Video: Changing the world with graphs
Here’s a video worth watching, even if a bit long (about 25 mins.).
Hans Rosling, Professor of International Health at Karolinska Institutet and Director of Gapminder Foundation, speaking at LeWeb3 conference, Paris, 2007 (video courtesy of Robert Scoble).
Several things to notice in this video:
- statistical storytelling with amazing graphs (of interest to both students of narrative theory and visual communication or information design)
- fresh perspective on globalization, economic development, history, and environmental issues
- the power of software and animated statistical graphs to help tell stories that can change (how we see) the world
- Rosling’s message to bloggers: use blogging to connect to the whole world instead of reinforcing the homogeneity of the Western world. How do we do this? How do you do this?
Facebook Beacon timeline & analysis
I love this analysis by Geoff Livingston of what went wrong with Facebook Beacon: They put business before community. Geoff argues this won’t work in social media:
ROI is a by- product of community participation as opposed to hard transactional advertising.
If you haven’t followed the Facebook Beacon controversy, here is a brief & manageable timeline for media snackers:
November 6, 2007: Facebook announces new targeted advertising system, Beacon: AP news; Read/Write Web
Analysts reflect on the business implications & possibilities of Facebook Beacon:
- Forrester analyst Jeremiah Owyang explains & compares My Space and Facebook advertising products
Privacy concerns emerge
- Forrester analyst Charlene Li’s Close Encounter with Facebook Beacon
Moveon.org starts campaign against Facebook Beacon: Read/Write Web; Moveon.org online petition; Moveon.org Facebook group (65,000 members between Nov. 20 and Dec. 3); For Immediate Release commentary (Shel Holtz & Neville Hobson);
November 28: Facebook makes changes to Beacon: Facebook announcement (ripe for ripping apart in a PR rhetorical analysis!)
The PR nightmare doesn’t end here:
- In spite of changes to Beacon, Privacy Issues Still Loom (from Read/Write Web)
- Coca-Cola backs out of Facebook Beacon; NY Times B.I.T.S. analysis here; ZDNet analysis here
- PC World reveals Beacon is stealthier than it seems; commentary from CNet blog (parent.thesis)
- Robert Scoble criticizes Facebook’s PR moves
Evolution of Beacon Nov. 6 – Nov. 29 from NY Times B.I.T.S. (hat tip to Jeremiah Owyang who posted this on twitter)
Edits (Dec. 5 & 6):
The big PR question is: Where is Mark Zuckerberg? It started with R. Scoble’s post above but others (note the excellent PR advice in this post), including Shel Israel, are asking the same question.
Todd Defren posts as Fake Mark Zuckerberg and shows what Mark should say. Funny, but great PR advice.
Mark Zuckerberg finally posts on Facebook blog. Shel Israel comments and finds Mark’s statement credible. I think the first paragraph is nice, because it admits they made mistakes. However, what has annoyed me throughout Facebook statements is that they claim to have created Beacon to “help people share information with their friends.” Really? As my students put it: “If I want to share information with my friends, I TELL them.” Beacon is an advertising platform and its goal is to make more money. So, although the first paragraph is OK, the second one is not:
When we first thought of Beacon, our goal was to build a simple product to let people share information across sites with their friends. It had to be lightweight so it wouldn’t get in people’s way as they browsed the web, but also clear enough so people would be able to easily control what they shared. We were excited about Beacon because we believe a lot of information people want to share isn’t on Facebook, and if we found the right balance, Beacon would give people an easy and controlled way to share more of that information with their friends.
But, here’s the change, as a result of user “feedback” (outrage?):
today we’re releasing a privacy control to turn off Beacon completely. You can find it here.
And, OK, this excerpt is good PR:
It took us too long after people started contacting us to change the product so that users had to explicitly approve what they wanted to share. Instead of acting quickly, we took too long to decide on the right solution. I’m not proud of the way we’ve handled this situation and I know we can do better.
What’s missing is some sort of promise/guarantee that user privacy will be a priority in the future. Instead, Mark’s last paragraph closes the topic. He hopes that:
this new privacy control addresses any remaining issues we’ve heard about from you.
Meaning, that’s it, we’re done, can we drop it now? We’ll see…
Dec. 5: Read/Write Web claims this is the end of the Beacon saga… the blogosphere is tired.
Ethics in the Digital Age survey
I’m working in my office and my eyes wondered to the September 2007 issue of PRSA Tactics, sitting in a side tray. The survey on the front page reads:
Ethics in the Digital Age
The percentage of PR professionals and students who think technology makes it difficult to ethically conduct public relations:
Professionals: 35%
Students: 46%
????!!!!
Is this a stupid question, or what??!!
Ethics, again
The discussion in the PR blogosphere of social media PR ethics makes me happy 
It’s wonderful to see PR critics in the field – not only in books such as Toxic Sludge is Good For You or in academic journals only academics have access to. The very fact that this conversation is taking place is a huge step towards more ethical PR. Shel Holtz calls this a nice thought and claims it won’t solve the problem of unethical social media PR practices… no, it won’t, not it the short term. Besides, no one solution will be enough to solve the problem. It needs to be attacked from several fronts, and this is but one of them.
Another solution is the one that Shel proposed, that each agency publish a case study after implementing a campaign. I called that solution unfeasible. It won’t hurt, but here are my doubts about it:
- It relies on trust. If people are OK with engaging in unethical, misleading PR tactics, they’ll be OK with not publishing these tactics in their case studies. How can we trust them to provide an honest account of all their tactics?
- It assumes education that might not be there. This fellow who explained his misleading tactics did just what Shel recommends – and when I read the comments I noticed it didn’t even occur to him something was wrong with his approach! Similarly, if clients don’t know the difference between ethical and unethical PR, they might be drawn to the unethical practices that bring impressive immediate results (never mind the long-term consequences…)
A comment on Shel’s post states that client education is the answer. If clients know the difference between ethical and unethical PR, they’ll only pay for the ethical kind. This is a good idea, I think, but how do we do that?
To recap, I believe there’s no ONE solution to the unethical social media PR problem. It has to be addressed on several fronts. So far, the ideas I encountered are:
- Put peer pressure on PR folks to publish their tactics
- Keep a PR watch, keep critiquing and calling people out on unethical practices – maybe our posts will come up when their names are googled!
- Educate (some) PR practitioners and clients
- Use a WIC (wisdom of the crowds) rating system for PR practitioners & agencies (another good idea in a comment to Shel’s post)
Do you have more ideas for possible ways to tackle this problem? Do you have practical recommendations for how to accomplish 1, 3, and 4 above? (2 is already happening, although we might be preaching to the choir…)
New PR Hope?
I’ve noticed several posts lately on the ethics of certain social media PR practices. The most recent one, from Shel Holtz, even calls for a radical (but unfeasible) solution to ensure transparency of social media PR.
The post Shel comments on is sad and scary, yet I can’t help but see hope for the PR profession in social media. There are many PR bloggers out there (see my blogroll) who make the profession accessible and transparent. Their posts show that PR people DO have values. Their blogs allow them to critique the PR profession from the inside (rather than us academics critiquing from the ivory tower) – so they have more credibility among PR practitioners. I think in time these PR bloggers will accomplish two important things for the PR profession:
1 – more ethical/transparent PR practice. They’re already pushing for this, and the very act of critiquing and calling people out on unethical practices is powerful. It is more punishment than PRSA can enforce!
2 – a better reputation. PR has a PR problem, and the profession will have an iffy reputation for a long time, but these bloggers will significantly improve PR’s reputation and professionalism.