ChrisMarritt's shared items

Is social business the new badge for the social media expert?

Judging by some of the events I’ve attended and an increasing number of blog posts I’ve read recently it could well be.

Let’s start off with the fact that it’s yet another ‘social’ term that’s been stolen by those who appear to think the world started with the internet and that social media changes everything. If it existed before they did, then it can’t have been that important. Just like social marketing had a specific meaning before the advent of social media, so did social business. And neither has anything whatsoever to do with social media.

Social marketing has actually been around for at least 40 years and one of the earliest accepted definitions was by Kotler and Zaltman in 1971: Social marketing is “the design, implementation and control of programs calculated to influence the acceptability of social ideas and involving considerations of product planning, pricing, communication, distribution and marketing research.” The UK’s National Social Marketing Centre defines it as “the systematic application of marketing, alongside other concepts and techniques, to achieve specific behavioural goals, for a social good.”

Social business also has a well established meaning:

“Social business is a non-loss, non-dividend company designed to address a social objective.”

This one comes courtesy of Wikipedia, the social media gurus’ favourite font of all knowledge, so it must be right!

The new social business consultants want you to be astounded about how disruptive social media and social networks are and what gargantuan effects they are going to have on your business. They want you to think that only they have seen the light and that only they can take you by the hand and guide you into the future.

This is flawed thinking on two levels:

1) Social business isn’t actually that new or different. Business has always been about people. “People buy from people” has been true since the dawn of time. What’s changed is the means of interaction between people and organisations. It’s now easier for people to talk to other people, and for you to listen and talk to them.

2) They don’t have the experience or expertise to provide worthwhile consultancy on everything.

Now that’s not to say that social business can’t also be defined as “a business designed around social tools, social media, and social networks” (also courtesy of Wikipedia). It’s hardly rocket science to realise that businesses need to adapt to the changing world around them and that a huge part of that is the rise of the ‘social web’.

But the critical thing is that the last person you’d want helping you to change is a social business consultant.

Personally, I’d run a mile from anyone who claimed to be a social business consultant. What you’ll probably find is someone who has failed at something else and spotted a new niche where they hope to make a quick buck; or someone who iss actually very good at what they do, but isn’t satisfied with that and wants to be recognised for being bigger and cleverer than everyone else.

The people you actually need to help you build your social business are the actual real experts in their field.

You need a technology expert who ‘gets social’.

You need a human resources expert who ‘gets’ social’.

You need a research and development (R&D) expert who ‘gets social’.

You need a marketing communications expert who ‘gets social’.

You need a public relations expert who ‘gets social’.

You need a market research expert who ‘gets social’.

You even need a finance expert who ‘gets social’.

You ‘get’ the message?

What you don’t want is to hire any one of the above and let them be your social business consultant.

And what you definitely don’t want to do is hire a social media expert and let them be your social business consultant. By their own narrow definition of themselves they are going to be least able.

It’s ludicrous to think that a PR consultant or marketing consultant has enough experience and expertise across your whole business. But beware, they might be very good at persuading you they have. They’ll use phrases like ‘paradigm shift’, ‘blue sky thinking’, ‘social convergence’, ‘conversation cloud’… and so on. Mostly meaningless twaddle, but it impresses some people. The clients they attract are just like the Emperor in Hans Christian Anderson’s fairytale who bought an invisible suit and didn’t want to admit he couldn’t see it for fear of being seen as unfit, stupid, or incompetent.

If you are going to hire a consultant to help you change your business to become a ‘social business’ then the consultant that is most likely to help you blend all of the appropriate experts together is the good old-fashioned management consultant.

So the only bit of ‘social business’ that I and my consultancy can help you with is public relations, corporate communications and how ‘social’ impacts on communications, behaviour and reputation management. It also means we’ll get involved with the communications and public relations elements of human resources, marketing, finance etc. But when it comes to providing advice on actual market research, or actual human resources then we’d prefer to introduce you to or help you find someone who actually is a real expert rather than someone who just knows about social media and social networks.

So if you come across a social business consultant then just remember the Emperor’s new clothes.

Related: An open letter on social media evangelism

If you want track the livestream social media activity of MPs, then the new website YatterBox will be perfect for you. It has just been launched by York University graduates and their unique site tracks all MPs’ social media: Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, blogs and Hansard. It is bound to be an valuable resource for many, from constituents and political geeks, to research students and the media.

I enjoyed its data on how social our MPs really are – more Labour MPs use Twitter (44%), with Lib Dems leading on Facebook (86%), and Conservatives leading on YouTube (24%), blogging (22%) and Flickr (34%).

Congratulations to the team behind this site. It is the clever creation of Matthew Freckleton (pic left) and Chris Etheridge, (pic right), with IT support from Richard Taylor who designed the website. I really like their strapline, “making politics social”, discovering which ones really are social media savvy, and I would like to see this launched as an app too. I also wonder how many MPs are on FourSquare, which is becoming increasingly popular.

An email from Chris outlined their vision about the website. Matthew thought up the idea during the 2010 general election when he saw the value in a site which pulls all the social media outputs of all UK MPs into one place.

Chris says: “It is believed that YatterBox will appeal to a lot of people who want to check up on what their MPs are saying and doing during elections and big issues of debates, such as the upcoming AV referendum. On other occasions, it is most likely that political enthusiasts and news companies will be its main users.”

To see the different social media outlets, you use the filter box at the bottom right of the page; if you click on the Twitter button for example, that turns Twitter off. Likewise, if you click on the Facebook button, that turns Facebook off. You can then click on the button that you have switched off to turn it back on again.

Well done guys, and I hope you find some sponsors to support you with this great new website.

Today I’ve got a guest post from Emily Turner looking at some of the aspects of the relationship between PRs and journalists – from someone who has experience from both sides of the fence.

Emily’s an NCTJ-trained journalist with fourteen years’ public relations and crisis communications experience in the public and private sectors. She blogs at thewomaninbib68.co.uk.

It was really inter­est­ing to read a well-thought out piece by Matthew Brown on the rela­tion­ship between jour­nal­ists and PRs.

Many jour­nal­ists want to go back to the time when they could get infor­ma­tion direct from source with­out a PR get­ting in the way. Who can blame them? Those days were ripe for a gaff-laden quote. But the old days will never return. Busi­nesses and organ­i­sa­tions have too much to lose. A word out of turn can go global thanks to social media and busi­ness is increas­ingly risk adverse.

The rela­tion­ship between PRs and jour­nal­ists is com­plex. It is inter­est­ing that nearly two-thirds of those in PR in the UK are women, accord­ing to the Char­tered Insti­tute of Pub­lic Rela­tions, while Women in Jour­nal­ism says women are under­rep­re­sented in Britain’s newspapers.

It’s a mis­con­cep­tion that a PR’s job is easy, it’s not that far off from a journalist’s duties. There’s reac­tive work as calls come in and com­plaints from the pub­lic and cus­tomers on inter­net forums and social media. There’s the sched­ule of proac­tive work, cri­sis com­mu­ni­ca­tions train­ing, media analy­sis, blog­ging, tweet­ing, Face­book, releases to upload on web­sites, inter­views to be recorded, press con­fer­ences to arrange and meet­ings with other organisations.

The journalist’s com­mon war cry is that PRs don’t put out enough proac­tive stuff or enough usable proac­tive stuff. Well no one within a com­pany will­ingly offers up a story to their PR. Why add to their own work­load? PRs have to sniff them out and hound until they get all the details and then,when they’ve squeezed the blood out of a stone, often go through a tor­tur­ous clear­ance process. If the story involves sev­eral organ­i­sa­tions or com­pa­nies, the release could go through numer­ous amend­ments. I think my per­sonal record is 25 amend­ments between 15 parties.

As for usable stuff, this is the del­i­cate bal­ance of PR. As a PR you are keenly aware of a journalist’s needs. Many PRs were once jour­nal­ists them­selves. You are also aware of your company’s or client’s needs. Some­times the client or com­pany will not lis­ten to the PR’s advice and a non-news, puffy release goes out. Often it could be because there are inter­nal or exter­nal pol­i­tics going on behind the scenes.

The reces­sion is going to have a dra­matic impact on PR. The reduced PR ser­vice will mean it will be more dif­fi­cult to get a query answered, fewer inter­views and far less proac­tive out­put. The stan­dard of try­ing to answer every query will drop and it will become accept­able to be unable to answer queries because the man­power is not there. PRs will be forced to focus on com­mu­ni­cat­ing directly with their key audi­ences – cus­tomers, share­hold­ers, peers and the pub­lic — through social media and the inter­net rather than rely­ing on the media.

Here’s some thoughts on the world of PR:

Puff v non-puff

PRs hate cheese and they hate puff. They hate hav­ing to write it, place it and talk about it. Most PRs are hon­est with jour­nal­ists about their sto­ries. If it is weak they might try and strike a deal that the jour­nal­ists prints it in return for access to a bet­ter story another time. A puff or weak piece won’t nec­es­sar­ily be the fault of the PR, it has prob­a­bly come from much higher up and they’ve prob­a­bly advised against doing it. If you aren’t going to use it, say so and this can be fed back with a “told you so!” If the release says “unique”, “lead­ing” or “most pop­u­lar”, then it is because the client has insisted on it or no payment.

Con­tact

Jour­nal­ists often want a ded­i­cated PR con­tact but it is safer to email your query into a mail box that every­one in the press office can access. If you mail it to your ded­i­cated con­tact and they are not in, you risk delay in your query being answered. Also do not ring the press office and then fail to leave a mes­sage. If you leave a mes­sage it goes on the query sheet to be answered, rings do not. Rings do not indi­cate how urgent your query is either. Be aware that email queries get on the response list faster than mes­sages left on voice­mall. It is always a good idea to fol­low up your email/voicemail with a call a few hours later to check it has been received.

Read­ing press releases

Please read the press release thor­oughly before phon­ing. All too often the jour­nal­ist will call to ask ques­tions which read­ing the release will answer.

The PR call

PRs never win. If they call to check a story’s been received, the jour­nal­ist feels annoyed. Often the PR has been told to do a ring around by their boss. Also if the PR doesn’t ring and the jour­nal­ist misses a poten­tial story, they ring the PR annoyed that it wasn’t brought to their attention.

Dead­lines

It helps when jour­nal­ists are con­sis­tent with dead­lines. Tell the PR if it is a print or broad­cast dead­line or a per­sonal dead­line you are work­ing to, as this gives the PR a real idea of how urgent the request is. If you lie and say you need it absolutely by 3pm “or the world will end” only to change it to “yeah, 48 hours is fine”, the PR is never going to take your dead­lines seri­ously. A jour­nal­ist who is always real­is­tic with dead­lines is rarely going to be dis­ap­pointed. Remem­ber the PR is unlikely to have the infor­ma­tion you need to hand and will have to source it and get it cleared.

Atti­tude

Swear­ing at a PR is unac­cept­able at any time, no mat­ter how under pres­sure you are or how close your dead­line is. If you con­tinue to behave in an offen­sive way then most press office man­agers will request you email in your queries in future or refuse to deal with you at all. If you wish to build a rela­tion­ship with a reg­u­lar PR then you need to gain their trust. This means being fair in what you print, give a rea­son­able time­frame for a right of reply and then using that right of reply, have a con­sis­tent man­ner, give con­sid­er­a­tion to who is dri­ving the story and their motive and give as much dead­line notice as you can.

Off-the-record

If you’ve gained the PR’s trust, then it’s likely that the PR will brief you off-the-record when nec­es­sary. Most PRs know off-the-record is not really off-the-record. But they might give you back­ground for your guid­ance, which they should say how they expect it to be used (eg non-attributable to them). You can then use that infor­ma­tion and try and get it to stand up else­where with other sources. If you use that infor­ma­tion and attribute it to them, the PR will never give you that extra back­ground again and a use­ful part of that rela­tion­ship will be lost. Like­wise if you need advice on whether what you are print­ing is true or fea­si­ble, a PR is likely to give you guid­ance if you’ve got a good relationship.

Inter­views

Many PRs put out a press release with details about inter­views. If inter­views are to be held on a spe­cific date at a spe­cific time, there will be good rea­son for that. If you call up a day after the inter­views were held, you are likely to be disappointed.

Wast­ing time

Some jour­nal­ists rel­ish the game of “word round­abouts”. This occurs when the PR is not say­ing the words the jour­nal­ist wants to hear. The jour­nal­ist will con­stantly rephrase what the PR is say­ing, end­ing it with “is that what you say­ing?” only for the PR to say “no” and then repeat­ing their orig­i­nal words. If a PR has said the same thing three times then it’s time to accept the state­ment that is being offered.

Exclu­siv­ity

Often jour­nal­ists feel angry that a rival has a story that they haven’t and will blame the PR for keep­ing it from them. It is not for PRs to share another newspaper’s tip offs or what other news­pa­pers are writ­ing about that week. Don’t ask for exclu­siv­ity on a story either. It’s unwork­able unless you are offer­ing Max Clif­ford sums of money.

Weigh­ing up bridge burn­ing

PRs know that they need jour­nal­ists to get their sto­ries out. But PRs help jour­nal­ists too. PRs often help out less expe­ri­enced jour­nal­ists, show­ing them the ropes of a par­tic­u­lar indus­try and tak­ing time to explain things in more detail. If you are going to stuff your rela­tion­ship with your reg­u­lar PR for a story, it’s worth con­sid­er­ing a few points. Is this story going to really enhance your career? Could this PR go places in their career and will you cross paths again in the future? If you stuff this PR could it under­mine your rela­tion­ship with other PRs?

Finally

A PR is never a “PR girl” (girls are under 18 years of age), a PR babe (babes are under 12 months of age) or a PR guru.

When the religious beliefs of an NHS employee run contrary to trust policy, the result is often headline grabbing conflict. Louise Hunt looks at a modern day dilemma

I attended the excellent NMK online PR debate last night and came away with plenty to think about. Other than the Q&A session at which point those posing questions became either; a) guarded or b) salesy (it must’ve felt like a shark tank for the one client that attended), the debate covered a lot of interesting areas.

I wanted to pop my hand up a few times, throw something and shout a few times and storm out a few times – but (to the relief of the people I sat with) I did none of that stuff. So I’ll do most of it here and now.

#1 A ‘one world order’ industry

Antony Mayfield suggested that there’s a race on, and that the type of agency that gets to effective online communications first will write the bible on it and own it. In my view (or IMO, if Vikki Chowney will let me be a digital native – for she is the chief of the natives) this is a ridiculous suggestion. The bible is already being written; every time a client hands a huge small pot of gold the industry takes either a step forwards or a step backwards (I will concede that it’s often a step backwards though). However the point remains, while people use the internet to communicate, the bible is being written. Then rewritten. Then burnt and written again. This isn’t traditional communications, it’s fluid, it moves, it changes, it contradicts, it’s human.

No single type of area of communications will lead; the fact that (for all intents and purposes) two distinct areas of communications sat at that table in Zigfrid Von Underbelly highlights that at least two industries know that something is going on. PR wont just wake up one morning and forget about the internet, and neither will digital (and we’re all screwed when the ad boys learn how to turn wifi on).

#2 The general attitude towards public relations

Many of the issues raised at the NMK debate referred to public relations as media relations. Which it is not. I’ve worked in PR (both in traditional, social focused, in-house and agency) for a while now and I’d estimate that media relations makes up for about 10% of my job. Even then, good media relations isn’t ‘let’s create a database and phone people’ it’s ‘I wonder who I know that might be interested in this’. Media relations is relationships with the media – not relationships with Media Disk. That would be Media Disk Relations.

Last night was a tricky one for PR, because the good PR agencies (I.E. those that were savvy enough to know something was happening and turn up) had to support the bad agencies. Most of the issues that came up were issues with bad PR agencies, not good ones.

The idea that PRO’s aren’t in the perfect situation to take over relationships using the internet is crazy. Crazy I tell you.

#3 Measurement

The final throes of the debate centred around digital’s apparent ‘joker’ card – measurement. There are two issues here; measuring influence and using important metrics.

Influence: Those that claim that they can measure influence are being 50% inaccurate. And that’s a bad stat too. Influence means a mass of different things, (I’ll use the bad example that I gave to Andrew Smith at the bar) there could have been one hundred people telling the CEO of Oracle to give Sun Microsystems a wide berth, each holding a tiny bit of influence over the CEO, but then one person strolls over at lunch and states that he thinks the CEO would be stupid to not buy Sun… Influence isn’t a numbers game, it’s a relationships game and PR is perfectly situated to pull out how those relationships work. That’s exactly why sociologists, politicians and psychologists (gasp, even the great Edward Bernays) tend to make great PRO’s. They understand relationships and social mechanics. Neither of which can be measured by click-throughs or bought on Google AdWords.

Important metrics: There is a single metric that is important. Not inlinks, outlinks, internal links, authority, page rank, click-throughs, alexa. But conversions. To come back to Stuart’s bad bar analogy from the event, marketing might make you more attractive, advertising might bring you more short-term attention, digital might bring more click-throughs and promotion might help spread the word, but public relations keeps peoples interest and ensures that the reputation is managed. I’ll take the point that brands cannot guard their own brand identity, because people create that, but PR can influence that. And almost like magic we’re back to influence and social mechanics again!

I’m terribly aware that I’ve babbled on for too long already, so I’m cutting it short and stopping. I’d really like to hear from Anthony and Roger – I have massive respect for both of them (and the other good guys in digital) and I would hate this post to look like a slight on them – it’s not.

I’d love to hear from Ian (massive thanks have to go to Ian – cheers again), Stuart, Drew, Adam, Kerry, Adam, Vikki, Simon, Tim, Ben and anyone else who I had a chat with on the night.

Also, here’s a sort of summary of who’s covered the debate so far…

Lloyd Gofton talks a good talk and treads the steady tightrope of digital and PR.

Peter Hay gives us the PRWeek edit of events.

Jo-Rosie Haffenden throws down the gauntlet of changing public relations to interactive relations (I wholeheartedly agree, but still stubborn as a mule I’ll say public relations is interactive relations).

Rowan Stanfield talks about the debate from the perspective of digital – and gives a comprehensive overview. As you’d expect, I’m preparing a long winded comment.

Danny Whatmough chirps in – but I’m still mad at him for not making it.

Roger Warner expands on his panel chatter further – again, comment is in the post Roger!

There’s a literal boat-load of activity going on where Twitter is the common factor. One example: I posted earlier about Twitter hashtag overload.

Time now for something a lot more positive.

I’ve picked two things that are well worth giving your time and attention to if you’re trying to determine the value of Twitter to you, just like everyone I know is doing. Including me.

First, Twitter for PR (Keynote & YouTube version) by Corinne Weisgerber, an assistant professor of communications at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas, USA.

It’s one of the best presentations I’ve yet seen that credibly explains how Twitter can be a useful tool from a PR point of view, a major point I make myself in workshops and presentations I do about social media and PR (including the weekly webinars I’m doing wearing my Bond-i hat).

Weisgerber’s presentation is especially compelling with its use of embedded video, making it easy to grasp key points and thus aid your overall understanding.

Here’s the slideshow:

Hat tip: Matt Rhodes, FreshNetworks.

Next, read Twitter sucks, so change your friends, an excellent post by London-based musician, writer and teacher Steve Lawson in which he beautifully trashes much of the utter drivel about Twitter that has been published in some of the UK mainstream media in recent weeks, notably by The Times.

There’s so much that’s copy-and-pastable about Steve’s post to demonstrate how much I agree with what he says that it’s hard to know where to click the mouse.

So let me focus on his conclusion:

[…] Twitter - and the raft of ‘micro-blogging’ services that are springing up, and will continue to mutate - is changing the way we communicate online, and we’re all the better for it. It’s not going to disappear, and 3 years from now, we’ll all have a twitter name (or hopefully an OpenID-authenticated cross-platform equivalent) the way we have an email address.

“Changing the way we communicate online” – that’s the view that strikes me as especially convincing.

I’ll conclude by saying that the bottom line quoted here won’t take anything away from Steve’s post, so go and read it in its entirety and add your opinion to the growing conversation on his blog.

Finally, see these related points of view:

• Social networks ‘are new e-mail’, a BBC report from South by Southwest 2009 that suggests that all people want to do on social networks these days is post status updates.
• Microblogging will marginalize corporate email, a compelling point of view by tech marketer Hutch Carpenter that suggests that communications amongst employees will both increase and divert away from email because of the growth of microblogging with services like Yammer, Socialcast, Present.ly and SocialText Signals. Not to mention Twitter, of course.

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© 2009 - visit the author for more great content.

That's the question I've been asking people on a nifty website Nath from Travel Weekly discovered and shared on Plurk today.
It's called ask500people.com and allows you to pose questions - multiple choice, comment-enabled, photos etc - which visitors to the site can respond to. I've not got 500 people yet and don't expect to but the site is so easy to use (and some of the questions are such good fun) that I'd anticipate a wider audience before too long.

There are multiple polls running at any time, but some appear on the Homepage (mine made it on there tonight!) in response to voters adding "Points," or up-voting questions that they like and would like to see answered by the community.
According to the website's FAQ "Questions with the most points are promoted up the the question list until, hopefully, they appear on the homepage.
"If a poll doesn't make it after 24 hours, it's removed from the lineup. All polls, however, remain available to voters and can be linked to or embedded on websites."

That's great... until you get to the final three words of the last paragraph. Because I can't embed the poll or the widget that accompanies it on this website - it simply won't happen.
And The Daily Post asked a question about Everton's stadium situation, but had exactly the same problem with embedding. So I guess there must be a coding glitch somewhere, hence the posted screenshot here to illustrate my poll.

Luckily, you can also link directly to your question using code - as I have here.
I think it's a handy tool - one of the LDP reporters has posted a poll of her own about education, which is here as part of a crowdsourcing project she's running. It shows the geographic spread of voters using a map, handy at-a-glance panels and a little results sidebar.

So a useful site and one I'd say was a good addition to a journalist's toolkit. I just wish I knew why we couldn't get the embed options to work...

UPDATE: I got 522 responses in under seven hours and five comments - I reckon that's pretty good for an off-the-cuff poll. You can see the results here.

Yesterday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved new guidance for publicly-listed companies in using traditional websites and social media channels like blogs to meet the SEC’s public disclosure requirements under Regulation FD.

Regulation FD (’fair disclosure’) sets out a clear rule relating to the selective disclosure of information, and clarifies some issues under the US law of insider trading.

The SEC’s new guidance on what tools companies can use concerning Reg FD is a huge step forward in opening up the closed world of regulated financial communication, providing companies, investors and anyone with an interest in a US-listed company with better means to more easily find, share and interactively make use of information that’s offered in electronic form.

I first heard about the SEC’s news in a dent from Dominic Jones yesterday. (Btw, you’ve heard of tweets, right? Better get used to hearing about dents now as well.)

It seems to me that the SEC’s announcement vindicates efforts over the years by influential voices such as Sun Microsystems’ CEO Jonathan Schwartz who have called on the SEC to open up the regulatory framework governing financial communication.

So what does the SEC’s liberalization move mean for communication and investor relations?

While I’ve not studied the SEC’s preliminary statement yet in real depth, two immediate thoughts come to my mind:

1. This could be the moment, the tipping point, when the social media news release really comes into its own, given its purpose of presenting news and information in a format that is designed for online interactivity.
2. It could well give a kick in the pants to how corporate websites are managed and controlled, opening up the development of those sites into genuinely interactive and useful tools. A bit like how blogs work in many ways.

Others with unquestionably deeper knowledge than me about financial communication have posted some excellent first thoughts.

Dominic Jones, IR Web Report:

[...] The move is significant as it could cut disclosure costs for many companies that today use paid PR wire services to distribute their disclosures. It could also encourage companies to make investments to improve their investor relations websites and facilitate the use of blogs for communications with investors.

[...] What I believe may be the most significant part of the release, is new guidance that says web-based disclosure documents do not have to be in “a format comparable to paper-based information, unless the Commission’s rules explicitly require it.”

That is a welcome clarification and could encourage companies to be more innovative and creative in how they present their disclosures online rather than merely dumping documents in PDF or image-based documents that mirror the printed documents.

Jennifer Leggio, ZDNet:

[...] The guidance, which will be effective upon publication in the Federal Register, does imply that there are certain stipulations that public companies must meet in order to take full advantage of the guidance. And, as with any disclosure, the companies should tread carefully in determining what should be disclosed, where and how. No matter, this is definitely an advancement that positively impacts companies, investors and social media pundits.

[...] Bottom line? If used carefully, this new method of disclosure could be a boon for social media allies, as well as public company marketing budgets and Web presence alike. However, the wire services are likely going to suffer a bit of a loss.

Kate Plourd, CFO.com:

[...] Companies now will be permitted, under certain circumstances, to distribute investor information via Web sites exclusively — instead of through a system limited to SEC filings and widely distributed news releases. The guidelines are intended to help investor relations in using that less-understood manner of dissemination.

They also clarify how the antifraud provisions apply to statements made by the company — or a person acting on the company’s behalf — in blogs and electronic shareholder forums. And they explain that companies cannot require investors to waive protections under the federal securities laws as a condition of participating in a blog or electronic shareholder forum.

[...] “It’s a better way to provide information to investors, because today it can be presented in an interactive format that allows each individual to click through or drill down to the level appropriate to him or her,” said [SEC Commissioner Christopher] Cox. “We recognize that allowing companies to present data in ways different from our current forms and in more technologically advanced ways than Edgar can be a significant help to investors.” Edgar is the SEC’s system of Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval.

So, the first takes on a move by the regulator of the world’s biggest and most influential financial market that has huge implications for communication and investor relations.

And not just within the US - the SEC’s new guidance will no doubt be studied carefully by regulators, communicators and IR practitioners elsewhere.

Incidentally, the SEC is now participating in Twitter.

Not a bad indicator that individuals within are taking this seriously.

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© 2008 - visit the author for more great content.

My guess is you read that Blog posting headline and assumed it to mean that Facebook is over for the masses, MySpace is back en vogue and the future of online social networks belongs to LinkedIn.

Not at all.

In my journeys (and this includes feedback I get on this Six Pixels of Separation Blog and Podcast or in speaking or with clients), I'm frequently asked if I think Facebook can continue to grow or will some other kind of online social network come around that will make us all jump ship? (it's a whole other Blog posting for another day).

It got me thinking about why we use these online social networks, what they mean and how they fit in to our everyday lives... and this light went off:

Facebook is wildly popular right now and - although I don't really use it for this particular use - most people do use it to stay connected with old friends and family members, or to meet up with people they haven't seen in a long while (how many people you knew in high school try to connect with you via Facebook on a daily basis?).

My guess is that most people floating around MySpace use it to stay current. They hop around people's MySpace profiles to be up-to-date on who's doing what in art, music, culture, literature, parties, meet-ups, etc... If you're hip, with it and "now"... you hang out and play on MySpace.

LinkedIn is all about building your professional stature. It's all about making the right connections, so that your future can be brighter than your past. LinkedIn is all about establishing initial contact, building that trust over time and being able to connect to those business people more effectively in the future.

It's the "perfect storm" for online social networking, isn't it? You have a place to stay connected (and find) family and friends, a place to hang out that keeps you "in the loop" and a place to connect with those who can help propel your career forward.

Each one has its own merit and value. While an individual's interest and attention may shift from one to another, Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn each provide their own, special network depending on if you're focused on the past, present or future.

(sidebar: I'm sure you read last week that LinkedIn got an investment of over fifty million dollars, which gives it a valuation of one billion dollars? read more about that here: MarketWatch - LinkedIn Raises $53 Million In VC Funding).

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