Social TV and Second Screens: To What End?

December 5th, 2011

Here’s the latest in the ongoing series of essays, “Local Media in a Postmodern World:”

Social TV and Second Screens: To What End?

This one is for broadcasters and broadcast companies. An awkward situation is brewing for broadcasters in the world of social media. As advertisers continue to spend money on themselves that used to go to advertising, they’re discovering the value of so-called “second screen” experiences and, in some cases, tailoring their TV ads to jump start the process. The problem is that the TV industry is doing the same thing, and in so doing, competing with the people who pay the bills. This is doubly problematic, because we already know that this “second screen” activity can and does take place during the very commercial breaks that pay those bills. If you haven’t explored the world of unintended consequences in this area, I urge you to read this essay – all the way through.

Posted in Broadcasting, Reinventing Local Media, Social Media | 5 Comments » |

Goodbye, Google; hello, Google+

July 6th, 2011

By now, you most likely have heard about Google+, Google’s new entry into the social networking phenomenon. I was fortunate enough to get an early invite, so I’ve spent the last week playing in the application. I think this has the potential to reshape Google’s entire business in ways that will be very, very hard to ignore. It all begins with the name, Google+. It’s not merely a new application, it represents a complete shift in the company’s strategic thrust. It’s THAT significant.

Check your company’s analytics, and you’ll see that, in 99% of cases, Google is the top referrer of eyeballs to your website. Why is that? It’s all about search, and Google owns search. Everything they do is important in that regard, and while most people are comparing G+ to Facebook and/or Twitter, I think that misses the point. Google+ is far more than “just another social network” or a “Facebook killer” (yeah, right), because it incorporates all that is Google.

My search results, for example, are now personalized and presented within the plus framework. I like this very much, because the first organic result often reveals the website most recently visited by me that addresses the search query. This is incredibly useful for those “I read that somewhere” searches.

The two things I find most intriguing for news are both found in the service’s Android app (an iPhone app is coming, but I don’t know if it contains the same abilities as the Android app). One, I can set it so that any picture I take is immediately and automatically uploaded to a folder on my G+ account. This type of application — where a picture I take on earth is automatically distributed to the cloud — is game-changing for the real-time news industry, and I fully expect to see similar applications applied more broadly to the news business. However, G+ is first out-of-the-box with this, and it is powerful. Next will be video. You can count on it. Try to imagine online news with this feature. It will be amazing.

The second Android function involves the information stream of Google+ itself. Since every one you “follow,” gets placed immediately into a circle of your choice (friends, family, coworkers, etc.), you can choose what stream to follow at any given time. It’s a great way to use connectivity, and the infrastructure is all drag-and-drop simple. You can deliver posts to any group as well, including making them “public,” where anybody can see them. This is significant, for it mimics Twitter in that sense.

The mobile app allows you to make your location known to Google (it’s off by default) and then read a stream of posts “nearby.” This has staggering implications for spot news coverage, where geolocation is important. Want witnesses, photos, video? No hashtags necessary, if you’re on location, for if everybody’s using G+ (a big question), a simple swipe of your Android phone gives you everything automatically. This is another innovation that will expand beyond Google, but the reality is that it is Google that brought this to the table.

Jeff Jarvis admitted yesterday that his school, City University of New York (CUNY), is going to have to begin teaching Google+ in its journalism program, and I certainly agree. His views of G+ include many thoughts about its application for news, and I recommend reading this piece.

But the most important thing to note is that Google has the clout to actually force businesses (of their own free will) into its “plus” cavern, and that is a big game-changer. Firstly, Google has announced that Google+ for business is coming, and I’m sure it will incorporate everything of Google’s already stout toolkit for businesses. Secondly, everybody will need a Google profile in order to be fairly “seen” by the search engine. What business would turn that down? It’s free.

And if businesses will use it, we need to know everything about it.

Social media consultant Jay Baer wrote this week that Google’s history is entirely built around the ranking of “Pages” on the Web. It developed PageRank to provide searchers with the best possible results. However, personal publishing via social media has changed everything.

Philosophically, Pages with more and better other Pages linking to them must be better content, and each link counts as a “vote” for that Page. But when the dominant form of expression became something smaller than a Page, and our votes of content confidence became expressed by social sharing and other behaviors that differ from “I’m going to link to this website from my website,” Google found itself trying to play web page ranking poker with less than a full deck of cards. It was trying to do a very difficult job with incomplete information.

This explains, in part, why Google had to make a move like this. The world of information is simply changing, but Baer adds that it is the integration of G+ content into its search algorithms that makes it so potent, especially for businesses. Remember, he points out, Google owns the top two search engines in the world. YouTube is number two.

Google has inserted so many tentacles into so many crevices of our digital lives, that they can compel us to use Plus via integrations and reminders in (just a starter list):

• Gmail
• YouTube
• Picasa
• Maps
• Android (the app for Plus is fantastic)
• Chrome
• Analytics
• Blogger

…Here’s the scenario I see unfolding before the end of 2011, and possibly before Labor Day. Google opens up business pages on Plus to Adwords customers. Any clicks and +1 (Google’s version of Facebook “like”) your business content receives on Plus has a direct impact on your organic search engine rankings, while your Facebook activity continues to have no impact.

Go read Jay’s article, for it’s really quite good. Then, if you don’t already have one, create a Gmail account, which will lead to a Google profile, which will lead to Plus. The company has announced that the service will be completely open to everyone by July 29th.

Most observers are writing about how Google+ will impact the news industry, and that’s important. I think its greater shock to the media ecosystem, however, is its potential to once again influence advertising, and that this is what should interest us most. It’s true that the two have always gone together for media companies, but they are increasingly disconnecting, and we must pay very close attention to what’s happening in this space.

This is why my best advice for any media company is still this: don’t leave to geeks what rightly belongs to upper management, especially sales. There’s still far too much ignorance about all of this stuff at the upper management level. Google+ will be a critical element in local advertising downstream. Will people shift from Facebook or Twitter? That’s the wrong question, for in the end, it really doesn’t matter.

Like a great many other things, it’s all about the money. Money doesn’t require mass anymore, and nobody knows that better than Google.

Posted in Culture, Disruptions, Google, Social Media, Technology | 2 Comments » |

LeBron James: A media company with a PR problem

June 15th, 2011

We’re all media companies these days. Technology has given us that. It’s the “Great Horizontal” as tagged by Jay Rosen, that hyperconnected universe of individual publishers and broadcasters.

Famous people have taken notice and find that being their own media company has its benefits. Remember how Ashton Kutcher became the first celebrity to hit a million followers on Twitter in 2009? That’s a drop in the bucket these days. Ashton found that he could “talk” directly to his fans with Twitter, and he’s been very smart about it. Athletes, politicians, singers, musicians, artists, poets, authors, anybody can take advantage of the tools of personal media to get their word out, for free.

But as traditional media companies can tell you, there are certain responsibilities that come with the power to address a BIG group of people, because intentions don’t communicate, only behavior. This is especially true when people can react to that behavior and share it with everybody else. It may be easier to protect the stages of big media, but that begins with a very basic understanding about that stage’s responsibilities within the bigger picture in order to keep people coming to watch your production. Being a media company is a responsibility before it is a mouthpiece, because the audience is the one who makes the decision whether to accept the message or not.

This is why most media companies specialize in public relations. Hell, it’s the flip side of the coin of journalism, and we all know that’s true. We’re all selling something, be it a story, a point-of-view or — and perhaps especially — ourselves.

As athletes go, LeBron James is a pretty strong brand, but he has a serious personal image problem. He’s got natural gifts that we’ve never seen before in one package, and that has been hyped since he was a boy. Unfortunately, his image doesn’t match his behavior, and rather than work on that, James continues to make one foolish PR mistake after another.

There was promising championships for Cleveland and not delivering. There was “the decision,” which was so wrong in so many ways. There was the big stage presentation where he was “introduced” in Miami, sort of a celebration before the victory. There was the anticipointment generated by promising “not five, not six, not seven…” championships. What a boneheaded thing to say. He’s referred to himself as “King James” in text messages. Now there’s the haughty and condescending snub of basketball fans who had the temerity to criticize him during the NBA Finals.

“All the people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day, they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today. They have the same personal problems they had today. I’m going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that.”

He’s about to enter unchartered waters in terms of forever screwing up the gifts he’s been given, and no course correction is going to help him. That’s because Life is the author of character, and in personal media — when it’s just you — you can’t turn to a “team LeBron member” for advice before opening your mouth. It’s either in you to say the right thing, or it isn’t. If it isn’t, don’t worry. Life will teach you, but only if you have a teachable spirit. You can’t play a role, read a book or take a course. Humility is its doorway, and that’s buried deep within the human soul.

As a huge fan of the Dallas Mavericks, I’ve watched as the national sports media has had a field day with James’ performance, while the superior basketball team picked apart the individual talents of the Miami Heat. Somebody wrote that James can’t experience failure, because he doesn’t know what it is. That’s an apt description of a character defect so enormous that it spills out into his efforts to control the message.

I teach my students that it’s all about your personal brand, and that to behave ethically these days demands a vast understanding of the big picture and their role within it. That includes responsibilities. There is no set of rules to memorize, absent, perhaps, the Golden Rule, that perfectly fits every situation, but we must always remember that everybody’s watching.

There are both benefits and opportunities in the Great Horizontal, but perhaps the most important thing is this: you simply cannot hide your real self, if you wish to play within this realm. There are no failures of talent, only character. My advice to LeBron is to work on that; the rest will happen automatically.

Thanks to Twitter follower TJ (@TJ2016) for the inspiration for this piece.

Posted in personal media, Social Media, Sports, The Great Horizontal | No Comments » |

Make it easy for me, please

June 9th, 2011

In my morning reading, I once again came across something that is increasingly causing me frustration: having to research a writer’s Twitter handle in order to do them the favor of advancing a link of their work. Not only does this make me angry; it’s also damned foolish.

Here’s the article in question. It’s by Julie Moos of Poynter. Yes, THAT Poynter, a place that certainly should know better. I don’t follow Julie on Twitter, so I don’t know what handle she uses (turns out it’s @juliemmoos). I thought the article was worth passing along to others, but I wasn’t able to give @Julie the link love she deserved, because I didn’t have the time to look it up.

But here’s what bites: why should I have to? If Twitter is so important to creating inbound links for content, why aren’t we making it as easy as possible for people to do just that? No, that’s not precise, for many media companies — Poynter included — automate the process (see the image to the right).

They do so, however, by tying the tweet to the company without mentioning the writer. This may seem like a good branding practice, but it disrespects best practices for the medium itself. It’s just one of many ways companies refuse to acknowledge the importance of personal branding, and that needs to change. I want to promote Julie, and in so doing, promote Poynter. That’s the way it works, folks, and I, for one, am tired of looking up Twitter handles when those who stand to gain should do it for me.

(Note: My Twitter handle appears at the bottom of every post here.)

Posted in Social Media, Twitter | No Comments » |

$1,000,000 in 3 days via social media

June 1st, 2011

Sometimes it’s the story behind the story that’s the real story.

In Columbia, Missouri last week, events came together to create a remarkable accomplishment for the people of Central Missouri — raising over a million dollars for relief efforts in tornado-ravaged Joplin. The town was leveled by the giant twister and rather than feel helpless, everyday people came together via social media to make a difference, guided by the steady hand of KOMU-TV.

Anybody who has worked charities knows that cash is the number one need in times of disaster. You can send all the food and clothing that you want, but nothing fixes things like money in the hands of responsible charities. As a board member of the Heart of Missouri United Way, Brent Beshore knew this. Beshore grew up in Joplin and immediately went into action. The owner of Museao, a contemporary event hall in Columbia, Beshore created a Facebook group called “Joplin, MO Tornado Recovery,” and planned a fund raising event at Museao for Thursday night.

KOMU-TV, which was deep into wall-to-wall online coverage of the disaster, worked with Beshore to transform the event into a telethon, with just 3 days of planning. Beshore’s local business connections helped garner corporate “matching” donations, and before the event even started, they had raised in excess of $400,000.

KOMU’s Jen Lee Reeves took over handling Beshore’s Facebook page (and on her own time) and wrote of her efforts for MediaShift. She told me that the newsroom’s natural response was to want to help, and that’s exactly what they did.

…we offered support to our viewers and outlets for their sorrow – we found legitimate resources and organizations that were giving support to victims. KOMU was closer to the damage in Joplin and we knew we could partner up with organizations that could make an immediate impact in the recovery of the city. Our messages in social media just helped increase our efforts – I kept my ears on the “ground” and could help inform our audience faster and more efficiently thanks to our social efforts.

KOMU-TV anchor Sarah Hill and University of Missouri graduate/producer Robert Kessler set out to create the content for the telethon, and everybody who works for the station pitched in. Plans were altered when yet another tornado hit the town of Sedalia, 50 miles west of Columbia, so the fundraiser was tweaked to include them, and the work continued. KOMU-TV news director Stacey Woelfel picks it up from there:

As the program started, we got a lot more phone traffic than we expected. People were having trouble getting in, so they had to try many times. At the telethon site, we were getting a lot of big corporate and group donations, so the number went up quickly. We were live in all four locations–telethon open house, Joplin, Sedalia, and studio–moving back and forth pretty quickly. As the :45 minute mark hit, we decided to extend 30 more minutes so we could keep the phones ringing. The talent did a great job of making the plea but moving things forward still, and the dollars kept coming in. Once into the 8 o’clock hour, we decided to push through to 9. Talent filled again and not long before 9, we hit the million dollar mark. We ended up airing a telethon-centered 9 pm CW newscasts on both CW and NBC, ending the telethon at the end of that. In all, the producer and the talent helped us stretch a planned one hour telethon to two and a half hours.

The latest total from the event is an incredible $1,163,962. If there were records kept of such things, I’m sure this would be one. It is truly a remarkable accomplishment for Mr. Beshore, KOMU-TV and the people and businesses of mid Missouri. As of today, the Facebook page has over 171 thousand fans, another amazing achievement.

Ms. Hill told me via email that the key to the whole endeavor is and was social media. “There’s no other way,” she wrote, “that a community our size could raise more than a million dollars in 3 days.”

Many of the initial donations according to the Heart of Missouri United Way were online out of state…which means people were either watching our livestream of the telethon, seeing it on Brent’s FB page or seeing it on our FB page or twitter. We sent out a You Tube preview link to the telethon via social media 24 hours before the event and hundreds of people shared it on their Facebook walls (that doesn’t count twitter). We also sent out via social media a link to a music video that aids Joplin and more than 8000 have shared that link. I wouldn’t be surprised if the United for Joplin fundraiser eventually hits $2M. There is a music group called “The Co” that is working with MTV and others to donate the proceeds of a special song download to Joplin relief. The “telethon” is over but social media is fueling even more momentum and bringing in the dollars a full four days after the actual event. In fact, there is now a “virtual ongoing United for Joplin event” going on Facebook right now.

News director Woefel said they just did what a local television station can do best, “delivered humanized stories about the loss and the need for help through locally-involved anchors who really cared about what they were talking about.”

We didn’t try to run the phone bank or handle incoming pledges or reach out to the business community for those large donations you must have. We let our other partners do that and that’s what led to the success. I would also give a lot of credit to Sarah as the lead anchor on the project. Clearly she cared about what we were raising money for and that passion helped make it work.

Social media is the great new friend of the news business, and this is one of the best examples I’ve seen of how a TV station deeply connected in its community took advantage of its involvement in social media to really make a difference where and when it counted. KOMU-TV has set the bar high, and my hat’s off to them.

Posted in Reinventing Local Media, Social Media, The Great Horizontal, Weather | 2 Comments » |

The conversation goes on, with or without us

May 25th, 2011

I got a tweet from Sarah Hill, anchor for KOMU-TV in Columbia, Missouri yesterday that says much about the current state of journalism and how social “media” is impacting the institution. We’d been exchanging direct messages about their coverage of the horrible disaster in Joplin, when she wrote:

The telethon has raised $175K thus far and it doesn’t start til Thursday.

The people of mid-Missouri are coming together to raise money for the relief effort, and Twitter, texting and Facebook have made it easy for people to connect with the cause. This is an excellent use of social media by a TV station in trying to make a difference, but it says even more about their recognition of the reality that is journalism today, that it’s no longer about us. We wish them well on the telethon.

Here’s the thing: fundraising efforts are also taking place beyond what a traditional media company is and can do, as everyday people pick up the cause and pass it along. This is the “Great Horizontal” of which Jay Rosen speaks, that remarkable new empowering of the people with which, sooner or later, those who practice professional journalism must come to grips. The question for the pros is this: do the people really need us anymore, or perhaps it’s better to ask “How can we as pros best fit into this conversation?” There are those who say that the pros should “lead” the conversation, but City University of New York professor and author Jeff Jarvis isn’t one of them.

I think the conversation is happening all around us, with or without the journalists. I teach now that it’s the role of the journalist to add value to that conversation: verification, debunking, facts, reporting, context, platforms, teaching…. The late James Carey defines the role differently. As Jay Rosen explains in the Carey Reader: “The press does not ‘inform’ the public. It is ‘the public’ that ought to inform the press. The true subject matter of journalism is the conversation the public is having with itself.”

But I’m seeing that news organizations think it is their role to lead the conversation (they set the agenda), allow the conversation (you may now comment on our story, now that it’s done), and judge the conversation (see Bill Keller’s sniffing at vox polloi).

…that is the reflex of the journalist: to control the conversation.

In a conversation with Michael Arrington this week (see below), Jarvis clarified the concept:

The conversation goes on without us. We in journalism thought the conversation needed us. That’s not the case anymore. It’s end to end, like the Internet. We can add value to that in all kinds of ways. We can vet and find good people and find nodes and networks, and give perspective to journalism.

This is why the word “curation” must be a part of our everyday language and practice. Here’s a series of images that I use to convey the concept. It begins with the output of a traditional news organization on a 24-hour, horizontal scale. “Real time” is what’s being outputted horizontally. That line moves across the horizontal line as the clock ticks. This is continuous news.

This would be fine if it weren’t for the fact that millions of others are outputting what’s important to them at the same time. So news in real time doesn’t just refer to our horizontal line; it includes everybody’s.

The opportunity, therefore, for “new” journalism is the ability to slice through all of those horizontal lines and makes sense of it all for others. This is what Jeff is talking about, and any attempt to exclude those other streams is not journalism in the 21st Century. Technology will help with the task, but it involves human judgment at some point.

We’ve come a long way since the days of criticizing “citizen journalists” in understanding what’s evolving before our eyes with news in the network. People aren’t stupid and no special group has a license on the practice of journalism. We all want to know what’s going on, and as the events in Missouri confirm, participate in what we can do to fix things that are broken. This may whack the fatted calf of professional journalism, but that’s a small price to pay for a more involved citizenry (and electorate). The more, the merrier, and while it does present challenges (certainly), we’re all better off for it in the long run.

The window for mass media to carve out a profitable role within this new hegemony is still open, but it will be closing slowly as more and more smart people get into the curation act. Traditional media companies still have the local muscle to block such efforts, but we must be smart, and that begins by acknowledging that the news conversation IS going on, with or without us.

Posted in Continuous News, Culture, Disruptions, Journalism, Media 2.0, Reinventing Local Media, Social Media | 5 Comments » |

The Web Is Our Friend

February 20th, 2011

Here’s the latest in my ongoing essay series, Local Media in a Postmodern World.

The Web Is Our Friend

We’re watching the world change before our eyes in the Middle East as everyday people are picking up the tools of new media to spread revolution against tyranny. Most of us “over here” see this as a good thing, although we fear the vacuum that might result. Good or not is an important question, because this idea that everyday people can connect so easily is at the core of everything that’s disrupting the media world today. If everybody is a media company then the media is everybody.

I’ve dedicated my life to the belief that the Web is a good thing for culture, and I teach that we’ve just begun to feel the ramifications of a genuinely hyperconnected world of human beings. I think it’s going to change everything we know, and if I had the money, I’d invest in that wager.

And so I think it’s appropriate for me, today, to take a trip back and explain why I think the Web is our friend. Insofar as Life moves us upward and onward, it’s important to know where our belief is, for only then will we be free to explore tomorrow.

Posted in Citizens News, Culture, Disruptions, Essays, Networked World, Postmodernism, Social Media, Twitter | 1 Comment » |

The matter of serendipity

March 31st, 2010

Ah, serendipity. It’s one of my favorite words, having been introduced to it in the 60′s music scene with “The Serendipity Singers,” a folk group on the hootenanny circuit. It’s getting a lot of attention today in the media discussion world, where some are lamenting that it will be lost with the eventual disappearance of newspapers. Here’s Jeff Jarvis, who smartly defines serendipity as “unexpected relevance:”

What is serendipity? It’s not a story from left field. It’s not, I think, “the opposite of what you normally consumed.” There’s a reason we find value in the supposedly serendipitous. When I started Entertainment Weekly, I said that our features had to satisfy a curiosity you didn’t know you had — but you end up having it. When we read a paper and find a good story that we couldn’t have predicted we’d have liked, we think that is serendipity. But there’s some reason we like it, that we find it relevant to us. Maybe that relevance is the unknown but now fed curiosity, maybe it’s enjoyment of good writing or a certain kind of tale, maybe the gift of some interesting fact we want to share and gain social equity for, maybe it’s a challenge to our ideas, maybe an answer to a question that has bugged us. In the end, it has value to us; it’s relevant.

Jeff thinks that we find serendipity today mostly through Twitter and Facebook, but I disagree. What I’m finding increasingly difficult to support with these two giants of social media is the time-consuming nature of following the links recommended by my friends, colleagues and those who I follow. This is the opposite of serendipity to me; it’s called work.

Where I find the most “unexpected relevance” today is through my RSS reader, which gives me plenty. In addition to the links, I also get enough to determine – for myself – if it’s relevant for me or not, and that’s what’s missing for me with Twitter and Facebook. It’s also why I absolutely love full-feed RSS. One of my favorite RSS feeds is The Inquisitr from Australia. Duncan Riley’s team always manage to float lots of interesting – and often off-topic – content that makes me smile and informs (and satisfies) my little serendipity brain cells.

So, for me, serendipity hasn’t been lost at all. I get more of it today than ever, and it’ll be fun to watch efforts to create “serendipity machines” through various algorithms. My only problem with that is if it’s a button I must push, it’s not serendipity.

And so it goes.

Posted in Culture, Disruptions, Just Plain Fun Stuff, Newspapers, personal media, Social Media | 4 Comments » |

Businesses are beginning to listen

March 12th, 2010

I can remember a few years ago when Jeff Jarvis went through his “Dell Hell” saga that those of us observing (Jeff, too) wrote about the day when businesses would actually pay closer attention to what’s being said about them in the online world. Beyond paying attention, we wanted them to respond.

Fast forward to today, and now we have a whole cottage industry blossoming as an arm of public relations. It’s called “reputation management,” and it’s the new big thing for advertisers. It is increasingly being offered to small and mid-sized businesses by those companies smart enough to see the market for it, and it’s yet another way that local media companies are being sliced out of the commerce mechanisms at the market level.

One company that is clearly managing its reputation by listening is Uno’s Pizza, a long time favorite of mine. Yesterday, at the Des Moines airport, I had a really trashy, cardboard tasting (although I must admit that I don’t really know what cardboard tastes like) personal Uno’s pizza. To see if they were listening, I tweeted the following:

When I landed in Dallas a couple of hours later, the following greeted me in ÜberTwitter via my Blackberry:

So there you go – reputation management at its finest. Good for them. It’s exactly the kind of response we first wrote about back in the Dell Hell days. I’ve sent the email they requested but haven’t heard back yet.

Of course, this all begs the question of how soon people will begin gaming this to get free meals or whatever. Knowing human nature, it’s probably already happening.

Posted in Advertising, Media 2.0, Networked World, Social Media, Twitter | 1 Comment » |

Future fame (and why it’s important)

March 6th, 2010

Like a lot of folks, I have a Google search RSS feed based on my name. Call it vanity or call it “reputation management,” but today’s world allows a degree of feedback never known before.

Last week, I ran into (and subsequently made friends with) a Finnish sports photographer named Kari Kuukka (also here and here). He’d just returned from the Vancouver Olympics and wrote a blog entry referencing a quote of mine that he uses on his Facebook page (see image). My Google search picked it up. I went to take a look. And now we’re Facebook friends.

This kind of thing happens more often than you might think, and it kind of freaks me out. Kari is a reader of this blog and also of my essays, which are published by The Digital Journalist. I showed the Facebook quote to Karen, and she said, “You’re famous.”

A few days later, my friend (and genius) David Weinberger posted a blog entry referring to a podcast he’d done on the subject of fame. In it, David speaks of a new form of fame that is here, thanks to the World Wide Web. In days past, “the media” determined who rose to the ranks of the famous. There was a neat, orderly process that one had to go through in order to “become” famous, but even if one followed all the right steps, the decision wasn’t based on anything other than the grace of media. He’s including Hollywood, the music industry, etc.

Today, it’s very different. The mainstream media still plays a role, but fame today is generally within smaller groups, peer groups or whatever. I think this is going to take awhile for people to accept that “fame” within smaller circles is actually fame, but I think David’s right. And not only is it more like “big fish/small pond,” the method of determining fame is very different, for the mechanisms of the Web allow for the audience – everyday people – to make the decisions on who gets to bask in the light of fame.

In Lexington this week, WLEX-TV General Manager Pat Dalbey took me to the Monday night taping of Woodsongs, a popular old-time music show that’s recorded in an old theater in downtown Lexington. One of the performers was Andy McKee, a remarkable guitar player that, well, you have to see to believe. Under the old world system, it’s unlikely Andy would be touring the country and selling CDs of his original compositions. His claim to fame? The guitar channel of YouTube, where Andy McKee’s music has been heard and seen over 72 million times. The members of YouTube vaulted McKee to fame, although it’s very unlikely his name will ever be a household word (neither will mine).

There are other stories popping up all the time. Colbie Caillat presented at the Grammies this year. Nobody ever heard of her before she put her music on MySpace. David Lehre’s work on YouTube got him a spot with MTVU, and he’s now a film producer.

So fame works in different ways today.

I first wrote about this in September of 2007 in our AR&D Media 2.0 Intel newsletter:

This is a generation unbound by the roadblocks used by the status quo to maintain their status, and I’m especially taken by the astute views of Ms. Caillat.

In an age when marketing has been elevated above content and so many songs are written and produced to a pre-ordained formula…Records these days…tend to contain one or two good tracks which you download to your computer so that you never have to listen to the rest of the album again.

The clue to the real power of J.D. Lasica‘s “personal media revolution” is found in this statement, and it assigns blame for current media chaos where it belongs — with the people who used to control everything. It’s not about technology or copyright or distribution or any of the other things you read and hear about these days that are cutting into music sales; it’s about the institution producing crap.

(Ask your employees how many watch your news, and then ask them why they don’t. Be prepared for the next response.)

So what do people do when confronted with crap? They usually find another path, and that’s at the core of what’s happening around us. This is why I so strongly recommend that local media companies search their own neighborhoods for tomorrow’s employees in addition to following the more traditional paths.

We’re being disrupted by the prosumer movement, and so far, we’ve taken the wrong path in trying to defend ourselves. Steve Jobs was asked last week why Apple came out with what could be considered an iPhone killer, an iPod with everything the iPhone has except the phone. His response is telling: “If anybody is going to cannibalize us, I want it to be us. I don’t want it to be a competitor.”

So rather than wait for somebody else to embrace the prosumer movement, we need to be doing this ourselves. This is essential Media 2.0.

So to Karen’s statement about Kari putting a quote of mine on his Facebook page, yes, I may be “famous.” But my tribe is a far cry from that which produces old world “fame,” and I’m very happy for it to be that way. You see, I write to challenge my own assumptions, not necessarily to be read, so anything that comes of that is really just an ancillary benefit. Oh it makes me “feel” good to know that people notice, but that’s not my goal.

And maybe that’s what real fame is all about anyway.

(You might be interested in a Google search on “1,000 true fans” and what that means for media professionals today as they work to grow their personal brands.)

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