There is clear dissatisfaction with the current state of marketing among the social media mavens.

• Fred Wilson and Union Square Ventures are looking for companies to invest in to take advantage of this.
• BuzzLogic releases their conversational ad service.
• The Inquisitr moves from AdSense to Technorati Media, indicating a potential shift at b5 Media.
• Lookery is providing demographic information that is relevant to social media providers and shaping ad presentation that way
• A completely off-the-radar person such as myself realizes that there is gold in what holds the attention, and that’s not always the latest and greatest

So what can be done? Jeff Jarvis points out that the problem lies with measurement. I agree, as there is only value in a system where all of the people involved agree on what the metric of record will be, and how it can be validly captured.

Currently CPM is the agreed upon metric. In a feed based online world, how does a CPM model work? And, most importantly, why would I continue to place your ads on my site if all your doing is advertising to people based on the words on the page, rather than who is looking at the page and how often that page is looked at.

In effect, advertisers should be the ones thrying to figure out how to get into the community, get into the conversation. As an advertiser, don’t you want to be where the action is? But how do you find an engaged audience in an online world that makes a sand castle on the beach in a hurricane look stable?

The challenge for advertisers is to be able to find the active communities and conversations effectively. The challenge for content creators and communities is to understand the value of their conversations, the interactions that people who visit the site have with the content.

In effect, a social media advertising model turns the current model on its head. Site owners and community creators gain the benefit of being attractive to advertisers because of the community, not because of the content. And site owners who understand who visits their site, what content most engages them, how they interact with the system will be able to reap the greatest rewards by selling their community as a marketable entity.

And Steven Hodson rounds out the week’s think on communities by throwing out the subversive idea that communities are not always free (as in ‘beer’, not as in ‘land of’). If a community has paid for the privilege of coming together to participate in communal events and discussions, then can’t that become an area for site owners to further control the cost of advertising on their site?

While the benefit of reduced or no marketing content is the benefit of many for-pay communities, this benefit can be used by site owners by saying that an advertiser can have access to the for-pay community at the cost of higher ad rates and smaller ads. The free community is a completely different set of rules, but there are also areas in the free community that are of higher value than others.

In summary, the current model is broken. But there is no way to measure the value of a Twitter stream, a FriendFeed conversation, a Disqus thread, or a Digg rampage. And until there is, we are stuck with an ad model that based on the words on the page, and not the community that created the words.

In April 2007, I tried out the Joost desktop client.  [More on Joost here and here]

I was underwhlemed by the performance, and the fact that the application completely maxxed out my dual core CPU, my 2G of RAM, and my high-speed home broadband. I do remember thinking at the time that it seemed weird to have a Desktop Client in the first place. Well, as Om Malik reports this morning, it seems that I was not alone.

After this week’s hoopla over Chrome, moving in the direction of the browser seems like a wise thing to do. But I definitely hear far more buzz over Hulu than I do for Joost on the intertubes.

Update

Michael Arrington and TechCrunch weigh into the discussion.

In the community of voices I follow online, one of the continuing themes is the narrowness and antiquated coverage provided by NBC(I launched into a screed on the topic this weekend).

I have also heard that many people are using the tools at their disposal (open proxy servers being the most notable) to circumvent the geo-location tools of the providers to view coverage from other national providers. I thought I would share some of my experiences with two of the providers, BBC and CBC.

BBC

Finding proxy servers in the UK turned out to be relatively simple, and I was able to get to the BBC site and view, with substantial performance penalties, some of the video on the site. This was a tactic I have used before, as I am a fan of English Football, and need to use this method to gain access to highlights and match-day broadcasts.

CBC

I am, well, disappointed with the lack of success I have had with the CBC. I hear from people in the homeland that the coverage makes NBC looks like the US is the only country in the Olympics, where the CBC provides a true global perspective. However, finding a proxy server that can fool the CBC video servers has been impossible. Therefore, I continue to not watch any Olympics at all.

I am sure that there are other means (P2P, Torrents, etc.), but I am finding that, well, I don’t care that much. It is the events in South Ossetia / Georgia, Zimbabwe, and other hot-spots that I am finding far more relevant to my day-to-day life.

So while I appreciate some of the challenges posed by circumventing the monopoly of the mind that NBC wants to claim, once that was achieved with the BBC, I found that I was in a So what? position.

But before I give up, has anyone had any success with getting the CBC feeds to work outside Canada?

As many readers know, I am going through the process — if you call filing a bunch of paperwork and not hearing anything for 2 years a process — of obtaining Permanent Residency in the United States, often referred to as the Green Card.

This morning, on NPR, there was a story about a foul-up in the processing of Green Cards that is suspicious, to say the least.

I have started referring to this process as the Dream Card because it leaves one thinking that the application they completed was done in a dream, a long time ago. An like most dreams, it is a fable of the subconscious mind and as likely to come true as those blue, flying penguins in my dream last night.

The degree of complexity that accompanies the application process has made bureaucrats from the Byzantine Empire write letters of complaint to their members of Congress, saying that the USCIS is giving them a bad name. Kafka has been seen rising from the dead at night, and penning a new tale based on this experience.

Other people covering this story.

NY Times
The Guardian
Times Of India
Miami Herald
San Jose Mercury News
Sacramento Bee Editorial

A few media outlets have grabbed this story as an example of just how broken the US system is when it comes to immigration, especially given the irony of the recent debate over the immigration bill that was tossed out of Congress. How could the immigration system have hoped to deal with the new regulations, if thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of valid visas go unused every year, due to government inefficiency.

Why would an illegal immigrant bother to go through a legal process that punishes the very people who are taking the time to follow the rules?

I would raise my voice in protest; but it would do no good. Drawing a pool of highly skilled, well compensated indentured servants from around the world to these shores to keep the wheels of innovation and development rolling appears to have become the American way.

And like indentured servants everywhere, we are a disposable commodity, to be teased by the promise that some day, we could, we might, just maybe be able to live here (and still not be able to vote) as Permanent Residents.

Tags: Green Card, fiasco, scandal, State Department, USCIS, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, indentured, servants, work visa, visa

I have been using Skype as a landline pretty exclusively for the last 6 months, but the quality of the service has been degrading rapidly. Today, I called Samantha from the office and she said it sounded like I was calling from inside a tin can.

So, on a recommendation from a co-worker, I am giving Gizmo a try. Pretty immediately, I noticed a quality improvement over Skype, and people on my conference calls said it was much better.

So, if you want to reach me, try spierzchala on Gizmo, or +1-508-635-4420.

And Skype, let me know when your quality improves.

Tags: Gizmo, Gizmo Project, sound quality, SIP, VOIP, Skype

Today, I want to talk about what happens when you aggressively adopt an online strategy, but leave your print subscribers behind.

I subscribe to a great architecture and design magazine, whose name I will exclude from this discussion, with a fantastic and informative online presence. The archive and articles available to subscribers are a fantastic resource for people just beginning to explore this field.

In February, I noticed that they had updated their site with the most recent issue’s content and cover. I was somewhat miffed, as my print copy had not yet arrived in the mail. Immediate assumption: print copy lost; request re-transmission.

Today, I checked the site, and all of the content for the March 2007 issue is online. And I don’t have my copy of this issue yet.

Based on the response to the e-mail that I sent to the circulation and publishing team, I may be the first person to bring this to their attention.

When you are in the dead-tree print industry, the Web (1.0 and 2.0) are crucial extensions to your existing business model. But the aggressive use of the Web channel to deliver your content to the rest of the world before the print subscribers receive their copies is doing damage to your business.

Subscribers pay extra in order to gain access to your magazine before the rest of the world can get it. This must extend to the Web channel. As a subscriber, knowing that someone can read the contents of the magazine online before I get my chance to look at the print copy is unsatisfactory.

Subscription content infers a level of exclusivity to those who buy the gold ticket. If you give everyone the gold ticket at the same time, then a subscription loses it sense of exclusivity. Then the magazine loses guaranteed revenue. Then the magazine is gone.

Information should be free. I chafe against the subscription gateways as much as the next person. But if you base your entire business on a subscription model, you better not undermine your own subscription business by giving the subscription content away for free.

Tags: magazine, content, subscription, print, Web

James Governor of RedMonk covers the serious fine Nationwide just got in the UK. [HERE and original post HERE]

This post immediately left me with the feeling (and it’s an oogie feeling) that the country in which I reside is completely borked when it comes to data security.

Private companies would get slammed by leaking private information in every country, except the US.

And if a financial institution compromised or lost personal information, they would face real fines, except in the US.

These must be gross generalizations. So prove me wrong.

Yesterday, I read Anne Zelenka’s post on ROWE at Best Buy. I was heartened to see that this idea was getting mentioned again, and that it was getting front-page interest from Big Media.

On a lark, I forwarded the post to my director and VP. Their responses frightened me. They were written in management-ese, and indicated that timesheets are soon to be added to my daily routine.

Hugh Mcleod — Sheep/Wolf

I can help cure the first, starting with Why Business People Speak Like Idiots, and George Orwell’s Politics and the English Language.

The second plague, timesheets, I see as more odious. It goes along with the new measurement-focused management culture in our company. Sometimes, I wonder what’s more important to the managers and executives: measurements or results.

As a person who is difficult enough to manage due to my bipolar, and my deep-rooted desire to do things that have meaning, timesheets are a problem for me. I don’t work to timesheets; I work to goals.

Structured environments have always been a serious problem for me. They trigger a deep resentment, some deep rooted need in my soul not to conform. I know that they serve a purpose, and that some people take a great deal of comfort in the process of knowing how they spent their day. My comfort comes from delivering meaningful results, not in worshipping the almighty bureaucracy.

I suppose that as the company I work for grows and has more people to manage, timesheets are inevitable. However, it’s about the time that timesheets appear that I feel the need to find more results-oriented, dynamic organizations.

Timesheets are a sign of corporate doublespeak, freeing people from the need to excel.

Technorati Tags: work, management, timesheets, bipolar, sheep/wolf, gapingvoid, Web+Worker+Daily, Anne+Zelenka

This is good to know. I have been spending years trying to make my speech sound as non-descript as possible. It was interesting this summer to go home and talk to my family. They have a uniquely Southeastern BC/Southwestern Alberta accent. Hey, even Canada has unique accents.

You don’t think so? Well, the stereotypical “Canadian” accent that is portrayed in the US popular media is actually a Southern Ontario / Toronto Area accent. It is easily recognizable and immediately pegs you in the rest of Canada as someone who should be distrusted as a likely carpetbagger.

The only spoken/written giveaways I have retained are:

– “a- bowt” and “owt”
– “prawcess”
– “sheduel”, although I do alternate this with “skeduel”
– I spell “theatre”, “centre”, “colour”, etc. correctly

However, if you call me American, I will be very quick to correct you.

For a 38-year old man with no outward symptoms of a physical ailment, my daily drug/supplement regimen is one that would leave many of my peers stunned.

The problem is, that like most people who are bipolar, I take a cocktail to try and balance out the variety and multitude of symptoms and effects I undergo. The current melange, as prescribed is:

• 1800mg of Trileptal (900mg twice daily)
• 300mg of Bupropion/Wellbutrin (150mg twice daily)
• 20mg of paroxetine/Seroxat/Paxil (10mg twice daily)

It’s the last one that causes me the greatest concern. Paxil/Seroxat/paroxetine is prescribed much less freely now than it was when I was first given it in 1999. The side-effects can be stunning and as dangerous as the condition they are supposed to assist with.

I have tried multiple times to take paroxetine out of my “diet”. Unfortunately, I immediately slip into SSRI discontinuation syndrome — aggressive behaviour, irritability, and a host of other issues. In the final calculation, paroxetine will likely be a part of my “diet” until I have 6 months in a Tibetan hermitage to wean myself off of it.

Until then, I am adding things such as Omega-3 oils and Ginkgo Biloba to the mix to see if they help my body control my cycles naturally, using the methods it has used for millennia.

It’s interesting to note that, when we are mostly aware of what’s going on, Bipolars are the best ones to play with and adjust their own treatment regimen. Most high-functioning Bipolars seem to enjoy tweaking and turning the knobs in most things anyway, so why not in our medications.

[The reference in the title is from a Star Trek, Original Series episode. You know how to use Google; you find out what it means.]