Just took a peek at elections.twitter.com and my mind has been sufficiently blown.

It’s a very cool real-time way to watch reactions to all things related to the current presidential election in the US. At the top of the page, they feature Obama and McCain’s most recent tweets, and I thought the two of them side-by-side was quite telling, at least in terms of their use of technology.

Barack’s invites you to watch him live via Ustream at a rally in Reno, NV. McCains? A link to his most recent tv campaign. It should be noted that McCain’s new ad (a smear job against Obama) makes no mention at all of McCain’s site. So, the Republicans are using Twitter to drive traffic to their tv ads, and not using tv ads to drive traffic to the web.

Does that seem backwards to anyone else?

I’ve been pretty silent about it until now, but I was selected as one of the 50 bloggers to receive a Nikon D80 DSLR camera for a review period of six months. The camera arrived yesterday ( coincidentally on the same day as a scheduled Gastown Photowalk- photos below), and now I’m finally going public about my involvement.

I suppose it’s likely that I was chosen because of my photography hobby in part, but I assure you that nobody is expecting any photographic magic from me. It’s more likely that I was selected because I’ll take an active interest as much in the campaign as in the camera itself. Or maybe they just didn’t want the list too heavily stacked with talent .

I’ll go into my take on all of this in a second, but to avoid any confusion, here are the facts, as I understand them:

Nikon hired the MWW Group to create a blogger relations program that they’ve called “Picture This.”

50 bloggers were chosen, 48 (To date, 46) of whom opted to participate

The trial period is six months, after which the camera can be purchased (at a discount, with the funds going to charity), sent back or kept for an additional six months.

There is no obligation or even expectation to blog about it, the only rule being that if we choose to, we must disclose that we are part of the program. Already, there’s some controversy over the program, which critics say is unethical. They wonder how a blogger could possibly be objective with such a generous loan in the equation?

It’s possible that sending me a camera will make me go ga-ga and cause me to start singing the virtues of Nikon, sure. But that is why there is only one rule: that I disclose my involvement, so the reader can take my opinions and feedback with the proverbial grain of salt. This mandated transparency is what separates this campaign from many of the others that have been under fire for avoiding this extremely important factor. As always, it’s up to the readers as to whether anything that I write rings true for them, and as long as they have all the facts they can make an informed decision one way or another.

I suspect that the dissenters share this one in common with me; we both wish we’d thought of this campaign first. But whether I had been selected or not, I would agree that it is a great way to spread the word online and is perfectly legal and ethical. The only thing that is different in this case of this campaign is the middle man has been cut out. The middle man in this case being the MSM (main stream media).

This time, the consumers are having their say, and have been contacted directly for their opinion. This has rattled the feathers of a few PR types, mostly because the model that they’ve “always used” has been abandoned. After all, what kind of future is there for the PR industry if there’s no need to kowtow to the media anymore? We’ll have to address that one another day, but for an example of how to adapt, start reading this post again from the beginning.

Now that I have been completely up front about my involvement and my feelings about all of this, I can move on to why we’re here; the camera in question. But first, a few more short words about the campaign. The box arrived via courier, accompanied by a hand-written letter on Nikon letterhead from a Senior Director at MWW. In the letter, they offered to give me a walk through of the camera’s features at my convenience. Even if I were being extremely critical (which I often am of attempts at blogger outreach) I have yet to find fault with the way they’ve conducted themselves.

Now, the camera. As I mentioned, I am a bit of a hobbyist photographer, and I used to shoot sports on the weekends while still in high school and between semesters of college. Since getting a new Olympus Evolt E-500 for Christmas, I’ve been trying to relearn the art, this time in digital. So although I’m not completely uninformed, running out on a Photowalk with nary a clue as to how to use this new tool was an interesting adventure. I took a bunch of shots, and I published them in their unedited form, in a set made specifically for my involvement in the program (equal parts disclosure and evangelism). Check out my first attempts with the D80 on our Photowalk by clicking this image:

I will continue to disclose my involvement each time I blog about this subject, and the meta data on my Flickr photos is all the disclosure I feel is necessary as to what camera took what shots (including my webcam, we now have four cameras in the house).

I welcome all feedback in the comments below. There are obviously a number of differences of opinion on all of this, and I’d like to hear them all.

Today I received an email from The Tyee, an independent news blog here in Vancouver, BC.

It was a pitch of sorts, asking me to check out their new video, and spread the word. It must have worked, because here I am posting about it, just minutes later. Watch the video, then check below for my postmortem of the campaign and pitch:

Pretty entertaining video, especially to those of us in Canada who recognize the antagonists depicted in the short, among them Izzy Asper and Conrad Black. Both are famous for making big bucks while doling out little or no credit (or pay!) to the dedicated folks creating their content. I didn’t laugh while watching the video, but I smiled and nodded up and down several times.

Breaking down the campaign and pitch

The Pitch: Although it was a form letter, the email alerting me to this campaign was addressed to me, and acknowledged the fact that I have commented at the Tyee in the past. The letter also indicated that there was incentive for forwarding it along; a number of different prizes, all in conjunction with the “green” theme, including carbon-neutral goodies and a pair of flip-flops made from recycled tire rubber.

Lastly, since this is to get the word out about The Tyee, the fact that the page containing the video also has a full explanation of The Tyee, its people and its message, one only has to follow this one link to find out everything they need to know.

Ideas for Improvement: A shorter post slug on the campaign page, so it looks cleaner. Plus, I suggest a more personal letter of approach for “blogger outreach,” even though the letter from Editor David Beers was quite good. While I’m at it…The Tyee could afford to cut the word count of most of their posts in half, and increase the number of characters that appear in one’s reader via the feed.

The Verdict

Whoever is responsible for the campaign should be proud of themselves.

Reader, If you’re an American, and the unabashed Canadian sensibility of both the video, the campaign and The Tyee itself has escaped you, then just trust me when I say that this is exactly what our country’s media landscape needed. Tyee, you are indeed “A Feisty One Online.”

*For the uninitiated: “Tyee” (wikipedia entry) is a reference to a large salmon, usually a Chinook, and doubles as a cry when said fish finds itself at the end of a lucky angler’s line. “Tyee! One on!”

I’m rather embarrassed to admit that I missed the sign-up deadline for Casecamp, Crayonville (held in Second Life) tonight. Sounds like I missed out.

Anyway, without that coolest of the cool ‘unconference’ to attend in that 3D world I’m gradually warming up to, I started digging into the episodes of “Crayoncast,” the podcast by staff of Crayon, “a new marketing company.” And I like it. The staff each give a quick minute on their favorite topic of the week. Some of it is actually useful too, such as the tip to check out JPG Magazine, the first “user-generated” print magazine, for photographers.

What are you waiting for cool kids, submit your shots now. You could win and get published, and with that receive $100 and a free subscription. The future of publishing is now.

Ever the Master of brevity in the blogosphere, Seth Godin points out a press release from CBS that highlights their enormous success on YouTube, including a quote from YouTube brass. And then he speaks volumes, by saying almost nothing at all:

“Think about that for a second.”

I applaud CBS for changing their stripes and trying a new way of distributing their content, and I’m especially proud that they are willing to publicize that such a huge audience prefers a different model from the one that has kept them safe and warm in their ivory towers for so long.

Score one for new media.

But perhaps the best news for CBS is the fact that viewership is up, according to their ratings. It proves what many of us have been saying all along; Giving a valuable chunk of information away will only help business, and not hurt it. It builds trust, and exposes your message to a larger potential audience. It puts collateral into the hands of your would-be evangelists.

Now it’s the music industry’s turn to learn this lesson, right Mack?

If you have to read the Wikipedia entry for RSS to understand what it is, then this post could change your life. And I’m not joking.

Even RSS pros out there (especially Blackberry carrying types, like my wife) will appreciate the fancy new Web2.0 tool that I am about to introduce you to.

It’s called The Simply Headlines Experiment, and I found it via Steve Rubel.

Here’s the best way to describe it (in my words)…

It takes the latest entries from your chosen feeds, ie. http://feeds.feedburner.com/TellTenFriends (hint hint) and it turns them into news items in a cleverly designed newspaper format that you can receive in your email. You have the choice of text only, or html, as you see above. Also, it has a bunch of feeds already set up to choose from (CNN, Reuters, etc.).

So all you have to do is take the feed address from wherever you see this symbol: and paste it into the program. And voila! You’ll get your chosen items delivered daily in your email. Sound easy? Go here to sign up, and if you have any trouble, just ask me for help and I’d be happy to talk you through it. Before you know it, you’ll have a customized Google homepage riddled with dozens of feeds, or like me your Bloglines account will see action from upwards of 100 different sources (I know, I’m a bit of a junkie).

The time to make a significant jump in your understanding of technology is now. This tool has been created for you, to help you bridge the gap into one of the most exciting things to happen to media since the first television flickered to life. Perhaps that sounds a bit hyperbolic, but bear with me. The true extent of RSS’ influence on the way we receive news and connect with both each other and of course our customers won’t be seen for years to come. In time though, the bulk of internet users will get wise to the use of feeds, and they will be incredibly prevalent as part of our culture. What I mean by this is, not just my brother or my sister but indeed my Mother will, in her lifetime use RSS feeds as her main source of news. This may sound like a bold prediction, but you don’t know my Mom.

Cheers all, I hope you like it. And I said a few paragraphs ago, I’d be happy to help you get this set up, if you have troubles with it.

Actually, I’ve never been internet famous. Not unless you count the small gaggle (I think we’re between a gaggle and a horde, at present) of you, faithful readers.

But plenty of people are using social media tools to become quite famous, indeed. From the Wall Street Journal (no sense giving you a link…a story about bloggers that isn’t free!) via Steve Rubel: the Social Media Power Players.

More on that: My good mate and designer Rob (a world trekker in his own right) is just “chuffed” with Matt Harding, bottom left in the image (see Steve’s post). Click to read Rob’s post, where you can watch Matt dance badly in several countries.

Here’s an interesting story I spotted today at “My Boring Ass Life,” a blog by filmmaker Kevin Smith.

(Smith as Silent Bob)

Twice this week Kevin has hit back at critics, once after Joel Siegel walked out of a screening of Clerks 2, and once today when he was criticized for putting the names of 10, 000 MySpace fans at the end of the credits. As a marketing idea, this one was brilliant, and Smith credits that one to the Weinstein Company. It got people talking and it got press. And it happened on his MySpace, which we should all know by now is free.

The real interesting part of the story is that we’re seeing a real trend here: The critics of the mainstream media are no longer safe. You’re entitled to your opinion, Ms. Critic, but so is everybody else. And in the case of Nikki Finke, she’s being blasted by fans of Smith en masse for her close-minded evaluation of the tactic. Check out the comments on his duplicate post from Myspace.

As Smith notes, not a single industry honcho or guild member has complained, even for one second. (Finke claims that putting fans in the credits is an insult to the folks who work so hard to earn those credits day in and day out) Well guess what Finke? It’s a new world, where the audience is the marketer, and is just as deserving of being honored for posterity for their word of mouth efforts in the credits, which they can then freeze frame for their friends when they buy the DVD. (Because they will. All 10, 000 of them)

Just another example of how the gap between blogging and traditional media is closing. Soon, not only will journalists have to write for their audience and Google (a skill they’re slowly mastering) but now they’re inevitably going to have to accept the fact that they’ll have to open up comments, and leave their writings at the mercy of immediate response from their readers.

I hope Clay won’t mind that I pulled this from an email he sent me much earlier today:

Traditional media is so far behind the news cycle; they report business news two/three DAYS late. By that time, it’s been digested, blogged and commented about by bloggers everywhere. Faddishness? I think not. Of course, we’re not journalists. We’re not the first draft of history. Journalistic media will always hold this place in our society.

What we do is provide the commentary in the margins of the first draft. Once journalistic media can get out of its “Traditional” (mired in print) phase and begin reporting in truly real time… well, that’ll be a different day.

I agree almost entirely, except I want to add that when the mainstream media opens themselves up to instant feedback, the way the blogospere operates, then that “commentary in the margins” will be of as much or more value than what he refers to as the first draft, and writers will be cautious of that fact, to say the least.

One of the easiest ways to promote the virtues on new media marketing is to remind clients that everything that you do to attract customers online can be measured for its level of effectiveness. Site stats, blog subscribers, email newsletters, online conversion rates; it’s all completely measurable, and 100% accountable as an investment.

Not so with traditional media. But that might be changing (even though it’s not going to make much difference, imo). Seth Godin reported the other day that Nielsen will finally be rating the viewership of commercials. This is scaring everyone in the TV ad business. They’re afraid of what they might find out. I’ll make a prediction: You’ll find out that for the most part you’re setting money on fire. Plus, you still won’t be able to equate viewership to sales, so alas you’re still not proving any definitive value on your investment. He also reports the belief that newspaper distribution numbers are a lot less accurate than they used to be, likely in an attempt to keep up the illusion that people are still reading them (my words, not his).

I know sometimes I sound like such a critic of mass media, but for the most part I’m not. I watch a lot of t.v., and a lot of commercials. I read a lot of newspapers, too. I just disagree with the cost of mass media advertising, and the lack of accountability for the money spent.

Advertisers must be feeling the same way I do, too. This week in Canada, one of the largest media networks (I say media, because they own several) bought out one of the other big ones. BellGlobeMedia, already a media behemoth in Canada, now owns all of CHUM’s TV and radio stations, consolidating the media landscape in Canada even further. It’s funny too, since CHUM only just recently abandoned the concepts that their company was built on, and very quickly proceeded to tank, and get swallowed up by the competition. Full disclosure: I’m a former CHUM employee (a rather jaded one at that, but then again right now they all are). I used to edit the Speaker’s Corner show in Victoria, with my good friend Dan Lupton, among other duties. One former CHUM employee shares her recollection of what once was, in this touching article from BC’s The Tyee.ca. Carla, I too bought into Moses’ vision, and although I haven’t even met the man, I still believe in it.

Finally, to round out this gloomy look at the state of the TV business, I point you to Adcouver, where Ryan Ashton (who now lives just three blocks from me) relays a post from Steve Rubel about how YouTube has reached 100 million video streams per day, while the major US networks are reporting record lows in their ratings.

Is the future bright for television? Yes, but not the way we know it now. The major US networks should first learn a lesson or two from the likes of Rocketboom, who now have a new host, and she’s great! Hell, they could learn a lot from any number of the millions of kids out there with nothing more than webcams and ideas, that have made YouTube the success that is today.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an episode of Entourage to download.

Update: Holy hell! Talk about great TV! Found in the Rocketboom episode today: Human Space Invaders, and Human Pong, et en Francais, aussi!!