Google Sidewiki is PR Game Changer

The gig is up.  Any client who thought they could escape social media is now in it, whether they like it or not. Google Sidewiki, launched a couple of days ago, is a PR game changer - it exemplifies, perhaps more than any other application, how social media has infiltrated all communication and can undermine any PR strategy that does not consider social networks.

Here’s how Google spins it: What if everyone, from a local expert to a renowned doctor, had an easy way of sharing their insights with you about any page on the web? What if you could add your own insights for others who are passing through? In other words - what if Google can turn everybody into a content producer and then rank and control all that content?

Now they can, and they will.It means that on this blog page you, or anyone with an easily installed Google Sidewiki app, can write notes that are then visible to anybody else. The general public - adversaries, friends, competitors, your nephew - can enhance your web page without your consent or knowledge.

This is what it looks like (left). In a way, every web page is now a blog, with unmoderated comments open to everyone.

Google will somehow rate these Sidewiki comments, through one of their mysterious algorithms, and present the most relevant first. You Sidewiki comments are then stored in your Google profile.  Sidewiki comments can be Tweeted, emailed, Facebooked.

So, my buried Google Sidewiki comment “Mark Rose is a big fat idiot,” follows this blog forever, and can be blasted out through other channels. Only Google could come up with something this insidious and mind blowing. Google Sidewiki is ready for Internet Explorer and Firefox, soon for Google Chrome. Download Google toolbar with Sidewiki.

What does this mean for public relations?

It means that all clients are now IN social media, whether they know it or not. Google is further connecting social media channels and controlling major social networks, such as Blogger and YouTube.  This is further proof, if we needed any, that a PR strategy that does not include social media has a huge hole in it.

Three questions to ask:

1. What’s your social media PR strategy?
2. What’s your Wiki strategy (Wikipedia, Wikimedia, Google Sidewiki)?
3. What is your social media news creation and delivery mechanism?

These can seem like esoteric questions but just asking them moves you in the right direction. The primary function of PR is no longer “How do I get the media to cover me?” It’s now “How do we impact our audience through our own media?” Google Sidewiki further re-defines media, when anybody can ‘report’ their opinions and facts on any web page, or words, phrases, or sections of a web page. What makes this frightening from a PR perspective is that all this content is subject to Google’s ever-changing algorithms. It makes Google the most-powerful social media company out there.

From Google: In developing Sidewiki, we wanted to make sure that you’ll see the most relevant entries first. We worked hard from the beginning to figure out which ones should appear on top and how to best order them. So instead of displaying the most recent entries first, we rank Sidewiki entries using an algorithm that promotes the most useful, high-quality entries. It takes into account feedback from you and other users, previous entries made by the same author and many other signals we developed.

Hyatt PR Hell a Lesson in Open Media

Hyatt Hotels is making all the wrong moves in its PR disaster that is spreading across the country.

The Hyatt Regency Boston, the Hyatt Regency Cambridge, and the Hyatt Harborside fired 98 housekeepers on Aug. 31, replacing them with $8-an-hour employees from Hospitality Staffing Solutions. Many had been cleaning rooms at the chain’s hotels for more than 20 years and earned about $15 an hour.

The criticism unleashed at Hyatt Hotels has been unrelenting and merciless, fueled through social media channels.  The Consumerist, Executive Nomad, and the Harvard Business Review (Lessons From Hyatt: Simple Ways to Damage Your Brand)  have weighed in, along with national news outlets, since the story broke on Sept. 17. Facebook groups have cropped up to “Save the Hyatt 100.’ On Tuesday, Massachussetts Governor Deval Patrick threatened a government boycott of the hotel chain. Taxi drivers are boycotting Hyatt and the protests have spread to Chicago.

Hyatt originally stonewalled any inquiries into its actions. Lately they have become belligerent in fighting what they consider outside intrusions into their business affairs. Public relations cannot fix a company or right wrongs. In this case, top Hyatt executives who are calling the shots are doing deep damage to the brand and probably costing the company many millions over the pittance they are saving over the ’Hyatt 100.’ 

USA TODAY: Reader to Hyatt Hotels: “Shame on you” for outsourcing housekeepers

“I understand first-hand how difficult it is to manage through the current economic challenges without compounding the disruptions the times have caused,’’ Massachussetts Governor Deval Patrick wrote. “But surely there is some way to retain the jobs for your housekeeping staffs, as other hotels have done, and to work with them to help the company meet its current challenges, rather than tossing them out unceremoniously to fend for themselves while the people they trained take their jobs at barely livable wages.’’

Hyatt faces other challenges: Union workers stage sit-in to protest cuts to Hyatt’s health insurance coverage

LaFrances Rowell, 26, is taking chemotherapy for breast cancer and is supporting three children, ages 1, 2 and 7, but it was no question that she would join 194 other unionized hotel workers and their supporters in sitting in the street Thursday at the height of rush hour in front of the Park Hyatt hotel on North Michigan Avenue. The union workers are protesting Hyatt Corp.’s attempt to negotiate cuts in their health-insurance coverage. They also fear other hotels will follow Hyatt’s lead.

PR/Media Week in Review 06-28-2009

If you’re news junkie like me it doesn’t get better than last week. We started out with “Neda” and a bloody crackdown in Iran, Farrah Fawcett finally succumbing in Hollywood, quickly eclipsed by Mark Sanford in South Carolina confusing Argentina for the Appalachian Trail (”Buenos Airhead,” the cover of the NY Post said) - all trumped by Michael Jackson’s ultimate Hollywood ending.

News events last week re-defined and strained the limits of social media. Twitter, blogs, and Facebook proved to be a valuable if inadequate resource in Iran. Twitter crashed a few times under the deluge of Michael-mania, proving that nothing resuscitates a career like death.  Lisa Marie Presley, daughter of the previous ‘King,’ shared her thoughts of marriage to Michael and the premonition that he would die like her Dad, on her MySpace page. TMZ.com, the ultimate insider Hollywood news source, first reported Michael’s death.

More and more, social media transforms how news is created, packaged and disseminated. Increasingly, traditional media follows social media in breaking news, and then reports on reaction through social media channels. It is demoralizing to see that Twitter could not topple a government in Iran - it will take more time, chipping away at the blockages of a totalitarian regime. We thought that 20 years ago Tiananmen Square was the beginning of the end for the Chinese regime - but that was before Twitter and Facebook. For now, guns, batons and the apparatus of repression trump cell phone cameras. #iranelection news on Twitter is moribund but it exists.

The Michael Jackson news will play out through the week. Remember the long line of white Cadillacs for Elvis’ funeral? I’m sure that Michael, who took showboating to a grander level, will top that. There is the suspect doctor, the drugs, another autopsy, toxicology, the battles over the estate, the talk show appearances and the revelations that will be packaged in books. The world has a large appetite for Michael Jackson news.

Today, we hear that Mark Sanford will not resign as Governor of South Carolina. Sure, what else can this bozo do but be a politician? Now that he has been found we see how lost he really is.

Video of the Week

Cyber War In Iran Escalates #iranelection

#iranelection - the ‘hashtag’ Twitter stream - has become the news wire of the Iran resistance.

Great way to follow #iranelection is on Twub with tweet feed, aggregated pictures and videos. The tweet feed is real time, meaning several tweets per second (the Twub widget in the right hand column of this blog is slower).

‘Changing timezones can save lives’ says one tweet on #iranelection. They want all bloggers and tweeters to confuse the Iranian authorities in an escalating, dangerous cyber war. ‘Do not re-tweet Iranian names’ says another. URGENT RT: Police checking cellphones for videos and pictures, transfer your files and clean up your phone #iranelection

On-the-scene photos and videos have significantly decreased in the past couple of days - the authorities do not want another ‘Neda’ martyr on their hands.

Between the earnest and helpful tweets on #iranelection are messages of provocateurs, scam artists and the lurking Iranian authorities, who bought the best minds of our allies to plan massive cyber subterfuge - what we are now witnessing. #iranelection is a real-time example of how an impromptu, global news and opinion network can self-sustain and self-moderate. Combined with YouTube, Facebook and blogs, #iranelection has become the information lifeline of Iranian protesters.

One way to simultaneously follow your own Twitter stream and #iranelection is through Seesmic on your desktop. See screen capture below.

Social Media Feeds Iran Resistance

If Czechoslovakia 1989 was the Velvet Revolution, Iran ‘09 is the Twitter Revolution.

This is when Facebook is more powerful than the Ayatollah, when YouTube replaces CNN, when the Twitter stream #IranElection replaces Associated Press. With tape recorders, cell phones, video cams, cameras, and computers Iranian protesters are battling tear gas and truncheons and bullets. Mousavi’s willingness to embrace martyrdom  was conveyed via Twitter - his moves are transmitted through his Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/mousavi 

Great single source for constantly updated news from Iran aggregated from multiple social media channels:  The Lede, The New York Times News Blog.

Twitter: @nytimeskristof All hail the Iranian photographers braving the streets! Great pix at http://www.demotix.com/iranelection

See Twitter on the Barricades: Six Lessons Learned, NYTimes, 6/21/2009

Update NYTimes, The Lede, Saturday, June 20, 4:54 p.m. New York Times Op-Ed columnist Roger Cohen was out on Tehran’s streets on Saturday and has filed this account of what he witnessed. Here is some of what he reports:

I also know that Iran’s women stand in the vanguard. For days now, I’ve seen them urging less courageous men on. I’ve seen them get beaten and return to the fray. “Why are you sitting there?” one shouted at a couple of men perched on the sidewalk on Saturday. “Get up! Get up!”

Another green-eyed woman, Mahin, aged 52, staggered into an alley clutching her face and in tears. Then, against the urging of those around her, she limped back into the crowd moving west toward Freedom Square. Cries of “Death to the dictator!” and “We want liberty!” accompanied her.

There were people of all ages. I saw an old man on crutches, middle-aged office workers and bands of teenagers. Unlike the student revolts of 2003 and 1999, this movement is broad. [...]

Later, as night fell over the tumultuous capital, from rooftops across the city, the defiant sound of “Allah-u-Akbar” — “God is Great” — went up yet again, as it has every night since the fraudulent election, but on Saturday it seemed stronger.

Tehran Minute by Minute

We cannot underestimate the importance of what is going on in Iran now.  Read The Lede  in The New York Timesfor minute-by-minute, sometimes second-by-second updates. This is not original, on-the-ground reporting - it is scans of Twitter, Facebook, other news sources, images and sounds being broadcast out of the country through social media and traditional means.

‘Reporters’ are locked out of the news; citizen journalists are capturing events internally and beaming out to the world. A television station in Los Angeles sent 1,000 tiny USB-enabled cameras disguised as pens inside the country. Facebook is now available in Persian, Google is translating Mousavi’s web feed into English. The picture on the left was sent via Twitter.

This is one more example - perhaps the most telling yet - of how social media and citizen journalists are reshaping how we gather and transmit news. Iranians will get smarter about how to get around the government clampdown on ‘evil’ media and the rest of the world, hungry to know what is going on in Iran, will aid them.

This past week has been a revelation. “Where is my vote?” - the repeated message of protesters, in English, is something we have asked in recent U.S. elections (we have a long history of manipulated elections). They speak of Revolution and Democracy and every citizen counting. I cannot pretend to understand the complexities of the Iranian culture but the events of the last week show that we have similar aspirations for justice and freedom and they need to be supported. (Several sources report clashes between the police and protesters).