#Neda and the Power of the Viral Image

The 37-second amateur video that shows, in vivid and horrifying detail, a young woman named Neda dying of a gunshot wound on the streets of Tehran, has the capacity to change the political dynamic in Iran. It may already have done so.

I will not link to the video here. The decision to watch it should be made carefully, knowing it is sickening and likely to remain with you for the rest of your life. You can easily find it if you want.

I found it nearly overwhelming. I had to step away from the computer and gather myself. Afterward when describing it to my wife my voice was shaking and I couldn’t quite formulate my thoughts.

The morning after viewing it I can say this: I believe that 37 second clip can transform global opinion.

I liken it to the 1972 photograph of the young Vietnamese girl running naked through the streets, her skin seared by the chemical burn of napalm. Or the 1963 picture of police dogs attacking civil rights protesters in Birmingham, Alabama. Both, it is argued, played a key role in galvanizing public opinion on the political issues they represented.

For me, and I suspect many who view it, the Neda video says with absolute clarity: The violent crackdown on street protesters in Tehran must not stand. The perpetrators must be stopped or removed.

It removes any ambivalence or subtlety one might have about the situation there.

Last night I was actually wondering how a government responsible for Neda’s death–in an environment where cheap, instant, global, many-to-many communications has brought the phrase “the whole world is watching” closer to literal fact than it was in the 1960s–can possibly remain in power.

In the cool light of morning I realize that was dramatic hyperbole, heavily colored by emotion.

But still: That 37-second video has already become a singular, powerful fact driving  global opinion. Its impact will only accelerate and expand. It will have consequences.

Let me also predict that the mainstream media is going to miss the import of that video. Partly because they dare not show it, and thus it will not become part of their newsrooms’ collective consciousness–or conscience.

But also because they still tend to view amateur, viral “reporting” as marginal “bonus” material, incapable of driving public thought in the way their own professional reporting and opinionating can.

There is a #Neda hashtag on Twitter. It captures conversations about and inspired by the video.

Yet it is now being added as a hashtag to general Twitterizing on the election protests, as an  expression of commitment at least as powerful as the green avatars that hover like nauseated witnesses over the 140-character global thoughtstream.

Much is made about Twitter and its limited ability to drive change.

This isn’t about that.

It’s about the power of a single, brief incident captured on video–in an  environment where people share what moves them instantly with a global audience, without the assistance or approval of governments, media or any institution—to change others’ minds.

Change the world?

In the cool light of morning, I realize that’s foolish too.

But if you are feeling strong and brave and willing to have a horrifying image seared into your brain, view the video.

It will change you.

Tropicana’s Orange State Twitter Strategy

What an incredible. . .thing New Media Strategies, a Washington, D.C. digital marketing firm, has created for Tropicana, the orange juice brand.

It’s called An Orange America.

The. . .thing displays an aggregation of Twitter updates about either John McCain or Barack Obama, visually indicating in blue or red which terms are linked more frequently to each candidate. Click on the words across the bottom, and arcs illustrate how each term is connected to others.

It’s hypnotic, in that high-nerd kind of way.

Two observations:

1. It’s an aggressively unexpected branding venture for an orange juice company. It’s all a stretch: the “We’re not red, we’re not blue, we’re 100 percent orange” slogan. . . the “squeezing” of “fresh” Tweets. . .the idea that the conceptual connections so vividly illustrated are meaningful. [What, for instance, does it mean that there is such frequent use in Obama-centric Tweets of the words "Biden" and "Pray"?]

You can just imagine the suits at PepsiCo who haven’t been in on the fun seeing this and going “WTF?????? How does this help us move more units of Low-Pulp in Q4? Minute-Maid is killing us with those in-store promotions!”

2. And yet: Viewed holistically, An Orange America conveys the impression that Tropicana is alert, progressive and in touch with emerging cultural forces–a significant shift from what you’d normally think about a mass marketer of juice products or its PepsiCo corporate overlords.

I think it’s great to see companies doing odd and wonderful things with social media.

The use of this stuff by big companies is still immature (by which I mean in early development, not juvenile. Although it’s sometimes that too).

It’s inspiring to see the sort of creative mojo behind this thing coming from a marketing agency.

I’m guessing An Orange America didn’t cost much to develop–a fast, inspired job flipped against the wall to see if it sticks. A wing, a prayer and a fast sign-off.

How any of this relates to the core mission of moving the aforementioned units of Low-Pulp OJ is a question I leave to others.

How to Kill a Social Media Campaign

David Armano, author of the Logic+Emotion marketing blog and VP for experience design at Critical Mass, presents this image of the life-and-death cycle of a social media campaign:

The first things we do, is kill all the social media campaigns….

VanityFairer: The Magazine’s Social Faux Pas?

Seems like everybody and his posse is trying to figure out how to use Twitter to promote a business. A lot of these feeds are loaded with ham-fisted promotions that are as likely to repel as attract. Mainstream media have been no more skilled than your typical supplement pusher, for the most part.

Which brings us to Vanityfairer, a Twitter “fan”feed by someone who identifies “her”self only as Vanity Fair Wayfarer and whose bio reads only “I heart Vanity Fair magazine.”

“Her” updates are really pretty good–mainly pointers to stuff about, in or related to content from the celebrity-addled, scrumptiously visual, annoyingly literate and therefore-hard-to-ignore glossy.

So is this a real fanfeed, or a Twitter Potemkin village?

I couldn’t find any reference to the Vanity Fairer feed on VF’s website.

But back in June VF Daily did a characteristically high-ironic item about the magazine’s new Facebook page. Editorial assistant Bill Bradley writes that he’d been charged with getting 10,000 members for a VF page in two months, at pain of losing his job. [As of this writing, the Facebook page has 8,610 fans, and according to the site, Bradley is no longer in the employ of VF. Of course we have no idea whether this is true.] So clearly someone at VF has been pondering what the magazine should do in the world of social media.

[In fact, read this wonderful entry from Vantiy Fair Daily about VF mid-level editorial staff's recent indoctrination to social media by Conde Nast, which led to the whole Bradley gambit.]

Back to Vanityfairer: It looks to me like the Twitter feed is an undisclosed VF inside job. Vanity Fairer is following a conspicuous list of 51 prominentos from the worlds of technology and media [including Tim O'Reilly, Esther Dyson, WSJ's Kara Swisher, 2.0 author Sarah Lacy, John Dickerson of Slate, Gawker, Ana Marie Cox and TechCrunch, A-list tech bloggers plus a few C-list hangers-on like me].

The trick to building a Twitter posse, as savvy Twitsters know, is to “follow” people whom you hope will follow you back–or actually maybe write a blog item about the Twitter stream to gain some 2.0 brainshare [!]. So there is clearly something tactical and ambitious about Vanity Fairer’s “following” list. Vanity Fairer appears to be following none of her own personal friends, for instance. A bit curious.

[I should point out that as of this date, the only people who have taken Vanity Fairer's bait are CNN social media ubiquitist Rick Sanchez, MSNBC cartoonist Daryl Cagle and someone named Vitor Fasano, who Twitters, I think, in Portugese. And me.]

I direct-messaged Vanity Fairer to see what’s up. “She” wrote this:

Good to hear from you, am actually a fan of *you*rs (Drama 2.0) too! Yes, I am just a fan of VF mag; pretty sure they have no idea I exist. [The reference to "Drama 2.0" regards a mysterious fellow from the world of online advertising and marketing whose schtick is a hilarious bitter cynicism about web 2.0 foolishness. Which is to say his blog is kind of like mine, but his is really good and apparently makes money.]

Then this, an hour later:

p.s. I wish VF HAD put me up to this, it’s something they should be doing!

Then this, after I asked why she was following only media luminaries but not friends:

Have another acct on Twitter 4 friends; this acct lets me “play” a bit anonymously. Media lums I follow here r people I think VF wld follow?

Huh.

For now, let’s have some sport and, what the heck, assume the worst about Vanit Fairer.

If Vanity Fairer is an official VF venture–someone doing the corporate flagship magazine’s bidding but disguised as an independent fan–that’s a bad move by Conde Nast.

Rules No. 1 through 10 of social media are “Don’t f*ck with people.”

Don’t use social media to play pretend. If you want to make a cool Twitter feed for your publication, go for it. But don’t make like it’s not yours. If you’re a real independent fan of the magazine, launch a Twitter feed. But if you have some some sort of entanglement with the pub, say so. No shame in it.

Of course, circumstantial evidence notwithstanding, it’s possible that Vanity Fairer is an independent effort. In which case I am once again spewing nonsense into the digital void. The only consolation is that this is not the first time, nor likely to be the last.

But if I’m right. . .

Vanity Fair has made its reputation by illuminating the world of tuxedo-and-ball-gown “high” society.

Wouldn’t it be a hoot if it stomped into this foreign new social swirl like a drunken hillbilly?

Salesconx: Business Slow? Sell Your Contacts!

I’m getting really skittish about proclaiming some new Web 2.0 scheme spectacularly stupid, wrongheaded, or immoral.  It seems like every time I do so the scheme immediately gets traction and the perp gets rich.

So it’s with some trepidation I introduce you to Salesconx, a marketplace for the sale and purchase of personal business connections. Essentially you can sell access to your contacts–I mean the actual live people you know personally and/or have done business with–in an open marketplace. You can also buy access to others’ connections.

Connections are priced anywhere from $35 to $1,000 and up.

I know, I know. I had a hard time wrapping my brain around this at first too. Could this marketplace be as nakedly crass it appears?

Let’s look at one current listing, which appears in the “Buy” section. This is where people make their connections available to buyers.

In this case, Kris N says he has a “strong connection” to the chairman of an oil drilling company in Thailand. He is offering anyone who wants to buy crude an introduction to that chairman for $100.

It’s not clear whether the CEO knows that Kris is charging $100 for a meeting with him (or if the CEO thinks maybe he’s going too cheap). Whether Kris’s connection to the CEO remains “strong” will depend, I suppose, on whether Kris’s introduction is beneficial to the CEO or just time-waster.

Let’s look on the other side of the market, where people say how much they are willing to pay for connections to certain kinds of people.

This guy sells high-end custom men’s clothing. He’s hoping to get introduced to some agents that represent professional athletes. [Good prospect targeting, by the way!] He’ll pay $35 for an introduction.

The secret sauce of salesconx.com seems to include aspects of eBay, eHarmony, LinkedIn and those blood banks that pay for pints of plasma.

It is easy to ridicule this as a tool by which grubby salesfolk pimp out their Outlook files for some extra cash.

Let me strain to view this another way.

The charitable view is that Salesconx is a marketplace that can produce win/win/win scenarios. Mr. Thai Oil gets someone to buy his crude. Someone who needs oil is hooked up with a key decision maker. They are unlikely to have met otherwise. The fact that Kris got $100 for his trouble is kind of icky–dishonest, if it’s not revealed to Mr. Thai Oil–but not intrinsically harmful.

[An actual real-life salesguy from Salesconx called me on the real live phone an hour or so after I signed up for an account. He thought I was a real community member; I told him I was a blogger. He told me the site will use a ratings and recommendations feature, like eBay offers, so anyone who makes a bad match will get rated down by the community. And (he said) Salesconx will either refund money or give credits to anyone disappointed by the quality of a connection.

[I tried to find written elaboration on this but the Salesconx FAQ isn't posted on the site yet. Beta, I know.]

Taken up a notch and viewed from 30,000 feet, Salesconx is a remarkable economics testbed. It provides a platform by which the most important intrinsic currency of commerce–personal connections–is assigned a transparent market price.

So why does this all seem so spectacularly stupid, wrongheaded and immoral?

For me, it’s because I can’t imagine being on either end of that transaction.

I like it when people I know match me up with talented people, point me to a good deal or recommend a product. And vice versa. Social media like LinkedIn, Yelp and Twitter have oiled that machinery. So have pleasant nights of drinking and chatting.

But no money has changed hands in those transactions. If someone in my personal network who knows I buy software silently recommended a vendor hit me up–and quietly pocketed $60 for his tip–I’d be disgusted. If LinkedIn had a Circle of Hell [not a bad idea, by the way] I’d send that contact there with one brisk click.

Now I’m no salesguy. And sales culture appears more tolerant of things I consider vulgar. I also realize that transparent “introductions” are different from stealth pointers toward unwitting sales prospects.

Who knows? Maybe Salesconx will help millions of people unlock the value in their rolodexes, and help billions of dollars change hands efficiently and legally. As a press release on Salesconx points out, a lot of money is spent trying to develop sales prospects. This could just be a faster way to do it.

Hey, maybe by 2011 “free” networking sites like LinkedIn will be seen as sweet throwbacks, relics of the days when people actually helped each other along without collecting anything in return.

As I said, I’ve been wrong about this kind of thing before.

Which brings me to the punchline: According to the press release, on Sept. 9 Salesconx is expected to announce series A funding.

The Feds and Social Media: EPA Goes Blogging

From the Who Knew? files: The Environmental Protection Agency has been hammering away at a group blog since April.

Don’t worry, it’s not the Bush hacks extolling the virtues of offshore drilling. Greenversations is written by a group of civil servants at the agency who explore greenish issues in a personal way. As they go, they often mention EPA services that can help you, the citizens of America, live a greener life.

Here’s Lina Younes, head of the agency’s multilingual communications office, on how the agency helped her fix her leaky toilet, in a manner of speaking.

I learned about the WaterSense program through EPA and found out that the new toilets with the high-efficiency WaterSense label were finally available in the Maryland area where we live. We studied various options. We considered the dual flush toilets that we’ve seen in Europe and more recently in EPA’s Potomac Yard green building, but we finally opted for single flush toilets that use 1.28 gallons per flush and we couldn’t be happier. They do the job and we’ve put a stop to those leaky toilets, finally.

The entries appear to be vetted by EPA staff. But I came across some useful stuff. In this entry about what to do with an old cell phone, I came a fairly cool federal publication on The Lifecycle of a Cellphone. It’s made for kids, but I learned a lot about the resource intensive manufacturing process of phones, and where the motes of deadly toxin are embedded.

The whole point of Greenversations is to “open up the agency to the public,” to digress into 2.0 communications vernacular, and “put a human face on the agency.” It appears to accomplish this. Yes, but will anyone read it? Hard to imagine someone engaged enough with environmental issues to read blogs would be attracted to this 2.0 public service announcement outlet, however well done.

Comments are moderated, as you might expect. But Greenversations has at least some tolerance for agitprop. A response to an EPA science writer’s introduction of a new regular blog item on environmental science:

Steve Holmer says:

July 23rd, 2008 at 12:05 pm

Rather ironic, but it is encouraging that EPA staff have not given up on science. However, reading today’s Washington Post about how Director Johnson repeatedly lied to Congress about the decision concerning the CA waiver doesn’t leave one feeling like EPA has yet turned the corner.

Looking forward to better times ahead,

Ah, yes, but now about the government has a database of people who have made comments critical of high-level federal officials! Is Mssr. Holmer safe from government harrassment, even under the provisions of the Patriot Act?

From the Frequent Questions page:

Why do you ask for my name and email address when I leave a comment? How do you protect my privacy?

Providing your name or email address is optional. We ask for your name so that it is easier to carry on a conversation, so we will publish it along with your comment. We ask for your email address so that we may contact you if necessary. We will not publish your email address.

To protect yourself, please don’t include information that identifies you in the body of your comment, such as email addresses or phone numbers. We don’t edit comments, so we won’t be able to publish comments containing such information.

Huh. I wonder of Mssr. Holmer included his real e-mail address. And if he did, whether he got a response “thanking” him for his “valuable comment.”

If any of this interests you, you can always follow Greenversations on Twitter.

But you knew that.

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