08.19.07
As with life, things end as they begin.
This post will mark my final post for the Public Relations in the Age of Digital Influence course. It’s been an interesting and enlightening semester. Our class began with discussion on the role of everyday citizens who act as marketers and influencers in the age of Web 2.0. We’re ending with lessons about mass collaboration and crowdsourcing and the impact these practices have on media, communication, and business. As we moved through concepts, this course never deviated from the reality that, now more than ever, people hold great power in communicating and disseminating mass messages.
In my first blog post, I shared my skepticism about the intent of citizen marketers, arguing against the notion that bloggers are completely altruistic when promoting a product or business. I later blogged about my discomfort with writing in a conversational style to humanize my blog and refuted the “seamless shift” from consumer to contributor. In looking back, I must admit that my consistent skepticism against modern technology is a bit surprising. I consider myself as person who embraces technology, new communication gadgets, and killer applications. Moreover, I’ve always called for the type of society where peers worked together and shared information. We seem to be moving in that direction with citizen marketers and crowdsourcing, but for some reason, I’m having a hard time accepting the change – or maybe the means through which we are making the change.
I can’t really put my finger on the exact root of my skepticism, but I think one of the major factors is the grave impact that all this sharing and selfless promotion could have on careers and ultimately the economy. In Stock Waves: Citizen Photo Journalists Are Changing the Rules, a photographer discussing the new wave of consumer-generated stock photography, is quoted as saying, “Microstock has destroyed the careers of hundreds, if not thousands, of photographers.” This statement shows that not everyone is prepared for or adept at embracing the forever changing technological advances. With different levels of learning, knowledge, finances, and interests, the ‘old guard’ or veterans within a profession could be left without a career.
Now, the thought ‘change or die’ is probably fresh on your mind. The article Creative Crowdwriting: The Open Book pulled a great quote from Tapscott and Williams that explained this thought much better: “…this new participation is both a blessing and curse…it will also cause great upheaval, dislocation, and danger for societies, corporations and individuals that fail to keep up with relentless change.” I agree with this statement, but would add that this “new participation” will also cause danger for people and societies who accept change. File sharing illustrates this, as consumers face the possibility of being sued for downloading copywritten material or getting computer viruses from downloading bad files.
So, I end this course blog the way I began: with a healthy dose of skepticism about the glory and selflessness of Web 2.0 and its offerings. I in no way meant to be the cold bucket of water in this course, but I think all sides of this topic need to be explored a bit further in the literature, and in a manner that doesn’t gloss over the drawbacks.
08.11.07
Mass Collaboration: Even Wayne Brady Gets It
Ask Wayne Brady what makes good improv and he’ll probably tell you his audience. I’m in Las Vegas this week with my husband who is attending the National Association of Black Journalists Conference. Last night we went to see Wayne Brady’s live improvisational performance “Making %#it Up!” at the Venetian. In a rather quaint auditorium, Brady and his assistants removed the invisible barrier between artist and audience and encouraged full participation by audience members. To create laugh out loud comedy, audience members were asked to come on stage to role-play, suggest scenes for Brady to reenact, and provide the punch line for the joke. The end result: a damn funny show.
According to Wikinomics authors Tapscott and Williams, everyday people are the new media. Because of advances in consumer technology, we are controlling the Internet, television, news, and even movies. We now have the opportunity to dictate what information gets placed on the agenda for traditional media and consumers’ discussion.
Two things came to mind as I watched Brady’s performance. First, the leader (or in this case the star) does not hold all the power. Oftentimes, leaders simply have the most credibility and best means for spreading an innovation to the masses. The best solution may come from an audience member who is not bogged down with the pressures of thinking up the most novel idea. Secondly, people love being a part of the action and are eager to contribute if they know their idea will go towards creating something significant.
But last night’s performance also brought another thought to mind: I paid for Wayne Brady and not the comedic talents of Joe Schmoe. While mass collaboration is beneficial, we have to place limits on how much control consumers have in developing products and services. Why? Because too much collaboration may blur the line between professional and amateur. Tapscott and Williams write,
“In a world where all one needs is a camera phone to report on one’s surroundings, it is no longer as straightforward to pigeonhole a person’s role. In the emerging prosumption paradigm, a person can seamlessly shift from consumer to contributor and creator” (p. 143).
I disagree with this statement. The shift from consumer to contributor is not always seamless, particularly when the consumer has little or no professional training in what he is contributing to. It’s wrong to create the notion that any person with a blog or Podcast is a journalist. We need to continue showing the distinction between consumer-generated and professional content to uphold professional standards and limit career “remixing.”
It seems that Wayne Brady (the genius he is) recognizes this point too. He never gave his audience total control over dictating his moves. He shot down suggestions he didn’t like and admitted when concepts were too racy. Audience participation only made up the first half of his performance. During the second half of the show, Brady built the invisible barrier between artist and audience and performed self selected songs and dances, sending the message that ‘not everyone can do what I do.’
08.04.07
Preparing Public Health for Mass Collaboration
As technology improves, more people move away from human-to-human interaction to embrace computer-based communication. I’m very interested in the role technology, particularly the Internet, plays in healthcare and concerned about the effect this medium has on health promotion. Consumers are increasingly being led to the Internet to improve health behaviors. This way of life is producing both positive and negative effects, with the two most apparent outcomes being increased awareness about healthy living (positive) and decreased professional advice about healthy living and behavior change (negative).
According to Wikinomics authors Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, newer Internet technology is facilitating collectivism among consumers, creating users who are active participants in, developing, editing and regulating content for the web as well as print and broadcast channels. In the opening chapter of Wikinomics, the authors explain that in the age of collaborative technology, the connected will survive and disconnected will fail. The authors write:
“A power shift is underway, and a tough new business rule is emerging: Harness the new collaboration or perish. Those who fail to grasp this will find themselves ever more isolated – cut off from the networks that are sharing, adapting, and updating knowledge to create value.”
This “power shift” is present in public health. I look at Tapscott and Williams’s collectivism theory from two health promotion perspectives. First, consumers who don’t understand how to use the Internet to obtain health information will be placed at a disadvantage in learning about personal and community health. Many of these individuals may possess the greatest healthcare needs, but their unfamiliarity with retrieving and contributing information will prevent communication with peers and health professionals who are using technology to communicate health. Secondly, healthcare professionals who don’t use mass collaboration don’t receive professional and audience input with solving serious health issues.
I was taught to look at public health from a business standpoint, with profits being increased awareness and changed behaviors. Public health educators wanting to help improve negative health behaviors often stick to tried and true theoretical approaches and tactics. As mentioned in the book, our collaboration happens most often during committee and coalition meetings. Because we’re taught to not reinvent the wheel (and often have little money to do so), many professionals in the field are unable to harness the power of the Internet to enable mass collaboration from colleagues and audience members. Furthermore, many of our theories are outmoded and fail to address the role technological advances like the Internet have in engaging consumers.
Tapscott and Williams warn readers that newer demands will force development of new processes and models. The authors advise professionals to “reconfigure” existing methods to meet needs. I plan to write my thesis on whether computer-mediated communication lessens relevance of traditional communication theories for behavior change. In light of Web 2.0 and other interactive technologies, I’m particularly interested in determining whether the diffusion of innovations theory should be enhanced to address message transmission through newer, more faster modes of communication that don’t rely on face-to-face interaction. The principles and use of Wikinomics provide more justification for reexamining relevance of traditional communication theories.
07.28.07
Nikon Blogola: Controlling the blogosphere one camera at a time
Consumers and marketers alike are learning how to navigate the blogosphere. As a relatively new medium, blogs are enabling corporations to devise new ways of marketing products. The newness of blogs is also enabling companies to circumvent conventional marketing ethics to promote products. Blogola is a primary example of this, as influential bloggers are being compensated to review new products.
Nikon is using blogola to promote its D80 camera. The company’s blogger outreach strategy is to loan D80 camera (valued at $1000 and up) to leading bloggers in hopes of getting strong reviews that will help the camera sell to amateur photographers. As with payola in the recording industry, blogola smells like bribery. While Nikon is loaning their cameras to bloggers who participate in the program, the bloggers are given an opportunity to later purchase the camera at a reduced price (a major perk by any photographer’s standards).
Naked Conversations discusses the FUD Barrier. According to Scoble and Israel, FUD stands for fear, uncertainty, and doubt. The authors explain that companies have historically used FUD tactics to demote competing products and persuade consumers to purchase their product. Today, the authors write, FUD is used to sway corporations against blogging.
The first FUD barrier for blogging that Scoble and Israel discuss is negative comments. Having unflattering reviews posted on a message board for current and potential customers to see is deemed unhealthy for business. Conversely, blogs are said to give companies a false sense of the conversation surrounding a product. The authors quote Mike Torres of Microsoft with saying; “People are a lot more polite when they know you are listening.”
Torres’s sentiment explains why blogola doesn’t work. When companies agree to compensate bloggers for writing about their product, the blogger’s perspective is softened. Jack Jaffe’s April 29th blog post entitled D80 Blogger Outreach Rocks is laced with praises for Nikon:
“I have to tell you that in my humble opinion, this has been the best example of blogger outreach I have either experienced (first hand) or read about.”
Jaffe’s May 25th blog post Thank you Nikon! is laudatory as well:
“I just wanted to thank Nikon for selecting me to participate in their blogger outreach program. With photographs like this (which I would never have had before), I now have loyalty to a brand which quite frankly I had never considered before.”
Now, I admit that the picture Jaffe is referring to is clear, but it’s hard to not wonder whether Jaffe or any other bloggers selected for this campaign have overlooked problem areas of the camera because they are getting clear pictures. Moreover, I wonder whether these influential bloggers are experienced enough to give a complete review of a high-grade digital camera. While the D80 is built for amateurs, digital photography is a very detailed medium and the most involved enthusiasts will want to do more with their cameras than take pictures that can be uploaded to flickr.
While the ethics are questionable, I’ll also admit that Nikon’s D80 blogger outreach is a smart strategy for controlling the blogosphere. Nikon has opened the door to both positive and negative reviews, but by giving noteworthy bloggers a noteworthy product, Nikon is minimizing its chances of being criticized in consumer-generated media.
07.21.07
Whole Foods: Is WOMMA Missing A WOM Opportunity for WOM Ethics?
The Word of Mouth Marketing Association (WOMMA) released its Ethics Code in 2005 to expose “bad-willed marketers [running] deceptive and dishonest marketing programs.” To achieve this, WOMMA built its Ethics Code on the following six principles: (1) Consumer protection and respect are paramount; (2) Honesty of Relationship, Opinion, and Identity; (3) Respect the rules of the venue; (4) Manage relationships with minors; (5) Promote honest downstream communication; and (6) Protect privacy and permission.
Earlier this month, it was discovered that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey was anonymously posting defamatory information about a rival company on a message board. Mackey violated the first 3 principles of WOMMA’s Ethics Code. By posting under a assumed identity, Mackey took control away from consumers to give biased (and possibly false) information that highlighted his company and downplayed his competitor. Mackey didn’t disclose his relationship to Whole Foods and his phony identity misled the public about who was really communicating. Had WOMMA’s code been released after July 2007, readers would think the document was in direct response to Mackey’s actions.
The Whole Foods scandal highlights the need for ethical marketing standards in the age of digital influence where true identities are usually hidden from the public. I won’t use this post to argue whether Mackey violated ethical codes. (That answer is obvious.) Instead, I will use this post to present findings of a quick and dirty conversation map I conducted to determine whether this latest case of “CEOs Gone Wild” brought attention to WOMMA’s Ethics Code.
Why a conversation map? Well, WOMMA’s website doesn’t mention the Whole Foods incident. This issue would help bring attention to the Ethics Code and WOMMA itself, but association leaders aren’t using specific ethics cases to advance their mission. After finding this, I was curious to see how well accepted or known WOMMA’s code is. I found the following:
• A Google search for WOMMA Mackey produced approximately 781* results, most of which were blogs. A July 12th blog post on A Shel of My Former Self discusses the Whole Foods incident and need for ethical blogging, but makes no mention of WOMMA. There were 23 comments associated with this post and in 3 of the comments the author calls for WOMMA intervention. A blog post on Consumer Generated Media (CGM) from July 12th was the only blog that provides direct mention of WOMMA in the post and links to their webpage. The CGM blog is very influential with a Social Meter score of over 2,000.
• A search for John Mackey Whole Foods in Google Blog Search produced approximately 2,722** results. The first 20 results were dedicated to the Whole Foods message board incident. While many of these posts mentioned ethics, there were no conversations regarding WOMMA or their Ethics Code.
• A search for Whole Foods in YouTube produced 378 results when sorted by upload date. The first two pages contained videos released within the past week and 4 of these videos are related to Mackey’s mistake. Similar to blog posts, the related videos discuss ethics, but don’t mention WOMMA.
Findings of this limited conversation map seem to suggest that controversy surrounding Whole Foods and the heightened attention to word of mouth ethics is not brining much attention to WOMMA. WOMMA mentions on their ethics page that they want to raise awareness of unethical practices to push “bad-willed” businesses out. However, the association isn’t capitalizing on relevant events that show need for ethical codes in word of mouth marketing. Perhaps this is WOMMA’s method for not being viewed a regulatory force as mentioned on their FAQ page. While this is commendable, highlighting such incidents would help WOMMA educate consumers, businesses, and advertisers about unethical marketing practices.
* Advanced Search Options: English Only; Results from the last 3 months
** Advanced Search Options: English only; July 13, 2007-July 20, 2007
07.14.07
Net Promoter Score: Don’t Sleep on the Passives
The effect of marketing plans and new product incentives pale in comparison to the opinion of a trusted friend, relative, or colleague. According to Fred Reichheld’s Ultimate Question, positive word of mouth is key for driving good profits, while negative referrals cast doubt on a company’s integrity. Reichheld’s Net Promoter Score (NPS) helps companies ask customers whether or not services rendered are worthy of word of mouth promotion.
The NPS framework characterizes customers as a promoter, passive, or detractor. Promoters have the highest repurchase and customer loyalty rates of the three groups. Passives follow promoters with lower repurchase rates and excitement about the product. Detractors create negative publicity for a company because they’ve experienced poor customer service and want to warn others about the company’s practices.
On the NPS referral scale, promoters are “extremely likely” (9-10) to recommend service to someone else. Detractors dominate the scale (0-6) as “not at all likely” to recommend a company’s service to another person. However, both groups are able to generate equal amounts of word of mouth about the service received. Reichheld fails to give a good description about purchasing behaviors of passive customers. From the explanation given, I get the impression that passive customers have experienced good and bad service, but they still support the company. Passive customers aren’t exactly in the middle of the NPS scale (7-8), but they’re in a position where they can become either strong promoters or detractors.
The NPS framework can extend to social services as well. In health education, positive word of mouth is your profit. Health educators want to deliver a quality program to community members, so that people not only return, but also bring other community members along.
I held an emergency preparedness training this morning and spoke with three participants who’ve been enjoying the program, but recently had a bad experience with an instructor. One student began the conversation positively by saying “Candice, thank ‘Bob’ for teaching Monday’s course for us.” Another student chimed in with negative comments about Bob’s teaching style. This sparked negative comments from a third person. By the end of the conversation, all three participants were complaining.
This experience made me think about the power detractors have in influencing peers to defect. I consider the participant who wanted me to thank Bob as a passive participant – he had some reservations, but was willing to overlook them due to his overall good experience in the program. Had detractors not been present, I wonder if he would have continued to give Bob accolades.
Consumers are greatly influenced by word-of-mouth referrals. It’s harder to convert a detractor into a promoter. After determining NPS, business leaders should take steps to identify passive customers before they fall into the clutches of detractors. Leaders should work to understand needs and preferences of passive customers to create a better product that turns them into loyal promoters.
07.07.07
Too purfect for my blog
In the closing chapters of Naked Conversations, authors Robert Scoble and Shel Israel provide dos and don’ts of blogging. In chapter 10, public relations professionals are advised to enter the blogosphere as a human and not as a traditional marketer, as true bloggers and consumers can easily spot forced or contrived writing. The authors write that mass marketing has a very limited place in the blogosphere and that consumers respond better to blogs that are managed by people speaking in their own voice.
The ability to speak in your own voice is what distinguishes blogs from traditional marketing and journalism. Blogs are not peer reviewed or edited by the higher-ups within an organization. With blogs, we’re finally allowed to speak in a conversational tone, misspell a few words, and use ellipses over and over again. I’m relatively new to the blogosphere, with “Is this thing on?” being my first blog. As a newbie, finding my blog voice has been the most challenging, particularly because I’m writing for academic purposes where accuracy and logic count.
Academic brainwashing has worked a number on me. Finding a misspelled word makes me cringe. Reading prose that rambles is upsetting. While I’m getting used to links, I’m convinced this isn’t the right way to cite a source. This isn’t to say that I don’t make these mistakes. I just try really hard to not make these mistakes. What you’re reading right now is actually my second draft of this post, which I typed in Microsoft Word and pasted to my blog (sorry readers, now the blog magic is gone). At this point in life, it’s hard to shut off the “i before e except after c” voice and write as a free spirit.
To Scoble and Israel, the desire to be the perfect PR professional (or in my case health communicator) who shields her imperfections is wasted on the blogging community. In this digital communication age, people want to see that humans and not online characters are on the other end of the gadgets. In addition to speaking in your own voice, Scoble and Israel encourage bloggers to reveal their humanity by telling the truth, acknowledging mistakes, correcting mistakes, admitting when they don’t have the answer, and being transparent.
So, only after being born to a teacher who corrected every grammatical error I ever uttered, marrying a journalist, and spending semesters with Morris, Kiernan, and Twomey do they invent a form of communication where it’s okay to be human. Oh, how funny life can be. I’ll continue to search for my online voice and writing style through this blog and perhaps, a more personal blog. Maybe I’ll find the relaxed writing spirit I had as a child. Maybe I’ll lose the fear of mispelling misspelling a word and post directly into the editor. Just maybe.
06.30.07
A Campaign Strategy Full of Tactics
In last Monday’s Public Relations in the Age of Digital Influence class, speaker Alison Byrne Fields presented the components of a strategic brief. Stratgey, as Byrne explained, is developed after the business objective and communication goal are established. Strategy was described as the roadmap guiding how a communication campaign’s objectives and goals would be met. In addition to providing guidance, strategy helps planners filter out irrelevant factors, but is flexible enough to integrate new information to produce measurable campaign outcomes.
One of Fields’ key points was that strategy is not a tactic. Strategy is a well thought out plan, whereas tactic is a smaller activity implemented to reach the goal. I have heard these terms used interchangeably, and have probably used them incorrectly myself a few times. The confusion between these words is understandable because strategy and tactic depend on one another: you can’t fulfill your strategy without using tactics, and a string of tactics with no strategy is useless.
Tactics are the face of a campaign, as these activities attract audience members to your message. Because of this, campaign tactics are highly scrutinized for appropriateness. Political campaign tactics in particular are placed under a microscope and checked for ethics and relevancy to campaign goals. The search term “political campaign tactic” produces over 2 million results within Google Search with such headlines as “Baptists angry at Bush Campaign Tactics” and “The anatomy of a smear-campaign.” The public evaluates campaign tactics because they help us form an opinion about the messenger.
Social media has changed the process in which Americans participate in politics. Interactive features of Web 2.0 are helping 2008 presidential hopefuls garner moral and monetary support from citizens. Democrat and Republican Party candidates alike are using websites as a central hub to connect with Americans across the country. This tactic of using the web to communicate with citizens is layered with additional tactics to encourage support. Hillary Clinton’s website, for example, invites users to get cell phone updates, plan a campaign event, watch Clinton’s YouTube videos, read the blog, start a blog, read news updates, view campaign photos, and (oh yeah) donate. It’s a bit overwhelming, but essential for reaching potential voters and remaining a competitive force.
In politics, campaign tactics are scrutinized for being too over the top and too under the radar. Soon after announcing his plan to run for President, Barack Obama’s main website was criticized in a local TV news report for being too plain when compared with Clinton’s and John Edwards’ sites. The site was soon revamped with all the social networking bells and whistles. In March, the blog Web Candidate 2.0 posted informal stats showing that Obama led in the blog’s “Myspace Primary” with nearly 62,000 friends. According to Obama’s Myspace page, this number now stands at 126,172.
Web 2.0 features are helping ‘08 presidential candidates connect with the public, but I’m eager to see the final outcome of these tactics in light of the overall strategy for raising campaign funds and gaining supporters. For instance, if using social networking is a tactic for pulling younger Americans into politics, will we see more young adult voters in 2008? Additionally, it will be interesting to see how the final two candidates incorporate web-based campaign tactics into their strategies for getting voted into office and connecting with citizens after elected.
06.23.07
The more things change, the more things stay the same
While new communication modes are introduced by the minute, people are not straying from traditional communication principles used for community development. Online communities are relatively new phenomena, but the principles for creating and sustaining an online community are not. This week’s textbook and supplemental readings show that web-based communication through blogs, instant messaging, and other interactive features enhance, rather than change, the way we form social groups.
As a public health educator, my job is to bring real-life community members and groups together to learn about a specific health topic. One of my current responsibilities is to recruit neighborhoods to form what are called Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTs), which after large-scale disasters, go into their neighborhood to provide basic emergency response services to neighbors in need. To create teams, I mainly use the standard community building / social network development strategies taught in public health programs.
There are many similarities between what I do as health educator and what experts recommend for building an online community, beginning with what O’Reilly Network’s Building Online Communities article calls “existing for a reason.” Online community developers are encouraged to create a virtual space that meets members’ needs. As in the real world, civic participation online increases when users find relevance in the topic being discussed. Communities across the nation have developed CERT programs because community responders can improve disaster outcomes. A key message for CERT programs (including mine) is that first responders will be overwhelmed in a disaster and unable to meet community needs. People want to join and stay in programs that benefit their wellbeing.
Online community developers are also encouraged to use a peer outreach approach to recruit new members. In the 1960’s sociologist Everett M. Rogers refined the diffusion of innovations theory, which posits that early adopters of a product can in turn influence late adopters in their social network to try the new product. According to Building Online Communities, a “healthy” online community is one that attracts new members using older members. The author writes, “An active user group exudes a sense of community. This attracts people who enjoy the company of like minded individuals and seek the social rewards of participating in a healthy peer group.” Public health practitioners use diffusion of innovations often. We rely on community leaders and gatekeepers to spread the word about our programs to attract new participants and bring credibility to our message.
In Naked Conversations, authors Scoble and Israel also laud use of traditional word-of-mouth marketing to build online communities. These authors also recognize use of company blogs for helping to improve images of large businesses that in the past did not acknowledge consumer voices. The tradition in the latter principle is that persuasion and trust are best achieved through interpersonal communication. Blogs give organization leaders and customers an opportunity to discuss their point of view about a product or service.
With the help of blogs, we now have a culture where consumers feel like they have more control in influencing business practices. We also have consumers who feel responsible for making sure that large corporate and governmental structures don’t overlook everyday people. Gail Ann Williams advises that online communities be a space where members feel accountable for the progress of their community. In the real world, and I see this with my CERT program, members who take pride in their neighborhood and want to see it flourish work at keeping other community members safe and healthy.
We often condemn advances in communication technology because we fear that new innovations will jeopardize how we converse and interact with each other. But it seems that we don’t stray too far from past practices.
06.15.07
I’m laughing out loud…
No seriously. I am cracking up right now because I’ve finally been diagnosed with ‘Red Cart Romance.’ That’s right dammit. I’m a fellow “Internet dork and Target lover, end-cap whore, and $1 section addict.” Man, that’s me to a T. I’ve been reading the last few chapters of Citizen Marketers and trying to figure out what in the heck I feel so passionate about that I could actually devote an entire blog to. I love Macs, my DVR, and breathe hip-hop so I could blog all night about these topics. But as I read page 129 the lightbulb above my head turned on. TARGET! If I ever started a product evangelist type blog it would be my Targe’ shopping chronicles. All the bargains…All the deals…like the $199 lounger w/ottomans that I got for $30 (my best deal yet). McConnell and Huba’s explanation of personal relevance (p. 110) is key to understanding the popularity of blogs. Slave to Target is such a genious idea because there are so many of us out there.
Citizen Marketers is turning out to be quite an interesting book. I’m getting ready to begin chapter 7, but chapters 4-6 have presented interesting points on the competition between social media and traditional media. One of McConnell and Huba’s early points is that with each communication innovation, the printing press is placed at a further disadvantage. Television, radio, and now computers have all created strong competition for printed material. Computers, however, seem to be the most threatening, as the Internet engenders a community-type atmosphere where we can interact as well as receive information. Considering that computers combine qualities of all three media (e.g. audio, video, text, and interactivity) I wonder if this will be the innovation that finally causes the demise of printed news.
McConnell and Huba’s iPod battery and Comcast examples show that bloggers are becoming agenda setters for news media and companies. The recent YouTube video of the cadet dancing in his dorm room made CNN (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znAz8_YJWHk) a few weeks back. Bloggers and YouTube patrons are giving reporters topics to cover. While it seems a bit odd to campaign for cola, obviously product evangelists who put forth money, time, and gas to lobby for their favorite product are effective in getting corporate heads to hear their concerns and change policies. I’ve experienced both faulty iPods and long Comcast wait times and accepted these inconveniences as ways of life for the technology age.
