As it happens, it’s worth updating this story. Yes, Rupert Murdoch joined Twitter and we’ve been analysing every single tweet as if it’s being delivered on a stone tablet. But while that was happening, Twitter decided to verify not only Murdoch’s Twitter account but the one belonging to his wife Wendi Deng.

Except they verified the wrong one. @Wendi_Deng was a spoof account set up by a chap in London. Business Insider ran a transcript of the fake Deng coming clean, and questions were asked about Twitter’s still-secret verification process.

It should’ve been @wendideng, without the underscore, although as I write this the real account has been taken offline.

Mathew Ingram’s piece at GigaOM summed it up nicely: Why Twitter’s “verified account” failure matters. It’s about trust.

Anyway the ABC Radio conversation wandered well into other matters and hardly touched upon Rupert and Wendi. The pace of news. The appropriateness of Twitter marketing. Potential revenue streams for Twitter. And so on. And so forth.

The Sundays presenter was Jennifer Fleming, who’s filling in for James O’Loghlin over summer. The producer was Siobhan Moylan.

The audio is ©2012 Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Apparently Sundays is usually podcast, but I’m going to post my interview here anyway.

In this episode you’ll hear what I think about the Prime Minister’s Christmas Message, which doesn’t hold a candle to my own Christmas Message from 2008, let alone the Queen’s Christmas Messages, such as Her Majesty’s 50th such message in 2007; the NRMA’s claim that petrol pricing is too hard to predict and their call for an inquiry; the fact, or supposed fact, that Twitter gets more news mentions than Facebook, even though the latter is much, much bigger; and a really, really stupid tweet from Shahira Abouellail, whose blog is called fazerofzanight.

You can listen below. But if you want all of the episodes, now and in the future, subscribe to the podcast feed, or even subscribe automatically in iTunes.

If you’d like to comment on this episode, please add your comment below, or Skype to stilgherrian or phone Sydney +61 2 8011 3733.

[Credits: The 9pm Edict theme by mansardian, Edict fanfare by neonaeon, all from The Freesound Project. Photograph of Stilgherrian taken 29 March 2009 by misswired, used by permission. Mark Zuckerberg news item from NewsyTech.]

Here’s my conversation with Richard Margetson on ABC 105.7 Darwin about the Facebook changes, broadcast on the afternoon of Tuesday 27 September 2011.

Again, this bounces off last week’s Crikey piece, Hey Facebook, we want to share, but this is ridiculous, but Mr Margetson was also aware that I’d just come from a lunchtime briefing with a bunch of information security people so he explored that angle too.

The audio is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, presented here as always because the ABC doesn’t generally post these live interviews and it’s a decent plug for them.

As I mentioned on Monday, I was scheduled to do more radio spots this week about Facebook’s changes and what they meant for privacy. Here’s another of them, and there’ll be a third posted shortly.

For most of the presenters, the kick-off was my Crikey piece from last week, Hey Facebook, we want to share, but this is ridiculous — and I’ll have more to write about that before the weekend is finished.

This conversation with Nicole Dyer from ABC Gold Coast was broadcast on the morning of Monday 26 September 2011.

It’s interesting to hear how different presenters explore different aspects of the issue, I think. Earlier the same morning I spoke with Katya Quigley on ABC Mid North Coast NSW, and she was much more interested in the idea of being always-connected and whether that gave people enough down time, as it were.

Alas, that radio station isn’t streamed online so I couldn’t record it.

The audio is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, presented here as always because the ABC doesn’t generally post these live interviews and it’s a decent plug for them.

Today on I’m a Goddam Expert it’s Facebook, the recent round of changes, and what it means for users and the world of social networking generally. It began with Friday’s piece for Crikey, Hey Facebook, we want to share, but this is ridiculous, and so far I’ve been booked to do four radio spots. And counting.

I did two spots on Friday afternoon, one with Lindy Burns ABC 774 Melbourne the other with Melanie Tait on ABC 666 Canberra. Here’s the audio for the Canberra conversation.

The Melbourne conversation (2.1MB MP3) covered similar territory, but the recording dropped out near the end so I haven’t bothered posting it as a proper podcast.

This material is ©2011 Australian Broadcasting Corporation, but they generally don’t put these interviews online — and hey, it’s a good plug for them. Well, a minor but useful plug.

I’m doing two more this morning, also for ABC local radio stations. The Gold Coast at 0940 AEST and North Coast NSW at 1010.

Today I returned to the print media with an opinion piece, Trends on Twitter brief but telling, just like in the real world, in the Sydney Morning Herald.

It’s an overview of Twitter’s “Trending Topics”, including the observation that marketers who try to game the trends are probably wasting their time. Research by Hewlett-Packard’s social computing lab [PDF] shows that there’s probably no point in focusing on the “influencers”.

Topics will trend or not based on whether people found it interesting to retweet at that moment. Just like Yahoo! Research’s Duncan Watts said a few years back.

Somehow I managed to refer to the fisting incident without using the word “fisting” itself.

I wouldn’t have thought about writing this piece myself, being too immersed in Twitter to realise that it needed explanations. Blame Joel Gibson, the SMH Opinion Editor. He commissioned it and did a decent job of improving my Sunday-written words.

I think it’s quite sweet that Fairfax decided to explain my name.

If you’re not yet at least experimenting with Twitter, the real-time social messaging service, you should be.

Suppress the corporate paranoia. It’s a lot easier than you might think. And while Twitter does get far more attention than its relatively small size might suggest — truly active Twitter users number perhaps 20 million globally compared with Facebook’s 750 million active users and counting — it punches well above its weight in terms of connecting with influential community members.

Twitter may not ever become the core real-time service used by the masses. Or if it does, it may only be for a few years. You only have to look at the last decade to see the then-leading MySpace surpassed by Facebook in 2008, just four years after Facebook was founded. Google’s launch of Google+ in June this year has generated plenty of speculation that the search and advertising giant’s foray into social networking will in turn wipe Facebook off the planet. Who knows?

There will always be some real-time social messaging service, however. Whether that’s Twitter as a stand-alone service, or whether we all end up using a real-time component of Facebook or Google+ or something that has yet to be deployed — none of that matters. The principles and practices of real-time messaging will doubtless end up being much the same.

Anything you might do with Twitter will be easy to migrate to any other real-time messaging system. The lessons you learn will carry across too.

Now some social media expert gurus (SMEGs) make a big deal about how it’s vital you get Twitter right. Silly beginner’s mistakes will destroy your reputation, they say. Well, that’s only partially true.

If you make a mistake on Twitter, sure, you’ll be slammed within minutes. But most of the criticism will come from SMEGs who spend their time worrying about such things wanting to demonstrate their relevance, or whingers with too much time on their hands. Just remember that it’s all a storm in a teacup, and while the storm might have sprung up within minutes, it’ll also be forgotten within minutes.

Take a deep breath, and move on.

Besides, the SMEGs are trying to sell you their consulting services. Of course they’ll make Twitter sound hard.

It’s not.

Twitter is just people talking to other people, where their conversations are visible to the world.

That’s why I prefer to describe Twitter as social messaging rather than micro-blogging. It’s not a one-way street. You need to listen as well as talk. Respond to the people who talk to you and, just as importantly, introduce yourself to people who are talking about you, or about matters that affect you. That’s how you slowly build connections.

But I get ahead of myself.

“You”? That’s the first key question. In the context of a local government, who is the “You” that’s talking with people?

Many organisations imagine that since their Twitter account is another “official” voice it should be run by the marketing department, or corporate relations. I think that’s a mistake. The usual result is that the Twitter stream becomes nothing but links to media releases, and the tone becomes cold and bureaucratic.

The best organisational Twitter accounts seem to be run by customer service. CSOs are already responding to the general public. They know what issues come up. And they’re usually across everything that’s happening.

The question then becomes one of choosing the right person or people to run the Twitter account. In general that won’t be the newcomer 22-year-old who’s got lots of Facebook friends, but the receptionist, office manager or CSO who’s been around for a decade and a half.

They key is finding someone with the broad knowledge of the organisation and its communities. Learning Twitter, as I say, is the easy bit.

That person then needs to be given the authority to tweet themselves, without having to ask for every tweet to be approved. Real-time is important, and natural language is important. Don’t make the mistake of one federal government department of having every tweet approved by a committee and scheduled for transmission. That way lies Twitter death.

Besides, do you get the marketing department to approve every sentence in every telephone conversation? No, you trust in people’s ability to say the right thing.

Make sure you identify the person operating the account publicly.

A human face always helps communication. Add their name to the Twitter profile, and link the Twitter account back to a page on your website that explains who is tweeting, what they will and won’t be tweeting about — for instance, they might mention road closures but not building approvals — and what their hours of operation are.

Of course in a large organisation you might want to have several people operate the account. In that case, tag every tweet with that person’s name or initials. Margaret Jenkins becomes “^MJ” or “-Margaret” or even “-Marg”. They’re the most common methods, but it really doesn’t matter how you tag the tweets as long as you’re consistent about it.

Another method might be to have the Twitter account be the mayor’s, particularly if he or she is a hands-on kind of person. If you do that, again it’s important to distinguish between the mayor’s own tweets and those added by the team. For example, when he was Prime Minister Kevin Rudd would sign the tweets he write himself with “KRudd”, while the rest were signed “KevinPM Team”.

I’d have gone for something shorter than “KevinPM Team”. On Twitter, space is always at a premium. We already know it’s about KevinPM since it’s from his twitter account. “KTeam” would work nicely.

You’ll also have to think ahead, and know what you’ll do with the account when the mayoral robes and chains eventually get passed on.

But what would a local government tweet about?

Anything short that people might want in real time, either because it’s live information they need to know now, or it’s of high value and you want to spread the word widely.

Here’s some examples off the top of my head.

Bin collection back to normal after industrial action. Bins still full? Phone NNNN NNNN to book extra pick-up. ^MJ #rubbish

Garbage truck breakdown. Bin collections in Lilyfield running 3 hours late, but we will finish today. ^MJ #rubbish

Jenny Smith Gallery: Photo portraits by Andrew Jones opens 6pm tonight. FREE. http://counc.il/466 #art ^MJ

Council meeting tonight 7pm Bullathinga Town Hall. Agenda at http://counc.il/468 ^MJ

Council agenda item 4 approved: $20k funding for new pet health centre. http://counc.il/467 ^MJ

Flooding closes Perkins Rd at Hangmans Creek. Will not re-open today. Divert via Bullhorn Rd. Next update 7am. ^MJ

Smithfield Library has 200 new romantic fiction titles. Borrowing is free. Full list at http://counc.il/454 ^MJ

Pensioner? Free cholesterol tests at Bullathinga Town Hall this Friday 8am to 12pm. http://counc.il/467 ^MJ

DA received: shop renovations at 127 Smith St. Comments close 17 Aug. http://counc.il/556 ^MJ

Next on stage at Bullathinga Park: Folk Off, Irish comedy folk trio. http://counc.il/546 #bullafair ^MJ

Spraying footpaths for asthma weed today in areas west of Perkins Rd. It’s safe for humans. http://counc.il/549 ^MJ

See the hashtags, the keywords starting with “#”? They serve two purposes. One, they add keywords to a tweet that might not otherwise be present, so they’ll turn up in searches. Two, by categorising your tweets with hashtags, you allow people who aren’t interested in art, say, to filter out those tweets.

Note that I’ve put the critical information at the front of the tweet, making it easier for retweeters to chop off bits at the end if they want to add their own comments. I’ve used a custom URL shortener to create short web addresses. Twitter does URL shortening anyway, but the yourls.org tools make it easy to set up your own shortener for added branding and a whiff of professionalism.

Note that every tweet must stand alone. Tweet often get retweeted out of context, and in any event people usually only see the most recent tweets. If you opened conversation on an issue then you need to close it again, and use all the key words on the closure.

Flooding subsides. Perkins Rd has re-opened at Hangmans Creek. ^MJ

I haven’t covered how you respond to tweets directed at your account, or how you do customer service via Twitter, striking the balance between answering immediately or directing people elsewhere for more comprehensive answers. They’re whole topics in themselves.

But for some good examples, look no further than Telstra. Despite their once-traditional reputation for poor customer service, Telstra is actually doing really well on Twitter.

So how do you start?

Register an official Twitter account, and also get whoever will be tweeting on your organisation’s behalf to set up a personal account. Fill in all your profile. Don’t stress about getting it 100% right, you can change it at any time.

Install TweetDeck as your Twitter client software, rather than using the Twitter website. It provides a lot more flexibility, and it’s available for Windows, OS X, iPhone and iPads and Android.

Start by listening. Set up search columns in TweetDeck for the names of the towns an suburbs in your area, and note what people are saying. Start to follow the interesting people in your area. Note the regular questions people have, and answer them. Note the misconceptions and correct them.

Follow other local governments, here and overseas. Think about what works for them and might work for you, and what doesn’t. Adopt what seem to be good behaviours. Follow a few high-profile tweeters and learn from them.

Tweet about a small subset of things at first. Choose easy, non-controversial things to start with, like letting people know when and where meeting are and pointing them to the documentation. Then add in new sets of tweets as you become more comfortable with the medium and can persuade staff members to contribute from their area. The fact that you’re adding more to what you’re tweeting about is worth its own tweet.

Don’t panic. Have fun.

[Image: Twitter bird drawing by Hugh McLeod.]

Earlier this evening I recorded this interview with Iain Dale, who’s keynoting the Microsoft Politics & Technology Forum in Canberra on 1 June. He’s one of the UK’s leading political bloggers, a former Conservative Party politician, publisher of Total Politics magazine and host of the evening show on London’s LBC Radio — amongst other things.

I’d originally intended to use a slab of this in the Patch Monday podcast I do for ZDNet Australia, but it’s not really about technology. Our conversation did touch upon the way political parties use social media such as blogs and Twitter — or, really, why they don’t. But we also covered the attraction of broadcast radio as medium and why it’ll survive, authenticity and much more. So I decided to post the entire recording here as a podcast.

I began by asking Dale about a piece he wrote for The Guardian earlier this month, Is this really the death of political blogging? It turns out the headline is misleading.

For more on Iain Dale, read his Wikipedia entry or follow him on Twitter.

I’ve been thinking of doing a more podcasts of interviews along the lines of this one — not necessarily about politics or technology but whatever strikes my fancy. Indeed, I created the blog post category Conversations for this purpose, although so far I’ve only used it to post random audio I’ve been involved with. What do you think?

What a week! If you were following my Twitter stream this evening, you’d already know that one of the cats, Artemis, is gravely ill tonight. She is in hospital. My cashflows are thoroughly depleted. And I am severely stressed. But I am also astounded by people’s generosity of spirit.

In writing all this, I run the risk of alienating those who want to see a supposed-professional’s website full of serious things like my media work and serious commentary, or at least mildly amusing satire, not that supposedly lowest-of-low, “cat blogging”. My good friend Nick Hodge has already written this week about professional versus personal social media projections and the risks of letting them intermingle.

But you know what? Fuck all that!

If I am to be an honest human — and I would like to think I strive to be one — then what I write about should be what is on my mind. And this is what dominates my mind today. If you don’t like it, well, stop reading now and pop back another time. Maybe next week.

And if you think less of me for writing about the personal issues that happen to be dominating my life, well, fuck you too.

So, to Artemis…

Yesterday we thought she had food poisoning of some sort, and figured she’d recover today after spending the night flaked out on the bed. But her appetite did not return, and late this afternoon she took a turn for the worst. No energy, unable to stand on her own feet, weak pulse.

I got her to our local vet just as they were closing, but she was too ill to stay overnight unattended, so we took her to the Sydney After-hours Veterinary Emergency Service at the University of Sydney’s Veterinary Teaching Hospital.

Initial treatment with fluids restored some of Artemis’ strength. She’s sitting up again.

The initial consultation revealed symptoms of small kidneys and possibly infected bladder, which could mean anything from kidney disease of some sort to a urinary tract infection. Comprehensive urine and blood tests will be required. Some bleeding was also revealed in her mouth, with unusual tissue growth. This can be indicative of mouth cancer, although someone on Twitter did say something about kidney problems causing mouth ulcers. However the vet flagged the likelihood of cancer. A biopsy will be needed, but at the moment Artemis isn’t strong enough for the anaesthetic needed for that.

Now all this couldn’t have come at a worse time.

As I wrote the other day, I’m already in the difficult position of having to find a new home when I’m skint. One of my tasks over the next few days is to figure out how to get sufficient cash in while we’re in the slow-income post-holiday period to enable househunting and moving before 3 February.

This evening, however, I emptied my bank account and my wallet into as much as I could muster to cover the required 50% deposit for the estimated treatment costs.

That wasn’t enough for the full recommended option that included all the analyses for this first night. It was enough for the consultation and hospital cover, fluids, initial essential treatment and some methodone. That’s $640, of which I’ve paid half. So Artemis is alive, and my task now is to figure out the next steps — including paying the rest of that, deciding the course of action from here, and then paying for that.

As far as I understand the options from here, Artemis will need at least a few days in hospital, plus those tests to properly diagnose her condition, including the potential cancer. I imagine all that won’t be less than an additional $1000. If it is cancer, and operable, then that’s a jaw section to be removed. I don’t see that being under another $1000, given that when her tail was crushed in an accident in 2007 and had to be removed that cost around $1000, and the jaw sounds more complicated.

So there’s my challenge for tomorrow. Pay for the initial treatment and investigations. Then, once they’re done, figure out how to cover the rest of the problems once they’re revealed or, face the other potential decision, consider whether it’s all too hard, too much of a burden on everyone including the Furry One herself, and go for The Long Green Sleep.

I must be honest here and say that I am overwhelmed.

People might imagine that because I have a reasonably high profile and have travelled overseas twice last year that I have a respectable income. I do not. The media work I do pays very little. The geek-for hire work I do is relatively low in volume. The overseas trips were paid for by others — Microsoft and Salesforce.com, to name names.

And my total volume of work, and hence income, is patchy because over the years I’ve had an on-again off-again battle with depression — something I don’t make a big deal of because, well, it’s as boring as all fuck. But several nastier-than-usual bouts over the past few years, each representing stretches of some weeks without any real income, have left me with zero cash reserves and no credit cards. Like most people with even less income than me, I pay as I go and pray there’ll be no unexpected glitches.

Like having to move house.

Or sick pets.

As it approaches midnight on this Wednesday night, I am not depressed. But I do have a very large question mark sitting in front of me.

However I am overwhelmed by people’s generosity, and generosity of spirit.

Friends have offered to sort out what happens tomorrow morning. We still have to work out the details, but at least tomorrow is OK.

What has astounded me, though, is the generosity of strangers. On the left-hand side of my website there’s a PayPal donation button. People have used it occasionally over the years. However in the past three days there’s been five donations totalling over $200 — all but one from complete strangers. People I barely know have been offering help on Twitter this evening — logistics, cold hard cash, or both. The other day, when I first mentioned my accommodation problem, people offered to help cover the bond on new premises until the old one is refunded, as well as other kinds of support.

I am surprised, pleased, feeling supported but nevertheless overwhelmed. And today has been the first day in the last few weeks that I’ve been able to focus well enough.

Tonight several people suggested that I set up a microfinance donation thingo to cover Artemis’ treatment. That is an option, and I’ll consider it properly in the morning, because I am certainly in no position to pay back loans of the magnitude required.

But all that is enough for now. The facts of the matter have tumbled out. I am exhausted. I’ll get a phone call between 6.30 and 7.30am tomorrow with further news. And right now Apollo, the other cat, is demanding attention. Loudly.

Thank you everyone, truly thank you, for your support tonight.

[Photo: Artemis with her prey, a noisy miner bird, from 23 May 2005.]

A weekly summary of what I’ve been doing elsewhere on the internets — which this week wasn’t very much at all because I lost a couple of days returning from San Francisco.

Articles

None this week.

Podcasts

• Patch Monday episode 69, “Service goes social, but how?”. Based on material recorded at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce event in San Francisco, this episode includes a chat with Fergus Griffin, vice president of product marketing for Salesforce.com’s Service Cloud product.

Media Appearances

• On Wednesday I did another brief spot with Paul Turton on ABC Radio Statewide NSW.

Corporate Largesse

• On Friday I had lunch aboard the South Steyne at Darling Harbour, courtesy of Watterson Marketing Communication.

Elsewhere

Most of my day-to-day observations are on my high-volume Twitter stream, and random photos and other observations turn up on my Posterous stream. The photos also appear on Flickr, where I eventually add geolocation data and tags.

[Photo: Since I didn't take any photographs this week, here's one of the rather serious seagulls they have in San Francisco.]

I’m making an unexpected trip to Newcastle this Saturday for the National Young Writers Festival, where I’m part of a free panel called No Man’s Land discussing war reportage.

War correspondence is undertaken by all parties involved in conflict. The NGO’s [sic], the military groups, and hopefully the civilians via a free press. This panel is an introduction to how these stories find their way to us.

The other panellists include people with some first-hand experience. Freelance photojournalist Ed Giles, who’s worked across the Middle East and Asia since 2006. Sierra Leonian journalist Olivia Boateng, who fled with her children. One child killed, and her family scattered, Olivia spent 5 years in a refugee camp before being granted refugee status. And there’s author and academic Debra Adelaide, who currently teaches the Creative Writing program at UTS.

I’m replacing Patrick Gray, producer of the Risky Business podcast on information security. Supposedly I’ll be talking about how all this changes in this new high-bandwidth networked age. Or how it doesn’t change.

No Man’s Land is this Saturday 2 October 2010 at the Elderly Citizens Centre [shoosh!], Laing Street, Newcastle, from 2.30pm to 4pm. It’s free, and you don’t have to register. Just rock up. And you can buy me a drink afterwards.

The National Young Writers Festival is all part of the grand This Is Not Art festival. It’s a great time to visit Newcastle. I went last year and wrote this Letter from Newcastle.

Australian airline Jetstar and the managers of rock band Powderfinger seem to think that waving the magic word “social media” means free labour. Exploitative cunts.

As mUmBRELLA reported:

Jetstar is continuing its drive into social media, funding an official blogger on Powderfinger’s farewell tour which is sponsored by the budget airline.

According to Jetstar: “Over 50 days, Jetstar’s official tour blogger will ‘Follow the Finger’ and produce daily blogs, video diaries, fan photos and Twitter updates. They will interview the band and support acts, interact with fans and locals and become a member of the tour support team.”

As well as covering travel and accommodation, the blogger will receive an allowance of $100 a day.

Right.

So in other words, for more than a month and a half, the “winner” of the “competition” will work as a writer covering the tour — call it journalism or blogging or whatever you like, it’s all the same thing. They’ll work as a producer, curating fan photos. They work as a PR assistant and “interact with fans and locals and become a member of the tour support team”. That’s a whole bunch of different media skills, a pretty special person indeed.

In return they get paid less than the legislated minimum wage.

The federal minimum wage is currently $15.00 per hour or $569.90 per 38 hour week (before tax).

Casual employees covered by the national minimum wage also get at least a 21 per cent casual loading.

I reckon “become a member of the tour support team” sounds like an offer of employment, yeah?

“Jetstar has been making a growing investment in social media,” says mUmBRELLA, but clearly not enough to pay a fair day’s wage for a fair day’s work.

Maybe Jetstar should try telling the roadies they’ll also get $100 a day “allowance” in return for the privilege of seeing all 34 concerts. To their faces. And I’ll sit back and watch…

Please insert a final angry sentence that includes the words “exploitation”, “unethical” and “pond slime”. And on Monday I’ll be phoning Fair Work Australia for an opinion.

Rock on.

Unless, of course, Jetstar get in touch before then to tell me they’ve decided to pay the winner the proper MEAA rate for freelance writers [PDF].

Last night I gave one hell of a serve to The Online Circle, a “full-service interactive agency” who I accused of… well… read it for yourself. Today their CEO Jeff Richardson emailed an apology, and I reckon he’s more than made good. Bravo.

I’ve always said that the true measure of a business is how it responds when something goes wrong. Too many try to cover the cracks with bullshit — I’m sure you know the kind of hollow corporate PR-speak I mean. It takes integrity and, indeed, guts to respond directly to criticism, particularly when it was a direct and as harsh as mine.

Mr Richardson, Sir, it takes a solid effort to write an email like yours, which I thoroughly appreciate, and of course I accept the apology.

Here’s the full text of Jeff’s email:

Hi Stilgherrian.

Firstly, I apologise.

Secondly, thank you.

I read your post this morning about our agency’s emails to you and, of course, you’re right. Spot on in fact.

You raised a number of different points from our understanding of our audience and spamming to the actual grammar in the email.

As a small agency we do find ourselves rushing from time to time and it’s apparent we’ve rushed too many times through this process. This may explain things but obviously it isn’t an excuse.

We need to slow down and commit the time a task deserves. We also need to accept that while we are very good in some areas we’re not necessarily the right people to do everything we try to do.

Your post has brought this reality back to me and all involved at The Online Circle.

As an aside, we did review your website. What we didn’t do was categorise you properly. Our bad.

We’ve unsubscribed you in our database and you won’t hear from us again unless we are responding to something you have actively written about.

I hope you accept my apology and I invite you to keep us honest if you ever pick up a future imprudence.

Regards,

Jeff

P.S. Your ‘arsehats’ comment cut deep. We’re small business people trying our best. This time our best wasn’t good enough. Not even close. But we’re not arsehats and we’ll be working to prove that. Cheers.

It’s always good to see someone who stands behind their business. Despite the serve I dished out, The Online Circle responded with dignity and honesty, and you can’t ask for more than that. Well done.

Speaking personally, I wouldn’t trust a “full-service interactive agency” that can’t even get the basics of the Spam Act 2003 right. So here’s my Big Fat Monday Night Hello to The Online Circle, the arsehats who just spammed me.

Guys, here’s how your email starts:

Hi Stilgherrian,

Firstly, thank you very much for your effort and involvement in our [redacted] campaign (We hope you enjoyed the chocolate). We saw some great blog articles and Twitter updates written that have really helped people understand more about [redacted] and why we all should get involved.

Erm, I wasn’t involved in this campaign, with or without any effort. So there’s arsehattery #1. And I never got any chocolate. There’s arsehattery #2.

Oh, and that sentence in parentheses? The full stop should be inside the closing parenthesis. That’s #3.

I’ll skip over the plug for your “we’re excited to announce” thing because — and OMFG how original is this? — you’re inviting people to upload videos to promote your client’s product! A video competition! How unique is that?

“Not at all,” is my answer there. Video competitions have to be the most overworked cliché in social media marketing.

But here are the bits which really shit me.

You are receiving this email because The Online Circle has found you to be an online influencer in Australia. This is our first contact with you and we promise not to share your name or any details with anyone.

An “online influencer”, eh? So it’s not that I’m an “interesting writer” or “respected commentator” or “glutton for chocolate” or even just “nice guy” or perhaps even “dangerous psychotic” — but an “online influencer”. Great. I fit some smegging buzzword du jour category for your marketing effort. T’riffic. How depersonalising.

“This is our first contact with you,” you say?

Bullshit.

You previously emailed me on 24 February, subject line “Social Media Influencer — How about free samples?”, to say that you “understand generating content for your blogs and social media channels can sometimes be challenging”. No, I don’t “generate content”. I write. I take photos sometimes.

And you emailed me again on 1 March, subject line “We are ready to send you some free chocolate”, with the same content.

All three emails claim “This is our first contact with you”. Liars.

And if you’d bothered to even look at my website…

… as opposed to, I presume, just finding me on some list of Australian bloggers somewhere, you might even have discovered that I don’t fill my website with random plugs for multinational corporations. Especially corporations that pull more than USD 7 billion a year in revenue but still want the punters to do their creative work for them in exchange for a few chocolates.

Arsehats. Exploitative spammy bloody arsehats.

More than two years since Barack Obama’s presidential election campaign, the numbers are still staggering. $770 million was raised, roughly 65% of that online. There were 3.2 million individual donors, with the average donation under $100.

This is completely different from traditional political fundraising, which revolved about dinners and other events costing $2300 a ticket — the maximum unreportable donation donation allowable from a couple at that time under US electoral laws. Obama’s campaign really did reach out and mobilise millions of ordinary Americans.

Yes, millions. The progressive Democratic Party network is now 15 million people online.

Online social networking tools made all this possible, sure, but the success came through the clever application of those tools. The key word here is “personal”.

The campaign’s central managers provided a framework within which individual campaign workers could do their own thing in their own communities. The technology was created specifically for the campaign, but you could do all of it with Facebook and a few optional extras. And while fundraising was obviously a key goal, so was involvement.

• At a rally with 10,000 people, Obama’s team would ask everyone with a mobile phone to SMS a certain number to pledge a $5 donation. Or, even better, a 1900 number so the donation is charged directly to their phone bill. Bang! $50,000 raised in 60 seconds. And you’ve captured their phone number.
• Once you have someone’s contact details, you can ask for more. Another $5? Can I just have your age please? How about an hour of your time to help the campaign?
• Every donor was sent a thank-you letter — not in bulk by an anonymous central office administrator but individually by a real person from their own neighbourhood.
• People who volunteered their time to door-knock were given the names and addresses of 25 people in their neighbourhood and a training video explaining how to campaign legally. Once they knew what these people’s hot button issues were, that was fed into the database, and they could be sent personalised campaign material addressing their concerns.
• Everyone spoken to was asked to suggest another 25 people who needed to be convinced to change their vote.
• The central system allowed campaign workers to organise their own groups and local events in their own way. Eventually there were 20,000 groups from a national “Latinos for Obama” to thousands of “My neighbourhood for Obama”, who between them organised more that 200,000 offline events.
• Campaigners could blog about their activities and post photos and videos. More than 100,000 people were blogging regularly. 1800 videos were uploaded, and more than 14 million people-hours spent watching them.
• The campaign office created a “Fight the Smears” website debunking the negative myths about Obama, then bought Google keyword advertising. If people searched for “obama arab” they’d see a link to that website.
• On election day, local campaign workers phoned people to remind them to vote. 6 million calls.
• There was measurement at every step. What worked? What didn’t? That information was shared so everyone learned.

The election of Barack Obama was Politics 2.0, the election of the representatives. These same tools can be used for Government 2.0, the running of the nation and our communities.

Some of the examples we’ve seen are:

• In Kentucky, residents wanted to stop a controversial condo (apartment block) development because there’d been poor communications from the authorities and a lack of opportunity for community input. Using these techniques, they gathered 1600 active members on a Facebook group to save the existing building. They organised 20 events, packed the City hearings with observers, and eventually had the proposal killed
• Here in Australia, the Hugh Bamford Reserve Protection Group saved a park at North Bondi in Sydney. The Waverley Council issued the planning information near Christmas for a $20 million industrial-zone development on protected land. Local residents gathered more than 2500 members through their Facebook group, forcing the Council to extend the time for public comment. Eventually the Mayor caved in and pulled her support for the development even before that time had expired.
• MillionTreesNYC is a public-private partnership to buy a tree, or suggest a spot for a tree, or offer to dig the hole and plant the tree, and link everyone up. 97,000 trees have been planted so far
• In the UK, FixMyStreet allows people to report potholes, illegal dumping, broken street lighting and graffiti. An Australian version is under development, It’s Buggered, Mate, where you simply tell it “What’s buggered?”, “Where?” and “How exactly is it buggered?”

The key to all of this is building your list of people by making personal connections, and maintaining that relationship by staying in touch.

• You don’t marry someone on the first date. So talk regularly. Not only every six months because that’s too infrequent, but not every ten seconds either because that’ll turn them off.
• Be relevant. Obama’s biggest fundraising day was when Sarah Palin made a disparaging comment about community fundraisers. They capitalised on that quickly be getting a message out the very same day, “We’ll show her”!
• Be authentic. Don’t send press releases to list of supporters. Nobody wants to read press releases. Emails need to come from a person, and be written in a personal tone. Senator Al Franken, in his election campaign, would email out scanned images of hand-written letters.
• Lower the barriers to entry. Make it easy for people to engage, in little ways. The most active campaigners for Obama were females aged 53 to 57. Design your systems to suit.
• Raise your expectations. Ask people to do stuff. Ask them to host a dinner. Ask them to pay. Ask them to write comments. Ask them to refer your product. You’ll be surprised how many say “yes”.
• Foster your regulars. Give them special access, special privileges.
• Measure everything — from different subject lines in emails, different styles of videos, whatever. As an aside, I discovered recently that the Huffington Post writes two headlines for every story, and after five minutes chooses the one which generates more click-throughs.

James Carville used to say in the 1990s “It’s the economy, stupid.” Now it’s “It’s the network, stupid.” How big is your network? How well are you using the tools to create and focus that network?

The power of individuals to organise themselves is the big change. And organisations who don’t take this on board are in denial. And yet it’s more of a cultural change, not a technological one.

As Joe Trippi said, it’s not about the tools, it’s about what you do with them. It’s about the listening. And it’s being willing to have the conversation.

Bonus links

• Time to dump 20th Century “leadership”?, in which I suggest that we need a very different style of manager to work in Government 2.0.
• Risk, Fear and Paranoia: Perspective, People!, being my presentation at Penny Clarke MLC’s NSW Sphere event.