The MoPR Blog

Weekend Reading is posted every Friday and represents some of the cooler and interesting mobility, wireless and collaboration news Mobility PR has read throughout the week.

Can we finally forget about forgetting someone’s phone number? Mary Jo Foley outlines Microsoft’s plan to eliminate phone numbers with Echoes. Will users buy into it? Check out the comments section to read for yourself – like any comment section, there are some very well-though out responses and just plain nastiness – but all very entertaining.

Mo’ money, mo’ problems. Twitter nabbed $15 million in funding. Hooray! Maybe now they can afford to buy another server for their service. Key functions such as IM and the ability to read older posts have been down all week leaving users frustrated and ready to bolt to another service – Friendster and Pownce have both been mentioned as alternative hang outs.

Readers rule. We picked up a magazine called Everywhere at SXSW a couple months back. What made it more interesting than all the other stacks of magazines is that the content is purely reader-driven. Every article, blurb and photo was submitted by readers. Is this a trend? Maybe. This Old House Magazine’s July issue will be called Your Old House and will be completely written by readers. We’ll be blogging more on this on a future post – we think it’s a fascinating topic and wonder how this new business model will affect both the publishing and public relations industry.

Another week, another report extolling mobile advertising. A recent Harris Interactive claims “there are strong opportunities in mobile advertising during the current economic downturn.”

How’s that?

According to the 2008 Consumer Acceptance of Mobile Advertising study by Harris Interactive, Rochester, N.Y, consumers have no plans to cut back their purchases of cell phones. The survey shows that 16% of U.S. homes are using wireless phones exclusively, more than double the amount used four years ago.

And during the economic slowdown, advertisers can effectively reach consumers through innovative marketing techniques such as mobile advertising.

Social media for the uninitiated. Do you get social media? Confused about new social media? Need to explain it to a client? Your mom? Here’s a cute, funny and very informative video someone created to explain it in easy terms.

You know a technology has gone mainstream when popular hip hop songs are being shared across the Internet about it. So there is no arguing that Facebook has totally arrived.

We’ve been blogging quite a bit about Facebook and so we thought it would be appropriate to share this track from up and comer NSANE titled, you guessed it, “FACEBOOK.” The 17-year old artist is making it big on OurStage, a site for emerging musicians. OurStage has some pretty neat programs running for both emerging artists and the fans that support them which you can check out here: www.ourstage.com/about/news

WARNING: If you listen to this song all the way through more then once, you may have trouble getting it out of your head. You may find yourself humming, “I was on Facebook” at random times throughout the day. If this will get you in trouble at work, perhaps you should wait to listen to this song until you are home tonight. Seriously.

Check this out:

My favorite lines from the track:

“When I came across you, I knew instantly that you had to be my boo, and yeah it’s got to be real, I was on Facebook.” – - It really has to be real. I mean, he was on Facebook.

“This can’t be Facebook love, this gotta be true. I changed my status yesterday to say I’m in love with my boo.” – - He’s right, it can’t be ‘Facebook love”. Let’s face the facts. He changed his status for her. That is true commitment.

“I wanna get my hands off these keys and start feeling you” – - Nice, at least this shows that the youth of today do have the desire to transfer their experiences from a virtual world to the real world. There is hope.

In all seriousness though, this is a fun song and NSANE has done something as an artist that we are constantly counseling our clients to do in their own communications with their audiences – - BE RELEVANT!

NSANE took something (Facebook) that is extremely relevant to his audience and used it to communicate something he was passionate about (his Boo).

From blog posts to press releases one of the keys to good SEO and online pickup is the content’s relevance. In order to gain the interest of your audience, your message must be relevant in relation to something top of mind for that audience (an issue, a trend, or a question). When the major elements of your message have relevance to your audience they are more likely to pay attention to the rest of your message and absorb the details. And if you are consistently delivering relevant messages to them, they become more and more likely to align you (in their hearts and minds) with whatever the topic is that you are communicating about.

So will NSANE become the defacto rapper about Facebook? No. But because he was able to smartly leverage the hot topic of Facebook, he just might make a name for himself as a smooth R&B artist writing songs about the realities of modern day love – - which today, could very well start on Facebook.

It’s not breaking news that print media is suffering. With the lousy economy, skyrocketing operating costs and readers defecting and getting their information online, publishers are aggressively looking for ways to leverage the web to make a profit or to merely stay alive.

One recent study, “Vertical Search Report 2008,” from E-consultancy conducted in association with Convera suggests though, that publishers can retain existing readers and even grab new ones by offering a very specific search functionally within their market or niche. By delivering a specific search niche publishers can position themselves as the go-to expert source on the topic in their industry.

Publishers have an opportunity to gain this “search market share” by establishing themselves as the definitive search engine within their particular niche or sector.

A great example of a publisher that has done this with success is TechTarget. Though not originally started by TechTarget [they bought the site back in 2002] the publisher’s Whatis.com website has positioned TechTarget as the go-to site for IT tech term definitions. It certainly has helped strengthen TechTarget’s brand as well.

The challenge of course is that publishers will be up against hugely popular generic search engines such as Google. The way to overcome this competition is to produce a search tool which is perceived to be a better way to find information on a very specific topic – like IT tech term definitions – than generic search engines can offer.

The report backs up its claims with a statistic of 93% of media and internet B2B professionals saying, “they would be “very likely or quite likely to use a search engine that focused on serving their specific business or work needs.”

Granted, these are early adopters and people who feel comfortable using technology.

Even so, more than half of the respondents claimed that faster access to desired information was a major benefit of vertical search, with 50% saying the focus on their business interests and workflow would be a major advantage.

According to the study, the three biggest advantages of having a vertical search feature on an existing website is the ability to “improve brand by becoming an authority website,” the potential to “keep users on-site” and the “potential to monetize through advertising.”

Vertical search also helps advertisers connect to their customers and “increase the publisher’s revenue stream.”

That’s key.

It’s one thing to have a killer search engine, strengthen the brand and be positioned as the prime landing spot for your industry, but if this search engine drives customers to a site, keeps them there and lets publishers increase ad revenue, then it’s a win/win.

Feed the reader
Another interesting point from this study was the increasing use of RSS feeds and advice on how publishers should be utilizing them.

The research notes the impact that the underutilized RSS technology could have on the print world and how using RSS feeds to push and offer content to readers can increase readership.

By employing RSS, print publishers can extend the life of their content, gain readers and gain more ad dollars. For the reader, RSS feeds offer the convenience of reading their favorite columnist, breaking news, industry news or sports scores, anytime, anywhere.

According to the report, many professionals are already receiving content electronically – a whopping 80% of internet professionals surveyed as part of the research were already using industry or sector-specific RSS feeds.

Trends in digital marketing are leading towards a fragmentation of the online landscape and “atomization” of content, or the breaking down of content into bite size bits of information – very drilled-down and hyper-focused to a specific audience.

Content owners have a great opportunity to increase visibility for their content through the effective use of feeds, widgets and toolbars, according to the report:

“The level of uptake for feeds and customized homepages is very high among this early-adopter audience, but this kind of online behavior will soon become more widespread among knowledge workers across a wider range of industries,” said Linus Gregoriadis, head of research at E-consultancy.

As communication professionals working with numerous early adopters and their ahead-of-the-curve customers, we sometimes tend to forget that not everyone understands the technology behind RSS or are even using it without knowing how it works to read their daily content.

Like E-consultancy, we also believe that usage of RSS technology, both on the desktop and on smartphones, will increase with the “less-techie” audience over the next 12 months.

We understand that the average newspaper reader wants to open their front door, reach down and grab the Sunday paper. They don’t care how the paper was printed, how it was distributed to the delivery center, and then sent to the paper carrier’s home where it was folded, bagged and thrown onto their front porch. They just want to read their newspaper.

The same goes for online and mobile content – people with smartphones don’t care about RSS technology, XML, or feeds. [Next time you’re at a BBQ or party, ask your friends if they know what RSS is.]

Like the newspaper reader, smartphone users just want their content delivered to their device so they can read it.

Struggling print media need all the help they can get. Using new media and technology such as focused, niche search engines and setting up easy to subscribe to RSS feeds is a great start for publishers to help add value to their content, keep readers – even gain readers – and more importantly nab ad revenue. As someone who comes from the print world, still relies on a healthy print industry and continually follows it, I’ll definitely be watching this trend. – John “JC” Chilson