We Live in Public

Over on Razorfish's content strategy blog, my companero Rachel Lovinger and I discuss our reaction to Ondi Timoner's new documentary, We Live in Public. We IMed each other, then distilled down our conversation into a blog entry.

Trust but Verify

I have a new essay up on Razorfish's content strategy blog Scatter/Gather, entitled "Blinded by Content Bliss." In it, I argue for more care in verifying the authenticity of user-generated content before incorporating it into a site. The national media showed us how not to this recently when covering the election in Iran. Since that country's government keeps a tight reign on information, the media had to resort to broadcasting a lot of user-created content in the form of Flickr images, tweets and blog entries. Of course, some of this material did prove excellent, but all too often we started seeing the media backpeddling on content they'd already aired. Not a good for journalism. And not a good practice for any of us as content disseminators either. I offer some simple principles in how to avoid reproducing poorly-sourced content - and plain old fabrications.

You'd think these principles would be common sense, but with 28% of Republicans still believing Obama may not have born in the United States--due to the spread of this very sort of poorly sourced information--well, you'd be wrong.

Two more of my recent pieces:

"Cultivating Effective User-Generated Content," With Bob Maynard, Razorfish.com, July 2009 [pdf]

"Crowdsourcing Content," Scatter/Gather, April 22, 2009

Crowdsourcing Content

I have a new post about crowdsourcing content over at Razorfish's Scatter/Gather blog. One of life's little mysteries is why folks would want to contribute content of one sort or another for free in the first place. I briefly describe some incentives and also discuss framing your inquiries and networking for providers.

Speaking of crowdsourcing, Iain McDonald, the founder of Amnesia | Razorfish, laid down the gauntlet today at the Razorfish Client Summit, asking attendees to see how many results they could create for a freshly minted word, specifically "razorfunfish" on Google within a single day. A prize would also be given to the person who created the entry, which rose to the top of the heap.

Well, moments later, I noted that results were already appearing. It'll be interesting to see who comes up with the most effective means of "owning" the term. I'm seeing some pretty creative efforts already. Someone even bought the URL. Also, coincidental to the subject of my article above, someone created an entry on Wikipedia. We'll see how long it lasts.

Also: Google results for razorfunfish

AutoPromotion

I have a new article, "Auto promotion: Using Twitter in the automotive industry," on Razorfish's Headlight blog about how the automotive industry is using (or failing to use) Twitter.

Kudos to Razorfish

Kudos to Razorfish for winning a MIN Best of the Web Award for Design for our work on WWD.com. I'm happy to say I worked on the project as a content strategist.

Scatter/Gather

Proud to announce the launch of Razorfish's new content strategy blog, Scatter/Gather. My first contribution, "To Fabricate or Not to Fabricate" critiques the practice of "astroturfing," wherein folks basically fabricate grassroots campaigns or, more loosely, positive reviews for a company or products. I advise against.

Let 'Em Talk

Razorfish's Headlight blog focuses on digital trends in the automotive industry.

My article "Let 'Em Talk" was just published there last week. It discusses how car dealership employees use message boards and what can be learned from them - and consequently, the value for dealership employees in having a social networking outlet.