No more Ning

As I've mentioned before, I administer a couple of Ning social networks. The value proposition was that you could, for free, set-up your own social network. It's great for clubs, churches, networking associations, etc. to provide a Facebook-like experience for those who share a common affinity around the organization or interest.

This was the promise on which oodles of groups started their Ning networks and got people to sign up, upload pictures, blog posts, calendar items and all sorts of other content.

But now Ning is going to press the Delete key on your Ning if you don't pony up!

From their website:

"We recently made the decision to focus 100 percent of the company on enhancing the features and services we offer to paying Network Creators. As part of this change, we'll be phasing out our free service. We will announce further details about Ning's product roadmap and different pricing options on May 4, 2010."

I'm not naive enough to think that businesses don't need to re-think their business model from time-to-time, especially if you're not making money. But when you're entire business model has been based on a free social network, and you get people to spend hours of their time building and maintaining their Ning site, you shouldn't just hit Delete on them. It's a broken promise. I'm not here to tell Ning how to do their business (ok, I've done it before with the spam thing, so I might as well do it again) but it doesn't seem like a good thing to build your business on a promise and then back out on it. It's bait and switch, and the bait now smells pretty fishy.  Sorry, terrible pun!

The value of public relations

Toronto-based MDC Partners has announced it has acquired a majority interest in Sloane & Company, a New York-based public relations firm. Miles Nadal, MDC chairman, has said he's willing to spend up to $100 million on agency and personnel acquisitions in the coming months! Hey Miles! Over here in Topeka is a great boutique agency specializing in the booming mobile app business!

Here's his quote that I'd like to splash around today:

"We believe that most of the innovative initiatives happening in marketing communications today are happening within the public relations arena," Nadal said in a statement. "Clients are under enormous pressure to deliver measurable results in a shorter and shorter time frame. Smaller entrepreneurial firms that are empowered to think differently, have the ability to do brilliant work and want to share the wealth, are the best partners for us."

For all of the negative flack the PR biz gets, especially from our friends in the media who have to put up with cold-pitches and poorly aimed emails from PR people who don't do their homework, it is true that the best results and the greatest innovation comes from within the PR disciplines. Engaging publics through social media is much more a function of the PR form of strategic communication than other forms of marketing communication.

Since I started Talon 12 years ago, it's amazing how many times I've had to reinvent what I do. With technology and consumer changes, the task of the PR force is to recognize how to leverage those new technologies to reach those new consumers and influence them favorably toward the organizations we represent.

This is what Winning Rules is all about. Let me know if you discover any of those "innovative initiatives" Nadal talks about so we can explore them together.

Annoying Ning

I administer a couple different Ning social networks (which is a create-your-own network service). Ning offers nice features for groups to have their own social networking, such as pictures, video, blogs, chat, etc.

BUT BEWARE!

Anyone who is a member of your Ning can submit blog posts. You can control which ones get published if you're the admin, but it doesn't stop spammers from auto-sending loads of crap. I had to create a rule in my Outlook inbox that if the subject line says I "have a Ning blog post to approve" the email automatically goes to my junk folder. That folder had received about 60 of those emails today!

When I checked my Ning, I had 150+ first name members with gmail addresses. I deleted them all and reported them for spam, then changed my settings so that I have to approve all new members.

Ning needs to give the admin the ability to limit who can post to the blogs. I looked and there's only an option to moderate posts or not.

Google, Kansas

Over at my Kevin in the Kan blog, I've been writing about my hometown's efforts to woo Google to select it as a test site for its high-speed fiber optic network (which would bring surfing speeds of 100x faster than what most people have now).

I thought I would mention it here too because of how viral this grassroots effort has become. It is really a grand lesson in the power of social media and word of mouth (and how a community can work together WITH its government toward a common goal).

The latest PR move is when the mayor proclaimed that during the month of March, Topeka shall hereby be known as Google, Kansas. A silly move to attract Google's attention? Perhaps. That's what some are saying, but it's getting noticed! Here is some of the press attention Topeka (err...Google) has picked up:

CNBC
Wall Street Journal
BusinessWeek 
CNN (I like this one a lot...good job Mayor Bunten)
Christian Science Monitor
San Jose Mercury
The Week
The Register (UK)
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
San Francisco Business Times
Washington Post
Computerworld/Networkworld
Kansas City Star
CNET
National Post
Associated Press
Examiner.com
Barron's
Connected Planet
Newser
Los Angeles Times
Digital Trends
VentureBeat
TMCnet
NBC Bay Area
TechCrunch
PC World
 

The local effort has been pretty much exclusively through Facebook and other social media, plus local get-togethers. Check out the ThinkBigTopeka site for more info on the campaign.

Doesn't Google Buzz just sound like a great PR thing?

I signed up for Google Buzz -- because what PR guy doesn't like anything that has the word "buzz" in it.

Buzz turns my Gmail into another social networking opportunity. Woo hoo! Just what I needed. Here it is in a nutshell:

* Automatic friends lists (friends are added automatically who you have emailed on Gmail)
* "Rich fast sharing" combines sources like Picasa and Twitter into a single feed, and it includes full-sized photo browsing
* Public and private sharing (swap between family and friends)
* Inbox integration (instead of emailing you with updates, like Facebook might, Buzz features emails that update dynamically with all Buzz thread content, like the photo viewer we mentioned above)
* "Recommended Buzz" puts friend-of-friend content into your stream, even if you're not acquainted. Recommendations learn over time with your feedback.

But, much to Google's chagrine, the "buzz" has been mostly bad. I've heard from several of my friends who have nixed it after a brief trial run.

This article highlights some of the most notable negatives:

Buzz seemed to have a mind of its own, picking names in your email inbox , and selecting them randomly for you to follow in your "Buzz" network.

"Thanks Google Buzz, I'm automatically following 3 ex-girlfriends. #fail," wrote Tony Pitluga of Pittsburgh in a tweet that was widely re-tweeted last week.

Another problem users discovered is that Google makes public everything you do in Buzz in its search engine, unless you set the privacy settings ahead of time.

Can Buzz bounce back? Google announced some improvements and should get credit for reacting quickly -- but as for me, I'll turn it off. I have Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, and that's enough social networking for me. Why add one more?