Can you contribute others' posts?

Yesterday, the Malay Mail published both ShaolinTiger and my posts about "PR and bloggers" side by side in a contrapuntal article entitled "Battle for the Internet mind". Shaolintiger posted about this on his blog, attracting many replies screaming plagiarism, copyright-infringement or the like.



Technically, it isn't plagiarism, because its attributed to us. It's possibly copyright infringement, because we weren't asked or informed. But here's a slight loophole, that I've had at the back of my mind thinking:

The whole page is framed as a reader-contributed page where the Malay Mail asks readers to send in links to anything interesting they've seen on the Net. So technically, it isn't the Malay Mail that's willfully taking and publishing blogposts, right? Readers contributed them.

I'm not a lawyer, so I'm really asking an open question about the legality of this?

Personally, I wouldn't even have needed to be asked permission (permission is over-rated). But it'd have been nice to just get an email from The Malay Mail telling me:

"Hi David, we loved your post on this and this, so we're going to run it in tomorrow's newspaper. Thought we'd let you know. Oh, and don't worry about running out to get a copy, we'll send you a complimentary copy."

It doesn't hurt to be nice, you know?

On another note, in today's connected society, is the culture of taking and re-purposing something that's become a norm? I can embed any YouTube video I want without asking the person who posted the video in the first place. Can the Malay Mail 'embed' my blog into their newspaper too?

I guess that's another discussion altogether.

New MALAYSIAN tech podcast for my ears...

I've confessed previously what a big fan of podcasting I am. In fact, podcasts have replaced the radio completely for me.

What I've been looking forward to though is for a truly local tech podcast to break through and set the ball rolling in Malaysia. Murmurings at KLTweetup seemed to indicate that more than one large tech personality in Malaysia was looking into it and then on Monday, I discovered TheITChannel.



Hosted by @mikefoong and @andrewkjs (and supposedly, in future episodes @thechannelc) of Twitter fame, the inaugral episode covers Earth Hour, Maxis iPhone launch and DiGi's Broadband launch - all from a really local tech-head viewpoint. It's a great listen and the hosts are suitably Malaysian (not at all pretentious with western accents). I think it'll stay on my podcast list for a while.

Meantime, I'm also looking forward to ByteBot's podcast when that comes around. It's starting to looks like it's going to be the year Malaysian podcasting takes off.

Can't fight Gravity

Do you know why an apple fell on Isaac Newton's head?

Because he was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Okay, lame joke aside, this post is about Gravity, that long awaited twitter client for S60 (3rd ed or 5th ed) that was just released yesterday. The news is, I've just gone out and bought it. Yup, probably the best RM 38.23 I've paid for a mobile app.



What I liked about Gravity:
- It's very, very fast to load and start-up
- but still maintains a swish-looking yet clean interface
- easy access to pictures and instant twitpicking (yes! now pictures from my N96 straight to twitter!)
- 'Kinetic' scrolling (the one where scrolling gets faster and faster as you hold on to the key or tap the screen)
- Big tabs for Search, Contacts etc. and little tabs you can scroll sideways for other menus.

What I would like to add to Gravity:
- How do I post my GPS data from Gravity? It should be there...but I'm not getting how to do it.
- Font-size changes
- More integration with S60 OS (e.g. add an option to the context menu of the camera app to twitpick a just-taken photo).



That said, I think Gravity in its first iteration has already covered all the basics and got them exceedingly right. Well done! I can foresee myself tweeting a lot more from my mobile now.

On a side-note on twitter, I was at #KLTweetup last Friday. It was a pretty good meetup and especially fantastic to finally put faces to all those random KL tweeters I follow. Pictures can be found here.

In fact, it was so successful, the folks behind it have started planning for a second one. Sign up here.

If you go, we may bump into each other.

PR people and bloggers: why engage in the first place?

First off, I'd like to remind you that I've got a disclaimer somewhere on this blog that anything and everything posted here is solely my opinion. This isn't work related, and does not reflect my employer's opinion. It doesn't even reflect my fellow PR colleagues opinion. Any similarities in opinion is purely coincidental.

Now that we've got that out of the way, I wanted to latch on to a timely post by Shaolintiger last week to put forward some thoughts on the matter of PR people engaging bloggers in Malaysia. And problems that subsequently ensue.

I believe the crux of the issue is that there is still largely misunderstanding on both sides to this core question: "What's the point of engagement?"

To the PR person:

It's no big secret that more and more clients today are asking agencies about engaging the blogosphere, twit-o-sphere or whatever "-sphere" you can think of.

Most clients don't understand social media, and I can't help but think the responsibility falls squarely on the agency to educate them. Both PR people and clients need to understand what social / peer media can and cannot do. Expectations, goals and objectives of any kind of engagement needs to be set right.

What's your goal in engaging the blogger? So that they can write a positive "write-up" about your client's products / services? If so, I'd say paying for the advertorial is probably the best way to go.

Let me give you an alternative viewpoint: what if your engagement with the social / peer media isn't so you can see positive blogposts, but so you can involve yourself and your brand in the conversation that's going all around you regardless of whether you take part or not, and add value?

What if the objective of holding a blogger event is to listen to what bloggers have to say about your product rather than having them go home and re-printing your press release?

Social media is about the conversation. Companies can participate, or they can pay some money and take an ad. Like what an editor once told me.

My humble advice is don't think the blogger owes you anything just because they attended your event. The onus is on you, the company and the PR person advising the company, to make sure what you've got to tell the blogger is worth the blogger re-telling, if coverage is your goal.

To the blogger:

Here's what PR people can do: pre-release scoops, direct contact with some top people (CEOs?), connect you to in-depth discussions with experts from client companies, get you product samples, previews of upcoming products, and ensure your feedback gets listened to and acted upon.

Here's what PR people don't do (generally): place advertorials or do advertising. This function is the media-buying agency, whom the client pays to insert advertisements / advertorials in the right places.

PR people shouldn't be out there to get free publicity. Many are (I won't deny that). But they shouldn't be. Bang them on their head if they try that stunt on you.

PR people are not out there to con you so that you write good things on your blogs about their clients, for free. If their goal is deception, they should be hung out to dry and rightly so.

PR people are there to facilitate conversations between a company and its interested audiences.

If you're a blogger who's heard about the upcoming cool new phone and think its worth your time and space to blog about it, the PR person is your best bet to get you that hands-on with the device before its even launched.

If you have a grouse against a certain company, the PR person is the person that should be listening and taking the feedback back to the company and making sure there's follow-up. Even if its to tell you they can't do anything about it.

If you're not interested, tell them and the PR person should go away.

This doesn't mean clients shouldn't advertise on your blogs and pay PR people to get free publicity. Advertising still exists and will continue to exist. It just isn't the purview of the PR agency. Rather, the right people who should be placing advertisements on your blogs are media buying agencies who might work for the same client as the PR person. Of course, this doesn't stop you from proposing an advertising package to the PR person you're working with if you think its something that will add value to the client.

So what's the root of the problem?

I can't help but think its the PR community's fault for bringing this onto ourselves in the first place by setting expectations wrongly when working with the blogosphere.

ShaolinTiger is right when he says:

...the sooner YOU poorly informed PR hacks educate yourselves the sooner you will reap real benefits from engaging bloggers and forming relationships with them.

The key word is understand. Social media is not as simple as the one event = 8 write-ups formula many 'PR' agencies peddle to clients. On second thought, even your traditional media isn't as simple as that. We could all do with a little more thinking, research, and just asking ourselves: "Would I do this to myself if I was on the other end of the stick?"

Please feel free to discuss if you've something to add. Comments welcome.

What's Twitter? Why is it so great?

I've become resigned to the fact that only a few people will ever get Twitter. But what I'd really like is for all my friends to be on Twitter.

So here's Ewan Williams, co-founder of Twitter explaining Twitter to the masses at TED. He does a great job too, and if you're a social media person - you should keep a copy of this somewhere on your hard drive.