Our Last Class—and Onwards to The First Campaign!

We’re down to one last class—hard to believe, huh? For class, read the assigned chapters of my book and dig around on TechPresident.com, TechRepublican.com, Obama’s tech plan, a Washington Post op-ed I did last fall, and Patrick Ruffini’s thoughts on the subject. You can also read my column from this week about Netroots Nation.

On Monday please don’t forget to bring a paper hard copy of the final project. If you have ANY questions about what you owe me, make sure to ask BEFORE class. Class is too late!

War dot com

Good morning! I promised you a good James Fallows article on China’s Great Firewall, so here it is, as well as an interview on the same subject. If you want to page through some of the sites we covered, check out the class feed.

Our subject this week is going to be the war in Iraq and the unique stories that have come out of it—the first war fought since Web 2.0.

Feeling the traditional media wasn’t covering Iraq went and using VOIP technology, Swarthmore college students started putting together a regular news show interviewing Iraqis. Here’s an NPR story on it and then go listen to some of the podcasts.

The newest aspects of Web 2.0 in the war is how it allows us on the home front to hear from soldiers and civilians in the war zone in real time. Salem Pax was one of the first Iraqi bloggers in Baghdad, and the Baghdad Burning blog actually ended up being turned into a book. Its author, Riverbend, is still unknown.

Here’s a roundup of the best military blogs (or milblogs) right now and a site that rounds up milblogging. Army of Dude is one of the biggest. The military isn’t sure exactly how to deal with the bloggers (but then again, it seems to be like John Kerry: Both for and against the same things). Colby Buzzell‘s blog ended up launching a successful book (it won the Lulu Blooker Prize, for best blog to become a book) and he’s continuing to write for GQ. I recommend picking up the book if you want a good soldier’s memoir.

One of the biggest controversies to break out online is over Kevin Sites, who was an independent journalist in Iraq and videotaped what appeared to be a soldier shooting an unarmed wounded Iraqi. He now has a book/documentary out about his career. You can also see his Flickr feed. Here’s an interview that discusses his offbeat path.

Of course Sites isn’t the only one in Iraq with a video camera—the troops have them too and seem to spend a lot of time mixing patriotic videos (WARNING: some of this is graphic war footage). Dig around on YouTube and see what good videos you find. Controversial videos have also surfaced of private contractors shooting at civilian cars. This week, Del.icio.us at least one YouTube video of the war.

The web is also being used to rally veterans to oppose the war. But is that a good thing?

This week, dig around, read a few blogs, and write about what surprises you. Is seeing and reading about war a good thing or a bad thing? Should we have this much access to the front lines?

Let me know if you have any questions on the ole final project. Here’s the link, too, to the Chris Anderson/PR controversy we covered in class.

Online and Overseas

For next week’s class, I want you all to go to Global Voices Online, which rounds out the bloggers around the world, and pick a country that begins with the same letter as your name (to get the country listing click on countries in the upper right-hand corner). Explore that country’s blogosphere and write your blog post of the week about your findings.

Your Final Project

For your final project, as we discussed in class, my hope is that you will be able to apply the lessons learned in class to your own professional lives and careers.

As such you will prepare a project plan to incorporate social media/Web 2.0 techniques into your current workplace or towards a cause on which you work or care about. The final project must include no fewer than five different “Web 2.0″ platforms, including but not limited to social networking, blogging, gaming, Google ad campaigns, podcasts, vlogs, online viral videos, wikis, Wikipedia, and anything else you’ve stumbled across that interests you.

The ideas need not be budget-constrained (i.e. even though games or Facebook widgets can be incredibly expensive to build, you may include them). For each idea, you must outline and include the following characteristics: (1) the tool’s purpose; (2) the intended audience; (3) the social component; and (4) how it fits into your larger strategy.

For instance, if you’re building a game, who would you want to play the game, what would the game play be like, and what’s the game’s intended message? If you’re building a Facebook widget, what would it do, what’s the social component that would make people put it onto their Facebook pages, and how does it advance the your workplace or cause, and/or educate people as to your position? If you’re building a Google Adwords campaign, who would you hope to draw into your website, what search terms would the campaign be built around, and what’s the hook/language you’d use to get people to click on your ad?

You must also justify your choices—for instance, why would a social networking site make sense for your intended group? Why would you choose a video podcast instead of an audio podcast? Why would you choose Vimeo as your videosharing site instead of YouTube? Why create a wiki instead of a blog?

If you’re using something like a blog, you must think about and answer  these questions along these lines: Who will write on it? What’s the voice? How often are you looking to post? Would you include comments? Why or why not?  Will the blog require extra staff? What’s your goal for the blog?

All of these justifications and arguments and choices are your opportunity to demonstrate to me what you have picked up out of this class. You must cite readings, statistics, and case studies from class to get a top grade. There’s a big difference between not being budget-constrained and making smart choices. We’ve certainly looked at many examples in class of companies and organizations that haven’t done social media well – and how that is more dangerous than not doing it at all. This memo is your chance to think through all of these concerns and trade-offs and make smart choices that demonstrate your understanding of how social media works in today’s world.

You must also include a survey of the existing Web 2.0 landscape for your project. This will count as the social media project from the syllabus. In it you must answer the following questions at a minimum: Who are your online competitors? Your online friends/allies/potential partners? What are the leading authorities on your topic online? If you choose a cause, what are opponents doing? What’s going on around the world on your topic/cause? What lessons can you draw into your own projects from the successes or failures of allies/competitors?

For the competitive surveys, I’m going to be looking for at least 15 social media sites spread across at least three of the four following areas: Blogs/Microblogging, Wikis, Social Networking (including both sites and groups), and general social media (Vlogs/Podcasts/Citizen Journalism/Audio/Video). If you have picked a subject that doesn’t get you 15 sites in three areas, you need to change your definition or pick a new topic.

Write up a brief description of each site, classify it, the URL, any traffic details or size numbers you can track down, as well as some analysis of the level of engagement.  Give specifics—don’t just tell me that Facebook or MySpace are the most popular social networking sites on the Internet, figure out how much activity there is in the profiles you were examining, your groups, or fan pages. Remember the concept of the long tail! Don’t forget some of the resources we’ve used like TruthLaidBear and Quantcast. Here’s an example entry for a Facebook group that I belong to:

Site: Vermont State Society Facebook Group
URL: http://harvard.facebook.com/group.php?gid=8156815255
Type: Social Networking Site
Traffic:  22 members in group; Facebook ranks 15th on the web according to Quantcast
Description: This largely inactive group suppo Arts Vermonters in Washington and members post job listings and news stories of interest to it. It is an open group which anyone can join with a single administrator. No one other than the administrator has posted to it.

Your plan, complete with competitive survey, should be written in the form of a memo to your boss (in this case, me), outlining your argument for engaging in social media at all, each tool you’ve chosen and why you’ve chosen it, the potential applications, and your goals for growth. While there is no set page length, I would be very surprised if you could accomplish all of the above in fewer than eight pages with normal spacing and font sizes.

Your final project plan must be ready for class on July 28th.

As the syllabus says, your final project is worth thirty points (the 20 points of the project plus 10 of the social media report), i.e. thirty percent of your final grade. The grading will be divided into the following:

Competitive Survey: This section will be worth ten points (or two points for each three sites you survey). I will look at the applicability of those sites to your larger project as well as the research you’ve done to examine who your competitors/allies are in this particular field.

Project Outline: Twenty points; ten points of the grade will examine your overall thinking and justification, your citations and case studies, statistics, and arguments for engaging in social media. The other ten points of the grade will focus on the specific tools you’ve chosen, how you’ve justified them, how you’ve thought through the challenges (i.e. staffing, comments, etc.) and how they fit into the larger strategy. You will the be graded on how realistically your plan is outlined, how fully you demonstrate comprehension of the Web 2.0 landscape and its various tools, and how clearly you establish your goals and objectives. I want to specifically emphasize the first and third criteria, because those can get lost in the rush of fun tools.

Any project plans not turned in on July 28th will be docked five points (half-a-letter grade). Any project plans turned in by August 1st will be docked ten points (one letter grade). Projects will not be accepted after August 1st and, if you have not turned in your project by Friday the 1st, you will not be able to pass the class. This is a real world scenario and, in actual project pitches, late pitches aren’t accepted.

Please email me if you have questions. We will also discuss this more in class. Make sure to put some good thought into how you approach this. This is your chance to really wow me with how much you’ve learned.

Wikipedia Reports

So I’ve posted all the links from last night in my class del.icio.us feed. You find the links to all the parts of Wikiscanner and Wikipedia there, as well as the links to the Wikipedia tutorials you’ll need to dive into this project. For two weeks from now (Week 7, July 7), you need to do two things:

(1) Write a new page or substantially edit an existing page within Wikipedia. By substantial, I will be looking for more than 200 words of original material or the equivalent in terms of reorganization or “wikification.” You’re going to be graded not just on your contribution but how well you do within the bounds of Wikipedia—whether your contributions are welcomed, fit within the context of the Talk page within your particular entry, your adherance to NPOV and “notability” guidelines, and the like. You’ll need to spend some time learning the ethos of Wikipedia via its tutorial and reading through the tutorials and talk/discussion pages where you want to make your contribution. You won’t be penalized if your changes are undone, as long as you have a good case for your notability/NPOV, etc., and engage in the discussion if necessary.

(2) Create a report that examines the Wikiscanner report. You may do either a report on a particular organization and all of the edits it has done to the site OR you may report on a single entry and who everyone was who edited that particular article. Here are two examples of the best work from this spring’s class in terms of the Wikiscanner part.

MMOGs and Check-in

Online gaming (and related consoles like the Wii and Xbox 360) is quickly graduating from a teenage past-time to a massive industry, partly because the generation raised on Nintendo and Super Mario Brothers is aging and still playing games. Adult gaming is huge today. Movies today can gross more from the associated games than from the movies themselves. XBox’s Halo 3, which released in September and allows people to play joint missions from multiple locations connected online, had the biggest release in entertainment history—grossing some $170 million in its first 24 hours.

Massive multiplayer online games (MMOGs) are a huge business today—they’re even being used by the U.S. Army to recruit (as well as train).

Second Life is probably the best known of the various games and it has spawned a massive economic industry within it (although the benefits are questionable). Before class on Monday, please sign up for a Second Life account (basic membership is fine) and download the application before class so we can get started in class. If you’re using the school’s computers, just create your account. Read the Wikipedia page carefully so you understand the game (tech subjects like this are where you can trust Wikipedia better than just about any other source). BusinessWeek also had a good cover story on this phenomenon last year (make sure to note and listen to the podcast). If you love this and are interested in journalism, then go ahead and join the reporting staff of the Second Life Herald, the game’s virtual newspaper, or become one of the game’s embedded reporters. Also check out the Second Life Showcase to see some cool things going on in the game and listen to a podcast or two. Confused? Don’t be. Very few people understand how this world works and what its impact could be; that’s especially true of groups with an agenda.

Beyond Second Life, World of Warcraft is probably the second-best known, with a huge passionate following. How huge and how passionate, you ask skeptically? Try roughly 2 million North American players, 1.5 million European players, and 3.5 million Chinese. That’s some seven million PAYING users.

Companies are beginning to realize how big gaming is and how influential games can be in helping people make decisions, as well influencing decisions and policies. The North Carolina firm Persuasive Games is probably the leader in online game development. Go ahead and play a couple of them. Blog about your experiences. Are the games effective in getting their point/message across? What surprised you about this week’s readings?

As for next week, a reminder that you need to be all caught up on your blogging. It’s the sixth week of class, which means that you must have five (5) blog entries. One each on the following: (1) We the Media/Cluetrain/Naked Conversations; (2) The Long Tail; (3) The Search; (4) Here Comes Everybody; and (5) Gaming. If you are all caught up, I’d strongly encourage to work ahead on an extra blog post or two. You can’t do them all at the end of the semester. If you don’t have all five blog entries done by next week, you won’t be able to make them up.

Next week in class, we’ll be talking about the final project and the field report, which given how short this semester is turning out to be, we’ll wrap into one.

Wikipedia and Truthiness

With the Wikipedia class, we’re going to delve into the world of what Stephen Colbert calls “Truthiness.”

As your first journey into Truthiness and the challenges of the web, take a look at the documentary “Loose Change,” which was put together online to highlight the U.S. government’s role in the 9/11 attacks. On YouTube, hundreds of thousands of people have been able to view “Loose Change”—and, if you take the time to watch it, it makes a pretty convincing case that we don’t know the full truth about the 9/11 attacks. All told, across its various postings and versions, more than ten million people have watched the video. The challenge, of course, is that at best the documentary aspires to “truthiness,” that is it’s hard for a lay viewer to judge its actual level of factual interaction. Places like Popular Mechanics have tried to debunk the theories. One student last semested pointed out to me in class a parody of “Loose Change” called “Unfastened Coins.”

It’s easy to dismiss endeavors like “Loose Change” (or is it?), but the journey into Wikipedia is much more complicated. Here’s some background reading and viewing on Wikipedia, the world’s largest encyclopedia. Its founder, Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales, has turned into one of the web’s big celebs. He’s a big proponent of collaboration and “crowd-sourcing.” The project, though, despite becoming the default research tool for most college students and lazy journalists/researchers is very controversial for its “truthiness.” It’s very hard to know what exactly you can and can’t trust on Wikipedia. Newsman John Seigenthaler got very burned by a libelous write-up, and not surprisingly Encyclopedia Britannica thinks the project is the devil incarnate. On the other hand, a Nature study found that the two are about equal in accuracy. Of course, the beauty/challenge of Wikipedia is that anyone can edit it, as Colbert likes to demonstrate by raising the subject of “Wikiality” on subjects like elephants.

If you want a few other examples of wikis and how they’re used, check out the DisInfopedia and these useful resources on what wikis are and how to use them to collaborate. The articles also include some useful tips on how you might apply wikis to the work that you’re doing.

This is the week that I want you to be most wary of what we’re learning. Ask hard questions about wikis and Wikipedia—we’re going to talk in class about your mini-project, which will include contributing to a Wikipedia entry and preparing a research report on using a program that allows you to track who’s been editing a particular entry. Your blog entry should focus on the following two questions: Should we trust Wikipedia or an expert-led encyclopedia more? How could Wikipedia be better set-up to better provide accuracy? Should it be open to everyone or just verified “experts”?

In class, I’ll walk you through some Wikipedia pages, help you set up accounts, and explain WikiScanner.

For your reading for the week, tackle the following in “Here Comes Everybody”: Pages 1 – 54, 109 – 304. It’s a good book and a fast read so I hope you enjoy it.

REMINDER: Make sure next week to check my Twitter feed for a note that I’ll make it back to Washington in time for class.

Google: Veni, Vidi, Vici

Wait? Didn’t we just meet? Is it time for class again already? We’re going to spend all of tomorrow’s class looking at Google, which has become the most powerful media company the world has ever seen.  It’s so huge that the presidential candidates are beating a path to its door (as are desperate authors like myself). Your assignment for the week’s blog: Should we be afraid of Google? Don’t worry: I won’t worry too much about the due date for this blog since it’s a short time between class and I’m a little late getting this up.

As you read Battelle, think about what he means search as a database of intentions. What impact does this have for better and worse? In class, we’ll watch a video about Googlezon, predicting one possible future.

Make sure to also check out this Economist article, this piece by Google about why it remembers searches, some Google tips and tricks, this explanation of page rank, and this funny story of Ted Leonsis and how he seized his own page ranking.

Simply Google puts all of the various parts of Google on a single page—it’s an impressive representation—and Scoble, whom we discussed last night and the author of NC, says there’s DOG afoot! Could Google end up owning the internet? Could sites like del.icio.us do search better? Yahoo!, the perennial also-ran in search, has been expanding too, although as you probably saw Microsoft may end up owning Google. Will Google kill Wikipedia? Will it own the wireless arena? Google today encompasses some huge brands, like Blogger we mentioned last night and YouTube, so here’s some YouTube history for you. Here’s a Google cheat sheet.

GoogleEarth and GoogleMaps are incredible products, putting resources that in our lifetimes once belonged only to the wealthiest and most advanced governments in the hands of anyone. Here’s some fun stuff about them. Have you looked for your house in GoogleMap? I know if you go to my address, you can see my car sitting in the driveway.

Want some alternatives to Google? Try this resource for 100 other search engines or use Googlonymous. Why do alternatives matter? Because it turns out that what you find depends very much on where you search!

Lastly, if you just can’t get enough on Google, here’s a bunch more: Google Health, Google Search, Google Privacy, and just some fun.

Also, try to send me an email this week about how class is going for you. I’ve thrown a lot at you in the last two weeks—do you feel like you understand the material? Are we covering too much in class? Too little? Am I talking too much? What do you need from me to be able to do better and learn more? I want to make sure that you all are equipped at the end of the class to navigate the digital world and so if we need to spend another week on blogging, online communication and PR tips, etc., we certainly can do that. Meanwhile: Several of you have asked about whether you’re on the right track blogging-wise. I’ll send you each an email this week about your blog.

Blogging, Social Media, and More Head-Spinning

First some links from last night: Metadata and tags, folks and tax, RSS (more) and Technorati. Here’s a good Seth Godin blog post on Bobcasting too. You should load Seth’s blog into your RSS reader if you haven’t already. He writes one of the best marketing blogs out there.

I hope your heads have stopped spinning from all the different forms of blogging last night—I know I threw a ton at you. We’ve just got so much to cover and so little time! I’ve put all of the links from last night (and will put all the links from future nights) at del.icio.us/mppr85060class. Check out the links to your heart’s content. I hope you’ll plan on spending an hour or two after each class going over what we covered in class with more time and leisure.

Also, for Friday’s class I want you to watch some vlogs (video blogs) and listen to some podcasts. Here are the links to TWiT, Rocketboom, Webb Alert, and Ask a Ninja. Feel free to explore and see some other vlogs and podcasts.

If you have iTunes on your computer, the best place to find podcasts is in the iTunes store. You can download individual podcasts or subscribe. You can get a ton of your favorite NPR shows (This American Life, Day by Day, Diane Rehm, etc.), listen to speeches, and even download the Sunday talk shows, among the many professional podcasts. More fun, though, are the random podcasts.

For your blog entry this week, talk some about your reaction to Chris Anderson’s idea of The Long Tail and whether you’ve found yourself exploring new areas in the internet’s long tail. Also, write a paragraph about exploring podcasts and what you chose to listen to.

We’ll be talking more over the semester about what makes a good blog and some of the various formats blogs have taken. Here are the blogging tips to get you started, as well as some other tips here, here, and here.

The topic for Friday’s class is social networking and social media. We’ll spend most of this week looking at a a few of the major social networking and social media sites: MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Digg, and del.icio.us.

For starters, dig through my files on Facebook, and make sure to read the following articles: Jeff Jarvis, Fast Company, Wharton, Mashable, CNN, and check out this tips and tools for Facebook. Here’s some info on how companies are using social networking and who are the demographics. Compare who uses MySpace and Facebook? What’s different? Why? What does friendship mean online? Watch Scoble’s take on Kyte TV (you may have to install Flash) and then ask yourself: Is Robert Scoble media? What does the future for media look more like? Scoble or the Wall Street Journal?

We’ll play with Digg, Flickr and YouTube in class some, so if you’ve never used those sites, make sure to spend some time on them. Here’s some background on Digg. They are some of the leading examples of social media. Del.icio.us is a form of social media too, and here are some other examples. You want some concrete examples about how this works? Take a look at this report on social media and public radio. And take a look at how to do effective online advocacy in social networks.

One question to ponder for this week: Do we need a Bill of Rights for the social web? Boy, that would be a good “extra” blog entry, wouldn’t it?

First Class Details

I think this is going to be an exciting semester—thanks for coming along for the ride. I’m excited about having such a small class; it should allow us to have more freedom for discussion and individualized case studies. Sorry for the confusion about the wired status of our first class—I hope SCS can sort that out by the next time we meet, so please stay tuned for a new classroom.

A few assorted notes:

* Don’t worry about buying and setting up a domain name. We’ll tackle that in class on the 9th.

* Make sure to email me the address of the blog that you set up. I’ll want to start following along and add you to the class blogroll to the right. Also if there’s an email other than your Georgetown email that you’d like me to use, tell me that sooner rather than later.

* Please friend me on Facebook and LinkedIn before our next class—if you don’t have accounts on those two services, you’ll need to create them. We’ll cover in the coming weeks what makes them useful tools.

* Thank you to everyone who voted—the voting wasn’t all that close so our random make-up class will be held Friday, June 13th. That means that, after not meeting for the next two weeks, we’ll catch up on schedule very quickly with three classes in eight days. I understand that a couple of you expressed concern that a Friday meeting conflicts with the Jewish Sabbath and I understand that and so will tape the class as a podcast for you to listen to over the weekend. It will not count towards your two absences as long as you email me ahead of time.

There’s a lot of reading to complete by Monday, June 16th. You’ll need to read Cluetrain Manifesto, We the Media, Naked Conversations, The Long Tail, and The Search by Monday the 16th. If you need to skimp a little bit on the reading (which I would understand), the “long tail” concept can be grasped in just a few pages—the book is mostly case studies and examples of how the “long tail” plays out in society. That said, it’s a pretty easy read and well-written so you might find it easy to plow through.

The plus side, of course, is that the reading drops off very quickly after that—there are only two other books the last six weeks of class. Sorry for the front-loading, but as I said in class, there’s no way to do this other than complete immersion.

So just to clarify what you owe me for our next class meeting June 9th: one blog entry, a couple of del.icio.us links, Cluetrain, We the Media, and Naked Conversations. We’ll spend that class going over blogging tips, looking at what makes a good blog, and then you’ll have another entry and round of del.icio.us links due that week on The Long Tail. For your first blog post, tell me what you think is the most important point in “We the Media” and, of course, why?

[Logistic note: Normally I’ll have this blog post up on Tuesdays rather than Thursdays, but I waited until people had a chance to vote on our make-up class.]

Please email me if you have any questions or outstanding concerns.