Ed Batista

On Metadata: What You Can't See CAN Hurt You

I had a vivid reminder this morning that we're represented online not only by the data we can see--from blog posts to search results--but also (and increasingly) by metadata that we often can't see.  (And I also learned just how good customer service can be.)

One of my favorite tools is Feedster, which describes itself as "the largest and richest archive of indexed feeds on the web."  (What's a feed?)  I use Feedster, Technorati and Ask.com's blogsearch service on a daily basis to keep up news from feeds on a variety of topics--including myself.

Searching feeds for my name or for links to my site allows me to see who's commenting on or linking to my posts and to jump into the discussion if I want.  I can also just confirm that my posts are being picked up and indexed by these services so that other people can find them.

Although I do like Feedster, I'd gotten a little lazy and hadn't run a vanity search on their service for a while.  So it was a little surprising to run one this morning and get the following:

If you look carefully, you'll notice that at the bottom of each search result is a link to my feed, which has been given a somewhat lengthier and, ah, more colorful title than plain old "Ed Batista."  To each his own, of course, but that's not really how I want my feed to be described.

I use FeedBurner to add a bunch of features to my feed, so I immediately took a look at my FeedBurner configurations.  Nothing there suggested that my feed should be titled anything but "Ed Batista."  I searched their forums for advice but didn't find anything applicable, so I used their contact form to ask for help directly--and just 34 minutes later I heard from Paul at FeedBurner.  Paul couldn't solve my problem, but he confirmed that it didn't appear to be on FeedBurner's end and suggested that I contact Feedster.

After double-checking that my feed wasn't mistitled on any other feed search services, I went to Feedster's site and used their contact form to ask for help--and 19 minutes later I heard from Jeff at Feedster.  Success!  Apparently "certain fields were corrupted" at Feedster (whether inadvertantly or by someone with too much time on his hands, I don't know), resulting in the "inappropriate title" for my feed.  Feedster solved the problem, but they're still in the process of checking the millions of feeds they index to be sure that the metadata associated with each feed is correct.

And happily, a search for "ed batista" on Feedster is now a little less...adventurous.

Lessons learned?  Even free services like FeedBurner and Feedster can do customer service right, so there's really no reason to settle for anything less.  Kudos and thanks to both of them.  And I'm sure as hell going to run those vanity searches a little more often.

Doc Searls Closes Syndicate

Doc Searls' closing keynote at Syndicate was an inspiring talk.  It was a natural extension of the ideas he first laid out in "Saving the Net," the Nov. 16 article in Linux Journal that Doc called the longest and most important piece he's ever posted online.  I've interspersed my headers with direct quotes and slide text from Doc's presentation to try to render the hour-long talk as a reasonably concise blog post--it's still long, so follow the jump:

Jonathan Schwartz Keynote at Syndicate

Doc Searls interviewed Sun President & COO Jonathan Schwartz as the Day 2 keynote here at Syndicate.  Most of their discussion focused on hardware, business models, DRM and other topics better covered elsewhere.  But what little Schwartz had to say about blogging was compelling.  He's adamant about the need to eliminate almost all the distinctions between internal communications among employees and external communications with customers, partners and other stakeholders, and he clearly sees blogs as the best way to make that happen:

There's very little communication internally that you want to keep private.

Intranets are such an anachronism...they’re going to die.

The dividing line between what's internal and what's external is diffusing, and the utility is dying away.

The defensive approach is "Don't give employees [blogs]—they’ll leak information."  The offensive approach is, "Give them [blogs]...they can communicate and create more opportunities."

Schwartz also talked about how Sun used blogs to proactively address criticism of the company from competitors and others:

Blogging has played an enormously important part in the revitalization of Sun’s reputation...

Rather than spend $150 million on an ad campaign, let’s just start speaking in our own voices [on our blogs]. And guess what? Authenticity wins out.

If you are authentic, if you communicate consistently, you can basically counter anything anyone says about you.

This resonated with an earlier comment he made:

Doc Searls: So transparency is the fulcrum on the lever now?

Jonathan Schwartz: Authenticity is the fulcrum.

tags: syndicate syndicate conference doc searls

Scott Anderson's Keynote at Syndicate

Scott Anderson, Director of Enterprise Brand Communications for HP, gave the opening keynote this morning at Syndicate, "the premier event for content syndication trends," and he had some interesting things to say on behalf of a massive corporation that's embraced blogging wholeheartedly.  From one of Scott's first slides:

• A corporation cannot dialog
• A corporation is a collection of people
• People dialog with people

Scott commented further:

HP isn’t blogging with anybody; people within HP are blogging...

Doc Searls is the conference chair and introduced Scott, so the parallels with the first three theses of the Cluetrain Manifesto are surely no accident:

1. Markets are conversations.
2. Markets consist of human beings, not demographic sectors.
3. Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.

Old news: Doc and his fellow Cluetrain co-conspirators have won.  Their fundamental message is now the conventional wisdom among big-brand corporate marketers.  More from Scott proving this point (I'm paraphrasing here):

• No flacks.  All HP blogs are written by the person whose name is at the top of the page, not ghostwritten by PR staffers.
• No lawyers.  HP's legal team initially wanted to vet all posts.  Scott recognized that this would have killed their blog experiment in its infancy and fought hard to resist it.  As an apparent compromise, HP has established blogging guidelines (see below) that allow bloggers to be themselves (within limits) while keeping their attorneys at bay.
• No censorship.  HP learned a tough lesson early on when an overzealous staffer deleted a negative comment from the blog of David Gee, a senior marketing exec.  The incident threatened to give HP a black eye in the blogosphere, but they restored the comment, Gee rapidly posted a response, "Honesty is the best policy," and they now realize that negative comments are the most important ones.

Despite HP's commitment to openness, their employee's company blogs aren't personal platforms.  The company has established some clear, common sense guidelines, excerpted below, to help bloggers find the right balance:

1. Speak for yourself. ("Write your own blog in your own distinct voice.")
2. Target timely topics.  ("...relevant to the business technology and business issues and concerns of our customers.")
3. Keep the communication lines open. ("...unfiltered two-way communication.")
4. Always show respect. ("Respect the blog medium.")
5. Preserve privacy and confidentiality. ("Reflect common sense and good business judgment.")

After a year of active blogging, HP views it as a success.  According to Scott, readership and press coverage are up, a number of productive discussions have been sparked by blog posts, and customers are responding favorably.

Rich Marcello, General Manager of HP's Business Critical Systems, has said:

A customer stated "how much he liked my blog and that it was just as important to him that he knew who he was buying from and what that person believed as it was to understand the products.”

Rich also recently posted a one-year assessment of his HP blog:

Well, I've been writing this blog now for about a year. The other day I was thinking about what I was trying to accomplish when I started last December and whether or not I actually did what I set out to do. I think I have. In a nutshell, I wanted to show you a little bit more about who I am as a person and what I really believe on many different topics. No hype, just a really direct and honest conversation on a host of topics. Hopefully, you've felt some of that in the writing and sometimes, at least, found some of the topics helpful. For me personally, it's been really useful to write down as honestly and crisply as possible what I believe.

Then I came across a really good discussion of two different kinds of leaders written by Sobonfue Somé. I thought the description of the first kind of leader is how I've tried to act in this blog (and actually in my entire life) and so I thought I would share it with you here:

"You could say there are two different kinds of leaders: the leader who strives to be herself and retain her genuine identity while helping those who follow her, bringing along her goodness and failures and exhibiting both; and the leader who figures out and imitates the model that people want to see, showing her good qualities and hiding her flaws, 'having it all together' and so forth. The first kind many people find frightening, partly, I think, because it suggests no one can reach perfection. The second kind of leader is more appealing to our view of the world. But the second path is a deception from the beginning. As a human being, it's hard to be flawless, isn't it?”

tags: syndicate syndicate conference doc searls