The Thicket

Flock is Awesome!

Granted, I may be a little late to this party (story of my life), but while at MacWorld Expo two weeks ago, I stumbled upon the Flock browser booth.  It was just me and the booth dude, so I had lots of time to check it out, ask questions, volunteer for Beta testing, etc. I have to tell you, I'm putting Safari, Firefox, Mozilla, and Camino, all of which I use on the Mac, aside and am lasering in on this cool browser (a new version of Flock has just been released for Mac Leopard and TechCrunch raves about it).  Flock is a Mozilla application and it's geared heavily toward people who use social-networking sites (ahem, which is very much me). I love the “look and feel,” and it has excellent RSS and blog management built in and it seems pretty zippy after startup. Might be worth giving a look.  Be a Flockstar!

Washington Post "Buzz Maps" Track DC-Based Bloggers

The Washington Post has selected blog aggregator site Outside.in to provide Buzz Maps of DC-area bloggers on WashingtonPost.com, according to the Outside.in blog.
A "Buzz Map" (see image, which you can enlarge by clicking), tracks both DC-based bloggers and the places they are discussing in the area. The service also maps the top 10 places mentioned, based on volume in a given week.
The service went live on WashingtonPost.com last week, but not much is there, yet. 63 cities currently comprise the Outside.in database. Outside.in helps marry local advertising with local geo-specific bloggers. EveryBlock, a similar startup (but with much less apparent traction), provides geo-filtered news and data in Chicago, New York and San Francisco, according to Silicon Alley Insider.

Candidates Won't Be Seen During Super Bowl!

FOX has announced that it won't sell Super Bowl spots to any presidential candidates - though no candidate has yet asked for a spot (ahem...sounds like many of the "R's" are out of cash, anyway...).
The game is sold out, and even if additional time could be found for one candidate to buy in, equal opportunities couldn't be found for all candidates, FOX says (via TV Week).
FOX cites an FCC rule that says that a network can reasonably refuse to sell political time in "unique, one-time-only" broadcasts where equal ad time can't be offered to all candidates.
Speculation had sprung up that one or more of the candidates would advertise, based primarily on the fact that Super Bowl Sunday falls just two days before Super Tuesday. 
Dang, now if the game is sorry, we won't have the candidates shenanigans to look forward to like a faux cross in the window, or Bill wagging his finger.

OhmyNews, the South Korean online newspaper written by citizen
journalists, is opening a school to help their reporters hone their craft.
Class topics include photography and interviewing. This is significant for a number of reasons. First off, it further legitimizes citizen reports. And it does so on its own terms: the practitioners—and not old-school academics—are behind the effort. And the school will undoubtedly create a strong face-to-face community alongside the online newspaper’s massive online community.

Equally important from an entrepreneurial standpoint is the school’s location. Korea is perhaps the most internet-focused nation on the planet, where broadband connections are nearly as common as electrical wires. Bottom line: what happens in Korea isn’t likely to stay in Korea, which means there’s a ripe opportunity to start similar ventures elsewhere. As more and more citizen journalists emerge, readers and viewers will inevitably seek out the most prescient and finest reports. Which means that those who want to stand out as citizen journalists will seek training.

Thinking Different

For some, banner ads are a quarterly tradition that's an easy row to complete in a spreadsheet of tactics but if you must, please make sure you allow yourselves to do something out of the box (even when your media buy doesn't first suggest it).

Here's something different (and customized for this one site - yes, one site) - check the ad here.

Piracy is a Market Signal

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(and yes, the soundtrack to this is a bit dodgy/buggy.)

Wallstrip Host Lindsay Campbell Leaving Show, Staying With CBS

Lindsay Campbell, the face (and voice, and, IMO, much of the brains) of Wallstrip, one of my favorite podcasts, is leaving the Web video show. But she'll stay with the same employer: Lindsay has a new job at CBS Interactive, which bought the finance/stock show last May. This makes sense: At the time of the CBS deal, the conventional wisdom was that CBS had purchased the show in part to secure Lindsay's services for future projects.

Lindsey, along with Wallstrip producers Adam Elend and Jeff Marks, will be moving on to something called Moblogic.TV (you can check out their new promo video at the site, which is about all you can see there). It’s a loss for Wallstrip, although it appears Wallstrip has hired someone capable, Julie Alexander, NYC based actress and someone who’s hosted Wallstrip before, and CBS keeps it’s star host.

Corporate Bloggers Survey Says...

In the first corporate blogging survey we did with TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony, we were encouraged to see most communications professionals had adopted the best of practices regarding authenticity.  Last month we completed the second survey with our friends at Cymfony.  Check out Porter Novelli's Peter Hirsch and Cymfony's Jim Nail, presenting the findings from the second annual corporate blog survey.