Peter Hirshberg from Technorati is presenting now at the Conference Board's Corporate Communications and Technology Conference in NYC. Interesting mix of folks here: Raytheon, State Farm, World Bank, JC Penney, Merrill Lynch, Motorola. I will speak on a panel tomorrow with Genevieve Haldeman from Symantec and BL Ochman. It seems like this conference will be a good introduction to the social Web (Peter has been using the term "Live Web" which I am not too sure about. The Web has been pretty "live" for a while).

Peter's points:

  • "The rise of the audiences" - Peter claims the audience is now the "impresario" which I take for another way to say the audience is in control.
  • "Audience becomes the promoter" - He cites the redesign of major newspaper sites to stress a move away from homepage traffic as people link deeper into these sites (promoting content at lower levels)
  • Clever video - Peter is showing a funny couch interview with 4 tween-age girls (who is his daughter?) who are revealing what we all know intuitively (and from our own experience) - they are thoroughly digital and savvy. This is a great way to enliven a basic preso on the changes afoot.
  • "We need to listen and not just talk" - followed by David Sifry's State of the Blogosphere charts.
  • "Ordinary people with a voice are huge"
  • User communities come together around tags - 250 million tags, 30% of users tag (sounds high)
  • "On the margins" is the most popular Sun blog (over Jonathan Schwartz)
  • Sun has unfiltered post headlines about their products right on the product pages - UNCENSORED - facilitated by Technorati.
  • Joi Ito digital video explaining the importance of texting in Japan (it's important)
  • video of Sky Dayton talking about his opinions on "asian" use of digital media (unintended I'm sure but treating Asian's digital profile so monolithicly is a mistake)
  • funny video of "man on the streets" from NYC 3 years ago where few people know anything about blogs. Unfortunately, Peter reveals his bias by introducing it as wanting to see what the "East Coast" knows about this as he and the folks on the West Coast have technology on their minds. I hope this doesn'y turn into some hiphop-like rivalry of east vs. west. (I know some pretty smart folks all over the world, never mind the coasts)
  • "Control was so 20th Century" - The Cluetrain Manifesto.
  • Dove, Coke & Mentos, PopSugar - all used to make the points.
  • Peter also discussed the Inconvenient Truth use of their conversation marketing stuff
  • Interesting use of this with Jell-o 

A good intro speech and presentation. Peter is obviously smart and an engaging speaker. I continue to be surprised that marketing and communications professionals appreciate this basic information but they do and that's important. People are taking notes.


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