The details are here: Google Press Center: News Announcement.

Lots of other people are, of course, buzzing about it. See Techmeme: Previewing Google Friend Connect: Website owners can make any site social (Sean Carlson/Google).

Now, since it is just launching, I’m not too sure we can take advantage of it in this semester’s classes, but I’ll hope. I’d like for all students to be able to get an account. But, Google is rolling it out piece meal, like they usually do with Beta releases.

What’s The Benefit?

What might it do? offer to our student projects? Well, it can make a digital resume a social site, for instance. Would we want to do that? I don’t know, but some aspects seem compelling. The simplest explanation comes from the release above, “any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming — picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.”

Websites that are not social networks may still want to be social — and now they can be, easily. With Google Friend Connect, any website owner can add a snippet of code to his or her site and get social features up and running immediately without programming — picking and choosing from built-in functionality like user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews, as well as third-party applications built by the OpenSocial developer community.

Visitors to any site using Google Friend Connect will be able to see, invite, and interact with new friends, or, using secure authorization APIs, with existing friends from social sites on the web, including Facebook, Google Talk, hi5, orkut, Plaxo, and more.

So, although we wouldn’t want to necessarily add that info to the resume, we can put it on a sub-page. The student uses that to build their own network over time. Also, what about potential employers and internship providers that are digital adopters and want to connect with the student in their social networks? Well, now you can do it on your own domain.

Does it change the rules?

No, but it can change the opportunities.

Best practices will still rule. In fact, they are going to become even more important. This is, after all, as much an opportunity to screw up your online reputation as it is to enhance it. ;o) Translation: Don’t post anything you wouldn’t show Grandma and Grandpa.

I’ll be watching and signing up. Hope for a quick invite for me. No. I’m not holding my breath. ;o)

This could turn out to be a really good, easy way to explore socializing a site, while not spending too much time on coding and more. After all, we’re developing PR practitoners, not creating developers and coders.

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I’ll share my response, but ask that you visit her post and read the comments by students (sign up required, membership is free). (After visiting that post, also consider going to Kelli’s blog at PRos in Training. It’s a good one.)

This revolves around a recent wiki (prspammers wiki) created by Gina Trapani of Lifehacker, tips and downloads for getting things done. Gina’s Web site is here: Gina Trapani, tech writer and web developer.

The short story? She’s been getting pitches to her personal e-mail address, whereas she has clearly stated links for pitching her and the other editors of Lifehacker (see left hand column). None of them say, “Write to my personal e-mail account.”

So, she has reacted in a public manner. Her choice to do that, of course. Most of us would likely have just filtered the emails and moved on with our lives. But, sometimes we all feel compelled to make a very public point. Right? So, yea! for Gina’s team. I really don’t see anything about her coming off as being malicious in her approach. So, I don’t have a problem with what she’s done.

Update: Kelli has pointed out something I didnt’ see. Gina did post this in Twitter: Twitter / Gina Trapani - “my PR blacklist: http://tinyurl.com/5xj5qh Feel free to add to it.” Well, by publishing it that way, and not providing any safeguard against people maliciously adding to the list with those that are not guilty, she’s just as guilty as those she condemns. Why? Well, she’s just created a vehicle that can harm others. In fact, it is worse. She has not just bothered people with spam, for instance, she’s created a process that may damage one’s reputation unfairly. Talk about Lifehacking. Sheesh!

Here is my comment to Kelli’s post. A bit long for a comment, so I’m adding it here in case you don’t want to go to PROpenMic. But, I can’t imagine why you wouldn’t want to. ;o)

Gina’s process of handling it, and how she’s dealing with it online, is much different than Chris Anderson’s. I’d say she has a valid argument and the nature of online business is that you can feel the backlash in a very public manner.

To me, the days of broadcast e-mails is long gone. It has been gone for over a decade, really. Maybe longer?

An example. That’s one thing I don’t really like about our network here. The invite tool is an invitation to print what many people likely perceive as spam. Scraping your address book to invite people isn’t personal in any way. It isn’t targeted, unless you consider a scattershot approach targeted. I don’t. Facebook’s many widgets are even worse. How many Facebook apps have you blocked? I think I block about 1 every other day.

My point? These practices and strategies (if you can use that term) are still being practiced, even built into the software we use, let alone built into PR firm practices and firm culture.

Years ago, and I mean 20 or so years, you could do a blast mail campaign to newspapers and almost be assured of vast pickup, particularly if you were looking to get into the class C & D papers (local dailies & weeklies). You can still do that today (for class C & D papers, only) and bet on pretty good pickup. But, does this really serve a client’s best interests? I don’t think so. It is lazy. It is unprofessional. It is not PR. Does anyone see any bridges being built through these scattershot approaches? Nope. The key phrase here is “mutually beneficial”, as in the PR practitioner needs to be giving Gina something she wants, not what the practitioner wants to have printed or covered. Why is such a no-brainer concept repeatedly lost on so many PR people?

Everyone holds responsibility here, but the onus is really on management. Is there frequent re-education / training? Is there a vetted process to assure who is using what names from what list? Is there oversight? Sadly, I’m betting the reality is that less than half of firms and organizations actually do that. And, I’m betting I’m being generous, too.

The reality may be a combination of two things. First, firms are trying to get the most out of every possible tactic (billables) and the client’s need for a ROI that they can buy into (retaining your client). These combine to engender a culture furthering these bad practices. Also, note that I’ve used the term ‘tactic’ yet, do we really believe there was any true strategy at work here? No. Strategy leads to tactics. There is no shortcut. You don’t have one without the other.

At least Gina exhibited mature and rational judgement in her effort to deal with the problem. Eh, not so fast … see above. Chris Anderson, on the other hand, well … he just came off looking like a very impudent child. Many of those he outed were not even PR people, some were people he asked to write to him and, worst of all, he uses the term PR and public relations to cover a wide variety of practices, like sales. Finally, his effort - by his own words - intended to do harm. Gina, on the other hand, just dealt with it publicly, yet (with a few exceptions) only published the domains of firms. Anderson is malicious, ignorant and myopic in his approach.

Related Posts:

POP! PR Jots: PR Pitching and Blacklists - by Jeremy Pepper

“Unsubscribe Lifehacker: My Email to Gina Trapani” « socialTNT

A Young Pro’s Take: Media Relations and the New PR Blacklists « PR Interactive

Tech PR Gems: Block & Tackle PR: Tackling the Blocking Bloggers

PR 2.0: Making Mistakes and Amends in Blogger and Media Relations

PR Squared: Open Letter to Gina Trapani of Lifehacker

A Whole Lotta Nothing – Stop asking, start filtering

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Britannica was one of the encyclopedias. Big black books that took up two rows on the main family bookcase. Right next to Britannica sat the Oxford English Dictionary. Again, huge black books filled with information. Then, there was also the World Book, among others.

We would take them down when reading the paper or watching television and look up anything that we didn’t know about. We would read and enjoy it. I wonder, are kids still doing this today? Or, do they just pickup their nearby Wifi laptop and look things up, instead? Oh, please don’t tell me they are going to Wikipedia … and believing they are getting solid information. (Yes, I know they’re being fooled and doing it every day.)

For me, nothing beats a book. I love the fun of flipping through pages and finding something new.

Even better, a book (even online) that has real editors. So, my new found great Britannica Online reference brings me to an issue that bothers me greatly. Wikipedia and editors. Editors are important. Crucial.

Editors with credentials. Editors that may be vetted. Not editors with names like StaticGull at Wikipedia. Static Gull’s credentials? “This user can make The Spinning Dancer turn both ways.” Oh, now there’s a selling point. No real name for Static Gull. No way to vet their knowledge and trustworthiness, yet h/she has edited (and reverted edits) entries such as the Battle of Blenheim. There are so many examples like this in Wikipedia that the site becomes laughable when offered up as a trustworthy reference. You’ll see links to many instances of chicanery within Wikipedia below.

Shel Holtz kindly shared a free account to access Britannica online, recently. I was happy to have it. Thanks, Shel. I imagine that Britannica hopes to have a word-of-mouth campaign spring from this regarding the views of educators on the validity of Wikipedia as opposed to Britannica. Why?

See screen shots of Wikipedia vandalism on Wikipedia Watch. Check out this refutation of a Nature journal article that attempted to claim Britannica and Wikipedia are not too much different from one another. The Study and the Data (PDF). That article has since been roundly refuted and discredited. See links below.

You know, there has been a lot of talk about online reference sources these past few years. For instance, as of this writing, Alexa lists Yahoo! #1, Google #2, Windows Live #3 and Wikipedia #7 in their Global Top 500 sites ranking. All four are used as reference sites, in their own way.

If I were to rank them as valid and useful reference resources, I’d likely put the search engines up high as sources I could then verify with further study. Wikipedia, however, I wouldn’t even rank. For instance, if a student turns in a paper with a Wikipedia reference, I require that they provide two or three independent resources to verify the Wikipedia reference. I would accept the Britannica reference - alone.

Why? Britannica has editors. They have names, real names. Britannica has a long history of academic discovery. They are open. They accept input and you can actually speak with real people and vet them based upon their academic credentials.

Funny. See how Wikipedia cites those behind Britannica here: Encyclopædia Britannica. Now, where is the list of characters behind the names like: WillowW. That’s one of the editors for the Britannica article.

Britannica, unlike Wikipedia. does not have an inbred system that causes errors to remain - even be defended. They don’t have a relatively invisible process which allows great falsehoods to linger on their site and requires a struggle to remedy. See any of the instances cited in the related links below.

I don’t know for certain, but it may be possible that Wikipedia is one of the greatest deceptions (if not outright frauds) perpetrated on the world’s population. The koolaid drinkers among the ardent supporters will say it is an excellent resource to educate the 3rd world. Please. Well, if we want to mis-educate them, maybe.

Wikipedia’s refusal to institute (a) some form of captcha technology and (b) a stern policy of verifying e-mail addresses for all members/editors suggests to me that they are more interested in traffic. They seemingly invite spam. Reminds me, in a way, of a paraphrase of the “Gold Hat” (Alfonso Bedoya) line in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. “Credentials? We ain’t got no credentials. We don’t need no credentials. I don’t have to show you any stinking credentials.” (IMDb)

Now, let’s be clear on that idea of fraud. Fraud is defined as “…a deception made for personal gain” or “a deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain.” (Source) The unfair part refers to Wikipedias emphasis on participation and visitors, not on verification of content. Traffic spurred by their lax system is the gain. Yet, vandalism is rife throughout the site. How many people see those vandalized pages, accept them as fact, and leave feeling they have learned - when they have actually been deceived. I believe that it is possible the site desires to keep their bad practices in place because it appeals to their volunteer base. Further, the site’s traffic does wonders for propping up the faux fame of its particpants - even the founders.

Want Wikipedia to earn credibility? Institute real processes to assure some validity in the site. Nope, they don’t do it. Those volunteers might balk. The site’s traffic flounders. The founders fame flounders, too.

Consider the remarkable relationship between Google and Wikipedia. Why Google makes Wikipedia links often register as the first result for many terms, I cannot fathom. Wikia certainly benefits from all this. Ah, the founders are now making money.

Wikipedia’s koolaid drinking supporters certainly try to defend the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit. But, it is that “anyone can edit” aspect that frightens me. It should frighten you, too. Why? Because people are beginning to give the site undue respect using the fallacy that “It has been there so long, it must be true.” That argument is actually used by Wikipedia editors, sometimes, to defend efforts to correct an inaccurate article. The site is bizarre.

When considering Wikipedia as a reference source, I think of one saying that even the supporters of Wikipedia will understand is - “Danger, Will Robinson!”

You want a wiki as reference source that you can trust?  Visit Citizendium.

Related Links

Society of Professional Journalists: Press Notes

Public Information Research - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia-watch.org - Wikipedia Watch

Fraud - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

fraud - Definitions from Dictionary.com

Wikipedia Watch

Screen shots of Wikipedia vandalism

Alexa Top 500 Sites

RC patrollers - Wikitruth

Vandalism exposed - Wikitruth

known vandals on wikipedia - Google Search

Revision history of Social media - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Main Page - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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I was fortunate to have Kellie Matthews and Lisa Poplawski join me for an interview some weeks ago. Sadly, I goofed the recording and there were pops and hisses … just a general bad audio hair day, so to speak. So, they very kindly agreed to a Mulligan interview. I am grateful.

Kelli blogs at PRos in Training and Lisa blogs at Crisis in Conversation. Please check out their blogs and I’ll offer a bit of bio information here.

Kelli Matthews: “Teaching public relations is also about helping students figure it all out - from the nitty-gritty of writing to the big picture strategic thinking and from stress management to the job search. I teach public relations at the University of Oregon. I have both my BA and MA from the UofO. In addition to teaching, I co-own a PR and graphic design firm, Verve, with my sister and biz partner, Amy Miller. You can check it out here: vervenorthwest.com.”

Lisa Poplawski: “Lisa Poplawski … a senior at the University of Oregon. 21 years old, I’ll be graduating with a BS in Journalism and Economics this spring. A strange combination, I know, but starting at Oregon’s J-school, we were required to take Econ 201 and 202, and I just fell in love. The combination turned out to be fitting, however, as I’ve just turned in 16 law school applications over Christmas break, and will be attending law school this coming fall with not just logical and analytical skills from my Econ major, but I might be able to write a little bit as well.”

I’ve enjoyed watching the social media efforts of many other universities. The University of Oregon is yet another school that is embracing emerging digital media in their classrooms. The good aspect? They do it well. Their faculty and students are great. So, that’s the reason for this podcast. Hope you enjoy it.

The podcast is 28mb and runs 29:24.

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I’ll admit, all of the people signing up are my favorites. I’m still kinda stunned by the turnout we’ve experienced. We surpassed the 500 members mark in just 3 weeks.

Today, however, a new truly favorite member signed up. Look at her work and her involvement online. She’s remarkable, and I haven’t even met her, yet.

Meet Danielle Warby at PROpenMic (free signup required). But, you don’t really have to go there. Trust me, there is much more out there online.

templatedata - The web at www.usyd.edu.au

“This blog is based at the University of Sydney. It is written by members of the Digital and Print Media team. Other university staff members with ideas for articles are most welcome to contact us about writing for Templatedata. Readers and comments from the general public are most welcome. The views expressed on this blog are those of the respective authors and not those of their employer.”

Oh, to be sure … there’s more: Danielle’s DesignDyke’s bookmarks on del.icio.us, her Flickr: Photos & Video from danyell.com.au, even a MySpace.com account - Design Dyke, not to be outdone … she’s into video, too. YouTube - LesbianIntent’s Channel.

Staff - The University of Sydney

“Danielle is the Web Support Officer for the Faculty of Economics and Business. Danielle’s responsibilities include website content management and production of marketing materials for print and web. Her main interest is in the area of Social Networking and other Web 2.0 technologies such as blogging. Danielle is also a qualified graphic designer.”

From there, we find Danielle engaging in all manner of social media sites, like Twitter / designdyke … Danielle Warby - FriendFeed … and her personal blog at Vox.

Design Dyke at Vox. Danielle is a student, too.

“I’m an independent, creative woman and I know what I want from life but I’m usually too busy enjoying myself to get my shit together. I have my own graphic design/digital marketing business, I work at Sydney University on their online marketing communicatiions [sic] (specifically social media) update a few of their websites and design the occasional logo. I’m studying Post-Grad Marketing at Sydney Uni… all which leaves me with little to no social life but plenty of time in front of the computer. In my spare time I sleep.”

She’s also a business woman. LinkedIn: Danielle Warby. And that brings us to her business. Design.

Yes, I saved, perhaps the best for last. warbyweb: graphic design web design

Visit and look at Danielle’s work. The level of broad interests at work here is quite simply amazing. She’s even “in the process of setting up an online lesbian magazine that focuses on art and design. I am here to check out what the dykes are doing.” (Source: YouTube)

Now, I ask you. When would I have ever been able to meet someone like Danielle without the advent of social networks? Never. I’m very happy we started PROpenMic. Danielle, you’re pretty damn cool. We must ask her to chat with our class next semester. Hope she’ll agree.

Admit it. You love her. I know you do. Yeah, and a bit of jealousy, too, I think. Yep, I hear ya’.

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Rick Edmonds, Poynter’s Biz Blog, shares “the latest American Society of Newspapers Editors’ annual census” and it ain’t pretty.

Print is continuing to hemorage at a sad rate. The good news may be, they will learn and adapt. Sad how they didn’t do it beforehand to stem this ugly flow.

Out With The Old … In With The Newbies

Fulltime professional news staffs fell by 2,400 last year, a drop of 4.4% to a total of 52,600.

It was an even larger decrease than the 2,000 drop-off in the recession year of 2001. Since the census is completed as of the end of 2007, the tabulation does not include hundreds more buyouts and layoffs already imposed in 2008.

If there is good news in all of this, some of those being fired are being replaced by younger journos. So, students leaving school actually still have a chance. Why are media companies doing this? Well, one reason is likely to get rid of the high overhead of expensive, mature & seasoned talent. (Well, it is the expensive part they want to dump.) Then, they replace them with inexpensive newbies. Gee, will this make us want to buy more newspapers?

Diversity Suffers…

To make matters worse, Poynter Online’s Tom Huang reports that Diversity at Work is suffering, too.

…the overall numbers don’t seem too gloomy: In the past year, the percent of minorities working at daily newspapers grew a smidgeon — from 13.43 percent to 13.52 percent.

But it’s the absolute number we should be worried about.

The only reason why the percentage of minorities in newsrooms has essentially remained flat is because both white and minority journalists left our newsrooms at about the same rate (resulting in an overall 4.4 percent decrease in full-time journalists at daily newspapers).

The total number of minority journalists at daily newspapers fell by about 300 people…

You’ll find some very good “RELATED” links in each story. Please check them out. Also, please start some prayer circles for our print industry. No, I’m not kidding. Seriously.

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The experience of launching this community, and watching it grow, has been very enjoyable. I deeply appreciate all of the people that have visited the site and signed up. PROpenMic is actually turning into a worldwide social network for public relations and marketing communications worldwide.

The post is here: Diversity :: PROpenMic’s Demographics, by Country. An excerpt is below, but you’ll have to visit the site and sign up to read the post. Sorry, but I’m trying to continue to build the community.

As of today, we have 361 members (in a little over 12 days). They hail from 25 nations. There are at least two (2) members from each continent (well, sort of … you’ll have to read it to understand). North America and Europe are the largest contingent, but we’re now reaching other continents, too.

Students are our largest group, 220+. Faculty represent, I believe, some of the most active and creative researchers and experiential educators in the world. That is particularly true with regard to online public relations. We have the honor of welcoming Dr. James E. Grunig, easily the single most prolific public relations researcher and publisher in the world. Our practitioners represent a wide variety of experience and sectors within the broad field of public relations practice. PROpenMic has welcomed people with the title of CEO, President, SVP, and VP from some of the largest PR agencies, as well as some of the most prominent boutique agencies, in the world. Even more Managers, SAEs and AEs have signed up, too. But, just as important, we have practitioners from NGOs, PA/Government practice and local/regional practitioners, too. I won’t even try to represent the broad range of practices they hail from, please just look for yourself. The experience runs the gamut.

I hope you’ll visit the site and consider signing up. We are especially interested in attracting students and faculty from PR/Marcom programs around the world.

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Sure, we’ve been creating our blogs and podcasts. We’ve been following each others writings and media. All fun. All good. But, there really hasn’t been one place for everyone to do a meet and greet … until now.

PROpenMic.org is the place.

PROpenMic? A metaphor. Step up and speak your mind. Our goal is to be the social network for PR students and faculty worldwide. We have common interests, goals and certainly can learn from one another.

The site is open to practitioners, too. So, if you’re interested, please come and join in the discussion.

We can share documents, audio, video … a music / podcast player, forums, blogs & photo albums for each member … RSS feeds, photo albums, and more. Already people are blogging and four forums have begun - PR Syllabi & Resources, PR / Marcom Pros, Faculty and Students. We can start more, too.

Connect & Collaborate

I love sharing and learning. No better way to do that than to interact with your peer groups, right? So, my hope is that we can all come together - from around the world - and connect in this community.

The site is built upon the Ning.com platform, so it has a sort of Facebook-like appeal. The difference? No ads. No apps sending you numerous emails. Just PR people. Hey, I like Facebook for connections, but to do what we wanted to do … a mashup of content in one place … we had to have our own platform, in my opinion.

Meetup, Mashup & Share

Already, in one day, we have people signing up. Blogs, forums & video sharing are already seeing a bit of activity. We want more, though. Interest has come in from Asia, Europe, North America & Australia. How about you? and your students?

I realize that starting this at the end of a semester isn’t the ideal time. But, I had an epiphany on Sunday night and just started building the site. By Monday morning it was essentially ready to go, so I shared PROpenMic.org in Twitter and through an email to about two dozen people.

Please Join

I’m seeking your support, please. Share PROpenMic.org with your students, fellow faculty, PR/Marcom colleagues and more. Sign up yourself and there is a very easy “invite” process for you to use. Thank you.

Note: PROpenMic.org will never sell or share your email address or personal information with anyone else. You choose what to share on the site. This is a nonprofit academic project, primarily for the benefit of our students. No cost. No ads.

And, just so you’ll know … This is for real, too. No April Fool’s silliness, here … unlike this one from Google. Hat tip to Brett Pohlman for that one.

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I had a thought. Yes, I know … that’s often a dangerous thing.

Why not take our ongoing blogging and podcasting activities and fold them into a real, honest-to-goodness, social network?

So, here ya’ go … LoveliestVillage.org will now become … TheLoveliestVillage.org.

From now on, part of our ongoing projects will be — grow the network. It isn’t enough to just practice the art of writing for an online audience, or preparing podcasts, or dabbling in graphics and layout. All of that means bupkus if you don’t also know how to develop the network (audience) for your project. D’oh?

It is such a simple natural progression on what we’ve been doing, I wanna kick myself for not having done this sooner. Perhaps it is my new infatuation with ASCCAFriends.org and the power of Ning, but this seems like a pretty fun idea. I can see students becoming fairly engaged. A little competition between groups as to which one lands the most signups … huh? Ya’ think?

After all, the students (depending upon the semester and # of classes / class size) combine to crank out 140 to 300+ videos and 240 to 500+ blog posts each semester. To keep it sane, we can limit participation in the ‘open’ social network to the almost 1,000 students in our department and select outiders/alumni. Then, as we learn, perhaps open it up. (Don’t know about that.)

Now, if we can’t build a network of Auburn students and fans around all the video podcasts and blogging we’ve been doing - while letting the network members blog & post, too - well, I’ll feel pretty goofy. (More goofy? goofier?) I’m even thinking about doing some Facebook Ads (just among Auburn students) to get it rolling. Don’t worry, we won’t spend much. The process of creating and launching the ads alone, is worth the cost.

Not foresaking the traditional bread-n-butter PR practices, we build in the traditional elements such as research, media relations, press kit … well, we will have to decide what fits.

So, whatta’ ya’ think? I’m liking this … but, as always, crave feedback and critiques.

I’m thinking that any college, university … any school, could create such a network.

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Seero and Ning, alone or combined, could offer a very simple - yet broad and complex - implementation for a class campaign project. Add Utterz, Flickr, YouTube and more into the mix … you’ve got one powerful social network.

A Ning micro network may be built for any local organization. With domain mapping and the ability to turn ads off (for a cost, about $25 per month @ Ning) these sites can be a powerful mix. They even incorporate mobile.

• Barb Iverson shares “Seero: Live Video with a Geo Twist” on Poynter Online - E-Media Tidbits. This is a cool site and service. Applications abound for class and business. Iverson shares journalism ideas, too.
• Ning.com still fascinates me with its ease of use and full blown micro-social network possibilites. I set up this one (minimal, I’ll admit) in about 30 mintues: campascca.ning.com. Now, just imagine what a full group of students could build for a client as a class activity. Of all the social network tools we’ve talked about for so long, this one allows a class activity to incorporate them all in a real-world experience. You can import/aggregate RSS feeds into the community.

Then, there is this rather unfortunate example of a survey used as promotional tool, IMHO.

• A recent survey “by APCO Worldwide and the Council of Public Relations Firms (CPRF), the survey sought to determine how bloggers and PR pros can improve working relationships.” Study finds PR-blogger divide - PRWeek US (Subscription required) Problem is, the respondent pool is a whopping … wait for it, you won’t believe it (or will you?) … “The online survey polled 55 senior executives at Council firms and 47 bloggers. APCO and CPRF created a Web site, www.bloggersandpr.com …”

Whoa, Nellie! They survey 112 102 people (once) … and draw conclusions about the entire medium and industry? Hello?

Well, to me this story is a placement for a bit of publicity … and a sad one, at that. Come on, APCO and CPRF … what were you thinking? It is one thing to be transparent … another to be able to see right through you!

Is this really what you folks call survey research? You really want to hang your hat on this? If so, we’re all in deep trouble. The About page tells more, yet raises more questions than it provides answers.

I am so tired of seeing these survey as marketing tool lame examples. To see it coming from an industry group, well … it is just simply sad.

With such a small, insignificant sample, don’t say “59 percent spend more than 20 hours per week (blogging)” [Source for survey sample quote]… rather, say 27 people. Sheesh! I’d fail a student for something like this. Use of percentages to try and make the results seem more credible is simply wrong. No debate on that.

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