David Strom and I got together at the recent New Communications Forum in Las Vegas to catch up on things. We’ve both been around the tech media business for a very long time, and while we’ve never worked for the same company at the same time, we’ve got plenty of mutual friends and experiences.

David came up with the idea of creating a podcast for the public relations community that would communicate what we’ve learned about the best and worst of PR. Both he and I have been on many panels in front of PR professionals, talking about how to work with the media. The appetite for this kind of information seems to be insatiable, and a podcast is a quick and easy way to capture some of our experiences.

So this week we recorded the first episode of Tech PR War Stories. Each week, we’ll get together and talk about some aspect of technology media, whether it’s news, tips, advice, rants or reminiscences.

We’re really going to try to update this one every week, which sounds like an impossible dream to me. However, David has been publishing his Web Informant newsletter every week for many years, so I guess where there’s a will, there’s a way.

Please listen to the inaugural program (it’s only 14 minutes) and let me know what you think. If you have iTunes, you can find it here. This is a work in progress and we want to make sure the programs meet your needs. We’re pretty much open to anything!

Financial institutions are known for treating their customers like cattle, but my recent experience with the E*TRADE brokerage has me envying the cows.

I use E*TRADE as a backup to my bank, occasionally transferring money into the brokerage for investment. Often these sums are pretty large. The transfers have always been smooth in the past, but when I tried to move a fairly large sum out of E*TRADE and back to my bank two weeks ago, the transaction didn’t go through.

The trouble was that the system didn’t tell me that the time (although E*TRADE claims it did). It simply made my accounts disappear. So when I noticed a week later that the transfer had never gone through, I went online to look at my accounts. They were gone. All of them.

I stayed calm, and called the brokerage, which told me to call back in the morning. When I called today, I was told that the accounts had been frozen as a security measure and that I had to go through an identity verification process to make the transfer. Okay, that’s reasonable, but why hadn’t anyone called me when I initiated the transaction 10 days earlier?

They did, on March 13, I was told, and they left a message. Really? I never got that message. And I wonder why they left one message in nine days ago and didn’t bother to follow up when I didn’t return it? It doesn’t sound like they were all that keen on getting to the bottom of the story. Well, they tried to reach me, I was told.

What number did they use, I asked? I was read an old work number and I hadn’t used in about five years. Did anyone notice that the voice mail that answered the phone didn’t identify themselves as me, I asked? They didn’t have an answer for that.

I’ve been making large transfers like this for years, I said, and I’ve never been run through this gauntlet. I was told that it’s a new policy to confirm all large transfers. Really, I asked? No one at either E*TRADE or my bank asked any questions when I transferred an even larger amount of money into the account a few weeks earlier. So it’s only suspicious when you transfer money out, I guess.

By the way, I’m still waiting on some paperwork that the E*TRADE rep was supposed to send me on another issue seven months ago. It doesn’t really matter. By the time I get the paperwork, I’ll be with another brokerage.

A perceptive analysis of the evolving media world comes from IBM, of all places. A 36-page report by IBM Global Business services that was recently posted on IBM’s site foresees the media market falling into four basic classifications (with compound annual growth rates through 2010):

Traditional media (5%) – The model most media companies use today.
Walled communities (10%) – A combination of professional- and user-generated content delivered to a limited number of subscribers who either pay a fee or part with information about themselves to gain access.
Content hyper-syndication (33%) – Proprietary content is delivered through many channels, often in exchange for a license fee.
New platform aggregation (16) – Collection and packaging of content that is primarily user-generated.

By 2010, traditional media will be a $340 billion, market, with walled communities reaching $240 billion, content hyper-syndication $25 billion and new platform aggregation $50 billion.

So market growth has clearly shifted toward sectors that combine user and professionally generated content. As the report notes, five of the 10 fastest-growing websites last year were CGM aggregators.

Other interesting sound bites: “Worldwide revenue from new media channels – such as Internet advertising, mobile music and online games – is expected to reach nearly US$55 billion in 2006. But that pales in comparison to the US$455 billion in revenue that traditional channels are expected to yield in 2006.”

“According to a recent [Forrester Research] study, if advertisers had an additional US$1 million for marketing, 50 percent of them said they’d spend it on Internet search, 42 percent chose other forms of Internet advertising, but only 19 percent mentioned television.”

The report concludes with 10 recommendations for media companies, such as bringing consumers more directly into the content development process and loosening up on ownership rules in order to gain share.

The forecast of 33% CAGR in content hyper-syndication surprised me, as did the predicted $240 billion size of that market just three years from now. It suggests that Viacom, Sony and other digital-rights management flag-wavers are shooting themselves in the foot when they try to rein in file-sharing services. The recording industry is learning a consumer education campaign is far more effective than lawsuits in turning music downloaders into informed, paying customers. Part of hyper-syndication is giving a little away in order to get new customers on the back end.

This report is well worth reading if you’re interested in the future of media.

Here’s an interesting Q&A with Piper Jaffray’s lead Internet analyst Safa Rashtchy in which he talks about why Google is the most important company in the user revolution. This is because Google puts users at the center of everything and makes it possible for them to manage information the way they want. This is distinct from portals, which assumed a lower level of user knowledge and so organized everything for them.

He also talks about how kids communicate differently from adults. Sharing photos and videos is fun for them and they multitask when they communicate. I noticed this on a plane the other day. I was surrounded by teenagers and all of them were engaged with some kind of electronic device all the time. Yet they were chatting with each other without removing the earphones from their ears. Kids today are incredibly nimble in the way they manage technology. There is a huge difference between them and their parents in this respect.

I had the opportunity to be on a panel about social media put on by the Public Relations Society of America’s Boston Chapter last evening and it was a good opportunity to assess the current state of PR thinking about the topic. John Cass moderated. The sold-out session drew about 80 people, many of them owners or employees of small agencies. The questions indicated that people are past the tire-kicking stage and are beginning to ask substantive questions about how to participate in the blogosphere in particular. I was also surprised at some of the questions that weren’t asked, but more on that later. My take-aways:

There’s a lot of focus on tools – Many questions related to how bloggers can maximize traffic and visibility. Todd Van Hoosear, who’s practice leader for social media at Topaz Partners, gave an informative talk on how tagging can raise search engine visibility while I sang the praises of del.icio.us as a means to monitor conversation about companies and products. Attendees seemed somewhat taken aback by the amount of technical knowledge that’s needed to generate traffic, but I think the reality is that tagging and RSS are pretty easy to use once you get the hang of them.

People are worried about managing client expectations – Several questions related to whether businesses should be blogging/podcasting at all and how to set realistic expectations for those that want to engage in these activities. It sounds like there’s a bit of a gold rush going on right now, with businesses diving into social media without really understanding what they expect to get out of it. This is typical of any hot new trend and I think PR organizations play an important part in helping their clients to understand how – and whether – to blog.

There’s a lot of interest in a new approach to press release – Todd Defren from Shift Communications was on the panel, talking about a new kind of press release his company developed last year. Three cheers for this new approach to media relations, which providies journalists with extensive background and multimedia commentary to use in their stories. The standard press release wore out its welcome long ago. The emerging class of social media press release offers much richer information and potentially positions the authors as valuable content sources. Todd said the template for the Shift Communications press release has been downloaded more than 50,000 times and I can see why.

I was also interested by the questions that weren’t asked:

The role of social media in mainstream media – one of the most important reasons for businesses to participate in social media, I believe, is to improve their visibility with mainstream reporters and editors. The mainstream media is relying on social media sources more and more for story ideas and background information. Mainstream media is also an important source of links and traffic to blogs and podcasts. In light of this fact, I found it curious that there were no questions about this developing relationship.

Questions of voice, topic and content – While there were a lot of questions about how to drive traffic to blogs, there was almost none about what blogs should say and how they should say it. It could be that I’m simply behind the times and PR organizations have already figured this out, but I don’t think that’s the case. In my opinion, you need to get straight what you want to talk about before you start talking. Judging from the questions I heard last night, though, this doesn’t seem to be a big issue with PR practitioners.

How to become a destination – There was some discussion of this, but not as much as I had expected. Social media presents a great opportunity for businesses to become content providers and destination sites for communities of customers. While there was some interest in this angle, there was relatively said about it. Perhaps it’s still too early.

I devote a chapter of my book to the role of public relations in social media. Judging by the discussion last night, it’s clear that there is broad awareness in the PR community that this is a big deal and that practitioners need to develop strategies. That’s a good thing.