John Frost owns and edits The Disney Blog, one of the most popular Disney fan blogs on the Internet. While he’s an unabashed Disney enthusiast, his blog is a straight account of both the good and bad news related to the company he covers. The Disney Blog attracts about 100,000 monthly visitors, but it is not formally recognized as a media outlet by The Walt Disney Co.

John Frost

John will join me on a panel, along with Ben Popken of The Consumerist, next week at Nuance Communications’ Conversations 2008 conference in Orlando. I asked him a few questions about his blog and he generously provided these detailed answers.

Q:  What value do you provide that mainstream media doesn’t?

A: I’m a subject matter expert, the voice of a peer, a shepherd to the community and, to some degree, an advocate.

Q:  How is your content shaped by contributions from your readership?

A: Mainly through comments and emails. I get leads from readers and they let me know when I’ve stepped over the line.

Q:  How do you believe interactions between customers and businesses are changing as a result of Web 2.0?

A: It flips the funnel. It changes the art of marketing to the art of listening and contributing. For Disney, however, they’re still just getting used to providing better tools for guests to make decisions.

Q:  How do you avoid inaccuracies and to provide balance in your coverage?  What are your practices for correcting mistakes?

A: Use reliable sources, always attribute, provide links to background as needed. Minor mistakes might just disappear, factual mistakes, when caught by readers, are acknowledged with an update to the post and quick notice that a change was made. Major mea culpas usually involve a new post that links to the old.

Q:  What could the companies you cover do to made better use of customer feedback?

A: First, show us they’re listening. Have an online community manager and/or liaison who reaches out before feedback is even needed. Then, when feedback is received, you have the trust of the community to respond honestly, even if it’s only “I can’t answer right now, but we will find the answer and get back to you.” Then follow up.

I’m particularly impressed with companies that go out and search for feedback loops and attempt to deal with problems even before the consumer knows there is a problem. RSS feeds on various engines are a great help with this. If someone posts a complaint about all the weekday fireworks shows being canceled, be ready with an answer of alternate experiences for that evening.

Q:  What frustrates you most about dealing with these corporations?

A: Faceless voice mail loops, help centers located overseas staffed with people who have no expert knowledge of the subject matter, the usual stuff.

In my case, each division has its own rules and contacts for material that my audience is interested in. Some still won’t deal with blogs, some are beginning to reach out. But our primary audiences are – and I use this term endearingly – the super geeks. They have different needs than the average consumer. PR may only release one photo and no concept art, no details on the background story or interviews with the creator. Mass media gets all that at the press junkets, but I’m not invited, nor can I afford to attend events like that. Why would I want to repost the press release that they can get anywhere?

Q:  What could these companies do to put you out of business?

A: Hire me. They can’t put the fans out of business. There will always be a niche market for fan groups online and off. What they can do is feed our need to be brand defenders, not just brand critics.

Q:  Blogging is a hard way to make a living.  What motivates you to keep going?

A: I wish I was making a living at this. It pays the bills and helps with the costs involved in being a Disney fan. What keeps me going is the same thing that got me started: my passion for the subject matter.

Web ushers in age of ambient intimacy

Clive Thompson has a terrific feature in the International Herald Tribune about social networks and “ambient intimacy”, which is the phenomenon of sustaining relationships through casual awareness of what others are doing. Twitter and the Facebook News Feed are bringing new breadth to this concept, enabling people to glimpse others’ lives through occasional insights into their everyday activities. This intimacy becomes addictive. People who initially reject the News Feed as too intrusive or the constant stream of Twitter chatter as too overwhelming often find themselves drawn in to the point that monitoring the stream becomes addictive. There are also downsides to this phenomenon, in particular the lack of privacy and control over one’s own persona. The Internet was supposed to liberate people to reinvent themselves, but the arrival of tools that let anyone publish information about anyone else has actually done the opposite: it has given us less control over our own image.

tags: socialnetworking, twitter, facebook,

While I Talked, People Twittered – Pistachio

Laura Fitton invited me to post an item from my newsletter about speaking to an audience that was Twittering about my presentation. The article I posted kicked off an interesting round of discussion about the pros and cons of real-time feedback. Check out the comments.

tags: twitter

Tweet Grid

This service lets you create up to nine windows in a browser, each running a different Twitter query. It’s an interesting approach to bringing order to the wonderful chaos that is the tweetsphere.

tags: twitter, tools,

Google Confirms RSS For Web Search Results

Search Engine Land confirms that Google will soon make search results available as RSS feeds. You’ll have to set up a Google Alert first, though. Standard Web search results won’t be RSS-able. Google is currently the only major search engine not offering RSS feeds of web search results.

Kodak in Social Media Space

Jenny Cisney, who’s got the nice title of Chief Blogger for Kodak.com, lists all the ways to contact the company via social media. And there are quite a few!

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Between checking Marketwatch.com and commiserating with colleagues, it’s safe to say there wasn’t a lot of work getting done this week. Nervous investors flocked to the Web for some sign that the turmoil in the financial markets would soon die down.

With so much attention riveted on the future of the economy, this seems an ideal time for corporations to use their blogs to provide guidance and reassurance, or at least perspective, on the Wall Street meltdown. However, a quick tour of 15 prominent sites demonstrated that they were doing anything but that. Here’s a sampling:

Kodak‘s Thousand Words blog posted photos of Northern California scenery and humpback whales off the coast of New England.

Accenture has a perfectly aligned blog about Accelerating High-Performance Business.  It hasn’t been updated since early July.  There’s also an Accenture blog devoted to advice from experienced consultants.  That one hasn’t been updated in two months.

BenettonTalk took on the topic with its characteristic directness and left-wing advocacy.  It pointed to several articles from people who want to revamp the US financial, transportation and participative government systems.

Boeing is tied up with a strike, so it can perhaps be excused for not addressing bigger economic issues.  Randy’s Journal hasn’t.

Wal-Mart, which is one of the most important companies in America, posted two entries since the crisis began.  One was about its campaign to reduce plastic bag waste and the other clarified its strategy on digital rights management. I suppose that’s more important that the economy in some parallel universe.

Factory activity hit its lowest level in seven years last month. With that as a backdrop, Chrysler chose to devote space to test-driving the Dodge Challenger and a new model of its gas-guzzling RAM 1500 truck. It also posted a video of Chairman Bob Nardelli talking about electrical prototypes.  We can assume everything is just great at Chrysler.

As the Dow fell 777 points on Monday, Delta Airlines posted an item about its sponsorship of the World Business Forum in New York City.  Describing an event that covered “leadership, innovation, the intersection of politics and business, and the challenge of change,” the blog doesn’t say one word about a mounting financial crisis that touches on all those areas.

Give General Motors credit for trying to be topical.  Its September 29 entry presented Chairman Rick Wagoner making a case for government loans to automakers to meet more stringent fuel economy standards.  At least that’s newsworthy.

Johnson & Johnson talked about a visit to BlogWorld and a dinner honoring two esteemed scientists.

Bill Marriott, who is one of the few CEOs who blogs, commented proudly on Marriott’s selection to a list of best places to launch a career and more soberly on a hotel bombing in Pakistan.  Not a word about the outlook for the travel sector.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers has an article by David Phillips about the shortcomings of regulatory reports.  Of all the corporate blogs I checked, this was the only one that addressed the market turmoil directly.

Sony wrote about a charity it supports and the long-term viability of the Blu-Ray disc format.

Southwest Airlines talked about a new approach to speeding up lines at airport security and also a pilot’s experience during a particularly rough landing in Austin.  In 13 entries since September 17, there is only one passing reference to “the current mess on Wall Street.”

Toyota was happy to report that 48% of Lexus owners are repeat customers.  It also boasted about two new crossover vehicles as well as its ongoing work on hybrids.  I guess the US economic crisis is a domestic matter.

Wells Fargo says its Guided by History blog “allows our archivists and historians to provide a rich online experience that bridges events in the past and with an outlook on the future.” You’d think this would be a great time to look at past economic meltdowns for context the current turmoil. You would be wrong. Instead, the entry posted the day after the Dow’s record drop is a travel video.

My point isn’t to ridicule these companies as much as it is to demonstrate how far we still have to go in achieving the culture of openness that new media enables.  Here was an opportunity for some of America’s most respected corporations to offer guidance and thought leadership to frightened consumers.  Instead, most have chosen to serve up the same old happy-talk mush they’ve delivered for years.  That’s their right, but that isn’t leadership.

These are historic times that offer businesses the chance to break through the noise and do something daring and different. So far, corporate America has fumbled the opportunity. Perhaps, as the economic picture becomes clearer, some will start talking with their customers instead of marketing at them. That would be a welcome development. I’ll keep an eye out for you.

• The 140-character attention span

  Lest you think David Strom is an old fogey for not getting on the Twitter bandwagon, remember that the guy has been a fingernails-dirty tech reviewer for over 20 years. But enthusiastic as he is, he still just doesn’ t get the appeal of Twitter. Sure, he understands what it does and why it’s so popular, but there’s something about the constant ADD-like distraction of instant messages that offends the book-reader sensibility in him.

• How agencies tackle social media

  iMediaConnection has video clips from over a dozen professional marketers and agency professionals discussing the future of social media. One message is clear: this is a sea change in marketing.

• FT.com / Companies / Media & internet – Google still struggling to conquer outposts

  Google may rule the roost in the US, but not overseas. For example, Yandex, which handles 46 per cent of search queries in Russia, has been preparing since the spring for a listing on the US stock market. Seznam, which controls 63 per cent of Czech searches, has been the subject of a number of buy-out approaches. Google is trying to build its online reputation, but the task is difficult against entrenched rivals.

• Porn passed over as Web users become social: author | Technology | Internet | Reuters

  Social networking sites are the hottest attraction on the Internet, dethroning pornography and highlighting a major change in how people communicate, according to a web guru.

  
  

While strolling through Pet Rock 2008, the annual festival in east-central Massachusetts that brings hundreds of dog owners together in a celebration of their pooches, I was struck by the old cliche that dog owners and their pets frequently look alike. I started snapping examples of where I thought that was true. While the cliche is by no means universally true, there are some striking similarities in some cases. Just for fun, here are a few examples.

• Study: 58% Aren’t Familiar With Social Networking

  More than half the people surveyed by Synovate said they don’t know what social networking is. Perhaps more interesting that a third said they’re getting tired of the networks they belong to.

  Synovate says it “spoke to” more than 13,000 people globally (we doubt that; this was probably an online survey). While the results aren’t statistically valid, there are some interesting international comparisons. The Dutch and Canadians are more active social network users, although the Canadians are losting interest faster. They prefer MySpace to Facebook. The Japanese are losing interest the fastest.

  tags: daily_reading, social_network, research

• destinationCRM.com: A Company Like Me | Diigo

  Paul Greenberg believes that businesses have to develop the same kinds of relationships with customers that customers develop with their friends. This is difficult to do, but in the new customer-empowered world, it’s the only way to gain a sustainable edge. Do your customers trust you as much as they trust each other? Is there something you can do to earn that level of trust? Read this thought-provoking article for a very lucid perspective on the changes being brought about by social media.

  tags: daily_reading, crm

• Events Industry: Robust Growth Through 2011

  Events are emerging as the brighit spot of an otherwise dismal media industry. A new white paper sees growth of 5.5 percent annually through 2011, with biggest opportunities overseas.

  tags: daily_reading, events

• Gap Widens in Online Advertising

  Online advertising continues to grow at a 20% annual clip but search is pulling away as the vehicle of choice. Search ads are forecast to represent 42% of overall U.S. online ad spending in 2008, according to eMarketer, up from 40% in 2007.

  tags: daily_reading, google, search, advertising

• Google Chrome is fastest browser

  A variety of independent tests have established that Google’s new Chrome browser is the fastest on the market, particularly when running javascript applications.

  tags: daily_reading, google

• Facebook micro-payments total $35 million, VC says

  Facebook may book $35 million in small-dollar virtual gifts this year, or about 10% of its total revenue, estimates venture capitalist Jeremy Liew. This indicates that people are willing to pay good money for items that have no practical value, as long as the sentiment is there. Facebook could be an innovator in creating the kind of micro-payments system that has been unsuccessful in other markets.

  tags: daily_reading, facebook