Disqus - Latest Comments for Kevin Briody

Re: RIP The Yellow Pages

Kevin Briody — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 17:01:25 -0000

I couldn't agree more - our yellow pages simply don't see the light of day anymore. I actually dread getting the new one delivered every year. Just so much more to recycle. To Ross' comment, fair point. I think we're both just relating to our own circumstances - in the 'burbs in the US where i live, there just isn't much future in old-style yellow pages.

Re: Some things should have been left back in the 90s

Kevin Briody — Wed, 04 May 2005 21:19:18 -0000

Larry makes a good point - the issue is about communicating a value proposition in clean and direct language. Too many companies simply use marketing speak to "fancy up" their messaging, at the expense of making sense.

Re: Twitter Spam Spirals Out of Control

Kevin Briody — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 12:33:53 -0000

A lot of these spammers do it to try and grab people who still use "auto follow" - the setting where you automatically follow anyone who follows you. Simple disable that and I think a lot of perceived attractiveness for Tweet spammers would disappear.

That and CAPTCHA - I agree with everyone else, frsutrating the ability to use bots to mass follow would likely help a great deal.

Re: Why I’m not a "Social Media Strategist"…

Kevin Briody — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:22:00 -0000

Sean - I meant to comment on this months ago, but fell down on that goal. Just stumbled back across this now, so here you go:

Personally I think "social media" is being just abused to death by agencies and consultants right now. It, along with "digital" (Digital Media Manager, Digital Communications Mgr, etc) are both in vogue though I can see them having somewhat short lifespans as they speak to the specific tools and not the desired impact.

My preference is to characterize this kind of work as community marketing - what you do to is help companies connect to and build relationships with communities (users, potential influencers, partners, etc). "Community" referring to the general idea, and not the tools themselves (forums, portals, blogs, etc).

That said, it too probably is as good or bad as any of the others. Pot-A-to vs pot-AH-to, and so on. :)

Re: Has/How/Why tech blogging has failed you

Kevin Briody — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:06:11 -0000

Good post and great comment stream. A couple reactions:

"Bickering" and the like (from a commenter) - I think this more than anything has caused me to substantially reduce the amount of tech/geek/gadget/etc blogs I subscribe to. So often otherwise good blogs and eloquent writers degenerate into name calling and finger pointing - Arrington did this, Winer yelled that, Calacanis spun this, Scoble claimed that, etc. My view of podcasting is still stained thanks to reading all the Curry vs. Winer stuff years ago. It gets old - we all have enough stress and drama in our lives, we look to tech blogs to talk about...tech.

Tech blogs as PR outlets - having seen this first hand (worked on a PR team for a major tech company, reaching out to bloggers), I can say you are 100% spot on. Some of the highest trafficked tech blogs are nowadays indistinguishable from "traditional" news sources, albeit faster to the story and with more snark. They want (demand in many cases) the scoop or exclusivity, as that first 2 min of a story garner all the traffic. And traffic drives ad revenue, which is really all that matters. They love embargoes so long as it gets them "in" on early news or reviews, get invited to the cool parties and treated like royalty, etc. It's all part of the game, which has taken a chunk of the fun out of blogs as you mentioned. It also turned me off a lot of them when I jumped out of that game - why read them when they all print mostly the same story? I mostly read bloggers now with strong opinions and fun angles, with an occasional techmeme wander to see if anything big is happening.