Dishing on the Digital Universe

Recently I had the displeasure of participating in an odd PR fire drill. I had scheduled a release to go out several days later, pending final customer review.  Because of our structure I don’t handle the wire service but rely on someone else to help in that area. When we can, we queue up the release with the wire service and with our Web team early.

Imagine my dismay when the customer alerted us that they had seen it on the Web — five days before it was supposed to go live. My manager and I spent a good 30 hours or so tracking down what had happened. At first, because stories that appeared had their origin with a UK wire service, we figured that one of our EMEA teams was trigger happy and sent it out prematurely. But no, after going through all the channels we were still a little stumped — no one appeared to have sent it out. The wire service was on a UK bank holiday and was unresponsive (which was odd to me…US wires are reachable 24/7, 365).

Finally the answer surfaced. It turned out that there was some sort of Web glitch that pushed the release to the site early. It appeared on our own company site for a few hours. When the error was realized it was immediately removed. Unfortunately, in those hours, the damage had been done.

Most people in our own company never noticed. Editors didn’t pick up the news early (then again it wasn’t material news so perhaps if it had been so that may not have been the case). The customer might never have realized. Except for the little job of scraping that the UK wire service did in those hours when the release was live. The service pulled the release off our site then pushed it live over their wire which meant pickup by sites that rely on wire services to receive their news. Sites like Yahoo and Google Finance, TradingMarkets.com and more. The kind of Web sites that executives and investors tend to read every day. The kind of Web sites that are sure to be noticed by all the wrong people if you are trying to fix a mistake.

But what exactly is scraping? And why do companies and individuals do it? Wikipedia describes it thus:

Web scraping (sometimes called harvesting) generically describes any of various means to extract content from a website over HTTP for the purpose of transforming that content into another format suitable for use in another context. Those who scrape websites may wish to store the information in their own databases or manipulate the data within a spreadsheet (Often, spreadsheets are only able to contain a fraction of the data scraped). Others may utilize data extraction techniques as means of obtaining the most recent data possible, particularly when working with information subject to frequent changes. Investors analyzing stock prices, realtors researching home listings, meteorologists studying weather, or insurance salespeople following insurance prices are a few individuals who might fit this category of users of frequently updated data.

Access to certain information may also provide users with strategic advantage in business. Attorneys might wish to scrape arrest records from county courthouses in search of potential clients. Businesses that know the locations of competitors can make better decisions about where to focus further growth. Another common, but controversial use of information taken from websites is reposting scraped data to other sites.

Have you ever been to one of those blogs where it seems like there is content but it really just regurgitates other information from places? Most likely it was scraped. Like this one, which snagged some strange little portion of my post on books. At least in that case it linked back to me. I’m rather loathe to link to it (I denied the ping on my blog already) but, for the sake of explanation, there you go.

Scraping helps to raise Web rank for those sites…if they link back to my post it may show up as a pingback, which in turn is another link back. And savvy marketers know that raising Google rank is done through linkbacks. The more sites you have linking in the higher your ranking is.  In many cases it has to do with helping push advertising on a site. But in some cases, like the one above that linked my book post — I can’t figure out for the life of me what the purpose is. Anyone care to enlighten? My thought is that they plan on implementing Google AdSense for revenue or they used to have ads and they were yanked.

In the case of the UK press wire, I suspect that they are working to proliferate their name across the Web in conjunction with as many press releases as possible. The more people see their name related to an announcement the more they think that the service is popular (we humans are rather sheeplike in that sense…automatically assuming that popularity is an indicator of level of service — we all covet that thy neighbor has). The more their name is out there (especially on “press releases” that appear to originate with big brand companies), the more likely that people will recognize them and come back to them to pay for services. Smart but VERY shady in my opinion.

When someone else scrapes your Web site it can help with raising awareness about your own site. In the case of that wire service picking up our news it helps to proliferate the information to a variety of places that we may not have paid for through our subscription to BusinessWire. The more awareness on a legitimate press release, the better, in my opinion.

However, you may not want all that extra dissemination. If so, what can you do to combat your Website from being scraped? Again, Wikipedia lists a few measures that Web masters can take:

Technical measures to stop bots

A web master can use various measures to stop or slow a bot. Some techniques include:

• Blocking an IP address. This will also block all browsing from that address.
• If the application is well behaved, adding entries to robots.txt will be adhered to. You can stop Google and other well-behaved bots this way.
• Sometimes bots declare who they are. Well behaved ones do (for example ‘googlebot’). They can be blocked on that basis. Unfortunately, malicious bots may declare they are a normal browser.
• Bots can be blocked by excess traffic monitoring.
• Bots can be blocked with tools to verify that it is a real person accessing the site, such as the CAPTCHA project.
• Sometimes bots can be blocked with carefully crafted Javascript.
• Locating bots with a honeypot or other method to identify the IP addresses of automated crawlers.

Additional resources:

• What’s with all those Spam ping-bots?
• Catching Unwanted Spiders and Content Scraping Bots in ASP.NET
• Stop RSS Feed Scraping (Wordpress Plugin)
• Stop Rogue Web Bots from Eating BandWidth and Stealing Content (2005 but seems relevant)

Scraping is sometimes used in other ways, such as described in this recent Wired article. Mashups are one way that bots can be used to pull information from a Web site and to reformat it into better and easier ways to find and navigate the information. Users may benefit from this sort of bot/scraping usage but corporations are faced with bandwidth issues, copyright infringement and more importantly, lost revenue.

Overall, this is a great lesson for companies though — doublecheck the methods that you use to make sure releases don’t land on your Web site before you want them to. Once they hit the Web site you may no longer have control over the material. Serious food for thought huh?

There are a lot of excellent posts out there about how to best use Twitter, so rather than rehash those, I’ll recap them below.

However, from my own experience, there are a couple of things that corporations using Twitter may want to think of up front. Most importantly though:

Decide how you want to use Twitter and based upon that you’ll know the best way to administer — and in turn, how to acquire followers for — your Twitter feed.

For example, if you decide to primarily use it as a means to provide updates, then having a visible administrator who interacts with the community may not be as important. Media companies often go this route as do many larger companies. It also means that you can’t easily acquire Twitter followers by following them and hoping they follow you back…that move tends to be pretty transparent to users. You’ll also notice that companies that choose to use Twitter to update tend to either follow everyone that joins or not not follow anyone at all (or perhaps only other company Twitters or employees who Twitter). Companies that you use Twitter this way don’t usually respond to Twitter questions through @ responses — either they may not respond (not ideal IMHO) or will use direct messages instead.

The tricky thing about this route is that you have to actively promote your Twitter feed in other ways to acquire followers. Add a badge or a link to your Web site. Include the Twitter link in your signatures, press releases and customer newsletters. Add to your event invites. Get creative.

Examples:

CNN Breaking News
ITPro
PodTech
Apple News
HPNews
IBMTivoli
Dr. Horrible (not a corporation but a good example…if you haven’t seen Dr. Horrible, get thee there, quick!)

And since, I mentioned that promotion is key in other ways, let me take this opportunity to shamelessly help my own company (CA, Inc.) promote some of our new Twitter feeds which we’re just getting off the ground:

CAgrc (governance, risk, compliance)
CAmainframe
CAInfoGov (brand new, soon to be populated information governance info)

The other route that companies often take are to use Twitter to help open up a dialogue with their customers, which is what JetBlue and Forrester are doing. JetBlue is not using the feed just for updates though, they have actively invited questions, which is a different way to look at using Twitter. In general though, I recommend at least mentioning in the bio who is doing all the replying to questions and responses.

Other companies give their employees the freedom to interact with their audience directly, helping to promote the human side of their business. Comcast Cares is the one that I see most frequently mentioned. But the poster child for giving employees Twitter freedom is Zappos. Not only is the CEO a prominent Tweeter but they’ve also aggregated all their employee Twits and all the comments left by other Twitterers on their company Web site.

But I said I wasn’t going to rehash so instead I’ll point you to some of the best posts this week…and there have been some very very good ones:

• Chris Brogan on 50 Ideas on Using Twitter for Business
• SocializedPR on Seven Rules for Establishing a Corporate Presence on Twitter
• Gartner Analysts decry Facebook, Twitter bans at work

Related articles by Zemanta

• Web Strategy: The Evolution of Brands on Twitter
• Blogging vs Microblogging
• Why Brands Are Unsuccessful in Twitter

Let me ask one of the most popular business questions currently on the Net. Why do social media and Internet marketing matter for companies?

And the answer: Because your customers are using it. Granted, they may be using it to meet people, network and share, but one of the key things that they are also doing is influencing each other.

Case in point. I’ve got the Applebox blog in my RSS reader…smart, funny, entertaining and she loves cats so even if I didn’t know her sister I would feel an affinity for much of what she writes about. Today I ran across a post she wrote about the Furminator. I was intrigued for several reasons.

1. She wrote glowingly about this crazy cat brush on her blog.
2. She described the Amazon reviews as “orgasmic,” a term that may harken back to her witty post title but more importantly adequately describes the fervor by which the reviewers talked about how well this brush worked. As a company, wouldn’t you love to see such gushing love for your product?
3. She was inspired to purchase the darn thing as a result of reading a review by one of the more famous bloggers, Dooce.

You might see where I’m going with this. One thing to keep in mind — I wasn’t even looking for or even THINKING of buying a catbrush.

So at this point, I’m intrigued. Someone I trust has recommend a product and she points to many others who endorse the same product.

The steps I took to determine whether or not I really was going to buy this funny catbrush:

1. Scanned through the 284 (!!) positive reviews on Amazon. (Note that the dog version had well over 1,000 reviews!)
2. Did a quick websearch, mostly looking to see if I can find it for less than the $22 Amazon price, which seems like a lot for a brush.
3. See that there are a slew of YouTube links demonstrating the brush. Spend 15 minutes going oooh ahhh at all the fur that this brush seems to pull up.
4. I’m SOLD. But I’m still hung up on the $22 price so I go to NextTag and BizRate to search for a better price.
5. I determine that Amazon does indeed have one of the better prices plus since I have Prime I don’t pay for shipping.
6. My husband suggests that we wait and see if the natural pet store we go to for Romeo’s food has one, so we’ll do that later today.  If they don’t have it, I’ll just head back to Amazon.

One of the biggest take-aways from this, if you are reading, should be the realization that in this process,
I NEVER WENT TO THE COMPANY’S WEB SITE.

I’ve worked with companies that assume that, “well of course the customer will come to us FIRST to find out about our product! We don’t need to worry about blogs or social media.”

Maybe. But maybe not. The thing is, customers no longer need to rely on the company to find out about that same company’s products and services. They can go to their peers, their network (asking questions on their blogs, Twitter, Facebook), search engines, YouTube, etcetera. The reason I am going to buy that FURminator catbrush is because I have the testimonies of the masses, not because I read some marketing jargon on the homepage of the FURminator Web site.

What does that mean for companies? It means that not only do you have to start thinking about how to create superior products that will engender such loving praise among buyers but that you need to listen to what people are saying around the Web. Be in those places where people are talking. Don’t assume that your own company web site is the first place that a potential customer will go for information — it may be the second place or the third, or not at all. If that’s the case, make sure you know what is out there…what the pros and cons are in the ongoing discussion. Use the Web to share additional information. Get your videos up on YouTube. Put whitepapers out wherever people will read them — not just on your Web site where they have to fill out a tedious sales form to get information (because remember, they don’t even need to go to your site anymore so why would they bother filling out a form?). Participate in discussions on blogs and forums around the Web. Be visible and make it apparent that you are listening and that company policies and products are being shaped by what the consumers want. Look at the potential of the Web to build relationships. In a word, participate. Don’t just sit back and assume that if you build it, they will come. Because with the Web, they may not have to.

I posted over on my writing blog about some cool sites for people who love books. So you don’t have an annoying redirect, here is the repost.

 — 

In the event you haven’t stumbled on any of these yet, I thought I’d share a few of the cool new bookish/literary sites that I’ve run across.

1. LIbraryThing
   I’m on there as Crystallyn if anyone wants to friend me. The best site (in my opinion) for cataloging books, reviews and talking with other book lovers.  The book recommendation engine doesn’t seem to be as well-refined as Shelfari
2. Shelfari
   Shelfari is new to me so I’m still digging in (again, my username is Crystallyn so friend me up!). It gives you a better graphical representation of your bookshelf than LibraryThing does but it’s not quite as feature rich.
3. GoodReads
   Again, I’m there as Crystallyn. Similar to LibraryThing, GoodReads has a bit more of the social aspect to it, recommending friends and helping you connect with other readers.
4. WeRead
   I imagine that many people know this site through the Facebook application, iRead. It’s similar to LibraryThing, Shelfari and GoodReads. I found that in order to use the Web site that I needed to create a new account, so I’ll stick with iRead in Facebook, which allows me to catalog books and “chuck” books at friends.
5. TitlePage TV
   Television for book lovers! Author interviews, forums and more. If you want to find new books and find out more about the authors, this is your place.
6. Bookcrossing
   Feel bad about all the books piling up? Not sure you want to donate them to a library where they may get tossed anyway? Give them away for free, randomly, around the world. That’s right, leave a book in a subway seat, tagged with special info. Then head to Bookcrossing.com and track your book. See where it ends up!
7. Kindle Social Network
   A newer site, the Kindle Social Network aims to hook up Kindle lovers in a forum to talk about the device, where to get great books and to discuss the books they are currently reading.
8. Listal
   Again, on there as Crystallyn. LIstal is a social network not just for book lovers, but for lovers of media and entertainment. Besides books you can also catalog DVDs, music, television and video games. Find friends, get recommends and discuss!
9. LibraryElf
   Ever have fines on library books? Now you can get alerts before books are due, track multiple library cards and get text alerts for holds.  Some libraries are already doing this through their own Web sites but if not, this looks to be a great, free service.

(Gmail Fail Whale from Running with Foxes)

Yesterday’s failure of Gmail did one thing that was quite remarkable. It highlighted how successful and important that Twitter has become. Within minutes of it going down, thousands of people were using Twitter to find out if their situation was unique. As I mentioned yesterday, 75-100 tweets a minute were flooding in reporting the Gmail outage. It was such a phenomenon that traditional news sources not only reported on the Google outage but how much abuzz the Internet was about the gmail failure.

We’ve heard about how Twitter “beat out” regular media in reporting the big earthquake in China a few months back. Even Twitter has described itself as a “personal news-wire service.”  The Twittersphere response to the GMail Fail is testament to how true that has become. It was the first place I went to not only share my frustration, but also, and more importantly, find out if others were also experiencing the same. I knew that within minutes someone would either answer me and tell me that I was crazy or that I would be able to search and find out that others were equally frustrated.

I find it ironic, actually, that it is Twitter that scooped the news. People love Twitter on the same level that people used to love Google. Google used to be the darling of the Net and could barely do any wrong. Now that they are so large and their empire is so great there is still love, but it’s not that driving crazed passion that people used to have for the company. Like they now have for Twitter. I’m talking the kind of passion (see above picture) that inspires hundreds of people to create their own Fail Whales. There is even a fan club!

Google, however, knows the importance of staying in the good graces and has followed up with an apology on their Gmail blog. We heard loud and clear today how much people care about their Gmail accounts. We followed all the emails to our support team and user group, we fielded phone calls from Google Apps customers and friends, and we saw the many Twitter posts. (We also heard from plenty of Googlers, who use Gmail for company email.) We never take for granted the commitment we’ve made to running an email service that you can count on.

Google paid attention. They saw what was happening to their brand. They monitored the noise. They apologized and humbly recognized the value that people place on their service.

Google is ( as they should be), clued in so they, like many editors do, paid attention in realtime to the buzz in the Twittersphere. News that comes across Twitter is immediate. More and more editors are realizing the value of getting information from Twitter in real-time in order to discover new stories. And, just like editors, savvy companies should be watching Twitter search regularly to monitor conversations about their products, company and brand. Consumers are using Twitter to finding ways to share everything related to brands they love and hate and marketers need to listen and pay attention.

A few moments with Twitter yesterday probably told Google more about what the problem with the email was than all other inputs combined. My post yesterday outlined what I was able to discern in the space of five minutes using Twitter search. That’s incredible power for a company who pays attention.

If you aren’t already, start listening.

One moment I was in and navigated away briefly. I came back, opening a new tab and get the “Temporary Error (502)” for my Gmail. I’ve been a Gmail user since the very early days and have had barely any issues ever so this was new to me.

So I went to Twitter and tweeted my problem and did a cursory search to see if I was the only one or not. Definitely not. In the small print there, you can see that 210 MORE results have come in since my last search (that is within the space of 2 min). On average, Twitter is receiving 75-100 tweets a minute about Gmail being down!

Looking back at the page now, over 626 tweets have come in in the last five minutes.

That’s fascinating on many levels. Annoying and frustrating because the service is down, true (I imagine my 65 year old father is freaking out right now not realizing what’s going on), but also fascinating in watching how quickly the world was alerted that there was a problem.

By reading the Tweets you can discern a few key things very very quickly:

• It’s both Gmail and Google Apps users.
• If you were already logged in you seem to be ok.
• It’s worldwide. People are tweeting in from everywhere.
• For some it comes up momentarily then crashes again.
• There are one hell of a lot of Gmail users on Twitter.
• If you are reading gmail through a POP service you are fine…appears to be HTML specific.

The Huffington Post has already beaten me to the blog punch, as I’m sure many others have:  GMail Down, Internet Resorts to 140 Character Complaints.

For me I am blown away by the fire that can be started via Twitter. It’s the ultimate word-of-mouth machine, shaping the news in a way that is both amazing and frightening. Frightening if you are the company on fire, that is.

Google is posting a few updates on their forum, but oddly, are ignoring the power of their blog to communicate to their customers.

I’m especially interested to see how Google will talk about the outage and how the blogosphere will respond. I’m envisioning many “Fail Whale” parodies to start appearing on Flickr (just found the first). Talk about a meme in progress!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Gmail’s Out…Again
• Rant: Is This The Worst Week In Google’s History?
• Gmail Goes Down - Twitter Survives
• Gmail Outage Prompts Google Mea Culpa, Panic Subsides
• Where are you left if the Cloud goes down?

Last week there was a letter to the editor in MediaPost’s Online Media Daily Section Three:

Email Generation Gap
RE: Emailing It In (Mobile Insider, 08/07)

From: Kimmie Smith,  Kitten Lounge
I am 28, and my mom is great at emailing me — but many times the things that she replies could be sent in a text message, or, since I have TwitterBerry, she could just use that. With everything that’s out now, it does seem like a lot to sit down and have an email when in under 140 characters you can sum up the essence of your conversation. It’s amazing how literally everyday there is a new application that makes the one you downloaded last week seem like it’s already a dinosaur!

It reminded me of my undergrad business communications classes I taught at UMass Boston. I had to reiterate that using text abbreviations for business is not the norm. And that while it’s great to be simple in conveying your message, you need to provide a greater context in many cases.

Texting also eliminates much of the emotional, human side of communicating with others. I find this to be true when I’m Twittering. When I break down a message to 140 characters I have to strip out much of my own personality that would normally color such messages. I think that, unless you are a prolific Twitterer, it is hard for someone to really get to know you in that medium. There isn’t enough of you that bleeds through the few characters you are able to post.

I read this email not long after I had  a conversation that I had with a Swedish regular at the local bar my husband and I frequent. We had talked briefly about hooking up for dinner and to text him and let him know what worked for me. I told him that he would be one of the only people I may text, not because I myself am opposed to texting, but because I just don’t know that many people who text. He was surprised…he says he texts everyone he knows. But I just don’t know of many people. Well, aside from my dear friend Angela who always texts me on birthdays and holidays. I do text from time to time though. I use Twitterberry when I’m updating Twitter when I’m out and about. And on random occasions I’ll text my husband or my sister, but neither of them ever text me back. Instead when I talk to them next they’ll mention they got it.

In fact, the people I do know that text frequently tend to be younger (I’ve got nearly 10 years on Ms. Kimmie) or they tend to be European. Still, more and more people are using text messages to communicate, with the Mobile Data Association reporting that there is a 30% annual increase in the number of mobile phone messages being sent, with 212,616,000 SMS text messages are being sent every day.

Still, Habeas, a secure e-mail service provider, commissioned news polling company Ipsos on a survey that found that:

• Sixty-seven percent of respondents prefer email as a communications channel over other online vehicles and 65 percent believe this will continue to be the case in five years.
• Consumer opinion of the future importance of email registered far above future expectations for video conferencing (19 percent), instant messaging (17 percent), SMS text messages (12 percent) and Web meetings (12 percent).
• Sixty-five percent of the demographic between the ages of 18 to 34, the age demographic most comfortable with IM, SMS and emerging communications methods, will favor email to communicate with businesses in five years.

This last point is interesting in light of the original email I cited. I wonder if Kimmie will change her tune as she gets a bit older, preferring the larger context of email for communications.  Texting doesn’t really work well for business use. I even become confused/frustrated with some of the Blackberry messages that I receive from colleagues that are too short to convey true meaning. I can’t imagine replacing most of my email message communications with friends by using texts. Maybe it’s the writer in me, but I just need more space, more information, a way to make sure my words and intent is clear. It will be interesting to see how the habits of the millenials and gen-y will change as they age. Technology is also bound to change as well — what will be the next killer technology to replace texting?

I do think that texting probably hits home a bit more in the US with my generation and above, not so much as a two-way communication tool, but rather as a way to receive alerts. In and amongst the mobile twitters I choose to receive I do receive the random alert on what is happening in the Heroes world or what the story is with the weather.

And now, you can find out INSTANTLY (before it even is Twittered) who Barack Obama decides for a running mate. Talk about an up-to-the-minute alert! Not sure why that matters so much if you find out first or second, but if you really care,  here’s the link. I do think that this tactic is interesting, playing off of people’s need for instant gratification, while scoring them more email addys and phone numbers. From a marketing perspective, I find it a great idea.

Oh, and something else to keep in mind: texting can be dangerous.

The buzz in the PR blogosphere is all about the SEC ruling that companies will soon be able to use their corporate Website and blogs as a means to share financial information. This is big news that will most likely change the way that the industry looks at press releases. Earnings releases in particular will most likely undergo a revolution as they can be quite costly to ship to the wire in their present format. Companies will be able to save considerable amounts of money by posting the earnings information on their Web site and allowing investors to subscribe through RSS or receive updates via email. Companies may still opt to send information over the wire but I imagine that rather than spending thousands on a full length, detailed release with charts, graphs and the like, a paragraph will go out alerting interested parties to the appropriate link where they can find more information.

Pundits are already speculating that this announcement will mean the death of the traditional press release. Instead, companies may turn toward the social media release (or SMR) as a means of disseminating information. While not actually new (SHIFT Communications published their SMR template way back in 2006), they are just now starting to gain traction in the market place. Essentially, SMRs are a way to provide information to both search engines and editors by creating better channels for information rather than “spinning” a story that may not be as relevant as a full body of material that could be provide by video, audio and key links. For an interesting discussion by PR/marketing Pros : Chris Heur, Shel Holtz, Tom Foremski and Brian Solis on the topic, check out the recent New Media Podcast.

Several companies have already embraced the Social Media Release, most noticeably in the space I frequent by Oracle. Click that link and you’ll see the difference in press release structure. Clear soundbytes, bullet points, links to additional information and supporting quotes. Editors get the information they need to write the story and the links are snatched up by search engines, driving traffic to other relevant Oracle points of interest. GM, IBM and Symantec are all starting to meddle in creating SMRs rather than traditional releases.

Implementing this new format may be a challenge for some companies. At CA we’re currently bandying about discussion regarding the potential but implementation is not as easy as it may sound. Right now the process is somewhat simple. Spit out a written press release, stick it on the wire, then turn it over to the marketing channels for whatever dissemination that they see fit. With an SMR that is turned on its head. Suddenly the marketing team needs to be involved up front. There may be more planning needed that isn’t specific to the realm of PR. If you are including video, who is creating it? Who is in it? Where is the audio coming from? Are there accompanying webinars and seminars? What blog posts might correspond? Who does the company need to line up in order to make sure that the appropriate content is ready before the SMR goes live? It becomes more involved up front than the traditional press release and for that reason alone I think it may be awhile before there is widespread adoption of the true “social media” part of the release.

I think what you may see are companies doing a bit more of what Oracle is doing — changing up the format and perhaps including links but not necessarily including video and audio. For example, a recent higher education momentum release only pointed to other parts of the Oracle website. Nothing revolutionary there other than the new format.

For big companies with lots of moving parts there may be two sides to the picture. On one hand there is more money to create content, but getting marketing and PR to work in tandem might be more of a challenge, especially if there is a steady schedule of SMRs that are planned by the PR department. If marketing’s focus is creating leads vs. visibility (unfortunately many companies divide marketing and PR up in this way), the marketing team may be more interested in creating sales presentations and buying mailing lists for email campaigns than creating videos and podcasts to accompany SMRs. Small companies may not have the time or money to do anything elaborate with video and audio so may also feel challenged in making the switch.

Eventually demand will drive the market, but the SMR is still somewhat nascent. It will be interesting to see if the ability to use the Web for earnings vs. using the wire really helps to facilitate that change. I’d love to hear about companies that have successfully implemented SMRs and from companies that are considering the switch (such as we are at CA). What benefits and challenges (if any) do you see to using SMRs over traditional releases?

Del.icio.us is one of those rare sites that has been around for many years and has hardly undergone a single revision when it comes to design. I’ve always been ok with that because part of what makes the service so wonderful is its overall simplicity. If I had any beef with the bookmarking site it was that organizing tags tended to be a little bit tedious.

The new design is definitely better looking with more emphasis on subscriptions and networking than before — which makes sense given the 2.0 world that we’re now in.

The settings option does give a bit more clarity on how to manage tags, subscriptions and bundles but if you have a lot to organize it will still take you quite a bit of time. BUT the best part of the redesign is how you tag when you are saving your bookmark. There are more visuals and you can easily send the bookmark to people in your network.

Most users will be happiest about the new domain name you can use: www.delicious.com Finally, much easier to type!

I’m excited about the changes and digging in and getting my feet wet with the new design.

More news on the del.icio.us launch:

• ReadWriteWeb: Delicious Finally Launches Version 2.0
• del.icio.us 2.0 announced as Digg deal eats dirt for Google
• Yahoo gives Delicious more speed, fewer punctuation marks
• A tasty new look for social bookmarking