Quick News: How Upworthy became the fastest growing website in history, meet Line: the biggest social network you never heard of; Ragan promo;

News That Fits: Discussion about IABC; Michael Netzley reports from Singapore on rural India’s enthusiastic adoption of the mobile internet, and news from around Asia; Twitter is evolving: analytics and #FollowMe; the language of social images; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; listener comments: feedback from and about Speakpipe, our experimental new audio comment service, and from listeners via Google+ and Facebook; Deskcamping connects businesses with spare desks and freelancers; recording on an iPad with Hokusai, Dan York reports on Google+ enhancements and Facebook hashtags; the Washington Post joins the sponsored content fray;

Shel’s at the IABC conference next week and won’t be live on the show; music from Zac Mac Band; and more.

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Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for June 17, 2013: A 91-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

• FIR #708 bookmarks on Delicious

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+.

You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday June 24…

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

The second LeWeb London conference took place earlier this month when 1,200 or so people gathered in London  – joined by thousands more via the net – to hear other people talk about the sharing economy.

That dry description belies the dynamism and exuberance of this seminal biz/tech conference and exhibition  that has grown from the social homebrew kick-start days of blogging nearly a decade ago to being arguably the most influential European conference of its type today.

I was there on June 5 and 6, at the splendid Methodist Central Hall just across the way from the Houses of Parliament,  as one of the official bloggers. It was my first LeWeb since 2006 although I did parachute in via Google+ Hangout On Air sessions in London and Paris last year. Huge fun!

In actually being physically there this time, my goal was mostly to listen – to meet interesting people and hear interesting ideas. And that is exactly what happened.

I met up with my good friend Silvia Cambie – who along with her colleague Gloria Lombardi have written terrific perspectives of their experiences of LeWeb – and we shared some of our own thoughts about what we saw and heard as we saw and heard them (and we chatted about some of that on a Simply TV interview on June 7).

Last week, on June 10, I spoke of my impressions of LeWeb London 2013 in a 10-minute report on episode 707 of For Immediate Release, the weekly business podcast I co-host with Shel Holtz. I’ve embedded that specific clip below if you’d like to listen here and now (and feel free to download it if you prefer):

You might want to listen to the whole podcast episode as after my report, Shel and I continued talking about LeWeb for another five minutes or so.

In my report, I highlighted these standouts:

The audio-visual spectacle that was the “LeWeb experience” in terms of how the plenary room and each of the session rooms were decorated, lit,  audio’d; in essence, the full experience. Awesome, in a word.

You can get a sense of that from the many photos taken in or of the plenary room, such as these from my LeWeb London set on Flickr.

After a few teething troubles at the start of day 1, the wifi turned out to be excellent. As I mentioned in the FIR report, there were Cisco routers everywhere you looked, even peeking from behind John Wesley.

The Official Bloggers I met were a great bunch. The blogger programme was very ably set up and managed by Ricardo Sousa who set the bar pretty high for future such programmes at LeWeb.

We did have some group photos taken on the last day but I can’t find any of them online. So until I can, here’s one I made, a selfie during the photo shoot.

The stand-out blogger for me was Adam Tinworth who live-blogged much of the two days. Excellent posts, great content and full of detail. (Adam’s very good at this, as I know from his work at the last B2B Huddle in May.)

Of the many speakers, a half-dozen of all I saw and heard really made a strong impression on me. Not only because of what they said – good though it all was – it was also in the telling of their stories: how they said it and the attention their story-telling attracted.

You can watch video recordings of each of those speakers – either presenting to the audience or in conversation with LeWeb founder Loic LeMeur -  and see what you think:

• Joe Gebbia, Co-Founder, Airbnb. Standout: describing the early days of Airbnb and how it got started.
• Jeremiah Owyang, Partner, Altimeter Group. Standout: immaculate preparation and, hence, an attention-grabbing presentation.
• Jeremy Stoppelman, Founder and CEO, Yelp. Standout: a natural, relaxed and credible speaker.
• Martin Varsavsky, Founder and CEO, Fon. Standout: I’ve seen Varsavsky speak before and it’s a always a pleasure to see and hear someone so passionate in his business beliefs.
• Alexa Varsavsky, Co-Founder, Modabound. Standout: Like father, like daughter!
• John Perry Barlow, Co-Founder, Electronic Frontier Foundation. Standout: the first time I’ve seen the legendary original hippie and Grateful Dead songwriter in the flesh speaking. Truly memorable.

These are but six of the 38 individuals who spoke at LeWeb London 2013 and who were video-recorded in wonderful high definition – check them all out on YouTube.

As I mentioned earlier, my major goal in being at LeWeb London was to meet interesting people and hear interesting ideas. That also enabled me to record two special interviews that I published earlier this week as FIR Interview podcasts:

• FIR Interview: Festicket Founders at #LeWeb London. Zacharie Sabban (CEO) and Jonathan Younes (CTO).
• FIR Interview: Rossi Mitova, CEO and Co-Founder Farmhopping, at #LeWeb London.

A final congratulatory word must go to Loic LeMeur and Géraldine LeMeur, the two founders of the LeWeb conferences, for their peerless dedication and outstanding presences over almost a decade with a brand that has now moved to a new level.

Take a look at what others have said about LeWeb London 2013. And here’s looking to LeWeb London 2014!

Related posts:

• Good reasons to be at LeWeb London in June
• Taking LeWeb to another level
• Google just disrupted the conference business with Hangouts On Air

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the premier British dictionary of the English language – or, as its tag line states, “the definitive record of the English language” – adds new words from time to time, as well as evolved meanings to current words, that reflect contemporary usage.

They have strict rules on such additions such as a new word being current for ten years before it’s considered for inclusion in the dictionary.

In an announcement this week about recent words updates, chief editor John Simpson notes an exception in the case of the word “tweet”:

The noun and verb tweet (in the social-networking sense) has just been added to the OED. This breaks at least one OED rule, namely that a new word needs to be current for ten years before consideration for inclusion. But it seems to be catching on.

So the OED now shows the additional meanings of “tweet” thus:

a. intr. To make a posting on the social networking service Twitter. Also: to use Twitter regularly or habitually. Cf. tweet n. 2.

b. trans. To post (a message, item of information, etc.) on Twitter. Also: to post a message to (a particular person, organization, etc.). Cf. tweet n. 2.

I think it’s a sensible decision to evolve the dictionary definition, precisely for the reason Simpson mentioned. It certainly is catching on.

Now imagine my huge surprise when I see that one of the sources of information cited by the OED that I imagine contributed to their decision to add the new meanings is a link to a post I wrote in March 2007 (I’ve highlighted the text in yellow):

The post in question is this one I published on March 15, 2007; the cited text is this:

[…] not much chance to tweet on Twitter, especially since it seems that SMS posting from my mobile phone doesn’t work […]

You saw “tweet” used as a verb here first, folks!

Related posts:

• A guide to writing for the world
• Language choices at the granular level
• The globalization of English

FIR co-host Neville Hobson met with Farmhopping CEO and co-founder Rossi Mitova at the LeWeb London 2013 conference on June 5 to hear her vision for Farmhopping, the power of communities and the role social media plays.

Mitova explains how Farmhopping can solve two of the main problems faced by farms: finding and reaching customers and securing financing.

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Get this podcast:

• Download the MP3 file (4.7Mb, 10:12)
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About our Conversation Partner

“Hello, my name is Rossi Mitova and I am the founder of Farmhopping. I graduated in investment and financial risk management in London. My future was predetermined. I was to start my career in the financial world where endless 100 hour working weeks in the City awaited me. I can’t say I found this prospect really exciting and I nurtured my passion for the outdoors with sports such as skiing and kite surfing.

“One day Michael took me to the farm in Kresna and I realized that being in the mountains and around animals is something that makes me feel exceptionally close to nature. I made a choice then and there: I left my corporate future behind and I took the road less travelled. I realize however that this is not a decision that everyone can take so I thought why not allow people around the world to be part of this amazing lifestyle without having to quit their jobs?

“And this is Farmhopping.”

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Podsafe music – On A Podcast Instrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

GaggleAmp is a service that helps amplify your social media messages. The company’s founder and president, Glenn Gaudet, gave FIR an account to use and report on back in September 2011. Since then, we’ve posted a series of updates with Glenn about GaggleAmp’s amplification of FIR promotions.

In this entry in the series, FIR co-host Shel Holtz gets the latest from Glenn.

In the GaggleAmp process, fans sign up to receive tweets, Facebook updates and/or LinkedIn Messages that they can modify and then send to their followers. There’s still plenty of room in the FIR Gaggle if you’d like to join the 120-plus listeners who already share our updates with their communities. Sign up here.

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Get this podcast:

• Download the MP3 file (4.2Mb, 10:37)
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About our Conversation Partner

Glenn Gaudet is the President and Founder of GaggleAMP. Gaudet brings over 20 years of comprehensive experience in both strategic and product marketing for technology and media companies ranging from start-up to $1 billion in sales. He has delivered results in both marketing technology as well as using marketing technology to gain results.

Prior to GaggleAMP, Gaudet was the Chief Marketing Officer at two different companies including Pulvermedia, an integrated media company that specialized in the voice and video industries. As CMO, Gaudet was responsible for all aspects of branding as well as marketing for the entire portfolio which included event, online and print products.

Connect with Glenn on Twitter: @glenng.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Podsafe music – On A Podcast Instrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

The just-published 2013 Meaningful Brands study from French marketing and communications group Havas contains useful metrics and insights for business leaders, marketers and communicators, along with big uncomfortable realities about what consumers think about brands.

This worldwide study into the connections between people and brands at a business level measures the benefits brands bring to our lives, says Havas. Embracing 700 brands, over 134,000 consumers, and 23 countries, the firm claims it to be the world’s first such study.

It measures the impact of a brand’s benefits alongside its impact on 12 different areas of well-being (health, happiness, financial, relationships and community, among others) for a full view of a brand’s effect on our quality of life.

And while headline metrics make great reading – such as Havas’ view that “Meaningful Brands outperform the stock market by 120%” – the underlying finding emerging from the firm’s study is bleak and stark:

[...] Most people worldwide would not care if more than 73% of brands disappeared tomorrow.

Think about all the money spent globally on marketing, communication and public relations. Then think that for more than 73% of the companies who are spending it, their brands wouldn’t be missed if they disappeared entirely.

Only one in five brands are perceived as making a meaningful difference in people’s lives.

We see a wide difference in attachment among markets with a strong polarisation between developed and developing markets. In Europe and the US, people would not care if 92% of brands disappeared. In Latam it’s 58% and in Asia it’s 49%. In Latam and Asia people are attached six times more to brands than Western markets.

Expectations in the West are largely unmet, fueling growing lack of trust and indifference towards brands.

That lack of trust and indifference is clearly reflected in other credible research such as Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer study.

And the reasons behind this? The Financial Times has a thoughtful analysis:

[…] In mature markets, brand saturation may be part of the problem. You hardly need to spend long in an American supermarket to conclude there are simply too many indifferent brands out there.

More importantly, too many brands have been making promises they cannot fulfil. Slightly less than a third of consumers think brands communicate honestly, resulting in growing distrust.

[…] More constructively, the study shows that consumers reward brands that listen to them, provide good quality, innovative products at fair prices; make their lives happier, easier and healthier; and support the environment, the economy and the community. “A new model for human prosperity is emerging, centred around the idea of human potential and wellbeing,” Mr Haque says. That is a big claim.

Big claim or not, it seems crystal clear to me what brands – rather, the people behind or representing those brands – must do to begin the process of rebuilding trust with people and converting their indifference into curiosity and interest. Here are three foundational steps:

1. Think and act more like people.
2. It’s about other people; it’s not about you.
3. Be honest, open, genuine and imperfect, like everyone else (aspires to be). No one is perfect.

Are you listening?

(If you don’t see the video embedded above, watch it at YouTube.)

Related posts:

• In a crisis of reputation and trust, the personal touch is everything
• A leadership call to action to build trust
• Trust in a name makes the difference

Would-be festival-goers browse a curated directory of music festivals, mostly in Europe (eg, Leeds, UK;  Roskilde, Denmark; Sziget Budapest, Hungary). For a given Festival, you can preview music from artists playing at a festival of choice via SoundCloud.

Then, in a single purchase, you can book a festival package – tickets, transport and accommodation – eliminating much of the frustration associated with buying tickets online for festivals: dealing with multiple providers and purchasing procedures, separately organizing travel and accommodation, etc. By consolidating this process, Festicket also intends to open up the festival-booking market to an even wider audience.

In this FIR Interview recorded at the LeWeb London 2013 conference on June 5, the two co-founders of Festicket tell FIR co-host Neville Hobson about their business model and how it works, what they were looking to achieve by being at LeWeb London, and how their service could be of interest to businesses.

Listen Now:

Get this podcast:

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About our Conversation Partners

Zack Sabban is an ex-investment banker turned into a festival guru for the sake of delivering the unique turnkey solution for all festival goers around the world, Festicket.com.

While he was a student and later a banker in NYC and London, Zacharie travelled the world to fulfil his passion for live music. He attended countless festivals and concerts around the world where he realized the need for better access to information.

His creativity, social network, and his amazing experience of music festivals are a competitive advantage for the growth of Festicket. Zacharie supervises all the operations and development of the company.

Connect with Zack on Twitter: @zacksabb.

Jonathan Younes, a graduate from Paris’s Ecole Nouvelle d’Organisation Economique et Sociale, is a serial web entrepreneur in charge of all the technical developments of the Festicket project.

Jonathan is also co-founder of playlistnow.fm and with Festicket he will continue to make the web a better platform for all music fans.

Jonathan’s design and technical knowledge is essential to Festicket’s success on the web.

Connect with Jonathan on Twitter: @jonyou.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Podsafe music – On A Podcast Instrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

Quick News: A brilliant use for Vine, compliance not to blame for pharma’s lack of social media engagement, Amazon’s Storyteller turns scripts into storyboards, study finds internal social networks improve access to information; Ragan promo;

News That Fits: Cheerios got it right by not giving in to backlash over multi-racial family in TV commercial; Dan York reports on Google+ War on Words, Facebook to make ads more like posts, Scott Monty and Gary Vaynerchuk, and more; impressions from LeWeb London 2013; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; listener comments from the FIR Community on Google+; how some organizations use social media to build audiences and get the word out; Michael Netzley reports on a substantial policy change by Singapore government for online news sites, and more; Anonymous prepares to enter the news business;

Music from Belladonna; and more.

Listen Now:

Get FIR:

• Download the MP3 file (35.6Mb, 88:21)
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Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for June 10, 2013: An 88-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

• FIR #707 bookmarks on Delicious

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+.

You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday June 17…

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)

When Jaguar Cars launched the F-Type sports car, the 13-minute video made by Ridley Scott’s company in April for the US market captured my imagination in one area especially – the sound of the car’s exhaust.

Added to the high-definition video and audio in the overall story, that sound contributed to an enriched and memorable experience, making it probable that I’d share that experience with friends and other in my online communities, far more so than if it had simply been  ‘a pretty good video.’

Which is what I did.

This is one example of experiential communication that I define as innovative, and that I included in a presentation to members of the MIPAA that I gave in London on June 7.

The focus of my message to car industry communicators and motoring journalists in the meeting was that effective communication is more about innovation and experiences than the tools and channels of communicating. You also need to see that idea in the context of the huge technological and behavioural changes around us, such as the big pictures you see from credible sources like Mary Meeker.

If you get the contextual mix right, your message can be a powerful method of provoking thinking that opens up conversations.

Here’s the deck I used (it’s on Slideshare); see if you agree or not.

Related posts:

• Fifteen big trends for the evolving digital age
• The sound of an F-type
• The significance of an innovative fast follower

Jeremiah Owyang joins FIR co-host Shel Holtz for a discussion about Owyang’s latest report for the Altimeter Group on The Collaborative Economy.

The report focuses on the impact on business of the movement toward people sharing products and services, disintermediating the manufacturer or service provider. Airbnb – a marketplace for individuals to rent out their own properties so people don’t need to use hotels – is one example. Another is ZipCar, the US-based service that lets people use a car only when they need it.

According to the report, “Every car-sharing vehicle reduces car ownership by 9-13 vehicles; a revenue loss of at least $270,000 to an average auto manufacturer. The cascading impact to the ecosystem has far reaching impacts to auto loans, car insurance, fuel, time impacts, environmental impacts, auto parts, and other services. For corporations, the direct impact is that consumers can now purchase one product, and share it among many others, reducing revenue in traditional business.”

In the interview, Owyang discusses the key points of the report and shares several examples, along with a discussion of the ways organizations might embrace the disruptive nature of collaboration to remain viable and profitable.

Listen Now:

Get this podcast:

• Download the MP3 file (9.87Mb, 24:34)
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• Subscribe to the FIR Interviews RSS feed
• Get the FIR app for your iPhone, and for your Android device from the Amazon App Store

The report is embedded below (and available on Slideshare):

Bonus: video recording of Jeremiah’s plenary keynote presentation on the first day of the LeWeb 2013 conference in London on June 5, 2013, in which he presented The Collaborative Economy:

(If you don’t see the video above, watch it at YouTube.)

About our Conversation Partner

Jeremiah Owyang is an Industry Analyst on Customer Strategy and a Partner at Altimeter Group. As author of the blog Web Strategy (rated by Edelman as top Analyst Blog since 2008), he focuses on how corporations connect with their customers using web technologies.

Jeremiah hails previously from Forrester Research as a Senior Analyst focused on Social Computing for the Interactive Marketer and takes pride in launching and managing Hitachi Data Systems’ Social Media program in 2005 2007.

Jeremiah, along with the Customer Strategy team, has published numerous research reports focused on social business. He has been frequently quoted in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and USA Today, and he is a frequent keynote speaker at business and technology conferences around the world. He also served as the Intranet Architect at World Savings (now Wells Fargo) and was a user experience professional at Exodus Communications after receiving his Marketing bachelor’s degree at SFSU.

After work, he spends time with family, gets in some exercise, and travels to tropical beaches. Jeremiah was pleasantly surprised to find that his small, white, furry dog Rumba is active on Twitter.

Connect with Jeremiah on Twitter at @jowyang.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the online FIR communities on Facebook, Friendfeed and Google+. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 415 895 2971 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: @FIRpodcast. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Podsafe music – On A Podcast Instrumental Mix (MP3, 5Mb) by Cruisebox.

(Cross-posted from For Immediate Release, Shel’s and my podcast blog.)