Horn Group Weblog

Innovator Insight - David Hornik, Part 2

In part 2 of my interview with David Hornik, partner at August Capital, we discussed how social networks have become the under pinning of a huge array of consumer experiences. Consumers are now left wondering how do I have a single unified posting experience and how do I have a single unified consuming experience with the world coming to me. If you have the solution, I know David would want to hear from you.

Interview with David Hornik, Part 2 from Ken Shuman on Vimeo.

Twitterific

I'm a firm believer in multiple means of communications.  Especially with the media.  You want email only? OK (if you actually respond), prefer I just call? OK, IM, fine, Facebook message or wall post?  No problem. Text?  Sure. The newest one on my communications list is Twitter. I've signed up, I follow people, people follow me, but I've drawn the line on putting Twitter on my mobile phone.  I need to be online and actively decide to go to Twitter because I'm bad enough constantly checking email on my phone, Twitter would drive me nuts.

Interesting mix of people following me. Journalists, fellow Horn Group colleagues, other PR industry colleagues, a few friends, and some of my fellow bloggers from the Silicon Valley Moms Blog and its outlets in Chicago, D.C., New York, L.A., etc.  Sometimes my updates, or public replies might look a little strange to folks I know professionally.  So be it.

But I have to admit I get a little freaked out by a third of the people who follow me, because I don't know them.  Some of them are in the PR business, so that's ok, but there are quite a few more where I can't really find a connection.  Slick_sellers?  Srilanka news? Lindseylohan01??? I'm not so worried that I'm going to "close" my updates, but if I get some extra time, I might try and research a bit more and if it still bugs me, I can block them individually.

There have been quite a few stories and blog posts over the past couple of weeks about mainstream adoption, or even awareness of Twitter.  Kara Swisher recently polled 30 30-somethings at a  wedding  in the D.C.  area and none of them knew what Twitter was.  Some were vaguely familiar with Facebook. And that's in a pretty sophisticated metropolitan area - forget Middle America. I agree with Kara - we do live in an echo chamber here.  But that echo chamber can grow quickly.

I do have one strange social media outside world story.  I recently friended a cousin of mine in New York and when he accepted me on his Facebook , he told me about his dad getting a kidney transplant from his sister.  The next night my mother called from Florida to tell me the same thing and when she asked how I knew already, I was at a complete loss at how to explain to someone who's never owned a computer.  I think I ended up with "long story".

But back to Twitter. I've also run into many tech-savvy people who refuse to sign up for Twitter on principle, with the perception that people use it for inane updates like "I'm going to the bathroom right now".  They really don't do that, but some things are trivial, or only of interest to a very small group of other Twitterers.  That's why I use it, but keep it at some distance.

There are also a lot of people who refuse to do IM because they don't want their attention demanded immediately.  I can understand that and I usually use IM for work-related communications within my company or client base.  Every once in a while when a far-away friend pops up, I might do it.  My kids also IM or text me.  As a matter of fact, my 11 year old daughter once had a tantrum on a text message.  Really.  I said no to some request and boy did her fingers fly.

Experiment:  I just sent out a very general trend story pitch on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.  It was along the lines of "anyone working on, or interested in a story about XXX".  I got one response or exchange from Twitter and Facebook, two from LinkedIn.  So far. It'll either pay off down the road, or maybe I annoyed some people although I was careful to only go once to people who were on more than one platform. We'll just have to see, but I know it'll be a while before I do that again.

I would also encourage you, if you haven't already, to listen to David Hornik on our Innovator Insight series . Link or scroll right down, it's the post right before this. David has a unique talent for "bringing it all home" and getting you excited about things you thought you didn't care about.

Anyone else have interesting social media stories to share?

Innovator Insight - David Hornik, August Capital

In this epsiode, I had the opportunity to sit down with David Hornik, partner at August Capital. David has been with August Capital since 2000 and during the past eight years he has invested broadly in information technology companies, from enterprise application and infrastructure software to consumer facing software and services. He currently sits on the board of six companies including PayCycle, Six Apart and VideoEgg.

I had so much fun chatting with David, we broke the segment into two parts. During the first part of the interview, we touch upon different messaging platforms available today. David share his opinion on if Twitter has mainstream appeal and why everyone should check out BlogIt powered by TypePad.

Interview with David Hornik from Ken Shuman on Vimeo.

Web 2.0 Expo SF: Everybody into the pool!

Ah Web 2.0 Expo, you're all grown up. Funny this time, walking the floor and seeing so many big booths, big brands. Collaborative technologies are filtering into the enterprise, some more smoothly than others. Sun, Microsoft, Cisco-Webex, Oracle, Disney, IBM, Adobe ring the floor.

I had to laugh, though, seeing the sad little nonprofit area, looking for all the world like the Valley's poor relations hanging out in the hallway. Might want to rethink that next time. I stopped and donated to the EFF out of sheer mortification (not to mention a sense of gratitude for all they do, and all I've learned from them). Here are a few pix: I particularly recommend the completely mystifying taxidermy project, brought to us by some company whose name escapes me.

The Blogtropol.us Lounge, hosted by our friends at The Conversation Group, was a huge hit. It was the place to be: black leather couches, a Wii, a little video studio setup at the end, drinks, chatter, endless pitching and repitching, and a veritable clog of bloggers.

I skipped the parties and missed the keynotes, including what I heard was a spine-tingler from Marc Andreesen, who, to my utter horror, has now assumed the role of Valley elder. Boy does time fly. CNET's Charles Cooper's piece is required reading.

Editors Speak Out

I spent most of my sessions at the Bulldog Media Relations Summit at the "Meet the Editors" panels.

Makes sense since I'm the media director here.  I also appeared on a panel called "Riding the Airwaves, Pitching Top Broadcast Outlets" ( I spent more than 20 years in TV News before I switched over to PR). It was a last minute deal since all the news around the Olympic Torch in San Francisco meant a number of  the media were no-shows.  I was on the panel with Akilah Monifa from KPIX/CBS San Francisco and Richard Strauss of Strauss Radio.  Moderator was Jeffrey Schulman from MultiVu.  I think it went pretty darn well, especially for a surprise.  We'll see how I do on the feedback survey.

So back to the other editor panels.  If there were any underlying themes:

• Blasts are spam. Everyone says 70-80% of their email pitches are irrelevant.
• Pitch thoughtfully, especially really understand the publication's target audience.
• Think like a journalist - what's the peg?
• Bloggers like direct contact from the CEO.
• Pitch concisely, subject lines are very important. Watch superlatives.  A bad pitch line would be "Company XXX releases revolutionary new product"
• Everyone's getting into video.  The Wall Street Journal is starting to send reporters out with small hand-held video cameras, the staff  at the Mercury News attends weekly "new technology" education sessions.  All the new hires at USA Today are rich media producers. The SF NYTimes guy would like to hire a full time web producer.
• For television, especially, figure out the visual aspects of the story. If it doesn't have anything beyond screen shots, it's probably not for TV News.
• It would be great if company blogs could provide more than promotional material, had some useful elements.
• Certain newspaper and wire reporting tasks, especially coverage that involves public documents, and posting of press releases  are being outsourced to Bangalore.
• Be sparse and selective with follow up calls.  End of the day seems to be best.
• Be aware of daily, weekly and monthly deadlines (check the ed cals)
• We're heard it a million times before, but relationships are key.
• Be a trendspotter.
• Academics welcome, if they really have the expertise.
• Surveys need to be scientifically accurate and not too obviously self-serving.
• If you don't return a reporter's call, they're going to assume you're hiding something.

For the most part, all the attending media were friendly and open, some even had spent some time in PR. The exception was the session "How to Get Featured in Leading Lifestyle Media" with editors from Dwell, San Francisco Magazine, and Sunset.  The correct title should have been "How to Not Totally Annoy Leading Lifestyle Media." With the exception of  Sunset, the tone of the session was pretty negative towards PR, especially the guy from Dwell who basically said he never reads or cares about PR pitches sent to them.  And they all hated creative mailers.

To end on a positive note, the one person I found delightful was Jesse McKinley who runs the San Francisco Bureau of the New York Times.  His coverage is mostly political, breaking news and some feature-writing so he's not one of my NYT targets.  But he had a great attitude, sense of humor and I'd really like to get to know him anyway.  Very good writer too.