Shel Holtz, Communicator

Mashable reports on a digital billboard that shows passersby watching an instance of violence targeting a public employee, evidently a growing problem in The Netherlands. The goal, according to the Mashable article, is "to encourage citizens to stand up for public workers in violent confrontations." The video shows how the billboard works and how it was created.

The Mashable article is here:
http://mashable.com/2010/04/29/ar-billboard-street-fight/

due in large part to Katz’s Facebook group, GSW is returning to the stage for four nights — two sold-out shows at The Gramercy Theater and two shows with some tickets remaining at Irving Plaza — in New York City. Even God Street Wine’s drummer, Tom Osander, was surprised by the results from Facebook.

Interesting piece from Mashable. The jam band God Street Wine broke up in 1999 (according to Wikipedia), but reunited based on interest generated by a Facebook group started by a fan, with the proceeds from all four concert dates going to charity.

You may recall that a Facebook group inspired Cadbury to bring back the Whispa candy bar. Combine this with the fact that Boomers are taking to Facebook and other social venues the way they took to the streets in the Sixties and you may find that "the crowd" could compel all types of organizations to bring back something that was once deemed no longer viable in the marketplace.

If this lives up to the promise of the video, it'll be pretty amazing. Hat tip to Sallie Goetsch.

FIR listener Scott Douglas directed me to this "zooming presentation" from a service called Prezi.com; the presentation walks us through the Nestle-Greenpeace dust-up.

All this talk of attention crash is nonsense, as the ever-articulate Clay Shirky points out in the video above. Add this snippet from a Shirky interview with the Columbia Journalism Review:

The reason we think that there’s not an information overload problem in a Barnes and Noble or a library is that we’re actually used to the cataloging system. On the Web, we’re just not used to the filters yet, and so it seems like “Oh, there’s so much more information.” But, in fact, from the 1500s on, that’s been the normal case.

So, the real question is, how do we design filters that let us find our way through this particular abundance of information? And, you know, my answer to that question has been: the only group that can catalog everything is everybody. One of the reasons you see this enormous move towards social filters, as with Digg, as with del.icio.us, as with Google Reader, in a way, is simply that the scale of the problem has exceeded what professional catalogers can do. But, you know, you never hear twenty-year-olds talking about information overload because they understand the filters they’re given. You only hear, you know, forty- and fifty-year-olds taking about it, sixty-year-olds talking about because we grew up in the world of card catalogs and TV Guide. And now, all the filters we’re used to are broken and we’d like to blame it on the environment instead of admitting that we’re just, you know, we just don’t understand what’s going on.

I'll be talking about this more today on episode 531 of For Immediate Release.

Harvard is the first university to use foursquare to help students explore their campus and surrounding places of interest.

Harvard University today (Jan. 12) announced its presence on foursquare, a new location-based, mobile social networking application. The service, which is accessible from smartphones and other mobile devices, enables students and visitors to explore the campus and surrounding neighborhoods while sharing information about their favorite places.

In addition to creating an up-to-date online rating guide of stores, restaurants, businesses, and other venues throughout Harvard Square, foursquare users can also employ the application as a game, in which they earn points, and ultimately acquire coveted foursquare “badges.” Harvard is the first university to use foursquare to help students explore their campus and surrounding places of interest. Users who have visited a predetermined number of sites on the campus will be awarded the Harvard Yard badge on their foursquare profiles.

Be sure to read the complete article. As David Armano noted in the tweet that pointed me to this article, this represents a smart use of FourSquare -- which still has plenty of doubters -- by an organization. I'm certain organizations of different natures will find a way to leverage the service to achieve their own business goals.

For all the upsides to social media, its viral nature can be difficult to handle. American Airlines learned that in the wake of the Haitian earthquake.

Several lessons here. First, you need to be vigilant in your monitoring to identify these issues as soon as they come up and address them quickly. Second, there's a phenomenon associated with being retweeted by celebrities with a lot of followers. And third, mainstream, traditional media can play a huge role in helping to remedy a situation that's gotten out of control.