In a Starbucks with Hacking Netflix, Orbitcast, and Micro Persuasion
“Starbucks coffee notes, actually done in the morning, featuring the authors of Hacking Netflix, Micro Persuasion, Orbitcast. Random stuff, kind of memorable, New York blogging, public relations, gnoing to Gnomedex, OPML.”
Dave discusses the growth and evolution of RSS, OPML, and other web technologies. He expresses frustration with companies like Yahoo and Google that he feels are not collaborating enough with the broader community. The group also discusses the blogging community in New York versus other cities, the challenges of getting traditional media to engage with bloggers, and ideas for more informal blogger meetups and events. Overall, the conversation provides an insider’s perspective on the early days of the blogosphere and the ongoing dynamics between established players and the grassroots online community.
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Transcript
This transcript was automatically generated.
Okay, we’re live. Hi everybody.
Morning. This is Dave Winer.
It’s morning coffee notes coming to you from 42nd Street in New York, New York I’m here with Mike. Mike, what ’s your last name? Uh, Colchini.
Say that again? Colchini. Colch ini. Mike is the editor of H acking Netflix Weblog, a very excellent weblog that has just like huge flow.
So if you ever want to get some flow for your blog You got to grevel to Mike and maybe he’ll point to you. And then Ryan, Ryan, what’s your last name? Sigir.
Okay, and I’m not gonna try that. You guys, you, oh anyway, so how did we all meet? Steve Rebell who has the micro persuasion blog, he’s stuck on a train on his way into Grand Central Station and he’s gonna call sometime soon and he’ll join us and in the meantime What should we talk about? What’s, you’re a blogger, right ? Yeah, we’re all three of us are bloggers. So I know what his blog is about. What’s yours about? It’s orbicast with all things satellite radio. Oh cool. Cover Sirius XM.
Are you interested? Do you have an interest in satellite radio? Oh, yeah.
Sort of a crazy little passion.
Is that right? Yeah.
So how long have you been doing it? Since late October actually .
It’s taken off like crazy. It’s just that it’s amazing that a number of people that really want to, they’re hungry for information on it.
Is that right? So do you like get them information on that? Oh, yeah, it’s like constantly all day long and that’s pretty much what I’m doing. Is that right? Oh, you see like you don’t have a day job, that’s your job? No, I don’t have a day job.
Yeah, cause you lost it, should you leave it all day long? No, no, no, no.
All these people in here, we’re in a starbomb, sorry, all these people are staring at us wondering, well, maybe these are like a big-time radio show or something.
It’s just a podcast. I love this setup. So, yeah. Oh, well, tell them about it. What do you see? What does it look like to you? So, this is like a little conference conference microphone. Yeah, it ’s like designed for a conference room table. So you get the 360. It’s sort of like a dingus.
It’s got a radius. I’ll, maybe I’ll put a picture of this up here, but it sort of projects up and down.
So, actually, it would be kind of better if it was like maybe 10 inches. So should we just lower it? But it doesn’t, actually, maybe that would be better, but see, here’s the, you can see the graph there, right? So it’s picking up my voice pretty well. You can say something. Oh, hey. A little bit. Yeah, see, there you go.
So, tell us about hacking Netflix. What’s that like? It’s been interesting. I don’t know. I’ve been doing this almost a year and a half and it’s kind of surprised me where it’s gone. Yeah, it’s well, it was a deliberate thing on your part. You wanted to make a blog that would have a large audience or a lot of people meeting it.
Actually, I didn’t.
It’s just what it was. It was the Monday. The Monday release is what’s new.
Yeah, it was news. I actually wanted to explore what was going on with Netflix.
They’re a very private company and I sort of want to hack the company, you know, sort of figure out what’s going on.
It’s a stupid domain name.
It’s a great domain name.
I criticized it from day one on it.
Why? What’s wrong with it? Well, it sounds like amateur.
She’s really like hacking Netflix. What does that mean? Well, it’s like rocking Netflix , but in the 21st century.
Exactly.
How’s Netflix doing? They’re doing really well. They just announced that they passed the 3 million subscriber mark based on the competition from Blockbuster.
They’re still managing to grow despite pretty hardcore competition.
Blockbuster is spending a ton of money acquiring new customers and Netflix is still growing.
I haven’t switched. I still use Netflix. I tend to be pretty loyal. I think the service is good.
I know I’ve read on some other blogs like John Robb has a blog where he basically said Netflix ’s toast that they can’t.
The turnaround is very bad now.
They had some problems in early January, February, and it’s part of their… they go through prosperits.
And when you had that many members, you do have some movie allocation problems, but I’m hearing double the problems from Blockbuster right now.
Of course. Start-up must be like, yeah. Have you ever actually seen an Netflix facility? No, no. They’ve actually invited me out, though.
They have one in New York, don ’t they? There’s one in Queens.
In Flushing.
Yeah, and I’m actually in Flus hing every once in a while, but they’re very secretive.
They’ve only released a few photos of the distribution centers.
Really? But you could go inside and take a look at the view monitor. They invited you to do that? Well, they invited me to the corporate headquarters.
So there’s something… some secret sauce inside that distribution center, huh? Well, they’re starting to release information about it, so they’ve shown actual pictures of people stuffing the envelopes and things like that.
They kind of visualized what it must be like.
Somebody was telling me, maybe it was you, that they have some kind of deal with the post office, so that when you return the envelope, it scans it at the post office, and that goes on their computer, and they send you something out , a new one out, before it actually arrives.
Well, actually… Is that true, or…? From what I understand, it’s currently not true.
I think they’ve tested it in the past.
Blockbuster is supposedly doing that. It’s wrecking havoc.
I’ve got people that are recording five movies out of the three-hour plan right now.
Because they’re erroneous positives, or something like that.
Yeah, they’re getting the movie scan, so we’re seeing all kinds of weirdness going on.
But from what I understand, the source of Netflix, they don’t do that.
So it seems like it must be, like, a temporary… This whole idea of mailing around these DVDs, you know, seems like a sort of an anach ronistic thing that, given a few more years, it’ll all be networked.
This is… Steve, I gotta get it. Hold on.
Why don’t you…? Oh, whatever.
Steve, how you doing? Okay.
Okay, we’re… Do you know…? We’re live reporting Steve Ra vel.
Hold on.
Dave’s leaving, so maybe I’ll read and address his first question.
I started the blog, since he can’t hear it, he won’t be modest.
I started the blog because we came from a software company, and I actually worked together a software company.
You know, we’re the global building, which used to be called the global building.
Dave said to actually understand blogging, you should read 50 blogs and start one.
And I just started wanting a company I’m passionate about, and I thought that was really important, you know, to learn blogging.
And this is sort of the experiment going awry.
It’s sort of the automatic thing to want to talk to this microphone.
This little stick just standing right on the table, and you have to look at it and talk to it.
Yeah.
Note your voice level.
Okay, good.
Good.
So that was a little dramatic thing.
Steve’s in New York now, and Steve Ravel, PR blogger… PR God, yes.
is going to be joining us soon.
So what were you guys talking about while I was, otherwise, occupied? Oh, I readjusted your first question about why I started… Why I started hacking Netflix.
I readjusted your first question.
Oh, why did you do that? Because we came from a software company.
There were a couple other people involved, so we started a software company that sold it to people here in New York.
You guys used to work together then? Yeah, for years.
Years.
They’re like your buddies.
Yeah.
And we encourage each other to blog and stuff like that.
You only know something funny.
We were sitting around at a meeting at my work now.
You know how blogging has spread? It’s sort of this person-to- person thing we were talking about, you know, spreading podcasts.
Well, they don’t know anything about it.
Well, here’s what I mean.
See what I mean? Well, let me just say this.
Before we started, I said, “Let ’s not do anything.
Let’s not talk at all, because it’ll screw up the whole thing . " But unfortunately, yeah, we did .
Well, no, no, no.
What I’m saying is we were sitting around at a product manager meeting where we were talking about having another blog for our company.
Right.
Our CEO blogs.
The guy next to me blogs.
The guy across us has a blog for his youth group.
And another guy has a blog he’s starting up about New York City .
So there’s six bloggers and out of six people.
What company is this? It’s Indexed Stock Imagery in New York.
It’s a stock photo agency.
Right, right.
So blogging, it’s fair to say it’s caught on.
Oh, yeah.
And does anybody worry about how many people are reading their blogs? I don’t, you know, I don’t worry about it.
I’d like to watch it.
You worry about it.
Well.
Knacking Netflix.
Hey, there he is.
Steve.
Steveville.
Say hi to the folks at home.
Hello, everyone.
I… What’s your name? My name is Steve Herbell.
What’s the name of your blog? My name and my blog is Micro Persuasion.
But doesn’t everybody know that already? Not everybody.
There must be somebody who doesn’t know that.
So Steve, you’re going to get … Oh, you found this? Yeah.
Well, that’s a sexy backpack you’re talking about.
Thank you.
I have to be different.
I have to be different.
So you’re going to get some coffee? I am.
Yes.
Okay.
We’ll be ready for you.
I’ll have a question ready for you.
Oh, okay.
That’s not good.
Nice surprise, Steve.
That was Steve Rebell, everybody.
Everybody.
So everybody at your company at this meeting, they all have blogs.
Oh, yeah.
One of them is interesting.
It’s called Garage Spin.
What? Garage Spin.
I’ve talked to a lot of people about blogging.
I’ve talked to people on the train.
I’ve done presentations of blog ging now.
He’s a musician.
He wants to record an album.
When I talked to him, he didn’t know how to market his album.
So I told him, “Blog the process.
Blog the tools you use.
Blog the thing that you’re going through. " I want to learn about it.
And he’s crossing the podcast.
I’ve been pushing him very hard .
I’m like, “Dude, podcast.
This is a beautiful outlet, especially for the masses of people who just want to be musicians and want to have exposure.
That’s podcasting.
You can just instantly just deliver all your… So do you do it? Yeah.
Garage Spin’s up and running.
Yeah.
He’s working on the blog.
He’s one of the people that’s really concerned about how much traffic is coming in or whatever.
I think everyone who’s starting off just wants to know.
Is there an audience to what I ’m talking about? I don’t think it’s true of everybody.
My father, for example, he’s a very talkative guy.
It’s really hard to get a word in it.
But he said, “I have nothing to say.
What would I say?” That you hear a lot.
It’s like, “I don’t know.
I wouldn’t have anything to say . " And so my answer to that is, " Well, just…” And those people are certainly not worried about how many people are going to read their blog.
Their concern is the other end of it, is that all of a sudden everybody’s going to be reading my blog and I’m not going to look good.
I’m really stupid, right? That’s true.
So what I say to people like that is I say, “Well, just go ahead and start the blog and post something really, really insipid and stupid. " It’s like, “Hi, this is my blog . " And then just don’t do anything .
Leave alone.
And then someday you’ll be in the shower and an idea will hit you.
And you’ll go, “Oh, God, I wish I could just get this out to the world. " And then that’s when you go post something on your blog, right? And that sort of gets the process going.
And that really has helped a lot.
I’ve found a lot of people sort of get over the first initial hump.
But if you have to… It’s sort of like, what’s a good way writers get this question all the time? It’s like, “Okay, I want to write something.
How do I go about doing it?” And a writer will say, “Just write it. " The only way to write is to actually write.
You can’t prepare to write.
Same thing is true with podcast ing.
So you were saying before, you ’re worried about the production .
That, to me, is the same kind of concern that my father had.
He said, “Well, I’m afraid I don’t have anything to say. " Well, the thing is that the good news is the first time you do a podcast, nobody’s gonna listen to it anyway.
So what’s the problem? Look as bad as you want to look .
I listened to my first podcast.
It’s pretty embarrassing.
I pause at this moment and say, “Well, gosh, I think I better explain what I’m doing here. " And then, without any segue at all, after I’m finished explaining what I’m doing, I just start reading from my notes.
It’s like, “Oh, I’m getting my picture taken. " So anyway, Steve Rubell, who actually looks different from the way… I mean, you look the same, but you look different from what you look on your blog.
Whether I look better online or … There’s no better… I’m not saying better or worse.
It’s just different.
Steve has this big picture of himself right there in the upper corner, which probably is good PR, right? I guess so.
So tell us about your blog and how you got started blogging, Steve.
When did you start? MicroPersuasion? Is that the URL? Yes, it’s micropersuasion. com.
Okay.
I would say about a year and a half ago, I started to read blogs aggressively through RSS Feeds.
I saw that we’re having a major impact on my reading habits.
I started working with clients to launch blogs in my PR firm in early 2004.
And then about a year ago, I woke up one Sunday morning and I said, “What’s going on here? I’m working with clients and helping them blog.
I’m reading you, I’m reading Scoville, and I’m learning so much.
So I think I should have a blog also.
Obviously.
Yeah, obviously, right? Duh.
You know? And you know… We’re like religious evangel ists, aren’t we? It’s really shameless.
And so I started to… So we get you to drink the Kool -Aid and then your job is to go out and get everybody else.
It’s like a cult, right? You know? Yeah.
I’m sorry.
We were… Of course, I’m going to say now , we were talking about this before, right? It’s like I was listening to a podcast this morning with Ron Bloom and Adam Curry.
And they were talking about the mechanics of building a really big audience for podcasts.
And I was sort of shaking my head as I was listening to it.
I was going, “No, no, that’s not how it works. " It’s like a pyramid scheme.
And you don’t need to reach 10 million people in one shot with your message.
What you need? No, you… I mean, actually, you don’t need to do anything.
But if you want the thing to grow, it’s just done, you know, one evangelist at a time.
Basically, you know, my father was a really interesting experience.
I mean, he… Before he did a podcast, he said, “Well, you know, I would never do a podcast about everything you’d say. " Now that he’s done one, he’s got a billion ideas of things that he wants to talk about.
He’s telling everybody… Of course, I’m telling everybody about it.
My brother’s telling everybody about it.
So all of a sudden, there’s a whole other group of people that are getting infected with the disease, or maybe it’s not a disease, but that’s… It’s all pipe, piper, pyramid scheme, evangelism, two-tier marketing, you know, the whole nine yards, right? It’s like Amway, right? It’s like Amway.
Exactly, except there’s no money in it.
It’s just for love, basically.
I disagree with the money part.
I’m getting some black glory.
I disagree, too.
There is money in it.
Of course, there is.
I mean, actually, there’s a lot more money in it than you can get with advertising.
Yeah.
There’s money from all different kinds of aspects, too , because if you look at it, I’m making money from it, too.
Right.
By winning clients.
But for your clients, how much money do they spend to try to get the world to know who they are, right? That’s why they hired you.
That’s right.
And it’s an extension.
So if a blog can help you get better known, then aren’t you making money? It’s another tool we’re going to use.
I mean, we launched a practice under the name Microphone.
It’s raising a Kruppercat’s microphone.
That really helps companies.
What does it mean? Micro persuasion? Yeah.
When I launched the name, to me that meant that there are millions of small voices, micro voices, that have just as much influence as the mass voices.
Yep.
They are the mass, right? Which we pay for.
I mean, you pay for mass persu asion.
You pay for, you know, I mean, a hit on Good Morning America or you’re a client or whatever.
But the reality is that you have, you know, you get a hit on a Scobalizer or a Slash God.
Your case, what you’re doing is amazing, right? I mean, I go and I, personally, you’re in every single PowerPoint that I show.
Because on this topic, which is a lot.
His blog is an interesting blog .
Because you Google Netflix, you ’re the third one.
You took ownership of Netflix, basically.
Yeah.
They didn’t have a blog presence and you created one for them.
You know how powerful this whole system is? On Tuesday, I posted Block buster’s customer service number .
And on Monday, I posted it.
And by Wednesday, it was the number one hit for Blockbuster 800.
That’s two days later.
So I’m going after Blockbuster ’s today.
So, it’s bizarre.
And this leads to a different topic, if I could ask this.
Where do you want to go? Well, I wonder if Google One Day is going to wake up.
And we’re going to say, we’re giving these blogs too much power.
Turn it off.
Yeah.
We’re going to make a change.
I don’t know.
Well, go on with that.
Well… What’s your concern? Why is that a concern to you? Well, I hope they don’t.
Because… But I don’t think it should be a concern.
I mean, basically… Well, I’m sorry.
Go ahead.
I don’t want to… Well, it’s a concern because I think that that’s, right now, one of the… One of the factors that’s going to help push blocking your main stream.
What is? The Google juice.
I don’t know if I don’t agree with you because… Well, let me tell you why.
If I may.
Yeah, sure.
The companies need comfort.
Okay? The buying scene.
So, are they going to buy into blogs? I don’t know.
But if you try it to search engine marketing, if you try it to optimization, that’s something they’re buying right now.
Now, maybe in a year, that won ’t be true.
They’ll buy it no matter what.
But, right now, they’re saying, okay, so what’s this getting? And when I show them the Google juice, that’s like, immediately they get it? Yeah.
And I say, okay, I understand.
Yeah.
So, Google makes that change that, I think, reduces the direct influence.
Okay.
Can I respond? Yeah.
Okay.
I don’t care whether your companies have blogs or not.
First of all.
So, it means absolutely nothing to me one way or the other whether they do it or they don ’t.
Second of all is that there’s a real big danger in relying too heavily on sexualization.
The whole point of blogging was to take, you know, to decentral ize to the extent that we’re all sort of like looking to Google for approval.
We’re now going back to the old system.
It’s like, you know, okay, we traded in one boss for another.
They used to be, you know, what anointed credibility was getting on the radio or getting quoted in the New York Times.
Today, you know, fuck it.
I don’t care.
I really honestly don’t care whether I get quoted in the New York Times.
I mean, maybe a little bit.
My parents read it.
So, it’s like, it’s good for family relations, but it doesn ’t build flow for me.
They very rarely get the story right.
You know, all the objective things, reasons why you might care about that seem to have faded now used to be that that was a very big deal.
Now today that’s been replaced by Google.
But someday… I’m just quite like, by the way , like 300 PR firms out of business.
I didn’t do it.
No, no, no.
I didn’t do it.
No, no, not me.
No, PR is in crisis of course.
I mean, although PR has a chance to get back to its roots .
The irony of the name PR was, what did it stand for? Public relations, right? But you didn’t like, market to the public.
You marketed it to the press.
Why don’t we say it really has real meaning? But that’s not public, you know .
They were sort of anything but the public.
They were elitists.
They were, you know, the king makers.
They were, you know, gate keepers, all the rest of that stuff.
Now, like you said, you get to do the job that you’re always supposed to do.
So, if your clients don’t want to do it vlogging, if it doesn ’t get them Google juice, that’s your problem.
That’s where it’s locked in wide.
I think you have to sell it.
And one of the ways you sell it to them, we sell the whole Clut rain module.
Do you? Oh, no.
You have a Clutrain module? Mantra.
Oh, Mantra.
I thought you said, well, we can sell you the module.
No, I had a Clutrain module.
I’ve been making a lot of money .
Here’s the Clutrain, take a ride with me.
Mantra is.
That’s great.
We sell it.
I mean, the human voice and the corporate speaker is dying.
And I mean, I believe that.
Do they buy it? That’s the bad.
No, no, they don’t buy it.
Number two is, do they get it? No, they don’t get it.
Are they going to try to use it and usurp it and pretend they ’re doing it? Maybe, right? No, I wouldn’t.
Otherwise, you wouldn’t.
At least personally, I wouldn’t work with them.
You wouldn’t do that, right? Good for you.
That means that you have a soul .
Congratulations.
Well, I’ve been freaking the K ool-Aid one.
That’s the other way of looking at it.
Yeah.
I think of it as a soul.
You think of it as Kool-Aid.
Okay, great.
You’re a distributor.
Right.
Me too.
I’m weighing all the way.
That’s right.
That’s cool.
So, do you enjoy your work? I love what I do.
You love what I do? I love what I do more so now than I ever have.
I’ve been in PR for 15 years.
I always loved it.
I guess I’m a rare bird.
I think I was a PR person in a former life.
Yeah, I think in some ways you went down.
I’ve been in PR for 15 years.
I always loved it.
I guess I’m a rare bird.
But.
I think I was a PR person in a former life.
Yeah.
I think in some ways you went down.
Absolutely.
Except nobody pays me.
That’s right.
Damn it.
Somehow we got to figure out that one.
Would you travel across the country and do a great thing? I wish.
I mean, doesn’t everybody live to be Dave Warner? I mean, it’s just like.
Is that right? Really? It’s not so great.
I think you embody like every male in the 30s and 40s and 50s .
Well, I waited a long time for you to do this.
I, you know, sort of like put down roots and, you know, got bored out of my mind.
In Silicon Valley.
Yeah.
It was either do it now or never do it.
Yeah.
Well, I’m having a good time.
I’m having a good time.
You know, all my ideas now have taken root.
And, you know, and so they’re not considered, you know, all that far out anymore.
So what’s next? Me? Yeah, that’s what I like.
Well, right now, I haven’t really been all that secretive about it.
I mean, basically, I think in terms of formats and protocols, it’s OPML.
OPML comes as the next layer up after RSS.
I mean, you know, that’s the role OPML plays right now is, you know, sort of, it’s where, you know, it’s doing lists of subscriptions, right? And so it can be used for book mark, it can be used for directories, it can be used for presentations, it can be used for thinking, for organizing and planning.
And it can actually is pretty good for group wear.
And it sort of goes in a lot of different, and then if you take that and like mix it in with the internet and all the, you know, basic sort of simple networking like HTML has, you know, where you can link from one place to another, it gets pretty powerful, you know.
So I’ve been wanting to do this .
I mean, I got started on doing it in early 2002.
And then I, you know, I got sick and then I couldn’t do it.
But everything down and sort of , you know, reset everything and figure out what I was really doing and quit smoking.
Now I’m losing weight.
That’s the big thing, right? I’m losing weight and getting sick.
That’s why Florida has been really good for me and continues to be.
So you’re retiring to Florida? I don’t think there’s any retirement about it.
No, I’m not retiring, but Florida is kind of, you know, it’s one of these places where I’ve like always wanted to like be there for some extended period of time.
I wanted to live at the beach and, you know, that’s another one of those things.
Like, you know, okay, like when were you planning on doing it? You know, it’s either like do it now or maybe you don’t ever get to do it.
So, yeah, I’m trying to create a lifestyle at the same time.
There’s a lot, you know, if I want to do a business and like you said, basically the ideas are becoming acceptable now.
And if I wanted to really build a development team today, I could do it.
I raised money to do it and, you know, I don’t know if I could do that in Florida.
I might try to make this interview with you as much as I can with us.
The trip is that it’s not really an interview.
It’s more of a conversation.
Yeah, I mean, it’s like let’s talk about the clue train, right? The clue train says that there ’s like no top or bottom.
It’s not like, you know, like, you know, two-tier or whatever.
We’re just hanging out here.
Well, something I want to ask you actually, I could, is, and I know I’m, I know I’m totally just, but the question’s on the line.
Go ahead.
Like RSS.
Yeah.
I mean, we all believe it.
We all use it.
We all, right? Okay.
And when we live in the aggreg ators, we take, we walk out on that street ten feet.
Yeah.
Pull up ten people and read them.
And not one.
I don’t know.
No present.
We’ll probably know what RSS is .
Maybe they’ve heard it.
Okay.
Can you get in trouble for doing that? Yeah, I can do that.
So what’s the point? Well, the point I’m making is that, or question, is that how do we, I mean, I think that we ’re all evangelists here for RSS.
But why? Why do you have to be something for everybody? This is what, I get asked that, this gets, you know, comes up all the time, right? And five years ago or three years ago, four guys could be sitting at a table in a Starbucks on 42nd Street and none of them would have heard of RSS.
Today, all of them have and they all use it, right? So that’s an awful lot of growth right there, okay? It’s fast.
Yeah.
And maybe five years from now, you’ll go out on 42nd Street and they’ll all be talking about RSS and how, you know, their company is adopting it across the board and how, you know, they’re going to the next thing.
Some guys are talking about this thing called OPML and they ’re not sure what it is or whatever.
And I feel like it’s like when I talk about the web.
But that’s the way it should always be, Steve.
There should always be something new happening that, you know, that is making its way through, you know, our civilization.
It should always be.
If it ever stops being that way , then you should be, like, worried.
Not worried that people don’t know.
I’m worried that people think it’s too hard.
It is too hard.
Right.
Maybe that’s the answer to that one.
And how does it get easier is a really interesting question.
It’s not a technological question.
It’s a human question.
It’s a political question.
It’s people putting their pride aside and deciding to work together a question.
And, you know, there’s very little of that.
Once RSS became, you know, somewhat successful, all of a sudden a lot of people wanted to take it over and own it.
And then they, you know, so they could split it in two, but they could never make the whole thing go the way they wanted it to go.
The only way for that to happen is for people to drop their pride and say, okay, I’m going to do it the way you want to do it.
There has to be an awful lot of that happening.
And it’s not happening.
And look what happened with Yahoo.
They have this ugly, you know, little graphic that they ask every blogger to put on their site.
Right.
Well, I won’t do it.
You know, I refuse to do it because I think it’s just a tiny little bit of working together there.
We can solve that problem and make it easy for, you know, for anybody to be in that space.
Of course, their attitude is we ’re the only aggregator out there, right? No.
Well, they’ve made it easier for my mom to read blogs.
She doesn’t know their blogs.
And I just set up a couple of beats for her.
Yeah.
And now she goes through.
Right.
But why does it have to be specific to Yahoo? You can use that.
Well, they’re the ones that, I think they have one of the better interfaces for reading for someone who’s not technical.
What if somebody has a better one for people who are non- technical? Let’s write one.
Why don’t we create one? There’s a need.
But then, you know, do you see my point is that just the tini est little bit of working together, we couldn’t get it.
You know, I tried approaching them privately.
They wouldn’t respond.
I tried asking them that I saw a guy from Yahoo talking about their aggregator at a conference.
I raised my hand.
I said, hey, how about working with everybody else? They sort of snickered.
Like, well, why should we do that? And then I called them out.
I called the Yahoo problem on scripting news.
Escalated up the next level.
Total silence, you know.
I mean, you know, that’s bad.
I mean, you know, I think what they think is that I’m jealous in some way or, you know, I’m pissed off or whatever.
Yeah, I’m pissed off, but that ’s not insurmountable.
I can easily get a swage, you know.
I found out from Scobley yesterday that these guys at Microsoft are scared of me.
And I said to them, I said, well, that’s pretty good.
It’s kind of like, how could Nixon have ever opened up relations with China if they weren’t scared of him? That’s quite a comparison, Nick y.
What? Oh, yeah.
Oops.
Gee, where should we go with that? Just so you know, Dave’s holding up his fingers on the inside of his head.
Like, bring my shoulders up.
We need video casting.
Yeah, let’s go.
Oh, it’s a good thing Mark Pil grim isn’t vlogging anymore because he’d have a field day with that.
Oh, yeah.
Sorry.
Oops, that was the wrong thing to say.
Anyway.
I might come back.
Yeah, so working together would be good.
I don’t know.
I think that it’s also, we’ve got this problem with content modification and what Google’s doing with AutoLink.
And I think that’s terrible.
And, you know, it’s a radical ization and commercialization.
A totally unnecessary commercialization of the web.
And you know what’s coming next .
They’ve got a browser involvement.
Just buy another Mozilla program or just a job to Google this week.
Yeah.
And the venture, that’s right.
And a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley funded the original guy who worked on Firefox.
You know what these guys are doing there? They’re getting ready to put ads, our ads, if you have ads, are going to move out of your page and into their Chrome.
And you’re going to get bootk its.
And they’re going to make all the money.
And then the next thing is they ’re going to sell out to the Christian right.
And then all of a sudden we’re all going to become Bush supporters.
Jim Bush in 2008, all the way.
That’ll be fun.
Jason Calcanus is good about calling out people that do that though.
I mean, he’s got 70 web logs now.
And he’s really, anytime somebody comes up with these brilliant business plans to, you know, take the content that we all write.
I mean, you know, we spend a lot of energy on this and they slap an ad on it and expect to make it get rich on it.
Really, I wasn’t aware that he was doing that.
Yeah, he’s called, you should check out his blog.
He really calls out these guys.
The Nano Publishing Blog? That’s what I mean.
I subscribe to it.
It’s Jason Calcanus.
Oh, yeah, I don’t subscribe to it.
It’s really good. He calls these guys out.
He’s sat at South by Southwest, I think, at one of the conferences.
They know what was it.
I remember that conference.
Of course his bread and butter depends on them not doing that.
Well, ours too to some degree.
I don’t think they should slap ads on it.
Micropersuasion, Orbitcast.
No, without there being some sort of rush here.
What’s the worst example of that happening? Who’s doing the worst? Well, there’s concern that blog lines will do it.
I mean, we’re all syndicated in blog lines.
I mean, Dave, you’ve got about 3,000 subscribers there.
I’m worried for ads on there without sharing the revenue back with us.
That’s why, like, Google is at least they give us some pitt ance of the revenue.
See, I’m not that concerned about that.
What if they’re making money off your content? You could also not change the feed.
I’d like to be able to change my feed and say… I’m more concerned when they change what I say.
You know, when they make me out to, you know, when they point to Amazon for my content, and I don’t point to Amazon as a matter of principle because they’re patent abusers, and when they change my content to point to Amazon, then I feel you really used.
I mean, feel betrayed, and specifically when it happens for Google because of what we were saying before is, like, that’s why you don’t want to depend too heavily on them because they’ll break your heart.
I mean, you know, this was the problem with centralization, is there was no incentive for them to listen to us, right? And if there’s only one Google, well, then why should they care what we think? There is going to be a market that kind of evolves where people will take either content that people are making available free and changing, and I think companies will try to push the boundaries in doing that.
One of the areas I’m concerned about is fake blogs, right? So companies are doing that, right? But I can easily see somebody creating what I call a fake-f ake blog, which is basically somebody saying, “Well, you know what? I don’t like Starbucks, so I’m going to create a fake blog and pretend it’s Starbucks . " I’ve done one of those. I don’t want to tell you what it is.
It hasn’t quite percolated through Google yet.
I don’t want to tell you what it is. I don’t want to tell you what it is.
But a fake-fake blog? Yeah, I understand the concept.
You know, where it’s like, you know, and you might think it’s the company trying to do that.
Also, I’m wondering if some of these fake blogs are intentionally fake, because they know it’s just good PR, not good PR, but they know it’s bad.
What do you mean by that? Well, like the McDonald’s Lincoln Park blog. Did you hear about that? Yeah.
Okay.
FCP.
So I’m wondering if McDonald’s said, you know, some companies believe there’s no such thing as bad PR.
Right.
So they’re going to get to create online bots.
So I’m wondering if McDonald’s, one of two things happened.
Either they said, “Yeah, we’re going to do this blog thing. We ’ll do it this way. " Right.
And they really were totally naive.
Or.
Or they were smart as hell.
Right.
They said, “They’re going to be outraged by this, but we’ll get a lot of orders. " We’ll get all this link up, and we’ll get all this possible.
Well, did it work? Did it get people to go? Got people talking? We’re talking about it right now.
Yeah, that’s right.
Creep of listening.
I’m being accused of being a sh ill.
McDonald’s has, you know, I’ve written about this a lot when I ’m traveling.
You know, McDonald’s, this was a big secret.
I put something on my blog and said, “Boy, if McDonald’s were really serious about Wi-Fi, you know, they could clean up. " And then somebody said, “What the fuck are you talking about? Of course it’s serious about Wi -Fi.
Look at the map. " And so they sent me a board to the map.
And if there aren’t, I mean, every McDonald’s all across the country has Wi-Fi.
So if they wanted to get blog- type people interested in McDonald’s, one simple way to do it would be to put a little sign on the door that says, “Take out your laptop and try it out, because it works. " This is like, well, Starbucks has become the de facto hangout .
Absolutely.
Well, yeah, I was, you know, Keith Tier, Keith, he did real names.
And sort of Silicon Valley entrepreneur started Cyber, Siberia, basically the first cybercap in Britain, in London.
And, you know, we were talking about that the other day and basically agreed that this is what cybercap plays became, is Starbucks, right? I mean, you know, it went the other way.
Instead of a new chain, I think we’ll see more and more of it.
That’s McDonald’s.
I mean, you know, there aren’t any Starbucks.
You know, there’s Starbucks on the two coasts in Chicago.
And that’s it.
You know, in big cities, there ’s Starbucks.
But if you’re like driving cross-country, if you’re in like a red state somewhere, forget it.
McDonald’s is like the only place that has Wi-Fi.
And now I have another reason not to go to a red state.
It’s no Starbucks.
No.
Yeah, right.
Well, it’s true.
You know, my first cross- country trip, driving from Reno, Nevada to Denver, Colorado, not one Starbucks.
I got it.
You win? Oh, I drink this stuff every day.
No, you know what the solution is? No.
Oh, I think the solution is really quite to my big checkery .
There’s an answer to this, which is McDonald’s iced tea, unsweet iced tea.
It’s really pretty good.
It’s bloated with caffeine.
It’s very refreshing.
And it’s quite affordable.
Well, he’s an influence.
So I’m going to try it.
Yeah.
It sold me on McDonald’s.
What? It sold me on McDonald’s.
It’s great.
I like it better.
The only problem is you have to smell the smell of McDonald’s.
That’s the problem.
You don’t want to hang out in a McDonald’s and put on your laptop.
The Wi-Fi is pretty good, and it’s $49 a month.
Do you know if it’s greasy? Oh, yeah.
Well, you know, people, what was it? Madge Weinstein said, “Oh, sure .
We know he’s going for the iced tea.
Ha, ha, ha. " He’s, you know, a few quarter-p atter with cheese or whatever.
He never did that.
I like the chicken selects.
Gained at least 20 pounds off chicken selects.
I stopped eating that.
But I don’t do that anymore.
Salads and salmon.
That’s me, you know.
Yeah, that would be nice if they had a chain of restaurants where you could go.
And I don’t care if it costs 10 bucks, you know.
Have you tried the Verizon, the new, like, broadband service they have in the cities? I don’t know about that.
They have a city.
They now offer up to $600K first in, like, 15 major cities .
$80 bucks.
Give it to you.
$80 bucks for what? $80 bucks a month.
Flat.
Where do you get access? Anywhere.
Anywhere.
The whole city.
It’s a card you plug in your notebook.
Oh, really? Yeah.
Again, I hate to plug Jason Cal canis twice in one podcast, but he has it.
Sure.
He raves about it.
He’s got me wanting it so bad.
Because I want to post.
But it’s $600K.
So is it a cellular modem thing ? Yeah, it’s a cellular modem.
Yeah.
Oh, really? Yeah.
And it’s how much a month? $80.
$80.
It’s only a major city, so.
On top of a $30 Wi-Fi canada.
On top of what? On top of a $30 a month Wi-Fi canada, which I have here with T-Mobile.
But why would you even need that? Well, you locked in for a while .
Well, and then you wouldn’t need it at home either if you live in that area, right? Yes.
Although it doesn’t go all the way up, right? I would have to stick some.
You know, they have a Wi-Fi at Brian Park, right? Yes.
Yeah.
All over the place.
Yeah.
All over the place.
So if I wanted to go, I’d save six bucks instead of uploading this podcast.
I mean, I’m going to upload this podcast right after we’re done, basically.
You know, so it’s like going to be instant broadcast journalism .
You’re a media star now, Steve.
I am? How do you feel about that? That’s scary.
This guy, Mike is the star.
Yeah, Mike is.
I’ve done like 20 interviews.
You’ve done over 100.
I’ve done so many.
It’s crazy.
But isn’t it a lot that the media want to talk to a PR person? I mean, that the media want to interview a PR person.
Yeah.
I mean, it’s just irony.
Who? Well.
Who wants to interview a PR person? Well, I’ve done a lot of interviews.
Oh, you do? That’s true.
I did four just this week.
Isn’t that a conflict of interest? Not yet.
I’m actually able to.
It’s getting close to that, huh ? No, because I’ve moved now.
But isn’t your job to try to get in those interviews for your clients? Aren’t you competing with your clients? Not anymore, because I’m now working now.
I would say, I would say 80% of my job now is to work with clients on blogging and strategies and also building a whole side of our business.
So by becoming more of a visible expert on this stuff, you’re helping generate business for your firm.
Exactly.
Which is exactly what you’re saying to your clients is that by becoming an expert in your own area, by letting everybody know that you know the most about whatever it is that you do, that that just can’t help but help your business, right? I wouldn’t say I know the most.
I think I learn from the people who do.
But I don’t know any other blog ging PR person.
You’re the only one I know.
There are 140 of them.
I understand, but I’m telling you, it’s not getting any easy data, Steve.
And I’m sure you’re aware of that too, right? Yes, but I want to give them a plug, because I think that there are a lot of good PR blog gers out there who are out there long before I was from all over the world.
I mean, Neville Hopson out of Amsterdam, if you’re not reading his blog, it’s fabulous .
He’s talking about Well, I read your blog, and I expect you to point to him when he has something interesting.
I do, I definitely do.
What about a link blog? Do you ever think about doing one of those? I have thought about doing that , because Because you ask what’s next for me, that’s one of them.
That’s another thing OPML is good for.
Is that, you know, if you want to do a more sort of like long post, short post sort of thing, and a lot easier, that’s one of the things I want to do.
I think that blogging has gotten too in a rut.
I have a link blog now, kind of , for delicious, which is basically, yeah, it’s my backup brain.
I mean, if I see a laptop, I think I want to buy, I’ll throw it there.
But actually, something I’ve actually done is I’m using delicious, the irony is, where I sit, is I now get pitched a lot.
You get pitched.
I get pitched.
Which is weird, because you’re a pitcher.
It’s like, years ago there was Bill and Ted’s bogus journey, it’s a B movie.
And it was a scene where Bill and Ted were sent to their own personal hell.
Okay, and that’s what I feel like, because all these years of pitching journalists and spamming their own biases.
Now I’m getting spammed by other PR professionals and the tables have turned.
You’re a filter.
Well, like, and some of it’s really good.
And I’m trying to be nice.
I try to respond to every pitch and try to say thank you.
At least just say thank you.
But what I’ve done is, I say, hey, let’s make the pitching process transparent.
Go put your link up in delicious and tag it micro persuasion.
And tell me one line why you think I should link to this.
Have you asked people to do that? Yeah.
And what do they do? Some have actually taken to it and started to post things there.
And I try to pull things from there regularly that I think are appropriate.
So it’s a public place, basically.
You could point to that from your blog if you wanted to.
Yeah, I do.
So you’d have a sort of, or you do.
And so there would be a place that basically anybody could post to.
That’s transparent pitching.
Well, it’s sort of like, there ’s so many things like the track back.
If you had, you know, that’s kind of like track back, except in a sort of centralized place.
Well, it’s an invitation saying , you know, post something here.
I promise you I’ll look at it.
And then if I, it sounds interesting.
There’s something I want to ask .
Is there sort of like, Is this the question you were going to ask me at the beginning? No, and I was going to put it out to all these guys.
Is that, is there like a pulse to the New York bloggers community? Do you have meetups? Do you have, is there anybody who throws parties or anything like that? No.
Cause like in San Francisco, there’s a whole sort of circuit .
There’s no time for that.
There’s no, you gotta catch a train.
You gotta.
I’m not saying it’s a good thing, actually.
Cause I think it’s very incest uous.
And people are so concerned about being friends with other people that, you know, they’re not getting any truth anymore because you gotta, you know, be careful.
So is there anything like that? I’ve been pushing for it.
I’ve been trying to, you know, connect with different people.
You know, I reached out to Steve.
That’s why we’re here this morning, you know, let’s get together.
I got together with Jason and some of his bloggers one night, two weeks ago.
Six Apart was here.
They actually had a, you know, drinks last week.
I was too sick to go.
They had a what week? They sort of like, you know, open, what is it, happy hour.
Six Apart was here.
Meina came into town and, you know, Anil and Nate, they had an open house basically for bloggers.
And, but no, we really need some sort of formal way because .
Well, here’s the thing, you know, I think that New York is very, as you know, Dave, it’s very different in the valley.
I mean, it’s, it’s, it tends to be.
It’s not really a community, is it? It’s so huge.
And here’s how we see it like with on the PR side.
When we go into a media tour, we’re a client out in California.
Don’t meet, the media world will meet with the clients.
In New York, they really don’t want to.
Unless it’s such a big name or has such a value for them or they really have the time to do it.
It’s a very different vibe.
That’s changed because in the 80s, I did press tours that came through New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington and so forth.
And yeah, I mean, they would card me around all the publications and yeah, they would meet.
I didn’t think there was a whole lot of value.
It’s hard.
We can get the meetings, but it ’s a lot harder.
I think that’s rashes.
Because now you can find out what you need to know on the web.
I’ll go to your website.
I’ll send you an email.
You send me a copy of the software to find out why I’ll play with it.
It’s different.
Yeah.
Well, I guess that’s good.
Things have changed.
But one of the things I noticed , I spent a bunch of time in North Carolina and in Greens boro, they’ve got a blogging community and it is very much based on face-to-face.
And one of the big differences, and I said this when I was meeting with people there, it occurred to me that there may be more bloggers in New York, but a blogger in Greensboro more likely knows another blog ger than a blogger in New York does.
You may know them not geograph ically, but you’ve met and your friends, you grew up with them basically.
I haven’t met many New York bloggers.
Have you? Yeah, I’ve met a bunch actually .
At different events, the blog ger dinner where I met you.
That’s right.
I started meeting people.
The thing is, blogging is a solitary occupation.
We sit there and we’re writers.
You sit there and you have to spend the time researching.
Dave, you’re very prolific, but to me, it’s the time I spend alone.
Usually late at night, after the kids are in bed, writing.
I love this, seeing you meeting other people and discussing stuff.
I think it’s exciting.
Yeah, I usually don’t want anything to do with meeting people.
This is actually the first time I’ve ever met a blogger.
He’s constantly trying to drag me along.
So what do you think? Is it good to meet other blog gers? Did you hate every second of it ? It’s sort of neat to see the person behind the words, which is sort of neat.
I don’t know.
Not every week.
The people who really are social butterflies and they just want to meet everybody.
I just want to blog.
I want to spend my time on that .
If you have something interesting, email me.
We’ll go from there.
The community is online.
It’s not.
Next week, I’m coming back to New York to do a debate at Re uters.
They’re inviting all these press people in.
It’s so fascinating.
This is another reason we get together is to help assuage the fears of the print journalists.
All the questions they ask are so revealing.
They want us to say, “No, you can’t trust bloggers. " They’ll always be a reason for you to exist.
Bloggers have access to Brian.
Bloggers have confidence to entrust whatever.
There will be, I think, a lot of press people.
I know people are flying in for that thing.
It should be interesting.
I used to do scripting news din ners in New York.
I’ve probably done maybe five of them over the years.
We almost got one together for this one.
I don’t know who would show up for it now.
Actually, I actually think you could have the opposite problem .
So many people show up.
How do you manage that? I don’t have a problem with that.
Katz’s Deli is very good for that.
Katz has this huge dining room.
At worst, we’d fill up a tiny corner of that dining room.
That’s not the problem.
I have no idea who would show up anymore.
I try to be there when I can.
No, I’m sure you would.
Maybe next time.
The one I liked the best that I ’ve ever done was the brunch we did in Alexandria.
We had our own private room and 10 people at the really long table and the door closed.
We could hear everything.
Whereas contrast that to one that I did in Amsterdam where we were 10 people sitting at one long table and I couldn’t hear what the guy sitting next to me was saying.
What’s the point? I mean, okay.
It was like I moved my mouth.
What did he say? I actually have to go run.
We’ve got 44 minutes.
Don’t run yet.
Let me wrap this up.
Before you go, we’ve got to talk Dave into gnomedex.
Yes, we’ve got to go.
Before you leave, I just want to get a chance to wrap up.
So don’t just walk out and make me wrap up by myself.
I would love to go to gnomedex, but Chris has got to invite me to speak.
This is one of the things that … Or let’s do an open session that’s an unconference blogger style thing.
I’ve written about this. Two tier conferences.
I don’t like those.
I would love to go to gnomedex.
But I would also like to get invited.
I thought seriously about going , but I haven’t gotten invited to it.
And I see him inviting all kinds of other people.
You paid? Maybe I should just pay.
Maybe I should just fuck the hell with getting invited.
Mark Cantor, filter out.
I want to meet filter out.
You think Mark Cantor is like … He’s a nut. I knew him in the SPA years ago.
He’s doing crazy stuff.
So you would fly across country to see Mark Cantor.
Well, the group, the combined group.
Steve’s there.
Scobal.
Yeah, Scobal’s okay.
What do you think about the podcast hotel? Have you heard about that one? No.
I swear they got this one from me.
I did this in a podcast.
I explained this idea. I’ve had it for years.
The idea is that we all go check and do a hotel somewhere.
I mean, like 20 or 30 people.
And we stay there for a week and we just interview each other.
We go places and there’s no sessions.
Absolutely no structure to it whatsoever.
And who’s doing it? Alex Williams is doing it in Portland, Oregon sometime this summer.
I don’t know if he thought of it on his own. That’s great.
You know, there’s another thing I want to fix about this business is that give people credit for their ideas.
Come on. What’s the problem? I know you feel the same way, right? Absolutely.
You’ve been abused.
Well, I don’t like using that word.
But I like pleading with people better than complaining.
Anyway, okay, thanks everybody.
We were about to be evacuated.
This has been one of the most interesting podcasts ever.
And I’d like to thank you all guys for coming by and see you all real soon.
Thanks, Dave.
This is a perfect way to end this.
Are we going to kick it out? Hopefully we’re alive still.
Okay, that’s it.
Morning. This is Dave Winer.
It’s morning coffee notes coming to you from 42nd Street in New York, New York I’m here with Mike. Mike, what ’s your last name? Uh, Colchini.
Say that again? Colchini. Colch ini. Mike is the editor of H acking Netflix Weblog, a very excellent weblog that has just like huge flow.
So if you ever want to get some flow for your blog You got to grevel to Mike and maybe he’ll point to you. And then Ryan, Ryan, what’s your last name? Sigir.
Okay, and I’m not gonna try that. You guys, you, oh anyway, so how did we all meet? Steve Rebell who has the micro persuasion blog, he’s stuck on a train on his way into Grand Central Station and he’s gonna call sometime soon and he’ll join us and in the meantime What should we talk about? What’s, you’re a blogger, right ? Yeah, we’re all three of us are bloggers. So I know what his blog is about. What’s yours about? It’s orbicast with all things satellite radio. Oh cool. Cover Sirius XM.
Are you interested? Do you have an interest in satellite radio? Oh, yeah.
Sort of a crazy little passion.
Is that right? Yeah.
So how long have you been doing it? Since late October actually .
It’s taken off like crazy. It’s just that it’s amazing that a number of people that really want to, they’re hungry for information on it.
Is that right? So do you like get them information on that? Oh, yeah, it’s like constantly all day long and that’s pretty much what I’m doing. Is that right? Oh, you see like you don’t have a day job, that’s your job? No, I don’t have a day job.
Yeah, cause you lost it, should you leave it all day long? No, no, no, no.
All these people in here, we’re in a starbomb, sorry, all these people are staring at us wondering, well, maybe these are like a big-time radio show or something.
It’s just a podcast. I love this setup. So, yeah. Oh, well, tell them about it. What do you see? What does it look like to you? So, this is like a little conference conference microphone. Yeah, it ’s like designed for a conference room table. So you get the 360. It’s sort of like a dingus.
It’s got a radius. I’ll, maybe I’ll put a picture of this up here, but it sort of projects up and down.
So, actually, it would be kind of better if it was like maybe 10 inches. So should we just lower it? But it doesn’t, actually, maybe that would be better, but see, here’s the, you can see the graph there, right? So it’s picking up my voice pretty well. You can say something. Oh, hey. A little bit. Yeah, see, there you go.
So, tell us about hacking Netflix. What’s that like? It’s been interesting. I don’t know. I’ve been doing this almost a year and a half and it’s kind of surprised me where it’s gone. Yeah, it’s well, it was a deliberate thing on your part. You wanted to make a blog that would have a large audience or a lot of people meeting it.
Actually, I didn’t.
It’s just what it was. It was the Monday. The Monday release is what’s new.
Yeah, it was news. I actually wanted to explore what was going on with Netflix.
They’re a very private company and I sort of want to hack the company, you know, sort of figure out what’s going on.
It’s a stupid domain name.
It’s a great domain name.
I criticized it from day one on it.
Why? What’s wrong with it? Well, it sounds like amateur.
She’s really like hacking Netflix. What does that mean? Well, it’s like rocking Netflix , but in the 21st century.
Exactly.
How’s Netflix doing? They’re doing really well. They just announced that they passed the 3 million subscriber mark based on the competition from Blockbuster.
They’re still managing to grow despite pretty hardcore competition.
Blockbuster is spending a ton of money acquiring new customers and Netflix is still growing.
I haven’t switched. I still use Netflix. I tend to be pretty loyal. I think the service is good.
I know I’ve read on some other blogs like John Robb has a blog where he basically said Netflix ’s toast that they can’t.
The turnaround is very bad now.
They had some problems in early January, February, and it’s part of their… they go through prosperits.
And when you had that many members, you do have some movie allocation problems, but I’m hearing double the problems from Blockbuster right now.
Of course. Start-up must be like, yeah. Have you ever actually seen an Netflix facility? No, no. They’ve actually invited me out, though.
They have one in New York, don ’t they? There’s one in Queens.
In Flushing.
Yeah, and I’m actually in Flus hing every once in a while, but they’re very secretive.
They’ve only released a few photos of the distribution centers.
Really? But you could go inside and take a look at the view monitor. They invited you to do that? Well, they invited me to the corporate headquarters.
So there’s something… some secret sauce inside that distribution center, huh? Well, they’re starting to release information about it, so they’ve shown actual pictures of people stuffing the envelopes and things like that.
They kind of visualized what it must be like.
Somebody was telling me, maybe it was you, that they have some kind of deal with the post office, so that when you return the envelope, it scans it at the post office, and that goes on their computer, and they send you something out , a new one out, before it actually arrives.
Well, actually… Is that true, or…? From what I understand, it’s currently not true.
I think they’ve tested it in the past.
Blockbuster is supposedly doing that. It’s wrecking havoc.
I’ve got people that are recording five movies out of the three-hour plan right now.
Because they’re erroneous positives, or something like that.
Yeah, they’re getting the movie scan, so we’re seeing all kinds of weirdness going on.
But from what I understand, the source of Netflix, they don’t do that.
So it seems like it must be, like, a temporary… This whole idea of mailing around these DVDs, you know, seems like a sort of an anach ronistic thing that, given a few more years, it’ll all be networked.
This is… Steve, I gotta get it. Hold on.
Why don’t you…? Oh, whatever.
Steve, how you doing? Okay.
Okay, we’re… Do you know…? We’re live reporting Steve Ra vel.
Hold on.
Dave’s leaving, so maybe I’ll read and address his first question.
I started the blog, since he can’t hear it, he won’t be modest.
I started the blog because we came from a software company, and I actually worked together a software company.
You know, we’re the global building, which used to be called the global building.
Dave said to actually understand blogging, you should read 50 blogs and start one.
And I just started wanting a company I’m passionate about, and I thought that was really important, you know, to learn blogging.
And this is sort of the experiment going awry.
It’s sort of the automatic thing to want to talk to this microphone.
This little stick just standing right on the table, and you have to look at it and talk to it.
Yeah.
Note your voice level.
Okay, good.
Good.
So that was a little dramatic thing.
Steve’s in New York now, and Steve Ravel, PR blogger… PR God, yes.
is going to be joining us soon.
So what were you guys talking about while I was, otherwise, occupied? Oh, I readjusted your first question about why I started… Why I started hacking Netflix.
I readjusted your first question.
Oh, why did you do that? Because we came from a software company.
There were a couple other people involved, so we started a software company that sold it to people here in New York.
You guys used to work together then? Yeah, for years.
Years.
They’re like your buddies.
Yeah.
And we encourage each other to blog and stuff like that.
You only know something funny.
We were sitting around at a meeting at my work now.
You know how blogging has spread? It’s sort of this person-to- person thing we were talking about, you know, spreading podcasts.
Well, they don’t know anything about it.
Well, here’s what I mean.
See what I mean? Well, let me just say this.
Before we started, I said, “Let ’s not do anything.
Let’s not talk at all, because it’ll screw up the whole thing . " But unfortunately, yeah, we did .
Well, no, no, no.
What I’m saying is we were sitting around at a product manager meeting where we were talking about having another blog for our company.
Right.
Our CEO blogs.
The guy next to me blogs.
The guy across us has a blog for his youth group.
And another guy has a blog he’s starting up about New York City .
So there’s six bloggers and out of six people.
What company is this? It’s Indexed Stock Imagery in New York.
It’s a stock photo agency.
Right, right.
So blogging, it’s fair to say it’s caught on.
Oh, yeah.
And does anybody worry about how many people are reading their blogs? I don’t, you know, I don’t worry about it.
I’d like to watch it.
You worry about it.
Well.
Knacking Netflix.
Hey, there he is.
Steve.
Steveville.
Say hi to the folks at home.
Hello, everyone.
I… What’s your name? My name is Steve Herbell.
What’s the name of your blog? My name and my blog is Micro Persuasion.
But doesn’t everybody know that already? Not everybody.
There must be somebody who doesn’t know that.
So Steve, you’re going to get … Oh, you found this? Yeah.
Well, that’s a sexy backpack you’re talking about.
Thank you.
I have to be different.
I have to be different.
So you’re going to get some coffee? I am.
Yes.
Okay.
We’ll be ready for you.
I’ll have a question ready for you.
Oh, okay.
That’s not good.
Nice surprise, Steve.
That was Steve Rebell, everybody.
Everybody.
So everybody at your company at this meeting, they all have blogs.
Oh, yeah.
One of them is interesting.
It’s called Garage Spin.
What? Garage Spin.
I’ve talked to a lot of people about blogging.
I’ve talked to people on the train.
I’ve done presentations of blog ging now.
He’s a musician.
He wants to record an album.
When I talked to him, he didn’t know how to market his album.
So I told him, “Blog the process.
Blog the tools you use.
Blog the thing that you’re going through. " I want to learn about it.
And he’s crossing the podcast.
I’ve been pushing him very hard .
I’m like, “Dude, podcast.
This is a beautiful outlet, especially for the masses of people who just want to be musicians and want to have exposure.
That’s podcasting.
You can just instantly just deliver all your… So do you do it? Yeah.
Garage Spin’s up and running.
Yeah.
He’s working on the blog.
He’s one of the people that’s really concerned about how much traffic is coming in or whatever.
I think everyone who’s starting off just wants to know.
Is there an audience to what I ’m talking about? I don’t think it’s true of everybody.
My father, for example, he’s a very talkative guy.
It’s really hard to get a word in it.
But he said, “I have nothing to say.
What would I say?” That you hear a lot.
It’s like, “I don’t know.
I wouldn’t have anything to say . " And so my answer to that is, " Well, just…” And those people are certainly not worried about how many people are going to read their blog.
Their concern is the other end of it, is that all of a sudden everybody’s going to be reading my blog and I’m not going to look good.
I’m really stupid, right? That’s true.
So what I say to people like that is I say, “Well, just go ahead and start the blog and post something really, really insipid and stupid. " It’s like, “Hi, this is my blog . " And then just don’t do anything .
Leave alone.
And then someday you’ll be in the shower and an idea will hit you.
And you’ll go, “Oh, God, I wish I could just get this out to the world. " And then that’s when you go post something on your blog, right? And that sort of gets the process going.
And that really has helped a lot.
I’ve found a lot of people sort of get over the first initial hump.
But if you have to… It’s sort of like, what’s a good way writers get this question all the time? It’s like, “Okay, I want to write something.
How do I go about doing it?” And a writer will say, “Just write it. " The only way to write is to actually write.
You can’t prepare to write.
Same thing is true with podcast ing.
So you were saying before, you ’re worried about the production .
That, to me, is the same kind of concern that my father had.
He said, “Well, I’m afraid I don’t have anything to say. " Well, the thing is that the good news is the first time you do a podcast, nobody’s gonna listen to it anyway.
So what’s the problem? Look as bad as you want to look .
I listened to my first podcast.
It’s pretty embarrassing.
I pause at this moment and say, “Well, gosh, I think I better explain what I’m doing here. " And then, without any segue at all, after I’m finished explaining what I’m doing, I just start reading from my notes.
It’s like, “Oh, I’m getting my picture taken. " So anyway, Steve Rubell, who actually looks different from the way… I mean, you look the same, but you look different from what you look on your blog.
Whether I look better online or … There’s no better… I’m not saying better or worse.
It’s just different.
Steve has this big picture of himself right there in the upper corner, which probably is good PR, right? I guess so.
So tell us about your blog and how you got started blogging, Steve.
When did you start? MicroPersuasion? Is that the URL? Yes, it’s micropersuasion. com.
Okay.
I would say about a year and a half ago, I started to read blogs aggressively through RSS Feeds.
I saw that we’re having a major impact on my reading habits.
I started working with clients to launch blogs in my PR firm in early 2004.
And then about a year ago, I woke up one Sunday morning and I said, “What’s going on here? I’m working with clients and helping them blog.
I’m reading you, I’m reading Scoville, and I’m learning so much.
So I think I should have a blog also.
Obviously.
Yeah, obviously, right? Duh.
You know? And you know… We’re like religious evangel ists, aren’t we? It’s really shameless.
And so I started to… So we get you to drink the Kool -Aid and then your job is to go out and get everybody else.
It’s like a cult, right? You know? Yeah.
I’m sorry.
We were… Of course, I’m going to say now , we were talking about this before, right? It’s like I was listening to a podcast this morning with Ron Bloom and Adam Curry.
And they were talking about the mechanics of building a really big audience for podcasts.
And I was sort of shaking my head as I was listening to it.
I was going, “No, no, that’s not how it works. " It’s like a pyramid scheme.
And you don’t need to reach 10 million people in one shot with your message.
What you need? No, you… I mean, actually, you don’t need to do anything.
But if you want the thing to grow, it’s just done, you know, one evangelist at a time.
Basically, you know, my father was a really interesting experience.
I mean, he… Before he did a podcast, he said, “Well, you know, I would never do a podcast about everything you’d say. " Now that he’s done one, he’s got a billion ideas of things that he wants to talk about.
He’s telling everybody… Of course, I’m telling everybody about it.
My brother’s telling everybody about it.
So all of a sudden, there’s a whole other group of people that are getting infected with the disease, or maybe it’s not a disease, but that’s… It’s all pipe, piper, pyramid scheme, evangelism, two-tier marketing, you know, the whole nine yards, right? It’s like Amway, right? It’s like Amway.
Exactly, except there’s no money in it.
It’s just for love, basically.
I disagree with the money part.
I’m getting some black glory.
I disagree, too.
There is money in it.
Of course, there is.
I mean, actually, there’s a lot more money in it than you can get with advertising.
Yeah.
There’s money from all different kinds of aspects, too , because if you look at it, I’m making money from it, too.
Right.
By winning clients.
But for your clients, how much money do they spend to try to get the world to know who they are, right? That’s why they hired you.
That’s right.
And it’s an extension.
So if a blog can help you get better known, then aren’t you making money? It’s another tool we’re going to use.
I mean, we launched a practice under the name Microphone.
It’s raising a Kruppercat’s microphone.
That really helps companies.
What does it mean? Micro persuasion? Yeah.
When I launched the name, to me that meant that there are millions of small voices, micro voices, that have just as much influence as the mass voices.
Yep.
They are the mass, right? Which we pay for.
I mean, you pay for mass persu asion.
You pay for, you know, I mean, a hit on Good Morning America or you’re a client or whatever.
But the reality is that you have, you know, you get a hit on a Scobalizer or a Slash God.
Your case, what you’re doing is amazing, right? I mean, I go and I, personally, you’re in every single PowerPoint that I show.
Because on this topic, which is a lot.
His blog is an interesting blog .
Because you Google Netflix, you ’re the third one.
You took ownership of Netflix, basically.
Yeah.
They didn’t have a blog presence and you created one for them.
You know how powerful this whole system is? On Tuesday, I posted Block buster’s customer service number .
And on Monday, I posted it.
And by Wednesday, it was the number one hit for Blockbuster 800.
That’s two days later.
So I’m going after Blockbuster ’s today.
So, it’s bizarre.
And this leads to a different topic, if I could ask this.
Where do you want to go? Well, I wonder if Google One Day is going to wake up.
And we’re going to say, we’re giving these blogs too much power.
Turn it off.
Yeah.
We’re going to make a change.
I don’t know.
Well, go on with that.
Well… What’s your concern? Why is that a concern to you? Well, I hope they don’t.
Because… But I don’t think it should be a concern.
I mean, basically… Well, I’m sorry.
Go ahead.
I don’t want to… Well, it’s a concern because I think that that’s, right now, one of the… One of the factors that’s going to help push blocking your main stream.
What is? The Google juice.
I don’t know if I don’t agree with you because… Well, let me tell you why.
If I may.
Yeah, sure.
The companies need comfort.
Okay? The buying scene.
So, are they going to buy into blogs? I don’t know.
But if you try it to search engine marketing, if you try it to optimization, that’s something they’re buying right now.
Now, maybe in a year, that won ’t be true.
They’ll buy it no matter what.
But, right now, they’re saying, okay, so what’s this getting? And when I show them the Google juice, that’s like, immediately they get it? Yeah.
And I say, okay, I understand.
Yeah.
So, Google makes that change that, I think, reduces the direct influence.
Okay.
Can I respond? Yeah.
Okay.
I don’t care whether your companies have blogs or not.
First of all.
So, it means absolutely nothing to me one way or the other whether they do it or they don ’t.
Second of all is that there’s a real big danger in relying too heavily on sexualization.
The whole point of blogging was to take, you know, to decentral ize to the extent that we’re all sort of like looking to Google for approval.
We’re now going back to the old system.
It’s like, you know, okay, we traded in one boss for another.
They used to be, you know, what anointed credibility was getting on the radio or getting quoted in the New York Times.
Today, you know, fuck it.
I don’t care.
I really honestly don’t care whether I get quoted in the New York Times.
I mean, maybe a little bit.
My parents read it.
So, it’s like, it’s good for family relations, but it doesn ’t build flow for me.
They very rarely get the story right.
You know, all the objective things, reasons why you might care about that seem to have faded now used to be that that was a very big deal.
Now today that’s been replaced by Google.
But someday… I’m just quite like, by the way , like 300 PR firms out of business.
I didn’t do it.
No, no, no.
I didn’t do it.
No, no, not me.
No, PR is in crisis of course.
I mean, although PR has a chance to get back to its roots .
The irony of the name PR was, what did it stand for? Public relations, right? But you didn’t like, market to the public.
You marketed it to the press.
Why don’t we say it really has real meaning? But that’s not public, you know .
They were sort of anything but the public.
They were elitists.
They were, you know, the king makers.
They were, you know, gate keepers, all the rest of that stuff.
Now, like you said, you get to do the job that you’re always supposed to do.
So, if your clients don’t want to do it vlogging, if it doesn ’t get them Google juice, that’s your problem.
That’s where it’s locked in wide.
I think you have to sell it.
And one of the ways you sell it to them, we sell the whole Clut rain module.
Do you? Oh, no.
You have a Clutrain module? Mantra.
Oh, Mantra.
I thought you said, well, we can sell you the module.
No, I had a Clutrain module.
I’ve been making a lot of money .
Here’s the Clutrain, take a ride with me.
Mantra is.
That’s great.
We sell it.
I mean, the human voice and the corporate speaker is dying.
And I mean, I believe that.
Do they buy it? That’s the bad.
No, no, they don’t buy it.
Number two is, do they get it? No, they don’t get it.
Are they going to try to use it and usurp it and pretend they ’re doing it? Maybe, right? No, I wouldn’t.
Otherwise, you wouldn’t.
At least personally, I wouldn’t work with them.
You wouldn’t do that, right? Good for you.
That means that you have a soul .
Congratulations.
Well, I’ve been freaking the K ool-Aid one.
That’s the other way of looking at it.
Yeah.
I think of it as a soul.
You think of it as Kool-Aid.
Okay, great.
You’re a distributor.
Right.
Me too.
I’m weighing all the way.
That’s right.
That’s cool.
So, do you enjoy your work? I love what I do.
You love what I do? I love what I do more so now than I ever have.
I’ve been in PR for 15 years.
I always loved it.
I guess I’m a rare bird.
I think I was a PR person in a former life.
Yeah, I think in some ways you went down.
I’ve been in PR for 15 years.
I always loved it.
I guess I’m a rare bird.
But.
I think I was a PR person in a former life.
Yeah.
I think in some ways you went down.
Absolutely.
Except nobody pays me.
That’s right.
Damn it.
Somehow we got to figure out that one.
Would you travel across the country and do a great thing? I wish.
I mean, doesn’t everybody live to be Dave Warner? I mean, it’s just like.
Is that right? Really? It’s not so great.
I think you embody like every male in the 30s and 40s and 50s .
Well, I waited a long time for you to do this.
I, you know, sort of like put down roots and, you know, got bored out of my mind.
In Silicon Valley.
Yeah.
It was either do it now or never do it.
Yeah.
Well, I’m having a good time.
I’m having a good time.
You know, all my ideas now have taken root.
And, you know, and so they’re not considered, you know, all that far out anymore.
So what’s next? Me? Yeah, that’s what I like.
Well, right now, I haven’t really been all that secretive about it.
I mean, basically, I think in terms of formats and protocols, it’s OPML.
OPML comes as the next layer up after RSS.
I mean, you know, that’s the role OPML plays right now is, you know, sort of, it’s where, you know, it’s doing lists of subscriptions, right? And so it can be used for book mark, it can be used for directories, it can be used for presentations, it can be used for thinking, for organizing and planning.
And it can actually is pretty good for group wear.
And it sort of goes in a lot of different, and then if you take that and like mix it in with the internet and all the, you know, basic sort of simple networking like HTML has, you know, where you can link from one place to another, it gets pretty powerful, you know.
So I’ve been wanting to do this .
I mean, I got started on doing it in early 2002.
And then I, you know, I got sick and then I couldn’t do it.
But everything down and sort of , you know, reset everything and figure out what I was really doing and quit smoking.
Now I’m losing weight.
That’s the big thing, right? I’m losing weight and getting sick.
That’s why Florida has been really good for me and continues to be.
So you’re retiring to Florida? I don’t think there’s any retirement about it.
No, I’m not retiring, but Florida is kind of, you know, it’s one of these places where I’ve like always wanted to like be there for some extended period of time.
I wanted to live at the beach and, you know, that’s another one of those things.
Like, you know, okay, like when were you planning on doing it? You know, it’s either like do it now or maybe you don’t ever get to do it.
So, yeah, I’m trying to create a lifestyle at the same time.
There’s a lot, you know, if I want to do a business and like you said, basically the ideas are becoming acceptable now.
And if I wanted to really build a development team today, I could do it.
I raised money to do it and, you know, I don’t know if I could do that in Florida.
I might try to make this interview with you as much as I can with us.
The trip is that it’s not really an interview.
It’s more of a conversation.
Yeah, I mean, it’s like let’s talk about the clue train, right? The clue train says that there ’s like no top or bottom.
It’s not like, you know, like, you know, two-tier or whatever.
We’re just hanging out here.
Well, something I want to ask you actually, I could, is, and I know I’m, I know I’m totally just, but the question’s on the line.
Go ahead.
Like RSS.
Yeah.
I mean, we all believe it.
We all use it.
We all, right? Okay.
And when we live in the aggreg ators, we take, we walk out on that street ten feet.
Yeah.
Pull up ten people and read them.
And not one.
I don’t know.
No present.
We’ll probably know what RSS is .
Maybe they’ve heard it.
Okay.
Can you get in trouble for doing that? Yeah, I can do that.
So what’s the point? Well, the point I’m making is that, or question, is that how do we, I mean, I think that we ’re all evangelists here for RSS.
But why? Why do you have to be something for everybody? This is what, I get asked that, this gets, you know, comes up all the time, right? And five years ago or three years ago, four guys could be sitting at a table in a Starbucks on 42nd Street and none of them would have heard of RSS.
Today, all of them have and they all use it, right? So that’s an awful lot of growth right there, okay? It’s fast.
Yeah.
And maybe five years from now, you’ll go out on 42nd Street and they’ll all be talking about RSS and how, you know, their company is adopting it across the board and how, you know, they’re going to the next thing.
Some guys are talking about this thing called OPML and they ’re not sure what it is or whatever.
And I feel like it’s like when I talk about the web.
But that’s the way it should always be, Steve.
There should always be something new happening that, you know, that is making its way through, you know, our civilization.
It should always be.
If it ever stops being that way , then you should be, like, worried.
Not worried that people don’t know.
I’m worried that people think it’s too hard.
It is too hard.
Right.
Maybe that’s the answer to that one.
And how does it get easier is a really interesting question.
It’s not a technological question.
It’s a human question.
It’s a political question.
It’s people putting their pride aside and deciding to work together a question.
And, you know, there’s very little of that.
Once RSS became, you know, somewhat successful, all of a sudden a lot of people wanted to take it over and own it.
And then they, you know, so they could split it in two, but they could never make the whole thing go the way they wanted it to go.
The only way for that to happen is for people to drop their pride and say, okay, I’m going to do it the way you want to do it.
There has to be an awful lot of that happening.
And it’s not happening.
And look what happened with Yahoo.
They have this ugly, you know, little graphic that they ask every blogger to put on their site.
Right.
Well, I won’t do it.
You know, I refuse to do it because I think it’s just a tiny little bit of working together there.
We can solve that problem and make it easy for, you know, for anybody to be in that space.
Of course, their attitude is we ’re the only aggregator out there, right? No.
Well, they’ve made it easier for my mom to read blogs.
She doesn’t know their blogs.
And I just set up a couple of beats for her.
Yeah.
And now she goes through.
Right.
But why does it have to be specific to Yahoo? You can use that.
Well, they’re the ones that, I think they have one of the better interfaces for reading for someone who’s not technical.
What if somebody has a better one for people who are non- technical? Let’s write one.
Why don’t we create one? There’s a need.
But then, you know, do you see my point is that just the tini est little bit of working together, we couldn’t get it.
You know, I tried approaching them privately.
They wouldn’t respond.
I tried asking them that I saw a guy from Yahoo talking about their aggregator at a conference.
I raised my hand.
I said, hey, how about working with everybody else? They sort of snickered.
Like, well, why should we do that? And then I called them out.
I called the Yahoo problem on scripting news.
Escalated up the next level.
Total silence, you know.
I mean, you know, that’s bad.
I mean, you know, I think what they think is that I’m jealous in some way or, you know, I’m pissed off or whatever.
Yeah, I’m pissed off, but that ’s not insurmountable.
I can easily get a swage, you know.
I found out from Scobley yesterday that these guys at Microsoft are scared of me.
And I said to them, I said, well, that’s pretty good.
It’s kind of like, how could Nixon have ever opened up relations with China if they weren’t scared of him? That’s quite a comparison, Nick y.
What? Oh, yeah.
Oops.
Gee, where should we go with that? Just so you know, Dave’s holding up his fingers on the inside of his head.
Like, bring my shoulders up.
We need video casting.
Yeah, let’s go.
Oh, it’s a good thing Mark Pil grim isn’t vlogging anymore because he’d have a field day with that.
Oh, yeah.
Sorry.
Oops, that was the wrong thing to say.
Anyway.
I might come back.
Yeah, so working together would be good.
I don’t know.
I think that it’s also, we’ve got this problem with content modification and what Google’s doing with AutoLink.
And I think that’s terrible.
And, you know, it’s a radical ization and commercialization.
A totally unnecessary commercialization of the web.
And you know what’s coming next .
They’ve got a browser involvement.
Just buy another Mozilla program or just a job to Google this week.
Yeah.
And the venture, that’s right.
And a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley funded the original guy who worked on Firefox.
You know what these guys are doing there? They’re getting ready to put ads, our ads, if you have ads, are going to move out of your page and into their Chrome.
And you’re going to get bootk its.
And they’re going to make all the money.
And then the next thing is they ’re going to sell out to the Christian right.
And then all of a sudden we’re all going to become Bush supporters.
Jim Bush in 2008, all the way.
That’ll be fun.
Jason Calcanus is good about calling out people that do that though.
I mean, he’s got 70 web logs now.
And he’s really, anytime somebody comes up with these brilliant business plans to, you know, take the content that we all write.
I mean, you know, we spend a lot of energy on this and they slap an ad on it and expect to make it get rich on it.
Really, I wasn’t aware that he was doing that.
Yeah, he’s called, you should check out his blog.
He really calls out these guys.
The Nano Publishing Blog? That’s what I mean.
I subscribe to it.
It’s Jason Calcanus.
Oh, yeah, I don’t subscribe to it.
It’s really good. He calls these guys out.
He’s sat at South by Southwest, I think, at one of the conferences.
They know what was it.
I remember that conference.
Of course his bread and butter depends on them not doing that.
Well, ours too to some degree.
I don’t think they should slap ads on it.
Micropersuasion, Orbitcast.
No, without there being some sort of rush here.
What’s the worst example of that happening? Who’s doing the worst? Well, there’s concern that blog lines will do it.
I mean, we’re all syndicated in blog lines.
I mean, Dave, you’ve got about 3,000 subscribers there.
I’m worried for ads on there without sharing the revenue back with us.
That’s why, like, Google is at least they give us some pitt ance of the revenue.
See, I’m not that concerned about that.
What if they’re making money off your content? You could also not change the feed.
I’d like to be able to change my feed and say… I’m more concerned when they change what I say.
You know, when they make me out to, you know, when they point to Amazon for my content, and I don’t point to Amazon as a matter of principle because they’re patent abusers, and when they change my content to point to Amazon, then I feel you really used.
I mean, feel betrayed, and specifically when it happens for Google because of what we were saying before is, like, that’s why you don’t want to depend too heavily on them because they’ll break your heart.
I mean, you know, this was the problem with centralization, is there was no incentive for them to listen to us, right? And if there’s only one Google, well, then why should they care what we think? There is going to be a market that kind of evolves where people will take either content that people are making available free and changing, and I think companies will try to push the boundaries in doing that.
One of the areas I’m concerned about is fake blogs, right? So companies are doing that, right? But I can easily see somebody creating what I call a fake-f ake blog, which is basically somebody saying, “Well, you know what? I don’t like Starbucks, so I’m going to create a fake blog and pretend it’s Starbucks . " I’ve done one of those. I don’t want to tell you what it is.
It hasn’t quite percolated through Google yet.
I don’t want to tell you what it is. I don’t want to tell you what it is.
But a fake-fake blog? Yeah, I understand the concept.
You know, where it’s like, you know, and you might think it’s the company trying to do that.
Also, I’m wondering if some of these fake blogs are intentionally fake, because they know it’s just good PR, not good PR, but they know it’s bad.
What do you mean by that? Well, like the McDonald’s Lincoln Park blog. Did you hear about that? Yeah.
Okay.
FCP.
So I’m wondering if McDonald’s said, you know, some companies believe there’s no such thing as bad PR.
Right.
So they’re going to get to create online bots.
So I’m wondering if McDonald’s, one of two things happened.
Either they said, “Yeah, we’re going to do this blog thing. We ’ll do it this way. " Right.
And they really were totally naive.
Or.
Or they were smart as hell.
Right.
They said, “They’re going to be outraged by this, but we’ll get a lot of orders. " We’ll get all this link up, and we’ll get all this possible.
Well, did it work? Did it get people to go? Got people talking? We’re talking about it right now.
Yeah, that’s right.
Creep of listening.
I’m being accused of being a sh ill.
McDonald’s has, you know, I’ve written about this a lot when I ’m traveling.
You know, McDonald’s, this was a big secret.
I put something on my blog and said, “Boy, if McDonald’s were really serious about Wi-Fi, you know, they could clean up. " And then somebody said, “What the fuck are you talking about? Of course it’s serious about Wi -Fi.
Look at the map. " And so they sent me a board to the map.
And if there aren’t, I mean, every McDonald’s all across the country has Wi-Fi.
So if they wanted to get blog- type people interested in McDonald’s, one simple way to do it would be to put a little sign on the door that says, “Take out your laptop and try it out, because it works. " This is like, well, Starbucks has become the de facto hangout .
Absolutely.
Well, yeah, I was, you know, Keith Tier, Keith, he did real names.
And sort of Silicon Valley entrepreneur started Cyber, Siberia, basically the first cybercap in Britain, in London.
And, you know, we were talking about that the other day and basically agreed that this is what cybercap plays became, is Starbucks, right? I mean, you know, it went the other way.
Instead of a new chain, I think we’ll see more and more of it.
That’s McDonald’s.
I mean, you know, there aren’t any Starbucks.
You know, there’s Starbucks on the two coasts in Chicago.
And that’s it.
You know, in big cities, there ’s Starbucks.
But if you’re like driving cross-country, if you’re in like a red state somewhere, forget it.
McDonald’s is like the only place that has Wi-Fi.
And now I have another reason not to go to a red state.
It’s no Starbucks.
No.
Yeah, right.
Well, it’s true.
You know, my first cross- country trip, driving from Reno, Nevada to Denver, Colorado, not one Starbucks.
I got it.
You win? Oh, I drink this stuff every day.
No, you know what the solution is? No.
Oh, I think the solution is really quite to my big checkery .
There’s an answer to this, which is McDonald’s iced tea, unsweet iced tea.
It’s really pretty good.
It’s bloated with caffeine.
It’s very refreshing.
And it’s quite affordable.
Well, he’s an influence.
So I’m going to try it.
Yeah.
It sold me on McDonald’s.
What? It sold me on McDonald’s.
It’s great.
I like it better.
The only problem is you have to smell the smell of McDonald’s.
That’s the problem.
You don’t want to hang out in a McDonald’s and put on your laptop.
The Wi-Fi is pretty good, and it’s $49 a month.
Do you know if it’s greasy? Oh, yeah.
Well, you know, people, what was it? Madge Weinstein said, “Oh, sure .
We know he’s going for the iced tea.
Ha, ha, ha. " He’s, you know, a few quarter-p atter with cheese or whatever.
He never did that.
I like the chicken selects.
Gained at least 20 pounds off chicken selects.
I stopped eating that.
But I don’t do that anymore.
Salads and salmon.
That’s me, you know.
Yeah, that would be nice if they had a chain of restaurants where you could go.
And I don’t care if it costs 10 bucks, you know.
Have you tried the Verizon, the new, like, broadband service they have in the cities? I don’t know about that.
They have a city.
They now offer up to $600K first in, like, 15 major cities .
$80 bucks.
Give it to you.
$80 bucks for what? $80 bucks a month.
Flat.
Where do you get access? Anywhere.
Anywhere.
The whole city.
It’s a card you plug in your notebook.
Oh, really? Yeah.
Again, I hate to plug Jason Cal canis twice in one podcast, but he has it.
Sure.
He raves about it.
He’s got me wanting it so bad.
Because I want to post.
But it’s $600K.
So is it a cellular modem thing ? Yeah, it’s a cellular modem.
Yeah.
Oh, really? Yeah.
And it’s how much a month? $80.
$80.
It’s only a major city, so.
On top of a $30 Wi-Fi canada.
On top of what? On top of a $30 a month Wi-Fi canada, which I have here with T-Mobile.
But why would you even need that? Well, you locked in for a while .
Well, and then you wouldn’t need it at home either if you live in that area, right? Yes.
Although it doesn’t go all the way up, right? I would have to stick some.
You know, they have a Wi-Fi at Brian Park, right? Yes.
Yeah.
All over the place.
Yeah.
All over the place.
So if I wanted to go, I’d save six bucks instead of uploading this podcast.
I mean, I’m going to upload this podcast right after we’re done, basically.
You know, so it’s like going to be instant broadcast journalism .
You’re a media star now, Steve.
I am? How do you feel about that? That’s scary.
This guy, Mike is the star.
Yeah, Mike is.
I’ve done like 20 interviews.
You’ve done over 100.
I’ve done so many.
It’s crazy.
But isn’t it a lot that the media want to talk to a PR person? I mean, that the media want to interview a PR person.
Yeah.
I mean, it’s just irony.
Who? Well.
Who wants to interview a PR person? Well, I’ve done a lot of interviews.
Oh, you do? That’s true.
I did four just this week.
Isn’t that a conflict of interest? Not yet.
I’m actually able to.
It’s getting close to that, huh ? No, because I’ve moved now.
But isn’t your job to try to get in those interviews for your clients? Aren’t you competing with your clients? Not anymore, because I’m now working now.
I would say, I would say 80% of my job now is to work with clients on blogging and strategies and also building a whole side of our business.
So by becoming more of a visible expert on this stuff, you’re helping generate business for your firm.
Exactly.
Which is exactly what you’re saying to your clients is that by becoming an expert in your own area, by letting everybody know that you know the most about whatever it is that you do, that that just can’t help but help your business, right? I wouldn’t say I know the most.
I think I learn from the people who do.
But I don’t know any other blog ging PR person.
You’re the only one I know.
There are 140 of them.
I understand, but I’m telling you, it’s not getting any easy data, Steve.
And I’m sure you’re aware of that too, right? Yes, but I want to give them a plug, because I think that there are a lot of good PR blog gers out there who are out there long before I was from all over the world.
I mean, Neville Hopson out of Amsterdam, if you’re not reading his blog, it’s fabulous .
He’s talking about Well, I read your blog, and I expect you to point to him when he has something interesting.
I do, I definitely do.
What about a link blog? Do you ever think about doing one of those? I have thought about doing that , because Because you ask what’s next for me, that’s one of them.
That’s another thing OPML is good for.
Is that, you know, if you want to do a more sort of like long post, short post sort of thing, and a lot easier, that’s one of the things I want to do.
I think that blogging has gotten too in a rut.
I have a link blog now, kind of , for delicious, which is basically, yeah, it’s my backup brain.
I mean, if I see a laptop, I think I want to buy, I’ll throw it there.
But actually, something I’ve actually done is I’m using delicious, the irony is, where I sit, is I now get pitched a lot.
You get pitched.
I get pitched.
Which is weird, because you’re a pitcher.
It’s like, years ago there was Bill and Ted’s bogus journey, it’s a B movie.
And it was a scene where Bill and Ted were sent to their own personal hell.
Okay, and that’s what I feel like, because all these years of pitching journalists and spamming their own biases.
Now I’m getting spammed by other PR professionals and the tables have turned.
You’re a filter.
Well, like, and some of it’s really good.
And I’m trying to be nice.
I try to respond to every pitch and try to say thank you.
At least just say thank you.
But what I’ve done is, I say, hey, let’s make the pitching process transparent.
Go put your link up in delicious and tag it micro persuasion.
And tell me one line why you think I should link to this.
Have you asked people to do that? Yeah.
And what do they do? Some have actually taken to it and started to post things there.
And I try to pull things from there regularly that I think are appropriate.
So it’s a public place, basically.
You could point to that from your blog if you wanted to.
Yeah, I do.
So you’d have a sort of, or you do.
And so there would be a place that basically anybody could post to.
That’s transparent pitching.
Well, it’s sort of like, there ’s so many things like the track back.
If you had, you know, that’s kind of like track back, except in a sort of centralized place.
Well, it’s an invitation saying , you know, post something here.
I promise you I’ll look at it.
And then if I, it sounds interesting.
There’s something I want to ask .
Is there sort of like, Is this the question you were going to ask me at the beginning? No, and I was going to put it out to all these guys.
Is that, is there like a pulse to the New York bloggers community? Do you have meetups? Do you have, is there anybody who throws parties or anything like that? No.
Cause like in San Francisco, there’s a whole sort of circuit .
There’s no time for that.
There’s no, you gotta catch a train.
You gotta.
I’m not saying it’s a good thing, actually.
Cause I think it’s very incest uous.
And people are so concerned about being friends with other people that, you know, they’re not getting any truth anymore because you gotta, you know, be careful.
So is there anything like that? I’ve been pushing for it.
I’ve been trying to, you know, connect with different people.
You know, I reached out to Steve.
That’s why we’re here this morning, you know, let’s get together.
I got together with Jason and some of his bloggers one night, two weeks ago.
Six Apart was here.
They actually had a, you know, drinks last week.
I was too sick to go.
They had a what week? They sort of like, you know, open, what is it, happy hour.
Six Apart was here.
Meina came into town and, you know, Anil and Nate, they had an open house basically for bloggers.
And, but no, we really need some sort of formal way because .
Well, here’s the thing, you know, I think that New York is very, as you know, Dave, it’s very different in the valley.
I mean, it’s, it’s, it tends to be.
It’s not really a community, is it? It’s so huge.
And here’s how we see it like with on the PR side.
When we go into a media tour, we’re a client out in California.
Don’t meet, the media world will meet with the clients.
In New York, they really don’t want to.
Unless it’s such a big name or has such a value for them or they really have the time to do it.
It’s a very different vibe.
That’s changed because in the 80s, I did press tours that came through New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington and so forth.
And yeah, I mean, they would card me around all the publications and yeah, they would meet.
I didn’t think there was a whole lot of value.
It’s hard.
We can get the meetings, but it ’s a lot harder.
I think that’s rashes.
Because now you can find out what you need to know on the web.
I’ll go to your website.
I’ll send you an email.
You send me a copy of the software to find out why I’ll play with it.
It’s different.
Yeah.
Well, I guess that’s good.
Things have changed.
But one of the things I noticed , I spent a bunch of time in North Carolina and in Greens boro, they’ve got a blogging community and it is very much based on face-to-face.
And one of the big differences, and I said this when I was meeting with people there, it occurred to me that there may be more bloggers in New York, but a blogger in Greensboro more likely knows another blog ger than a blogger in New York does.
You may know them not geograph ically, but you’ve met and your friends, you grew up with them basically.
I haven’t met many New York bloggers.
Have you? Yeah, I’ve met a bunch actually .
At different events, the blog ger dinner where I met you.
That’s right.
I started meeting people.
The thing is, blogging is a solitary occupation.
We sit there and we’re writers.
You sit there and you have to spend the time researching.
Dave, you’re very prolific, but to me, it’s the time I spend alone.
Usually late at night, after the kids are in bed, writing.
I love this, seeing you meeting other people and discussing stuff.
I think it’s exciting.
Yeah, I usually don’t want anything to do with meeting people.
This is actually the first time I’ve ever met a blogger.
He’s constantly trying to drag me along.
So what do you think? Is it good to meet other blog gers? Did you hate every second of it ? It’s sort of neat to see the person behind the words, which is sort of neat.
I don’t know.
Not every week.
The people who really are social butterflies and they just want to meet everybody.
I just want to blog.
I want to spend my time on that .
If you have something interesting, email me.
We’ll go from there.
The community is online.
It’s not.
Next week, I’m coming back to New York to do a debate at Re uters.
They’re inviting all these press people in.
It’s so fascinating.
This is another reason we get together is to help assuage the fears of the print journalists.
All the questions they ask are so revealing.
They want us to say, “No, you can’t trust bloggers. " They’ll always be a reason for you to exist.
Bloggers have access to Brian.
Bloggers have confidence to entrust whatever.
There will be, I think, a lot of press people.
I know people are flying in for that thing.
It should be interesting.
I used to do scripting news din ners in New York.
I’ve probably done maybe five of them over the years.
We almost got one together for this one.
I don’t know who would show up for it now.
Actually, I actually think you could have the opposite problem .
So many people show up.
How do you manage that? I don’t have a problem with that.
Katz’s Deli is very good for that.
Katz has this huge dining room.
At worst, we’d fill up a tiny corner of that dining room.
That’s not the problem.
I have no idea who would show up anymore.
I try to be there when I can.
No, I’m sure you would.
Maybe next time.
The one I liked the best that I ’ve ever done was the brunch we did in Alexandria.
We had our own private room and 10 people at the really long table and the door closed.
We could hear everything.
Whereas contrast that to one that I did in Amsterdam where we were 10 people sitting at one long table and I couldn’t hear what the guy sitting next to me was saying.
What’s the point? I mean, okay.
It was like I moved my mouth.
What did he say? I actually have to go run.
We’ve got 44 minutes.
Don’t run yet.
Let me wrap this up.
Before you go, we’ve got to talk Dave into gnomedex.
Yes, we’ve got to go.
Before you leave, I just want to get a chance to wrap up.
So don’t just walk out and make me wrap up by myself.
I would love to go to gnomedex, but Chris has got to invite me to speak.
This is one of the things that … Or let’s do an open session that’s an unconference blogger style thing.
I’ve written about this. Two tier conferences.
I don’t like those.
I would love to go to gnomedex.
But I would also like to get invited.
I thought seriously about going , but I haven’t gotten invited to it.
And I see him inviting all kinds of other people.
You paid? Maybe I should just pay.
Maybe I should just fuck the hell with getting invited.
Mark Cantor, filter out.
I want to meet filter out.
You think Mark Cantor is like … He’s a nut. I knew him in the SPA years ago.
He’s doing crazy stuff.
So you would fly across country to see Mark Cantor.
Well, the group, the combined group.
Steve’s there.
Scobal.
Yeah, Scobal’s okay.
What do you think about the podcast hotel? Have you heard about that one? No.
I swear they got this one from me.
I did this in a podcast.
I explained this idea. I’ve had it for years.
The idea is that we all go check and do a hotel somewhere.
I mean, like 20 or 30 people.
And we stay there for a week and we just interview each other.
We go places and there’s no sessions.
Absolutely no structure to it whatsoever.
And who’s doing it? Alex Williams is doing it in Portland, Oregon sometime this summer.
I don’t know if he thought of it on his own. That’s great.
You know, there’s another thing I want to fix about this business is that give people credit for their ideas.
Come on. What’s the problem? I know you feel the same way, right? Absolutely.
You’ve been abused.
Well, I don’t like using that word.
But I like pleading with people better than complaining.
Anyway, okay, thanks everybody.
We were about to be evacuated.
This has been one of the most interesting podcasts ever.
And I’d like to thank you all guys for coming by and see you all real soon.
Thanks, Dave.
This is a perfect way to end this.
Are we going to kick it out? Hopefully we’re alive still.
Okay, that’s it.