(non)Value of Open Communities

Many web companies significantly profit from the appearance that they are open, but anything of value eventually needs to have some limitations placed on it. In spite of no longer having MovableType installed on this server, the mt-comments file is one of my most requested files. Registration moves you away from The Tragedy of the Commons to something more sustainable.

Can You Trust Wikipedia?

Trust - reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence. How confident are you that a particular Wikipedia page has reliable information? How sure are you in the ability of all the people who may have edited that page? Thanks to Luca de Alfaro and colleagues at the University of California, Santa Cruz you may soon be able to…

Cisco Social media release

First HP did it, now Cisco Systems has issued a Social Media Press Release. Not only is the release on the News@Cisco site, but it’s been distributed as a MarketWire press release (shown here picked up by CNN/Money—interestingly without the videos, but links to them instead).

PR battleground “social networks”

With social networks like Facebook and MySpace in the news a great deal, I find it interesting to get a sense of the depth of behind-the-scenes business planning going on and the role of PR in that planning. According to BrandRepublic: