I’ve always been pretty suspicious of movements, philosophies, -isms, etc., particularly those that enjoy periods of mass popularity. I would place into this category yoga, social networking, deconstructionism, veganism, communism, those yellow rubber bands that people wore on their wrists, dadaism, “grunge,” scrapbooking, and anything than can be encapsulated on a single bumper sticker.

There’s another movement that’s certainly become the cause célèbre-ity — that is of Green, and it just so happens to be the theme of this year’s Blog Action Day. I’m all for sustainability, eco-consciousness, and whatnot, but too often the champions of this movement come across as a bit shrill, smug, or exasperating. Luckily, I’ve come to realize that I already am “green” and can smugly say so without any necessary change in my behavior. My secret? I’m cheap, and obsessively opposed to accumulating “stuff” so that instantly puts me in a better place than all the Prius-drivers in Marin.

I loathe shopping and despair at any new items brought into our compact apartment (my wife is not so militant but she tolerates my manias). Since the recent birth our beautiful boy we have been waging a new war against cheap ugly plastic crap that the baby industry seems resolved to place in our home. Before, when I railed against clutter, stores, and spending money on useless stuff I came across as cheap and OCD. Now, I’m “green” and “sustainable.” It all works out!

Blog Action Day, green, measurement

Now “A-list” bloggers have another blog ranking list to strive for inclusion on (and then they can quickly claim that such things don’t matter, if they acknowledge them at all).

TechMeme has announced a new way of ranking tech blogs (and traditional news sources) for relevance and reach — The TechMeme Leaderboard, which will be based on the blogs and sources tha created the most headlines on Techmeme over the previous 30 days (so the list will hardly be static).

I think this list will instantly become more relevant than the only other “top blogs” list with any substance, the Technorati 100. The TechMeme leaderboard is probably one of the last nails in Technorati’s leaky creaky coffin…

The TechMeme Leaderboard won’t be officially released until tomorrow but Mike Arrington has the scoop at TechCrunch (see a screenshot below) and Dave Winer managed to finagle the full Leaderboard list from Gabe Rivera.

Blogroll, measurement, PR, research, tools

In addition to my “non-work” reading, which includes a front-to-back digestion of the print New York Times that has lately been appearing on my doorstep, and Ian McEwan’s latest, On Chesil Beach, I’ve been intrigued by these stories that have come through my RSS reader:

“I’m Sick of Users,” Josh Bernoff (Forrester): Part of Josh’s pledge is “I promise to avoid the user whenever possible.”

“Sorting Out Social Media Measurement,” Nathan Gilliatt (The Net-Savvy Executive): A good breakdown of “four basic applications” of social media measurement.

“PR Industry: please get it right — outputs do not equal outcomes,” Ed Moed (Measuring Up): Why PR “outputs” like media hits are not the same as “outcomes” like sales and bolstering reputation.

ed moed, forrester, ian mcewan, josh bernoff, measurement, measuring up, nathan gilliatt, net savvy executive, new york times, research, tools

Today is the day of the big Eastwick Move. The agency is moving into its new posh digs in Mountain View from Redwood City. Rather than talk about what a big step this is in the evolution and growth of the agency, I’ve taken this time to reflect upon what matters almost as much — how will this affect my lunch options?

I work out of Eastwick’s San Francisco office, here in (usually) sunny Potrero Hill. My fellow SFers live in the City, love the City, and, were it not for our beloved colleagues down the 280, usually view anything south of the Mission as a no-man’s-land of shopping malls, parking lots, and car dealerships (maybe it’s not that bad, but we are pretty finicky up here). One of the great things about our SF office, apart from being seven minutes from my house, is the myriad lunch options nearby. From french café to Chinese, to fantastic burgers and Middle Eastern, to soul food and sushi, it’s all good and all close.

Sadly, the same cannot necessarily be said for Redwood City. Apart from a fantastic Turkish restaurant and a decent pho joint, Redwood City had little to excite me until Eastwick’s Operations Ninja Ziad told me about El Grullense, just down the street from Eastwick’s office. This taqueria, part of an ever-growing chain, boasts some of the best tacos (real ones, not the crunchy shell-beans and guacamole-nonsense you see too often) I’ve ever had, and I consider myself something of an expert. It is their sopes, however, that are transcendent. These sopes, small round disks of masa with meat and other toppings, probably are the best in Northern California. This guy, writing two years ago, had it just right. I’d say that I lunch at El Grullense just about every time I make the trip down to our Redwood City office.  The staff is nice, it’s always crowded with a good mix of workers and families, and the jukebox is always jumping. This will be a hard habit to break.

I understand our new office is beautiful and just a nerd’s throw away from the Googleplex and other impressive tech businesses. I’m sure there will be plenty of good dining options nearby, but if all the food is geared only toward the Dockers brigade and Judd army, then I will shed a tear.

el grullense, measurement, mountain view, moving day, potrero hill, redwood city, san francisco, sopes, taco truck

Did anyone else catch the Lee Gomes column on Robert Gaskins and Dennis Austin, the inventors of PowerPoint, in last week’s Wall Street Journal? Other than birthing this awkward, ugly, and ubiquitous program, the two seem like perfectly smart, interesting, and reasonable fellows.

I am certainly not alone in my distaste for PowerPoint. As Gomes correctly notes, “the program is one the world loves to mock almost as much as it loves to use.” PowerPoint presentations have gone from their intended purposes — that of short, graphical highlights meant to accompany larger, substantive documents — to everything from church sermons to children’s book reports, to every single meeting, presentation, etc. you’ll ever attend.

PowerPoint users rarely ever use the presentation as a highlights vehicle for a larger work. The presentation is it. Perhaps there are some hidden notes, but very little else. Apart from how this is negatively affecting the state of content, what does this say about how we’re communicating to one another today? We e-mail, twitter, instant message, blog, SMS to one another. Even Word documents are more bullets, charts, and lists than actual paragraphs containing correctly constructed sentences. Sentences? Yes, sentences, remember those?

Of course, every day we hear that people are busy, they don’t have time to read through a bunch of unnecessary verbiage, they just need the facts, and they need them now. Are we not far from the day when we start speaking in bullets? I guess some children (and childlike adults already do). Will prepositions and indefinite articles soon be seen as decadent and wasteful? Will a lovely turn-of-phrase, a perfectly-chosen adjective, or a smart analogy be dismissed as superfluous and pompous?

Messrs. Gaskins and Austin hope not. As Gomes writes: “Now grade-school children turn in book reports via PowerPoint. The men call that an abomination. Children, they emphatically agree, need to think and write in complete paragraphs.”

Adults too, need to do the same.

dennis austin, lee gomes, measurement, powerpoint, research, robert gaskins, tools, writing

As some of you may have noticed (those with an intense interest in search tools, that is), Technorati unveiled a brand new page today. The home page is all new, incorporating search of not just blogs but video, audio, and photos. This is increasingly becoming a trend as Web content outgrows the traditional construct of text on a page. Unfortunately, this trend seems to be moving a bit too fast, and search engines like Technorati and Google (yes, the “universal search“) are putting quite a bit of importance on the ability to search video and other non-traditional means of content at the expense of a good-old-fashioned text search.

Speaking of Technorati’s new search page, my colleague Elisabeth noted with dismay this morning that her Technorati search did not include an option for searching by authority, one of the key reasons we still use Technorati (in addition to Google Blog Search and others). I knew that Technorati had recently redefined authority but couldn’t believe that it would do away with it in its new incarnation. A quick visit to the Technorati Blog later, I learned that to search by authority one has to visit a separate URL: http://search.technorati.com/. This is a bit of a pain, but it’s certainly better than not having the authority searchg option.

Have you seen the new Technorati? Do you use Technorati for blog search? If not, what do you use?

Authority, Blog Search, Google, measurement, PR, research, Sifry, Technorati, tools

Today we were treated to a visit from the inimitable Sam Whitmore of the Sam Whitmore Media Survey. A longtime journalist and tech media watcher, or “analyst” as described by yesterday’s New York Times, Sam is a longtime friend of the agency.

Sam fielded a bunch of questions about the current state of tech journalism and also gave us some honest feedback about our blogging efforts. One of the most interesting topics centered around measurement and presenting results to clients. How do you explain to a client that a positive mention in TechCrunch or GigaOm can be just as important (sometimes more, sometimes less) than a big spread in a print version of an IT weekly or even a business pub like BusinessWeek or Forbes?

This is particularly difficult to do when business goals differ from company-to-company and from quarter-to-quarter. PR isn’t only meant to drive sales, build thought leadership, or increase web traffic.  Often, it’s a combination of these things and more. 

Unfortunately, there are no easy answers to this dilemma, but I’m always on the lookout for new thinking. So, if you have any, bring it.

blogging, eastwick, journalism, measurement, media, PR, research, Sam Whitmore

Check out Catherine Holahan’s look at the most popular web analytics tools in BusinessWeek. The story looks at the biggest players like Alexa, Google Analytics, HitWise, comScore, etc.

Web traffic measurement is such a minefield these days that it’s easy to get stuck or dismiss the whole endeavour all together.  It’s good to see comparison pieces like this one that are attempting to make sense of the landscape.

analytics, businessweek, measurement, PR, research, tools

In the “Seriously? Oh, C’mon!” department comes news that a new magazine entitled Blogger & Podcaster is launching. Nothing new there, loads of resources for these new media are popping up, what’s notable here is that this magazine will be a print publication.

Why would such a thing be necessary? Is the print version designed to capture the hardcore blogger’s precious few moments away from his or her keyboard? Do bloggers prefer to read about blogging news and tools while luxuriating in the bath or riding the train to work? Maybe (and this is just the cynical side of me talking here), it’s simply that print ads will always go for more than website ads will…

The inaugural issue features blogger pin-up boy Robert Scoble looking like a geek* Truffaut or Scorsese behind his camera.

*I use “geek” in the best possible sense.

measurement, PR

A group of eastwikkers is getting a lesson in Wordpress from Joel this afternoon.  I blogged occasionally on eastwikkers.com (most recently from the SNCR conference in Boston).  Our original agency blog was powered by Typepad, which I became sufficiently comfortable with.  The new agencywide blogging effort (which looks very cool, and which unlike other PR/marketing programs and campaigns, actually will change the world and challenge everything you’ve ever believed to be true in your life)* is powered by Wordpress.

So far, Wordpress is fairly easy to use and I’m looking to forward to playing around with the tool, adding photos and sound files, maybe even video.  For now, let’s just say that if this first proper post hasn’t completely and irreversibly hooked you, know that you can check back for my musings (strike that, is there a more exhausted word in the blogosphere? — other than “blogosphere” that is…) thoughts on new tools and trends in PR research and measurement.  I’ll also have something to say about technology, PR agency life, city (San Francisco) life, and the occasional post about FC Barcelona, the source of so much pain and happiness in my life…

Oh my, I realize I’ve written that which I promise to avoid from today — the blog post about blogging.  No more, dear reader, no more.

* Do I exaggerate? Maybe a bit…

eastwick, measurement, PR, research, tools