The Arguments

Journalists, bloggers and public relation professionals sometimes view the future of information mediums, standards and distribution very differently. As the conventions of traditional journalism continue to clash with the unorthodox voice of the individual, everyone involved needs a place to explore answers and visions in a civil manner.

Sarah Evans founded #journchat, a live streaming conversation held each Monday night from 7 to 10 p.m. CST on Twitter, as a public forum between these diverse, and often at odds, professionals.

“The mission of #journchat is to keep an ongoing, open dialogue between journalists, bloggers and public relations professionals.”

Sarah Evans
Director of Communications, Elgin Community College

A Scheduled Debate

Evan’s idea thrives on the embrace of the community. In ever-increasing numbers people are flocking to #journchat each Monday evening to sort out the future of their collective professions in a spontaneous convergence of disparate—as well as like-thinking—individuals with myriad ideas about the state of information.

Every 30 minutes or so moderators introduce a new topic for the community to discuss and explore.

The published time frame for #journchat provides a reliable structure for the discussion—a notion counter to Twitter’s drop-in oriented format.

A Larger Vision

Evans told Brainstorm that she envisions #journchat evolving into a larger network—perhaps driven one day by a web application. It’s not difficult to imagine her concept as an extensible vehicle adopted to different topics and industries.

Join the Fray

Watch the discussions by going to Twitter’s search page and typing in #journchat. Or add your opinion to the discussion by getting a free Twitter account and including the #journchat tag in your posted “tweets.â€?

For discussion recaps, topics and more on #journchat visit the journchat.info website or follow the @journchat Twitter profile or @PRsarahevans herself.

Street Advertising Services: A greener, cleaner approach to guerrilla branding

“We wanted to apply a technique that was not just eye-catching and effective but also friendly to the environment. What could be more natural than water?”

—Kristian Jeffrey, SAS Founder

Profit from Filth

Street Advertising Services (SAS) of Britain offers a greener, cleaner approach to guerrilla branding. Using water, stencils and pressure washers, SAS cleans pavement in the dead of night, creating street art advertisements for companies like British Petroleum and K2r (see above).

Simple, direct and probably a great deal of fun on the installation side, it’s word-of-mouth (WOM) via foot. Remarkable.

[ via: dgirlp | Organic ]

Campy but Good

Google announced the launch of OpenSocial—their set of standardized application programming interfaces (APIs)—at “Campfire One” last Thursday.

Thrilled Social Network developers attending the event laud the benefits in the highlight video above (4:15). See the full event here (57:23).

S’More of a Good Thing

And why not be happy? Those developers are now aligned with Google and Google’s next big thing, and they also join a growing list of prominent OpenSocial online networks and supporters with whom to collaborate, including:

Engage.com, Flixster, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, iLike, imeem, LinkedIn, MySpace, Ning, Oracle, orkut, Plaxo, Salesforce.com, Six Apart, Tianji, Viadeo, and XING.

Their combined reach equates to over 200 million subscribers.

Roasting Distribution

Most importantly, OpenSocial promises developers a way to optimize development costs through the creation of a common platform available (thus far) only to OpenSocial affiliates.

A single source development platform means more rapid distribution and greater reach since developers can now build one app for multiple social networks, eliminating the need to create multiple network-specific applications.

Passing on the Hot Dogs

Conspicuously missing from the list of Google OpenSocial faithful was social media darling, Facebook. Facebook passed up a $1 billion offer from Yahoo last year, then a week ago sold a 1.6% stake to Microsoft for $240 million, inflating Facebook’s value to an estimated $15 billion.

Google’s OpenSocial countermeasure is expected to significantly reduce that estimate.

If OpenSocial delivers as promised and becomes the global de facto standard for social network development, Facebook may one day need to face compliance just to remain relative and viable. Probably not what Microsoft or Facebook had in mind when they inked the deal late last month.

Branded Just Right

All of which bodes well for for brand marketers, advertisers, developers and users. OpenSocial’s standards and conventions should drive streamlined creation, processing, access and distribution of messaging, bringing deeper reach and measurably greater returns for marketers.

Of course, sometimes standardization translates to stifling and stale—we’ll see. But the commercial benefits of ubiquitous and proprietary standardization are hard to deny.

Just ask Microsoft.

Update. From Techcrunch: Facebook may already be talking to Google.

Colts owner Jim Irsay’s news this week had nothing to do with the upcoming Colts vs. Pats game. That didn’t stop us from a little Top 20 Tom Foolery.

Some Good News

Jim Irsay, owner of the Super Bowl champion Indianapolis Colts was slated to make an important announcement here in Indianapolis earlier this week. So we used the looming local news as an excuse to start a new Top 20 topic on our office white board.

Irsay has since divulged his secret but with the Indianapolis Colts and the New England Patriots squaring off this weekend in what’s being touted as an early Super Bowl, we’ve continued to hypothesize, surmise and add to our list.

And with that, here’s 10 of our favorites from the board.

Top 20 Guesses at what Jim Irsay’s big announcement is…

1. He’s struck oil
2. Free oil changes for season ticket holders
3. Who knows, it’s all just Irsay
4. He is a patriot
5. Probably something charitable and scavenger hunt oriented
6. He’s Manning the helm
7. A new Colts jimnasium
8. He’s skeered of the Pats
9. His next acquisition: George Steinbrenner
10. He won’t let Moss grow on our rolling stone

See the rest here.

Incoming additions:

11. Issuing a reward for fans who catch the Pats cheating this Sunday.
12. He’s so confident he’s spotting the Pats 10 points
13. I live in Brown’s country, and no one here knows about the Colts, Irsay, or the Patriots. We are just fortunate to have a full team on the field at any given time.

Got an entry of your own?

Leave a comment and we’ll add them to the list above up until game time on Sunday (4:15 pm, EST).

Because? It’s a Good Cause

Yes, we’re a little off-topic here but as Mr. Irsay’s news reveals, it’s for a good cause and hey, there’s a Super Bowl ring at stake here. That’s our brand rationale and we’re sticking to it. But thanks (particularly to our overseas readers) for indulging us all the same.

A thought about modern day brand and market reach from David Meerman Scott (paraphrased):

Old Rules: Buy your way in with advertising, or beg your way in with PR.

New Rules: Publish your way in with content.

[via: Todd Defren ]