What is this line for?

See this long line?

People waiting to renew their driver's license?

Laid-off workers filing for their unemployment claims?

No, it is a line of all the former Michael Jackson publicists looking to get their media sound bites today.

5 reasons you should be using an RSS reader

RSS is the communications technology everybody seems to have overlooked.

It never fails to amaze me when I am speaking with a group and ask the audience to raise their hands if they have an RSS reader, and I get a sea of puzzled expressions.

If you are a believer in the saying that "Knowledge is Power" and you want to be as well informed as possible with the least amount of hassle, there's no excuse not to have an RSS reader.

First, an explanation of RSS (Real Simple Syndication): almost all web sites and blogs have feeds in which the content is sent almost like a pipeline to readers, which can be built into browsers (Firefox), web-based (Google Reader, Netvibes, My Yahoo) or a software program.

Think of all the web sites you read on a daily basis, and you'll see the orange RSS symbol somewhere (or if you can't find it, use your browser's "Find" function and type in "RSS"). Click on it and you'll get the special feed URL for that site, or a set of URL's for each stream of news. For example, if you want to follow PR Rock and Roll, the feed URL is http://feeds.feedburner.com/prrockandroll. A news site like the New York Times has multiple URL's, each one for a different sections of news, bloggers or columnists.

By cutting and pasting these URL's in the readers, you get a continuously updated pipeline from all your favorite sites straight to your desktop.

My favorite is Newsgator's FeedDemon (pictured above), which can be downloaded for free at the company's site. I keep the Windows software program open all the time, and it conveniently minimizes itself into the toolbar, running a visible alert when your feed are being updated. It's truly the Swiss Army knife of RSS readers, where you can save articles as clippings, create a "newspaper" viewing format, search for past articles, listen to streaming audio, watch video, and click onto any story to bring up the actual story posted in a mini-browser or your own default browser.

Why should all of you be using an RSS reader right now? Here are five great reasons, but once you are hooked onto RSS feeds, I guarantee you'll come up with more and wonder how you ever lived without them.

1) More information in less time: Instead of hopping from one site to the other, searching through different bookmark folders to click through on your most important sites, the information from all of them actively travels to you in one efficient package. You will be up to speed on all your favorite web sites and blogs in no time.

2) Clip posts and articles from the web: You want to save a valuable article you're reading, but you don't want to print it out (very un-green). RSS readers can "clip" those articles and put them in personalized folders you set up. Great for referencing information at future times.

3) Follow Twitter and LinkedIn updates: Nearly every Twitter feed has an RSS feed, so look for that magic orange symbol (usually below the Following... box) and cut and paste the code as a new subscription. Here's the RSS URL for my Twitter feed: http://twitter.com/statuses/friends_timeline/11213522.rss. You do not have to be a follower of anybody on Twitter to receive their RSS feed. On your LinkedIn home page, click on the orange symbol next to the Network Updates, and you'll be given the subscription URL to follow what all your connections are doing, including adding new people, joining groups, and posting queries. A great way to follow the burgeoning spider web of this highly useful professional service.

4) Find travel deals quickly: If you are searching for a flight or hotel bargain, why go researching on several sites when the bargain alerts can come right to your reader. My favorite is Airfarewatchdog's blog feed, which is on top of many sudden major deals, others feed devoted to fares to the Asia, Caribbean, domestic US flights and others.

5) Unclutter your e-mail in-box: Google Alerts are fantastic in tracking any kind of news, name, or topic, but your in-box can be hammered if you're tracking something popular. As an alternative, do a Google News search, and then click on the "RSS" with the orange symbol below the News Alerts link. Now, you'll be able to get your results in your RSS reader instead, and you can clip the stories you want to keep. Alternatively, FeedDemon has a "Watch" function that you can input like a Google search, and looks for instances of those words in every RSS feed you track.

Everybody had great praise for Michael Jackson... except his former publicist

You know that old saying your mother told you repeatedly about "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it?"

It seems all the notables who issued public statements about Michael Jackson got that memo and sent out a lot of love, sadness and praise. Even his ex-wife Lisa-Marie Presley movingly described her heartbreak.

However, one person that didn't hold back their axe to grind was Jackson's former publicist, Michael Levine, who worked with the singer when he was accused of molestation in 1993. Instead of doing the classy thing and taking the high road, he belly-flopped right into the mud.

According to the Associated Press, Levine said: "I must confess I am not surprised by today's tragic news. Michael has been on an impossibly difficult and often self-destructive journey for years. His talent was unquestionable but so too was his discomfort with the norms of the world. A human simply cannot withstand this level of prolonged stress."

Wow. Couldn't the guy just stick with nice things to say about his former client instead of playing backstabbing armchair shrink?

If you're a client of Michael Levine, don't get on his wrong side if you part ways. Guys like this give public relations a bad name, even after you've passed on.

The Wall Street Journal to ad industry: you're not that important anymore

With newspapers and magazines losing ad pages in the current recession, The Wall Street Journal decided to fire back at the advertising industry and drop their advertising column from five times a week to two.

Well, that will show them a lesson!

Of course, revenge might not be the reason. But when one of the country's biggest newspapers, one with a rich history of analyzing what makes business and consumers tick, decides advertising and marketing don't merit articles more than twice a week, that's a real sad dagger to the heart. Even more egregious in light of the fact that they launched a thrice a week sports section not long ago.

Dow Jones' explanation statement sounded contrived and dubious: "Our hope is that by running the column less often, we can better single out the key trends and issues in the industry, while increasing our ability to leap opportunistically on the news." That's pretty noble.

With this dramatic reduction, the Journal seems to be shooting themselves in the foot, as endemic marketers who would normally advertise in the paper around that column, often the biggest television, interactive and publishing entities, will move their dollars elsewhere.

The Wall Street Journal is in effect saying, "We don't think the advertising industry is that important, and we can live with the loss of ad revenue that goes with it."

Scuttling advertising and marketing coverage may benefit rival ad sales departments of the New York Times, Advertising Age, Adweek, and USA Today. Not only have they continued full coverage, but post breaking stories daily on their web sites.

However, I've saved the biggest irony for last: a newspaper company so desperate for advertising itself has ended up devaluing what it needs the most.

The Twitter Revolution may not be televised

When I attended Social Media Camp during Internet Week, social media marketing pro Chris Heuer presented a slide in the initial Social Media 101 session that read: "Spin doesn't work. People smell BS a mile away."

Ironic, I'd say.

Tell me if this doesn't remind you of late-90's nuttiness: social media gurus conducting Twitter seminars for anxiously paying attendees and clients... people are signing book deals based on tweet compilations. Just last week, Twitter is on the cover of Time magazine ("Twitter and the change it brings"). One Social Media Camp seminar was about "the science of retweeting." Ashton Kutcher battled it out with CNN for the most followers. Jason Calacanis offered $250,000 to Twitter to become a "suggested user" because he equated it with another "Super Bowl."

Maybe it's a good idea that Twitter executives Biz Stone and Evan Williams are playing it very close to the vest or not jumping into crazed expansion.

The anecdotal and empirical evidence about Twitter's shortcomings is snowballing as fast as the microblogging's growth is slowing. The media hype turning point may be just upon us.

I'm not talking about abject failure -- Twitter has proven to be a financial boon for Dell Computer, apparently help generate more than $3 million in sales since 2007 from its @DellOutlet account. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is milking his Twitter account for everything it's worth to show how cool both he and his company are selling shoes over the Internet. For breaking news and massive outspoken protests (such as the recent #cnnfail Twitter trend) and customer service outreach (notably with JetBlue), the service has absolute merit. I follow certain journalists to get a sense of what they are writing about and how they are viewing their beats.

But Twitter is turning out to be like a huge party that everybody RSVP'd for and very few people showed up. You know that feeling you may have had in the back of your mind wondering how interesting it would really be to let everybody know about what you were doing every hour? You may have been right -- it's not interesting at all.

To me, it started with the ingenious New York Times article at the end of May that revealed most celebrity Twitter feeds were concocted by ghostwriters. Suddenly, Twitter had a little hollow ring to it, that it was a bit of a smoke and mirrors act. And if Hollywood couldn't bother Twittering, then what about other CEO's and well-known names?

Then came this one-two punch this spring: Nielsen Online issued a report that "more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month," followed by last week's Hubspot research that showed that more than half of Twitter's 4.5 million registered users have never posted a tweet. This is going to be a business?

I've heard all kinds of stories of mega-celebrities with tons of followers putting links in their Twitter feed, only to see the click-through traffic produce very disappointing numbers.

Just today, digital traffic measurement firm Compete said monthly unique visitors grew only 1.47% and TechCrunch called it "a breather."

When the cold light of day arrives, and Twitter's ROI is scrutinized by corporate America, PR firms, Hollywood, and everybody else who drank the Kool Aid, it may turn out that Twitter is only effective with a certain niche of early adapters, or highly mobile and connected individuals.
Twitter may be more comparable to the specialized smaller audience of Wired magazine versus the colossal mass outreach of Good Housekeeping.

Spin? Oh yes, it does work.