Chip Griffin: Pardon the Disruption

SEC Blocks Employee Access to YouTube

I was stunned to learn today that the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, DC blocks employees from viewing videos posted on YouTube. Now, I know that many companies do this sort of thing, but for an important national regulatory agency to block access to potential useful information seems quite counterproductive.

This means that no SEC employee can see Professor Joseph Grundfest attack the recent Wall Street Journal article taking SEC Chairman Christopher Cox to task over the Bear Stearns situation. Certainly that's something of substance that ought to be of interest to someone at the agency.

Or what about being able to check out videos that are alleged to be part of penny-stock-pumping schemes? Surely the professionals at the SEC ought to be able to look at these without begging permission of the IT department.

SEC employees can't even watch video of their own commission meetings posted on YouTube.

To me, this is certainly very troubling. More importantly, it raises important questions:

• What other web sites is the SEC blocking access to?
• What other government agencies restrict access to legitimate and useful information?
• How has this lack of access to information made it harder for government employees to do their jobs effectively?

Government agencies restricting employee access to online information seems to go well beyond the concerns that Shel Holtz has raised about similar activity in the private sector. Regulators and policymakers make decisions every day that directly affect the lives of individual Americans. They should certainly have access to as much information as possible to do their jobs effectively and efficiently.

This also represents a more serious problem than the concerns recently expressed over possible Congressional restrictions on the use of services like Twitter and Qik. Restricting access to information clearly presents a greater concern than regulating how information may be disseminated (though it, too, is an important issue).

If there are employees who are abusing their government computers to access information that is not for professional purposes, by all means deal with those individuals. But do not throw the baby out with the bathwater to do it.

Why You Should Take Advantage of Online Advocacy

I created a short video for a presentation I did today about the promising future (and productive past) of online advocacy. It is entitled "Digital Advocacy Works" and it covers the history of online advocacy since 1994 (in brief), as well as some of the technologies available today and what this means for companies and organizations looking to influence politics and policy.

Who Says You Can't Get Sumthin' for Nuthin'?

Hey, it's my blog so first I get to tell a story, then you get the good news at the end of this post. Of course, if you're lazy, you can just ignore my explanation, but I promise to keep it (somewhat) interesting.

Ever since shortly after I founded CustomScoop back in 2000, we have made it a point to offer a 2 week free trial of our service to all comers. At the time, this wasn't a very common practice in the media monitoring industry -- online or off. Indeed, some of our competitors weren't too pleased, but I have always believed that once you try our service, you will like it. Fortunately, that has been the case for eight years, with most trial users offering positive feedback.

Price-wise, we have always been somewhere in the middle of the pack. We are far from the most expensive, but we certainly aren't the cheapest. Our goal in the marketplace is to deliver a superior product with the data and tools our clients need to be effective. We have consistently attempted to deliver the highest quality and most intensive human customer service in the industry. We believe we have succeeded.

Of course, we know that the price of our service is out of reach of many small businesses, sole practitioners, and yes -- even bloggers. Yet we believe many of these people would benefit from using our services.

Over the years, we have often been asked for a less expensive account that would meet this market need. Typically, we have referred people to Google News Alerts if they don't have the budget or clip traffic to justify paying for our serivce.

(Yep, that's right, we refer people to other companies, including competitors, all the time when we believe our service isn't the right fit. That's because I don't see any point in winning business only to see the customer disappointed with the product. You might score a few bucks in the short term, but the long-term cost, including word of mouth, will far outweigh it.)

We have been reluctant to offer lower-cost accounts for a variety of reasons, but primarily because we have built a business based on extensive human touch, superior service, and significant customization. As a result, we have not been structured to support high-volume, lower-cost accounts.

That has changed. Over the past year or so, we have worked hard to make significant adjustments to our technology to enable us to maximize the level of service we provide all customers. More important, it provides us with greater scalability in terms of customers as well as source coverage.

With those changes, I am pleased to announce that today we are debuting a new kind of CustomScoop account. We call it a "Personal" account but it works just as well for small businesses as it does for an individual. While it doesn't offer all the bells and whistles of our paid accounts, it does offer the same data and many of the key features.

You can see a chart comparing the personal account to our paid offerings here.

Ultimately, this gives communicators a great alternative to Google News Alerts. If you're going to use something free, you might as well use something that offers pro-quality tools. Specifically, here's what CustomScoop can do that Google can't:

• CustomScoop Personal lets you consolidate different topics into a single email alert so your inbox doesn't get cluttered and you don't see duplicate stories.
• CustomScoop Personal lets you consolidate different topics into a single RSS feed so your feed reader doesn't get cluttered and you don't see duplicate stories.
• CustomScoop Personal lets you slice and dice your data in many different ways, including breaking out media coverage by state, country, and more.
• CustomScoop Personal gives you much greater control over your search terms, including functionality like case sensitivity, requiring multiple keyword mentions, including or excluding specific states, languages, or even sources.
• CustomScoop Personal gets you personalized and timely email support for any issues you encounter.
• CustomScoop Personal enables you to tag your clips and save clips to folders to better organize your information.
• CustomScoop Personal provides you with a free Firefox browser plugin to make reviewing clips fast and painless.
• CustomScoop Personal lets you create simple charts to better understand your media coverage.
• CustomScoop Personal enables you to request any legitimate traditional or new media source to be added. We gauruntee that if we CAN add it, we WILL add it.
• CustomScoop Personal can be easily upgraded to a paid account at any time with no loss of data or customization.

Did I miss something? Probably. So check it out for yourself!

You can get your own free CustomScoop Personal account right now, right here.

Losing America's History

For those of you interested in history or politics, I encourage you to check out the essay I wrote about the potential loss of "America's story" as author David McCullough calls it.

Anti-Net Neutrality, Anti-Google Interview

Today I interviewed Scott Cleland, a Washington-based analyst who has been following Google for years. He seems to relish being a bit of a contrarian and in the interview he talked about the increasing power of Google and why that's bad for consumers. He also opposes net neutrality, something that many of you will no doubt disagree with.

Regardless of what you think about his views, the interview is worth a listen. Scott's a very thoughtful guy and he makes strong arguments -- and he isn't afraid to be out there on his own. Of course, the fact that Fortune magazine cited him as being out in front of the WorldCom scandal a number of years ago makes me listen even more. That failed company's CEO, Bernie Ebbers, even called him that "idiot Washington analyst."

Check it out and feel free to express your views in the comments over there.

(By the way, this was all for my new online TV and radio talk show "Conversations with Chip Griffin" -- I'll have a post up soon explaining this new venture.)

Social Media Experts Auction and Pesky Charity Tax Rules

Jennifer Leggio is auctioning off the services of five social media experts on eBay to help support the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. It's not exactly a new approach to fundraising for charity, but it does break a bit of new ground in that it is the first time I can recall social media experts being the focus of such an effort.

First, kudos to Jennifer and the five experts (Chris Brogan, Joseph Jaffe, Geoff Livingston, Aaron Strout, and Greg Verdino). It certainly seems to be a worthy cause and anytime members of the community engage to take part in charitable endeavors, it is admirable.

As someone who has participated in both sides of charity auctions before, I do have a couple of concerns about some of the specifics here, however. (Please note that some of what will follow may sound like tax advice, but I am not a tax professional and therefore you should not rely on anything I say for anything other than the opinions/observations that they are.)

First, it should be made clear to bidders that the full amount of their bid is not tax deductible, contrary to the impression one may get from reading the materials. I have always been advised that I can only deduct the amount in excess of the fair market value received at a charity auction. In other words, if something is valued at $1,000 and I bid $1,200, I can only deduct $200.

And therein lies the rub. These experts have naturally pegged the value of their services as considerable. This is common in charity auctions, as those who put themselves or their products up for bid want to appear to be as generous as possible. In this case, where the experts themselves accrue some marketing benefit from merely being out there (and let's be honest, that's always part of the charity auction process), I suspect that many of them have pegged the value at the high end of what they might be able to get in the real world for their services.

Now understand that I am not saying that any of these five fine gentleman -- all of whom I respect -- has fudged their numbers. In fact, I can readily believe that all have received such sums for the services offered. But is it the typical compensation they receive?

When bidding at a charity auction, there can be several motivations driving the amount of the bid. But two important ones to consider in this context are (1) am I getting a deal? or (2) how much can I deduct? Remember that the tax deduction essentially reduces the amount of capital you are committing, thus enabling you to bid higher than you might otherwise.

In short, I encourage you to consider bidding on the services of these experts to help Jennifer's fundraising efforts. In fact, I am considering doing so myself. At the same time, I would encourage Jennifer and the experts to clarify the real tax deductible component of any bid so that donors may bid with their eyes open. 

Lessons for High-Tech Entrepreneurs from the Restaurant Biz

I had a chance to merge my passions in my column this month in Mass High Tech magazine. I focused on the lessons we high-tech entrepreneurs can take from the restaurant industry. Check it out here.

Food Blogger Dinners in a City Near You

If you are a food and/or drink blogger, check out the plan for Cork & Knife Food Blogger Dinners, coming soon to a restaurant in a city near you.

If This Isn't Government Waste, I Don't Know What Is

I was stunned today when my wife handed me a letter from the US Department of Transportation. It was letting us know about the "National Household Travel Survey" that is being conducted. Apparently, we can expect to receive a phone call about this in the near future, and they would like us to participate.

It seems a bit silly to me, but that's not the real waste going on here. As a "token of appreciation" our friendly federal bureaucrats included $5 in the envelope to encourage us to take the survey when we are called. Not a check, mind you, like the private sector might use. But actual cash. Now, this came in an envelope with a sticker labeled "Resident." That's the sort of mail we usually just throw out. In fact, I'm not even sure why my wife opened this one.

How many people are literally throwing $5 in taxpayer money away? This is the epitome of stupid government behavior.

Check Out Media Bullseye's First Print Edition

The first ever dead tree version of Media Bullseye, the multimedia magazine I founded last December, is now available. I'm a big believer that there's still a role for print publications to play. Not everyone takes time to read articles online and this enables us to get in front of interesting people who prefer to read things on paper. Heck, I still real printed magazines and I imagine most of you do as well.

Head on over to Media Bullseye to watch a video where I show it off and find out how to get a free copy mailed to you or download the PDF from the web site.