Limiting Social Media?

By Sean Teaford

In February 2009, Michigan Congressman Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, was part of a Congressional delegation travelling to Iraq. The trip was supposed to be a secret until the group left but, through the use of his blackberry, Hoekstra frequently updated his twitter profile throughout the majority of the trip which contained details that some people within the Department of Defense (DoD) believed could have revealed the location of the convoy. Because the existing DoD policy states that details of congressional delegations cannot be disclosed until they reach their destination, this event prompted the Pentagon to review its social media policy. 

Two weeks ago, the Department of Defense opened up use of social media sites (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to rank and file personnel, allowing them to participate in online networking.  While access is open during most day to day operations, the policy allows commanders to restrict online access and bandwidth to maintain operations security. Deputy Defense Secretary William J. Lynn III, who signed the policy, said, “This directive recognizes the importance of balancing appropriate security measures while maximizing the capabilities afforded by 21^st century Internet tools.”

However, the relationship between social media and military personnel is not as symbiotic as it seems. Reuters reported last week that a raid by the Israeli military (IDF) had to be called off due to an intelligence leak. In a Facebook status update, an IDF soldier detailed how his unit was planning an arrest raid in a West Bank area. The soldier has since been relieved of combat duty but no overall limitations have been placed on social media access to the military in general.

The new DoD policy will continue to demonstrate how at odds it is with military life and security in ways that will echo the recent events in Israel. Difficult steps need to be taken to ensure security while not interfering with the 2^nd Amendment of the US Constitution or Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Before satisfactory progress can be made the question as to whether social media is a right that needs to be defended or a privilege that should be censored needs to be answered. Either way, the public fall out will be substantial. 

Is there a compromise to be made that will address security concerns while keeping access open to all military and government personnel?

Should everyone have access to social media sites?

Gulp! Avoiding Being Hooked By Bad People – or Bad Information

By Larry Greenberg

You may consider yourself too worldly to fall for a phishing scam. But be honest. Chances are that some time in your internet life, overwhelmed by the daily barrage of emails and other messages, you let your guard down. That’s when you received an authoritative-looking email with a link you clicked on in haste, only to learn you were tricked by a cyber-criminal seeking to take control of your computer and/or steal your valuable personal information.

If this has never happened to you, then you are most savvy. Or maybe lucky. Care to test your level of gullibility? SonicWall, a company that provides secure network solutions, has a 10-question quiz you can take — http://www.sonicwall.com/phishing/ — to see if you can tell the scammers from the mere spammers. According to the site, only 7.4% of those who have taken the quiz have scored a 100%, so if you don’t get an “A,” don’t feel too bad.

But in addition to being taken by bad people, how good are you about not to be taken in by bad information? If fending off phishers is difficult, consider how hard it is to sift through the countless news resources – broadcast and cable networks, newspapers and magazines, email newsletters, blogs, tweets, comments, and on and on. Even the most respected, best- intentioned members of the fourth estate can sometimes, if inadvertently, misrepresent the reality involving a particular issue or story. And while the blogosphere and comments boards offer democracy the greatest forum in human history, the conversations often have less to do with sober scholarship and due diligence than with emotional and even juvenile partisanship (partisanship in the broadest sense of that term). Even the most discerning information consumer will at some point, due to data-weary vulnerability, accept something as fact when it should have been treated with a healthy dose of skepticism.

The tools that make it so easy to disseminate inaccurate and distorted information also enable simple double-checking of facts. So while it’s easy to get caught in the frenetic pace of an electronic news junkie, it’s also simple enough to step back and carefully consider an article or statement that’s been presented as truth. Just as one might use the web to authenticate or debunk a phishy-looking email, one can conduct a Google web and news search to bring up a wide range of well-documented results covering a seemingly infinite range of topics.

There are also numerous sites dedicated to fact-checking. One such site is, in fact, called FactCheck, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, which tests the validity of assertions made in the world of politics. Another, Snopes, has become popular for verifying or discrediting urban legends across a wide range of categories.

So the next time someone tries to play on your emotions, whether with a scary looking email pretending to be from your bank or a terrifying-sounding message masquerading as the truth, don’t forget the power of the Internet to shine a light on the reality of the situation. It can’t hurt to get information from more than one source.

@LucasVPraag a “Golden” PR Prank

By Hugh Burnham

With all the heat that Goldman Sachs and the American banking system has been taking over the past year, spoofing Goldman Sachs’ head of corporate communications, Lucas Van Praag on Twitter ranks high on my list of PR pranks over the past few years. And while it doesn’t rival former Forbes and current Newsweek Tech Reporter Dan Lyons’ charade of posting as Fake Steve Jobs over a few years, it has certainly provided a certain amount of comedy over the past week or so.

The thing about Lucas Van Praag is that he has an unenviable job as head of Goldman Corporate Communications. From a public perception standpoint, Goldman can’t win. If it posts poor results, Wall Street will turn on it and so will the media. And if it posts terrific results as it has been recently, Main Street will turn on the company. In a sign that the company has recognized just how much their business is being affected by reputation, @lucasvpraag tweeted recently: Who put this in the annual (report)?

The risks of course that Fake Van Praag is referring to are elaborated on in Goldman’s annual report as follows:

“The financial crisis and the current political and public sentiment regarding financial institutions has resulted in a significant amount of adverse press coverage, as well as adverse statements or charges by regulators or elected officials. Press coverage and other public statements that assert some form of wrongdoing, regardless of the factual basis for the assertions being made, often results in some type of investigation by regulators, legislators and law enforcement officials or in lawsuits. Responding to these investigations and lawsuits, regardless of the ultimate outcome of the proceeding, is time consuming and expensive and can divert the time and effort of our senior management from our business. Adverse publicity, governmental scrutiny and legal and enforcement proceedings can also have a negative impact on our reputation and on the morale and performance of our employees, which could adversely affect our businesses and results of operations.”

Goldman is yet to formulate a coherent media strategy to deal with the growing public anger over its huge bonus pool and, most recently, the fallout over its role in helping Greece hide its massive debt, which may make Van Praag a convenient target.

Goldman must decide if it should undertake a costly makeover — one that’s likely to cost tens of millions of dollars — that would include for the first time television advertising, more aggressive rebuttals of negative stories, and making its TV-shy CEO, Lloyd Blankfein, available to the broadcast media. Blankfein rarely does television interviews, and has only recently begun to allow print reporters to conduct one-on-one interviews with him. All of which makes Van Praag’s task that much less enviable.

Despite guiding Goldman to massive profits just one year after the financial crisis nearly destroyed the U.S. banking industry, Blankfein has come under increasing pressure from senior executives inside the firm to repair Goldman’s image. There is no doubt that under Blankfein, Goldman may have been the most prepared of all the financial institutions to weather the 2008 financial crisis that required a massive government bailout of the banking system. But Goldman has also become the target of extensive criticism for connections to senior government officials, including former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson — a former Goldman CEO — who let Lehman Brothers fall into bankruptcy but took other measures which saved Goldman, along with the rest of the big banks and investment banks that held rapidly deteriorating mortgage debt.

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about Blankfein relinquishing his Chairman’s role to allow a more media savvy executive to put a better face on the company. This just seems to underscore how powerful the U.S. media is when they feel like a company is not forthcoming enough, such as is the case with Goldman.

Is external communication savvy a requisite of the CEO position? Send me your thoughts.

Open Letter to the Society for New Communications Research

By David King

The Society for New Communications Research released yesterday the key findings of a study on how the Fortune 500 are using social media.

The results can be summed up in this quote “continued steady adoption of blogs and the explosive growth of Twitter among Fortune 500 companies”

But even after I downloaded and read the full report here, I found myself thinking of all the questions I wish the report was about.

See the report is about how many companies are publishing content where, and that’s interesting, but what I really want to know is what they’re publishing and the factors that characterize the most successful programs.

For example, Gutenberg did a survey and we discovered – not surprisingly – that companies who knew what the goals of their social media program was, and had a specific budget to support those goals, had the most activity online and felt their efforts were effective.

We concluded that being able to clearly identify and communicate program objectives was perhaps the most critical factor in achieving success in many social programs, because its necessary to get the resources needed to support the program.

So here’s what I really want to know about the Fortune 500 and social media. And if you have some answers or you want to suggest more questions I urge you to post them here. Meanwhile I hope the organization reads this post and considers these next year.

• What characterizes the social content of the Fortune 500?

  For example, the study could determine that 20% of social content from the Fortune 500 had a humor element and that, that 20% attracted over %40 of total comments. This would provide actionable feedback.

• How do the Fortune 500 market their social content? What types of marketing appear to be the most effective?

  For example, are the most successful corporate blogs those that are heavily linked to in other blogs? Where does their traffic come from?

• How is social content branded?

  How many of the Fortune 500 have an independent brand for their social content? How many are co-branded? How many include the company name in the name of the blog or Twitter account?

• Most importantly of all, what separates the programs that work, from the ones that don’t. And how many are providing business benefits to the company?

PR Can’t Help you Now, Toyota

By Mike Gallo

Is it a problem under the hood, or in the microprocessor?

President’s Day isn’t exactly the type of holiday with a ton of  family obligations.  Actually, almost none.

For retailers, however, it means big sales on everything from a new fridge to a shiny new car.  Auto dealers in particular use the February weekend to help clear out the prior year inventory.  Guys with a little too much hair gel will ‘make deals’ – much like Danny, the iconic Honda salesman of the late 80s who you may remember was charged with selling the car that “sells itself”.  What a sad little man.

But, this year is different.

Consumers are still licking their wounds from what some economists are calling The Great Recession.  And, more to the point: Toyota’s massive recall has dominated the headlines and is sure to spook some would-be car buyers.  After all, more than 8 million vehicles are now potentially affected with problems related to the accelerator pedal, including many of the Company’s top selling brands. 

From a PR standpoint, how well has Toyota really handled its current situation?  Some have criticized the Company for its fairly impersonal customer communications, and others feel the car manufacturer has been less than fully transparent to say the least.

For example, floor mats were the likely culprit when the story first broke.  Now, it’s the accelerator pedal.  An interesting Op Ed earlier this week in The Wall Street Journal by Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., says the problem may run deeper, perhaps as part of the software.  The technology that powers cars has gotten incredibly sophisticated.  This introduces a whole new range of potential bugs and defects.

It sounds like Toyota may not fully know the extent of its problem.  If that’s the case, they owe it to their customers to tell them.  People understand that cars have occasional issues and are mostly OK with recalls, but they will never forgive a company that is not fully transparent with them.

Toyota needs to get in front of this quickly, especially as evidence points to a larger, more widespread issue.  And, it may go beyond just this auto manufacturer.

Larry Webster of Popular Mechanics magazine appeared on CNN earlier this week and spoke at length on the problem, saying that “in the last decade, there have been tens of thousands of reports of sudden unintended acceleration in cars made by all the manufacturers.”

Moreover, the NHTSA’s online database indicates that the top five auto makers have each received numerous consumer complaints of sudden unintended acceleration in more than one of its models.  Toyota was the biggest culprit with 41 percent of the complaints, but still, it’s not just Toyota.

For Toyota, or any other affected auto maker, to take control of this situation from a public perception standpoint, it will have to first get its story straight.

I learned early in my career that public relations can never fix a business problem.  Toyota is a good company with a solid brand reputation, but at this point the questions are coming faster than the answers.  When it comes to public opinion during times like this, you only have a short window to make things right.

Toyota has an opportunity to do the right thing, and lead the industry through what might be a very serious technical, and safety issue.  The well being of their customers, and the sanctity of their brand depends on it.

4 Steps to B2B Social Marketing

By David King

In an effort to turn our social media marketing efforts into how-to instructions any B2B company can follow, we came up with a series of whitepapers that breaks down the process of building and maintaining a social marketing program.

Meanwhile, we’re in the enviable position of having obtained too much new client work to finish the whitepapers! And we keep getting asked about these mysterious four steps.

So we’re posting them here:

Step 1: Create a Cohesive Social Brand

A social brand is something a company uses across all their online entities, to create continuity and make it easy for readers to drift from one medium to another. It’s an online brand associated with your company, but more fun than your corporate brand, easy to love and vendor agnostic.

IBM’s developerWorks is an example. developerWorks is a YouTube channel, Twitter handle, website, and it even has its own Wiki. Each medium has unique but related content, and they all have the developerWorks logo.

We could write an entire series of posts on this topic alone, but instead we’re going to link to the whitepaper here, because this one is completed. The whitepaper will lay out a specific set of criteria your social brand should meet, some advice on how to create one, and why you need it.

Step 2: Building the Content Engine

Before you start positing, lay out the process for creating, approving and posting content ahead of time. Determine who will post what, where and how often and get a long-term commitment from content creators.

Work hard to streamline the process, reduce middle-men over time and get more content up faster. This content will be the lifeline of your social marketing efforts.

Our whitepaper on this will include some diagrams illustrating suggested processes, timelines, frequency for different mediums, and guidelines for authors that can be copy/pasted into your own plans. Stay tuned!

Step 3: Attracting Eyeballs

Now you’ve used all your sweat, blood and tears and you’re hungry for readers.

Generally, there’s two sets of activities that go along with marketing your social brand to more eyeballs; (1) make every interaction people already have with the company an invitation to join you online and (2) engage with others online.

For number 1, place your social brand and/or links to social content:

• On the company website
• On email signatures
• On exhibit banners, brochures, handouts
• Business cards

To engage with others online you can

• Write guest blogs for already-established blogs, who will often post a link to your blog
• Retweet others
• Comment on other blogs and respond to other bloggers on your own blog
• Ask bloggers and media to subscribe to your blog to stay updated on company news, opinions on current events, etc. (depending on what the content is, media may or may not be interested)

Step 4: Putting a Ruler to Social Marketing

We use the following metrics to score the influence of bloggers:

Google Page Rank (Authority)
+Traffic (Popularity)
+Growth (Potential)
+Average # of Comments (engagement)
Total score

Then, based on the total score, and how that score was reached, we’ll categorize them as:

• 500 lb Gorillas
• Trade blogs
• Potentials
• No Names

When it comes to social content published by the company, we suggest using similar metrics (traffic, comments, linkbacks) in addition to measuring business results such as leads and conversion. Review the top-performing pieces of content each month to determine the headlines and mediums that have been most effective for you.

We also developed an action grid that proposes the likley course of action you need to take if your measurements are showing that the company’s social content are falling short.

We think this is a crisp and action-oriented way to discuss a specific approach to strategic social marketing for B2B companies. A refreshing break from the droves of people online screaming about the importance of social media, with no meaningful instructions on how to do it.

What do you think? Leave your feedback in the comments below, or email dking@gutenbergpr.com with your thoughts on our 4 steps.

Applying ‘Murphy’s Law’ in the Twitter Age

By Harjiv Singh

Five Things You Can Do to Prepare for a Crisis in an Era of Instant Communications

Microblogging services such as Twitter and an infinite host of other social media platforms have enabled anyone with online access to communicate instantly with a global audience.   As such, we now live in a world of billions of potential influencers.  One person’s opinions about a company, regardless of whether those opinions are based on evidence, speculation or emotional impulse, can spread within minutes among networks comprising thousands, sometimes even millions, of individuals.  Unsubstantiated hearsay about a company can quickly harden into fact – and live on forever, popping up again and again in search engine results.  And if those rumors go “viral” – that is, seen and distributed by enough people – it can attract the attention of the mass media, leading to a full blown communications crisis.

High-profile examples include Google’s alleged plans to buy Twitter, followed by another stating Apple would acquire the micro-blogging service for $700 million.  As we know now, both rumors proved false, but the wild speculation grabbed the attention of the trade media and undoubtedly impacted industry decision-makers around the globe.

Whether an online conversation involves something unfounded or true, the worst reaction is to ignore it.   Instead, organizations should take a ‘Murphy’s Law’ approach, that is, imagine the worst possible things that can be said about your brand and have a plan for quickly and effectively responding to them.  

Here are five steps your organization can take to anticipate and prepare for a communications crisis:

1. Know Who Will Do What: Your senior officers and communications team should create procedures to be followed in case of a crisis.   Who within the organization is designated to respond to rumors?  What platforms will they use?  Is there a company-wide manual that provides all employees with the dos and don’ts of reacting to online scuttlebutt or inquiries from professional journalists? 
2. Anticipate What You Will Say: What are the typical scenarios that the organization might expect?  Do they involve products, services, customer interactions, employee relations, financial markets, industry practices, corporate social responsibility or something else that can impact your stakeholders?  For each area, you can develop general messaging that can be quickly tailored to address a specific issue.    Make sure those messages are consistent with the core messaging that your company uses in daily communications through all of its channels.  The last thing your organization should do is send mixed messages.
3. Keep Your Eyes Open:  Assign one or more employees to monitor online conversations about your organization.  Make sure to have them monitor both mainstream news stories as well as those that appear in social media. These individuals should bring negative conversations to the attention of senior communications strategists who can then determine if next steps are necessary.
4. Be Responsive: The beauty of the Internet is that it enables two-way conversations.  If, for example, your organization discovers an unhappy stakeholder on Twitter, invite the individual to speak with you via email, phone or some other channel that will enable you to give them personalized attention and address their concerns in detail.
5. If Appropriate, Be Humble:  Be humble as an organization.  Show that you’re willing to listen and change.  Demonstrating a willingness to learn from mistakes and move forward can generate good will among stakeholders.  For example, Motrin, the brand for a popular U.S. pain reliever, launched a new ad campaign implying that mothers use baby carrying devices as a fashion statement.   The campaign prompted an immediate, viral protest, with women denouncing the depiction on Twitter and even forming a Facebook group to boycott the product. Motrin, which was closely monitoring social media discussions, immediately pulled the ads and apologized, helping to turn a potentially damaging gaff into an opportunity to engage in a positive conversation with its target audience.   Another instance involved a YouTube video of two employees, as a prank, tampering with food at a North Carolina Dominoes restaurant.  When the video began spreading on the internet, the company posted its own YouTube video of its president reassuring viewers that appropriate actions had been taken. 

With the ability of information to quickly become viral through social media, will this increase the number of crisis communications campaigns handled in the PR industry?

Don’t Indict Yourself During Interviews: Be Prepared and Own the Story

By Sean Teaford

Everyone knows that Ronald Reagan was re-elected in 1984 but few remember the catalyst for his landslide victory. After the first debate, Walter Mondale was the favorite as a normally quick minded Reagan was slow to process and respond. This played into the hands of the democratic strategy which challenged the incumbent President of being too old and beginning to show his age (Reagan was 73 at the time and the oldest President to have ever served). It was clear that Reagan’s mental faculties were beginning to fail (after his presidency he was officially diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease).

After the President’s lackluster performance in the first debate, the Republican Party contracted television producer and political consultant Roger Ailes to coach Reagan before his next televised confrontation with Mondale. Ailes overhauled Reagan’s once genial debate strategy by more heavily prepping him on topics that would be addressed and having him focus on specific points of contention rather that the honest spontaneity that originally got him elected.

Reagan rebounded in the second debate, and confronted challenges regarding his age. Reagan famously quipped, “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience,” which generated measured applause and laughter. The president’s landslide victory saw Mondale carry only his home state of Minnesota (by 3800 votes) and the District of Columbia. Reagan won 49 of 50 states as well as 58.8% of the popular vote and 525 electoral votes (the most of any candidate in United States history). 

Ailes knew that he had to prepare the President thoroughly in order to secure a victory. He knew what the most likely questions were going to be and he knew the points that Reagan had to hit in order to be successful. However, he had to tailor the preparation so that the words the President spoke, the way he carried himself in the debate, and the demeanor that he presented to the public was consistent with his character. This is the same strategy that PR professionals must implement when preparing a client for an interview.

An interview is an opportunity for the client to shine. Likeability, intelligence, and confidence are the characteristics that will translate well from interview, to reporter, to the public. The job of the PR professional is to know what questions are coming, what could be brought up, and what points need to be addressed so that the client’s message is well received. Every outcome needs to be considered and prepared for - from current headlines, to stock market trends, to government regulations. All of these things must be in the preparation so that, in the end, the client can position themselves as an expert source in their industry. 

Sometimes our clients feel that they don’t need preparation.  They feel confident in their own savvy and neglect to think of potential outcomes that could affect the outcome of a story.

Can you advise a client who believes that they don’t need to be coached?

Houston, We Have a PR Problem!

By Sean Teaford

On July 20, 1969, millions watched and listened as Neal Armstrong climbed out of the cramped lunar module, floated down the steps, and took man’s first steps on the Moon. It is a memory that reminds many of a more innocent time in their life and instills a certain amount of pride in the accomplishments of mankind. With all of the technological challenges and the unknowns involved in this mission, this single event typifies the best case scenario. 

However, during the Apollo 11 mission, the worst case scenario was always in the back of the mind. William Safire was the man in charge of writing a speech that President Nixon could deliver in the event that the mission to the moon fatally failed. The never-delivered speech began, “Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.” Some speeches are never given but, just in case, they have to be written.

When implementing a public relations strategy the same mindset must be utilized. Anyone who has been in this industry for more than a minute and a half knows that not everything goes to plan. What differentiates a good PR firm from the rest is the ability to anticipate multiple media outcomes, both good and bad, and have a plan of attack in place for each one of the projections. What makes a great PR firm is their readiness to counteract negative media coverage through systematic placement and thought leadership as well as a repositioning the corporate message so as to address the issues presented and shift media, and public, favor back to the client’s side.

The economic gauntlet from which we are slowly emerging was an exaggerated period during which PR firms had to carefully maintain favor with the media amidst tough corporate decisions both on the part of their clients and the media outlet itself. Layoffs, budget cuts, declining stock prices, and “corporate restructuring” are just a few of the topics that do not play well in the media but they have been a grim reality for many companies over the past eighteen months. Not only were many companies caught off guard with their communications strategies but numerous PR firms were ill prepared and many failed to pass the test.

During this time the term “crisis communications” has been bandied about in conversations, blogs, and articles when some PR professionals were asked to characterize this period of time. However, times are not always going to be bountiful and when one takes a common sense approach they will be ready for tough times such as these. As a PR professional, anticipating the possible fallout of such economic disasters (as well as other corporate, national, and international crisis’) is part of the job description.

What contingencies can a PR firm put in place in order to anticipate both the possible positive and negative outcomes of a PR campaign?

Is the cliché, there is no such thing as bad publicity, correct?

A Look Into The Future With Vint Cerf

By Samantha Singh

Last week, I attended a sold out event at the Churchill Club featuring Vint Cerf, “the father of the internet,” who is the co-designer of the Internet’s TCP/IP protocols and the current Vice President and Chief Internet Evangelist at Google in conversation with Jessica Vascellaro, tech reporter of The Wall Street Journal. Vint’s intelligence, sense of humor, and engaging personality were proof points of why you should care about Vint. 

A few of the forward looking points Vint mentioned are worth noting.

Cloud exchanges or interconnecting clouds

Right now, we don’t have set inter-cloud standards which means that everybody is making clouds but they lack interoperability between them making it nearly impossible to transfer data from cloud A to cloud B. Cloud computing is at a variable capacity; “It’s like time sharing on steroids.” If it has the same protocol, it will be like the Internet. Everybody is equal in this case and it should be the same for cloud, mobile, and more. If we follow the same path we took to develop the Internet, we can do the same for cloud mobile. This is an area that is still being explored, but seems promising.

The Obama Administration expressed interest in using cloud-based computing techniques to make government more efficient and cross-share of agency communication.  However, additional measures must also be taken to secure the cloud; it is critical to develop strong authentication. The next generation will address many of the inadequacy issues that are currently present. Ideally they want to make the cloud a collaboration process, able to share of information, so that everyone will have access to the same product.

Mobility

Our smart phones will replace all of our home remote controls (no need to have five different remotes on your coffee table) and prove the demise of “little gadgets.” We use our smart phones for just about everything, including making payments, why not flip channels with it too. This reminds me of the Adam Sandler movie Click, with the “universal remote” that can control your life and anyone in it. Seems that our smart phones will become even smarter and we will continue to be dependent on them. Let’s hope it doesn’t make us dumb.    

New Internet

Currently, Vint and friends are conducting an experiment at NASA under the title “The Interplanetary Internet/protocol” (computer networking in space). While they are currently at the development stage equal to where they were 40 years ago, they are taking what has been accomplished for the Internet thus far as the backbone for the Interplanetary Internet. As for the mobile environment, if you put the Interplanetary protocol on top of the Google Android OS for mobile devices, anticipating it works, this would change mobile and the Internet as you know it today, making it more robust, open source, and enables the ability to build a more complex multiple.

Optical switching may be the revolution that everyone is looking for as it is an efficient way of moving huge quantities of information back and forth, another area of interest for Vint.

Vint is definitely on a mission and we will just have to wait and see how things continue to develop in the next five or 10 years. As more protocols and standards develop, the planet is the limit. Vint’s principal, “do as little as you can get away with and don’t try to do too much.”

Being on the PR side, we thrive on learning about new technology and innovation and how that will improve or hinder what we do for our clients. I have to admit, I am excited to see some of these technologies in the future. I do think it will improve collaboration and transparency for PR and among team members and clients.  It will only make us more efficient and get rid of some of the paper pushing.

Will these technologies change PR for the better?

What are your thoughts?