Business Should Be Fun

When I was working at Alexander Communications in the late 1990s (about the time Alexander was acquired by Ogilvy PR), one of the biggest technology shows in the world was COMDEX. It happened every year in Las Vegas.

It was at this show that I was reminded of something from my client Lonn Johnston, vp of communications at TurboLinux. Over time, Lonn would become my friend, boss and mentor.

The lesson: business can be fun.

We hired the Flying Elvi (plural of Elvis?) to skydive dressed in (Linux) penguin costumes and land in front of the hotel where Microsoft CEO Bill Gates was staying. There was more to the campaign, but the main thing was IT WAS FUN. It was a blast!

Fast forward to now. I started my own little agency in April of 2009. Since our first 2 clients, we've grown a bit - we now have 4 staff and revenues are up 683%. With that kind of growth happening in one year, I worry a lot about the continuos quality of work, making the right new hires, taking the right client partners, etc.

But one thing I won't forget is that business can and should be fun.

I got a reminder of that today from a new intern at Cisco Systems, Greg Justice. He did a great video as part of a "I am the world's most interesting intern" contest.

Corporate raps aren't the only way to have fun, but here are a few others I've enjoyed in the past year (I know some, but not all of these folks):

- Will the real Linus Torvalds please stand up

- I use CouchDB

- Brety Bret Bret

Ok, I like the last one because it's about me. But folks like Jennifer Cloer, Greg Justice, Ray George, Kim Terca, J Chris Anderson and Claire McCabe are all having fun.

Thanks for that.

The Power of Polls

In 1935, America's most esteemed public-opinion poll was The Literary Digest, which had called accurately the last 5 elections. Their polls were showing that Franklin D. Roosevelt would lose the presidential election 56 percent to 44 percent to Al Landon.

Yet an upstart polling company, founded just a year earlier by George Gallup, claimed Roosevelt would win the election.

When Gallup was proven right, Gallup was thrust into the national spotlight. George Gallup was quickly approached by the fast growing movie industry. Several Hollywood producers approached him about working for them, and finally in 1940 he signed an exclusive contract with RKO Radio Pictures. Over the next few years he carried out surveys about many of the studio's planned film projects and many of the stars it had or wanted to have under contract, including Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire, Orson Welles, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. When that contract ended, Gallup continued to work with RKO and also added David Selznick and Walt Disney as clients. After World War II, he worked with a number of independent production companies as well.

George Gallup had created one of the most commonly used polling services for decades to come. It also created a slew of competitors, including Harris Interactive and Yankelovich Partners.

Polls had moved from the political landscape to the popular culture. Journalists loved these polls. Polls created debate. Sparked conversation. Polls sold newspapers.

Cell Phone Etiquette

I conducted my first poll as a PR strategy in January 2000. I was working for a new dot com, LetsTalk.com. We were competing against 10 other more established companies in the same space. We ran an inexpensive omnibus survey using Yankelovich and within weeks, we were featured in the New York Times.

In March 2000 the tech wreck hit and our expansive ad campaigns, marketing plans and ad agency went out the window. PR became a driving force behind the company's survival. We turned to surveys to drive that coverage.

At LetsTalk, we finally settled on the topic of cell phone etiquette. This topic, over the span of the next 5 years, got us predictable visibility in USA Today, New York Times, CNN, Consumer Reports and a myriad of other media sites.

Of the 10 companies we competed against in 2000, only LetsTalk is still in business, doing more than $100 million a year in annual sales.

Polling in Technology

As my career continued, I never forgot the power of polling. Omnibus polls. Polls of webinars. Polls of open source community. Every poll had some roll to play sparking discussions, and ultimately raising awareness.

I was reminded of this recently when a client launched a poll of more than 1,000 Java developers. Our poll told a story; and an unexpected one. This led to significant increase in media coverage (eWeek, JavaLobby, TheServerSide, CTOEdge and many other sites covered it); but it also increased web site traffic and the number of free trial product downloads skyrocketed.

This was one of the busiest Marches I can remember. OSBC. CloudConnect. VoiceCon. EclipseCon. Gartner PCC. My clients seem to be going to them all.

But the grand daddy of them all is South by Southwest Interactive.

I didn't go. I didn't have clients going.

Still, seems the season for SXSW recaps. So based on my brief exposure to South by Southwest tweets, articles and blogs, here is my own "best of" list for 2010.

Best Tweet about Twitter's ads:

Nadja Blagojevic/Lewis PR

@NadjaB: I'll be excited to see what the Twitter ad platform looks like, but I hope we don't have to start talking about twads http://tcrn.ch/9MmpC1

Best interview by an Alcatel Lucent influencer management guy of an Alcatel Lucent marketing lady at the ElevenAPI lounge:

Mike Maney/Alcatel Lucent

YouTube

Best "I have no reason for going but I wish I were there" tweet:

Ray George/Page One PR

@rgeorge28: I need to go to #SXSW in 2011

Best advice about SXSW:

Paul Carr/TechCrunch

"(SXSW) sucked last year, and it’s going to suck again this year. You’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise."

Most excited to meet Ashton Kutcher even though she was in Portland:

Jennifer Cloer/Linux Foundation

@jennifercloer: @the_spinmd if you don't buy you know who a drink frm me, well, that just might be the end of our friendship. hook a sista up.

Best Camera Phone Photo:

Lynn Fox/Palm

@foxycar: I feel so under dressed. #sxsw #austin #6th st http://yfrog.com/0bmebbj

Fun with social media and SXSW

I am not going to South by Southwest (SXSW) this year. I have no clients going to SXSW this year (although I do have one client who recommends Elliott BROOD ...SXSW at The Legendary Continental Club on March 19).

I don't have much time to get distracted during the work day. I have an account with Filtrbox. I kind of geek out on PR.

So mixing these facts together today, here is a poorly thought out effort to oversimplify and track the social media buzz coming out of SXSW 2010.

If you need two opposing perspectives to get up to speed on SXSW:

- The fun: USA Today writes on GM/Chevy's "Amazing Race 2.0" leading up to SXSW

- The skeptic: Paul Carr from TechCrunch offers this advice "(SXSW) sucked last year, and it’s going to suck again this year. You’re kidding yourself if you think otherwise."

So before I go back to work, I did quick searches for big brands and sxsw and put these into social media search tool FiltrBox. I did this on Thursday, March 11 around 3 in the afternoon MT (Filtrbox only tracks mentions after I start a search - it does not track any mentions before that time). Filtrbox can give suspect results sometimes (especially when I move fast - plenty of room for my own user error) and they say they are going offline all weekend. Still will be fun to check in and see how various brands are faring.

Editor's note: With all due respect to Jon Swartz who wrote the USA Today story above, I noticed GM/Chevy's SXSW program a few days ago from a Tweet from Tammy Camp (@tammycamp on Twitter) and a nice follow up Tweet from one of GM's social media guys Christopher Barger (@cbarger). I've added #chevysxsw and #sxswsf, Tammy's team Amazing Race Team, to my tracking.

The media is still on the cloud computing bandwagon, but where are the clicks?

Microsoft plans to invest heavily in its cloud platform but expects to see little revenue for two to three years, Bob Muglia, the president of the server and tools business, said Tuesday.

Cloud computing is hyped, but it's no real surprise then that people aren't searching for “cloud computing” in the US on Google. This could be for many reasons - including real buyers are more sophisticated than to use the term "cloud computing" in their searches.

Still, some stats I found interesting:

• Total number of news articles in past 6 months mentioning cloud computing: 10,626 (source: ITDatabase)
• Local number of searches in January on Google for cloud computing: N/A (source: Google AdWords keyword tool for January, 2010)
• Global number of searches in January on Google for cloud computing: 673,000 (Google AdWords keyword tool for January, 2010)

Digging down, I found that:

• Although IBM is doing respectably well with its cloud PR initiatives, it significantly trails Google, Amazon and Microsoft's in terms of the number of searches for its cloud products.
• Companies like Oracle and HP, despite some positive momentum recently, have a small percentage of the total share of voice around cloud computing from media perspective.
• None of the major vendors do very well on organic search results for "cloud computing" on Google.

It could be that Oracle, IBM, VMWare and HP all agree with Microsoft that meaningful revenues around cloud computing are some years away. Based on what I see in the final column below, they certainly don't seem to see the value yet in optimizing SEO around cloud computing.

	% of articles on cloud computing that mention specific vendor (source: ITDatabase)	Google AdWords: Total # of “vendor + cloud” searches (e.g. # of searches for “Microsoft Cloud” and variants)	Google Organic: "vendor + cloud" Google Ranking. (e.g. what ranking Microsoft pages come up on “Microsoft Cloud”)	Google Organic: Google ranking for “cloud computing”
Microsoft	32.7%	26,000	2, 5	36
Google	26.2%	47,000	3	Not in top 50
Amazon	16.3%	40,500	1, 3, 4	13
IBM	16%	14,800	1, 2, 4	18
VMWare	11%	4,400	1, 4, 8	19
Cisco	8.5%	2,400	1, 2, 4	Not in top 50
Apple	8.4%	2,900	0	Not in top 50
Oracle	8.2%	2,900	1, 2, 4	32
HP	7%	5,500	1, 2, 4, 5	Not in top 50

Edited Headline: When Comedians Retweet

With all the good that comes from social media, sometimes you find things that are odd. Today was one of those days - a co-founder of a startup joked when he RTd something I said (note he changed the company names). Although I know of this guy's company, I had never spoken with him (or even heard of him) before.

The Tweets:

bret_clement: Talking to software company who is using @pardot today. They liked it over LoopFuse, Marketo, etc.

royrusso: RT @bret_clement Talking to software company who is using@loopfuse today. They liked it over Eloqua, Marketo, etc.

Quick Context

I work in tech PR. I started my own agency in April and have grown quickly (although I hired my first senior employee in August - I don't currently have capacity to take on any new clients).

As I work with my clients, and talk to people in the tech industry, the conversation often comes back to sales automation tools, CRM packages, etc. These tools provide so much opportunity for marketers and PR professionals who want to track their results (in terms of sales/dollars).

I am no expert in these tools. My former employer (but not me) worked with LoopFuse for awhile. After I started my own firm, I sat in on a LoopFuse demo (which was interesting and useful). Other clients use Pardot, MarketBright, Marketo and other tools and are happy with them.  I reached out to a few of these companies about potentially working with them because I was and remain so enthusiastic about what their products mean for marketing pros.

So when somebody today mentioned they had evaluated a few products and picked one I hadn't heard of,  I thought it was worth Tweeting. 

I didn't get Roy's joke at the time. To be honest, I lost my temper a bit at being misquoted like that.

But more important to me, this caused me to reflect a bit on my own use of Twitter. We all have our own reasons for using it. But I think WOMMA (Word of Mouth Marketing Association) is right with its code of ethics. For corporations and startups using Twitter - transparency and honesty are important.

Agile PR: The Bearer of Reality

Earlier in my career, I worked with startups dedicated to software quality including Coverity and Agitar. These companies promoted more than their products, they promoted agile software development methodologies.

But it wasn’t until today when listening to Perficient's Kevin Sheen, Managing Director of Global Offshore Services, that I realized how it feels PR has become much more "agile". Especially as PR evolves into social media. 

For those who don’t know, agile software development is a methodology for developing software  code that involves frequent iterations, teamwork, collaboration and transparency. 

Keen said 75% of CIOs want some way to measure their software development performance, but only 33% do it. Among the reasons for not measuring performance: lack of discipline; lack of time/money and the tongue and cheek “we don’t want to be the bearer of reality.”

I suspect a similar disparity exists with PR pros. We all want to develop good metrics, but not everyone takes the time to do it or be thoughtful about what the metrics are.

But what struck me about the chat today is how recent PR launches I’ve done feel quite agile – both in their methodologies and their metrics of success.

Keen listed a few agile methodologies and metrics for success. I’ve taken his categories and added how my own experiences with recent launches apply.

Agile PR Methodologies:

• High degree of transparency – The social media elements around a launch today take a lot of time; especially if part of your goal is to monitor and engage target communities online in the places they frequent whether that be blogs, LinkedIn, Google Groups or Twitter. If you decide to outsource a lot of this monitoring/response work to an agency, it might require frequent (daily) updates with clients (unless you trust them implicitly to understand your positioning and online voice).
  
•  Iterative methodologies – Just as with agile development, the moving parts around PR launches today are much more complicated. You now have to monitor and promote your messages through various channels. Something said on Twitter can change your timeline; your targets or how you approach the launch. You have everything planned out at the beginning, but each day is filled with mini plans. Iterative plans can include specific Tweets, comments to blogs, pitches, content creation (videos, screencasts, press releases, blogs, etc) that can change on the fly.
• Tracking Changes – Keen calls his overseas project teams nightly and looks at a dashboard monitoring their process. PR doesn’t have slick tools like agile software to track their progress daily by a variety of metrics, but even if the process is manual, you need to be able roll up all the information each day into something understandable and actionable for client. For us, it was daily detailed agendas and a weekly PPT dashboard aimed to help other executives at the startup, not involved in the day to day, quickly understand the status of the launch. Anybody who has worked with me knows I hate busy work, but in this environment, clear communication about the ever changing landscape was a key value that we brought the client.

 

Agile PR Dimensions of Success:

• Quality – This is the big one and where most good PR agencies are putting a lot of time. How many visits did your launch drive to your clients web site according to Google Analytics? How many of those converted to sales? How many people watched the video? How viral was your messaging on Twitter? How many people downloaded the product?
• Predictability – In the software development world, predictability is “how close cost estimates come to actuals.” Part of me think this doesn’t apply to PR agencies who work on retainers – the amount of work involved with integrated PR/social media campaigns right now means they are probably doing a lot more work than you are paying for. The model is turned around – no matter how hard your agency works you have to have metrics to evaluate if the results are worth it in the end.

Dangers of Staff Churn

Offshore outsourcing has another similarity to PR agencies – the churn of the teams doing the work. Just as PR agencies can churn 50% of the staff over a year’s time – so do the offshore development teams. One US company got so frustrated by the churn (and the ongoing loss of familiarity to their project) that they literally asked for pictures of each member of the development team.

It's a little simplistic to drill down too far in the new parallels between PR and agile software development - but certainly the parallels exist.

 

 

 

Who is the new SlashDot: TechCrunch, Ars Technica or GigaOM?

Erick Schonfeld at TechCrunch wrote yesterday "Survey Says: PR People Love Our No-Embargo Policy."

I chatted with a few PR pros last night after we read Erick's post. From my informal poll, a more accurate headline might be "Survey Says: TechCrunch is the New Slashdot". The embargo policy is interesting - but we are flexible. TechCrunch can do what it wants - as long as it has the influence it has - PR folks will adjust. 

TechCrunch is the new SlashDot (in its day, a mention on SlashDot caused the "SlashDot Effect"  - where the mentioned web site would slow down or temporarily close due to the increased traffic). The TechCrunch community is very large, active and passionate.

What is more interesting to me about this poll is who is listed after TechCrunch.

The folks in this poll named the top  tech blogs: TechCrunch, GigaOm, Engadget, Gizmodo, VentureBeat, Silicon Valley Insider, Meritalk, ReadWriteWeb, LifeHacker. The top 10 Tech Pub blogs were WSJ, New York Times, CNET, BusinessWeek, ZiffDavis, Wired, CIO, eWeek, NetworkWorld and InformationWeek.

MeriTalk and Silicon Valley Insider in the top 10? GigaOm as number 2? Ars Technica at #10?

This surprised me. So I did some quick research that I wanted to share:

• I looked at each of blogs web site traffic as reported by Compete.com
• I looked at the Google Analytics for a few recent launches 

Traffic Comparisons:

For starters, lets use Compete.com to track the number of unique visitors to these blogs in March. Compete.com is notoriously sporadic in its findings. RSS feeds push out content in a way where readers aren't counted. But even with the flaws in using Compete - I think this creates some degree of accurate comparison.

Case Studies

Since Compete.com is arguably inaccurate, let's look at the Google Analytics on 2 recent launches I've seen:

Launch 1

- An Ars Technica article delivered 6x as much traffic as a NY Times blog. 

- The NY Times Bits blog delivered 5x as much traffic as OSStatic (GigaOm) 

Launch 2:

- Ars Technica drove 7x the traffic as GigaOm.

- GigaOm drove 2x the traffic as a corporate Twitter feed.

- A corporate Twitter feed drove 8x the traffic as a TechTarget article.

Conclusion

A top 10 list is different for each announcement, for each client. So I won't do my own top 10 list. But reviewing these poll stats, I do wonder what information the PR industry uses to gauge the most influential blogs.

What are your thoughts and experiences?

Will Twitter Ever Be the Same?

This week has been fascinating as celebrities continue to bring Twitter into the mainstream. Steve Rubel, SVP/Director of Insights for Edelman Digital and an AdAge columnist summed it up briefly on his Twitter feed yesterday: "Been thinking a lot about this week's events and feel Twitter will never be the same."

Who knows how the "Oprah Effect" will impact Twitter?  CNN v Ashton? Britney Spears? 

Over the past year, I have closely observed, managed or participated in more than a dozen branded Twitter feeds. Ashton and Oprah are quickly expanding Twitter's visibility with mainstream America  - but I believe some of the key things I've learned over the past year will remain true - no matter what the impact of this week's events are:

• The importance of metrics: Metrics for evaluating conversations regarding Twitter go well beyond the number of followers. The "million follower" milestones for CNN, Ashton and Britney are interesting, but for companies looking to engage their communities online, how many people are commenting on what you say? Are you changing the tone of how people talk about your brand? How much traffic is the Twitter channel driving to your web site? Twitter isn't just about sales - but do you know if your Twitter channel is driving sales?
• The importance of transparency: Engaging people online in a public forum like Twitter isn't easy. You sometimes need to address when people are negative. It is an opportunity to listen and an opportunity to give your point of view. I think a great example of somebody taking on this challenge is Ross Turk, director of community at SourceForge.  Ross is one of the best at monitoring the conversation online and engaging people online - even if the topic is potentially negative toward Ross's employer. More often than not, a conversation that starts negative ends on a positive note after Ross jumps in.
  
• The importance of commitment:  Organizations and brands can't just outsource management of their Twitter feeds to someone and walk away. People with experience can help organizations develop good metrics, create a useful voice, and help grow a successful Twitter feed. But a Twitter feed will only be successful with significant time commitment from stakeholders within the organiation. The most successful feeds, in my experience, are the feeds that have an authentic, knowledgeable voice. 

The Palm Pre launch and the evolving realities of product reviews

In the late 1990s, I worked with a stellar team of PR people supporting HP's NetServer division. One of my tasks was to make sure that we built a plan to make HP the #1 ranked server family amongst its competitors including IBM, Compaq and Dell. From the time we started to the time we ended, HP rose from a qualitiative perspective to the best reviewed product line in the space. To discuss how we did that would be a different blog - but it involved a lot of work, relationship management with product reviewers and sometimes making difficult decisions about when NOT to be in a competitive product review.

Fast forward to today, where two of my former colleagues, Lynn Fox and Jon Zilber work at Palm. As you may have heard leading up to CES in early January, Palm needed a home run with the launch of the Pre.

They got it.

Palm's stock was up 35% on January 9 right after all of the CES buzz hit and as of this blog posting a week later has almost doubled again.

The Palm Pre got many best of show awards and an obscene amount of positive media coverage at CES that is the hallmark of Lynn and Jon's careers, but the most interesting award to me as an old product review guy was the CNET People's Voice award, decided by over 10,000 CNET readers.

Great PR people still play a vital role in product reviews and awards. But now more than ever I hear clients talk about reader choice awards/consumer opinions. Amazon.com offers aggregate consumer ratings on a wide range of products, including software. Many publications have reader's choice awards. ePinions and Yelp offer reviews for consumers, by consumers.

In this environment, among the most important people in your product reviews initiatives are not your PR team but your product development teams. Social media plays a key role in helping product designers know what consumers are talking about and what they want. Monitoring blogs, Twitter feeds and other forums can help designers understand their target user pain points. The problem is how to sift through all of this information - but there are a growing number of ways to do this.

Having an active ear to the ground doesn't replace great vision - but it sure helps.

Intel and social media

Intel has, for the length of my professional career, been masterful at marketing (nevermind the Pentium FDIV bug).

Beyond the famous "Intel Inside" campaign, Intel also has a well deserved reputation for being extraordinarily disciplined in its announcements of new products. Simply put, an entire ecosystem of businesses rely on Intel processors - so Intel customers and partners have intense opinions about how and when it launches new chipsets. In the late 90s, I worked with HP on their Netserver line of Intel-based servers - I learned that Intel culturally became unusually disciplined and sometimes tight lipped during product launches - sometimes to the chagrin of partners like HP.

In other words, I would have anticipated that culturally Intel might struggle in the new world of social media. Could they transfer from the highly coordinated communication efforts of the late 90s to a world where engineers, partners and millions of other interested individuals blog - where one accidental posting could ruin the announcements for partners such as HP, IBM or Dell?

This year, I've been very impressed with Intel as it tackles social media. Members of Intel's team include Kelly Feller and Michael Brito.

A few of the impressive steps this team has taken just over the past month:
- Intel launched it's public social media guidelines.
- Intel launched the "What's Inside You" contest.

It is cool to see Intel - a company who might culturally have very good reasons to drag its feet on its social media front - become so active. It's also cool to see their Intel "What's inside you" campaign - it reminds me of a few contests we've run at Page One for Fortune 500 companies (we can't name) and a small Japanese company called Plat'Home.

Social Media, parenting and popcorn

I recently had an interesting email exchange with Connie Bensen before her presentation at the Social Media Strategies conference in San Francisco. I was unable at the last minute to attend the conference, but Connie was nice enough to point me to a few of her recent experiences.

Connie is a newer member of the thoughtful and visionary Network Solutions social media team.

While Network Solutions certainly has earned some recognition for their commitment to social media (heck, even their lawyers are involved in active online response), the thing that struck me most was a link she pointed me to of a 10 year old Cub Scout.



This 10 year old took an entirely new approach to the age old task of selling popcorn/chocolate/coupon books as a fund raiser. Whereas my memories of childhood were going door to door and asking people to buy chocolate bars - this kid expanded his vision, teamed with a non profit and built his own social media campaign. The campaign was called PopcornForKids. His goal was to "give some fancy Cub Scout popcorn" to as many of kids who struggle with meals every day - not as matter of sustenance - but as an unexpected way to show people care about them. The boy teamed with Feeding America as a part of his project.

I can't speak to this success of this particular campaign. However, I can speak to the glimmer of hope that the social media work I'm involved with at Page One PR will also be good for me as a dad as my kids look for ideas to support their own fundraisers and groups - not to mention their greater ideals.

SEO and PR - Deciding Who Gets The Exclusive

My colleague Nadja Blagojevic wrote an interesting blog on SEO and PR last week on the Page One PR blog.

We have growing appreciation for metrics-based pr at Page One. It's an exciting time for us as we see more data than ever before about how public relations can impact sales.

As we get more involved with SEO for our clients - some small changes begin to creep into our planning.

One example: we have always been faced with the question of who to give an exclusive to when we are making an announcement. Often times we don't give an exclusive, but in the times that we do, how do we pick the right blogger or reporter?

A number of variables go into this question:
- Personal relationships between our client and the blogger/reporter
- What reporters might be most interested in the announcement?

Now, as we get more involved in SEO, there is a new element to consider: does a reporter's site generally provide links to our client sites? This link is gold for our clients from an SEO perspective - and we are beginning to pay attention to what publications do link back as we consider who to give exclusives to.

For example:
- eWeek includes links back to companies they cover. For example, see this story last week on OpenLogic.
- InformationWeek does too - as evidenced by this article on OpenLogic.

However, there are still some very well known publications in tech arena who only include links in their articles to content on their own web site. They have good business decisions for not funneling traffic off of their own web site.

But the reality is the companies these publications cover are beginning to pay attention to how articles can impact organic search results, and link backs are a key component.

If you are a reporter who thrives on exclusives - you should realize if your publication doesn't link to the companies you cover - your ability to secure exclusives will dwindle.

Does a joke need a punch line?

A quick joke: How long do chickens work?

Would it matter to you if I don't tell you the punch line? Many people tout the number of views of YouTube videos as a metric - but there is currently no way to know how much of your video people watched. If they just watch for a second then stop - is it the same as hearing a joke with no punch line?

Videos are a new tool in PR. As just one example, my former colleague Josh Morgan, who started MorganDorado PR in Sacramento, has a number of videos for his clients on YouTube.

As PR people start to make more videos, we design videos with a punch line. Or if not a punch line, we have content that we want you to see.

But how are video viewers tracked?

As my colleague Craig Oda points out, YouTube Insights can be interesting - you can see viewer's gender and age. In Craig's case, the largest viewer group for his family videos are males 35-44 (my family videos tend to be more popular in the 35-44 female crowd).

My question is: when will we have access to information that provides insight into how long people watch each video?

We've done a handful of video programs for clients at Page One. Some are designed to be viral within specific audiences. These videos fit into a larger strategic campaign - so often our metrics for success are defined through a myriad of stats (sales; number of blogs and articles pointing to the video; number of actions, such as votes, for a campaign, etc). Still, we generally look at the total number of viewers.

But when does a viewer become a a viewer according to YouTube? Should somebody who watches 5 seconds of your video be counted the same as somebody who watches to entire video?

According to TubeMogul, YouTube counts a viewer when the video starts. So if you watch for 2 seconds, you are counted the same as someone who watches for 3 minutes.

Google and YouTube understand the power of metrics. But it will be good when YouTube, and it's underlying technology, can provide insights into how long videos are watched.

Oh, the answer to the joke: Around the cluck.