Associated Press, by far the most aggressive news organization out there when it comes to restricting any type of conduct which they feel has even the remotest chance of devaluing their brand.  They made news not long ago by going after bloggers who they felt were violating their copyright by taking snippets of and linking to their stories without consent.

AP is now  sending “take down” notices to their own employees with  Facebook pages.  They are  forcing them through a “Third Reich” type social networking policy to watch who they friend and  monitor the posts of their current Facebook friends for what  AP considers inappropriate content.  Quite a burden for an AP reporter just looking to hook up with a cute date on Facebook.

As reported in Wired Magazine, an Associated Press reporter recently received an  official reprimand over a comment on his Facebook page comment posted to his Facebook profile late last month criticizing the executive management of newspaper publisher McClatchy, whose stock plummeted following a 2006 acquisition of San Jose-based Knight Ridder.

Apparently APs  ethics policy says writers “must be mindful that opinions they express may damage the AP’s reputation as an unbiased source of news.

“They must refrain from declaring their views on contentious public issues in any public forum.”

WOW!  That does not leave much room for conversation and daily discourse.  After reading this policy I wondered what the Facebook Wall of an Associated Press Reporter looks like as it seems that opining on just about anything can get him/her reprimanded or fired.

After an exhaustive search through the Facebook pages of AP reporters here is a wall conversation I found between a reporter and his new hot Facebook friend Sally who he is also trying to hook up with.

Sally:  Did you see that new Iran protest video?

AP Reporter:  I had a hangnail this morning, really sucks

Sally:  What about that disturbing video?

AP Reporter:  It is supposed to be hot out today.

Sally:  Can I post the video on your page? Its important to get the word out!

AP Reporter:   I am getting my prostate checked today

Sally:  You are so lame and boring! Forget about that date tonight!

AP Reporter:   That’s ok.  I have to de-friend you anyways.  You are too controversial.

Can  AP interfere in their employees Facebook worlds in this manner?  Absolutely.  As I have said time and time again in the context of the Facebook Holocaust Denial dispute, there is no 1st Amendment protection in the private realm.  Is AP going to far?  A lot of people think so.  On thing is certain.  The numbers of AP reporters getting laid off Facebook is probably plummeting as we speak.

What is Digg? For those who do not know, I will use the description right off their web site:

“Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users. You won’t find editors at Digg — we’re here to provide a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and we’re changing the way people consume information online.”

I will not go into all the ins and outs of Digg. You can read a good article about it here. You basically submit content you find interesting to the Digg Community. The community votes it up or down. If enough people vote it up and not too many vote it down or “bury it”, your submission makes it to the “Front Page” which can generate thousands of hits to the submission.

Is Digg beneficial to the “obscure bloggers” of which I count myself? It can be if you remember the key phrase coined by Viacom movie mogul Sumner Redstone “CONTENT IS KING!”. I actually thought my brother Mark Cuban coined the phrase until I read about Redstone. This is the golden rule that drives the Digg community.

What is your blog about? Is your blog about getting traffic from front page postings regardless of quality of the content because you are ad supported? I see a lot of that on Digg. That kind of content in my opinion is not king when it comes to blogging because it is almost always content generated by someone else. Why not spend some time building a loyal readership base with quality and or original content? If you don’t people are not going to come back until you have another popular submission. I want reader loyalty. I want people to stick around and look at my multiple posts. The only way they are going to do that is if they enjoyed the initial post I submitted to Digg. When a Digg submission of mine hits front page, it is just as or more important to me how many other of my articles are clicked.

There is nothing wrong with writing about other people’s news. Unless you are writing an original screenplay it makes sense to write about the world happening around you. The key for me at least is to take an event, even if 500 other people have written on it, and make it mine with original ideas, thoughts and viewpoints. If I can not add something new (at least new to me) to an event, I tend to stay away from it.

The tendency of some Diggers is to read only the lead-in when they digg. I try to create a lead-in that encourages readers to click on the link to my blog rather than simply digg and comment off of the lead-in. A bad lead-in can get an article buried as quickly as a bad article itself. The art of writing a good lead-in can be compared to a a teaser for a Hollywood movie. You want to capture the interest of your audience quickly without giving to much information. You want them to be curious enough to go see the movie.(your blog) It is a continuous learning process.

Do not be afraid of the comments. When a submission goes front page there can be hundreds of comments. Many of them are hateful and tough to read but if you shrug those off and find the meaningful ones you can learn a lot about ways to improve your writing and content selection skills. I routinely got tortured for my grammar before I started working harder on it. I still get tortured to a degree but the complaints have reduced dramatically.

Here is an example of how Digg recently worked for me resulting in two ESPN interviews and an appearance on The Fox News Channel.(video below).

On June 6 2008 I wrote an article entitled “Why Athletes Go Broke“. It went popular and generated 814 Diggs. This is a fairly modest number for a front page submission. In contrast, the actual article on my blog received 30 thousand hits. This is again, not an unusually large number of hits from a front page submission. The real benefit is the other search engines and blogs that pick up on this large number of hits. This process got my post noticed by the New York Times. The Times linked to the my blog in their Freakonomics Section in a post entitled: Why Do So Many Celebrities Go Broke. It was also posted in their “Whats Online” section. The Times postings resulted in my submission being picked up by news blogs all over the world. This resulted in two ESPN interviews and a national appearance on the Fox News Channel.(video below) I have also received several offers to write for publications.

What lessons can be learned from this? There are some that will say that this only happened because my last name is Cuban. I dispute that assertion. I have written many blogs that have gone front page and not generated any interest beyond Digg. It proves that Digg does work for bloggers even in the face of any disdain by the Digg community towards the blogging community. I have no idea if this disdain actually exists but I read about it frequently. It proves that regardless of any Digg variables, content will always be king. If you have content that is timely, interesting and hits a “public nerve” Digg will work for you. Digg is not just for distributing hard news around the internet. Digg can work to distribute your thoughts on that news as well. You just have to have something worth saying. Digg can pull back the curtain but the audience still has to like the show. Be original-Be timely-Be bold as a blogger. The Digg community will stand up and take notice.

©2008 Brian Cuban

MY INTERVIEW ON THE FOX NEWS CHANNEL

What do you think of when you visualize your average Digg user? I visualize a late teen to twenty something geek glasses wearing, dateless, pimple popping nerd, barricaded in his room bedroom smoking a doobie while drinking a diet soft drink, farting on his cat and endlessly hitting the “refresh” key in the hopes of that one more elusive “Digg” that will take his story to the masses with his mother constantly calling upstairs to ask if he has found a job yet……

That is NOT a criticism of Digg users. It is more my taking a self inventory of my life and a warning to diggers that I am what you have to look forward to. A forty- something, Lasik vision enhanced dateless, pimple popping nerd with a bad back from sitting on his “computer ass” all day endlessly hitting the “refresh” key between sips of my favorite java in the hopes of that one more “Digg” that will take my story to the masses…

I am making up for lost “Digger Geek” time as I never got to be a true Digg Geek . Not only did Digg not exist in my true geek days but neither did personal computers or the internet…. How in the world did we all get by back then? If I didn’t have Digg now I would probably switch to massive heroin abuse….. Frankly, if I could stick my head in my computer terminal to get my hair cut, I would never leave the freaking house, Digging endlessly through time….

In the end we are all destined for “Digger Anonymous”. I can see it now…” my name is Brian and I am a Digging, nose picking geek”…. HELLO BRIAN!

Diggers are an interesting bunch…..

I frankly am a Digger that other Diggers love to hate. Why? Because I am a digging nose picking geek who often self promotes. This means I sometimes Digg my own original content posted on my own blog. As more than one Digger has so eloquently stated.. “Who gives a f**k was you think!” While I am actually proud of the fact that three original pieces I wrote went front page, I absolutely understand this philosophy.

The Digg philosophy is the only credible story is a story someone else wrote….

I have no problem with this. My content is not for everyone and may only have credibility to a limited few. I frankly think Bill O’reilly is a no credibility nose picking geek but hey, thats just me…. There are masses who think anything that comes out of his mouth should be a new paragraph in a history book. It is all in the eyes of the geek on the other end isn’t it? Credibility is judged by the masses. Just ask any bookie setting a line….

Even though it serves a legitimate “news distribution” purpose, I just can’t sit in front of my computer, diet coke and doobie in hand, endlessly digging articles across the internet… I would rather write original content offering my take on the news and digg that around the internet. I love to generate thought and discussion.

A perfect example of this is the groundbreaking scientific genetic animal cross-breeding story that broke the other day. Genetic scientists announced the creation of a whole new species of animal. They announced the creation of the “Chimpcat” A Chimpcat is apparently a cross between a chimpanzee and a house cat. It is furry, it can swing through trees and meows like a cat.

Now I could simply Digg this story in the hopes of accumulating thousands of Diggs and getting that elusive free set of steak knives I hear Digg awards monthly to the highest digger….. I however would rather write/blog my own opinion on the legal, medical ethics and social implications of the “Chimpcat”

I would rather write about my concern that the introduction of the Chimpcat into society will cause the entire public service infrastructure to collapse. Can you imagine a world where fire departments were endlessly called out on false “Chimpcats in trees” calls? There would be no time for legitimate fire calls. Cities would burn. Societies would collapse. Anarchy would ensue. Dogs and Chimpcats would be sleeping in the streets together….. Our worst nightmares would ensure…..

As the first person to pick up on and write about his insidious “Chimpcat conspiracy” don’t I have Digg credibility? Do I not now have a P.H.D in “chimpcatology” worthy of millions of Diggs?

GO CHIMPCAT GO!

I was looking at an article on the Legal Marketing Blog entitled ” To Blog or Not To Blog“. It was an article on whether it made sense from a marketing standpoint for a law firm to create a blog. It is worth reading. My take is this….

Before a law firm or any business makes a decision on whether to create a blog, it is critical that they come to a consensus definition of what a blog is and what “blogging” means to them. It can and will mean ten different things to ten different people. All you have to do is get on the web and randomly go through blogs to figure that out

You can click here for the Wikipedia definition of a blog.

The problem with law firms is that they have not figured this out. If it is a medium to large size firm forget it. They don’t have a clue. They don’t want to have a clue. Blogging is not politically correct and personal blogs are in fact either silently or openly discouraged unless the attorney is writing about his/her workout at the gym or posting photos from their latest vacation trip. If you want to see true blogging in the legal profession you almost without exception have to go to solo practitioners or small firms. Why? Big law firms want to protect what they have. From their perspective blogging can only cost them business. Small firms and solos want to go get what they don’t have and make and effort to understand what blogging can do to help that process.

One of the most publicized/controversial incidents involving legal blogging involved attorney Denise Howell and her blog Bag and Baggage. This is one of the most popular legal blogs out there. Denise expresses opinions and does not worry about being politically correct There is speculation over whether her blogging was a factor in her departure from Pittsburgh based firm Reed Smith, an old guard, large firm.

You can also go outside the legal profession to my brother Mark Cuban’s blog. No one will ever accuse him of holding back his opinion. This again how I define a blog.

Are their large firms who have true blogs. Sure there are but they are hard to find. Do your own survey of large firm web sites. You wont find much. You will find firms that call something a blog

What they end up doing is re-gurgitating cases, things other people have written and take no time whatsoever with any type of creative process.

Then there are the law firms who claim they want to be on the “cutting edge” and spend all this money to put a great looking blog up. They realize you can not blog and be completely neutral unless you are going to blog on what you had for breakfast, how your workout was etc.

These firms become afraid of pissing potential or current clients off. They then revert back to regurgitating case law and re-posting legal articles.

If you are a law firm and unless you feel your audience is going to find what you had for breakfast interesting, blogging should mean expressing an opinion. If your not going to do that, what’s the point…

I just expressed mine…..