On Digital Snippets
Maggie Fox and her team have done an outstanding job bringing the Social Media News Release to Ford Motor Company. I’m impressed by the layout and content. If I’m not mistaken, it looks like they are using WordPress as their backend, which I think fits well with our shared vision of news-releases-as-blog-posts. Nice job all around, especially to Ford in making their content available for sharing. I hope that this will lead to many other large companies sharing their content and posting more news in a rich, online format.
In addition to the creation of SMNRs for Ford, the Social Media Group is introducing a new term, “Digital Snippets,” which also appears to be the name of a new web service. Paul Gillin and Geoff Livingston both refer to Digital Snippets as innovative. Maggie refers to Digital Snippets as being revolutionary. For me, if I’m reading everything correctly, Digital Snippets are just release assets; they can be videos, audio, links, or text, but they are the pieces of the release that can be broken out and used as individual items. I want to be careful here because I hate it when I read posts by bitter people who want to tear down other people’s hard work. However, I can’t help but feel that I’m missing something? Video from YouTube? Images from Flickr? PRX Builder has offered those features for over a year now. There are hundreds of releases on PRX Releases.com featuring video, audio, podcasts, images, and more. Aren’t all of these Digital Snippets(TM)?
To test the concept, I took some of the elements of a Ford SMNR and rebuilt it in PRX Builder. Here’s the result. Obviously, it’s not as polished as the custom, Ford release, but the Digital Snippets are there and were quite easy to add. So I’m not sure that I understand the concept of Digital Snippets, other than to introduce a new buzzword with a trailing trademark. 
There seem to be more entries in the world of SMNR creation tools, which is great news because we can all benefit from this creativity. However, I’d like to throw out a challenge to folks like Edelman, WebITPR, Social Media Group, et. al. I’ve been working on hRelease for several months now. It’s supposed to be a community effort that will help move the SMNR distribution process forward. Since you all have experience in this area, it would be great to get a little help.
maggie fox said,
Wrote on January 23, 2008 @ 7:22 am
Hi Shannon, thanks so much for your feedback!
The reason that we feel that this update to the SMPR template is an innovation is that we’ve created a platform on which a story can be evolved in a modular way – each “snippet” (the term “Digital Snippets” is simply the brand name under which we’re marketing this service) has its own RSS feed within the larger SMPR feed. We have also created some custom widgets that pull and rotate the newest assets on third-party sites so that the content is always fresh.
Of course, we “stand on the shoulders of giants” and have not reinvented the wheel – we’re just using it in a new way.
Shannon Whitley said,
Wrote on January 23, 2008 @ 8:13 am
Thanks for the comment, Maggie. I do think that your work is excellent and I am all for anything that moves us forward in this area.
Todd Defren and I differed in opinion when he released the Social Media Newsroom Template. He wanted each piece to have its own RSS feed. I thought that people might suffer from web-feed-overload. Obviously, we went with the feeds, but I still think it might be too much of a good thing.
And my challenge still stands. There has been a lot of work done with teams of folks at PR agencies, but everyone is working separately. Imagine what we could all accomplish together.
Geoff Livingston said,
Wrote on January 23, 2008 @ 9:57 am
I hope this doesn’t come off the wrong way, but this to me seems to be a technical discussion revolving around which form to use. That doesn’t mean anything to me.
What does mean something to me is the function we are trying to fulfill. Because for me an SMR is a communications tool, not a form to be debated. It must help me achieve a purpose. And that is inspiring consumer generated discussion, possible media stories, as well as serving community members directly with content. If community members are on Flickr or YouTube, then it’s in the function’s best interest to serve up content there. Because that’s the tools’ purpose. Period.
In general, I find it ironic that all of the discussion about whether or not an SMR should host conversations is defeated by the complete lack of comments on any of the initial screen view’s worth of PBX releases. I can think of ten better ways to host a conversation. It’s a nice feature to have, but doesn’t serve the real communicator’s need: Inspiring others to create a conversation on their turf.
lastly, I’d like to see all of these bodies stop talking ideals, and start talking about what’s working and what’s not. Real SMR results. Why? Because functionality yields results, and we need to understand what does inspire people to act so we can build the form in a more appropriate fashion.
swhitley said,
Wrote on January 23, 2008 @ 11:14 am
Geoff,
I agree with what you are saying. I would only respond that the technical discussion lays a foundation for generating what you really want: the conversation. The right form and distribution process will make it easier for you to connect with others and will promote those conversations, but you’re correct in that there aren’t enough people analyzing the results of our efforts.
We are still trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t. I’d say it’s inconclusive right now, muddied further by those who are saying we don’t need any of this at all.
The lack of comments on SMNRs is being analyzed. It has also been lamented by WebITPR. They’ve been experimenting with various approaches, but I don’t know if they’ve hit on the right combination yet. Even though it seems sensible, comments on the release may not work at all, but we are still testing that idea, presenting the option in different ways.
I think there is still a lot of focus on ideals instead of practical knowledge because so many people haven’t grasped what *you* already know. You’re ready to move onto the next step, but there’s still a lot of convincing going on.
As for me, I’m a tech guy. I throw fastballs, sliders, and curveballs, searching for the right combination. Some of my pitches go wide. I’m looking for the right coaches to jump in and use their expertise to help this all come together.
Geoff Livingston said,
Wrote on January 23, 2008 @ 2:08 pm
Devil’s Advocate: Why build a technical product if there isn’t a defined need? Need should define technical development, not the other way around.
swhitley said,
Wrote on January 23, 2008 @ 3:48 pm
I’d say the need has been defined. Not everyone agrees on the definition, but some people have expressed the need clearly. It’s just that the solution hasn’t been recognized yet as meeting the need…or it truly doesn’t meet the need. That’s where the technical experimentation comes in.
Twitter is a good example for most of us where technology came before a clear need. You and I probably didn’t have Twitter in mind as a primary need, but we discovered the tool and now it’s very important to us.
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