Send this to your HR director

Flicked through the job listings in your local paper or on Monster.com lately? They’re almost always uninspiring, visually boring and just completely lame.

Which makes it even more cool when you see a recruitment campaign that doesn’t suck. Check out this listing for the editor of a small Virginia newspaper (thanks to Mathew Ingram for the link). They got staff, critics and readers involved and presented the whole thing in a nice little web package. More than anything the site tells applicants about the culture of the paper and the passion of the staff. I’m sure they’ll get some great applicants.

Would you take a job at BitTorrent?

A good friend of mine is considering whether he should move from Toronto to San Francisco for a job at BitTorrent. There is obviously a long list of pluses and minuses, particularly with the launch of their new service tomorrow, but when he asked my opinion it came down to three simple things: The download market is an incredibly interesting space, BitTorrent is one of the most interesting players and San Francisco is the epicenter of the tech world.

In my mind it doesn’t matter that BitTorrent face a lot of challenges. They have as good a chance as anyone and they are running in one of the most exciting races going on right now. A job at BitTorrent would be an opportunity to live on the bleeding edge for a while. You’d have a business card that would get you into a lot of interesting meetings and, very importantly, you’d be in the Valley. I think this would be an opportunity to learn and to make contacts. If BitTorrent became a huge success – great. If not I’m sure other opportunities would appear quickly, and often.

Two and a half years ago when I was deciding to move to Toronto for a job I approached the decision differently. I was looking for a company that I could help make successful. Now, potential failures are just as interesting. A chance to fail (maybe) is a chance to learn and as long as you are meeting great people and enjoying yourself then it looks like a good opportunity to me.

BitTorrent goes legit

Tomorrow BitTorrent will finally launch their much discussed play for the legit download market. BitTorrent.com will become a download store offering around 3000 movies and thousands or games, tv shows and music videos.

From the interviews I’ve read it sounds like Ashwin Navin, the CEO, has been backed into a corner. After the movie studios dictated high prices for BitTorrent to sell films he decided to rent them instead – for between $3 and $4. Of course the rentals are stacked full of DRM (digital rights management) so they are non-shareable and expire 30 days after download or 24 hours after watching them. Oh, boy – that’s some straitjacket style restriction.

The one advantage BitTorrent do have is the advantage they’ve always had – their incredible technology. Their download store will be based on the same per-to-per system that lets people share illegal content so easily that it allegedly accounts for 55% of all internet traffic (although claims vary). This should mean dramatically faster downloads than most other stores: a writer from the NY Times downloaded X-Men 3 in 2 hours on BitTorrent compared to 3 from WalMart.com.

Mathew Ingram has an interesting perspective on the launch over here.

And Gizmodo make a couple of interesting points:

The real question is: “Can BitTorrent compete against itself?” The BT network already offers a vastly superior catalog of content without restrictions (or cost), albeit not so legally. Something else to consider: since they’re using your bandwidth to distribute content users pay for, why aren’t purchases subsidized according to how much someone uploads?

I completely agree with point number two. If I’m helping them make money by seeding their content then I expect a discount, or some kind of incentive.

Reuters (talks about) embracing citizen journalism

After working in the publishing business for 2 year I have a real interest in seeing how that industry deals with the shift toward social media and citizen journalism. So, it has been great reading some of the stories that have come out of the WeMedia conference in Miami.

One of the biggest hurdles for citizen journalism is the rift it has created between the people in charge of traditional media companies and the journalists that work for them. I found that it wasn’t uncommon for writers to feel that the only reason their organisations were interested in citizen journalism is because they could save money on reporting and lay off ‘proper journalists’. Chris Ahearn, president of Reuters, thinks it’s a confidence issue: “as soon as we get over this crisis of confidence we will realise that this is a golden age of journalism.”

In fact Chris had quite a few interesting things to say – there is a post about his speech on the Gaurdian’s OrganGrinder blog.

I think Reuters will play a particularly interesting role in the shift toward social media. The fact of the matter is that most media companies, particularly newspapers, are cash strapped. They are doing less reporting themselves and are relying more heavily on picking up syndicated stories from organisations like Reuters. If Reuters starts sending out citizen journalism over the wires it becomes easy for editors to simply start running it. This is in comparison to getting your own citizen journalism system off the ground – a massive undertaking for most news organisations.

I don’t think this is ideal – but it could be a good start. I’m a believer in news communities. I think citizen journalism works best when someone in a community writes for that community (either virtual or geographical). So with Reuters sending out citizen journalism ‘feeds’ they will likely be detaching the journalist from the community – which in my opinion makes it less powerful.

Still, if editors become comfortable running these stories I think it is a much smaller leap to start asking their own readers to contribute to their newspapers and TV shows in more meaningful ways. I’m optimistic.

UPDATE: I should have mentioned the other big piece of citizen journalism news announced at WeMedia: The partnership between NowPublic and Asociated Press.

From the press release: “Contributions to the AP news report from NowPublic’s network of participants could take many forms over time, said AP Deputy Managing Editor for Multimedia Lou Ferrara. “They could range from simple eyewitness accounts to originally produced content.”

Of course NowPublic is another Canadian startup – based in Vancouver. Great to see them doing so well.

Toro magazine closing its doors today

I was sad to hear that the fantastic Canadian men’s magazine, Toro will not be publishing their March issue, or any more for that matter. The reason given: the advertising market in Canada. Apparently the ads dollars they were getting just couldn’t sustain their business.

Here is a quote from the press release:

(TORONTO – February 12, 2007) Toro proprietor Christopher Bratty is suspending publication of the Canadian men’s magazine he launched in April 2003. “Despite steady annual growth,” says Toro publisher Dinah Quattrin, “it’s become clear that the advertising revenue available in Canada for a general-interest men’s magazine is such that even a very high-quality book like Toro can, at best, manage to sustain itself. The prospect of significant profits wasn’t in the foreseeable future.”


UPDATE: I’ve already had a couple of emails from Dose staff suffering from flashbacks!

Does consumer PR sell products or stock?

I had a beer a couple of weeks ago with Ian Barr from Hill and Knowlton, a large PR firm here in Toronto. We were chatting about how PR is used in modern business. One question I had was how many clients were coming to him to promote a new product versus coming to him explicitly wanting to impact their share price? Now, I’m not talking about investor relation or corporate PR – that’s always been focused on share price. I’m talking about consumer facing communications.

Ian said effecting the share price was not the main reason clients gave for planning a consumer campaign but that the conversation was coming up a lot more in meetings.

I guess the point behind my question was this: In a world where citizens create the media (blogs, etc), and the investment community monitor that media, the line between investor relations and consumer PR is blurring. If you want to effect share price in this scenario you put an ad on TV (or on YouTube) – not just in the business pages. Or to stick with the PR story – you message the masses, not just the business journalists.

I wonder how long it will be until the scales tip and marketing managers talk about share price first and product launches second? Maybe soon if the Bombardier commercials that played during the Superbowl are anything to go by.

Why I left the media industry

When friends ask me why I left a great industry to start a web company I think I’ll suggest they watch this clip. It’s cheesy, but it gets across some of the key concepts behind this amorphous thing we call web 2.0. I think it’s a good investment of your next four and a half minutes.

Thanks to Greg Wilson for finding the clip.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE]

Fashion don’t

A potential fashion don’t for Vice magazine? I spotted him last summer on Queen Street West.

Also – does he look remarkably like the editor-in-chief from the National Post newspaper? Doug, is that you?