If you had doubts still lingering about the legitimacy of blogging, give ‘em up.

 

The SEC has sanctioned corporate web sites and blogs as viable communication vehicles for most financial disclosures. This means these outlets can be used to satisfy strict Regulation FD (Fair Disclosure) requirements.

 

•  the corporate web site is a recognized channel of distribution
•  information can be disseminated to the securities marketplace in general
•  there’s a reasonable waiting period for the market and investors to react to the posted information

The Q4 blog has some interesting perspective on this SEC decision. They said “If the SEC had come out and said “you must use RSS and email alerts” it would be creating the same problem it is now getting out of. By using a principle based approach, it allows the market to determine what is acceptable and ensures that certain technologies and/or companies are not able to create protected industries (like the newswires did). Having said that, a principle based approach also creates a grey zone that lawyers do not like.” 

 

Whoa. When something as conservative as financial news can be disclosed via social media, it’s a historic sign the days of early adoption have been left behind. Kudos to the SEC for making this move.

 

This decision raises some interesting short-term discussion points, one of which is the push/pull element. When a company issues a traditional news release over a newswire, the information is measurably pushed out to a pre-determined group of recipients. While there’s no guarantee the news is read by everyone, a company paying a wire service can be assured its information gets out there responsibly and reaches people directly.

 

What about blogs and corporate web sites by comparison? Do they provide the same ability to reach people directly?  The answer is: depends on how it’s done.

 

Brian Solis of PE 2.0 believes the answer is the social media news release (SMNR). The SMNR combines the best of both worlds: a content rich, SEO-optimized press release with a heavily linked, media rich blog post. This approach can guarantee equivalent, and perhaps even broader, content distribution. But it requires a company consciously re-inventing its news release engine.

 

Do you think a lot of companies will jump on this? I bet it’ll take some time; there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes machinery to duplicate and most B2B companies are still moving cautiously into the world of social media.

 

What’s the impact for newswire services? For decades, companies have relied on vendors like PR Newswire, Business Wire, MarketWire and PR Web to release their financial news in a timely fashion. A typical financial disclosure costs $1,000+ to move over a wire service. Will newswires go away over time as the social media news release goes mainstream in a few years? Or will they continue to exist, but in a different or reduced capacity?

 

Patti Smith once said, “People have the power.” I predict as companies acquire social media smarts, they’ll catch the wind and there will be far less reliance on traditional news wire services.

 

Although 7 out of 10 enterprise end users think Enterprise 2.0 will benefit their companies, three out of four enterprise end users are “very unclear” on what the term Enterprise 2.0 actually means.

 

• Videos of customers talking about products they use
• PowerPoint presentations
• Executives white-boarding
• Product demonstrations
• News announcements
• Talks & speeches
• Person-to-camera talks
• Thought leadership seeding

A lot of high-tech marketers I work with wonder if the news release is dead. I say no, it’s not even dying.

 

As David Meerman Scott says, more and more customers are finding you by Googling, so you need your name all over the Web. News releases are great way to spread the word. But try to…

 

This battle will play out in a political arena first, but it has obvious implications for business, individuals and advocacy groups. The operative question – whether a candidate or individual can define themselves in positive terms through social media before a negative one is forced on them from the outside – could apply just as easily to a company facing prosecution or a hostile takeover bid. Presidential politics just happen to provide the biggest public laboratory.

 With today’s social media tools, Tyco could have seeded facts with bloggers that would have filtered out to investors and the mainstream press. The image of a fundamentally sound company with a few rogue executives would have insulated it from the full brunt of shareholder uncertainty that eroded its value during the Kozlowski period. My theory is that social media personae cannot prevent mass market media images from knocking a few points from a company’s value or a candidate’s polling numbers, at least temporarily. It can, however, limit the damage, shorten the bad times, and help the company recover sooner. Until now, mass media images have appeared on a largely blank canvas. In the social media era, they’ll have to compete for space. November will be the test of how much competition social media offers. 

Luck is probably the number one factor that makes a chosen few promotional videos go viral. But even when your video takes off, you’ll be lucky to please everyone.

 

The video-consuming public maintains high – I guess you’d call them moral – standards for corporate-sponsored viral video. YouTubers clearly like their camp, but they simultaneously demand authenticity. It’s a razor’s edge.

 

Exhibit one: BMW’s “The Ramp” mockumentary, on the planned literal, physical launch of new Beemer model from a small hamlet in Bavaria to the United States. The town’s sinister, horse toothed event planner had a giant ramp built for the launch event, “Rampenfest.” The physics professor added wings to the car. I found the 30-minute, Spinal Tappy film pretty entertaining. There were also Facebook pages of the characters, T-shirts, and an online Miss Ramp contest.

 

No one complained about the spoof so much as the fact that BMW didn’t immediately come clean when savvy viewers figured out BMW was behind the campaign (duh). The Wall Street Journal concluded that “by keeping mum, the German automaker was taking a risk.”

 

Said the Jossip gossip site, “the problem wasn’t that BMW didn’t take credit for its viral marketing campaign; it’s that BMW didn’t acknowledge a viral marketing campaign that was so obviously paid for and produced by the car maker, only somebody missing his right ventromedial prefrontal cortex wouldn’t have figured it out. And the savvy consumer who bothered to follow the stunt and invest so much energy in the project didn’t like being treated that way.”

 

Said NewTeeVee, “BMW should have acknowledged their involvement with a coy wink by leaving hints that make discovery part of the fun.”

 

They have a point. Timing is everything in comedy.

Yet despite the handwringing, I Googled and Googled and still couldn’t find all the anti-Beemer flames the writers were alluding to. In any case, BMW’s ad agency for the spot isn’t too worried: “People were saying it was real. People were saying it was a marketing campaign,” art director Scott Brewer told the Journal. “We and the company wanted to stay in character and let them have fun with that discussion.”

 

Will Video for Food’s defense of the campaign (“brilliant”) was particularly well argued. It’s just fashionable, says Kevin Nalts, to bash big corporate video.

 

Bottom line: if you’re lucky enough to go viral, ride the wave, don’t sweat the snipes, but don’t run it into the ground.

Late last year, Wired spoke hopefully about technology stocks going IPO in greater numbers in 2008, “after three dismal years.” Some VCs, like Glen Kacher at Integral Capital Partners, forecast technology companies “coming out of a long dry spell; we’re only in the first year of an active IPO market.”

 

 

Nearly six months into 2008, tech IPOs are stalled. Some like Glasshouse Technologies, for example, have been on the back burner for seven months. CNN Money.com said the IPO market “has slowed to a crawl” and “can’t seem to get out of first gear.”

 

And they’re talking about every market, every industry, not just tech. Ouch.

 

There’s still plenty of action in M&A. Yes, deal activity is down 26% from last year (so far), but global deal volume is up 3% to date in 2008 vs. the same period in 2006 according to The Wall Street Journal. Let’s not forget that 2006 was the biggest year in M&A history until 2007 rewrote the record books.

 

Updata Advisors says global M&A deal value in Q1 08 rose to $33 billion – an increase of 32% over $25 billion in deal volume in the comparable quarter last year. Although this is a slight decline (8.3%) from Q4 07, it’s still a damn robust market. With a slowing economy, organic growth is tougher to achieve, so companies keep acquiring to maintain growth rates.

 

Our own lens confirms this reality. More than 35 Beaupre clients have been acquired, most over the past five years.

 

Last week, Microsoft acquired Beaupre client Navic Networks, a cool company that provides real-time TV audience measurement for interactive media placement. They joined earlier Beaupre clients acquired by Microsoft including Groove Networks and Parlano.

 

Updata Advisors think a strong M&A market will continue because “strategic buyers” (think tech industry gorillas) represent 90%+ of the deal activity.

 

It’s all about the endgame folks, and M&A continues to be the endgame of choice.