In the past four years, this site has gone from being a personal blog to covering politics to covering blogging to covering social media and on to where we stand today as a site oriented and geared toward sober and provocative analysis of the internet landscape we have today.

We don’t cover Techmeme and the latest and greatest stories. Not yet, anyway. At some point, we’ll cover the technology and business news of the day as well, but primarily we are about figuring out the intersection of all the web technologies with your everyday lives. What does it mean? How does it change us? Where is the value add in a society plagued by less and less bandwidth to cope with the cool bling that is showing up on the net.

In the past year, some of the best content we’ve ever written has shown up here. A sampling:

• Lessons in Management Series – Where I share some of my thoughts on leadership as someone growing into an executive management role at b5media.
• The Art of War: Facebook’s Strategic Plan for Ultimate Victory – a thoughtful post examining Facebook’s release of the application framework. Though I feel they had all the ingredients for success, as outlined in the post, it’s obvious they misfired. My subsequent departure from Facebook in March of this year demonstrates my current State of the Facebook universe.
• Movable Type 4 Review – With the open sourcing of Movable Type, I figured I’d give them the benefit of the doubt and install it, use it and do a review of it. Though I’ve since moved back off of MT4 at aaronbrazell.com – which is also where my personal blogging occurs, by the way – I see the MT4OS model as a positive step in the right direction.
• The Apple Store: Where Intelligent People Go to Die – Classic Technosailor.com posts which skewers the Applegasm mindset. Hey, I’m an Apple guy and I don’t even froth at the mouth. Now who is going to wait in line for a 3G iPhone? Be honest…
• Everything I Needed to Know about PR I Learned from Office Space – The favorite geek movie of all times really has something to teach PR professionals looking to make it in the age of social media.
• The PR Round Table – Stemming from the Chris Anderson outing of PR spammers, we assembled an all-star cast of bloggers and PR Professionals to discuss the challenges of co-existing in today’s paradigm. The series constituted a week of precision analysis, advice and debate surrounding blogger relations.
• Facebook, OpenSocial y la Gran Pesadilla Social – Carlos Granier-Phelps joined Technosailor.com to kickoff the Spanish content stream. He has been producing original Spanish content since and building a core Spanish-speaking audience, largely centered around Miami. In his kickoff post, Carlos discusses Open Social and the solution to the social media nightmare: that is, so many services, duplicating so much data, and not allowing for customer data portability.
• How the Macbook Air is the Future of Computing – The Macbook Air may be small, only have one USB port, not provide an optical drive and have other limitations – but it might have defined the future of computing. If you think about it.
• Grow Where You’re Planted – In many ways, a personal introspection. However, a challenge to anyone who thinks the grass is greener on the other side. Instead of looking for the next big thing, maybe the next big thing is right here, right now.
• SXSW Video Interviews – I spent four days on my feet tracking down interesting people, entrepreneurs, and bloggers (not mutually exclusive!) and recorded a series of short videos. Frank Gruber of AOL and Tech Cocktail, Laura “Pistachio” Fitton, Christina Warren of Download Squad, Brian “Copyblogger” Clark, Brian Solis of PR2.0 and Rainier Cvillik of Mogulus.
• Thought Leadership – Where I challenge the blogosphere to stop repeating everything they see on TechCrunch and Techmeme and start thinking for themselves.
• Friends vs. Fans – Have we ruined the concept of real friendship in an age of 2000 “friends” per person?
• Business Plan Series – Steve Fisher joined his blog, Venture Files, into Technosailor.com in April of 2008. In doing so, he brought his very in depth Business Plan Series with him and completed it here. It took him over a year to complete it and it is a solid resource for anyone looking to start a company.
• Business Card FAIL – One of the more lively, and entertaining post ever written on Technosailor. Steve Fisher talks about what makes a good, and more importantly bad, business card.

And that’s just a sampling. In recent days, we’ve been recognized by Google News as a News outlet and have been accepted into that index, a milestone for any news organization.

The challenges we face, in all honesty, is financing. While this site is on the move and being recognized widely (approached by a significant writer at a significant site who wants to write here instead), we have given up all income by leaving the b5media network as part of my departure from staff. We do not have the experience to close big ad deals and have not been accepted by any of the major ad-repping firms. Without income, it is impossible to grow the base of content as writers deservedly need to be paid, and I cannot continue to pay people out of my pocket. How to tackle this problem is thus far escaping me and will engage any individual or company who can bring solutions to the table that make sense.

I don’t wish to dwell on this though as it is largely an internal problem, but I do note it as a problem requiring a solution. Truth be told, the ability to hire additional writers can only serve this audience better.

Very few blogs, in my opinion, can make the transition from a blog to a media property. It requires a niche approach to growth. Every additional content stream must complement the goals and vision of the network. That’s why bringing Venture Files into the fold worked. An entrepreneur’s approach to building a company, working the venture landscape and instructing other entrepreneurs based on experience complements to analytical business mindset that I’ve cultivated here. Bringing Carlos on to produce original Spanish content around social media complements the goals of this site, while inventing a new community on the blog. The social media community, while vibrant, is largely missing in non-english speaking communities and provided an area for untapped growth.

Tomorrow night, we are also announcing Wicked Marketing, a new content stream from Mike Dougherty, of Wicked Java. Mike carries a huge amount of experience in online and print marketing that, to be honest, is not reflected in his portfolio. He has done work for Comcast and the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, to name only a few. Wicked Marketing is a significant complement to Technosailor.com because it bridges online and social media spheres as well as business and marketing.

We’re also noting that this post is #2000 for Technosailor.com, a significant milestone in itself. Longevity is a valuable asset on blogs today. In my opinion, the requirement (whether imposed or self-imposed) to create a certain number of posts in a certain period has deadly ramifications for a site. I used to do this to myself, kicking myself if I didn’t write a post a day. The effect that such artificial requirements create is less-than-quality content existing only to create search-engine indexing, forgetting that the primary audience of a site should be people, not machines. People can see through shallow, quota-based content. Machines cannot, nor do they care.

I moved away from post requirements some time ago, choosing instead to only write when I have inspiration. A secondary benefit of multiple authors and content streams is the gap-bridge that is created between my own posts. Steve can write a few times a week, as can Mike and Carlos, and together we can provide a regular stream of content for readers. It is far less contrived this way, and provides a richer reading experience for readers.

If there’s anything that can be said for this site, it’s here to stay. I didn’t sell a few years ago, though I wanted to. I’ve been thanked since by folks like Matt Mullenweg. It’s transformed from a personal blog to a professional blog and is now in transition to a media property. Longevity is the name of the game and counting the number of blogs who have been around this long, actively, is a relatively short list. I’m conscious of readers and that you are the only reason I remain online. I love what I do, but really, I could do other things as well. I keep coming back everyday because you have given me an audience, you have come back time and again, and you continue to encourage the evolution of this site to new highs.

So thank you. And happy birthday, Technosailor.com.

Well, it’s happened again. This time, the “outage” has occurred on a publicly editable wiki and lists PR Firms.

It’s caused quite a stir.

The story, in a nutshell is that Gina Trapani, lead editor of Lifehacker got tired of being spammed by PR agencies send press releases and pitches to her personal email address, despite notices “everywhere” to pitch tips@lifehacker.com. So she published a wiki with agencies that have pitched her personal email address (later made it editable only with attribution) and provided details on how to filter that list through Gmail filtering.

The topic has now been floated by some in the PR industry who have their panties in a bunch over this thing, that a blacklist be created for bloggers. I’ve avoided the whole controversy until last night when Geoff’s lunatical rant pushed me over the edge.

In those comments, I welcome the concept of a blogger blacklist. In fact, I want to be at the top of that list. See, it’s not that I don’t want to be pitched. I do. But pitching should come from some sort of rapport or relationship, not simply because of social ranking in the blogosphere. Even if the criteria were based on status in a particular niche of the blogosphere that was relevant to the pitch, that would be much more palatable than cold call spamming in the name of public frikkin’ relations.

Please put me on this blacklist. In fact, can I start it for you? Done.

I hope and pray this keeps the riff raff out of my inbox. Riff raff includes PR professionals or agencies who have not taken the time to understand us as bloggers. They don’t take the time to read our blogs. To know our audience. They leave voicemails about super secret meetings associated with events that we’re not registered for in cities that we aren’t in. They send us form letters addressing us as Site Owner. They don’t pay attention to how we want to be pitched.

See the PR agencies and professionals that can pitch me any day of the week know me or have some kind of professional rapport with me. They don’t need a blacklist. They wouldn’t even know I was on the blacklist. They don’t need to.

Is this too much work? Maybe. Should PR people care? Probably. I mean, really… If you’re spitballing top tier bloggers hoping to get the vehicle for the message, then you probably don’t want to include those top-tier bloggers, the biggest complainers, the most vocal advocates for change, in that list.

Some bloggers, like myself, will put our own names on that list.

Putting away all the foofoo, let’s think about some practical solutions to this problem. I think it’s high time that the PR community finance the creation and support of a third party broker that would maintain the authenticity, privacy, trust and relationship with the blogging comunity. I’m talking about an OpenID sort of trust-based system that includes the trust-relationship management as well as a CRM tool/plugin-in for sending communications in a standardized way. This tool would provide the recipient a means of “opt out” as well as trust-based ratings, reviews, advocacy and management.

PR Agency A sends me a press release via the system. I approve and can either create positive feedback or abstain (neutral feedback). If Agency B pitches and I don’t want it, I provide a negative feedback item that stays on an Agency’s permanent record.

I will gladly work with PR firms to create this tool. I think it’s essential for the healthy relationship between bloggers who legitimately want or need to be pitched and PR professionals who need to make a living and want to do it in a constructive, productive, ethical and moral way.

In the meantime, this stuff is not going to end soon. Agencies need to recognize that. Jeremy Pepper rightly points out that training is not happening. Spitball pitches or pitches in a way non-conducive to blogger cooperation (Gina’s issue) will not help.

As much as I’m a blogger, I have a degree of communications savviness too. We all want this to work well. Let’s create the tools to do it.

I don’t talk about politics much around here. I used to. Back in the day. However, the audience here is generally keen on reading thoughts about technology and business – particular social technologies and how this stuff really affects our lives.

My name is Aaron Brazell, and I’m the Editor here at Technosailor.com, however, others also contribute and we’re working on putting together a nice team of folks.

Generally, Technosailor.com is not about the news. Instead, we like to come in after the fact and offer analysis of the news. We like to leave the news breaking to TechCrunch and other large technology news blogs.

There are several really great series that have been written here and I’d like to point them out.

• Public Relations Roundtable
• Business Plan Series
• WordPress FAQs
• WordPress Plugin Security
• WordPress Release Cheatsheets
• WordPress Plugins & Code
• Customized WordPress

In addition, you are probably politically minded. You might want to see why I think the President should be impeached.

Otherwise, enjoy your stay. If you like what you see, go ahead and subscribe and keep up with us.

Hear the The Super Secret, Super Private Voicemail

Amazing people everywhere. That’s the summary, as simplistic as that sounds. The overlapping of all my various circles and networks of people: DC folks interacting with Canadian friends interacting with the PodCamp circle of friends interacting with b5media folks. Not to mention the vast presence of my Twitter friends everywhere I looked. As I said, it was truly amazing.

The past few days, if you’ve been keeping up with this blog, you know that I’ve interviewed six fantastic folks: Brian Solis, “Pistachio” Laura Fitton, Frank Gruber, “Copyblogger” Brian Clark, Christina Warren and Rainer Cvillink. Obviously a very productive day. Those were just the quick video sit downs that I did. We also did our regular weekly District of Corruption live from Austin, appeared on a variety of videos and podcasts by Chris Brogan, Scott Stead, and Kris Smith to name a few.

Though I met many, many new folks this week, I was very pleased to get the opportunity to meet (for the first time), Shel Israel, Erin Kotecki Vest, Micah Baldwin, Grant Robertson, Christina Warren, and Mark Cuban. Yes… I did just say I met Mark Cuban. It was only for a brief handshake as he breezed through the Washington VC sponsored Rock Band party Tuesday night.

Old friends reconnected include the inimitable Loren Feldman, Brian Clark, Darren “Problogger” Rowse, Scott Brooks, Alex Hillman and, as usual, many more.

On a light note, I’m a little miffed that the bulk of the coverage of the “Beacon Sucks” heckler moment during Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote wasn’t properly attributed. Christina did, but CNET, Valleywag and the rest of the coverage did not. It was me, of course, which makes me either the voice of the thoughts of all of us or just rude. Not sure which. You be the judge.

I want to thank the b5media crew that made the event a lot of fun for me. Thanks to Steph Agresta (aka, Internet Geek Girl) for being the face and voice of the Bloghaus. I know you’re wiped out from it, but it was great and I hope for you it was worth it. Lijit and Outbrain for sponsoring the “b5 ranch” – yes it was a real ranch. Grant and Christina for dinner, drinks and so much more with myself and the b5′ers. It’s a pretty cool dynamic to work for a competing blog network and still be some of the coolest people around.

Austin, I’m out. You were wonderful. Until SXSW ’09, stay weird Austin (that’s a tee shirt I saw today).

In light of Darren’s best of 2007, I figured I would follow suit.

Stats

• Posts: 324
• Comments: 2086
• Pageviews: 1.53M
• Visits: 558k
• RSS Subscribers: 900+

In earlier days, I might be tempted to feel down about these numbers. After all, the numbers have not dramatically increased since last year. For instance, in 2006, I had 1.2M pageviews making my growth an approximate 20% increase from last year. My RSS subscriber base has more than doubled but my post count has plummeted from 496 posts in 2006 to 324 in 2007, a 35% drop. Comments, likewise, have dropped from 2752 in 2006 to 2086 in 2007.

The reason I don’t get discouraged about this is because of the quality of the writing, the quality of the commenting and the quality of the readership. In the past year, the one post written by anyone on any topic that stuck with me as the most relevant and interesting was a Friday Whiteboard conversation with Rand Fishkin a few months ago called Every Blog Has its Way. In this short video, Rand described six types of bloggers. Most bloggers (particularly long tail bloggers who idolize other elite bloggers and try to mimic) see really two types of bloggers – elite and non-elite. In reality, it breaks down to power blogger, the commenter, the email guru, the networker, the influencer and the forum god.

After watching that video, I realized that this blog fell into the influencer type. In other words, it’s fairly unlikely that I will ever have the massive numbers of some others in the industry, but that it is likely I will have the right people reading. Knowing that I can take two approaches: I can try futilely to do it anyway and be discouraged when I don’t succeed or I can make my play to get in the ears of strategic people. I’ve decided that the latter is the best approach.

As a result, the quantity of entries has decreased (down from 496 to 324), but the quality has increased and my readership has grown.

Specifically, my RSS subscriber base has grown. In my industry, we are an RSS savvy bunch. As a result, I know that if my RSS subscriber base over doubles, and my pageviews has increased only a fraction of that, that more of the people I want to reach are being reached. Follow that?

Good stuff. It’s always nice to analyze metrics at the end of every year. At this rate I’ll have 2000 subscribers going into 2009 and nearly 2M pages around the same time.

But back to 2007. Here are the best posts (which is a very loose hybrid that combines the number of comments with my personal favorites).

January

• New Version of Serendipity (s9y) to WordPRess Importer
• 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.1

February

• Selling Technosailor
• My Script for Auto WordPress Upgrades
• How to enhance Your Blog’s SEO and Attract Relevant Traffic in One Easy Step
• HP Gives Consumer the Middle Finger

March

• What George Orwell Can Teach Us About Digg
• Podcast: Rick Klau of FeedBurner
• WordPress FAQ: How Do I Use Category Themes?

April

• Technosailor v7 Hits the Streets
• Alexas Irrelevance

May

• i is the New e
• 10 Things You Should Know About WordPress 2.2
• Technorati Authority the Authority?
• 98% of WordPress Blogs Vulnerable
• Intelligent Design and Stickiness

June

• Is MySpace Dead?
• The Art of War: Facebook’s Strategic Plan for Ultimate Victory
• Five Things MovableType Learned from Bilbo Baggins

July

• The Problem with RSS
• Guerilla Marketing Techniques that Anyone Can Do

August

• Your Resumé is Causing Hiring Companies to Laugh At You
• Movable Type 4 Review

September

• How Important Do You Think You Are?
• The Apple Store: Where Intelligent People Go to Die
• 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.3
• How Much Do People Talk About You?

October

• The Golden Rule of Twitter Marketing
• The Pervasive Web
• Everything I Needed to Know About PR I Learned from Office Space

November

• The PR Roundtable series with Marc Orchant, Cathryn Hrudicka, Doug Haslam, Marshall Kirkpatrick and Brian Solis
• g is the New i
• Valleyboys: It’s All About the Money

December

• Companies Using Beacon will Undoubtebdly be Sued
• Zuckerberg, Quit Insulting Our Intelligence
• Freakin’ Beacon Firefox Extension

Again, thank you all for making this year bigger than previous ones and I look forward to 2008!

Pick your favorite from the list:

So, Geoff is a friend of mine but I told him I’d give him an honest review of this book, and honest review I will do. Overall, the book is brilliant. I’m glad this is not “yet another book on blogging”. It doesn’t provide a how to. It doesn’t provide options for choosing your platform or describe how to subscribe to RSS.

It’s obvious that this book was written mostly for executives. This is not a bad thing as Executives are the ones steering companies and the reality is that if companies don’t embrace social media, they will be left behind. It is presented in a very philosophical way, describing the challenges that companies face today when it comes to the social media landscape, brand management and public relations. The simple message is, “Hey guys, you need to get what is going on today and you need to do it fast because Now is Gone”.

The book starts with an intro from Brian Solis who you may remember was a member of the PR Roundtable discussion hosted here in November, 2007. I love Brian, but the foreword was too lengthy and off-putting. As a reader, I wanted to get into the meat of the book and it seemed to take awhile to get to that point.

Geoff makes some common sense analogies between social media mirroring real life. It stood out to me that people do not like to be controlled but they will allow themselves to be influenced – as long as you don’t try to control them! His 5 steps to the basis of an effective social media message could probably be broken out further, but were effective for the book:

1. Giving Up Control of the Message
2. Participating in a Community
3. Is Your Community Social Media Savvy?
4. Dedicating the Resources
5. Ethics and Transparency

This book as a whole is a slam dunk, effectively communicating a message that is very much needed and, is very timely at a time where companies are embarrassing themselves more than ever in their engagement with social media. In that way, this book could not be more timely.

I would suggest for the next book, however, (There will be another one, right Geoff? :) ) that fewer callouts be used. It seems that call outs were half the book and if that was the intention, you might as well have made them part of the book. :) That’s a minor point though.

Bottom line… 4 out of 5 stars (does that mean anything anymore?). Job well done. Go buy Now is Gone (aff) today.

So here we go. The final question on this Friday.

What advice would you give to your own industry in engaging the other side?

Brian Solis: Chris Anderson summarized it best, “I only want two kinds of email: those from people I know, and those from people who have taken the time to find out what I’m interested in and composed a note meant to appeal to that.”

What’s it going to take for PR to reflect that sentiment and honest plea for relevance? It should be common sense. But it’s not. Common sense is all too uncommon in almost everything we do these days.

So to help PR “pros” stop pissing-off bloggers and reporters and start building meaningful relationships with them, here is a list of things to live by:

1. Remember this is about people
2. What do you stand for? Answer that first before you try to convince people that are busier than you why they should take time to stop what they’re doing to pay you any attention.
3. It’s more than doing your homework. To some doing homework is building lists. Figure out what your are representing and why it matters. How does it compare to other things. What do people need? What are their pains?
4. Practice saying it aloud in one-to-two minutes or less to a friend or in front of a mirror. Seriously. It works. If you don’t get it no one else will.
5. Less is more. Find the right people, not just because you read their profile in a database, but because you read their work and understand their perspective.
6. Engage in conversations outside of when you need something.
7. Build relationships not lists.
8. Humanize the process and remember that this is about people
9. Stop whining and making excuses. You are responsible for your actions so arm yourself with what you need to be successful.
10. Stop sending press releases without summarizing what the news is and why it is IMPORTANT to the individual person you’re sending it to.
11. Remember the reputation and the future of PR is on you. If you’re not in this to do your job better, then ask yourself why you’re here. If you’re not part of the solution, then you’re part of the problem.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: Let people know how you’d like to communicate but also, get over yourself, roll with the punches and deal with standard operating procedure. The good PR agents will do a good job and the rest will always be there. Ultimately, I’ll happily write about a great product that came in with an awful pitch and I turn down the opportunity to cover crappy products that come in via great pitches all the time.

Marc Orchant: I work both sides of the fence so I guess my advice would be to both side to do the following: be respectful, clear, and consistent.

On the PR side ““ know who you’re pitching and don’t waste the blogger’s time with pitches that are way off topic. Deliver a well- crafted pitch, supported by as much relevant information as you can assemble. When I get a pitch that contains a logo, screenshot, “money quote”. and sufficient background on the company or product, I have everything I need to begin thinking about what my coverage will look like. If I have to go fishing for this information, the odds are I won’t.

On the blogger side ““ invest the time in educating a PR contact abut who you are and what cover. This information should be on your blog. If it’s not, assuming that every PR rep has read the last month’s posts (or more) and intimately understands your topical focus and opinions is wishful thinking. There are simply too many blogs out there and he tools that do exist for researching the medium are less than great. So make it easy for the people pitching you to do so effectively. And when they miss the target, try first to course correct before blowing them off – especially when dealing with agency folks. You may not be interested int he client they’re representing today but who knows about tomorrow?

Doug Haslam: From the PR side, the first thing I would say is: “it;s not the other side.” Of course, this applies to all media. I approach PR as on the one hand helping our clients get attention, but on the other hand helping proifessional communicators get good stories. Stop worrying about “closing the deal” and start worrying about helping media present stories that will engage, educate or entertain their audiences.

Cathryn Hrudika: Re: PR Roundtable-My answer to Question #5Inbox
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Cathryn Hrudicka to Aaron

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Question #5: What advice would you give to your own industry in engaging the other side?

Cathryn Hrudicka: First, I would advise other PR professionals and initially resistant clients to get over their fears and misconceptions and learn all they can about blogging, podcasting, vblogging, and relatively new mobile apps, like Utterz. Next, they should do some creative thinking about how they could use these resources to have a real conversation, build community, brand themselves and share their messages. I would encourage them to start their own blogs and other channels for their own content. Next, they should learn about the key bloggers, podcasters and other content providers they might approach who would be interested in their story or news. They should learn about these journalists’ individual beats, preferences, styles, and approach each one accordingly.

I would advise other colleagues and clients to learn about the key social networks, like Twitter, Facebook, etc., and strategically create profiles on the ones most relevant to their audiences and their messages. Then they should observe how people converse with each other on each network, and figure out how to enter the conversation. Instead of simply learning new ways of “pitching,” or simply making promotional announcements, it’s really all about the conversation and the innovative ways of interacting that are possible now.

Indeed, they should keep up with the newer, constantly evolving ways of writing “social media press releases” and developing an online media room-but first, it’s how each blogger and content provider wants to be approached. We have to continue this dialog between PR professionals and content providers, because the technology, social networks, channels and protocols will continue to evolve at an ever-increasing rate. As mentioned in previous blog posts, the practitioners on “each side” will do a better job when we all have a more open, ongoing conversation.

Thank you all again all panelists. I hope this series has been productive for both sides and all involved. Talk to you next week!
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Forward

We continue the conversation today with our panelists.

Is “outing” a wayward PR agency or individual an effective way of dealing with the problem of misfired pitches?

Brian Solis: Quite honestly, I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often as it has been a serious problem for decades.

Chris Anderson’s post sent a jolt that reverberated throughout the entire industry. It was a painful reminder that complacency and spam do not belong in PR.

There are also several blogs dedicated to exposing spectacularly horrible moments in PR as well as exposing bad pitches and the people behind them ““ and they’re gaining in popularity.

The game of PR has largely been enjoyed the comfort of existing behind-the-scenes and this exposure and public ridicule is forcing PR out of its comfort zone, which at the end of the day will only make PR stronger and more effective.

Now whether or not running the names and email addresses on the Web was a good thing, however, is complicated to assess as there are many factors and ramifications for doing so.

On one hand, it scared the sh!t out of everyone and brought much needed attention to the need to improve things in PR. On the other hand, it starts to raise privacy issues and taboos that can lead down a scary path affecting everyone involved in the business of public relations and media publishing. And, all of these conversations at the moment are only addressing the symptoms of much bigger problems that face PR, including unrealistic metrics and a complete misunderstanding of how PR really works by clients and corporate execs.

Exposing names and contact information is a steep penalty to pay and quite honestly, it’s somewhat irresponsible. There are other ways to get the same result and impact without forcing individuals to publicly pay the price for the ills of entire industry. Note, my only reservation here is names versus contact information. Running names is a leap, but I can support it. Running contact information crosses the line.

I think that “some” lazy flacks have learned their lesson and many more have been alerted to the fact that they are the epitome of what’s wrong with PR.

Very few PR “Pros” are out there building relationships with the public or people. Most don’t bother to spend the time to really learn about what they represent, why it matters, and how it’s different than everything else out there. And, without that understanding how can anyone realistically believe that influential reporters and bloggers are going to pay attention to their generic pitch?

Marc Orchant: Only as a last resort after trying to deal with them directly. If they’re unresponsive and refuse to show any courtesy or respect for the value I place on my time I suppose I might call them out publicly.

Frankly, I’ve never had to consider this sort of doomsday scenario. I think a unilateral “outing” with no prior attempt at achieving a more diplomatic resolution is unprofessional and ill-tempered.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: I don’t know yet, it’s only been a few weeks since I first tried it. To be honest, it’s such a huge problem that I don’t know if my experience in calling out specific people was worth the cost it incurred in hurt feelings. I don’t think I would do it again and I’ve apologized personally to all of the wayward airheads (I kid!) that I called out a while ago on my blog.

Cathryn Hrudika: I know that “outing” incidents have happened recently, and I suppose one can see pros and cons. On the one hand, if a large PR firm is “outed” that has been notoriously slow to get the message, or a particularly egotistical and seemingly lazy PR practitioner, there is a tendency for some people in the industry to feel smug and think it has done some good, even if someone suffers public embarrassment or a reputation is damaged. In one sense, this seems to reflect the current mindset of a society where tabloid stories pass as news, and potentially damaging, confrontational accusations pass as “therapeutic confrontation.”

Personally, it’s not my style. I prefer honest, open discussions, like the constructive one we’ve been having on this PR Roundtable, where real information is exchanged as well as individual opinions. If someone, an individual or a PR firm, needs to be confronted, then I think it should be done with a certain amount of civility and respect, or else, in private. Some of the recent cases we’ve seen smack of mere ego gratification by the “outer,” rather than serving any real constructive or educational purpose. If an individual blogger or editor felt that he or she needed to confront an errant PR professional, surely it could have been done respectfully on a one-to-one basis, or in pitch guidelines that could have been posted on their blog or web site and also delivered to the agency in question. The only positive result might be that a few of these “outing” episodes did set off a much needed discussion about how we need to update and improve public relations practices, and what next steps should be taken. After all, if we are attempting to model the ongoing conversation, rather than the spam pitch, then let’s also model it in the way we handle an errant-or perhaps uninformed-practitioner.

It would seem preferable for PR industry trade associations to take a more proactive and progressive role in training their members adequately in newer public relations and social media techniques. Most of the effective re-education and discussion I’ve seen has been in nontraditional organizations that were created in the past few years by a small number of progressive PR and marketing professionals, such as the Social Media Club-not in the more traditional trade organizations. This training and mentoring should also occur in college and university programs in marketing, communications and public relations, so that younger PR professionals entering the field receive the most up-to-date guidance in the ever-evolving changes that are occurring in our industry.

Doug Haslam: Is it effective? Yes. No PR person wants to see their name on a “bad pitch” list and would do anything not to be publicly ridiculed. I have no problem with outing in that sense, though I wouldn’t necessarily take part in that sort of behavior unless severely provoked. What Chris Anderson did in his Long Tail blog– publishing the email addresses of 300 bad pitchers — is a real price PR people must pay, whether fair or not. The best answer to a “bad pitch” complaint is to send a good one– it’s worked for me.

The final segment of this roundtable is tomorrow. The panel will wrap up address with some takeaways for the industries they are in. Hopefully someone takes away some wisdom from these folks who are in the trenches of the industry.

Brand is a matter of some discussion – and we did that yesterday.

How can bloggers engage public relations better?

Cathryn Hrudicka: The lines between public relations professionals and media content providers are blurrier than ever, as many PR pros also blog, and produce podcasts and video content. So we’re playing one role in one context, and the other role at other times. That should give us better insights as PR professionals into how to converse with bloggers on behalf of our clients (or ourselves), because we know what it’s like to be a blogger and have other people pitch us. It’s also vital to realize that bloggers are very individualistic in their preferences, content and styles, and approach each one accordingly.

Bloggers could engage PR people more effectively by learning who the key PR representatives are for the people or topics they’re most interested in covering. The bloggers could be more proactive in approaching PR people to request background information or access to an interesting subject to interview. Actually, the top bloggers who also have more traditional journalism backgrounds are already doing that. There are so many bloggers, though, some who are lesser known, and it becomes difficult for PR pros to keep track of them all, what each of their individual preferences are, and what they prefer to cover. Bloggers could work at cultivating relationships too, instead of thinking of all PR people as “flacks” to be avoided.

Several prominent bloggers have made it a point to tweet on Twitter, announce on Facebook or on their blogs how they wish to be approached by PR pros, what topics interest them and don’t, and the best ways to contact them. For instance, B.L. Ochman has provided samples on her popular “What’s Next?” blog, of good and bad press releases and examples of how she wants to be approached by PR people. She has stated a preference for short, concise pitches with bullet points. In contrast, Robert Scoble (Scobleizer blog, PodTech) has mentioned that bullet points put him to sleep, and he prefers imagery and description in PR pitches. At various times, he has also requested that PR pros contact him via Twitter or Facebook messages, rather than by email. It is very helpful for bloggers to provide specific information like this so that PR professionals know immediately how to most effectively and efficiently participate in an ongoing conversation with these bloggers. Being aware of what events specific bloggers attend, and making a personal connection with them at these events, is also a key to forming an ongoing relationship.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: We can tell PR people exactly how we want to be communicated with, we can be flexible when they need something else and we can expand our horizons regarding our area of coverage. For example, I would like PR people to send me their clients’ OPML files, to send me bullet points about any release ahead of any launch, to provide access to the product or service being pitched and to be available to answer questions instead of asking me for an hour long CEO phone call.

Further, I’ve been considering a revision of my standard policy against covering mobile technology. I get so many pitches for it, it’s clearly a direction things are going in.

I also think that bloggers can be friendly with PR people and show them how to use tools like RSS readers and Twitter, when appropriate.

Brian Solis: I think it all starts with couples therapy.

Blogger, “All they do is spam with me this and that! They don’t care about me and my needs!”
PR, “They never listen to me”¦It’s like whatever I say is ignored no matter how important it is to me. They just don’t care!”

Seriously though, bloggers can benefit from maintaining a strategic and advantageous relationship with the right PR professionals. Love them or hate them, good PR people can still be a helpful part of the news and information process. They can and will work for you.

I think we all learned that running the names of lazy PR flacks in a public forum is definitely one way to send a clear message. Social Media is fueled by people and their peers, so running things in the blogosphere definitely makes things very personal. But there are also other ways to ensure that PR people “think” before approaching bloggers.

One way is to send positive feedback to those that do it right. Send notes to management in regards to those who do it wrong and remind them how to do things correctly. Or, simply block the individual from contacting you again ““ but in the process let them know why.

We recently had a lazy PR associate who ignored repeated points of advice on how best to reach out to bloggers. Aside from the lip service we got, he continued to do things the spammy way”¦blasting lists of targets with impersonalized messages with inappropriate news releases. Within one week, this person was called out by two bloggers, one of whom decided to cc: everyone at my agency lambasting his approach and well, basically, calling him stupid. Names are one thing, and probably inappropriate, but the message was loud and clear and this person was now directly humbled among his peers. And, most importantly, it spotlighted a problem that required correction, while also reinforcing the need for other people on our team to remember that this entire process is about people. One news release doesn’t matter to everyone! Subsequently this person is no longer with us.

Yes it takes time for you to respond rather than ignore things, it also takes an unusual level of patience and understanding, but it helps PR adapt and learn. Using the example above, one email affected 15 people.

Another way bloggers can work better with PR is to clearly say somewhere how they wish to be contacted, what they are looking for, and advice for cutting through the clutter. Submission forms are not helpful.

We should all be in this to learn together. And, for those that don’t want to learn or embrace evolution, then they’ve sealed their own fate.

Evolve or die!

Doug Haslam: Use them to help you. Tell PR people what you want, and let them in on the conversations, so long as they participate as, well, a participant, and not just a bald shill. The best way to increase the percentage of quality communications from PR is to post a policy somewhere on your blog or site that sets down your rules of engagement– do you want press releases? Would you prefer to hear from PR in comments? What topics do you want to hear about? There is nothing PR people like more than being told how to communicate with you.

Marc Orchant: I have a great relationship with many PR folks and I think the secret is to take the time to get to know them well enough to be able to speak frankly with them. I try to always make a point of educating a PR firm representative what my areas on interest and focus are. If they pitch me on something completely unaligned in their enthusiasm to get some coverage, I can then reference back to that conversation and remind them of where my interests (and those of my readers) are.

Just recently, I sent a quick “no thanks, not interested” response to a PR person (internal to the company in this instance). She replied asking if I would prefer not to hear about the company any more. I told her to please keep me on her distribution list but to understand that I would only follow up or write about their news if it was relevant. I’m interested in the company, think what they’re doing has value, and occasionally find something they’re doing appropriate for my readers. By clearly laying out the ground rules for engagement, she doesn’t have to waste cycles following up with me and I don’t have to expend energy saying “no thanks”.

There will always be unsolicited and completely inappropriate pitches landing in my inbox. I’m resigned to that. Too many PR “hacks” simply shotgun a press release to a big list hoping something will stick. And I’ve found a simple solution. It’s called the Delete key. If I don’t know who the sender is and find the pitch completely off topic to my blogs, it’s gone. If that rep really want me to cover a story, they’ll follow up (the good ones do) and we’ll begin establishing better communication and understanding.

That’s it for this segment of the Roundtable. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about the panelists views on “outing” wayward PR folks. This should be interesting.

Yesterday we discussed the challenges facing Public Relations professionals as it pertains to social media. Today, we discuss branding in an open, internet driven society. I think you’ll like what they have to say.

What does the concept of “brand” mean to you and how do you see the concept of brand protection (or the concept of “open source brand”, so to speak) being transformed in the internet age?

Doug Haslam: Brand is the concept of you or your company– what people think when they hear your name. What has complicated brand in the Internet age is that individuals now have a ready means to develop and promote their personal brands. Further, personal brand and professional brand are intertwined. Any communications an employee makes, whether on behalf of the company brand or not, affects the company brand in ways small and large. Likewise, anything the company says or does reflects directly on the personal brands of the employees. This intermingling of brands should affect companies’ thinking, from blog policies to employee morale and larger internal communications policies.

Cathryn Hrudicka: A brand is more than an identity or logo; it’s the markets’ and your clients’ experience of you, what you stand for, your special value, what benefits you or your company offers, what customer service experiences you provide, and more. It is the sum total of how you communicate in writing, design and graphics, audio, video, print collateral, online, in your blog, everything. I feel PR and social media are an essential part of branding, and that branding messages used in advertising and marketing campaigns need to be included and coordinated with PR and social media campaigns, even if the communication styles are a bit different. For example, I’ve recently taken on a very cost-effective branding campaign for my new company services under the banner of Creative Sage , which is successfully crossing boundaries between social media, public relations and marketing, and each area is enhancing the other, which is ideal.

Tomorrow, the panel will discuss blogger engagement of social media. Stick around.

How can we protect brands on the internet? It’s more of a challenge, but certainly the concept of a trademark still holds weight in a court of law. I’ve found, though, that if you are strongly represented all over the internet, in a practical sense it becomes foolish for others to encroach upon your brand, and those who try are becoming more recognizable to the general public as scammers. You do have to be more vigilant in searching regularly for those who would violate or defame your brand (or your clients’ brands); and PR professionals spend more time now in online discussions defending a brand or responding to criticisms, false claims and defamers. It’s an unfortunate side effect of having a major Web presence. I’m an optimist and think that the accessibility of the Web and number of social media outlets and blogs will continue to create more intelligent discussions and debates that can ultimately enhance a brand. It certainly offers PR professionals more opportunities to fight back against defamers, false and negative claims against their clients. Anything negative usually offers a positive opportunity as well-we just have to see it.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: The word brand has negative connotations for me, but let’s pretend it doesn’t for the moment. If your brand is at all based in the reality of your actions, then you should have enough staff capable of acting that way and who are actively engaged in social media.

I was just reading a comparison of Miro and Joost, for example. The Miro brand will be protected and extended by having people actively blogging, twittering, commenting, etc. in ways that promote free and open culture in general. Friend me on Twitter and pass me interesting news about DRM, Creative Commons, etc.

If you’re Joost, you should have a rich, probably European guy regularly do interviews about mainstream media’s embrace of innovation, with leading bloggers covering online video. Both of those companies are doing a good job of protecting and extending their brand using new social media.

Marc Orchant: “Brand” may be one of the most bandied about and least understood terms in the PR and marketing business – and this is not a new thing. Many of the same questions about what constitutes a brand were being debated 30 years ago when I began my career in the publishing and advertising businesses. To me, a brand is the promises a company makes to its customers and how well it keeps them. That may sound a bit soft and fuzzy but I think it ultimately defines how consumers experience, relate to, and choose which brands they want to associate themselves with.

When I look at the powerful brands in my life ““ Apple, BMW, Southwest Airlines, and Starbucks to name a few ““ I see a consistent pattern of excellence in execution and focus on core values that separates these brands from their competition. They make a promise to me as a consumer and deliver on that promise faithfully over the long haul. This execution earns them a greater degree of “forgiveness” when they misstep ““ and all companies do from time to time ““ that I do not accord to others.

I think that’s the key to “brand protection” is earning the trust (or loyalty if you prefer) that can only come from an established pattern of delivering on promises made, these companies promote two important behaviors that help to protect their brands. They cultivate me as an evangelist ““ something Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba have documented in their books Creating Customer Evangelists and Citizen Marketers (aff). Having built up my personal enthusiasm for their offerings, I become part of the “front line” both in terms of spreading positive messages about their products o services and acting as a vocal defender when those brands are attacked by others.

Brian Solis: The brand is something altogether different today than it was BSM (before social media). The brand used to be something dictated by corporations and reinforced by marketers and ultimately evangelists.

However, these days, many marketing and business executives foolishly think that they can still solely control the brand and the corporate messages 100% when in fact people are also contributing to brand identity and resonance.

Social Media zealots preach that participation is marketing, and indeed it is, but there are ways to do it right and ways to completely f it up. One thing is for certain is that covering your ears to customer commentary taking place in social networks and the blogosphere and repeating “la la la la la” over and over pretending like it doesn’t exist IS NOT participating.

It the era of social media companies have no choice by to relinquish control, well somewhat, to those who chose to discuss it openly, in public forums that are in large part, actively contributing to the extensive influence enabled by social tools.

That doesn’t mean that companies can’t help chart the course of a brand, businesses just need to take into account that people now have voices and there in lies a new opportunity.

Let’s not forget that a good brand, or a terrible brand for that matter, evokes an emotion bond.

The true “open source brand” will acknowledge and leverage the “voices of the crowds” in order to extend and mold brands for both now and in the future – by connecting with people.

Again, Social Media is about people, not audiences, and therefore, brands affect people and in turn evoke responses. The smart marketers will learn how a brand relates to the various markets they wish to reach, why it’s important, different, and helpful, and connect with people directly to help them. This reinforces the brand and service attributes we ultimately hope to carry forward.

I decided it would be useful to try to pull together some respected voices on both sides of the game and have a bit of a “roundtable” of discussion. We’ve discussed five questions, and I’ll be sharing their responses to these questions over the next week. I hope you find something useful in the discussion here. If you have anything to contribute, you’re welcome to do so in comments or on your own blog. I usually turn off trackbacks, but for these entries I will turn them on so you can join in the discussion any way you want.

But first, the participants.

Doug Haslam is a public relations professional with Topaz Partners, specializing in technology clients in the Web 2.0, mobile, storage and networking industries. Doug comes to public relations after a decade in broadcast journalism, and has spent his years with Topaz putting to practice his observations on how new media affect branding, reputation and communications.

Marshall Kirkpatrick lives in Portland, Oregon, has written for some of the top blogs on the internet and consults for companies who want to rock online. For more info see marshallk.com

Cathryn Hrudicka started her original company, Cathryn Hrudicka & Associates, working primarily in public relations, marketing, record promotion, arts management and event production in the entertainment industry. She has also worked on projects for technology and other Fortune 500 companies, universities, museums, major nonprofit agencies, trade associations, entrepreneurs, artists, performers and authors. She was recently quoted in Fast Company by Robert Scoble, about her use of social media, including to brand her new company branch, Creative Sage™, offering creative thinking and innovation training and consulting. She is also an executive coach and management consultant, a blogger, journalist, editor and media producer. She is on the planning committee for the San Francisco Social Media Club. See http://www.CreativeSage.com and http://www.CathrynHrudicka.com.

Marc Orchant is an independent consultant working with a number companies in the areas of new media integration, market and community development, and enhancing personal and team productivity. He is the Technology Editor for blognation USA, part of a global network of blogs focusing on emerging trends in technology and mobility. Prior to blognation, Marc wrote blogs on the Weblogs, Inc. and ZDNet networks. He was named a Microsoft MVP (Windows ““ Tablet PC) in 2006 and 2007. Earlier this year, Marc wrote The Unofficial Guide to Microsoft Outlook 2007 for Wiley and Sons, which was published in April 2007.

Brian Solis is Principal of FutureWorks, a PR and Social Media agency in Silicon Valley that “gets it.” Solis also runs the PR2.0 blog. Solis is co-founder of the Social Media Club, is an original member of the Media 2.0 Workgroup, and also is a contributor to the Social Media Collective.

What do you think the biggest challenge is for the Public Relations industry to fully embrace social media?

Marc Orchant: Pinning down the single biggest challenge is a tough question to answer but I think it essentially comes down to redesigning a game plan that better addresses the scope and scale of the social net compared to the relatively smaller field of play in the mainstream media world. The fact is that there are millions of blogs, discussion forums, wikis, and other conversation spaces available to PR practitioners if they know where to look. This demands a bit of “long tail” thinking on their part and I’m not convinced, based on my personal experience, that they have, as an industry, figured out how to do this well.

Pitches that are broadcast to all possible outlets rarely achieve the desired effects. Most credible bloggers who have established a solid readership have done so not by not cutting and pasting press releases but by offering analysis and opinion. So research needs to be done to craft effective pitches that speak to a blogger and, by extension, to their readers.

The best way to ensure that a client’s story is told well is to get into a 1:1 conversation with the top tier bloggers in a particular product space. But setting up briefings with bloggers is difficult because of scheduling difficulties and the payoff is often difficult to measure because the traffic benefit might not be immediate.

Doug Haslam: The biggest challenge for PR at this stage is to stop treating social media as an orphan, distinct from the “traditional” media. While pitching blogs may be different from pitching, say, a business weekly, so too is there a difference between pitching one blog vs. another blog, or one weekly vs. another. The larger point is that all pitches need to be properly targeted, and individualized for the recipient. So, those who would treat blogger relations as a separate effort form other media relations are, in my opinion, making a mistake.

This leads back to all the talk about “relationships” and conversations.” This isn’t something new, but the need to pitch bloggers and other social media has brought us back– or should bring us back– from the brink of “spam pitch” hell.

Brian Solis: What if we asked the question this way, “Should the PR industry participate in Social Media at all?” There are several pundits who have flatly said that “PR is too stupid to participate in Social Media” and therefore shouldn’t have a seat at the new marketing table.

After all, Social Media is about people.

In the eyes of many PR is associated with used car and snake oil salesmen or far worse, lazy flacks that have no clue what they’re talking about.

Yes, it’s true many PR people simply don’t or won’t ever get it. The other thing is that, as in any industry, there are also opportunists in PR who simply see Social Media as a new golden ticket and in turn, are selling a new portfolio of services without having a clue as to what Social Media really is and how it works.

The challenge for PR in Social Media isn’t any different than the challenge that already exists for them in traditional PR. For far too long PR has taken comfort in blasting information to the masses in the hopes that something would stick. Until recently, the industry really hasn’t seriously considered requiring people to learn about what it is they represent, why it matters and to whom, how it’s different than anything else out there, where customers go for information, and how it benefits the customers they’re ultimately trying to reach.

The lack of presence or the drive to inject these questions into the PR process and also take the time to answer them genuinely, without marketing hype, is perhaps the greatest inhibitor of PR’s legitimate entrance into Social Media.

Marshall Kirkpatrick: For many people the biggest challenge will be getting over their tendency to have only two, often overlapping, modes of communication: being condescending and kissing ass. Engagement with social media, like many things in this world, is all about adding value.

In order to add value, PR people should get in touch with their own personal strengths. Are you particularly good at coming up with helpful metaphors or translating between two different people in a conversation? If so, save me from CEO hot-air. Are you particularly fast at what you do and consistently in the know about breaking news, early? If so, help me be early in the news cycle and get your client’s perspective in before the most competitive writers consider
the topic old news. Can you drink more than a normal person can and still be pleasant in conversation? All of these are ways you can add value to the work lives of writers online. When clients will let you add these different types of value, instead of offering nothing more than “access” (the importance of which is rapidly declining) – then I think things are good.

Cathryn Hrudicka: I find that some of my public relations and marketing colleagues “get it” and some don’t. Some are still debating whether they should be writing blogs, let alone participating in a true conversation (not just posting links and events in a promotional manner) on Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Facebook and others. I’ve been making a lot of noise trying to educate them. One key is that we do need more specific case studies using social media examples and hard data to show numerical (or even qualitative) benefit to clients. We’ve been starting to produce such data, but it’s difficult, and a bit slow in coming.

In addition to PR and social media consulting, I also do innovation consulting and training in creative thinking, as well as executive coaching, I see similar barriers to innovation in the PR industry as I find in other industries. Ironically, success can be a barrier to innovation. Some of the “late adopters” are actually very successful in their practices and are unwilling to tamper what’s worked in the past to try anything new or relatively unproven. Since PR pros are under intense time and budget pressures, and they are often working in hierarchical agencies that don’t allow them room to experiment and “fail” on specific pitches, they don’t have as many opportunities to experiment with social media. Younger PR pros need ongoing mentoring, training and coaching, and judging from the programs I see at some traditional PR agencies, they are not getting enough forward-thinking training. It is essential to get the C-level principals at a PR agency into social media first.

I have always been on the edge, in that I built the PR side of my business in a maverick way. My earliest PR pitches were more conversational in style, with outstanding results, so social media conversations with media people were always natural for me. You must know how to craft story angles and what each individual media source really needs from a PR professional; do your research on specific media targets and keep up to date with contacts; and have ongoing conversations with media contacts, so they also get to know you and will come to you when they’re looking for an interview subject or story angle. It is vital to view media people, social or otherwise, as colleagues, not just the targets of a “pitch,” which really seems like an outmoded word to me now.

If you found this article notable and you want to hear what the folks have to say on other topics, make sure you subscribe to the feed or come back tomorrow. The conversation tomorrow will deal with the issue of brand in the internet era.

Nice linkbait, but completely false. The real weight of this flaw lies solely on MySpace (I know, there are apparently no security issues with MySpace, but I digress). In fact, if you examine the headers of a MySpace login, it is obvious to see that MySpace itself is transmitting username and password in plaintext in the headers.

Most people don’t look at headers. Why should they? They are the communication vehicles of browsers and server and not users. However, an examination of these headers by sleuthful individuals can find out all kinds of useful information.

Let’s look at the MySpace header that contains the username and password:

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http://login.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=login.process&MyToken=c7fd399e-2c28-4615-889e-dbf5c2cea71b



POST /index.cfm?fuseaction=login.process&MyToken=c7fd399e-2c28-4615-889e-dbf5c2cea71b HTTP/1.1

Host: login.myspace.com

User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X; en-US; rv:1.8.1.4) Gecko/20070515 Firefox/2.0.0.4

Accept: text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5

Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5

Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate

Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7

Keep-Alive: 300

Connection: keep-alive

Referer: http://myspace.com/

Cookie: MSCulture=IP=208.54.95.129&IPCulture=en-US&PreferredCulture=en-US&Country=US&timeZone=0&ForcedExpiration=0&USRLOC=QXJlYUNvZGU9MCZDaXR5PSZDb3VudHJ5Q29kZT1VUyZDb3VudHJ5TmFtZT1Vbml0ZWQgU3RhdGVzJkRtYUNvZGU9MCZMYXRpdHVkZT0zOCZMb25naXR1ZGU9LTk3JlBvc3RhbENvZGU9JlJlZ2lvbk5hbWU9; NGUserID=a2825a9-4920-1181671731-2

Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

Content-Length: 165

Login=&email=myemail%40hotmail.com&password=mypassword&ctl00%24Main%24SplashDisplay%24ctl01%24loginbutton.x=0&ctl00%24Main%24SplashDisplay%24ctl01%24loginbutton.y=0

The interesting part is right at the bottom where, if you look, my (now fake) username and password are displayed.

Update: To be fair, Facebook is guilty as charged as well.

Update 2: As does many other pieces of software. This highlights a deficiency in the HTTP protocol. HTML Password fields should be encrypted before transmission. Why is this not the case? What good reason can anyone give me why this should not have been fixed in, oh, 1996?