derek abdinor

In discussion the other day we were puzzled as to why the majority of companies on the JSE do not take advantage of Schedule 23 for their regulatory communications to the market and shareholders.

For issuing companies to embark on an electronic consent program, the following benefits accrue to company and shareholder:

1. Email addresses of shareholders for direct communication
2. Mobile numbers and landline numbers if proffered
3. Reduced printing and mailing costs
4. More cash in the kitty for dividends or retained earnings
5. Saving the planet
6. Training your shareholders to come to your official website as the #1 source of fact, news and comment

There are even more reasons to clean up one’s share register, embark on an asset reunification project  (tidying up unclaimed dividends) and ALL of them do credit to your brand. How you choose to spin it, be it by planting a tree for every shareholder converted or a reporting unit in your sustainability report, is up to you.

In South Africa, where public monies are involved, its always only a matter of time before the issue becomes politicised.

<pause for effect>

It follows that employing good shareholder communication governance NOW is better than having industrial action in a few months or years, at your AGM or outside your glass doors.

I blogged last week about techpresident.com and the impact Elections 2.0 is having on the campaigns. Well, YouTube has just upped the ante by getting in on a debate where voters are sending in video messages to presidential hopefuls (much like sending an sms to a live panel show). Read it at the Guardian.co.uk

“YouTube, which did not exist during the last presidential campaign, has already had an impact on this one. More than 2.5 million people have viewed the video I’ve Got A Crush … On Obama since it was posted last month and a follow-up about women fighting over Mr Obama and Rudy Giuliani, the Republican frontrunner, has been watched more than 500,000 times since it appeared last week. A Hillary Clinton campaign spoof on the final episode of the Sopranos was also popular.”

“YouTube effectively knocked the former Republican senator George Allen out of the race . A video of him last summer referring to a dark-skinned Virginian as “macaca” cost him re-election to the senate and a tilt at the presidency.”

Update: August 2, 2007: cynical, media-aware opposite viewpoint | Guardian

TechPresident is an online aggregating service about all the US Presidential candidates’ use of online social media. You get to measure their effectiveness, or newsworthiness, on Flickr, Facebook, YouTube, and Technorati.

Votojournalism
The excellent portmanteau of Voter and Photojournalism, for voter-generated content where users post pictures of the candidates on the campaign trail, online. I think the term will be hijacked to come to mean the use of social media by voters, or by candidates (see below) to run an effective campaign.

Microblogging
I was suprised to find that Barack Obama microblogs (blogs constantly from a computer of mobile device, usually one-liners of his movements) on Twitter, and does a really handy job. In fact, he has raised over 40% of his funding online! Funding is key to success in US politics, and Barack’s online strategists have been on the money.

I feel this would have an impact on business, after the elections. You could never bring microblogging to business, but it would be excellent for wannabe celebrities to grow an active stalking community.

Update: this was fleshed out into an article for BizCommunity. Read/Write Web has some interesting stuff on this, although they seem to be looking at the metrics of voting at first blush:  a lot of users in the world deperately want/need the US to change its policies and are following the campaigns, or lending their online presences to candidates they hope will bring about meaningful change.

Tony Blair rounded on the media this week, calling it a ‘feral beast’, only out to create ‘impact’, and singled out The Independent for special vitriol.

One may agree with his rant, especially when taking into account the rabid sensationalism of the British Media. But, the first rule of dissecting politics: cherchez l’argent. In this case, Rupert Murdoch of The Sun had backed Tony and his ‘Cool Brittania‘ campaign back in the 1990s, as well as the Iraqi debacle and the lies around that. Blair was a master of spin, having been impressed by Clinton’s 1992 campaign. Watch “The Queen” for an additional view.

Sure, the media is a prostitute, but so too are many other forms of earning one’s daily bread. Blair “rode the tiger rather than being eaten by it“, much as did Diana, and now wants to cry foul.

This is not a political weblog, but about media in general.
Are the two still distinguishable?