obiter / yair olmert

What is a new media company? And who really needs it?

A few days ago I used twitter to poll my followers, here are the results but first, some facts:

1253 people viewed the poll and its’ questions, 76 gave us their opinion

The poll and its results:

I have read #finesse140’s services and I think:

1.  New media agencies will replace traditional media companies- 8 (10.5%)

2. Is good for internet PR- 4 (5.3%)

3. Is good for creating an internet buzz (Wave)- 3 (3.9%)

4. All of the above are correct- 19 (25%)

5. Is not needed at all- 37 (48.7%)

According to this (very non-scientific) poll, we conclude that most of the people who actually gave us their opinion, think new-media companies are essential for the advertising and PR business as well as confronting crisis situations either personal, public or commercial.

However, 48% have answered it is not only non-essential, but not even needed, and a question arises-  Why?

Let’s start at the top- what is a “new-media” company?

I can go on and on about what exactly a new-media company is, but the short version is that it’s an advertising, marketing, image consultation an PR company that uses the internet and especially its’  social platforms (LinkedIn, twitter, facebook, blogs, YouTube and more), instead of “old-school” media (television, newspapers…) to further their clients’ interests (hence the whole “new” media thing).

For more information you can check out finnesse140’s services page.

And now we drop all the way to the bottom

Q: are these services even required?

A: how are they not?

I almost want to ask these people if they live on the same planet as I do. Have you not been around the internet lately ? (Obviously they have, they answered the poll, but I was being witty, sarcastic, and rhetorical)

New media companies have been popping up all around the world for several years. Obama practically owes his presidency to twitter and YouTube, the Queen of England’s first ever public use on the internet is on twitter (the HMTA- her majesties twitter account) mega-corporations like Dell and Starbucks are there, and most and foremost, new media companies are on the cutting edge of advertising is the US.

(I recommend getting to know Room 214 and we are social as great examples of this)

We also found there is a need for social media companies in Israel, so we founded Finesse140.

And so, we conclude that this question is irrelevant, since new media companies are already an essential for every effective internet campaign out there. The audience is sick and tired of banners and pop-ups, and prefers to be addressed as part of an intelligent dialogue.

So after all that, how come we still got so many answers dismissing new media companies as “not needed”?

Two main reasons:

The first is the “old school” media companies’ fear of change (as you probably know, change is a big scary monster).

The second are those running around the net with the intent to provoke and annoy us all.

And in my view, there are those who answered with no bias, and presented their personal opinion, I’ll write it under the “conservative” column.

New media companies are here to stay and became an inseparable part of the communication landscape, these are my personal beliefs, and they are backed by the fact that I invested a small fortune in founding my own new media company, Finesse140 Ltd . This is also why I groom my twitter account to be the second most followed account in Israel to date. This is the reason connect140 offers companies, businesses and Professionals twitter accounts to promote sales.

p.s. did you notice that 1250 people viewed the poll? There you have it, another way to advertise using social media. And the public? They don’t mind being provided with advertising as long as you don’t treat them like idiots.

There are two points of view to using twitter, one, for private use, in order to connect with friends and gather information. And the other, for commercial and civil use. Some early adopters in Israel, live under the impression that twitter is their own personal toy, that is not intended for the said uses, although twitter has outspokenly said that they are all for the commercial uses of their tool. Niv Calderon, our head of social media, was previously of those who believe in the first point of view, and used twitter like that for two and a half years.

After an incident in an Israeli show, “Hamakor”, in which after an Ashton Kutcher style competition one of the hosts of the show, Offer Shelah, said that all heavy twitter users where life-less people that needed to read a sex-ed book in order to get rid of their boredom.

Niv wrote a post in his blog about that, and I thought it was important enough to be posted world-wide.

Yair Olmert

The connection between lack of mutual encouragement and lack of understanding

What happened on the show “Hamakor”(the source-an Israeli current events magazine show) is very interesting. Its interesting that four people competed amongst themselves, brought into their radio and television shows, asked people to follow them like the never did before (it’s probably embarrassing to ask for attention out loud), got the support of all sorts of tech people and this is what happens. I ask myself why? What is it about us, the Israelis on twitter that makes whatever the media says “turn against us”? How can it be that the media, which feeds of technology people, still doesn’t understand what twitter is?

Let’s ask ourselves a question- if we feed the media maybe the problem is with the feed? Or maybe it’s in how we feed? Or maybe it’s something we project?

Offer Shelach is not special, a lot of other people don’t get it either.

It’s true’ he took it too far’ but it’s still a good opportunity to talk about the issue.

I accept the ruling paradigm that twitter is targeted to a small group of people’ and that they wouldn’t soil the holy feed trying to understand what’s going on here.

I see this in the cruel harassment in which business twitter accounts are referred to as spam (we will talk about “what is spam?”) suddenly, every ignorant is a spammer. God forbid, are they selling you Viagra? People starting out on twitter and trying to create themselves a presence are mocked, with the hypocrisy of a smile in front and a knife in the back in tweetups. Maybe that’s why twitter is for the life-less, maybe.

Would he have said that if hundreds of thousands of businesses were on twitter? Would he have said that if every government office which provides a service to the citizens would have twitter?

Is our interest to leave twitter for us, as a group of early adapters, who check everything new ASAP? Isn’t it our interest that everyone around us will use twitter? What is this? A closed guild? Wouldn’t we want our brother, mother, father, uncle, boss, nanny, high school teacher, mayor, railway operator, police and everyone else to have twitter?

Obvious isn’t it? So why mock everyone who doesn’t get it? Why automatically cancel out every one new? Why not encourage like we know we can?

What’s the connection between lack of encouragement and lack of understanding’ you ask?

If I were to ask the same question in the context of “parents and children” would you have asked me then?

Niv Calderon

Shahar Leonardo Goldfinger, the guy from TV, is a new recruit at #Finesse140, helping us manage our online social identity and spicing it with special geek effects. We also use him as a talented writer in a sweat shop without  any food, running only on energy drinks. This post is by him, welcome Shahar.

Mid-day, the entire staff of #Finesse140 social media, are sitting at their laptops, doing what social media people do, when suddenly, like a tornado hitting a poor defenseless village- Twitter went down (Read all about it and also DDoS).

Now, to most, Twitter is just a passtime, but to the freaks and geeks here at Finesse140, Twitter is like a cow to a Hindu family, It provides pastime, business and most importantly, social insight.

Twitter down by DDoS

For about ten minutes, all of us here just sat there and stared at each other as we impotently F5′d our Foxes in hopes the glitch was short lived. But, then we recovered, we got on to YouTube, and our blogs, checked out our Facebooks more closely, everyone found a new twitterless calling. Everyone but me, and that’s why I’m writing this, to make it look like I’m productive.

Shahar Leonardo Goldfinger

For the past few years the web was my third home besides my profession as a lawyer and my family. Lately I decided to make it to a business after i came to the conclusion I can bring something new, not more of the same. Thus, I founded #Finesse140 with the help of Niv Calderon and Jude Delevkovitch, who are positioned in managerial positions within the #Finesse140 Group.

For the last few months I’ve invested a lot of time learning and practicing many social media platforms and especially Twitter, on which i’m the second most followed in Israel nowadays.

The products of #Finesse140 were presented to leading media groups in Israel which found them useful and already contracted us. We’ve already opened our offices and are concluding our infrastructure build up.

Soon we are going to start looking for social media experts and other professionals to be hired by #Finesse140. More detailed information about that, soon.

Our Site is at: http://finesse140.com
my email is: yair AT finesse140.com

Facebook: http://facebook.com/finesse140

Twitter:
http://twitter.com/finesse140 #Finesse140
http://twitter.com/finesse140_info #Finesse140 Info
http://twitter.com/finesse140il #Finesse140 Israel
http://twitter.com/finesse140int #Finesse140 International

YouTube: http://youtube.com/finesse140

#Finesse140 is a new media group which specializes in targeted audience streaming.

This video was taken in the #Finesse140 office by the Nokia N97 people.

We are happy to inform you of #Finesse140 foundation and to wish you an awesome week.