Open up your mind and say, ahh...

We’ve heard of musicians finding collaborators via Twitter and reporters finding sources, but what about long-lost brothers finding each other? Well, that’s what happened to Matthew Keys, online news producer for KTXL FOX40 News in Sacramento, Florida.

“I have a routine of checking my e-mail, Twitter and Facebook before bed each night, just in case something happened during the evening that I didn’t catch, ” Keys told us. Well, at nearly midnight, Keys saw a message that would lead to a pretty big piece of news that he didn’t previously “catch” — a message from a man named Adam Smith reading:

Obviously, Keys was a bit freaked out. Still, after seeing Smith’s picture, which looked familiar, the young man recalled having spoken to his brother before. “Adam and I actually met in a web forum,” he explains. ”Neither of us can remember exactly how we came to meet, but we kept in touch off and on over the past year on MSN and Skype.” Determined to solve the mystery, Keys fired up Skype and messaged Smith.

“He started telling me things from my childhood that I had heard bits and pieces of growing up — things nobody could have possibly known,” Keys said.  “I gave him my cell phone number and told him to call me.  After a few minutes talking on the phone, it became pretty clear to both of us that he and I were related.  We wound up speaking on the phone for four hours, so much so to the point that I had to take the next day off from work to sleep!”

How did Smith know that Keys was his bro? Well, a few years ago, his mother told him that his father had other children, and mentioned a few names, including Keys’s. “At some point, Adam started asking his mom and our dad about me and something in him pushed him to ask me on Twitter details about my biological mom,” Keys says.

After reconnecting, the two then went on FOX40 for an interview, and Keys was even able to give Smith a ride to the station, because — get this — they live 10 minutes away from each other. (We’ve embedded the FOX interview below). According to Smith, the boys have even more siblings out there, waiting to be found. Here’s hoping they all have Twitter handles.

As an online news producer, Keys knows only too well the power of social media. “After telling our story on Facebook, we were flooded with people e-mailing and posting to our wall about similar lost and found stories involving biological and adopted siblings and relatives,” he says.  “It was extremely touching.  I use Twitter for much of the same reason.  Twitter and Facebook are both extremely powerful tools to reach out to our television audience and to interact and respond to the praise, concerns and personal stories of those who watch our on-air product.” It’s apparently also giving the old-fashioned PI a run for his money.

When Google announced the new WebM video platform at Google I/O this morning, it wasn’t just browser makers who were standing behind Google; many of the big players in web video have also pledged their support for the V8 codec, including Brightcove, Encoding.com, Telestream, Sorenson, Broadcom, MIPS and Qualcomm.

Even Microsoft, a company that previously said it would only support H.264-encoded content in HTML5 playback in Internet Explorer 9, has clarified that if a codec for VP8 video is installed on a user’s computer, IE9 will support it. The strong support from software, hardware and middleware providers for VP8 suggests a strong start for the WebM platform.

H.264 has become the dominant codec in the world of web video for many reasons, but the primary reason is that, in addition to being of high quality, H.264 enjoys plenty of support on both the software and hardware side. Web video services like YouTube, Brightcove, and Vimeo encode in H.264 as one of their defaults and hardware acceleration for H.264 playback and/or recording is supported in a cavalcade of devices.

Practically every consumer electronics device that supports video playback in any way includes support for H.264. Because the codec is highly versatile, it can be used when recording video from Flip cameras and it can also be used to encode feature length content to Blu-ray discs.

One of the problems that other open standard video formats like Ogg Theora have had in the past has been limited support from hardware and software creators. Already, VP8 has support from some of the biggest embedded chipset makers — Qualcomm, Broadcom and MIPS — which means that many future consumer electronics devices will include support for VP8 playback at the hardware level.

On the software side, Brightcove and Encoding.com will both be offering WebM support for their users. I spoke with Jeff Malkin, the president of Encoding.com, earlier this afternoon and he told me that his company will have WebM support as an easily selectable preset in the coming weeks. This means that Encoding.com users will be able to select WebM as one of their codec presets, just as they can with the iPhone or iPad so that the video they embed is automatically playable on browsers or devices that support the format.

In fact, looking at the number of supporters, practically everyone in the entire video industry has expressed some level of support for VP8/WebM with one glaring exception: Apple. While Apple has made its support for HTML5 and H.264 clear, we’ll have to wait and see how the company plans to address VP8 in its desktop products and in future mobile devices. As of right now, this isn’t an either/or battle. Almost every company that has aligned with VP8/WebM is also a supporter of H.264. It will be interesting to see how Apple and the MPEG-LA respond to this announcement.

In most fields, there’s an awful lot of work put into the last ten percent of quality.

Getting your golf score from 77 to 70 is far more difficult than getting it from 120 to 113 or even from 84 to 77.

Answering the phone on the first ring costs twice as much as letting it go into the queue.

Making pastries the way they do at a fancy restaurant is a lot more work than making brownies at home.

Laying out the design of a page or a flyer so it looks like a pro did it takes about ten times as much work as merely using the template Microsoft builds in for free, and the message is almost the same…

Except it’s not. Of course not. The message is not the same.

The last ten percent is the signal we look for, the way we communicate care and expertise and professionalism. If all you’re doing is the standard amount, all you’re going to get is the standard compensation. The hard part is the last ten percent, sure, or even the last one percent, but it’s the hard part because everyone is busy doing the easy part already.

The secret is to seek out the work that most people believe isn’t worth the effort. That’s what you get paid for.

By Seth Godin: http://sethgodin.typepad.com

Affiliate marketing had a bad reputation, the history of which seems to echo forward. A lot of the blogging crowd, especially those with a PR background strongly dislike the use of affiliate marketing as a marketing tool. One reason is that, in the past, people didn’t disclose their relationships, and partly because people in the past (and several people today) sell products and services that they don’t use or support, simply to make money from the sale of the product.

Quick definition. I call affiliate marketing “promoting a product or service that someone else has created to your community with the hope of providing benefit to that community, and to be compensated for that promotion.” (You might define it slightly differently.)

I think where people get a little crazy-hairy about affiliate marketing is that it’s a matter of trust and credibility, and that it requires to consumer of such information to make a calculation before fully consuming the data: is Chris saying this because he really likes the product, or is he saying this to make a few bucks? That’s pretty much the equation, right?

In my case, it should be reasonably clear that I value you more than I value a few bucks for you buying a book or something off my site. But that’s not always as clear with how others in the past have defined their relationships, and so, it leaves people feeling a bit weird.

My Take on Affiliate Marketing

I was with a client all day yesterday in Baltimore. We talked about affiliate marketing for their products and services no fewer than three times. They were very fortunate to have received many good leads and customers through the efforts of others sharing their offerings with their community. We talked about even more ways to derive value for people who’d graduated from the client’s services, and who might want to promote their success to others. In this case, it’d be people giving other people a hand up and a chance to improve their lot in life.

My take is that affiliate marketing, done ethically, is one of the best, most genuine ways to advertise something.

For example, I *rave* about my Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 camera. I love its video capabilities, mostly. (For stills, I’ve been shooting the Nikon D300s that Nikon sent me to review.) So, I love telling others that it’s great, and that they should check it out and see if it’s a good product for them. If you buy it from my link, I make about $15. Last month, I sold one (and thanks to whoever bought it), and I’m so excited, because I really hope they like the camera as much as I do.

Would I sell out your trust in me for $15?

Yes, it adds up, I guess, but that’s really not the model.

How You COULD Use Affiliate Marketing

I called affiliate marketing my worry reduction buttons, and I still feel that way. Affiliate marketing is a chance to achieve escape velocity, by helping someone earn a few extra dollars a month promoting something they love and believe in.

If there are products or services that you love, and you think your community will benefit from knowing about them, then why not find an affiliate relationship from that organization, and build a value relationship with that company? Check out sites like Commission Junction and Share-a-Sale and LinkShare, and the Google Affiliate Network, to name a few. See if they have sales relationships with brands you already love.

The caution, and there’s always a caution, is that if your site isn’t a site about selling something, then affiliate marketing can sometimes come off as a bit crass in between other items of value. Frankly, I came to terms with this on my site a few years ago, after 8 years of wrenching my hands over it. Know what got me over it? I only promote things I think you’ll find useful. I use some of that promotion money for charitable efforts, and to take my family out for the occasional nice dinner. It seems like a reasonable deal.

The Naysayers

The naysayers say you can’t sell something and be pure about your interest in the product. That’s weird, because I know lots of sales people that I consider upstanding and honest people. Isn’t PR “selling” me on the benefits and wonders of your client or their product? Are you then any more pure because you’re being paid to promote them via word of mouth?

Again, the thing is this: If you have a relationship where you benefit from selling a product, you MUST disclose it. (I wrote about my take on the FTC rules for disclosure and bloggers a while back.) That’s a must.

Further, if you sell plenty of things via affiliate marketing, it’s probably a good idea to start explain when you’re NOT an affiliate of a product or service. For instance, I’m a big fan of the Roger Smith Hotel in New York. When I talk about it, I make sure to point out that I have no business relationship with them, because I want to be clear that I’m not praising them for my own gain.

Similarly, when I promote a client’s work, I use a “(client)” or “(partner)” disclosure, even on Twitter. I always want the relationships I work under to be clear. Have you seen the disclosure section on my About page? (For another view on disclosures – and I love this and smirk every time I read it – check out Christopher S. Penn’s disclosures page.)

Tools Are What You Make of Them

There’s bad marketing. There’s bad PR. There are bad ways to use URL shorteners. There are blogs that are poorly done. Every tool has a negative use.

I think affiliate marketing is an excellent tool, when used well.

How do you see it?

Today’s the day that Chris Guillebeau re-launches his Empire Building Kit (affiliate link). I’ve known Chris and his work for a few years, have seen many reports of people’s success with his methods for training and educating, and have reviewed the materials for the project.

It’s a project where he teaches you how to launch a new business, be that consulting or a few other categories. Chris has all kinds of materials built into the course, including workbooks, video, and more. From what I’ve sampled, it looks pretty useful to me. Some of it actually helped me rethink what I’d already started to do with my new business.

So, I signed up to be an affiliate for the Empire Builder Kit. I edited my About page to reflect the proper disclosure. I posted this post with a reference to the Kit with the terms (affiliate link) right after the link, and I’m off and running.

The price of $149 is far less expensive than conferences on the topic. The material is mine to keep. The information will be worth much more than $149 once I put it all to use. Thus, I see this as an investment in something I think is valuable.

Small business folks looking to power up their business? The Empire Builder Kit might be the program for you.

Good luck with the launch, Chris.

By Chris Brogan: www.chrisbrogan.com