Bluegrass Consulting: Blueblog

It’s 3am. Lawyers and advisors of a takeover target sit squashed in a downtown hotel suite, empty coke cans and coffee mugs litter the room while reams of paper are poured over. Across the hall in a bigger suite the acquirer’s team of lawyers and advisors check emails and wait for phone calls from across the hall for more documentation. This is the mergers and acquisition (M&A) process as described by a bank lawyer friend of mine.

Call it what you will - a friendly takeover, synergy or absorption, this is one of the most exciting areas in business. M&A experienced a massive slump as a result of the global financial crisis when the CFOs clung onto their balance sheets like castaways on a raft. Now as we move into the “new normal” (thank you McKinsey &Co) where money is more expensive but more available, M&A is again on the rise - and a good a communications strategy around the practice can mean short and sharp success.

There have been many cases where poor communications on a merger has led to its near collapse or value depreciation. Financial journalist Steve Lipin uses the examples of Hewlett-Packard’s acquisition of Compaq, Conseco’s acquisition of Green Tree Financial Corp. and Newell’s takeover of Rubbermaid Inc as examples earlier this decade.

These companies’ employees and shareholders experienced long periods of uncertainty with minimal communication from management, executives or the board. They filled the void by circulating rumours and myths about the situation, which either led to the transaction’s collapse or dramatically reduced the acquirer and takeover target’s value. The above organisations relied on their lawyers and advisors to contract out communications. No offense to lawyers but they are best to stick to the detail and shouldn’t be concerned with top line positioning and key messaging.

It is absolutely vital that both the acquirer and takeover target have in place a co-ordinated communications plan months before any announcement to help fill the vacuum and begin to influence the decision makers.

Treat it like a political campaign. You are dependent on a group of stakeholders on your survival - and if you don’t convince them that your way is the right way you will be forced to abort your mission.

At the centre of the campaign are a few must haves:

1.     Do you have a credible story, with clear targets, that can be communicated, accomplished and monitored, over time, by the acquirer and investors?

2.     Does your story remove uncertainty and give direction to the organization so that employees can effectively deliver?

3.     Does your story link post-merger integration plans to the economics of the transaction?

(Thanks again to Steve Lipin for the checklist)

Takeover targets want to know one thing: what is in it for them? Will my job be safe? Can I get a pay out? Will my shares go up or down?

A communications plan will help executives and the board answer these questions from stakeholders. They will uncover issues that are usually an afterthought in the heat of due diligence but are typically the ones that can make or break a merger. These issues usually come from concerns from employees and shareholders so they must be top priority in any communications planning. And don’t forget, most employees are shareholders too!

M&A communications is a beast all onto its own. It can be aggressive or subtle, yet always highly strategic. Getting good advice and a good plan early is paramount for any successful transaction.

Heather Gilmore

Heather is a communications consultant, former Senior Manager at Westpac and media advisor to a NSW Premier and Treasurer. She is also an Associate Account Director with Bluegrass Consulting. Heather’s blog is at hgcommunication.com

In an ideal world, politicians would hold strong and sincere convictions and would debate on concrete issues aiming at improving the life of citizens. In this world, politicians would strive to raise public awareness rather than to sustain ignorance.

Given the way both the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have been dealing with the issue of immigration, if this world existed it was a long, long time ago.

In the recent elections, Prime Minister Julia Gillard decided to distinguish herself from her predecessor by shifting from a “big Australia” to a “sustainable Australia”. So far this kind of strategy is understandable: as a newly designated Prime Minister and with little time to convince, it is quite normal that she should try to differentiate her policy from her predecessor’s.

It is however more questionable that she should clearly link immigration policy and population policy, which is a dangerous shortcut that could be harmful to Australia in the long-term.

It does not matter whether it shows opportunism on behalf of the Labor candidate and whether both skilled and unskilled immigration have played their part, in particular in the country’s growth. The shift from a “big Australia” to a “sustainable Australia”, which is backed by almost 75% of Australians, appeared positive to Julia Gillard’s election.

On the other hand, after President Sarkozy’s popularity plumbed the depths in July 2010 (26% of favourable opinion), he gave a very strong speech in Grenoble on 30 July 2010 where he declared nothing less than a “war on crime”, forgetting that the age of prohibition is long gone. In his speech the French President promised legislative reforms to withdraw the French nationality from non-natives criminals.

This unfortunately sounds like Sarkozy’s favourite remedy to unpopular polls; he indeed gave similar speeches on security when he was Interior Minister in order to increase his popularity as a potential candidate for presidency.

Once again, this very negative strategy seems to be working as a poll of 6 August 2010 stresses that 70% of polled agreed with the president in regard to the withdrawal of the French nationality for some non-native criminals when the life of a policeman is threatened.

Apart from being populist and xenophobic, this is just another step in the escalation of a government where the current Interior Minister was condemned after he professed racial insult and where French police imposed brutal treatment of immigrants.

In the end, while Prime Minister Gillard’s communication has not been as ambivalent as Sarkozy’s, the goal remains the same: winning elections. It is a shame that political figures devote more time to discussing sensitive issues in a populist manner rather than engaging in open and constructive debate on what are important issues at many levels. While it is clearly a good means to their end it definitely does not heighten politics.

Arnaud Eard

Arnaud comes from Paris and gained a MA in International Political Economy at the University of Sheffield. He has been interning at Bluegrass Consulting since May 2010.

This is part 2 of a 4 part series which uses Julia Gillard and the current Federal Election to examine whether spin techniques effectively developed for the 20^th century media model are now outdated and ineffective in the 21^st century.

Gillard’s declaration she’s “going to discard all of that campaign advice and professional or common wisdom and just go for it” (in regard to “risk averse” election campaign communication) highlights the fact that old spin (controlling information by restricting journalist access, staying ‘on message’, an over-supply of information {e.g. renouncements of announcements} and over emphasising the positive) hasn’t been working.

These spinning techniques, which 10 to 20 years ago were largely a hidden and unknown art, are now a notion so familiar to the public, they no longer work. The extensive criticism and coverage of the much overused ‘moving forward’ slogan is just one example of that.

In addition, Channel 7 reporting political news, with the by-line, ‘cutting through the spin’, is another example of how widely spin it is now ‘accepted’.

You can’t be tricked when you know the tricks.

Nothing new in blaming the media

Much has been written on the role of the media in the challenge for straight forward authentic communication. The 24 hour media cycle, the demand for ‘new’ news, means journalists fail to properly cover policy due to a lack of time, and as Bernard Keane also points out, a lack of specialist skills: “The result is too much cynicism and not enough scepticism.”

Despite politicians and their advisers knowing the media is likely to misrepresent them, “gratifying them” remains the “primary purpose of the professional politician (who acquire) a crippling self-enfeeblement driven by their dependence…”

Keane also explains, and as we all know, it’s in the media’s interest for politics to remain in a “permanent cycle of spin, conflict and commentary, while actual problems are never resolved”. Good news doesn’t sell papers and conflict is essential to a ‘good’ news story.

But this is something spinners have known for a long time! That we haven’t found better ways of dealing with this is positively amateur.

Worse still…we have a major trust deficit

Spin can be defined as a type of propaganda, providing an interpretation of an event or issue to persuade public opinion in favor or against. It is between the two World Wars that spin was really pioneered, with Joseph Goebbels using it to great effect for the Nazis. Post war America refined his approach, with Eisenhower’s Republicans bringing professional propagandists into their inner circle for the first time, ensuring a decisive win.

Later, Bill Clinton and chief spinner James Carvelle mentored Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson/Alastair Campbell as they reinvented the Labour Party. And it is perhaps with Blair that we saw the beginning of the decline of 20^th century spin. Alastair Campbell, Blair’s former Press Secretary, while still in that role, spoke publically of how this new communication had become a hindrance to good government and had cost them dearly in terms of trust.

“We did make a concerted effort to get a better dialogue with some parts of the media…this was of course about reaching their readers. …but therein lay the seeds of spin. The consequences were greater than we anticipated. People stopped trusting what we had to say.”

A lack of trust virtually makes spin ineffective, as can be seen in the 2005 UK general election. The Government thought services were improving in heath and education. Polling showed the public also thought their schools and hospitals were improving. But they also thought they were lucky and that nationally things were getting worse.

They discounted their own personal experience because it was in agreement with the government line, and they were almost programmed to disbelieve anything the government said. (This example was found in Ivor Gaber’s paper Too much of a good thing: the ‘problem ‘of political communications in a mass media democracy)

Post 1 in this series began to examine the PR spin techniques of the NSW ALP Right and their role in the current campaign, as well as whether the declaration of the ‘Real Julia’ was actually just part of the strategy and part of managing perceptions around Australia’s first female leader and the way in which she took power. It concluded by questioning whether publicly rejecting the”very risk averse standard campaign model” was just more spin…

Post 3 will examine whether social media can help build trust and how the future of spinning lies in losing control. The final and fourth post will examine Ms Gillard’s apparent rejection of the “very risk averse standard campaign model” in the context of the election result.

Ruci Fixter

Julia Gillard’s political woes shine the light on the failure of modern day spinners clinging desperately to a political communication technique invented for the 20^th century model of mass media. In the 21^st century, these techniques are proving increasingly out of date and so dangerously ineffective it could lose Labor an election when spin, ironically, should be key to winning elections…

Standard and well known spin techniques such as the ’seven second grab’, key messages, catchy slogans and carefully controlled media management have all backfired spectacularly for Ms Gillard. All of a sudden, these tricks look very dated prompting her to publicly reject this “very risk averse standard campaign model” and re-introduce herself as the “real Julia” in a desperate search for authenticity.

This move was a somewhat startling acknowledgment that the usual spin simply wasn’t ‘cutting through’. Techniques designed to win were, in fact, conspiring towards losing Labor the election.

Focus groups - unfairly dumping leaders for false infidelity?

So how is it the ALP’s crack campaign team, seasoned professionals whose job it is to know the business inside out, couldn’t predict that this ‘old spin’, on its own, wouldn’t work? They should have been even more aware of the dangers, given the current levels of cynicism around how Julia assumed office.

In fact, one almost wonders if there was even a communication strategy in place to deal with how the electorate may have responded to Rudd’s unprecedented and brutal assassination. Or was it so clever we almost missed it…?

Many people place the bulk of the blame for the campaign’s rocky ride at the feet of NSW Right leader Mark Arbib, who both secured and destroyed Rudd’s leadership. It is not only the role he is believed to have played in convincing Rudd to dump the ETS, a turning point for voters, but the risk averse, poll-centric, NSW Labor Right strategy, that he along with long term friend and campaign director Karl Bitar have continued to push as the best campaign model.

But it appears that the result has been panicky politics driven by focus group research, which has seen leaders dumped like 20-somethings dump lovers over false infidelities. Many argue their use of the focus group results is not accurate or effective.

Former staffer in the Carr and Iemma Governments, Mark Aarons, explains their technique involves targeting the least politically committed voters in marginal seats. Their theory is that “…these people determine who win government and their views should therefore predominate in policy-setting. In a bizarre reversal of conventional political wisdom, leadership is redefined as following such people by pandering to them.”

Aarons’ experience was that this strategy “led the (Iemma) government up a blind alley”, not reflecting mainstream voters who hated the policy idea” (in this instance the Kurnell desalination plant).

However, most say there is little wonder the Arbib-Bitar partnership believe in this model. Arguably it has won them office in NSW since 1995 and, maybe, even the Kevin 07 election. Why fix it if it ain’t broke? But election 2010 seems to have broken the mould. Time will ultimately tell.

Old spin doesn’t work for ‘real Julia’

These campaigns have been largely stage managed spin-fuelled fiestas, and none more than Kevin 07. And as Michael Gawenda points out in Business Spectator, Gillard 2010 is in many ways no more or no less stage managed than Kevin 07 was.

However, what is different is that she has only been PM for six weeks and the way in which Rudd was deposed. Going to the polls seems rushed…standard NSW campaigning?

What is interesting and maybe very clever spin, is this point made by Gawenda:

“Gillard had two major problems coming into this campaign: she had been involved in the assassination of Rudd and she was a woman. Gillard and her advisors, it seems, decided that any sign of aggression, of passion or even vision, would be turned against her - she would be seen as an angry, pitiless, female, political executioner. So for the first two weeks of the campaign she behaved as if she was on Prozac.”

So maybe this strategy was deliberate all along.

Play the standard orchestrated campaign cardboard cut-out; let it look like you are being played by the ‘faceless men’, because anything else would make you look like “an angry, pitiless, female, political executioner”.

And then announce the arrival of ‘real Julia’, who it now looks like has been brave enough to stand up to said men, and indulge the electorate with a soft, approachable and benevolent female leader.

Maybe sexist attitudes towards women in power have been grossly overlooked in how this campaign could and needed to be played.

It might actually be very clever indeed - an all together cleverer ‘new’ spin, a planned emergence of the real Julia as a natural evolution of the Gillard personality.

But then, the long term damage to the Labor party, brought about by the scary power of the faceless men, now emblazoned in the psyche of the electorate, still seems a high price to pay for this approach.

Using Julia Gillard and the current Federal Election as a case study, this is the first in a 4 part series examining whether spin techniques effectively developed for the 20^th century media model  are  now outdated and ineffective in the 21^st century. Post 2 looks at the ineffectiveness of ‘old spin’, the role of the media, and the trust deficit. Post 3 examines whether social media can help build trust and how the future of spinning lies in losing control. The final and fourth post will examine Ms Gillard’s apparent rejection of the “very risk averse standard campaign model” in the context of the election result.

As the wheels on the Rudd train rattle and loosen and the destination once so bright now looks foggy and unknown, the pressure is not just on the train driver, but his top engineers and navigators, whose youth have many asking, do they know what they’re doing or are they just on for the ride?

Is someone’s age a genuine indication of their professional ability and skill or is it just an easy target? Take Adam Boland, Channel 7’s boy wonder who at just 24 began steering Sunrise to “national dominance 10 years ago”. Clearly his age wasn’t a hindrance.

On the other hand we have the Primer Minister’s top advisers Alister Jordan, Lachlan Harris (both 30) and Andrew Charlton (31) who featured in Tuesday’s Australian newspaper under the title Novices at the wheel of state. (Note: Peter van Onselen the journalist who wrote the story is only 34).

Whilst running the country vs. running Sunrise may seem an inequitable comparison, what is it that makes one young manager a ‘wonder boy’ and the others ‘novices’?  It may simply come down to how they tackle the challenge.

Age discrimination - or simply too young?

With more and more young people ascending to management positions, it is often these young highly capable managers and advisers who face roadblocks because older people use their ages against them.

In the case of the PM’s three young guns, are we simply seeing an older caucus speaking out because they are struggling to accept the tremendous power these youthful advisers have, and now that things have gone bad, looking for the easiest excuse?

Then again, it makes every sense to ask, especially as the wheels are coming off, is there a lack of experience here which needs to be addressed? And, are these young advisers doing what they should to ensure their short years do not translate into a lack of experience or strategic ability?

Politics not friend nor mentor

Adam Boland took steps to counter his young age. “Being so young, I had to become a student of TV, because I wasn’t around for the first 20 years of television… I’ve also surrounded myself with people such as Graeme Rowland who has been there for most of that time.”

Rudd’s advisers appear to really only be surrounded by Rudd, and the nature of politics is such that adopting experienced Labor party mentors to tell them the political lessons of 20 years ago…is not really possible.

The ‘trust’ and ‘confidentiality’ inherent in the role of a political adviser, spurned by the ever present threat to their boss’s leadership, leaks, and the need for the PM’s office to look like it knows what its doing, makes it hard to see how they could engage a mentor to bounce their ideas off and learn from.

And there is the obvious point, that Rudd would also be worried that asking the advice of others would be perceived as a sign of weakness on his part, and no doubt there would be those who would like to interpret it that way.

Learning on the job

So while a mentor may be out of the question for Rudd’s young men, there is no limit to these three advisers becoming ’students of politics and public affairs’. As Bernard Keane said in Crikey last week, talking more directly of Rudd, “there is no shame in learning on the job…John Howard almost managed to make himself a one-term wonder, but went on to do OK.”

A point made in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald was that van Onselen ‘forgot to mention’ that Bob Hawke had many successful ‘young buck’ advisers, while John Howard’s chief of staff in his first term, Grahame Morris, “was a man with years of experience when he was forced to fall on his sword.”

Maybe if Rudd’s three advisers were older they would have remembered first hand when in 1987 the Hawke Government introduced a 40 per cent profits tax on off shore petroleum and the industry’s response was by all accounts similar to that of the proposed super profits tax, one of the main issues behind all this finger pointing.

If they had worked around government then, would this be an example of how they would have had the ‘experience’ critics say they lack? No doubt this experience may have helped, but ultimately the challenge is as Keane says”…communicate effectively the case for reform, detail the flaws in the arguments of your opponents, and show you’re determined to achieve what you set out to do.”

What you don’t know - the past and human behavior may tell you

Communicating effectively and detailing the flaws in the opposition is in essence the crux of Alister and Lachlan’s job and on a positive note where they actually have proven they can do it; Lachlan through developing and managing the media strategy for Rudd in the 07 election, earning him his job today, and Alister through his years working by Rudd’s side in shadow government, most effectively and expertly causing political damage to the Howard Government over the AWB “wheat for weapons” scandal.

Showing that you’re determined to achieve what you set out to do may be something they have less experience with, and something they need to man up about when dealing with ‘the man’, who’s ultimately responsible for this.

Experience isn’t everything, and years passed do not guarantee a pay off in the rise of one’s intelligence, especially in the areas of social and public affairs, where instinct and generational understanding is key. But if young advisers look to the past to manage the present and future political challenges, their chance of success will no doubt improve.

For as we know, human behaviour and responses are more often than not predictable. This is the very reason the Kevin 07 campaign was designed and built around Abraham Maslow’s ‘hierarchy of human needs‘.

You are never too old to ask for help

The lesson to take away may be that you’re “never too old to ask for help“, something Rudd was told recently by Jack the Insider. He tells the PM that Hawke and Keating are real assets for him and the fact that their advice is not sought “is staggering”. “If a government finds itself in trouble as this one has, it would be sensible to go first to the caucus and then place a call to the old salts; the combat hardened political men of yore to seek advice.”

At the end of the day, its safe to say, no one is ever experienced enough, but how they manage that, whether they ask for help or not, is what proves are they driving the train or should they get off at the next stop?

Ruci Fixter

This could be a little weird to read in a blog… but I was watching an episode of ‘Californication’ the other day - and I stumbled across this fantastic quote…
For those who don’t know the show - this extract is a quote from an author speaking on a radio about his new job as a ‘blog writer’. He says:

“People… they don’t write anymore - they blog. Instead of talking, they text, no punctuation, no grammar: LOL this and LMFAO that. You know, it just seems to me it’s just a bunch of stupid people pseudo-communicating with a bunch of other stupid people in a proto-language that resembles more what cavemen used to speak than the King’s English.”

Now I have to agree. There are some people out there who think that by smashing a few thoughts or ideas on a keyboard and posting it on the web - they are indeed opening the lines of communication in a significantly more profound and diverse way the oldies of the previous generations would ever have dreamed they would be able to do.

I guess this school of thought is somewhat true. Instead of the good old telegram, telex, letter, telephone call, or chit-chat over coffee or lunch - all of which (except the telephone) take at least a marginal amount of effort, thought or forward planning to get going… - Today - we can simply text, blog, chat, tweet and status update all day to our hearts content, and we don’t even really need to think about it. I guess it also effectively gets the message (whatever it may be) out there and across for the all of your mates to see!

But - in doing this, what are we actually doing for the English language, or indeed for our refined and defined (…some more than others) interpersonal communication skills?

Another question: How long has it been since you pulled out a blank piece of paper and wrote a letter to someone, using correct language, diction, grammar and spelling? No spell-check or “fragment consider revising”?

Now, I’m not judging anyone - nor am I saying that it really matters when the last time you partook in this archaic method of communication actually was… but for many, many, many years this was the ultimate method of communication.

Even when the Fax machine was born… you still needed something written on paper in order for the ’state-of-the-art’ facsimile technology to do its bit.

If the technological means of communication today, namely email, blogging and tweeting simply enhance our ability to “traditionally” interact and communicate… I say bring it on! - It opens up the doors and multiplies the contact points one thousand fold and allows all of us to refine our command and mastering of the English language!

However, if we are indeed destroying the traditional means of interaction and communication by sitting at a desk, on a train or in a car “updating” the world through LOL, BRB, LMFAO, ROFL, and whatever other acronyms there are out there, through blogs and quirky-funny one liners, never actually having to spell a word, or for that matter know how to use that little thing you need to use when making one of those little smiling faces,  I ask you world… what is happening to the skills the ancients once mastered?

I guess more importantly I ask - do they in fact matter anymore?

Do we need to know how to write, to spell or to punctuate?

(NOTE: Any pedantic, high-school English teacher out there that notices any spelling, grammatical, punctuation or factual errors in this piece of literature - are to be reminded that this is in fact a blog… and is thus exempt from English language usage rules and regulations)

Semicolon, dash, close-parenthesis…
Nathan.

PS. If you ever get stuck understanding the new world lingo - check this out… it may help!

LISTEN TO ONLINE CONVERSATIONS

• Conduct a conversation audit - Analyse who is talking about you, your competitor, your issues and find out what is ‘hot’ now and likely to remain popular for a reasonable amount of time

DETERMINE KEY CHANNELS

• Find out where your audience is talking online and which of these places are most important to your campaign
• Develop a presence in these digital environments - you don’t have to invest huge amounts of money into web design I the content/purpose of the site is strong enough (content and purpose should be first priority, design: second)
• Choose tools to use in these environments that are appropriate to your campaign

CREATE AN EDITORIAL CONTENT STRATEGY

• Develop a forward focussed editorial strategy - this needs to be relatively fluid to account for the interest and issues you receive throughout your digital campaign but it should include the key messages and specific activities of interest to maintain consistently interesting and purposeful content.
• Tools can be used to schedule the publishing/tweeting of content (such as peoplebrowsr) but these tools should be used with caution
• Aggregated information from quality sources can also be used to bolster the content but should not be solely relied upon
• Content should be driven by the brand where possible

DO SOMETHING INTERESTING!

• You need to provide readers with something - whether it be you taking them on a journey, giving away prizes, recognition, a laugh etc
• Make sure that you have integrated tools into your content that will allow the user to easily virally spread your content
• Invest time to make sure the offering is a genuinely attractive, interesting and (relatively) sustainable one for the reader
• The content needs to feel unscripted, fresh, organic, instant and creative - not ‘suit language’ or marketing mubo-jumbo (bloggers and social networkers will not read this let alone spread it virally & it could be used against your brand by networkers who are keen to shoot down ‘corporates behaving badly’!)

DELIVER ON EXPECTATIONS

• If you set up expectations that you are there to listen, then you need to continue listening and responding in a timely matter
• Quite a large amount of time is required to build strong relationships
• Try to make it clear if the campaign is only a short term campaign… don’t let it die unexpectedly
• Maintain consistent updates across all channels to give readers a reason to come back to your site

Annabey

There are about a million reasons why your organisation should be engaging online these days… Here are five that come to my mind - let me know if you have any to add!

Online engagement is another communication channel an organisation can use to reach large numbers of people, instantly

Online engagement can be targeted to and reach specific audiences (and you can establish and connect to key influencers)

Online engagement can be useful for communicating detailed or technical information (whereas normal TV, print or digital ads cannot convey such a level of detailed information)

It forms an invaluable platform for further/future campaigns - You never know when you might need a few people ‘on your side’ online (get your positive messages out where crises often break first!)

Public third party endorsements add to your brand’s reputation and appeal

Annabey

When we think social media for advocacy - we usually think Facebook, Myspace, Twitter… sometimes YouTube… but how often do we think of Flickr?

A picture can tell a thousand words - so why don’t we use them when we’ve got something to say that we want other people to listen to?

With mobile phones these days - we all have a camera handy, so it’s a perfect tool to capture the moments that help make our point.

Not to pass up on the behind the scenes stuff as well. People love seeing what goes on backstage (I guess its that big brother, voyeurism in all of us). Barrack Obama has been doing it since before he was elected. He now allows everyone to come inside the White House and travel on the road with him.

It gives people that insight to the person (or indeed to a cause) that they wouldn’t under normal circumstances get the opportunity to see. The setting up of an interview, a work in progress… it could really be anything. It allows people to connect on a different level than they would if they were simply being spoken to.

It really opens up a new avenue into online advocacy.

You can also ask people to upload photos that relate to the issue you are campaigning on. You can set up a Flickr group, adjust the privacy settings to whatever you are comfortable with and allow people to become part of the campaign by contributing.

The more people that contribute - the more it will naturally spread.

It’s a great tool that I’m sure will be tapped more and more. The possibilities, especially for politicians and specific advocacy groups is enormous and I’m sure we will see it being used more and more into the future.

What do you think? - Also - Check out the Bluegrass Flickr page!

Check out this great resource - It allows you to post to 40 different social networking sites all at once!

It’s like talking into a megaphone. Now you wont have to login all over the place

http://ping.fm/

Have a good weekend,

Annabey