As an Internet publicist, I've gotten used to having my work environment re-made every three months. But I was unprepared for the total upheaval in online chats this past quarter. For anyone doing Internet publicity, it's important to understand the dynamic forces shaping online celebrity chat.
Celebrity chat has come of age. When I first started booking author chat tours three years ago, my customers wouldn't buy them - for good reasons. They had booked authors into chats on Prodigy, Delphi and America Online [AOL], and saw the results:
- Sparse audiences making mostly rude comments;
- Missing guests who couldn't get their software to work properly;
- Stupid, repetitive questions and lame, one-line answers; and
- Transcripts so poorly formatted as to be unreadable.
Why would any celebrity put themselves through this?
Why should any publisher or movie studio or recording company pay a publicist to set up chats? What value is there in reaching 20 people when half of them are either close friends or are paid to attend?
The Value of A Listing
I was finally able to articulate a reason my clients understood: The value of online chat is not the event itself but the publicity it generates. If a chat I book gets plugged on the log-in screen on AOL, millions of people will see the name of the author and the title of his or her book. If a notice for the chat makes the "cyberlistings" in USA Today, I don't really care how many people show up.
Don't get me wrong - it's important to have a chat that meets minimum acceptable standards. I want a good audience and I don't leave promotion to chance. I will do everything in my power to get the guest there on time, and make sure technical problems don't ruin the chat.
But the real point of the chat is the publicity and apparently, I'm not the only one who has figured this out.
In July of this year, I had my choice of chat rooms. By August, all the big chat venues were booked months in advance. I couldn't compete against well-known television, movie, and music personalities. I had five chat tours to book and no takers.
Chat Opportunities Abound
Then came the September Surprise. I've never worked in an environment that adapts as quickly as the Net. Good ideas are exploited instantly, and bad ideas are dumped faster than you can say "write-off." Thanks to a phenomenon called "portals," chat supply has caught up with demand.
The theory behind portals is that web sites that become communities will get and hold the most traffic. And a very good way to get traffic and build community is to hold celebrity chats. All the sites competing to be portals - Yahoo and Infoseek and Delphi and the rest - are suddenly opening up chat auditoriums and booking celebrity chats. And now I'm back to having my choice of venues again. But it won't last.
Now there is too much portal capacity and not enough value.
Another shakeout is approaching. In the coming months, we will see smaller and smaller portal sites catering to niche users - "professional portals," if you will, built around special interests.
In short, the Web will start to look a lot like AOL or CompuServe used to look - hundreds of special interest communities, each offering chat opportunities. Maybe next month I'll have a completely different story to tell about booking online chats?
Steve O'Keefe is director of Internet publicity services for The Tenagra Corporation and author of the book "Publicity on the Internet" (John Wiley & Sons). You can reach him by e-mail at ([email protected]) or by phone at 281-480-6300.
A Few Important Chat Sites
CTalk City (http://www.talkcity.com)
The best Web-based chat site around, with the most knowledgeable staff in the business. Hundreds of celebrity chat opportunities each week.
CYahoo! Chat (http://chat.yahoo.com)
Yahoo! Chat mostly serves as a technical host for branded chat series including Time Magazine, People Magazine, and TV Guide.
CInfoseek/WBS (http://pages.infoseek.com/webchat3.so)
The venerable search engine recently bought WBS - the Webchat Broadcasting Service - one of the biggest and best names in chat. Look for this partnership to blossom.
CThe Password (http://www.thepassword.com)
I love this site. Password is trying to become an intelligent catalog of the Web. The company does a great job of promoting the chats it hosts.
CYack! (http://www.yack.com)
A huge calendar of online events. The people pushing Yack have an interesting business plan for distributing their calendar.
COn Now (http://www.onnow.com)
Another giant calendar of online events. These calendars will help you quickly find chat venues for your guests.