In these recessionary times, the stock market doesn’t get nearly the attention that it did back in 1997 when Netflix was founded and every dotcom was looking for a big initial public offering. But if you’re the head of a publicly traded company stock price still matters a lot.

Just ask Reed Hastings, the CEO and co-founder of Netflix. On Sunday, he attempted to address the decline in stock value his company has undergone since announcing a new pricing structure in July. Following what’s become the standard social media playbook for restoring customer trust after a corporate blunder, he wrote a post that sought to be contrite about past mistakes and transparent about future plans.

The result? On Monday Netflix stock dropped a whopping 7.37% on a day when the exchange it’s traded on only dropped 0.36%.

On second thought, maybe that blog post didn’t actually matter since the last three days of trading saw Netflix stock drop 31.56%. That’s part of a total decrease in stock value of 43.36% since the company announced its new pricing scheme. Granted, this time period includes some big drops in the the composite stock indexes too, but nothing approaching the drubbing Netflix has taken.

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If you somehow missed it, New York Congressional Representative Andrew Weiner is being paraded around as the latest exhibit in an especially lively spring sex scandal season. What I’ve found most interesting about “Weinergate” hasn’t been the scandal, but the questions it raises about certain digital media ethics.

While admitting his online indiscretions, Weiner stated that there was no prior relationship between him and Whatcom Community College student Gennette Cordova, the intended recipient of a photo of him in his boxer shorts:
“Last Friday night, I tweeted a photograph of myself that I intended to send as a direct message as part of a joke to a woman in Seattle…. This woman was unwittingly dragged into this and bears absolutely no responsibility. I am so sorry to have disrupted her life in this way.” (source)

Part One: Reputation Management

The BigGovernment.com site that first broke the story has since doggedly documented a number of online affairs that Weiner has admitted to. From the way publisher Andrew Breitbard has injected himself into the story it seems clear that if he had any evidence of a previous relationship between Cordova and Weiner he would happily share it. But even in the absence of evidence of a relationship, the story is frequently being reported as though Cordova and Weiner had been having an ongoing virtual affair, as in this quote from Time magazine: “…it had been intended for viewing only by a woman in Seattle with whom he’d developed an online relationship.” (source)

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One of the stories in today’s business papers is especially poignant to Flip the Media. Just over two years after it acquired pocket-size Flip video camera from manufacturer Pure Digital Technologies, Cisco Systems is shutting down a number of its consumer businesses.  Sadly, one of the casualties is the little camera that was the inspiration for the Flip the Media name.

Begun as a blog for students to share lessons learned in a Winter 2008 MCDM video class, FTM continued on after the class ended and evolved into the news journal you are reading now. Living on Internet time, Flip the Media has gone through several iterations in the past three years and will continue to change just as the digital world around us changes.

Is there a lesson to be learned from the fate of the Flip camera? What does the end of something that showed quality video could be made with something that fit in the palm of your hand tell us? Drawing grandiose conclusions from Cisco’s action might be premature. Yet, for those of us who don’t sit in boardrooms or study corporate balance sheets, the speed (two years!) with which the company went from spending $600 million to buy the technology to dropping it like hot potato is startling.

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Hola devoted readers! We’ve been remiss in bringing you the dish from the south — not to mention from the South By Southwest Interactive Conference — in a timely manner. But have no fear, your gossip needs are going to be satisfied beginning … right … now !

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The recession may be hurting the pocketbooks of people and businesses, but a new study shows that few companies that currently spend money on social media plan to cut back next year. The 2009 Tribalization of Business Study by Deloitte, Beeline Labs and the Society for New Communications Research reveals that 94 percent of the 400 companies surveyed intend to maintain or increase investment in their communities.

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Not that long ago, media companies were easy to define. A media company could be a movie studio, television network, newspaper or magazine publisher, radio station or really any company that controlled a means of distributing content. But technology has brought about an enormous shift that many companies don’t yet recognize. Most companies are now enormously invested in media as a part of their everyday business, but few of them realize it.

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Following the recent debacle in which Facebook freaked out a large percentage of its user base with a clumsily-handled change to its Terms of Service, I was surprised when this showed up on my FB home page today:

Terms of Use Update

Today we announced new opportunities for users to play a meaningful role in determining the policies governing our site. We released the first proposals subject to these procedures – The Facebook Principles, a set of values that will guide the development of the service, and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities that governs Facebook’s operations. Users will have the opportunity to review, comment and vote on these documents over the coming weeks and, if they are approved, other future policy changes. We’ve posted the documents in separate groups and invite you to offer comments and suggestions. For more information and links to the two groups, check out the Facebook Blog.

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With Obama now officially President, the White House site has been redone to reflect the new administration’s priorities. Of special interest to those of us in MCDM is the Technology Agenda page. While it’s filled with important information, two things that jumped out right away for me were:

1. Protect the Openness of the Internet: Support the principle of network neutrality to preserve the benefits of open competition on the Internet.
2. Deploy Next-Generation Broadband: Work towards true broadband in every community in America through a combination of reform of the Universal Service Fund, better use of the nation’s wireless spectrum, promotion of next-generation facilities, technologies and applications, and new tax and loan incentives. America should lead the world in broadband penetration and Internet access.

These two combined can help ensure that Internet continues to be an incubator of innovation and the jobs innovation creates. Good policies for media professionals.