Innovation, Disruption and Riding the Waves of Change: CIO's New Partnership with LinkedIn

When we announced our new partnership with LinkedIn last week, it provoked a flurry of controversy within the B2B media space (you can see the highlights of the partnership in a letter from our CEO). The arrangement evinces some of the dramatic changes happening in the media business today, and dramatic change often creates confusion.

The Openly Social CIO
We pursued this partnership because it helps us reach more of our audience and enhances their networking by showing them with whom they're connected at the companies we write about and at the events we host. It also provides us with not just any old platform for pro-social networking in the future, but the most well-established and trusted business network there is.

CIO has some experience in the networking realm. We launched the CIO Best Practices Exchange in 2001. That morphed into the CIO Executive Council, a peer-to-peer advisory service with over 500 paying members today.

But our efforts until now have been closed and proprietary. Recent, rapid developments in publishing as well as in social networking have convinced us we need to extend our relationships and get our content out into the places our readers spend their time. We started a CIO group in Facebook a few months ago (not surprisingly, our CIO group on LinkedIn, launched at the same time, has three times the members as the Facebook group, and it's growing fast, with over 1,000 members as of last week). We have a CIOMagazine feed in Twitter. And every day, our journalists promote our content to dozens of social media sites around the web.

The New New Thing
Part of our agreement with LinkedIn involves the use of APIs - widgets of sorts that, associated with companies mentioned in our articles, display how many people in your LinkedIn network work at that company. These are not ads for LinkedIn or the companies mentioned; LinkedIn does not pay us to insert them. Rather, the widgets provide functionality we believe will be appreciated by our audience. But because it's a first, it has drawn a lot of attention, some of it very positive, some of it less so, including a post by industry consultant and blogger Paul Conley (Conley could have had many of his and his readers' questions answered in advance if he had taken me up on my offer, extended twice, to discuss what we were doing).

At issue is an established industry guideline that states "whether for editorial or advertising information, hypertext links should be placed at the discretion and approval of editors," and further, that "contextual links within editorial content should not be sold." While CIO's LinkedIn widgets aren't strictly links -- they don't take the visitor to a separate web page -- the same standards should certainly apply.

As editor in chief of CIO, I was privy to the developing partnership with LinkedIn in its early and confidential stages, as was CIO.com's online editorial director. We both approved the use of these APIs. While the initial test of the APIs was implemented by our technical staff, eventually the implementation will be automated based on rules agreed to by the editors. In the meantime, editors indicate which companies merit the treatment (i.e, which companies are most significant to the story) by inserting the names of those companies in the keyword field of their article; our technical staff does the actual coding, which is more extensive and labor-intensive than a simple hypertext link.

Our current use of the APIs inserts the

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Mon, Apr 21, 2008 2:43 EDT

Widgets are useful

Posted by: TechWatcher
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I did find the CIO widgets on LinkedIn useful - and wanted to convey that you are in the right direction. Just don't spam the portal with CIO ads! :)
-Des
I blog @ Techwatch

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Mon, Apr 21, 2008 14:33 EDT

CIO and LinkedIN

Posted by: Paul Conley
Rating:

Hi Abbie,
Just to be clear, you and I have different memories about your offer, "extended twice, to discuss what we were doing." I'm sorry that you seem to feel you were treated badly.
However, to review:
I contacted you at 3:44 pm on April 14th through Facebook, asking for information about the links. I did so after hearing complaints from your staff.
You responded that day at 5:41 saying that "We'll have an announcement on Monday."
I held off on the story for two days after that.
On Monday, April 14, at 10:05 am, you sent that announcement to me. It was embargoed until Wednesday at noon. You said then that you were available to speak, or that I could speak with your CEO.
I responded at 2:12 and said that I would hold the story for an additional two days. I also said that I was too busy to talk that day, but I suggested that your CEO could reach me via email.
Later that day, I found that the embargo had been broken. I notified you at 4:26 pm.
At 4:54 pm, I notified you that I had posted my thoughts on the links.
You responded at 5:01, after I published my post, telling me that the embargo was no longer in effect, and telling me I was free to write. You did, in fact, then make a second offer to speak to me. But the post was already published, as I told you in my note at 4:54.
So needless to say, I have a different opinion on what happened. I had an exclusive story. I asked you for comment, and you declined, saying that there would be an announcement. I held the story as a courtesy. You then told me that the announcement was embargoed. I agreed to hold the story for two more days. Then I found that the company had apparently sent the release to other media outlets WITHOUT the embargo.
So no Abbie, at that point -- three full days after I first contacted you and several hours after rival media outlets had run the story -- I felt no obligation to offer any more delays in publication as a courtesy to you or to IDG. I felt my primary obligation was to my readers. More importantly, I also felt an obligation to the members of your staff that had asked me to intervene.
I've taken the liberty of posting the transcript of our messages below:

Paul Conley
3:44pm Apr 11th
Hi Abbie,
What's with those LinkedIn links in the copy on CIO?
That's an ethics violation...just like intellitxt.
What can you tell me?
Paul

Abbie Lundberg
5:41pm Apr 11th
We'll have an announcement on Monday.
Best,
Abbie

Paul Conley
7:19pm Apr 11th
Please send me a copy of the announcement.
And I'm hoping that the announcement says that the ads are going away.

Abbie Lundberg
10:05am Apr 14th
Paul, just sent you a copy of the announcement through my CIO mail account. Sent it to correspond@paulconley.com - is that still your address? Hope we can talk this afternoon.
Best,
Abbie

Paul Conley
2:12pm Apr 14th
Hi,
Thanks for sending the release.
I'll honor the embargo, even though I saw the links a day before I received the release.
However, FYI, I'm likely to blog about this at noon on Wednesday. And it looks to me that the LinkedIn links violate ASBPE's ethics policy.
I'm not available for a phone conversation today. But your CEO is free to reach out via email.
Tks.

Paul Conley
4:26pm Apr 14th
The embargo has been broken by Crains Media Business:
http://www.btobonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080414/FREE/583948670/1078/newsletter01
Â?CIO,Â? LinkedIn form partnership targeting CIOs, senior IT executives :: BtoB Magazine
http://www.btobonline.com/apps...
Find information on B2B Marketing strategies and tactics. BtoB Magazine offers information on email marketing solutions, search engine marketing strategy as well as valuable business to business directories and BtoB lead generation articles.

Paul Conley
4:54pm Apr 14th
I consider the embargo broken.
I've posted my thoughts:
http://tinyurl.com/5ylcbe
paulconley: Breaking my heart: more unethical links in edit
http://tinyurl.com/5ylcbe
A blog for those who toil in the most specialized, and perhaps the least glamorous, area in the press -- trade journalism.

Abbie Lundberg
5:01pm Apr 14th
Paul, Can you articulate *why* you think it violates ASBPE's ethics policy? It doesn't under my reading of it.
It's not a paid ad -- it's functionality that we view as a reader service.
Eventually the implementation will be automated based on rules agreed to by the editors (e.g., how many companies in a story get the treatment; based on what selection criteria - frequency of mentions, etc.).
The instances that went up at the end of last week were put in as a test - to be able to show what the Company Insider does. Going forward, each story's editor will determine which companies in a given story get the link, based on their editorial judgment.
If the links prove too intrusive for readers, we may move them into a sidebar-like text box (e.g., companies in this story that you might be linked into).
I'd love the opportunity to discuss this with you before you post anything so I can better understand your concerns. I know this is a different kind of thing - and in our efforts to stay ahead of the curve with social networking and other online developments, we're moving fast and adjusting as we go.
Thanks for honoring the embargo -- however, I just learned from our marketing director that IDG PR had a different schedule from what she thought -- it's public now, so you are free to write about it if you want. I would, however, appreciate the opportunity to discuss before you do. You can call my cell anytime this afternoon/evening or in the morning before 9 at xxx-xxx-xxxx.

Fri, Apr 3, 2009 4:36 EDT

Like it

Posted by: Anonymous
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I too quite like it!
-SH
My blog

Innovation, Disruption and Riding the Waves of Change: CIO's New Partnership with LinkedIn

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