Question from Geoff and Qui: In social media campaigns, so many efforts rely on the tools and the technologies, as opposed to a bonafide communications strategy.   Why is a strategy important for your social media effort.  Further, why is it so important to research the social web community to inform your strategy?  Please limit your answers to 500 words and cite sources (using hyperlinks or traditional end notes).

Strategy is not only the framework that defines your communications plan, but also the benchmark upon which you measure your success. Far from being a plan to execute, strategy is about the big picture – choosing an approach to the communications problem at hand. It answers the questions of how and why, not who and what.

On the other hand, tactics are the who and what of your plan. What message are you sending, through what channel, and to whom? To understand why this is the action being taken, the strategy must be referred to.

However, selecting the best strategy is not a straightforward process and varies by situation. For example, communicating with a group of teenagers requires a very different approach from a reaching out to working moms. We know this instinctively, but how does one determine the correct strategy for approaching them? The answer is always research.

Teenagers tend to be very active in the social media space, particularly on social networks, instant messaging applications, and SMS. But a recent report from the Pew Internet and American Life Project suggests that teens do not consider their online social activities to be “writing.” How successful would a letter-writing campaign targeted at teens be if this kind of information was not included in an analysis? In fact, this data should inform the development of a more effective strategy that achieves the overall objective.

This is particularly true in the social media world where tactics may change drastically in a three month period. The rise of Twitter over the past year illustrates this concept. Any social media campaign launched in July 2007 based upon tactics would have completely missed the boat with Twitter. Nature Conservancy succeeded in 2008 using L’il Green Patch, a Facebook application as a tactic to achieve fundraising and awareness goals, but 2009’s Twestival in support of Charity: water  succeeded by activating people through Twitter, not Facebook. While this may reflect a change in the popularity of different tools, it could also reflect the different audiences activated by the campaigns.

Similarly, the recent kerfuffle over Motrin’s “baby wearing” advertisement for aspirin that outraged mommy bloggers illustrates that Motrin did not do enough research. Before launching a social media asset, Motrin should have known who were the key influencers among its audience. This research would have shown them that mommy bloggers are an influential group, and that they use a range of social media tools including Twitter.

Regardless of whether a given campaign includes social media elements, all communications activities should be rooted in a strategy-development process that includes research.

With 2008 as The First Campaign of the web 2.0 age, it’s interesting to look at how different campaigns are using social media. By now, we all know that Obama has an advantage over McCain simply because he personally has some familiarity with email and the Internet. Obama is tweeting (or rather, members of his campaign staff are), but McCain doesn’t have an official feed. Someone has set up a twitter feed from the John McCain polfeed site, but this does not demonstrate a commitment to social media.

Tom OKeefe demonstrates how stark the web 2.0 differences are across the board:

But what about smaller campaigns that don’t have the staff and money of a Presidential campaign?

Going down the list of states with Senate races, here’s what I found on Twitter*:

Alaska
Ted Stevens (R) v. Mark Begich (D)
Stevens has no presence. Begich’s feed features his blog posts (45 updates & 85 followers). There’s a second Begich feed that appears to be anti-Begich (10 updates & 18 followers).

Colorado
Bob Schaffer (R) v. Mark Udall (D)
Schaffer has an account, but nothing on it. Udall has 74 followers, but seems to only be posting every 2 months or so.

Maine
Susan Collins (R) v. Tom Allen (D)
One anti-Allen feed, only 7 updates.

Minnesota
Norm Coleman (R) v. Al Franken (D)
If Franken is priming his audience, I think it’s about time he get on stage. He’s got 166 followers and no posts. On the other hand, FrankenSense (pro) and FranklyFranken (anti) may be picking up the slack for him.

New Hampshire
John Sununu (R) v. Jeanne Shaheen (D)
Shaheen has an impressive 628 followers, 60 updates, but strangely is following 4,139. What’s up with that? I randomly checked 4 of the people she’s following and none were from New Hampshire.

New Mexico
Steve Pearce (R) v. Tom Udall (D)
Udall has 139 followers, and tweets like a genuine person:

Taking questions from the New Mexico Farm and Livestock Bureau in Mescalero, NM. Met J.W., who was in my dad’s WWII squadron!

1 day ago from web

@crystal: thanks for all your hard work fixing this! 11:36 AM July 24, 2008 from web in reply to crystal

North Carolina
Elizabeth Dole (R) v. Kay Hagan (D)
Dole has a profile, but no posts yet. Hagan has a negative feed against her only set up this month. 5 followers to date.

Oregon
Gordon Smith (R) v. Jeff Merkley
Interestingly, there’s a negative feed against Merkley that appears to be from the Democratic primary. It hasn’t been updated in 3 months.

Virginia
Jim Gilmore (R) v. Mark Warner (D)
Warner’s got 187 followers and is keeping a running log of his activities.

*I left the race off if neither candidate had a Twitter account.

But just the stats don’t give us the whole picture. Social media is about having a conversation. Are any of these tweeting politicians actually doing that? Tom Udall’s feed certainly takes full advantage of Twitter as a social media tool. He (or his campaign staff?) are even interacting with Twitter support staff.

Michael Whitney at TechPresident points us to an interesting example of sub-optimal use of Twitter – libertarian Presidential candidate Bob Barr. Unfortunately, the tone of the tweets is too advertorial, so it may not work to his advantage:

Please check out my new video and pass it on to your friends http://tinyurl.com/6n7acg

2 days ago from web

http://tinyurl.com/626kgw 01:11 PM July 13, 2008 from web
Please Tell People About Me And Recommend That They Follow Me On Twitter! www.twitter.com/bobbarr2008 ~ Thanks 08:14 PM July 10, 2008 from web
Please pass this link on http://tinyurl.com/5vvlh9 08:13 PM July 10, 2008 from web
McBama two sides of the same coin – Please digg http://tinyurl.com/5vvlh9 08:08 PM July 10, 2008 from web
Please tell all your friends about me and check out my website www.bobbarr2008.com 08:04 PM July 08, 2008 from web

War. Huh. What is it good for?

Let’s take a look at war’s tag cloud from the view of traditional publications and online social media publications. I would predict before running this analysis that the more traditional print publications would be more theoretical with big ideas, while the social media publications would focus more on today’s wars. (Note: the results from Technorati, Youtube & Google are recommended searches or tags from the search engines themselves and are not tag clouds.)

Let’s see how well my prediction works:

Mirriam Webster’s definition of war looks like this as a tag cloud:

Encyclopedia Britannica’s tag cloud for war looks like this:

When I search Technorati for blogs tagged with war, it suggests the following tags are related:

iraq politics bush terrorism israel news iran middle east military lebanon

Youtube’s search results for war recommend that I also try:

Google’s related searches include:

vietnam war peloponnesian war war definition world war 1

According to a tagcloud from Wikipedia, war is:

There are some interesting results here. The dictionary and encyclopedia provided largely expected results. Wikipedia’s also seem fairly similar, with some surprising entries. For example, “youth” is one of the key words in the cloud, perhaps reflecting more of a social commentary about war (that it’s often the young who are sent).

The other social media results come from related searches, and as such display a different kind of information. These are terms that are often associated with war by users while tagging their content or by users searching on the term “war”. Technorati’s list of related tags provides an overview recent and ongoing wars.

On the other hand, Google’s suggested searches focus on older wars. Perhaps with the plethora of information about today’s wars from news outlets and blogs, fewer people are using search to find information about contemporary wars.

Youtube has particularly interesting results in its recommended searches, and also in the videos that are returned for the search. Most of the recommended searches refer to video games and movies. Nearly all of the videos that are returned in the top 20 for this search are for video games, comedy routines, or songs. The lone exception is the following; a song that plays to images from the Iraq war:

On the other hand, searching for “Iraq” in Youtube, nearly all of the videos in the top 20 are related to the war (with the possible exception of 2 videos on Marines seeing UFOs in Iraq).

Interestingly, a search for “Iraq” in Technorati pulls up mostly posts about politics in the U.S. In fact both of the searches on “war” and “Iraq” pull up headlines from the Politics section of the site.

As promised (though late, again), I’ve done a quick analysis of the websites dedicated to Western Sahara. Unfortunately, I was not able to find much that was relevant in the blogosphere by searching for Moroccan Sahara, so I’ve opened the scale of this a bit (!) wider to websites that come up in the first page of a Google search.

Before I get to that, what I did find interesting in the blogosphere were the videos. This was something I hadn’t explored much when I did my earlier Technorati search on Western Sahara. A search for “Western Sahara” brings up videos on culture, news, and the conflict.

A search for “Moroccan Sahara” has some videos on culture and several on travel, but most focus on the conflict.

My Google searches presented similar results to this. “Western Sahara” brings up official country information sources like the CIA World Factbook and a Google map of the region. The remainder of the links on the first page of results seem generally pro-self governance, but are certainly not propaganda.

“Moroccan Sahara” is, again, full of travel links. They’ve clearly won the tourism war. As expected, there is no official country information associated with this search (it would all be under Morocco), but there are 2 other links of interest: www.moroccansahara.net and www.westernsaharaonline.net. They are both pro-Morocco. I find it interesting that Western Sahara Online does not appear on the first page of the “Western Sahara” search.

Finally, a Google search for “Polisario“, the Sahwari movement for independence, includes many news articles and pro-idependence links.

It’s interesting to see that while the pro-Moroccan propaganda forces have cornered the search market for Moroccan Sahara, they have had no success breaking into the top results for either Western Sahara or Polisario. Significantly, none of this has spilled over to affect “Morocco“.

Over the past several weeks since my first post on Big Brother Google, I’ve grown increasingly uncomfortable with the impact Google has – or could have – on my life.

The web has largely been an open space for users in the United States and Europe, as I talked about in my earlier post. Google’s free services add to the utility of and our enjoyment of using the Internet. But the first thing that starts to worry me is the sheer number of brands under the Google umbrella. Simply Google presents their various brands, some home-grown, others purchased. It’s quite an impressive list.

To discover this full list on Google’s own site is impossible. At least not without some serious digging.

One of the interesting links from Simply Google is to the Google Foundation.

Google.org aspires to use the power of information and technology to address the global challenges of our age: climate change, poverty and emerging disease. In collaboration with experienced partners working in each of these fields, we will invest our resources and tap the strengths of Google’s employees and global operations to advance five major initiatives: Develop Renewable Energy Cheaper Than Coal (RE<C), RechargeIT, Predict and Prevent, Inform and Empower to Improve Public Services, and Fuel the Growth of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises.

I really like this idea, and I tend to be far more comfortable when companies have clearly named foundations associated with them. Then consumers know where their money goes and everything seems far more above board.

And I think that’s a big part of what has been bothering me with Google – transparency. Robert Scoble has an interesting post on this and sums it up nicely with:

I think Google has to be very transparent, very warm, and very open when it comes to privacy and the data it’s collecting on all of us and to many of us it’s coming across as closed, cold, and opaque.

And we all know the history with Microsoft being closed, cold, and opaque.

That’s one side of my growing unease. But the other is how much we’re coming to rely on the company. I have 2 gmail accounts (and am considering setting up a third just for this blog). I use their calendar to keep my schedule and their reader to read the ridiculous number of feeds I subscribe to. I do nearly all of my searches on Google, as does 70% of the rest of the US.

Putting aside privacy fears, the big problem with this is that Google holds us all hostage. I’m not suggesting the company will do anything ‘evil’, but a very real concern for me is that these services will do down or otherwise not be available when I need them. This happened earlier this month when Google Docs went down for about 45 minutes. In the past, my gmail account(s) have been unavailable for extended periods of time. While this hasn’t happened in the last 2 years, it’s still a concern, especially because I have been using one of my accounts for work (and yet gmail is still far more reliable than the email system at work).

The third factor that’s creeping me out is the recent ruling in the Viacom/YouTube case. Even if Google doesn’t use the data it gathers from us for evil, someone else may access it through subpoenas or by hacking their systems (it’s not impossible).

Despite all of this, I still really like a lot of Google’s tools and plan to keep using them. They’re generally reliable (even though they have never promised me their services will be available for as long as I want them), well-designed, and very useful.

WAMU, my local NPR station, recently launched it’s own social network powered by Ning. Creatively called “The Conversation” (perhaps a shout-out to Joseph Jaffe), it’s touted as a way for listeners to add to the news coverage. It’s obviously also a way for WAMU to keep listeners engaged, not only promoting their programming, but also providing additional opportunities to give.

I commend WAMU for seeking feedback from their listeners. This is an important business function gained from social media, and it’s what consumers now expect. I am far more likely to contact them online, than by calling in to provide a comment. But I’m not sure that I would be an avid enough commenter/participant to want to sign up and join a community around this.

But I thought I would check it out, support my local NPR station, and maybe learn a thing or two as well.

Brendan Sweeney, a producer at WAMU, posted a question about rising food prices on May 15th. There are now 14 replies, including replies to replies by Sweeney. Some of the topics suggested are pretty interesting: Carlito, a non-WAMU employee brought up the idea of high fructose corn syrup being the basis of our cheap food in the US. Sweeney and colleague Kay discuss some interesting angles on high fructose corn syrup, and Jo Arpee chimes in with the full contact information for a nutrition expert at the University of Maryland.

This info raised my suspicions that Arpee might be a press officer at University of Maryland, but a quick Google search suggests she’s a nutritionist herself. Sweeney and Kay’s initial public discussion does spark further comments and gets members of the public involved.

It seems the original discussion originated out of an episode of the Kojo Nnamdi show that aired on April 10th.

Kojo Nnamdi Show: The Global Impact of Rising Food Prices – April 10, 2008

They followed it up with a show on June 2nd: Kojo Nnamdi Show: Local Effects of Rising Global Food Prices – June 2, 2008 So Sweeney’s original post makes a lot of sense.

If you take time to listen to the segment, you’ll see that the high fructose corn syrup is part of the lead to the story and part of the explanation of the economics of school lunch menus by Susan Levin. Really fascinating stuff. Another user comment on organics developed into a guest on the show who talks about developing a $60/week organic food budget.

From this one example, I’m happily surprised by the impact WAMU’s Conversation is having on its programming. I now plan to join The Conversation at wamu.org!

What is it like to live in a region largely at peace but without government? We’ve heard many stories about war torn regions where there is little to no government control, but what about those places that actually don’t have a government at all?

Western Sahara has existed in this state since the 1960s when it was released from Spanish colonization. “Release” is the best word I can come up with, as control of the territory has been disputed since that time. The United Nations has listed it as a Non-Self-Governing Territory since that time. With little pressure to resolve the dispute from the outside world, the two opposing governments of Western Sahara (Morocco and the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic – SADR) vie for recognition from other countries.

So what are Sahrawi bloggers saying?

New Sahrawi Satellite TV Station
I started over at Global Voices, and discovered they just began coverage of Western Sahara on July 5th. Their first highlight notes a brand-new TV station run by the SADR or SADR-sympathizers (I’m not entirely clear which). This seems to be the first one, so it’s interesting to see how the blogosphere reacts to this. This post, which pulls from (an translates) the Arabic Western Sahara blog, now has 29 comments – most of which are positive about the new station.

I found one of the comments (actually #29) particularly interesting:

Mohamed, mohamed and Agaila, you and your supporters were alone on the Internet since more than a decade to support separatism in Western Sahara. Now, that the Moroccans especially the sahraouis are aware of the impact of such a media, your sole aim is to discredit the arguments of unionist sahraouis on Internet by qualifying them as members of DST…

What I find so interesting is that this person is suggesting that one side in the sovereignty dispute dominated the online space for several years.

Natural Resources & Human Rights
Onward through the blogosphere, my Technorati search on Western Sahara brings me 612 posts. The relevant ones in English (that aren’t spam/advertising blogs) focus on resource disputes and human rights violations. There was an interesting post on politics and one of the plans put forth to resolve the dispute by Nick Brooks, a climate scientist who studies the Sahara desert. In fact his posts categorized under Western Sahara are all quite interesting and provide his personal experience grappling with the dispute. Most of these posts are written by people outside of Western Sahara, so with the exception of the last one, they don’t quite provide the internal perspective I was looking for.

Interestingly, the launch of the Global Voices Western Sahara blog garnered quite a bit of attention. I guess GV does play an important role in make voices heard.

The View from Western Sahara
Luckily, many of the comments on GV posted linked to their favorite Western Sahara blogs. Here’s what is out there:

• Unfortunately, I don’t speak Spanish, but Saha blogs aggregates over 20 Spanish-language blogs on Western Sahara. From what I can understand (thanks to French and Latin), there is a range of topics – from human rights to a poetry festival to something about the prime minister of Spain.
• Another Spanish-language blog by Aziza Brahim, a Sahrawi singer, shows some of the culture of the territory. Again, I can’t understand much, but I believe she just performed in Madrid.
• One Hump or Two? is a fantastic name and a blog about the Western Sahara by a fellow Washingtonian. Will Sommer comments on the latest news affecting Western Sahara, including a recent attack on a Sahwari human rights activist. Sommer has gotten a many comments from Sahrawis praising him for his coverage and providing additional details about some of his postings. Sommer’s perspective is that Morocco oppresses the territory through its occupation.
• Le Sahara Occidental Occupe also reports on “occupied” Western Sahara. The perspective is definitely Algerian (which is pro-SADR), thus the French coverage. There is strong reporting on political developments, and particularly disturbing images of torture.
• Sahara Occidental – Western Sahara aggregates news and provides links in English, Spanish, and French. It includes links to news reports from Morocco, but takes the SADC side.
• Free Western Sahara is written by an ex-patriot who has never seen her homeland. It’s an aggregation of video and images of Western Sahara, and conveys a strong sense of nostalgia. Posts are in both English and Spanish.

Many of these blogs are from the SADR perspective. That certainly backs up the comment from GV. But I wonder whether this is an artifact of searching for “Western Sahara.” Are there pro-Moroccan blogs that would turn up under different search terms?

The Internet is supposed to change the entire world, but I’m still waiting for it to change my healthcare.

Well, that is a bit of an overstatement. My doctor and all of the physicians in her practice use electronic medical records (EMRs) to keep patient records. In fact, since the day I first saw her, I’ve never had a paper record at her office. She comes in with her mini-laptop, plugs it into the cord that’s in every patient room, and quickly runs through my most recent list of prescriptions to make sure she’s got everything up to date. Yeah, she rocks my world.

But I read a couple of interesting articles recently about the Internet revolutionizing healthcare delivery. The first described what I would imagine the future of primary care will be – going to the see the doctor online. It failed. Miserably. The WSJ Health Blog reported:

At Brewer’s office the technical end works as promised, but patients don’t really seem interested. They don’t want to pay the (usually unreimbursed) $30 for the online visit with Brewer, and they’s rather just send a regular email, even though it’s vulnerable to snooping.

Before I get into the mechanics of this, let me first say that I’m disappointed that the WSJ would cop out this much – they’re reporting on Dr. Brewer, who happens to be a columnist for the Journal. They do disclose this in the posting, but it just makes me less interested in the story. I mean, if he’s a columnist for them, let him write the story himself, don’t “report” on it.

Anyways, Brewer and his colleagues have an “expensive” website ($1800 a year) that they can no longer afford to maintain because patients aren’t using their $30 a pop online visits. I’ve got a lot of issues with claiming that “patients don’t really seem interested.” There are a lot more questions that need to be answered about this story:

• What kind of private practice can’t afford spending $1800 a year on their website? And in what world does that count as an “expensive” professional website? Granted, the group is also paying per transaction, but that shouldn’t be a problem for them right now if they don’t have many transactions!
• Is Forrest, IL the right place to test this kind of initiative? Are people very spread out so getting to the doctor’s office isn’t easy? Or is it a very urban environment like DC where people don’t have time to get to the doctor?
• What kind of promotion did the practice do for this site? Were their patients aware that it existed?
• Is the patient population in for Forrest Family Practice a tech savvy group? Are they comfortable using the internet to communicated with their doctor?

Brewer created a forum on the WSJ site to ask about people’s opinion about email with their doctors. Generally, the response was pretty positive – the big exception being doctors worried about liability.

So is it too crazy to think about virtual doctor’s visits? Apparently not in the UK.

Cancer Research UK, a cancer charity somewhat similar to the American Cancer Society (ACS) in the US, has launched Cancer Chat, “a forum with a difference.” It’s an online forum like many others dedicated to talking about your experience with cancer. The difference is that this forum is moderated. They’re calling it “an information safety net.” I call it moderated because they’ve got a team of staff members making sure patients are not subjected to false information or quack cures. This isn’t a bad thing, let’s just call it what it is.

The really interesting thing is that the website doesn’t trumpet this fact. Patients and caregivers use the internet to share experiences with one another. They also search for information about diagnoses, treatments, and more. For both of these, users seek assurances that information is accurate. So I would think that the moderation would be a big selling point. Strange that they don’t take more advantage of it.

Anyways, it will be interesting to see how Cancer Chat works in the long term. Looking at the discussions thus far, it doesn’t look like it’s been so successful yet. After a week, the symptoms, testing and diagnosis section has 4 topics with a grand total of 23 posts.

The good folks at the Environmental Protection Agency are, administration willing, keeping us safe from killing our own planet. But they are also, apparently, a very eclectic group of people. According to Virgil Griffith’s WikiScanner, users of EPA IP addresses are interested in everything from 117 (the number, not the year) to ZOOM, a children’s television series I have never heard of.

While I find it notable (for lack of another term) that anyone would posit that 117 is the average number of times a woman has sex in a year, apparently the dutiful EPA employee who made that edit to Wikipedia failed to provide a reference, so it was removed a mere 15 minutes later.

This same user has made 110 edits within the timespan cached on WikiScanner. While many of them seem to be as random as 117 and ZOOM, others are exactly what I was looking for:

Additions made:

Air conditioner

HCFCs in turn are being phased out under the [[Montreal Protocol]] and replaced by hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), such as R-410A, which lack chlorine.

Clean Water Act

The Act also prohibits potentially harmful spills of oil and certain hazardous substances.

E-waste

* [http://http://www.epa.gov/ecycling/] – The US Environmental Protection Agency’s ‘eCycling’ program.

All of these, as well as numerous smaller corrections and updates, seem to indicate that these edits were made as this individual used Wikipedia and found errors or opportunities to contribute his own knowledge. This is precisely in line with Wikipedia’s goals.

Now let’s look at another individual IP. Based on the technical edits to aromatic hydrocarbons, I’m going to assume this is a scientist. His taste in movies trends toward the classics, he can’t resist Karl Rove bashing, and he’s definitely a Cornell alumn. As I dig deeper, I realize he also has a vandalism problem.

On the whole, there does not seem to be any overt EPA-related non-NPOV editing by EPA staff members. Most of the edits from EPA computers were made by these two users (1148 out of 1449), whose eclectic interests tell more about themselves than their employer. In fact, I now even know the first guy’s name. Oops!

I find myself clinging to something that is likely to soon be a very outdated notion. I want to compose in Word (or really, just any decent word processor – Open Office’s version is fine). 

The concept of authoring an article for publication directly in design software is laughable. I’d just never do that. The programs are too flaky, they don’t allow you to track changes, they may not have spellcheck built in, and page views are just generally not set up to allow easy text editing. So I write in Word.

This is as true for print publications as it is for web publications. The site I manage at work is developed in Dreamweaver, and I just copy my text from Word and paste it into the relevant template. My graphic designer does the same thing for our print publications, copying the text of my articles from Word files into InDesign pages.

I’m realizing that’s so archaic. I’m currently evaluating several content management systems (CMSs). I want to transition my site out of Dreamweaver and into a rationally organized easy system that allows my non-technical users to enter and edit content themselves. And the CMSs all expect you to do your composition in their WSYIWYG editors which overcome all of those arguments I had earlier on.

I say expect because no-one has figured out a decent way to import formatted Word documents into a webpage without breaking your CSS. Essentially, if you just copy and paste from Word to your web-based editor, the formatting gets very weird. So the solution is simply to compose in your CMS.

And as I think about it, I agree. It really doesn’t make sense to compose in one program with the specific intention of publishing that text in another, especially when there are such big conversion issues. The added benefits of doing this are the workflow of approvals and publishing can be built into the system – no emailing files around and wondering who has the current version. This is streamlining the business process for composition and web publishing.

But I can’t get over the fear of my document getting eaten by the system. I want a soft copy backup on a hard drive attached to my computer. Even though I will make any post-pasting edits to the document in the CMS, immediately making my Word document out of date, I still want to know that I’ve got that backup. Even though the CMS will have rollbacks and redundancies, I still want to know I’ve got it on my computer. It’s completely irrational.

I think it’s a holdover from the days when documents did disappear. I often had power outages at home when I was a kid, so I got in the habit of saving my work every 30 seconds. Even then, sometimes the file was just gone. So the idea of composing a long, considered article into a form on a webpage is frightening.

The irony is that I am typing this directly into my WordPress WYSWYG editor in my web browser. It saves my work every 3 minutes or so, and I can hit the save button myself. I can undo and redo what I’ve typed, and I can view the document editor in full screen if I need to. I feel completely comfortable blogging in this space, but I’m not quite ready to take the plunge with the items I write for work. I’ll probably get it over it pretty quickly though…I’ll take anything that makes my life easier!