For the uninitiated, Pinterest is a dandy way to share images you like on the web. You just download their little “Pin It” button and then select images you like, pinning them to “boards” on your Pinterest page.

What has made Pinterest particularly pin-teresting is that women 25-34 are the most active users of the site. It has quickly become a hub for fashion, beauty and housewares, and savvy brands have already launched Pinterest pages to get into the conversation.

And predictably, there is some blowback. Pinterest essentially lives off the images uploaded to the web by others, so the big question is: is Pinterest trying to build a business solely on someone else’s intellectual property? On the other hand, so much of the web is about linking and sharing, where’s the harm to any individual copyright holder of an image being shown on Pinterest?

We’ll be discussing the way brands can capitalize on Pinterest on a Bulldog Reporter PR University webinar, and some of the possible speed bumps, on April 20.

The regulatory environment for financial services firms that sell their services to individuals and businesses is very strict, particularly around the kind of “loose talk” that is so common in social media. The companies employ very highly paid “compliance” officers, using trained and experienced corporate lawyers, whose job it is to say “no” to most of the kinds of marketing that unregulated companies use on a daily basis.

But to ignore social media marketing is to stay in the buggy-whip era when everyone else is moving to gas-powered cars.

How to get around the problem of strict regulation? One solid strategy is for financial services companies to create a library of approved content that staff members can tweet or blog or post on Facebook. Another is to use third-party software from players like Hearsay and SocialVolt that is built to allow Compliance to review social media posts before they go out. Firms such as Northwestern Mutual and Morgan Stanley are starting to test these sorts of initiatives.

But make no mistake — this is still a difficult industry to move in to the social media. Scary example: it’s not okay for a Facebook user to “like” a post by an investment adviser, as it constitutes illegal word-of-mouth marketing. I get the regulation, but sheesh, something is going to have to change, since social media isn’t going away.

The notion of a “window” is that there are good times and bad times to take a company public. It mainly has to do with the receptivity of capital markets investors to new issues by unproven companies. When they are in a buying mood, the window is said to be open, and vice versa.

The window has been all-but closed since about 2002 (it never slams shut, it just gets so small that only the strongest companies can get through, such as Google and more recently, LinkedIn). There was good reason, too — 2002 was when the dying embers of Internet bubble finally went out, and lots of people were feeling burned and in no mood to buy shares of unproven, unprofitable web 1.0 companies (furniture.com anyone?).

Now, though, memories have faded, the appetite for new issues has returned and a handful of companies such as Splunk, Infoblox, Workday and ServiceNow are getting ready to test the waters.

If this first batch is successful in going public, you can be sure that many more companies will file in a rush to take advantage.

Another thing: for now, Steve Jobs isn’t going anywhere. He’s still alive, as far as we know he is still involved in the company to the best of his abilities and energies, and I would guess that the last thing he will give up is offering his opinions and leadership regarding new product development.

But the sad fact is that Steve is likely very ill and may not be with us much longer. And then Apple will have to attempt to do something it has never successfully done: create and market hit technology products without Steve Jobs’ guidance.

From the Apple II in the 1970s to the iPad in 2010, everything great that has come out of Apple has been shepherded to the market by Steve Jobs. Apple’s track record after Steve was pushed out of the company by John Sculley in 1985 until his return as CEO in 1997? Zero hit products, death spiral, near bankruptcy.

Another fact to consider: Sculley was the hottest exec in the country when he took over Apple and has at least as much mojo as Tim Cook. Yet he couldn’t deliver. In Cook’s favor, of course, is that he has been deeply involved in Apple for years, unlike Sculley, who had no tech industry experience.

Meanwhile, during his exile Jobs founded Next Computer, which merely created the operating system that now powers the Mac, and built Pixar into the moviemaking powerhouse it is today.

Conclusion: Steve Jobs is a unique technology industry talent, and Apple has no track record producing hits without him. So we’ll see how they do as the future unfolds.

Marino introduced himself today to the 50,000+ subscribers of the peHUB Wire morning email with the following:

Hi everyone, I’m Jonathan Marino, the new editor for peHUB.com. To some of you, I am a familiar face–I spent the last three years covering deals, private equity and banking for SourceMedia’s M&A Journal. Additionally, I have written about a range of topics for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Post and The Washington Examiner, including investigative reports and homeland security coverage. I’ll have all my contact info posted soon, but for now, reach me at jmarino99@gmail.com.

In the next several months, you’ll be seeing a number of changes and enhancements to peHub.com and the daily Wire as we look to provide greater networking capabilities, more exclusive stories and more columns from experts and executives. I will also be reaching out to many of you to get ideas about how we can improve our service.

Side note: despite CNN/Fortune’s assertion that Primack would broaden his coverage well beyond private equity to the public markets, there is very little sign of that so far in his coverage, which reads just like it did under ThomsonReuters.

Meanwhile, peHUB has suffered in Primack’s absence, with its writers employing his quirky language (eg., “shameless plug,” “Monday Mouth-off”) but without his signature wit. Hopefully, Jon Marino will bring some new life back to what has been a great media outlet for private equity and VC news.

Charlene Li of Altimeter Group

Charlene Li, one of my favorite social media pundits, gave a speech at the PRSA International Conference this week and then gave a “press conference” to those of us (including me) who were designated “press” for the conference.

Li said that like most analysts, she is in the midst of developing her “outlook” report for 2011, and she gave us a preview in the press conference.

The two big trends Li is watching as the year winds down are:

1. the rise of “social data” and “social search” and
2. our evolving feelings regarding privacy and permissions in social media

On social data, Li is watching to see how all the volumes of data we are generating in social media are used. Marketers and others are quickly realizing that social media users are providing reams of valuabe information about brands, trends, likes and dislikes, but are just now starting to figure out how to gather and analyze it.

On privacy and permissions, Li sees us moving away from protecting our privacy and toward managing the permissions we give web sites and our contacts. She likened the transition to what happened when Caller ID was first introduced. Peoples’ first reaction was that it was an invasion of privacy, but after awhile, as they realized that it had value, it became more about giving people useful information that reduced life’s friction.

Charlene Li of Altimeter Group

Charlene Li, one of my favorite social media pundits, gave a speech at the PRSA International Conference this week and then gave a “press conference” to those of us (including me) who were designated “press” for the conference.

Li said that like most analysts, she is in the midst of developing her “outlook” report for 2011, and she gave us a preview in the press conference.

The two big trends Li is watching as the year winds down are:

1. the rise of “social data” and “social search” and
2. our evolving feelings regarding privacy and permissions in social media

On social data, Li is watching to see how all the volumes of data we are generating in social media are used. Marketers and others are quickly realizing that social media users are providing reams of valuabe information about brands, trends, likes and dislikes, but are just now starting to figure out how to gather and analyze it.

On privacy and permissions, Li sees us moving away from protecting our privacy and toward managing the permissions we give web sites and our contacts. She likened the transition to what happened when Caller ID was first introduced. Peoples’ first reaction was that it was an invasion of privacy, but after awhile, as they realized that it had value, it became more about giving people useful information that reduced life’s friction.

viagra

That she had wifi access deep in the recesses of the Washington Hilton was remarkable enough, since none of the rest of us in the room had it. She apparently had an access code from one of the people in the room [I'm not making this up].

At the Washington Hilton, the only place with free wifi access is the lobby. As we were waiting for Sandra’s presentation to get on track as she dealt with a frozen computer and balky Internet access, an attendee behind me grumbled, “We paid $1,000 to attend this conference, and they couldn’t give us wifi?”

I bolted from the room [sorry, Sandra] and came up here, logged on and pulled up Sandra’s presentation on SlideShare. I’ll review it when I have a chance and can always ping her if I have a question. I was just getting ready to blast PRSA for not offering free wifi when I saw PRSA CEO William Murray across the room. So I went up to Bill and shared my complaint, and his response was simple: the Hilton wanted $200,000 for free wifi for the four-day conference.

Whaaaat??

It’s true. Bill pointed out the contract with the Hilton had been signed years ago, before ubiquitous wifi became the norm. And the Hilton, for reasons I don’t care to explore, apparently wouldn’t budge given the new realities. So PRSA is between a rock and a hard place. He said that starting next year in Orlando, they were able to negotiate free wifi into the contract and that it should be the norm in future years as well.

Why is this important? Because with the likes of Starbuck and McDonald’s providing free wifi, along with countless other locations, people have come to expect that they will be able to log-on when they want to. They don’t want to have to run to the lobby bar as I did. They don’t want to be offline in a room while someone is talking about Internet tools.

This is not a trend. This is already present reality and a given for the future. I give PRSA a pass on it this year given Murray’s explanation, but going forward, it’s a no-brainer.

Unfortunately for PRSA, this vote told me that the association is even more entrenched in its business-as-usual way of doing things than I thought. Further, it told me that a broad cross-section of the association isn’t prepared to embrace the present and future of communications and engagement.

PRSA formally created the “Leadership Assembly” last year as an acknowledgement of the need for broader input into the association’s future role in PR and communications. The Board is supposed to seek advice and counsel from the assembly, as opposed to its prior role of simply doing the legal business of a membership organization. Along those lines, the formal business of the assembly was limited to the first half of the day today, followed by a discussion of the near-term future of the PR industry in the afternoon.

As noted by the advocates of the resolution, the electronic discussion group gives the Board the ability to consult the Leadership Assembly throughout the year, but it didn’t do so. The authors, tech-savvy PR people from Boston and the Bay Area, hoped that the resolution would help move the association in that direction. It didn’t happen.

[2010 PRSA International Conference]

The voted ended a passionate and looong debate this year for and against this change. To summarize, those for the amendment felt that removing the requirement would open board leadership to a much larger pool of candidates, while those against argued that holding an APR demonstrates the necessary commitment to the profession and the society.

I voted for the change, twice actually, as I held a proxy for our chapter’s other vote. I did so at the direction of the PRSA Silicon Valley board, which voted to support the amendment.

What made this debate interesting to me is that it encapsulated many wider issues in the transformation and evolution of the PR industry. From my point of view, those arguing against the amendment (at least those who spoke or wrote publicly) were largely motivated by a desire to slow change, to affirm their support for “the way things are” and to support the APR accreditation as a symbol of PR expertise.

On the other side, those supporting the amendment seemed to be crying out for the organization to modernize, to open its leadership to a wider pool of candidates, and to recognize that “public relations” as a profession and marketing function is rapidly evolving.

In the end, I think the amendment lost because it addressed a narrow issue, the APR requirement, rather than rewriting the entire “minimum requirements” bylaw altogether. In addition to the APR requirement, the minimum requirements still call for potential Board members to have served as a chapter or section board member or, at a minimum, to have been in the profession for 20 years.

As a membership organization, the only *minimum* requirement for board service should be that the person be a PRSA member for a minimum of 2-3 years. Such a low threshold would allow anyone with a demonstrated commitment to the organization to run for office, only barring insurgents seeking for some reason to take over the organization.

Why the bare minimum? Because the nomination and election process is the proper place to vet qualifications for leadership, not the bylaws. The pool should be as wide as possible, thus hopefully turning the election itself into an opportunity to debate and discuss the future of the organization and the profession.

If there’s anyone out there worrying about the business efficacy of this organization, I recommend that you take this vote as a warning sign of a hidebound association that may be too slow to change to meet the needs of tomorrow’s PR and marketing professionals.

[2010 PRSA International Conference]