Education And Training

By SARAH E. NEEDLEMAN

Sylvester Chisom began paying a consultant last summer to blog on Twitter, post status updates on Facebook and run marketing campaigns on both sites for his auto-detailing business.

He thinks the service, which costs $450 a month, is worth it. “It’s just better having somebody else dedicated to thinking of stuff to put up,” says Mr. Chisom, co-owner of Showroom Shine Express Detailing LLC in St. Louis.

Some small-business owners, overwhelmed by the time commitment required of marketing their products and services via social media, are hiring consultants to lend a hand. But the price of such support can vary widely based on the extent of work involved, and many entrepreneurs with already meager resources for marketing and advertising may need to think carefully before taking on the extra cost.

The start-up 3 Green Angels, for example, charges clients a $400 fee to organize Twitter parties — real-time discussions on specific topics. Everywhere LLC, another specialty firm in Atlanta, charges clients up to $20,000 to arrange three streaming video press conferences led by popular bloggers.

Other agencies simply tack on social-media support as part of a package of advertising and public-relations services. Red Square Agency Inc., in Mobile, Ala., charges clients around $200 an hour, and ThinkInk LLC charges $10,000 to $20,000 a month for the integrated services.

Showroom Shine’s Mr. Chisom says he’s received several inquiries from potential customers who said they learned about his company through a recent promotion on Facebook. Revenue and traffic to his company’s Web site are up slightly from this time last month, he adds.

But Jonathan Zadok, co-owner of the Coffee Groundz LLC in Houston, says he wouldn’t pay another firm to blog on behalf of the four-year-old café.

“The idea with Twitter is that you get close to an immediate response,” he says. With an in-house person handling it, “there’s no middle man that has to go check with the company,” he says.

Mr. Zadok says last fall Coffee Groundz’s general manager, J.R. Cohen, set up profiles for the café on Twitter and Facebook. Customers started tweeting orders and special requests such as booth reservations, and in-store events promoted on the sites drew crowds three times as large as those previously advertised through signs and other traditional means.

Mr. Cohen, 31 years old, says he simultaneously posts blog entries on Twitter, Facebook and his employer’s Web site three times a day, often from his BlackBerry. He receives text-message and email alerts whenever messages are posted to Coffee Groundz’s feed so he can respond, if necessary, in a timely manner.

Mr. Cohen taught himself how to use Twitter and Facebook in about a month despite being someone who’s “not tech savvy at all,” he says. He estimates he devotes no more than 30 minutes a day to managing his employer’s presence on social media. “That’s really all you need,” he says.

Larry Chiagouris, professor of marketing at Lubin School of Business at Pace University, says it makes sense for some companies to pay for help to quickly learn social-media basics. But to use sites like Twitter and Facebook effectively, he says small firms typically need to be in control to show they are legitimate and sincere. “Unless a third party lives with you a long time, they can’t do that very well,” he says.

Some small-business owners say they are paying only for training and will eventually take full responsibility for managing their companies’ day-to-day presence on social media. Still, others say they need continuous support for handling certain tasks and promotions because they lack the necessary manpower and expertise.

Back of the House USA LLC, a St. Petersburg, Fla., provider of back-office support to solo entrepreneurs, falls into the latter category. Founder Erik Vonk says he and the firm’s 12 employees are getting “technical guidance” in using social media from consultants at Everywhere. But he adds that any opinions expressed on the sites “are ours.”

Back of the House has been paying Everywhere a monthly retainer since the spring and expects the social-media training to wrap up late next month. Afterward, Everywhere’s consultants will continue to help the firm take advantage of social media by organizing special promotions, monitoring what’s being said about the company and more.

The service is costing Back of the House between $5,000 and $15,000 a month (Mr. Vonk declined to be more specific).

So far Mr. Vonk says the investment is paying off. “I’m learning enormous amounts about how social media work, where to find the right software, how to search, what lingo to use, etc.,” he says.

Write to Sarah E. Needleman at sarah.needleman@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page B5

By LARRY BLUMENFELD

Derek Bermel recalled the moment things went awry in 2006 during rehearsals for his composition “The Migration Series.” Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis had commissioned the piece, which paired the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra and the American Composers Orchestra. All seemed well until the musicians reached a section marked by contrapuntal rhythms.

“I knew something was wrong,” Mr. Bermel, a composer, conductor and clarinetist, said in an interview. “I felt the jazz band and the symphony orchestra pulling apart. The orchestra was going with the conductor, and the jazz band was going with the rhythm section—piano, bass and drums.”

Mr. Bermel solved the problem by reassigning parts in his score. “Right then, I began to think about how a composer builds hybridity into a piece of music,” he said. “How can awareness of the separate cultures of jazz and classical music fit into one musical architecture?”

Those are among the challenges addressed by the second class of the three-year-old Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute, which connects composers working primarily in jazz with symphony orchestras to seek a deepened context for such collaboration. The JCOI will present the first of three public readings of new symphonic works by these composers on Tuesday and Wednesday at Kleinhans Music Hall, in Buffalo, N.Y., with the Buffalo Philharmonic (there will be readings with the ACO at Columbia University’s Miller Theater June 3 and 4, and with the La Jolla Symphony and Chorus, at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Auditorium, Sept. 19 and 20). Thus concludes a process begun in August, when 37 composers attended a weeklong series of workshops and seminars at UCLA’s Herb Alpert School of Music (17 of them now get the chance to work directly with orchestras).

Jazz and classical worlds have long intersected. Pianist James P. Johnson and saxophonist Ornette Coleman composed for symphony orchestras. George Gershwin and Leonard Bernstein incorporated jazz elements into orchestral works. Gunther Schuller proposed a “Third Stream”—somewhere between classical music and jazz—more than a half-century ago.

If that vision hasn’t exactly materialized, quite a few jazz musicians have worked lately in classical contexts. For Maria Schneider’s latest CD, “Winter Morning Walks,” with opera singer Dawn Upshaw, the composer-arranger conducted the St. Paul and Australian chamber orchestras. Saxophonist Wayne Shorter has recently composed for and performed with both the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Orpheus Chamber Orchestra. Earlier this month, pianist Marcus Roberts performed an original piano concerto with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. Wadada Leo Smith’s “Ten Freedom Summers,” which paired the trumpeter’s jazz quartet with a chamber orchestra, was a 2013 Pulitzer Prize finalist for music.

The JCOI, created in 2010, grew from conversations between George Lewis (then head of Columbia University’s Center for Jazz Studies) and Michael Geller, the ACO’s executive director. Mr. Lewis’s celebrated work as a trombonist and composer demonstrates his ability to think beyond genre. “The word ‘jazz’ is not going to hold me back from doing what I want to do with a set of instruments,” he said. “Still, there is a professional and socially constituted jazz field, and people identified with that field don’t usually have access to an orchestra.” If the JCOI fills a practical need, Mr. Geller thinks it extends both ways. “This program means an influx of music that is completely contemporary and offers a different perspective,” he said.

Beyond opportunity, the program immerses musicians in the symphonic world. The workshop week—”a boot camp for musical modernists,” Mr. Lewis called it— included a survey of symphonic innovation since about 1970, which Mr. Lewis thinks is too often overlooked. (He said that Gérard Grisey’s “Partiels,” composed in 1975, elicited “37 mouths open in astonishment at the same time.”) There was practical instruction of many sorts. Harpist Anne LeBaron demonstrated her instrument’s possibilities. An orchestra librarian shared the cost of an orchestra rehearsal (roughly $300 per minute).

Inevitably, issues of jazz aesthetics arose. Courtney Bryan, a 30-year-old pianist who studied jazz in her native New Orleans and classical music at Oberlin Conservatory in Ohio, asked about “strategies to notate the feeling of improvisation, without asking musicians to improvise.” Mr. Bermel, who, as the ACO’s creative adviser, worked closely with Mr. Lewis on the workshops, stressed one essential truth. “In a symphony orchestra, rhythm and momentum are driven by the strings,” he said. “Most people don’t realize that.”

At his apartment in Brooklyn, N.Y., bassist Gregg August pulled out the score to his piece “Una Rumba Sinfonica,” which will be played in Buffalo. “This middle section came out of Derek’s statement about the strings,” he said as he pointed out measures in which deconstructed polyrhythms drawn from Afro-Cuban music are scored for violins, violas and cellos. Mr. August, principal bassist with the Brooklyn Philharmonic, is best known for his work in jazz and Latin groups. His JCOI proposal described his belief that “Cuban rumba can inspire an entirely new way of writing for orchestra.”

In preparation for orchestral readings, each jazz musician works with a mentor composer. Flautist Nicole Mitchell, a composer in the 2010-11 program, is now among those mentors. “My own orchestra reading was traumatic,” she said. “I felt separated from my music up there on the stand while I sat in the audience. Jazz is really an oral tradition. Even though most of us write our music out, a lot of communication happens in real time, and musicians are directly involved with the composer.”

As Ms. Schneider said of her recent project, “We’re used to leaving room for someone to bring the music fully to life. Suddenly, if it’s not on the page, it doesn’t exist. It’s a completely different sensibility.” There are other differences, too. “Orchestra musicians look at a conductor,” Mr. August said. “They’re used to seeing the time, instead of relying on feeling it, like we do in jazz.”

The institute’s community is diverse. The previous class included pianist Phillip Golub, then in high school, and bassist Rufus Reid, then 66 and with a long and stellar jazz discography to his credit. Mr. Reid gained both the technical expertise, he said, and “the audacity to compose for orchestra.” He wasn’t interested in some grand Third Stream ambition. “I just had new ideas that required an orchestra,” he said.

Mr. Lewis didn’t think Mr. Reid’s piece, “Mass Transit,” swung in any jazz sense. “But it sounded like his bass playing,” Mr. Lewis said, “with his particular sense of wonder and surprise and drama. Some things go beyond genre, as long as you know what you’re doing and who you’re doing it with.”

Mr. Blumenfeld writes about jazz for the Journal. He also blogs at blogs.artinfo.com/blunotes.

A version of this article appeared April 22, 2013, on page D5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Where Classical Music And Jazz Collaborate.

By DIANA MIDDLETON

• The Job: Translator/Interpreter

• The Nature of the Work: Translators and interpreters work fluidly with languages, but their responsibilities differ. Translators work with printed copy. Interpreters specialize in the spoken word and serve as liaisons between two parties, such as a doctor and patient or defendant and attorney. They typically must consider ethical obligations; translators often have to massage copy to make sense of pop culture references. “Being bilingual isn’t enough,” says Judy Jenner, who co-founded Twin Translations with her sister. “We have to shape a message to an international audience.”

• The Pay: Many jobs are free-lance. Interpreters can earn between $15 and $30 per hour, according to Common Sense Advisory, a Boston-based research firm. Translations are paid per word. Ms. Jenner, for example, charges 24 to 27 cents per word, depending on the skill level. Savvy translators can earn six figures per year, says Milena Savova, academic director of the department of foreign languages, translating and interpreting at New York University. Full-time staff at language-services firms earn from $40,000 to $60,000, according to a recent survey from the Globalization and Localization Association, a language-services trade group.

• The Hours: Hours are often flexible. Ms. Jenner, who lives in Las Vegas, says she completes her assignments while lounging by the pool. Her twin sister and fellow translator/interpreter works from Austria. Elizabeth Chegezy, a translator and interpreter in Philadelphia, says free-lancers can work as much or as little as they like. However, she warns that the high-paced role technology plays in the business means some clients will demand unreasonable deadlines. At language-services firms, business hours are the norm.

• The Benefits: Free-lancers are responsible for their own health-care and retirement-savings plans. At language-services firms, traditional health-care packages are common, as are retirement-savings programs.

• Other Incentives: Translators and interpreters can cultivate a specialty in the field—thus leading to higher-paying jobs. Those with a background in chemistry, for example, will be shoe-ins for jobs translating complex documents about chemicals. Ms. Jenner parlayed her M.B.A. in marketing to nab a tourism-related translation job in Vienna.

• Best Part of the Job: For those with a passion for languages it’s a way to flex that muscle for personal satisfaction. Ms. Chegezy enjoys learning different strands of slang from Spanish-speaking countries, from Panama to Mexico. “Languages are an acquired skill for me, and there’s always something new to learn,” she says.

• Worst Part of the Job: Interpreting jobs in the health-care industry can make some squeamish. Ms. Chegezy has seen broken bones and patients vomiting while on the job. In addition, professionals must aggressively look for jobs. “It’s feast or famine,” says Ms. Jenner.

• Education/Qualifications: There are no official certifications required, although several are offered through trade organizations, such as the American Translators Association. A college degree is not required, but most have them. Spanish is the most in-demand language, but other languages are growing, such as Arabic.

• Hiring: Demand for translators and interpreters is expected to increase 24% through 2016, according to the Department of Labor. Joining an industry group such as the American Translators Association, which has its own job bank, can help translators find jobs in both translation and interpretation. The All Language Alliance also connects job seekers and positions.

Write to Diana Middleton at diana.middleton@wsj.com

By JAMIE EWBANK

Christian Mueringer / Alamy

Mont Ventoux’s peak

THE BARREN PEAK of Provence’s Mont Ventoux has a fearsome reputation among professional cyclists, but the Giant of Provence is also proof of the great cycling truism: Anyone with a bike can ride the same mountains as cycling’s heroes.

The Tour de France will return to Ventoux for the 15th time this summer, bringing with it enormous crowds. But even outside of those raucous days, the area remains the perfect place to make your own breakaway, offering everything from medieval architecture to mountain-reared pork and lamb, to be washed down, of course, with robust local wine.

Unlike multi-mountain holidays such as the Raid Pyrénéen—the route across the Pyrenees from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean—Mont Ventoux is ideally suited to credit-card touring and has enough off-the-bike diversions to be more than just a cycling holiday. Instead of climbing several mountains over several days, moving from hotel to hotel as you go, here you can stay in one location and choose three routes up one mountain.

Professional cyclists can make the ascent in just over an hour of nonstop cycling. Strong club riders will manage it in about double that time, but anyone who is fit and healthy can attempt the climb as long as you allow yourself several hours for rest stops.

Here’s our guide to an ascendant weekend on Mont Ventoux.

Day One

Friday

7:46 p.m. | Arrive at Avignon TGV and head to the small commune of Crillon le Brave, near the foot of Mont Ventoux. Hardened cyclists may want to ride the 40 kilometer journey, or you can take a taxi for around €80.

8:40 p.m. | As well as being a perfect base camp for all three ascents of Ventoux, the Relais & Châteaux’s Hotel Crillon le Brave is a beautiful place to stay. Its guest rooms are spread across several 17th-century houses linked by courtyards and bridges, and set alongside a pool and restaurant area where you can dine on local specialties, including filet d’agneau, and sip Châteauneuf-du-Pape. If you’re traveling without your bike, you can rent one from the hotel, which also has a Coureurs du Ventoux guest book to record your time. Rooms from €280 per night; place de l’Église, crillonlebrave.com

Day Two

Saturday

10 a.m. | Cyclists looking to record a good time for the ascent tend to set off early in the morning to avoid having to ride in the midday sun, but if you’re planning to bike at an unhurried pace, you can afford to leave later. Take the D974 and D164 toward Sault and enjoy a late breakfast at Le Provençal, a courtyard cafe in one of the town’s venerable buildings, where you can enjoy local pâté and lamb dishes for very reasonable prices. rue Porte des Aires; +33 (0)4 90 64 09 09

12 p.m. | Arrive in Sault, often thought of as the gentlest ascent and the most traditionally picturesque route. The town sits on the tip of the Vaucluse plateau, looking west toward Ventoux. Head to its elevated public boules court, from where you can see farmhouses dotted among the vast, blue fields of lavender the city is known for. Everywhere in town you’ll be greeted by the stylized ceramic cicadas designed by Louis Sicard.

From here, ride up the hill into Sault’s winding medieval streets, where you’ll find well-preserved 16th-century houses and a moving Maquis memorial. Grab lunch at one of the numerous cafes and enjoy the laid-back, Gallic culture, with a good view, a strong drink and not a laptop in sight.

1 p.m. | Begin your 26-kilometer ride from the boules court, dropping down the short, steep road into the valley and heading toward Ventoux on the narrow D164, making long sweeps left and right across the valley before entering the beech forests and starting the climb. The ascent from Sault is the longest of the three, and consequently the gentlest, with the early roads in the forest taking long, straight tilts.

2:30 p.m. | Two-thirds of the way into your climb, approaching the cafe and ski station at Chalet Reynard, the route is almost flat. The easing gradient comes at just the point where the road starts to lift out of the trees, giving you respite and a view to enjoy with it. The crowds—and applause—that greet your arrival at the chalet can be a shock after 15 kilometers of comparative solitude. Eat at the cafe and refill your water bottles before tackling the last leg. +33 (0)4 90 61 84 55; chalet-reynard.fr

3 p.m. | From here, you enter the iconic “moonscape,” where the peak of the mountain, beginning in the 12th century, was deforested to feed the shipyards in distant Toulon. The roads are steeper, and the mistral can be as difficult as the gradients if you’re unfortunate enough to find a headwind.

3:40 p.m. | After a few kilometers on the limestone slopes, stop at the Tom Simpson memorial for a reflective moment, leaving a bottle or cycling cap in tribute to the World Champion who died here during the 1967 Tour de France. This stop is also a useful respite before the final kilometer up to the last hairpin and the tiny, steep ramp to the Ventoux observatory.

4 p.m. | Spend some time getting your breath back and taking in the spectacular views. Despite being a crowded tourist spot, the summit of Ventoux has little more than a gift shop to offer, where you can buy sweets and souvenirs before starting the descent.

The contrast between the hours of ascending and the minutes of descending is striking. Even if you’re riding cautiously, you will be back in Crillon le Brave and taking a dip in the hotel’s pool within the hour. Take the descent cautiously, watching for oncoming cars that have pulled into your lane to overtake ascending riders.

Day Three

Sunday

10 a.m. | Follow the D138 through four kilometers of fields and flatlands from Crillon le Brave to Bédoin and start your morning with a tour of the town.

For cyclists, Bédoin is both Mecca and the Glastonbury festival, a place of solemn pilgrimage, yet so filled with kindred spirits that it is hard to avoid an atmosphere of communal celebration. You cannot take a photograph without a handlebar, a wheel or a Lycra-clad thigh intruding into it.

Fortify yourself for the journey ahead the way professionals did in less scientific days: with steak tartare at a roadside cafe. For something less visceral, lunch at the Hotel des Pins’s restaurant, L’Esprit Jardin, where you can have another Provençal speciality, côte de porc du Ventoux aux girolles. Mains from €15, hotel-des-pins.fr

1 p.m. | From Bédoin, ride gently through the vineyards of St.-Colombe and St.-Estève, spinning a lower gear than you think you need and saving yourself for the beautiful but unrelenting climb through the forest, where you’ll hit stretches of gradients that average 9% and peak at more than 12% along this 21-kilometer route.

2:40 p.m. | Stop at the signpost for Petit Moutet, about 12 kilometers up the climb, and enjoy the vista between two sections of forest. Few other vantage points include so much of Ventoux’s varied terrain. It can be daunting, but keep in mind that the summit isn’t going anywhere: Measure your efforts, take in the lush woodland and rocky passes and work your way up to Chalet Reynard, where you’ll benefit from familiarity with the final kilometers of the route.

4:30 p.m. | On your downhill leg, stop for a cooling demi-pression at Le Guintrand, a quiet cafe bar in St.-Colombe that offers shady outdoor tables and a view of the route without the bustle of Bédoin itself (+33 (0)4 90 37 10 08; leguintrand.com

). Once refreshed, cross the road for dinner beneath the hanging baskets at La Colombe. +33 (0)4 90 65 61 20

Day Four

Monday

9 a.m. | The route along the D13 and D938 to Malaucène is a short but rolling 16 kilometers—just enough to warm up for the final, third ascent. Begin the journey from Malaucène, which has neither Bédoin’s single-mindedness nor the valley vistas of Sault, yet in many ways is the start of the Ventoux legend. It was from Malaucène that the Renaissance poet Petrarch made one of the first ascents of the mountain, albeit on foot rather than on a carbon-fiber wonderbike. It is said that Petrarch’s account of climbing Ventoux popularized Alpinism, and Malaucène remains popular with rock climbers to this day.

11 a.m. | The ascent from Malaucène can be as tough as the climb from Bédoin, but with more shelter from the wind. It will take you three or four hours, depending on how well you have recovered from your previous exertions. While you will spend long spells riding up 9-10% slopes, the steep sections are broken up by gentler pitches of around 3%—and even the odd false-flat. This forces some grueling changes of rhythm, but also allows you some respite.

1:20 p.m. | By the time you reach Mont Serein, you’ve tackled the hardest that the Malaucène ascent has to offer and the final stretch is similar to the Bédoin ascent.

2:20 p.m. | On the descent to Bédoin, stop at Chalet Reynard for one final lunch, before returning to the hotel and departing. Express trains to Paris leave Avignon TGV every hour, and although the distance from Crillon le Brave to Avignon was ridable Friday, no one could fault you for taking a taxi back.

Por JESSICA HOLZER e GREG BENSINGER, de Washington

A mentira veiculada pelo Twitter na última terça-feira não vai desencorajar as empresas a continuarem divulgando informações que mexem com o mercado por meio de sites de redes sociais.

Enquanto isso, as empresas de Wall Street estão levando adiante planos que podem permitir que alguns funcionários tenham acesso a esses sites no trabalho.

Após uma mensagem falsa enviada por hackers da conta da Associated Press no Twitter informando que duas explosões na Casa Branca tinham ferido o presidente dos Estados Unidos, Barack Obama, o índice Dow Jones caiu imediatamente 145 pontos. O mercado se recuperou rapidamente.

Luis Aguilar, integrante da Securities and Exchange Commission, a CVM americana, pediu formalmente que a agência avalie a mensagem falsa do Twitter e disse que a SEC ainda não determinou quem a publicou e por qual motivo. “A SEC deve fazer uma investigação séria num episódio que parece ter havido manipulação dos mercados de valores mobiliários em violação às leis de mercado”, disse ele.

Um porta-voz da SEC disse: “Nós estabelecemos procedimentos operacionais padronizados sempre que ocorrem fatos que mexam com o mercado, sem exceção. Esses procedimentos começam obtendo dados sobre o que aconteceu. Nós não nos limitamos a procurar o catalisador de um evento, mas também as suas repercussões, para determinar se qualquer outra investigação ou ação se justifica.”

Além disso, Bart Chilton, integrante da Comissão de Negociação de Futuros de Commodities, disse que os funcionários da agência estão analisando as negociações. A queda das bolsas “levanta questões amplas sobre como a tecnologia é usada” no mercado, disse. “Alguém perdeu dinheiro, nem todo mundo que saiu voltou.”

Ao autorizar que os funcionários tenham acesso mais amplo às redes sociais, Wall Street pode remover uma barreira que as companhias dizem que as desencorajam a usar as redes sociais como um canal exclusivo para grandes anúncios. As empresas querem se comunicar diretamente com suas bases de investidores, mas têm receio que tweets e outras mensagens não atingirão um público vital: os analistas de ações de Wall Street e investidores institucionais.

“A maioria dos nossos investidores está usando canais tradicionais para obter suas informações”, diz o diretor-presidente da Zillow Inc.,

Spencer Rascoff, ao The Wall Street Journal. Ele disse que a Zillow, uma empresa on-line do setor imobiliário, não usaria exclusivamente redes sociais, mas, sim, as teria como um complemento para outras formas tradicionais de disseminação de informações corporativas — em parte devido às restrições que os funcionários de bancos têm para acessá-las. “A ideia é divulgar a informação para o maior número possível de pessoas”, disse Rascoff.

A Zillow anunciou na quarta-feira que irá começar a divulgar seus resultados financeiros e provavelmente outros materiais informativos por meio do Twitter e do Facebook Inc.,

seguindo a iniciativa do Netflix Inc.,

que anunciou neste mês que deve usar ocasionalmente o Facebook e o Twitter para divulgar informações. A Zillow também planeja coletar algumas perguntas por meio das redes sociais quando divulgar seus resultados do primeiro trimestre no início de maio.

A notícia falsa divulgada por meio do Twitter nesta semana não afetará os planos de divulgação de empresas como a Dell Inc.

e a Exxon Mobil Corp.,

que sinalizaram que usarão redes sociais para divulgar informações corporativas, de acordo com seus executivos.

A AutoNation,

Inc., que tem concessionárias de veículos, informou que não tem planos de alterar sua decisão de ter o seu diretor-presidente, Mike Jackson, divulgando materiais informativos por meio da sua página no Facebook e a sua conta no Twitter. “Nós já adotamos medidas para nos proteger dos hackers”, disse um porta-voz, destacando que os emails enfrentam questões parecidas.

Os bancos dizem que consideram que sites como o Twitter estão se tornando cada vez mais fontes importantes de notícias e esperam que eles se tornem canais essenciais. Prova disso é a recente aprovação dada pela SEC para que as empresas divulguem informações de interesse do mercado por meio das redes sociais.

O incidente com o Twitter reforçou o ponto de vista em alguns bancos de que os funcionários precisam ter acesso às redes sociais, assim eles podem avaliar as informações por conta própria.

“Isso não mudou os nossos planos. Todos os aspectos de qualquer ferramenta que usamos são avaliados cuidadosamente antes de serem implementados”, disse uma porta-voz do Bank of America

.

O Bank of America planeja afrouxar as restrições que impedem a maioria dos seus empregados de acessar o Facebook e outros sites. O Morgan Stanley,

o Citigroup Inc.

e o Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

também estão considerando relaxar as proibições para dar a um número maior de funcionários o acesso a redes sociais.

A maioria dos bancos de Wall Street restringe o acesso a redes sociais — assim como ao Gmail e outros sites privados – devido em grande parte às regras da SEC que exigem das empresas de valores mobiliários arquivarem todas as comunicações, incluindo tweets e publicações. Alguns funcionários pode ter acesso aos tweets de empresas de capital aberto por meio dos terminais da Bloomberg.

A orientação da SEC com relação às redes sociais levou o Morgan Stanley a considerar permitir o acesso a sites “dentro de um ambiente controlado”, disse uma porta-voz. O banco liberou suas equipes de venda de corretagem para usar o LinkedIn e o Twitter de forma limitada no ano passado.

O Citigroup está procurando conceder aos analistas de ações acesso limitado aos sites de redes sociais, assim eles podem acompanhar as empresas, disse um profissional do banco. O Goldman Sachs está buscando formas de dar a seus funcionários um maior acesso às redes sociais, disse uma porta-voz.

(Colaborou Scott Patterson.)

By IAN BURUMA

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Chinese demonstrators wearing anti-Japan T-shirts march during a protest over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands on Sept. 18, 2012.

When Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka visited Beijing in 1972 to restore Japan’s relations with China, a country that had been devastated by Japanese military aggression in the 1930s and ’40s, his host Mao Zedong allowed himself a moment of levity. Responding to Tanaka’s apology for what Japan had done during the war, Mao answered that there was absolutely no need to apologize. After all, he said, without the Japanese invasion, the Communist revolution would never have succeeded.

Secure in his nationalist credentials, as the leader who unified China, Mao could afford this little joke, which also happened to be the truth. Such a remark would be unimaginable for any of the technocrats who rule China today. Maoism can no longer justify the Communist Party’s monopoly on power, since few Chinese believe in any kind of Communism. Nationalism is now the dominant ideology, and the rulers have to prove their mettle, especially toward Japan. This need is particularly acute when a new leader takes power. The latest party boss, Xi Jinping, needs to show people, not least the military brass, that he is in charge.

Which is why a petty dispute over a few uninhabited rocks in the East China Sea is causing a serious and possibly dangerous rift between the two major powers of East Asia. The Chinese have recently sent naval ships close to the islands, as well as military aircraft. Japan responded by scrambling F-15s. And the U.S., still the major military power in the region (though, if China has its way, not for very much longer), is urging the two parties to remain calm, while voicing its continuing support of Japanese administration over the territory. A conflict in East Asia could be much more dangerous than anything happening in the Middle East. Taiwan might be involved, as well as the Korean peninsula. Apart from the potential loss of life, it would be a huge threat to the world economy, and it would pit the U.S. directly against China.

The Japanese call the tiny island group the Senkaku, and the Chinese call it the Diaoyu. Fishermen have trawled the waters around there for centuries, and in 1968, a United Nations commission discovered potential oil and gas reserves there, too. But neither the fish, nor the possible access to oil, quite explain why emotions are running so high, why Japanese businesses have been boycotted and Japanese stores and factories torched, why Japanese tourists and businessmen have been molested, and why hotheads in both countries indulge in talk of war.

On the surface, the dispute is about history, about which country has the best historical claim to sovereignty over the Senkaku/Diaoyu. In fact, it is more about politics, domestic and international, revealing the tangled relations in a region where history is frequently manipulated for political ends.

The historical record of sovereignty over the islands is murky. First of all, there are different notions of what constitutes sovereignty. Traditionally, the Chinese Empire saw itself as the center of civilization. Its authority over peripheral countries, such as Korea, Vietnam or the Ryukyu Islands (including the main island of Okinawa, now Japanese), was not so much a question of borders and laws as of proper deference. The periphery was expected to pay tribute to the Chinese court, in the way of vassal states. Even Japan, more independent than other vassals, went along with this to some extent.

After the humiliation of China in the mid-19th-century Opium Wars, and the forceful entry of U.S. gunships into Japan at the same time, Japan began to take a very different view of the world. Mimicking the Western imperial powers, Japan decided to carve out an empire of its own, using brute force as well as Western legal concepts. China’s humiliation at the hands of the British was deepened by the even greater humiliation of being defeated by Japan in a brutal little colonial war over Korea in 1895. This is how Japan acquired Formosa (now Taiwan), as well as other possessions in East Asia, including those Senkaku islands.

Contrary to popular belief, China and Japan were not always hostile to one another. For much of its history, Japan looked up to China as the center of civilization. And even after Japan’s rise to the status of a modern empire at the turn of the 20th century, Japanese attitudes to China were complicated. Japanese nationalists were often sympathetic to Chinese revolutionaries who toppled the imperial system in 1911. Universities and military academies in Japan drew in many Chinese students in the 1910s and ’20s. Before the Japanese invaded their country in the 1930s, many Chinese viewed Japan as a model of modernity.

The horror of the Japanese war in China, unleashed in its full fury in 1937, would change everything. Eight years of Japanese occupation, leaving more than 10 million Chinese dead, devastated the country. And memories of Japanese atrocities—biological warfare in Manchuria, the massacres and mass raping in Nanking, among other places—are still kept fresh in what’s called “patriotic education.”

This wasn’t always so. Chairman Mao was more interested in consolidating the revolution, by some very bloody means of his own, than in dwelling on the recent past. The Nanking Massacre was never made into a big issue under Mao. Nanking was, in any case, Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist capital in 1937 and therefore of little interest to Communist propaganda. And the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands, administered by the U.S., as part of Okinawa, and only given back to Japan in 1972, were barely ever mentioned.

It was only in the 1980s, after Deng Xiaoping opened China up to business with the capitalist world, very much including Japan, that memories of Japanese barbarism were deliberately stirred up. That is when a monumental museum was built in Nanking to remember the “300,000 dead” (almost certainly an exaggerated figure, which in no way mitigates the ghastliness of what the Japanese did).

Patriotism, based on grievances over a century of humiliations inflicted by foreign powers, from the Opium War to the Nanking Massacre, became the official ideology: Only the firm rule of the Communist Party would prevent China from suffering similar humiliations again. And besides, memories of foreign aggression are a convenient distraction from equally distressing recollections of what Chinese have suffered from their own rulers.

This, then, is what the dispute over those little rocks between Taiwan and Okinawa stands for in China today. It is a symbol of patriotism, without which the Party would have no legitimacy. Giving in to Japan would bring back memories of humiliation. Standing up for Chinese sovereignty is a test of China’s revived status as the major power in the region.

And yet, even Deng Xiaoping had never made a fuss about this particular issue; he said in 1978 that the Diaoyu question should be shelved for the time being, as “our generation is not wise enough to find common language on this question. Our next generation will certainly be wiser. They will certainly find a solution acceptable to all.”

Reasons why Deng’s wish failed to come true are to be found not only in China, but in Japan, which has had to contend with its own history of humiliations, the worst of which was losing the war in 1945. The U.S. took over Okinawa and the other Ryukyu Islands, including Senkaku/Diaoyu. Japanese armed forces were disbanded. Americans lectured Japan on the evils of militarism and wrote a brand new Japanese constitution outlawing the use of military force in international affairs. Henceforth the U.S. would take care of Japanese security, in effect turning Japan into a vassal state again, this time of the U.S.

Most Japanese, devastated by war, were quite happy with this arrangement. Being the first constitutionally pacifist nation even gave them a warm glow of moral superiority. The only Japanese who fiercely opposed it were right-wing nationalists, who felt humiliated by Japan’s renewed vassal status. Mainstream conservatives were content to concentrate on business and industry.

“Japan’s role as a kind of cat’s paw of American dominance will be the source of ever greater tensions. ”

When Mao’s Communists took over China, however, the U.S. changed its mind. Visiting Japan as Eisenhower’s vice president in 1953, Richard Nixon called the pacifist constitution “a mistake.” The Japanese were encouraged to rebuild their military, now called the Self-Defense Forces, and Japan would have to serve as a huge U.S. base for containing China, as well as other military ventures in Asia, such as the Korean and Vietnamese wars. And all this without revising the pacifist constitution to which most Japanese had grown attached.

The pacifist left in Japan, often sympathetic to Mao’s China, felt betrayed. The U.S. was accused, not without reason, of reneging on its own pacifist lessons to Japan, by dragging the country back into conflicts with other Asian countries. Conservatives were split between the old nationalists who wanted to rewrite the constitution and become fully independent from the U.S., and the more business-minded elite, who opted to go along with anything Washington demanded.

Even when Japanese businessmen pressed for closer relations with China in 1970, the Japanese prime minister, Eisaku Sato, staved them off out of deference to the U.S. policy of containing China. No wonder that he felt deeply humiliated when President Nixon suddenly announced his new rapprochement with China in the following year without bothering to inform the Japanese. This, combined with the sudden devaluation of the dollar, is still known in Japanese history books as the “Nixon Shokku” (Nixon Shock).

One year after that, Okinawa was given back to Japan on condition that the U.S. retain its military bases there. This meant that the Senkaku/Diaoyu would be administered by the Japanese government. Also in 1972, Japan formally made peace with China.

Despite periodic spats with China over symbolic issues, such as the alleged rewriting of Japanese school textbooks, denying the Nanking Massacre, or visits by Japanese politicians to the Yasukuni shrine, where the souls of Japanese war dead, including World War II criminals, are commemorated, business between the two countries, now worth more than $300 billion a year, continued to grow. In fact, the more China relied on business with Japan, the more Chinese politicians felt the need to assert their nationalist credentials by bringing up the war. This kept nationalists in China at bay and the Japanese on their toes.

However, even more than half a century after Japan’s wartime defeat, the problem of Japan’s status remained unresolved. A great economic power, with huge economic interests in China, Japan was still a vassal state of the U.S. in matters of security. The inadequacy of this arrangement is increasingly felt, and not just among the old nationalist right wing. A continuing source of tension in Japanese foreign policy is the need to act like a major power while still being deferential to American interests. This dilemma has a huge impact on Japan’s relations with China.

When the conservative Liberal Democratic Party government, which had governed Japan almost permanently since the war, was defeated in 2009, the new government, led by the Democratic Party of Japan, promised that a new, more open, more democratic, less bureaucratic era had began. One of the things that would have to change was Japan’s dependency on the U.S. While stressing the importance of the U.S. alliance, Japan would forge closer relations with China, as well as other Asian nations, and shed some of the deeply unpopular U.S. military bases in Okinawa.

The U.S. government, long used to Japanese subservience, reacted as fathers do when children threaten to run out of their control, and quickly blocked these initiatives. So did Japanese bureaucrats, who had no intention of letting mere elected politicians diminish bureaucratic authority by taking initiatives of their own. China continued to see Japan as a pawn of U.S. imperialism. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s idea of building an “East Asian Community,” loosely modeled after the European Union, went nowhere, as did his plan to move the U.S. base out of Okinawa. Mr. Hatoyama was seen as a failure; his plans for a vaunted new era had failed to lift off.

In 2012, the right-wing populist governor of Tokyo, a former novelist named Shintaro Ishihara, saw his chance to make a mark. Hoping to become prime minister, he decided to take the Senkaku/Diaoyu issue off the shelf to which Deng Xiaoping had consigned it. If the Japanese government wouldn’t defend this vital piece of Japanese territory against Chinese provocation, he, Mr. Ishihara, would buy it for the city of Tokyo from its private owner. In a fit of panic, the Democratic Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda nationalized the islands, declaring that they belonged to the nation and there was no more room for compromise. His hope was that with Mr. Ishihara out of the way, China would be pacified.

He was wrong. China’s rulers had to assert their nationalism. Words turned into gestures; army helicopters and fighter planes were dispatched. The government of the Democratic Party of Japan fell. The Liberal Democrats are back, led by Shinzo Abe, an old-school nationalist. His grandfather was Nobusuke Kishi, who was arrested in 1945 as a war criminal and later became a close ally of Richard Nixon in the struggle against Chinese communism. Mr. Abe is unlikely to change Japan’s state of dependency on U.S. security, especially in the light of China’s increasing military clout.

Things, in short, are back to square one: Pax Americana containing China, with Japan as Washington’s loyal vassal. This might seem a stable, even comfortable, position from the U.S. point of view. In fact, it isn’t. For a long time, the Chinese put up with the U.S. being the policeman of East Asia, because the prospect of a more independent, fully rearmed, even nuclear Japan would be worse. But Japan’s role as a kind of cat’s paw of American dominance, with Japanese nationalists compensating for their subservience by indulging in bellicose talk, will be the source of ever greater tensions, which are bad for everyone, including the U.S.

Eventually, a balance of power will have to be found between China and Japan, but that will mean a gradual withdrawal of U.S. might, which is precisely the opposite of what President Barack Obama‘s “pivot to Asia” is aiming to achieve. If prolonged for too long, arrangements made after World War II to create stability in the region will help to undermine it.

—Mr. Buruma is the Henry Luce professor of human rights and journalism at Bard College. His latest book, “Year Zero: A History of 1945,” will be published by Penguin in September.

A version of this article appeared May 11, 2013, on page C1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: China|Japan and the Abuse of History.

By LETTIE TEAGUE

There has never been a better time than today to be a sommelier in New York, according to sommelier John Slover, who cited a number of high-profile restaurants looking to add staff and much-anticipated restaurants that will be opening soon. Mr. Slover, a veteran of the New York wine world, is currently between gigs and looking for a job. I asked him to meet me for lunch at Maysville restaurant last week to discuss what goes into the search for such a position and which New York wine directors have the best jobs.

Mr. Slover was most recently a sommelier at Le Bernardin, where he worked for famed Wine Director Aldo Sohm. “I’d never worked in a four-star restaurant and I’d never worked in an established restaurant,” said Mr. Slover, who left the restaurant a few months ago, having realized that a four-star environment was not suited to his less-formal approach to wine. He did say he admired Mr. Sohm, whom he described as “titanic.”

I first met the 43-year-old Mr. Slover about six years ago, when he was a sommelier at Cru, a restaurant (now closed) that had one of the best wine programs in New York. After leaving Cru in 2007 and, after that, Grand Cru Consulting, Mr. Slover pioneered a terrific half-bottle program at the now-defunct Bar Henry and later at Ciano restaurant in Gramercy Park. The idea was that anyone could buy half of any bottle on the wine list, and Mr. Slover or one of his deputies would find some diner(s) in the dining room willing to buy the other half. It was a great deal of fun, and I drank some really good “halves” of bottles that I would not have chosen or been able to afford in full size.

While we awaited our appetizers, I asked Mr. Slover to give a professional appraisal of the Maysville wine list. He gave it a quick look. “There are two kinds of wine lists mixed into one,” he commented, noting the combination of young, reasonably priced ($50 and under) wines and a number of rare bottles. Was that a good thing? “As far as I’m concerned, all wine lists should be this way,” he said.

Mr. Slover pointed to the small section devoted to white wines from the Rhone Valley. There were two reasonably priced whites “for drinking now,” and also pricey whites from the great producer Jean Louis Chave. “This wine list has both connoisseurship and revenue,” he said. In the former category, he pointed out the 1978 Elvio Cogno Barolo ($420) and the 1988 Bruno Giacosa Barbaresco ($500), and in the latter there was the 2011 Lucien Crochet Sancerre at $50 (Sancerre is a sure bet no matter the price) and the 2005 Roulot Bourgogne ($65), which Mr. Slover referred to as “a real Slover-Bar Henry kind of wine.”

What’s a Slover wine? “I had a very specific idea about putting together a list of little-known wines with some bottle age at Bar Henry. I thought they delivered great value,” explained Mr. Slover, who loved to introduce wine drinkers to well-aged wines at affordable prices. “Most people think they want to drink something young, but there is wonderful harmony and complexity in older wines,” he said.

But back to the job hunt. How much do sommeliers make, by the way? The salary range is considerable, said Mr. Slover, estimating that a sommelier could earn anywhere between $45,000 and $150,000 a year, including tips. What sort of tip program? “Every place is different,” replied Mr. Slover, who chose not to elaborate on this sensitive topic.

I asked Mr. Slover what sort of wine program he is seeking, and whether he is willing to start from scratch, as he had so many times. “At this point in my career, I’m pretty specific about what I want,” replied Mr. Slover. “I want a place that’s serious about wine on a long-term basis, with a sizeable wine list.” In other words, he wants a wine destination. “There is a set of New York diners who don’t go to restaurants unless there’s a wine program or wine director they admire,” explained Mr Slover.

How big does a “sizeable, serious wine program” have to be? “Five hundred to 1,000 wines,” said Mr. Slover, adding that Ciano’s wine list—the last one he created—had 250 wines, but that was in large part because he had “maxed out” on storage, one of the biggest issues facing wine directors in New York. “Most restaurants don’t have a lot of cellar space, and off-site storage tends to be expensive and difficult to maintain,” said Mr. Slover, who added that size wasn’t the only factor pointing to a serious wine program. It’s also about a long-term commitment on the part of the owners.

I asked about the serious wine programs he admired—or perhaps even coveted. There are quite a few. Mr. Slover rattled off several names, starting with Tribeca Grill, whose wine list (and wine prices) he loves. “The owners and the wine team at Tribeca Grill have a total commitment to building a collection. It’s very organic,” said Mr. Slover. He also said he thought Brad Nugent, the sommelier at Porter House, is doing a great job, as is Patrick Cappiello at Pearl and Ash.

Mr. Slover recited several more names of wine directors and restaurants, including: Michael Madrigale at Bar Boulud and Boulud Sud and Josh Nadel at Locanda Verde and The Dutch (“I’d love a job like his”), as well as Franceso Grosso at Marea.

“In fact, I was thinking of taking out a contract on Francesco,” he said.

Write to Lettie Teague at lettie.teague@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared March 29, 2013, on page A18 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Sommelier Goes Searching.

By EMILY GLAZER

Massive open online courses, or so-called MOOCs, are opening up access to classes at a growing number of colleges and universities.

The U.S. government is supplying new data to help prospective students figure out which colleges offer the best bang for the buck. WSJ’s Jason Bellini has The Short Answer.
Image: Getty

The classes, which typically are free and not for credit, enable large-scale participation via the Web to a range of courses—from math to photography.

The American Council on Education, an association of university presidents, is considering for-credit status for some courses. But even without credit, courses can serve as an introduction to a subject, supplement coursework or help with job retraining.

Companies including Udacity (udacity.com), Coursera (coursera.com) and edX (edx.org) are partnering with schools or independent instructors to offer online classes. You can sign up on their respective websites.

Coursera has joined with schools including Princeton University, Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, the University of Florida and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. One of its most popular courses: “Introduction to Finance,” offered through the University of Michigan.

EdX, originally backed by a grant from Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has joined with community colleges in Massachusetts and McGill University in Montreal. One of its most popular classes is “Introduction to Computer Science.”

Some schools are starting to offer class credit for MOOCs for a fee. Udacity partner San Jose State University in California charges $150. Others require additional work or assessments.

The online classes are generally taught by instructors at the schools, though experts have said homework assignments are often different from those required in classroom counterparts. For example, exams may require less analytical thinking so you may not get the same experience as in a classroom.

Write to Emily Glazer at emily.glazer@wsj.com

By J.S. MARCUS

STATS: A three-room, 1,260-square-foot co-op apartment, with an eat-in kitchen and one bathroom, asking 8.7 million kronor (around $1.3 million), or $1,030 per square foot. Co-op charges, including property taxes and most utilities, are around 1,550 SEK a month. The apartment has electric heating, supplemented by wood-burning antique stoves. Electricity, billed separately, averages around 8,000 SEK a year.

DETAILS: Located on a quiet side street of Gamla Stan, or Old Town, the apartment is on the third floor of a 17th-century house with medieval foundations. The apartment underwent structural changes in the mid-19th century, resulting in 11-foot ceilings, which are substantially higher than in many other apartments in this part of Stockholm. The pine floors in the apartment also date back to the 19th century. The owners bought the unit in March 2011 and undertook a complete renovation, installing a new Poggenpohl kitchen. Although it’s just off a major tourist thoroughfare, the apartment is remarkably quiet. Unlike many apartments in Gamla Stan, the apartment also gets a lot of natural light.

SELLERS: Eva Darpö, a Swedish glass artist, and Bo Palmquist, former technical director of the Malmö Opera.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD: Stockholm’s Gamla Stan is one of Europe’s best-preserved historic neighborhoods. In recent years, it has attracted a number of new restaurants and night spots, as well as a steady stream of tourists.

WHAT WE PAID: The couple paid 7.2 million SEK and invested a further 800,000 SEK in renovations.

WHY WE’RE SELLING: Soon after moving in, the couple heard about a farm for sale on the island of FÃ¥rö, associated with film director Ingmar Bergman, who lived there for many years. Ms. Darpö, 58, and Mr. Palmquist, 63, decided to move to the island full-time.

WHAT WE’LL MISS: The convenience. “I walk everywhere,” says Ms. Darpö.

WHAT WE WON’T: Driving restrictions. Ms. Darpö says she is only allowed to drive her car, which she must keep several blocks away, down her street a few hours in the morning; she otherwise needs permission from the city.

COMP: A short walk away, a 1,313-square-foot apartment recently sold for 8.7 million SEK.

OTHERS SAY:
Mattias Schultz, a Stockholm-based real-estate broker, says that the price and historical elements place the listing “in a high-end category of apartments in Stockholm.” He points out that the apartment, like most in Gamla Stan, does not have a balcony, a drawback for many Stockholm residents. Johan Derelöv of Skeppsholmen Sotheby’s International Realty is handling the sale.

By SIMONA COVEL

Lisa O’Masta thought social networking and online video could help bring customers to Interwrite Learning, a maker of classroom technology tools.

But simply throwing videos on YouTube.com wasn’t going to work, she believed, because they would just get lost in the crowd. And she didn’t know how to find her company’s target audience — teachers — on social-networking sites like MySpace.

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“Educators tend to deliver messages best by interacting,” says Ms. O’Masta, vice president of marketing and professional development at Interwrite, which is now known as eInstruction Corp. “We wanted to encourage that behavior and spread the word” about Interwrite.

So, Ms. O’Masta and her marketing team came up with the idea of a song-parody video contest. Teachers and students were invited to send in videos of themselves performing their favorite songs, rewritten with new lyrics expressing the importance of technology in their classrooms. Interwrite spread the word through the local and trade press, and partnered with other educational companies.

The six-week competition, called Interwrite Makeover, generated more than 200 videos — about four times the company’s expectations — and hundreds of teachers and students learned about Interwrite’s products. The company estimates that it collected contact information for 27,000 leads, including teachers, parents and other members of local school communities. The contest cost about $40,000, including the prizes.

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“What made this successful wasn’t that it was about videos that got posted,” Ms. O’Masta says. By allowing Web visitors to comment on and help choose the winners, “we created a community.”

Community-generated video can be a smart — and low cost — marketing tactic for small companies, which often depend on strong bonds with customers.

“Savvy companies are going to let their own customers tell the story for them,” says Jeremiah Owyang, senior analyst in San Francisco at market-research company Forrester Research Inc., Cambridge, Mass. Sometimes, for a small company “recognition of community members is even more important than getting paid.”

Mr. Owyang suggests that company executives consider posting user-generated videos on their Web sites. Holding a video contest may not be an option, but simply trolling YouTube could turn up some clips made by enthusiastic customers.

Help From Peers

Interwrite, which had 180 employees at the time, reached out to video company Shycast LLC of Princeton, N.J., to build a Web site (interwritelearning.shycast.com/contest/1/) that would allow participants to sign up, submit videos, comment on entries and vote on their favorites. (In January, Interwrite was bought by eInstruction of Denton, Texas. The combined company has about 300 employees.)

To help get the word out, Interwrite partnered with TeacherTube LLC, a company that runs a community site for educators, where some existing customers already had posted demonstration videos about Interwrite products. TeacherTube offered Interwrite advertising on its site in exchange for using the TeacherTube name in the competition.

Other companies donated technology tools to the prize package in exchange for putting their names on contest materials and in the contest’s site. That doubled the grand prize for each of the three categories — roughly for elementary, middle and high-school entries — to $15,000 in classroom technology tools.

Sifting Through the Laws

From the winning video in the kindergarten-through-fifth-grade category

The team quickly realized, however, that executing the competition wouldn’t be as easy as sending out a press release and waiting for responses to roll in. Contests are governed by laws that vary among states and countries and cover a range of steps, including disseminating rules and collecting votes.

One hurdle: In the U.S., companies aren’t allowed to advertise contests to young children, so Interwrite had to focus on teachers. Sifting through the laws and regulations pushed back the competition’s start by about 10 days.

As the competition moved toward its September 2007 launch, the company worked with its public-relations firm to craft five press releases, which ultimately found the most success in local publications and on education-focused blogs.

After the launch, hits on Interwrite’s Web site rose to 7,000 a week, from 7,000 a month before. And the marketing team captured those leads by requiring visitors to complete a form with their names and email addresses before voting on, rating or commenting on a video.

Courtesy of the company

Lisa O’Masta

All that buzz presented some challenges, though. Each of the 220 entries generated dozens of comments from students, teachers and community members. Though most comments were positive, Shycast’s chief executive, Drew Peloso, says at the peak of the competition, he spent three hours a day scanning the site and removing offensive comments.

Contest management is the most time consuming and expensive service that Shycast offers, Mr. Peloso says, often comprising as much as 30% of client fees. Interwrite paid Shycast about $20,000 in all for the program.

Lessons Learned

Now that Interwrite has crowned its champions — the winning kindergarten-through-fifth-grade video was a rousing send-up of pop singer Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” — the company is planning its next competition.

This time, executives say, they’ll avoid certain hiccups, like stating the contest deadline in Greenwich Mean Time, which seemed to make sense for international contestants but led to widespread confusion. Next time, the company plans to list the deadline in multiple time zones.

While traffic on Interwrite’s Web site fell off after the contest ended at the end of November, it’s about 4% higher than before the launch. Customers are beginning to cash in $50-off coupons given to those who submitted a video.

More important, Ms. O’Masta says, when the company’s sales team visits a school, teachers and administrators often mention the competition.

“Companies know how to spend a whole lot of money on [marketing] that’s traditional,” she says. “I think there’s a whole new way of networking.”

Write to Simona Covel at simona.covel@wsj.com

Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page B5