Stowe Boyd points us at Clay Shirkey's (see recommended blogs, left) thoughts on the need for a new term to replace User Generated Content in the minds of the media.
"Indigenous Content (which is to say “Created by the natives for themselves.”)
Instantly I quite like indigenous content. Or IC, as we'll be calling it by the end of the month... It's warmer, less master-and-servant.
But at the same time, is it just me, or does it still seem a bit, well, patronising?
Perhaps it's just my perspective - as someone who has been used to being at the centre, broadcasting out for a large part of my career. My natural (and obviously incorrect) fall-back position is to assume that I am not part of the native group doing the creating. If that's an issue for me, I suspect the mainstream media are going to be in at least a similar, if not worse, position.
Is what we call UGC important? Well yes, I think it is, for the reasons illustrated above.
The important thing is for media companies to understand is their relationship to both the natives and what the natives create.
If we label it as in some way different from that created by media companies (ie, simply 'content' or increasingly, and usually inaccurately 'expert' content) then we place a barrier between Us and Them.
Doesn't what we have learned about the power of the network and the dominance of communities insist that the barrier is torn down?
And to that end I'm going to stop calling UGC anything other than content.
Please, by all means question this approach, or suggest alternatives. It'll help us arrive at a more robust position.
The further ahead you look - the faster you go | davidpcushman AT gmail.com | These are my views and my views only.
Showing posts with label user generated content. Show all posts
Showing posts with label user generated content. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Monday, August 13, 2007
Battle of Kruger Park - survival of the most adaptable
If you want an illustration of how the media world has shifted look no further than 'The Battle Of Kruger Park'.
It's a YouTube piece of user generated content which you may or may not have had forwarded to you by a friend (that's how it came to my attention in the latter part of last week).
It's wobbly, definitely not HDTV, shot by tourists - ie non-experts.
It is UGC in its purest form.
Yet already it has had more views than the first epidsode of the BBC wildlife series Planet Earth (as compared in Sunday's Observer).
The Observer recorded it at 10m views in its edition on Sunday August 12. This morning (Monday 13th) it's on 12.3m.
Planet Earth got 8.7m on BBC1.
It's not about mass media any more. The audience for beautifully shot and crafted aggregated content (a BBC documentary, for example) remains - but it is being outstripped by the audience for disaggregated content shared by communities of shared niche interest.
And when that niche interest plays out across the globe, the numbers become of the scale that the old mass media can only dream of.
Why?
It meets the need of a niche interest; the distribution network is exactly that (a distributed network - not a centre-out model); it allows the community to join in - comment on, respond with a video of their own, etc.
But it's also a sensational piece of 'entertainment'.
Quality takes many guises. Most of them have little to do with production values.
We have always, as a species, witnessed extraordinary events. Now, as a networked species, we are able to share them.
The camera/video and the means to publish and distribute what you capture with them are close to ubiquitious.
At some point in the not-too-distant it's conceivable you could see almost anywhere in the world almost anytime you wished.
Guess that'll finally nail some interesting questions... such as - do UFOs exist? Is Bigfoot more than a stuffed toy? And... is the referee right?
It's a YouTube piece of user generated content which you may or may not have had forwarded to you by a friend (that's how it came to my attention in the latter part of last week).
It's wobbly, definitely not HDTV, shot by tourists - ie non-experts.
It is UGC in its purest form.
Yet already it has had more views than the first epidsode of the BBC wildlife series Planet Earth (as compared in Sunday's Observer).
The Observer recorded it at 10m views in its edition on Sunday August 12. This morning (Monday 13th) it's on 12.3m.
Planet Earth got 8.7m on BBC1.
It's not about mass media any more. The audience for beautifully shot and crafted aggregated content (a BBC documentary, for example) remains - but it is being outstripped by the audience for disaggregated content shared by communities of shared niche interest.
And when that niche interest plays out across the globe, the numbers become of the scale that the old mass media can only dream of.
Why?
It meets the need of a niche interest; the distribution network is exactly that (a distributed network - not a centre-out model); it allows the community to join in - comment on, respond with a video of their own, etc.
But it's also a sensational piece of 'entertainment'.
Quality takes many guises. Most of them have little to do with production values.
We have always, as a species, witnessed extraordinary events. Now, as a networked species, we are able to share them.
The camera/video and the means to publish and distribute what you capture with them are close to ubiquitious.
At some point in the not-too-distant it's conceivable you could see almost anywhere in the world almost anytime you wished.
Guess that'll finally nail some interesting questions... such as - do UFOs exist? Is Bigfoot more than a stuffed toy? And... is the referee right?
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
How to please all of the people all of the time: News in a post-mass media age
I've grown up with the 6pm and 10pm TV news. It's hard for me to imagine a world without it. And perhaps there will always be enough common shared interest between people for this bastion of the broad to remain. Perhaps.
Broadcast - and news aimed-at-all as part of that - works on the premise that you can't please all of the people all of the time. So you try to please as many as you can, for as much of the time as you are able. That's broadcast, that's mass media.
But in a world of digitised, disaggregated content, the available response to an individual's requirements means they can be pleased all of the time. The networked model the internet provides means all of the people can be pleased all of the time.
The question for media companies is: Where is the news team which can serve this long tail of individual demand?
Answer: All around us - in the form of user generated content - communities of co-creators pulled together by their shared interests.
So what we used to call news needs to be redefined. I'll have a stab:
News is:
1. Personalised, real time, community-created, shared information.
2. Best gathered at the point of inspiration (on that handy converged device - the mobile)
3. Best distributed to the point of need (and, taking advantage of the always on, always with you nature of that same converged device, that's best served by mobile, too).
...which is just another reason why creating platforms, not content, should be the primary focus of media companies.
See Also: End of the retreat: How media is the new business model
Broadcast - and news aimed-at-all as part of that - works on the premise that you can't please all of the people all of the time. So you try to please as many as you can, for as much of the time as you are able. That's broadcast, that's mass media.
But in a world of digitised, disaggregated content, the available response to an individual's requirements means they can be pleased all of the time. The networked model the internet provides means all of the people can be pleased all of the time.
The question for media companies is: Where is the news team which can serve this long tail of individual demand?
Answer: All around us - in the form of user generated content - communities of co-creators pulled together by their shared interests.
So what we used to call news needs to be redefined. I'll have a stab:
News is:
1. Personalised, real time, community-created, shared information.
2. Best gathered at the point of inspiration (on that handy converged device - the mobile)
3. Best distributed to the point of need (and, taking advantage of the always on, always with you nature of that same converged device, that's best served by mobile, too).
...which is just another reason why creating platforms, not content, should be the primary focus of media companies.
See Also: End of the retreat: How media is the new business model
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Does a straightforward transaction site need a social element?
As publishers start to work out that content (in and of itself) has little or no value outside of print, there's an increasing urge to shuffle along the supply chain.
There's also a growing willingness to understand that a disaggregated internet is best served by one trick ponies - sites/services which do one thing, but do that one thing better than anything else does.
This leads some to conclude that what they should deliver is a really good shop - a place that helps you make the transaction of your choice swiftly and efficiently.
This doesn't sound like the place for the socialised web2.0 - does it?
But a shop which ignores the attributes of 2.0 is a shop with a limited shelf life.
Why?
1. Consumers want to co-create. If your shop site doesn't allow the community of users to share their ideas about what it should sell, rate what is on sale, come together to propose improvements to what is on sale etc etc - you're locking out all the value of the network. Let members of your community pitch next year's ideas, rate them and shape them - and big up the things they love. If they score down some items - don't sell them. The community has spoken.
2. Two-way flow of communication beats the market: How do you know what your users want NEXT. The market shows you what they want now, and also what they don't want - but it can never tell you what next year's hit or miss is. Your community can - if you're engaged in a two-way flow. This is genuine 'consumer insight' based on real conversations with real people - not on generalised assumptions that "we know our market".
3. Convergence of buyer/seller/product developer/user/employee: If the employee and the user is converging in the concept of user generated content - the same can be said of communities of people trading together. eBay writes this large: The buyer and the seller converge. The buyer is also converging with the developer/designer (think BMW cars for a solid example happening now - the customer customises). This is a 3-dimensional version of a person - not a one dimensional "treat me as the customer... and only the customer" approach. In a 'shop' community environment one person can be a buyer/seller/developer/user/employee
4. Trust is communal: Trust is now created in a wiki-way. The social tools of 2.0 (eg diigo) make it ever easier for people to share what they think of a product or a supplier with their community, rapidly and in a way that is much more readily trusted by most consumers than old-style marketing messages. Sony tells you its PlayStation 3 is the dog's. The community tells them its made a heap of mistakes (1.1m views on YouTube of How to Kill a Brand 1.1m of PS3 vs Wii - apple style). How does your shop help the community decide what to trust?
4. The Social Customer manifesto (see recommended blogs, left) reads:
Conclusion: A shop site is just dandy - providing its a shop selling things the community rates, allows buyers to be sellers and designers, makes its offers spin free, opens doors to transparent two-way flows, and lets the community decide which products and or suppliers it is going to trust - and why. It's worth adding, that all trade has always been social. A one-to-one relationship ain't a business. A one-to-many is a trading community.
There's also a growing willingness to understand that a disaggregated internet is best served by one trick ponies - sites/services which do one thing, but do that one thing better than anything else does.
This leads some to conclude that what they should deliver is a really good shop - a place that helps you make the transaction of your choice swiftly and efficiently.
This doesn't sound like the place for the socialised web2.0 - does it?
But a shop which ignores the attributes of 2.0 is a shop with a limited shelf life.
Why?
1. Consumers want to co-create. If your shop site doesn't allow the community of users to share their ideas about what it should sell, rate what is on sale, come together to propose improvements to what is on sale etc etc - you're locking out all the value of the network. Let members of your community pitch next year's ideas, rate them and shape them - and big up the things they love. If they score down some items - don't sell them. The community has spoken.
2. Two-way flow of communication beats the market: How do you know what your users want NEXT. The market shows you what they want now, and also what they don't want - but it can never tell you what next year's hit or miss is. Your community can - if you're engaged in a two-way flow. This is genuine 'consumer insight' based on real conversations with real people - not on generalised assumptions that "we know our market".
3. Convergence of buyer/seller/product developer/user/employee: If the employee and the user is converging in the concept of user generated content - the same can be said of communities of people trading together. eBay writes this large: The buyer and the seller converge. The buyer is also converging with the developer/designer (think BMW cars for a solid example happening now - the customer customises). This is a 3-dimensional version of a person - not a one dimensional "treat me as the customer... and only the customer" approach. In a 'shop' community environment one person can be a buyer/seller/developer/user/employee
4. Trust is communal: Trust is now created in a wiki-way. The social tools of 2.0 (eg diigo) make it ever easier for people to share what they think of a product or a supplier with their community, rapidly and in a way that is much more readily trusted by most consumers than old-style marketing messages. Sony tells you its PlayStation 3 is the dog's. The community tells them its made a heap of mistakes (1.1m views on YouTube of How to Kill a Brand 1.1m of PS3 vs Wii - apple style). How does your shop help the community decide what to trust?
4. The Social Customer manifesto (see recommended blogs, left) reads:
- I want to have a say.
- I don't want to do business with idiots.
- I want to know when something is wrong, and what you're going to do to fix it.
- I want to help shape things that I'll find useful.
- I want to connect with others who are working on similar problems.
- I don't want to be called by another salesperson. Ever. (Unless they have something useful. Then I want it yesterday.)
- I want to buy things on my schedule, not yours. I don't care if it's the end of your quarter.
- I want to know your selling process.
- I want to tell you when you're screwing up. Conversely, I'm happy to tell you the things that you are doing well. I may even tell you what your competitors are doing.
- I want to do business with companies that act in a transparent and ethical manner.
- I want to know what's next. We're in partnership…where should we go?
Conclusion: A shop site is just dandy - providing its a shop selling things the community rates, allows buyers to be sellers and designers, makes its offers spin free, opens doors to transparent two-way flows, and lets the community decide which products and or suppliers it is going to trust - and why. It's worth adding, that all trade has always been social. A one-to-one relationship ain't a business. A one-to-many is a trading community.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
An updated definition of media brands
Drawing a few threads together I'm proposing an updated definition of what a media brand is - and offering a suggestion about what a media brand should do:
Our legacy of content creation can get in the way of putting the community first. We can't resist the urge to broadcast - to select what the audience is offered and spin it to our tastes.
This often reveals itself in the way we display content. Media brands put the content they create first, tip their hats at some user-generated content (always given second billing) and actively prevent the sharing of other sources of content the community might actually prefer.
A blank sheet of paper approach would open our eyes to simple facts such as:
What lessons are there in this that you aren't prepared to learn?
- A media brand is a platform for a community with shared interests.
- Focused on the interests of this community, we should aggregate content and offer services.
- Services are best delivered at the point they are needed – and that is always, always mobile!
Our legacy of content creation can get in the way of putting the community first. We can't resist the urge to broadcast - to select what the audience is offered and spin it to our tastes.
This often reveals itself in the way we display content. Media brands put the content they create first, tip their hats at some user-generated content (always given second billing) and actively prevent the sharing of other sources of content the community might actually prefer.
A blank sheet of paper approach would open our eyes to simple facts such as:
- The best content for the community is welcome - be it our own, rival media brand owners', or user generated content.
- The community should judge what content gets highest prominence - and which gets booted into touch.
- Groups should be allowed to form which set their own parameters for what equals interesting and 'good'.
What lessons are there in this that you aren't prepared to learn?
l
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
User Generated TV show - shot on and sent from mobile
Another of my predictions for 2007 gets to be ticked off (well, very nearly). And no, I had no idea this was in the pipeline when I wrote this 'A citizen-journalism TV channel made up entirely of video shot on and uploaded from mobile phones will launch.' (click for 2007 predictions in full.)
I'm pleased to say it's emap (the company I work for) which is delivering this one.
FLASHBOX is a 100% user generated programme which will be aired on TV channel The Box.
Nowt particularly unusual about that (hello Current TV). Where it ticks my 2007 predictions' box is in being created almost entirely of video shot on and sent from mobile.
From the release: "viewers (can) upload personalised video clips via sms (really?), mms and online and will be shown around the music video playlist. This is a natural step for The Box, the first UK music channel totally dependent on consumer interaction."
I'm pleased to say it's emap (the company I work for) which is delivering this one.
FLASHBOX is a 100% user generated programme which will be aired on TV channel The Box.
Nowt particularly unusual about that (hello Current TV). Where it ticks my 2007 predictions' box is in being created almost entirely of video shot on and sent from mobile.
From the release: "viewers (can) upload personalised video clips via sms (really?), mms and online and will be shown around the music video playlist. This is a natural step for The Box, the first UK music channel totally dependent on consumer interaction."
It will be screened daily from March 19 at 4pm for 1 hour.
Emap programme Controller, Phil Poole said: "We all recognise the change in consumers media consumption habits and our programming needs to reflect that. We are excited by the new format and hope that our viewers are too!"
I'm interested to hear whether or not there's a revenue share for our new content providers? And can the show also be viewed on mobile - that would close the circle beautifully for me.
I'm interested to hear whether or not there's a revenue share for our new content providers? And can the show also be viewed on mobile - that would close the circle beautifully for me.
Thursday, February 08, 2007
Brickfish: Engagement advertising gets its own platform
Here's a very interesting development bringing together the concepts of engagement marketing and user generated content. Communities Dominate Brands (see links, left) should love it.
http://www.brickfish.com/
Going straight in on my ones to watch list!
It claims: "Brickfish is the first Digital Engagement Company to provide a comprehensive platform that connects advertisers and consumers through the world of User Generated Content. The Brickfish platform enables consumers to engage with advertisers by creating User Generated Campaigns for their brands. This approach creates digital communities comprised of brand evangelists and 100% brand-specific content, forming a positive feedback loop between advertisers and consumers. Consumers are recognized and rewarded for participating in Brickfish campaigns as they create, review, vote on, and propagate content across the internet. Brickfish also provides advertisers and content creators with comprehensive propagation and reporting tools. The company is located in San Diego, CA
UPDATED: Feb 21, 2007: Brickfish has just acquired an $11M sack of investment cash. See here:http://www.americanventuremagazine.com/news.php?newsid=2462
http://www.brickfish.com/
Going straight in on my ones to watch list!
It claims: "Brickfish is the first Digital Engagement Company to provide a comprehensive platform that connects advertisers and consumers through the world of User Generated Content. The Brickfish platform enables consumers to engage with advertisers by creating User Generated Campaigns for their brands. This approach creates digital communities comprised of brand evangelists and 100% brand-specific content, forming a positive feedback loop between advertisers and consumers. Consumers are recognized and rewarded for participating in Brickfish campaigns as they create, review, vote on, and propagate content across the internet. Brickfish also provides advertisers and content creators with comprehensive propagation and reporting tools. The company is located in San Diego, CA
UPDATED: Feb 21, 2007: Brickfish has just acquired an $11M sack of investment cash. See here:http://www.americanventuremagazine.com/news.php?newsid=2462
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Engagement marketing: a practical example
It's tough to 'get' engagement marketing if you're used to selling interruptive stuff.
So, you may or may not find this useful; I heard a case today of a firm who did a deal with one part of my company to run a story in the magazine and on the website promoting their competition. You send your pic and some words in about your life with this particular product - and they choose the best ones and stick you in a ad campaign. Your prize? why fame of course.
Sounds almost like engagement marketing dunnit - almost UGAdvert...
But we can do better than that.
As an engagement marketing opportunity it might work a little more like this:
media company hosts a competition for users to generate their own version of the ad to the brief of the company concerned. Users upload their images and words to an interactive area. Other users comment on them, vote on them, share them. Most viewed/highest rated at end of campaign wins a prize.
Upside; loads of users think creatively about the product - consider what it means to them - and share this with the world. Engaged - oh yes.
Downside: Company concerned might here what people really think about their product. And it may not be all good. But even this offers an opportunity for dialogue and to learn from the community to perfect that product.
Want decent UGC? Try the same from an editorial perspective.
I'm not claiming I'm revealing anything new here - just hoping a concrete example might help.
So, you may or may not find this useful; I heard a case today of a firm who did a deal with one part of my company to run a story in the magazine and on the website promoting their competition. You send your pic and some words in about your life with this particular product - and they choose the best ones and stick you in a ad campaign. Your prize? why fame of course.
Sounds almost like engagement marketing dunnit - almost UGAdvert...
But we can do better than that.
As an engagement marketing opportunity it might work a little more like this:
media company hosts a competition for users to generate their own version of the ad to the brief of the company concerned. Users upload their images and words to an interactive area. Other users comment on them, vote on them, share them. Most viewed/highest rated at end of campaign wins a prize.
Upside; loads of users think creatively about the product - consider what it means to them - and share this with the world. Engaged - oh yes.
Downside: Company concerned might here what people really think about their product. And it may not be all good. But even this offers an opportunity for dialogue and to learn from the community to perfect that product.
Want decent UGC? Try the same from an editorial perspective.
I'm not claiming I'm revealing anything new here - just hoping a concrete example might help.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
BBC to launch social networks - and your career on TV?
Now this is potentially scary - though not entirely unexpected: BBC to invest in social networking sites (over on Communities Dominate Brands)
Alan Moore discusses the BBC plan to build UGC socially-networking sites around brands such as Top Gear (while also planning to sell TV Centre - an illustration of the rapid shift from central broadcast to independant content creators).
The big advantage the Beeb has in a pitch for your video UGC (even against YouTube) is it has a reputation for putting things on the tele. Yep, your video nasty could, just conceivably, be broadcast on 'proper TV'.
Now, I don't know whether or not that is the Beeb plan - but it would be a real short-term drawer. Despite the rush to co-created content, you'd be hard pushed to find someone who wouldn't prefer that their own UGC reaches a huge number of people in one hit - and the perception remains that that's on TV.
If the Beeb ran a CurrentTV-style show straight after CBeebies on BBC4... what a head start they'd have.
That head start would only be for the short term. But it would give them the time to cement their audience into a TV-on-demand future.
If TV on demand via your pc, TV, mobile device is the real future, the TV schedule and the power of traditional channels just dribbles away.
Looks like rivals have a year before the BBC version will kick in.
Alan Moore discusses the BBC plan to build UGC socially-networking sites around brands such as Top Gear (while also planning to sell TV Centre - an illustration of the rapid shift from central broadcast to independant content creators).
The big advantage the Beeb has in a pitch for your video UGC (even against YouTube) is it has a reputation for putting things on the tele. Yep, your video nasty could, just conceivably, be broadcast on 'proper TV'.
Now, I don't know whether or not that is the Beeb plan - but it would be a real short-term drawer. Despite the rush to co-created content, you'd be hard pushed to find someone who wouldn't prefer that their own UGC reaches a huge number of people in one hit - and the perception remains that that's on TV.
If the Beeb ran a CurrentTV-style show straight after CBeebies on BBC4... what a head start they'd have.
That head start would only be for the short term. But it would give them the time to cement their audience into a TV-on-demand future.
If TV on demand via your pc, TV, mobile device is the real future, the TV schedule and the power of traditional channels just dribbles away.
Looks like rivals have a year before the BBC version will kick in.
Monday, January 29, 2007
YouTube will pay for UGC - how will you respond?
I appreciate I'm a little late on commenting on this one (YouTube to pay video makers, BBC) but then again, it ain't as if YouTube didn't promise as much at the time the google deal was signed.
But it does raise some interesting questions and perhaps means the rules of the game have changed.
UGC has so far been created for the glory of it, the fame, the attention, the self-satisfaction - whatever. Now the biggest and most visual example of it (ok, Blogger could argue with biggest) is saying - make good content people like and you should be paid. Note this - not just rewarded - paid.
YouTube says it didn't want to start with this model because the kind of people who were attracted by paid UGC would simply move to a higher paying one when it cropped up. It said it wanted to build a community first.
I'm not sure YouTube has much in the way of deep community. It has a great tool and people share what they create with that great tool on and in other communities.
What they have is lots of visitors with money to spend.
I guess the laws of supply and demand will prevail. It's inevitable that users will be rewarded for how well their content turns into cash. And that's where the google adsense expertise will kick in.
I suspect the google payment mechanism won't be far removed from a google adsense model. So if you make videos which no one wants to see - no money. If you make videos about things no one wants to advertise against - no money. If you make ads which get people in a spending clicking mood - big money.
Since no porn is allowed in adsense we could see the end of the titilating tag words and a reduction in teenagers dancing in their underwear. Things could get spectacularly more creative.
But we could end up with a flood of substandard TV-style ads. It'll be an interesting time.
I've got away from my original point. The biggest issue for rival media companies is of course, not the impact of payment for UGC on YouTube - but what that means people will suddenly expect from your fledgling UGC plan.
You'll likely have less fame to offer - and less cash. What's the response?
You're better off if you are well niched, that's for sure. Big fish/little pond gives you a chance.
Any one got other solutions?
But it does raise some interesting questions and perhaps means the rules of the game have changed.
UGC has so far been created for the glory of it, the fame, the attention, the self-satisfaction - whatever. Now the biggest and most visual example of it (ok, Blogger could argue with biggest) is saying - make good content people like and you should be paid. Note this - not just rewarded - paid.
YouTube says it didn't want to start with this model because the kind of people who were attracted by paid UGC would simply move to a higher paying one when it cropped up. It said it wanted to build a community first.
I'm not sure YouTube has much in the way of deep community. It has a great tool and people share what they create with that great tool on and in other communities.
What they have is lots of visitors with money to spend.
I guess the laws of supply and demand will prevail. It's inevitable that users will be rewarded for how well their content turns into cash. And that's where the google adsense expertise will kick in.
I suspect the google payment mechanism won't be far removed from a google adsense model. So if you make videos which no one wants to see - no money. If you make videos about things no one wants to advertise against - no money. If you make ads which get people in a spending clicking mood - big money.
Since no porn is allowed in adsense we could see the end of the titilating tag words and a reduction in teenagers dancing in their underwear. Things could get spectacularly more creative.
But we could end up with a flood of substandard TV-style ads. It'll be an interesting time.
I've got away from my original point. The biggest issue for rival media companies is of course, not the impact of payment for UGC on YouTube - but what that means people will suddenly expect from your fledgling UGC plan.
You'll likely have less fame to offer - and less cash. What's the response?
You're better off if you are well niched, that's for sure. Big fish/little pond gives you a chance.
Any one got other solutions?
Friday, January 19, 2007
A digital idea is a digital idea. Mobile and internet are one and the same
In the media world, delivering brands through channels is so cool it's hot. But I'm not entirely sure this emphasis on channels is particularly helpful.
At least, it isn't while we continue to see mobile and internet as separate channels.
In a world of digital land-grab, a blind charge to deliver the idea is often happening without a thought for its appropriateness to 'the channel' you happen to focus your world around.
This is most glaringly obvious in the mobile domain. A mobile play should focus on Tomi T Ahonen's 5 Ms. In short, it should take advantage of what differentiates a mobile device from a standard pc.
This means that if you have a great idea for a new digital delivery of your brand you shouldn't stuff it on to mobile just because you can. If it suits a fixed line play best, then deliver it there. If it offers advantages to the mobile user, make them available to the mobile user, too.
Seems obvious.
But the confusion is endemic and I'd hazard a guess it is structural. If you persist in running units focusing on mobile and other units focusing on 'internet', it's bound to occur. Indeed internal competition may actively encourage this to happen.
I can't think of a single mobile play which wouldn't benefit from the option of access via a 'fixed line' website. I can't conceive of a website which wouldn't benefit from being optimised for your mobile, or which wouldn't accelerate its performance by allowing UGC (user generated content) and social networked interaction via mobile too.
3G Mobile internet screws up the dividing line. Wifi-enabled smart phones erase it entirely.
Fingers crossed for change.
At least, it isn't while we continue to see mobile and internet as separate channels.
In a world of digital land-grab, a blind charge to deliver the idea is often happening without a thought for its appropriateness to 'the channel' you happen to focus your world around.
This is most glaringly obvious in the mobile domain. A mobile play should focus on Tomi T Ahonen's 5 Ms. In short, it should take advantage of what differentiates a mobile device from a standard pc.
This means that if you have a great idea for a new digital delivery of your brand you shouldn't stuff it on to mobile just because you can. If it suits a fixed line play best, then deliver it there. If it offers advantages to the mobile user, make them available to the mobile user, too.
Seems obvious.
But the confusion is endemic and I'd hazard a guess it is structural. If you persist in running units focusing on mobile and other units focusing on 'internet', it's bound to occur. Indeed internal competition may actively encourage this to happen.
I can't think of a single mobile play which wouldn't benefit from the option of access via a 'fixed line' website. I can't conceive of a website which wouldn't benefit from being optimised for your mobile, or which wouldn't accelerate its performance by allowing UGC (user generated content) and social networked interaction via mobile too.
3G Mobile internet screws up the dividing line. Wifi-enabled smart phones erase it entirely.
Fingers crossed for change.
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Reason report on MIT's Futures of Entertainment conference
Alan Moore on Communities Dominate Brands draws our attention to this post.
It's by Jesse Walker at Reason magazine. Read the whole thing here.
Here's some of my personal highlights, Alan selects others at CDB here.
And there are a few of my own conclusions at the end. Feel free to add your own as posts.
INTERNAL COMMUNICATION!
Last summer, as the explosive popularity of YouTube became obvious to the older media companies, the marketing department at the Cartoon Network decided to use the site to promote its shows. So it posted some video clips there, hoping the promos would get forwarded in emails, linked on blogs and MySpace pages, and otherwise spread through the Internet, strengthening the channel's fan base and drawing in new viewers.
Happily, people noticed the videos. Unhappily, some of the people who noticed the videos worked for the Cartoon Network's legal department, who mistook their colleagues' new marketing tactic for an unauthorized appropriation of the firm's intellectual property. They promptly sent cease-and-desist letters demanding that the clips come down...
PUT THE CONSUMER FIRST - AND MEAN IT!
...a business meeting she and some colleagues once had with Apple... the TV people were caught up in pleasing all their stakeholders, while the Mac man was concerned solely with improving the consumer's experience. It's a pretty good snapshot of the difference between a company that sells eyeballs to advertisers and a company that sells tools to the audience....
NEVER MIND THE QUALITY, FEEL THE COMMUNITY
The second panel... was devoted to content generated by the audience itself. The speakers included Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr; Rob Tercek of the (M)FORMA Group, which produces mobile entertainment; Kevin Barrett of BioWare, which makes computer-based role-playing games; and Ji Lee, who started sticking empty speech balloons on ads around New York City, waiting to see what people would write inside them and photographing the results... They all build structures where users can roam, interact, and create and share their own content.
Fake suggested that there is a "general exhaustion with mass consumer culture," and that less passive forms of entertainment are arguably the natural state of affairs. It wasn't long ago, historically speaking, that quilting bees and front-parlor music occupied the space now filled by movies and television.
Tercek argued that economic logic favors user-generated content.
And Barrett noted that, while only a minority of the grassroots creations... might be "good" by mainstream standards... that doesn't matter from the ordinary consumer's point of view. What's important is that it fills a need for the people who make it, not that anyone outside their immediate circle find it engaging...
FOLLOW YOUR USERS
You can't predict the way those people will use those tools. Flickr began as a feature in a long-dead online game, a way players could drag and drop photos into instant messages. The programmers soon added the ability to post those pictures on webpages, and that was the side of their service that succeeded.
Wise companies -- put another way, companies that survive in the marketplace -- understand that it's better to foster and follow such serendipitous developments than to try to force your users to conform to your original vision.
BUILD YOUR OWN SECONDLIFE
Ron Meiners of multiverse.net described his company's plan to build a platform that will let other people build yet more worlds on a license-free basis, from enormous World of Warcraft-style games to amateur, user-generated realms, each with their own aims and mores.
Of all of the above, the most telling for me is the notion that the natural human state is to join in - to interact, to be part of the entertainment rather than to sit back and stare at a screen: hence the success of social-networked sites, of blogging, of computer games... etc etc etc
It's why engagement marketing beats interruptive marketing, why UGC is essential, why micro mass media beats mass media, why broadcast is failing and self-cast is growing.
Even when we thought we were a mass media, passive-entertainment addicted society, the clues were still there: It's why people always liked Letters pages in magazines and newspapers, why phone-ins have always been at the heart of talk radio and why gossip happens.
Hollywood and TV have masked some human truths. The tools of the internet have done nothing more than reveal the huge commercial potential in understanding them.
It's by Jesse Walker at Reason magazine. Read the whole thing here.
Here's some of my personal highlights, Alan selects others at CDB here.
And there are a few of my own conclusions at the end. Feel free to add your own as posts.
INTERNAL COMMUNICATION!
Last summer, as the explosive popularity of YouTube became obvious to the older media companies, the marketing department at the Cartoon Network decided to use the site to promote its shows. So it posted some video clips there, hoping the promos would get forwarded in emails, linked on blogs and MySpace pages, and otherwise spread through the Internet, strengthening the channel's fan base and drawing in new viewers.
Happily, people noticed the videos. Unhappily, some of the people who noticed the videos worked for the Cartoon Network's legal department, who mistook their colleagues' new marketing tactic for an unauthorized appropriation of the firm's intellectual property. They promptly sent cease-and-desist letters demanding that the clips come down...
PUT THE CONSUMER FIRST - AND MEAN IT!
...a business meeting she and some colleagues once had with Apple... the TV people were caught up in pleasing all their stakeholders, while the Mac man was concerned solely with improving the consumer's experience. It's a pretty good snapshot of the difference between a company that sells eyeballs to advertisers and a company that sells tools to the audience....
NEVER MIND THE QUALITY, FEEL THE COMMUNITY
The second panel... was devoted to content generated by the audience itself. The speakers included Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr; Rob Tercek of the (M)FORMA Group, which produces mobile entertainment; Kevin Barrett of BioWare, which makes computer-based role-playing games; and Ji Lee, who started sticking empty speech balloons on ads around New York City, waiting to see what people would write inside them and photographing the results... They all build structures where users can roam, interact, and create and share their own content.
Fake suggested that there is a "general exhaustion with mass consumer culture," and that less passive forms of entertainment are arguably the natural state of affairs. It wasn't long ago, historically speaking, that quilting bees and front-parlor music occupied the space now filled by movies and television.
Tercek argued that economic logic favors user-generated content.
And Barrett noted that, while only a minority of the grassroots creations... might be "good" by mainstream standards... that doesn't matter from the ordinary consumer's point of view. What's important is that it fills a need for the people who make it, not that anyone outside their immediate circle find it engaging...
FOLLOW YOUR USERS
You can't predict the way those people will use those tools. Flickr began as a feature in a long-dead online game, a way players could drag and drop photos into instant messages. The programmers soon added the ability to post those pictures on webpages, and that was the side of their service that succeeded.
Wise companies -- put another way, companies that survive in the marketplace -- understand that it's better to foster and follow such serendipitous developments than to try to force your users to conform to your original vision.
BUILD YOUR OWN SECONDLIFE
Ron Meiners of multiverse.net described his company's plan to build a platform that will let other people build yet more worlds on a license-free basis, from enormous World of Warcraft-style games to amateur, user-generated realms, each with their own aims and mores.
Of all of the above, the most telling for me is the notion that the natural human state is to join in - to interact, to be part of the entertainment rather than to sit back and stare at a screen: hence the success of social-networked sites, of blogging, of computer games... etc etc etc
It's why engagement marketing beats interruptive marketing, why UGC is essential, why micro mass media beats mass media, why broadcast is failing and self-cast is growing.
Even when we thought we were a mass media, passive-entertainment addicted society, the clues were still there: It's why people always liked Letters pages in magazines and newspapers, why phone-ins have always been at the heart of talk radio and why gossip happens.
Hollywood and TV have masked some human truths. The tools of the internet have done nothing more than reveal the huge commercial potential in understanding them.
Friday, November 24, 2006
Expert content does have a role in social-networked success
Social networking has been a huge success on the web. Tomi T Ahonen (Communities Dominate Brands) has called it the killer application of 3G. It's certainly going to be one of them.
But one of the difficulties for media companies (or at least, those which existed before the internet took off) is that these sites (orkut, myspace, faceparty, youtube etc etc) attract huge audiences, offer compelling propositions - and manage all this without going to the trouble or expense of providing expert-created content (though, it has to be said, often without troubling themselves about such trivialities as profit, at least in the short term, either).
So it might be easy for us to spit our collective dummies and assume no one wants our fantastic creative genius any more. They just want an opportunity to show off their own.
Maybe. Maybe not.
What if we gave them our fantastic, crafted, creations AND engaged them in a vibrant, co-creation-rich, social-network?
So far, I haven't seen anyone doing both really well - great content to give you reasons to arrive, keep coming back, sample other media etc, combined with a killer social networking function which results in communities with the freedom to interact and form groups in the way they prefer.
Why not? Perhaps because recognised brands create instant 'them and us' in the communities which could form around them. Perhaps it's as simple as the proposition hasn't been right so far?
So let's not give up just yet.
Expert content (off the top of my head...):
I'll throw in a third and a fourth strand to this proposal:
But one of the difficulties for media companies (or at least, those which existed before the internet took off) is that these sites (orkut, myspace, faceparty, youtube etc etc) attract huge audiences, offer compelling propositions - and manage all this without going to the trouble or expense of providing expert-created content (though, it has to be said, often without troubling themselves about such trivialities as profit, at least in the short term, either).
So it might be easy for us to spit our collective dummies and assume no one wants our fantastic creative genius any more. They just want an opportunity to show off their own.
Maybe. Maybe not.
What if we gave them our fantastic, crafted, creations AND engaged them in a vibrant, co-creation-rich, social-network?
So far, I haven't seen anyone doing both really well - great content to give you reasons to arrive, keep coming back, sample other media etc, combined with a killer social networking function which results in communities with the freedom to interact and form groups in the way they prefer.
Why not? Perhaps because recognised brands create instant 'them and us' in the communities which could form around them. Perhaps it's as simple as the proposition hasn't been right so far?
So let's not give up just yet.
Expert content (off the top of my head...):
- gives advertisers confidence,
- presents a touchstone/testing board for the community,
- is initially more compelling and (if you get it right) trustworthy,
- offers access everyday users can rarely acquire (exclusive)
- provides an historic archive of great content (UGC can't be retrospective!).
- Offers an assurance of a certain quality standard
- er... I'm sure you can think of some others (please post them below)... that expert content is and which UGC isn't
I'll throw in a third and a fourth strand to this proposal:
- It must be optimised for mobile
- And it must have its commercial thinking rooted in engagement marketing.
Old style interruptive ads just won't work on the optimised mobile environment (and one in which, don't forget, people will be used to watching TV on within two years)...
So, if you can tick all those boxes (and check it against recently identified trends - particularly among Generation-C) you really ought to have something worth investing in.
Friday, November 17, 2006
Another social networking UGC site bought
Yahoo has bought bix.com, according to brand republic. I guess it's the response to failing to buy YouTube.
Says President and CEO Mike: "With Bix's platform focused on talent-based competitions combined with Yahoo!'s global audience and leadership in social media, as well as its sales and marketing muscle, we will take Bix to the next level. Expect many more contests with cool prizes, more community features, tons of entertaining content, and integration with many of your favorite Yahoo! services."
Sponsored contests (from both advertisers and consumers) has been the revenue model so far - a rather more engaging way of marketing than most seen in old media. I'll be keeping my eye on this.
The New York Times, said: "Some advertisers are using the site to reach potential customers. Six Flags, for instance, has created a contest on Bix.com called the Great American Scream-Off, in which participants upload videos of themselves screaming — as they might do on a roller coaster — for prizes including free passes. Yahoo would not discuss how much it charges advertisers to sponsor contests."
Says President and CEO Mike: "With Bix's platform focused on talent-based competitions combined with Yahoo!'s global audience and leadership in social media, as well as its sales and marketing muscle, we will take Bix to the next level. Expect many more contests with cool prizes, more community features, tons of entertaining content, and integration with many of your favorite Yahoo! services."
Sponsored contests (from both advertisers and consumers) has been the revenue model so far - a rather more engaging way of marketing than most seen in old media. I'll be keeping my eye on this.
The New York Times, said: "Some advertisers are using the site to reach potential customers. Six Flags, for instance, has created a contest on Bix.com called the Great American Scream-Off, in which participants upload videos of themselves screaming — as they might do on a roller coaster — for prizes including free passes. Yahoo would not discuss how much it charges advertisers to sponsor contests."
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The rate of change is so rapid it's difficult for one person to keep up to speed. Let's pool our thoughts, share our reactions and, who knows, even reach some shared conclusions worth arriving at?
