With the current, and understandable, desire to integrate User Generated Content into sites, whether it's via citizen journalism, blogging, or old-fashioned forums, it's always a nice surprise to see someone actively defending the role of the old media in a brave, new, integrated world...
So step forward Guy Kewney of Newswireless.net, as published on theregister in response to an attack on leading articles in print.
"A final point: the BuzzMachine is being perhaps a touch naive in saying: "Most [research] confirmed Sweeney's theories that Millennial students are not reading books for fun, watching television news or reading newspapers. Nearly all said they get their news from Yahoo!, Google, or other sites."
Yes, of course. We all do, for goodness sake. I do get a paper edition of a news journal, most days, but only because I can't get Google on the London Underground!
But when you go to Google, looking for (say) iPod virus news, what are you searching? "The internet" sure! - but not Technorati, not Digg, not the blogosphere; you're searching the Old Meeja - newspapers, mostly. Look down that list, and see whether it includes newspapers or not!
People who say "I don't read newspapers, I read Google" are deceiving themselves. It's like saying "I don't go near any cows, I get my milk from the dairy!"
As to how long the bulk of Google's news will be derived from the big news agencies and newspapers, before "great newspapers" all become online institutions, is quite another question. But whether printed on paper - like the Guardian - or published online - like the Guardian - they'll still need blogs and leaders to share important information that underlies the raw data.
If there is a "Kewney's Law of Media", then it's very simple. "A new medium may displace old media from top rank - but the old media will always live on."
We have blogs, and we have leaders, and they aren't the same thing. They overlap. The arrival of the blog, however, does not signal the end of the leading article or anonymous comment any more than the arrival of television marked the end of radio, or YouTube marks the end of TV."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/24/bloggers_vs_leaders/
I think one of the important points to take is that yes, kids today will look to mobiles, the net and TV for news and information, but if you have a valid and respected source, your work will be the thing they are looking for. You just need to make sure it's available in each format they require, whether it's print, net, mobile, or beamed directly into their tiny little minds.
The further ahead you look - the faster you go | davidpcushman AT gmail.com | These are my views and my views only.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query newspapers. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query newspapers. Sort by date Show all posts
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
How to avoid extinction in an evolving world
I saw Rory Brown tweet about journalist Hugo Dixon talking about the death spiral of newspapers today. It's a subject dear to my heart. Newspapers were where I started my career 21 years ago. I was trained for print.But we've logged their decline on this blog and many others. Microsoft, for example, predicts their extinction within 20 years.
The newspaper industry made, in my view, two key errors.
1. It missed the quality opportunity.
2. It spurned the R&D advantage it had
Now these are very grave errors. But if you're not in the newspaper industry I'd advise against form of smugness. For there, but for the grace of etc etc... (image by colin purrington via flickr)
Newspapers had (perhaps still have) an opportunity to do what the gift economy of the net couldn't: Invest in quality.
Churning out the same press releases anyone can find repeated 1000+ times on the internet may be cheap but it's also self-destructive. If you can't beat the web on price, you can't beat it on relevance and you can't beat it on speed (and you can't) you'd better find something else to beat it on. Quality seems the only game left in town. The creation of the point-worthy.
The R&D advantage was spurned too. When the print barons had piles more cash than the gift economists of the likes of wikipedia, google, youtube et al, they could have invested to make the kind of structural change required to match the networked world.
Now, ever more fearful, they are reduced to picking through the wreckage and looking for further efficiencies.
They chose not to invest in survival strategies for a world of complex adaptive systems (such as the net, such as evolution) and instead persisted with the linear mass-efficiencies models which worked so well in a mass industrial age.
Ok, so newspapers are having it hard. What's that got to do with you (if you aren't a print journalist, for example)?
Well, I don't think all of the troubles newspapers are facing are caused by the medium.
Anything which seeks to mediate in a networked world faces the challenge of being worked around, that's for sure. That is the impact of group forming network theory in practice.
But perhaps of even more impact is the way traditional companies and corporations are responding to, or are able to respond to, the huge changes being wrought by the networked world.
The death spiral Hugo Dixon describes is that of a company managing efficiencies. This is the mass industrial response - the fnal phase of the S-curve seen in many businesses (as referred to by Professor Malcolm Mcdonald among others).
When you have run out of innovations you turn to the accountants. More and more effort is focused on saving, less and less on growth.
You save until you can no longer spend.
This applies to newspapers.
It may also apply to a business near you.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Dog Bites Man: Reclaiming the issue attention cycle
And then I recalled something called the 'issue attention cycle' we used to talk about in newspapers back when I was in that industry.
Essentially it was the length of time people would still be bothered about a particular issue.
The first dog attack may get a 'brief' on page 7. The second a lead story on page 5. By the third there's a campaign on page 1. But as the attention wanes further attacks warrant less and less attention until they are no longer covered at all.
The issue - one assumes - remains, it's the attention that has gone.
Newspapers likely had a viral impact on each other. Neighbouring local papers having their agendas set, their attention focused, by those nearby.
I imagine (and if you have a relevant example, please do share) if you mapped the reporting of dog attacks over time you would see classic viral dispersion across the nation. Bubbling up, bubbling down again.
Let's assume that dog behaviour isn't viral - that there isn't the equivalent of doggy newspapers to spread the news. The behaviour of the dogs hasn't changed. The reporting of it has.
That's worth remembering when you read any story selected for you by lowest-common-denominator publication.
But it's also important we remind ourselves of this in social media: where the issue attention cycle remains. Through our selection of trusted sources (ie rss readers or peer-to-peer recommendation focused by our selection of Twitter or Facebook friends) we are active participants in the generation of these cycles.
And through the speed of publication, the cycles are hugely truncated.
The saving grace of the web in this regard is the universal ability to publish that it grants.
We don't have to wait for the centre to pay something attention; ourselves and our peers create our only cycles. We choose when to start them, how long to sustain them and when their job is done.
No one can tell us where our interest starts and finishes any more.
And for that we should be eternally grateful. The media chose what to surface. Now we do.
Friday, March 27, 2009
The Future of Newspapers
The Guardian's Open Platform project has caused a bit of a stir, at a time when mass media of all kinds is struggling to work out business models that have a better fit with the networked world.
The clever bit about the Guardian's plan is that they don't pretend they have the answers - they are sharing what they have with the rest of the world in the hope that a bit of global crowd-sourcing will evolve a sustainable solution.
At least that's my take. But let Dr Chris Thorpe tell you more.
Chris (one of Brando Social Consult's team) has been consulting to The Guardian on the project for the last six months. Now it's live he can finally talk about it.
I interviewed him at the Brando Social offices last week and have finally edited the video...
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=e3025827-9735-4ca6-bec0-f61d5f6609a0)
The clever bit about the Guardian's plan is that they don't pretend they have the answers - they are sharing what they have with the rest of the world in the hope that a bit of global crowd-sourcing will evolve a sustainable solution.
At least that's my take. But let Dr Chris Thorpe tell you more.
Chris (one of Brando Social Consult's team) has been consulting to The Guardian on the project for the last six months. Now it's live he can finally talk about it.
I interviewed him at the Brando Social offices last week and have finally edited the video...
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Care less what the 15 year old intern does: Ask what his mum is doing.
I've really enjoyed the righteous abandon with which some sections of the traditional media have crowed about one 15-year-olds insight that his friends don't use Twitter.
Among the other details of his note for Morgen Stanley are that online advertising is 'pointless' (I'm pretty sure he means interruptive traditional style advertising of the kind that sustains traditional media) and that no kids are reading newspapers.
That teenagers aren't using Twitter (much) comes as no surprise to anyone whose been watching the regular stats that role out of Nielsen, Comscore and the like. That it took an 'intern' to tell Morgen Stanley is perhaps the greater surprise - but that's by the by.
What is of more concern to me is the considerable amount of barking going on up wrong trees around this.
First, why does it take one intern's paper to get media owners jumping up and down? Kids are available to speak to every day of the week everywhere. Take them seriously and they will speak to you. Ask Ruby Pseudo. Same message goes to Morgen Stanley. Publishing the bleeding obvious as 'insight' doesn't do you many favours.
Second. Please, please, please don't think that the behaviour (particularly what they say they do compared with what they actually do) of teenagers is an indicator for how the world is changing and a guide to how you should respond.
As Clay Shirky put it if you want to know what technologies will succeed don't ask what teenage boys are doing - ask what their mums are doing.
Mums are busy. And if the tech doesn't make a material difference to their lives they don't use it.
How many mums are on Facebook, how many on Twitter? How many using email? Text?
You can be sure there are many. They are organising their lives and the things they care about with these tools.
They are showing these tools matter for very many, now. Enough to change the world? Not yet. When we stop using terms like social media and just get on with organising ourselves - then we'll know the world has changed because enough of us find it everyday ordinary enough.
Follow the teenage boys if you wish - I'll be watching the mums.
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Among the other details of his note for Morgen Stanley are that online advertising is 'pointless' (I'm pretty sure he means interruptive traditional style advertising of the kind that sustains traditional media) and that no kids are reading newspapers.
That teenagers aren't using Twitter (much) comes as no surprise to anyone whose been watching the regular stats that role out of Nielsen, Comscore and the like. That it took an 'intern' to tell Morgen Stanley is perhaps the greater surprise - but that's by the by.
What is of more concern to me is the considerable amount of barking going on up wrong trees around this.
First, why does it take one intern's paper to get media owners jumping up and down? Kids are available to speak to every day of the week everywhere. Take them seriously and they will speak to you. Ask Ruby Pseudo. Same message goes to Morgen Stanley. Publishing the bleeding obvious as 'insight' doesn't do you many favours.
Second. Please, please, please don't think that the behaviour (particularly what they say they do compared with what they actually do) of teenagers is an indicator for how the world is changing and a guide to how you should respond.
As Clay Shirky put it if you want to know what technologies will succeed don't ask what teenage boys are doing - ask what their mums are doing.
Mums are busy. And if the tech doesn't make a material difference to their lives they don't use it.
How many mums are on Facebook, how many on Twitter? How many using email? Text?
You can be sure there are many. They are organising their lives and the things they care about with these tools.
They are showing these tools matter for very many, now. Enough to change the world? Not yet. When we stop using terms like social media and just get on with organising ourselves - then we'll know the world has changed because enough of us find it everyday ordinary enough.
Follow the teenage boys if you wish - I'll be watching the mums.
Wednesday, November 08, 2006
'Crowd-sourcing' and citizen journalism go mainstream in 'old media'
Those of you who check my profile will know I work for emap. It's also a matter of public record that the company is currently undergoing a strategic review of its business known as Magazines 2010 - with the assistance of the Boston Consultancy Group.
With that in mind, you'll understand why this particular post on Communities Dominate Brands is one I'm very keen to share - particularly with anyone working on Magazines 2010.
What it reveals is that the idea of citizen journalist and crowd-sourcing have come together, been tested and proven and are being rolled out across mainstream mass media in the United States TODAY.
The post, by Alan Moore, quotes Wired: "According to internal documents provided to Wired News and interviews with key executives, Gannett, the publisher of USA Today as well as 90 other American daily newspapers, will begin crowdsourcing many of its newsgathering functions. Starting Friday, Gannett newsrooms were rechristened "information centers," and instead of being organized into separate metro, state or sports departments, staff will now work within one of seven desks with names like "data," "digital" and "community conversation."
The article continues: "The initiative emphasizes four goals: Prioritize local news over national news; publish more user-generated content; become 24-7 news operations, in which the newspapers do less and the websites do much more; and finally, use crowdsourcing methods to put readers to work as watchdogs, whistle-blowers and researchers in large, investigative features.
Alan says: "What we have seen and witnessed over the last 15 months is a body politic that wants to engage, given the right context, in a process that they can share in, be part of."
Apart from today's post. I'd also recommend this post on Group Forming Network Theory which helps to explain WHY people are responding so well when provided with these routes to contribute and publish and why joining in them is so important.
With that in mind, you'll understand why this particular post on Communities Dominate Brands is one I'm very keen to share - particularly with anyone working on Magazines 2010.
What it reveals is that the idea of citizen journalist and crowd-sourcing have come together, been tested and proven and are being rolled out across mainstream mass media in the United States TODAY.
The post, by Alan Moore, quotes Wired: "According to internal documents provided to Wired News and interviews with key executives, Gannett, the publisher of USA Today as well as 90 other American daily newspapers, will begin crowdsourcing many of its newsgathering functions. Starting Friday, Gannett newsrooms were rechristened "information centers," and instead of being organized into separate metro, state or sports departments, staff will now work within one of seven desks with names like "data," "digital" and "community conversation."
The article continues: "The initiative emphasizes four goals: Prioritize local news over national news; publish more user-generated content; become 24-7 news operations, in which the newspapers do less and the websites do much more; and finally, use crowdsourcing methods to put readers to work as watchdogs, whistle-blowers and researchers in large, investigative features.
Alan says: "What we have seen and witnessed over the last 15 months is a body politic that wants to engage, given the right context, in a process that they can share in, be part of."
Apart from today's post. I'd also recommend this post on Group Forming Network Theory which helps to explain WHY people are responding so well when provided with these routes to contribute and publish and why joining in them is so important.
Tuesday, June 12, 2012
Create value as if the world exists
There is a final disruption charging at full speed through the old world. It promises to be more fundamental than the disruption to the business of content creation and distribution, more disruptive even than our ability to self-organise to shape what we care about.
It is that we can self-organise to pay for it.
It is this disruption to mass, centralised blocks of capital, the switch to widely-distributed ownership and leadership that this entails, that will have the greatest long term impact on how our society is organised – on how we live our lives.
The web has been like a Big Bang to business as usual – disrupting media, marketing, customer service, new product development, the business of elections, the business of who governs us, how we are educated, how we are cared for and so much more.
But disruption of this people-power kind alone has limits. Even though we can find other people who care about the same things as we do, and in so doing lower the cost of action to achieve the shared purposes we have, long lasting and valuable change is slowed by the huge inertia of big capital.
There are those who argue big capital is just too big to be undone from the edge. But who thought the arrival of the internet would one day herald the end of big media? Today more people read Twitter each morning in the UK than read all the national newspapers put together. The power shift is almost complete in media; The content and distribution monopolies gone.
And so for big capital?
Make no mistake, big capital is holding back real change. Take Facebook. First the VCs have to get paid. Haven’t developed a business model to meet the needs of the networked world? F**you! Pay me! And so we get traditional broadcast style ads interrupting your FB time.
Then the VCs are replaced by Big Capital. Who want dividends. Fast. No time to develop a new model. You’ve caught all those fish in a barrel – let’s go spear them...
Where is the interest in long term benefit to the users? To their communities? To their society?
Clay Shirky has a nice line about news websites which are (shock!) “designed as if the web exists”.
Member-led, peer-funded partnerships offer the opportunity to create value as if the world exists. By which I mean value creation which goes beyond the back slap in the boardroom and the bottom line on the balance sheet, value creation which acknowledges that resources are finite, that people, communities, societies and ecologies are connected and matter to each other.
As I described in a recent post about Mindful Consumption, this kind of approach isn’t for a happy clappy hippy utopia, it provides a genuine competitive advantage: In a connected world where to win is to work together with ever greater numbers of people who care about the same things you do, few are going to sign up to support businesses who are damaging the ecosystem in which they exist.
Exploitation which damages our connected well-being has never been welcome. The fact is that exploitation is visible now more than it ever has been before: The web has revealed our interconnectedness like nothing in history before.
And that is a genie which is not going back in its bottle.
Change will come, big capital inertia can only slow things. And where we are frustrated, where we care most, where we see the most significant damage to our future and to that of those we care about, we will vote with not only our connectedness, our collaboration, our action – but with our personal funds.
Sure, it’ll be slow. We’ll chip away at first – Kickstarter by kickstarter. But one day big capital will wake up to find itself in the place newspapers have.
It is that we can self-organise to pay for it.
It is this disruption to mass, centralised blocks of capital, the switch to widely-distributed ownership and leadership that this entails, that will have the greatest long term impact on how our society is organised – on how we live our lives.
The web has been like a Big Bang to business as usual – disrupting media, marketing, customer service, new product development, the business of elections, the business of who governs us, how we are educated, how we are cared for and so much more.
But disruption of this people-power kind alone has limits. Even though we can find other people who care about the same things as we do, and in so doing lower the cost of action to achieve the shared purposes we have, long lasting and valuable change is slowed by the huge inertia of big capital.
There are those who argue big capital is just too big to be undone from the edge. But who thought the arrival of the internet would one day herald the end of big media? Today more people read Twitter each morning in the UK than read all the national newspapers put together. The power shift is almost complete in media; The content and distribution monopolies gone.
And so for big capital?
Make no mistake, big capital is holding back real change. Take Facebook. First the VCs have to get paid. Haven’t developed a business model to meet the needs of the networked world? F**you! Pay me! And so we get traditional broadcast style ads interrupting your FB time.
Then the VCs are replaced by Big Capital. Who want dividends. Fast. No time to develop a new model. You’ve caught all those fish in a barrel – let’s go spear them...
Where is the interest in long term benefit to the users? To their communities? To their society?
Clay Shirky has a nice line about news websites which are (shock!) “designed as if the web exists”.
Member-led, peer-funded partnerships offer the opportunity to create value as if the world exists. By which I mean value creation which goes beyond the back slap in the boardroom and the bottom line on the balance sheet, value creation which acknowledges that resources are finite, that people, communities, societies and ecologies are connected and matter to each other.
As I described in a recent post about Mindful Consumption, this kind of approach isn’t for a happy clappy hippy utopia, it provides a genuine competitive advantage: In a connected world where to win is to work together with ever greater numbers of people who care about the same things you do, few are going to sign up to support businesses who are damaging the ecosystem in which they exist.
Exploitation which damages our connected well-being has never been welcome. The fact is that exploitation is visible now more than it ever has been before: The web has revealed our interconnectedness like nothing in history before.
And that is a genie which is not going back in its bottle.
Change will come, big capital inertia can only slow things. And where we are frustrated, where we care most, where we see the most significant damage to our future and to that of those we care about, we will vote with not only our connectedness, our collaboration, our action – but with our personal funds.
Sure, it’ll be slow. We’ll chip away at first – Kickstarter by kickstarter. But one day big capital will wake up to find itself in the place newspapers have.
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
The death of death
We like a good death.
Death of the 30-second spot, Death of newspapers, Death of interruptive advertising, Death of the website (url), Death of Mass Media… etc...
Perhaps we should start thinking, instead, about life – in all its evolutionary glory – to reveal what’s really going on as the network disrupts everything it touches.
Life; in the disaggregation that digitisation has wrought, in the explosion of distribution of content and services we witness.
Life; in widgets’ freedom to explore and evolve. An explosion of new fauna and flora while the hamstrung dinosaurs of ‘websites’ lumber around hoping their food will come to them.
Life; in the freedom of nodes to connect one to another, one-to-many, one to whichever they choose.
Life; in the way conversations evolve.
Life; in self-forming, non-directed, rapidly-evolving, fuzzy-edged communities of passion and purpose. Out of chaos emerges new beauty, massive energy.
Life; in how groups form and reform online in ways THAT WERE NOT POSSIBLE in the physical world of the atom. Life; in ways the one-dimensional view of the node in Reed’s Law must underestimate.
This is the Columbo Moment.
Walks towards door. Pauses. Turns. Raises hand and eyebrow.
“Er… just one other thing.”
“These conversations of ours. The ones creating all the value. They couldn’t happen before could they?”
Lieutenant, you have me. No, they can only happen in a digital world. The Power of the Network relies on something more than a series of tools returning us to our ‘normal’ social selves – the We Species that Alan Moore refers to. The very fact that these tools are digital, that they function on/with/through the web, makes a fundamental difference.
The Power of the Network goes beyond returning us to our communal ‘we species’ roots. It pours Miracle Grow on those roots, blitzes them with mutating isotopes and carries out multiple cross pollination while harvesting and experimenting on the results ALL AT THE SAME TIME.
Every time I move desk I get a new perspective on the business I work in. I have conversations with people who are now much more conveniently placed for me than they had been previously, new people. New nodes, more connections = greater value emerging (one extra node doubles the value of your network).
In the digital world I can be next to everyone, all at the same time. There is no restriction imposed by atoms. Self-forming groups of passion and interest, ever forming and reforming, ever evolving, swirling around the world with fuzzy, permeable edges… these could not exist when conversation relied on two or more people being in the same physical space at the same time.
The self-forming networks of trust evidenced by blogrolls is one great example. But they don’t quite hit the ‘in real time’ (synchronous communication) spot.
Twitter, offers our latest best illustration.
Here’s what it does:
1. Nodes can connect without the limitation of sharing the same physical space. It’s your global, everywhere-at-once hotdesk.
2. It enables real-time, drop-everything-to-join-in conversation.
3. The group involved in the conversation has permeable edges (anyone can follow anyone else – being led to relevant people through their own networks of trust, anyone can spot someone else they might like to follow, referred to by someone else they are already following etc etc). There are no structural limitations imposed by reliance on personal data ownership. They are fuzzy. Facebook’s are more sharply-defined, for example.
4. Since the groups have permeable edges they can (must) constantly form and reform, pursue new interests, break-up, reform around a new purpose etc. They are about flow rather than focus.
5. The distributed micro-blogging nature of Twitter means the conversation can start from any node in your current self-formed fuzzy-edged group. The conversation itself can evolve rapidly thanks to rapid iteration and amplification, creating more opportunities for value to emerge, drawing in and ejecting contributors as it evolves.
Conversation, the great intersection of ideas, is the driver of value of the network. Now it is enabled to evolve in complex adaptive ways, just as the economy does, just as the internet itself does.
New stuff will emerge.
The digital world is not about death. It is about evolving and amplifying ideas through groups who could never have come together before. It is about life. New, amazing forms of life.
The evolution has begun.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Twitter: The newspaper of tomorrow?
My old mum says she hardly reads her daily newspaper these days. She's been getting the Daily Express delivered for as long as I can remember.Habit is a powerful thing so the executives at the Daily Express may sleep safe; I don't think she's about to give up paying for her daily copy. It's just she's "seen it all on the TV" by the time the paper arrives.
There's no use telling me you're setting your own news agenda, ploughing your own furrow etc etc. Your user thinks you're just reheating old news. Sorry, but there it is. (Image by kamerakrazy)
Her son (that's me folks) has never had a newspaper delivered in his life. Plenty to worry about for national newspaper folk then.
There's nothing new in this. Microsoft predicts the death of newspapers within 20 years.
Some of the debate about the skills journalism students need, which you'll find here, suggests that while there may still be printed mass distributed things in the future, we may only persist in calling them 'news' papers out of habit.
The thing is, my old mum does still read her weekly local paper. She doesn't do that out of some loyalty born of the fact it was where I started my career. No, she does it because it carries content she has not had access to elsewhere.
She doesn't have access to the internet, and the broadcast types behind the likes of teletext have never gone hyperlocal enough to become relevant or convenient enough for her.
So the local paper remains (for her, at least) a source of unique, relevant content which she is prepared to pay for. Even the advertising in it - by virtue of its focus on the local - for the most part, is of some value to her.
There are hints here for all services - print and digital:
Relevant = useful = valued
Imagine if you knew enough local people on twitter, people you have connected with and maintained connections with through the metadata you have exchanged - so that you trust them and can believe what they have to say.
Imagine if you could select 'My location' on twitter - and only receive tweets from people with x miles.
Imagine you could toggle this on and off when it matters to you.
Perhaps this is the shape of the newspaper of the future?
Whatever tools your communities choose to use, what is clear is that 'news' (read information or content) that people find relevant is that which is niched, either by topic or location or both.
Communities of purpose are the groups to make that happen - just another reason why they will play out as the business units of the 21st century.
Twitter; The newspaper of tomorrow? Well yes, in as much as it is a very effective way of discovering, filtering and distributing information with levels of relevance no printed medium yet has been able to compete with.
It is not alone in asking tough questions. The new digital tools of human connection (of group forming) consistently raise them:
- What is the value of mass/broad?
- What is the value of mediation?
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Mobile Entertainment Market: Cannes - first update
I'm at the Mobile Entertainment Market in Cannes and would be posting live tweets BUT once again there's no free wifi in the conference room.
To be fair, there is in the lobby – but that's not where the speakers are. I think the word I'm looking for is doh! No back channel here!
So here's my compromise – a few highlights from the first session. I know it means you can't join in with the conversation but at least you can latch on to the broadcast of ideas and maybe join in the comments here. Gah! I'd rather be twittering.
Anyways a few highlights:
Lee Fenton COO at Jamba reveals his animated rabbit ringtone has become the biggest sellng physical cd in Germany.
Love to know what the demographics are. My daughter is 3 and pesters for princess comics. I'll make a wild bet she won't buy her own newspapers when she's older.
Jamba is also going to offer downloads from MySpace artist pages.
Jamba spends $100m on marketing. Less than 10% is spent marketing on mobile yet it is their most efficent ad channel. They'd do more but they can't get the inventory.
During Alistair Mitchell's (RIM, ie Blackberry) keynote someone pointed out how poor the Iphone is for typing (and therefore text). Much prompting about a touchscreen blackberry with a keyboard led to no confirmation.
Interesting to me this fascination with typing – given the increasingly less text heavy internet and increasing numbers of new mobile users globally who can't read, much less type their queries. I guess that may not be relevant in the business user smart phone world?
Brief discussion of the long tail of places people seek content from makes me think that this alone should make operators tear down their walls.
What do operators make money from? Conversation. What prompts conversation online, peer-to-peer, by voice or text or IM or etc? Content.
It's another example of the because effect. Operators can make money because of content but not with it.
Finally, BBC's controller of mobile Matthew Postgate says Beeb is both a content and and an engineering company. Early adopters are into news which is why its popular on mobile internet. Mobile will be mainstream for Beeb before too long.
News translates well across different platforms. Drama may not (on tv well shot and lavish, etc) take that and put it on mobile and it can't elicit the same emotional response). It will take time for people to use the medium most effectively in its own right.
BBC has about 17m uu on fixed line a month, 2.8m on mobile. He thinks 40% are a new audience which they hadn't reached before.
He says Beeb is planning to roll out the iplayer on mobile and that devices like the iphone bring the fixed and mobile internet closer together.
A version of iplayer is in beta on iphone and itouch. Plan is to roll it out on more handsets this year.
Beeb worked closely with the isps for iplayer to be "sensitive to their issues" about demand on bandwidth, that same dialogue is going on with the mobile operators.
"We can create demand, which drives Britain towards a digital economy," says Matthew.
More to come later today.
To be fair, there is in the lobby – but that's not where the speakers are. I think the word I'm looking for is doh! No back channel here!
So here's my compromise – a few highlights from the first session. I know it means you can't join in with the conversation but at least you can latch on to the broadcast of ideas and maybe join in the comments here. Gah! I'd rather be twittering.
Anyways a few highlights:
Lee Fenton COO at Jamba reveals his animated rabbit ringtone has become the biggest sellng physical cd in Germany.
Love to know what the demographics are. My daughter is 3 and pesters for princess comics. I'll make a wild bet she won't buy her own newspapers when she's older.
Jamba is also going to offer downloads from MySpace artist pages.
Jamba spends $100m on marketing. Less than 10% is spent marketing on mobile yet it is their most efficent ad channel. They'd do more but they can't get the inventory.
During Alistair Mitchell's (RIM, ie Blackberry) keynote someone pointed out how poor the Iphone is for typing (and therefore text). Much prompting about a touchscreen blackberry with a keyboard led to no confirmation.
Interesting to me this fascination with typing – given the increasingly less text heavy internet and increasing numbers of new mobile users globally who can't read, much less type their queries. I guess that may not be relevant in the business user smart phone world?
Brief discussion of the long tail of places people seek content from makes me think that this alone should make operators tear down their walls.
What do operators make money from? Conversation. What prompts conversation online, peer-to-peer, by voice or text or IM or etc? Content.
It's another example of the because effect. Operators can make money because of content but not with it.
Finally, BBC's controller of mobile Matthew Postgate says Beeb is both a content and and an engineering company. Early adopters are into news which is why its popular on mobile internet. Mobile will be mainstream for Beeb before too long.
News translates well across different platforms. Drama may not (on tv well shot and lavish, etc) take that and put it on mobile and it can't elicit the same emotional response). It will take time for people to use the medium most effectively in its own right.
BBC has about 17m uu on fixed line a month, 2.8m on mobile. He thinks 40% are a new audience which they hadn't reached before.
He says Beeb is planning to roll out the iplayer on mobile and that devices like the iphone bring the fixed and mobile internet closer together.
A version of iplayer is in beta on iphone and itouch. Plan is to roll it out on more handsets this year.
Beeb worked closely with the isps for iplayer to be "sensitive to their issues" about demand on bandwidth, that same dialogue is going on with the mobile operators.
"We can create demand, which drives Britain towards a digital economy," says Matthew.
More to come later today.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Trust can't be broadcast
Trust in the banks is down. I believe the expression is 'no shit, sherlock?'Much more interesting than the bleeding obvious to me is the accelerating collapse in trust in advertising and traditional mass media.
(Image courtesy.)
This from Edelman's 2009 Trust Barometer release:
Let's say that again. Only 13% of people trust the ads now. That's assuming they are still accepting the interruptions.
- Trust in nearly every type of news outlet and spokesperson is down from last year.
- Trust in business magazines and stock or industry analyst reports—last year’s leaders— decreased from 57% to 44% and from 56% to 47%, respectively.
- Only 13% trust corporate or product advertising—down from last year’s low of 20%.
Even more staggering, the figure for the UK is down to JUST 5%!
So let's assume you overcome our studied ignorance of ads in social media. Those whose attention is snared by them (remember folks, it's a 0.01% click-thru rate), of these, only 13% (5% in the UK) trust what they see, hear and read. So they're hardly likely to act on them.
Peer-to-peer recommendation however, of the kind we see inspiring purchases of products and services every day in social networks, in conversations between friends, is not interruptive and it is trustworthy.
- Britain trusts media less than any other of the 20 countries surveyed (30%)
- Traditional sources of information are on the wane and at an all-time low
- Newspapers down 10 points at 19%;
- Radio news down 20 at 33%
- There is a Trust Bust in conventional Corporate Comms
- Only 5%trust corporate/ product advertising; 15% for corporate website, press releases, live speeches - Edelman Trust Barometer, UK
Trust in banking and business is down because of some very unusual economic factors.
Trust in mass media is down because of something much more fundamental. We've found ways to connect one to another - there is a new model which places trust in new places - in each other, in the edge - not the centre.
Trust can't be broadcast.
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Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Recommendation: it's all in the mind - theirs not yours
When I started out in the world of work, as a journalist, we had high principles about the distinction between advertising and editorial.
Where those lines blurred we had a blurred word to describe it: advertorial. An advert dressed up as editorial. A subjective advertising message posing as editorial recommendation.
We thought editorial should entertain and inform, be useful to you. In consumer media it was important to us that our recommendation should not be tainted by commercial concerns (beyond trying to sell newspapers, magazines etc of course!).
Advertising was clearly and explicitly about selling something, nothing more.
The advertorial aimed to do a little of both. And this adulteration made it something of a dirty word to editorial people. Written through gritted teeth, we felt as if we were perpetrating some kind of con trick.
And we held steadfastly to the control of the metadata so we could raise alarm bells for our readers. Warning: You are being sold to. We are being paid to write this. Warning! Suspend your trust in us!
This metadata was expressed through a label 'Advertisement Feature', for example, and the use of clearly different design cues to distinguish it from the pure editorial content. We wanted to be clear this wasn't really our recommendation.
That carries through in most advertising mediums. There is consistent metadata which makes it easy for my 3-year-old daughter to distinguish the difference between a TV advert and a TV programme within seconds. Ads online comply too. We feel guilty if we make google adsense indistinct from the editorial it sits within.
Roll forward. The digital disruption has changed who gets to publish content (recommendations) and who gets to distribute that content - through peer-to-peer networks of trust. We've moved from a centralised broadcast model to an edge-in networked one.
The need for a distinction between advertising and editorial content is an outcome of mass broadcast models. Where control of production and distribution of the message was in the hands of the few, to get your message to the eyeballs meant you either had to own the means of production/distribution or pay for placement.
If you were paying for placement we should be warned that the message was likely to be biased.
So we created a set of rules, both implicit (metadata) and explicit (legislation) to regulate those placements and warn us of the risk of bias.
But it's no longer the case that you need to either own the means of production or distribution in order to get your content OR advert published and distributed.
In the networked world we are all creators of what would once have been called editorial messages AND advertising messages.
And where the payment distinction dissolves, perhaps so does the need for distinction between advertising and recommendation.
Where they meet we find services. What advertising message would you forward (recommend) to a friend? One you think they will find useful. How did you decide to turn that advert into a recommendation?
Well, that's entirely up to you. First it has to be something you personally found useful (a service to you). Being able to change it to better suit your needs (a widget with a personal outcome, for example) makes that more likely. Moulding it to the needs of your own network of trust makes it more likely you will decide it's worthy of your recommendation. Where the content becomes a service, the ad becomes more likely to morph into a recommendation. But there's no certainty.
As JP Rangaswami was suggesting here, recommendation doesn't happen in the mind of the forwarding party, or the person who would distribute. It happens in the mind of the receiver. It's pull. The forwarder, the wannabe distributor, is pushing - is advertising.
I guess that means that one man's advertising is another man's recommendation.
The fact is, peer-to-peer distribution models are likely to make a better fist of selecting the right 'adverts' to forward to the people most likely to regard that service as a 'recommendation'.
So;
Models where audiences consume content (eg everything from straightforward broadcast models to youtube - where 1% of creators forge a ugc-powered broadcast model for 99% of consumers) more traditional ad models continue to create value.
But in Total Communities - where 99% are creating and distributing (eg myspace, twitter, facebook, social networks in general) where to take part you have to create part, making it ever easier to turn advert into recommendation is the new alchemy.
I'm going to be talking more about this at WidgetWebExpo in New York next week. In the meantime, please join in the journey by commenting below.
Where those lines blurred we had a blurred word to describe it: advertorial. An advert dressed up as editorial. A subjective advertising message posing as editorial recommendation.
We thought editorial should entertain and inform, be useful to you. In consumer media it was important to us that our recommendation should not be tainted by commercial concerns (beyond trying to sell newspapers, magazines etc of course!).
Advertising was clearly and explicitly about selling something, nothing more.
The advertorial aimed to do a little of both. And this adulteration made it something of a dirty word to editorial people. Written through gritted teeth, we felt as if we were perpetrating some kind of con trick.
And we held steadfastly to the control of the metadata so we could raise alarm bells for our readers. Warning: You are being sold to. We are being paid to write this. Warning! Suspend your trust in us!
This metadata was expressed through a label 'Advertisement Feature', for example, and the use of clearly different design cues to distinguish it from the pure editorial content. We wanted to be clear this wasn't really our recommendation.
That carries through in most advertising mediums. There is consistent metadata which makes it easy for my 3-year-old daughter to distinguish the difference between a TV advert and a TV programme within seconds. Ads online comply too. We feel guilty if we make google adsense indistinct from the editorial it sits within.
Roll forward. The digital disruption has changed who gets to publish content (recommendations) and who gets to distribute that content - through peer-to-peer networks of trust. We've moved from a centralised broadcast model to an edge-in networked one.
The need for a distinction between advertising and editorial content is an outcome of mass broadcast models. Where control of production and distribution of the message was in the hands of the few, to get your message to the eyeballs meant you either had to own the means of production/distribution or pay for placement.
If you were paying for placement we should be warned that the message was likely to be biased.
So we created a set of rules, both implicit (metadata) and explicit (legislation) to regulate those placements and warn us of the risk of bias.
But it's no longer the case that you need to either own the means of production or distribution in order to get your content OR advert published and distributed.
In the networked world we are all creators of what would once have been called editorial messages AND advertising messages.
And where the payment distinction dissolves, perhaps so does the need for distinction between advertising and recommendation.
Where they meet we find services. What advertising message would you forward (recommend) to a friend? One you think they will find useful. How did you decide to turn that advert into a recommendation?
Well, that's entirely up to you. First it has to be something you personally found useful (a service to you). Being able to change it to better suit your needs (a widget with a personal outcome, for example) makes that more likely. Moulding it to the needs of your own network of trust makes it more likely you will decide it's worthy of your recommendation. Where the content becomes a service, the ad becomes more likely to morph into a recommendation. But there's no certainty.
As JP Rangaswami was suggesting here, recommendation doesn't happen in the mind of the forwarding party, or the person who would distribute. It happens in the mind of the receiver. It's pull. The forwarder, the wannabe distributor, is pushing - is advertising.
I guess that means that one man's advertising is another man's recommendation.
The fact is, peer-to-peer distribution models are likely to make a better fist of selecting the right 'adverts' to forward to the people most likely to regard that service as a 'recommendation'.
So;
- Your service must be adaptable (so the user can make it a better fit for those he would advertise it to).
- Your service must be peer-to-peer distributed (it's the best fit with the networked world and the only way it can morph from advert to recommendation).
Models where audiences consume content (eg everything from straightforward broadcast models to youtube - where 1% of creators forge a ugc-powered broadcast model for 99% of consumers) more traditional ad models continue to create value.
But in Total Communities - where 99% are creating and distributing (eg myspace, twitter, facebook, social networks in general) where to take part you have to create part, making it ever easier to turn advert into recommendation is the new alchemy.
I'm going to be talking more about this at WidgetWebExpo in New York next week. In the meantime, please join in the journey by commenting below.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Lessons from the mass media wars
There are those in print media - newspapers/mags etc - who cling to the idea that they can 'do a cinema'.When TV arrived as the latest mass media many predicted the demise of cinema.
They didn't count on its:
- Ability to adapt with experience-enhancing technology (colour, stereo, Dolby, 3d etc)
- The power of that experience being shared.
And then there's the elements that kept radio in the game when first cinema and then radio rocked up:
- Convenience
- Portability
- Currency.
Media properties need to adapt. And the obsession with print has to be questioned long and hard.
Those cinematic and radio survivors of the mass media wars give a guide.
Cinema uses technology to enhance shared experiences, radio is convenient, portable and current.
Combine all these and you have a proposition to take you into the age of the eighth mass media - us.
From (We are the eighth mass media)
I don't just mean that we create the content in a UGC vs Professional Content Creators kind of way. I mean WE are the distribution, the content, the 'user journey', how messages are transmitted... WE are the medium and the media carried within it.
We are the connections. We are also how the connections are made.
In the age of the eighth mass media, organisations must understand that serving multiple and ever increasing numbers of niches is the route to sustainable scale.
Those who wish to remain part of our lives must provide value to the adhoc self-forming communities of purpose our digital selves can't help but participate in.
We have already adapted. We are creating a new landscape. Are you fit for it? Are you prepared to become so? I wonder how this 'Twitter: The newspaper of tomorrow? matches up.
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Monday, January 17, 2011
The case for ignoring your customer
I quite often hear of organisations which take the quite deliberate action of ignoring what their customers say about them online.
They reason that either:
1) They tried engaging and a group of antis came to dominate the conversation, (many brands gather themselves some long-term enemies)
2) There are only ever negative comments - and they 'already know' what customers don't like (think utilities - stuff that you take for granted until something goes wrong).
Both of the above represent a door closed on innovation.
Imagine, if you will, that all those complaining about your org or brand are in reception at HQ. In their hundreds or thousands. Would you ignore them, their feedback and their ideas?
Why then, when they have taken the time and trouble to tell you (and their peers) what they think of your products and services, would you ignore this crowd at your online door?
If thousands of newspapers and magazines had published negative comments, would you ignore them? Why ignore all those published online - collectively delivering huge reach and much greater trust.
And if a cohort of angry antis seek to dominate the conversation, think again about their concerns. Why are they so angry? How has your connection with your customer broken down so badly? Could you fix the damage of decades of mass broadcast comms with some human-scale peer to peer conversation? Could you show a brand is just a representation of the activities of people? Good interactions with people shift perceptions about brands.
It may be tempting to ignore the lone-but-noisey anti-fan - but something makes that person do what they do. No one sets up websites, twitter accounts etc and keeps building them over sustained periods without a pretty strong set of reasons. Are they reasons that matter? You'd best find out.
Further - disengaging with all your online customers as a result harms you, not them. All you leave behind is anger and a record revealing your ignorance which remains unchallenged and which stays on record for ever.
3) The third group who ignore are those who believe they know better than their customers. Some luxury brands take this view.
It comes from the belief that super premium brands are there to lead, not follow.
Those that believe this should take a look at their company history and ask themselves if they haven't at any point changed their products, servicing or marketing in response to customer usage, perception or complaint. Social media monitoring just writes that process fast and large.
In short I don't see a case for ignoring your customer. When you do so you are saying:
We know better than our customers - all of them, always.
And not even Steve Jobs would claim that.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone so I may have to tidy it up later ;-)
They reason that either:
1) They tried engaging and a group of antis came to dominate the conversation, (many brands gather themselves some long-term enemies)
2) There are only ever negative comments - and they 'already know' what customers don't like (think utilities - stuff that you take for granted until something goes wrong).
Both of the above represent a door closed on innovation.
Imagine, if you will, that all those complaining about your org or brand are in reception at HQ. In their hundreds or thousands. Would you ignore them, their feedback and their ideas?
Why then, when they have taken the time and trouble to tell you (and their peers) what they think of your products and services, would you ignore this crowd at your online door?
If thousands of newspapers and magazines had published negative comments, would you ignore them? Why ignore all those published online - collectively delivering huge reach and much greater trust.
And if a cohort of angry antis seek to dominate the conversation, think again about their concerns. Why are they so angry? How has your connection with your customer broken down so badly? Could you fix the damage of decades of mass broadcast comms with some human-scale peer to peer conversation? Could you show a brand is just a representation of the activities of people? Good interactions with people shift perceptions about brands.
It may be tempting to ignore the lone-but-noisey anti-fan - but something makes that person do what they do. No one sets up websites, twitter accounts etc and keeps building them over sustained periods without a pretty strong set of reasons. Are they reasons that matter? You'd best find out.
Further - disengaging with all your online customers as a result harms you, not them. All you leave behind is anger and a record revealing your ignorance which remains unchallenged and which stays on record for ever.
3) The third group who ignore are those who believe they know better than their customers. Some luxury brands take this view.
It comes from the belief that super premium brands are there to lead, not follow.
Those that believe this should take a look at their company history and ask themselves if they haven't at any point changed their products, servicing or marketing in response to customer usage, perception or complaint. Social media monitoring just writes that process fast and large.
In short I don't see a case for ignoring your customer. When you do so you are saying:
We know better than our customers - all of them, always.
And not even Steve Jobs would claim that.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone so I may have to tidy it up later ;-)
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, April 25, 2008
Two-way flow networks make humans the medium
Print, Recordings, Radio, Cinema, TV: Mass media has been, and remains, about one-way flows of communication. Broadcast.
The mistake we often make when talking about the internet (and mobile for that matter) is to describe them as mediums. They are networks. There is a difference.
The internet and mobile are tools to enable communication and reduce the cost of groups forming (helping to realise the potential of group forming network theory). These are the communities of purpose I described in Communities of Purpose are the Business Units of the 21st Century.
What difference does this make? A significant one for marketing.
Because we treat the internet as a medium, we place our advertising on it and in it. But the ‘media properties’ of the internet are to the medium as paper is to print. It’s the enabler. Paper is what makes magazines, books and newspapers possible. No one advertises on wood pulp.
Anyone who ever read the Cluetrain will have understood that marketing is about conversations (markets are conversations).
Conversation involves two or more humans connecting and communicating.
So where are you going to 'place' your marketing message? Where all the humans are, where all the conversations are going on?
Sounds sensible doesn't it?
Social networks (the media property hits of the internet) are where conversation appears to be happening (online at least). So the response has been; let's cover them in banner ads?
That’s not placing the ads in the relevant medium.
It’s a little like putting notices on trees and wondering why no one is acting on them when they read the newspaper that's made from those trees when pulped.
We're advertising in what we perceive to be the medium (ie the social network) when the medium is actually the conversation occuring between humans.
Justin Kirby at Digital Media Communications would say humans are the medium. The ads have to be in what's made from the trees, not the trees themselves! Your ads have to be in what’s made from the connecting tools of the internet – in the conversation.
So banner ads on the ‘media properties’ of the internet are effectively placing ads around ads. Delightful. Would you enjoy a site made entirely from adsense code?
Of course some people do notice the ads, some do click on them (0.1% isn't it?) and more still have a seed planted by an idea that they act on later. The activation likely comes after a conversation.
The human beings (the nodes in these networks) are your access points to other human beings. They are where the connections are made, they are the conversations, they are the marketing.
Figuring out ways to engage them in your product or service, to make them natural advocates is not about constructing a social network around it and hoping they'll thank you for it. It is more about reaching out to them as human beings in the hope that they will have good things to say about you when they do what humans do: connect.
They do this in social networks of course, but they also do this on telephones, in person, by fax, by email, by im, by text etc etc...
The one consistent element is real humans talking to one another.
If the human is your message, then that message gets carried with them – marketed - no matter what the medium.
Food for thought.
And good news for content. The content that convinces – no matter what the source, remains crucial.
Good experiences are content, too. Content, as Cory Doctorow said, is what sparks conversations. And I think we’ve illustrated how important that is.
The mistake we often make when talking about the internet (and mobile for that matter) is to describe them as mediums. They are networks. There is a difference.
The internet and mobile are tools to enable communication and reduce the cost of groups forming (helping to realise the potential of group forming network theory). These are the communities of purpose I described in Communities of Purpose are the Business Units of the 21st Century.
What difference does this make? A significant one for marketing.
Because we treat the internet as a medium, we place our advertising on it and in it. But the ‘media properties’ of the internet are to the medium as paper is to print. It’s the enabler. Paper is what makes magazines, books and newspapers possible. No one advertises on wood pulp.
Anyone who ever read the Cluetrain will have understood that marketing is about conversations (markets are conversations).
Conversation involves two or more humans connecting and communicating.
So where are you going to 'place' your marketing message? Where all the humans are, where all the conversations are going on?
Sounds sensible doesn't it?
Social networks (the media property hits of the internet) are where conversation appears to be happening (online at least). So the response has been; let's cover them in banner ads?
That’s not placing the ads in the relevant medium.
It’s a little like putting notices on trees and wondering why no one is acting on them when they read the newspaper that's made from those trees when pulped.
We're advertising in what we perceive to be the medium (ie the social network) when the medium is actually the conversation occuring between humans.
Justin Kirby at Digital Media Communications would say humans are the medium. The ads have to be in what's made from the trees, not the trees themselves! Your ads have to be in what’s made from the connecting tools of the internet – in the conversation.
So banner ads on the ‘media properties’ of the internet are effectively placing ads around ads. Delightful. Would you enjoy a site made entirely from adsense code?
Of course some people do notice the ads, some do click on them (0.1% isn't it?) and more still have a seed planted by an idea that they act on later. The activation likely comes after a conversation.
The human beings (the nodes in these networks) are your access points to other human beings. They are where the connections are made, they are the conversations, they are the marketing.
Figuring out ways to engage them in your product or service, to make them natural advocates is not about constructing a social network around it and hoping they'll thank you for it. It is more about reaching out to them as human beings in the hope that they will have good things to say about you when they do what humans do: connect.
They do this in social networks of course, but they also do this on telephones, in person, by fax, by email, by im, by text etc etc...
The one consistent element is real humans talking to one another.
If the human is your message, then that message gets carried with them – marketed - no matter what the medium.
Food for thought.
And good news for content. The content that convinces – no matter what the source, remains crucial.
Good experiences are content, too. Content, as Cory Doctorow said, is what sparks conversations. And I think we’ve illustrated how important that is.
Friday, July 08, 2011
The end of The Age of Being Told What To Do
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| Image via Flickr - and free to share anywhere! |
British politician's must be privately sighing with relief (or more likely laughing themselves dizzy). Because this spells out if not the end of the power of press barons, a very significant reduction in it.
The News of the World is one of NewsCorps. Part of the vast Murdoch media empire. It is an empire which has given the Murdochs huge power. They have used it to threaten, cajole, instal and topple Governments. They backed one party or another - and went on witch hunts and mud-slinging exercises to attack those who they did not annoint. Through this they have seeked to control how we are governed.
Successive generations of Britain's leaders have cow-towed to this power. It's been embarrassing to see them cringe before Rupert and Co.
Now politicians are waking to the realisation that Murdoch's media power has gone - and that learning has to impact every press baron remaining on the planet.
The rapid and angry response of the people took down the News of the World - destroying the brand. And that response was only able to grow, aggregate and self-organise to impressive effect because of the social tools now at our disposal - the social media. We didn't need to be told how to think, or what to do.
A community of purpose organised and created change, fast. The web lowers the cost of group forming. But the important bit is that these aren't any old groups. These are groups of people with shared purposes: Communities.
And communities lower the cost of getting things done.
No longer is the power at the centre - it is at the edge.
We, the edge, the self-organised, have achieved what Governments could not - we have brought the press barons to heel.
Of course there will be emergent clusters and clumps of influence, flocks to be turned in the peer to peer world where influence now resides. We don't all have equal influence - power if you like - all of the time. But it is us, the edge that will do the flock turning.
Messages are no longer done to us, but done by us - or at the very least with our considered consent. We will share what we choose to share - and that is the only way in which information will flow in this space. We will no longer be told what to think by a huge source of power at the centre - we will influence each other.
But before the politicians raise a glass of champagne to the demise of the media baron, they must also note that their fate remains in the hands of exactly the same forces. They may believe they are the power at the centre but unless they take rapid steps to open up to the people they represent - and relinquish the control that dominates the current model - they will go the way of the News of the World and of the press barons.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
I'm in media! Oh really? So are my children...
I responded to Paul Bradshaw's interesting question about the future of training for journalists here and by way of introduction mentioned that: "I've been in media for 20 years, unless you count the fanzines I wrote as a kid." Actually, I was in media as soon as I could be. I even made my own comics and newspapers before I had any means of distributing them.
Which makes me think today's kids will be in media rather earlier and rather longer - and they'll understand the power that gives them rather earlier.
As soon as they connect via the likes of habbo hotel, club penguin, or many of the other social networks for kids they are in media. (image by Terry Lloyd Smith)
They have the tools to enable what we've all become:
We're all publishers now, we're all distributors now, we're all advertisers now, as I've said before.
Which means as soon as we start forming into groups via the network we're in media.
Perhaps we are really in media even before we reach out for our first mouse - part of the eighth mass media I've started exploring here and here?
Friday, October 09, 2009
Catch-up: Causing a stir on BlogTalk Radio
Jon Hansen was kind enough to invite me to be his guest on his BlogTalk Radio show yesterday. It was broadcast live at 5:30-6:15pm UK time on October 8.
I very much enjoyed and - and Jon's invited me back to do another show in the near future - which I'm going to take him up on.
Apparently, yesterday's caused a bit of a stir:
This from Jon's blog:
Listen to it for yourself using the player, below.
I very much enjoyed and - and Jon's invited me back to do another show in the near future - which I'm going to take him up on.
Apparently, yesterday's caused a bit of a stir:
This from Jon's blog:
"...today’s show regarding the differences between traditional media such as newspapers and the emerging social media world, delivered an incredibly insightful and powerful message in terms the future of these paradoxical mediums.
"Unexpected . . . certainly not given guest David Cushman’s level of expertise regarding the subject matter. "What was surprising is the level of interaction within the confines of the show’s on-line chat room which even had one listener post a note asking me to take callers earlier in the show.
"While there have been segments in which I have had 19 or 20 people in the live chat room at the same time, the activity was noticeably brisk during today’s segment.
"It was also considerably more active than it was during the 90-Minute Buy American Special that featured a brief interview with Canada’s Trade Minister. Perhaps Dave should run for public office."
Listen to it for yourself using the player, below.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Has media forgotten what it does?
It goes without saying (but I'm going to say it anyway) that paper has had a huge influence on the way print media developed. But I wonder if we take for granted the huge influence the medium we have grown up with has had on how we are viewing our digital future?
Paper is finite.
That simple fact leads to a number of outcomes. For example; there is a cost involved in adding extra pages to a publication. Paper constrains how much we can publish and therefore what we choose to publish. Paper demands that we are selective - that we edit. We filter the world's information and publish only that which we see fit. And then we make it fit, the way we see fit.
We filter on the way in.
We place ourselves in a self-selecting position of authority. It's a seat we find hard to give up.
We do this, of course, from a perspective of 'serving the needs of the consumer'. We aim to give them what they want. It is in our financial interests so to do.
But the needs of the consumer have to fight for resources with the demands imposed by the medium. And the medium tends to win.
Paper has mass.
This creates distribution challenges. We have to move this mass from one place to another (driven by an initial transcation). We do our best to distribute it to distribution hubs (we call them shops) where we hope the supply chain can be completed with another transaction (which puts them in the hands of the consumer.
These facts (paper is finite and has mass) mean we are forced to serve consumers as large, lowest-common-denominator-driven groups. Paper's physical nature imposes a structural limitation on what print media does and how it must treat its users.
It is conceivably possible that each consumer could have a magazine crafted precisely for themselves, to meet their precise needs. All it would take is a dedicated team of content producers (and in the print world this means employing a team of writers, photographers, designers and sub-editors), a one-off print run and a delivery direct to the lucky receipient's door.
There is nothing standing in the way of that. Nothing but cost.
If you're prepared to pay multiple thousands for each issue of your magazine you can have what the digital space can give you right now (where you'd get it for free). It'll just take a while to deliver.
Print never felt there was much of a market for that. So it created content aimed toward the lowest common denominator (granted, niche by niche on occasion).
It distributed to reach as many as possible with as little waste as possible - but still found 20-25% of its output pulped. The need to drive down unit cost make us err towards a mass production approach. It forces us to think locally, too. (Distributing a newspaper globally is something of a challenge precisely because of that mass and cost thing.)
Consider then how digital is different.
Digital space is infinite. There is zero cost attached in adding an extra page. There is therefore no need to filter on the way in. There is therefore no reason for us to be selective, no cause for us to take up our seat upon our self-appointed editorial throne. The user gets to filter on the way out.
Digital has no mass. There are zero costs to distribution. We don't need supply chains or distribution hubs in the physical sense. Distribution can be pulled to those who want it, distributed by those who advocate it. And it can happen everywhere right now.
Now you can have your ultra personalised content at zero cost - and you can have it this very instant, updated the moment relevant change occurs. It's unlikey you'll do this alone, because you are a human being and hard-wired to be social.
When we think of the role of media in the digital world, are we considering what is equivalent to newspapers and magazines (that is media properties) in digital form - or do we want to become the paper (the medium)?
Is the platform approach (and it's one I advocate myself) about trying to be the digital equivalent of paper? Bearing in mind digital 'paper' has no mass and is limitless, would we be better off delivering brilliantly creative media properties closer in form to user accounts than to social networks?
My initial thoughts are that we may may have multiple roles - as nuancers of the culture (helping with collaborative filtering) in a platform/aggregational style AND as brilliant media properties (of the user account kind) where we become part of the conversation, pulled into someone else's aggregator or platform.
Who says it has to be either/or? The digital world offers more dimensions than we've had to consider before.
Please contribute your thoughts by commenting below.
Paper is finite.
That simple fact leads to a number of outcomes. For example; there is a cost involved in adding extra pages to a publication. Paper constrains how much we can publish and therefore what we choose to publish. Paper demands that we are selective - that we edit. We filter the world's information and publish only that which we see fit. And then we make it fit, the way we see fit.
We filter on the way in.
We place ourselves in a self-selecting position of authority. It's a seat we find hard to give up.
We do this, of course, from a perspective of 'serving the needs of the consumer'. We aim to give them what they want. It is in our financial interests so to do.
But the needs of the consumer have to fight for resources with the demands imposed by the medium. And the medium tends to win.
Paper has mass.
This creates distribution challenges. We have to move this mass from one place to another (driven by an initial transcation). We do our best to distribute it to distribution hubs (we call them shops) where we hope the supply chain can be completed with another transaction (which puts them in the hands of the consumer.
These facts (paper is finite and has mass) mean we are forced to serve consumers as large, lowest-common-denominator-driven groups. Paper's physical nature imposes a structural limitation on what print media does and how it must treat its users.
It is conceivably possible that each consumer could have a magazine crafted precisely for themselves, to meet their precise needs. All it would take is a dedicated team of content producers (and in the print world this means employing a team of writers, photographers, designers and sub-editors), a one-off print run and a delivery direct to the lucky receipient's door.
There is nothing standing in the way of that. Nothing but cost.
If you're prepared to pay multiple thousands for each issue of your magazine you can have what the digital space can give you right now (where you'd get it for free). It'll just take a while to deliver.
Print never felt there was much of a market for that. So it created content aimed toward the lowest common denominator (granted, niche by niche on occasion).
It distributed to reach as many as possible with as little waste as possible - but still found 20-25% of its output pulped. The need to drive down unit cost make us err towards a mass production approach. It forces us to think locally, too. (Distributing a newspaper globally is something of a challenge precisely because of that mass and cost thing.)
Consider then how digital is different.
Digital space is infinite. There is zero cost attached in adding an extra page. There is therefore no need to filter on the way in. There is therefore no reason for us to be selective, no cause for us to take up our seat upon our self-appointed editorial throne. The user gets to filter on the way out.
Digital has no mass. There are zero costs to distribution. We don't need supply chains or distribution hubs in the physical sense. Distribution can be pulled to those who want it, distributed by those who advocate it. And it can happen everywhere right now.
Now you can have your ultra personalised content at zero cost - and you can have it this very instant, updated the moment relevant change occurs. It's unlikey you'll do this alone, because you are a human being and hard-wired to be social.
When we think of the role of media in the digital world, are we considering what is equivalent to newspapers and magazines (that is media properties) in digital form - or do we want to become the paper (the medium)?
Is the platform approach (and it's one I advocate myself) about trying to be the digital equivalent of paper? Bearing in mind digital 'paper' has no mass and is limitless, would we be better off delivering brilliantly creative media properties closer in form to user accounts than to social networks?
My initial thoughts are that we may may have multiple roles - as nuancers of the culture (helping with collaborative filtering) in a platform/aggregational style AND as brilliant media properties (of the user account kind) where we become part of the conversation, pulled into someone else's aggregator or platform.
Who says it has to be either/or? The digital world offers more dimensions than we've had to consider before.
Please contribute your thoughts by commenting below.
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