Message From Michael -- April 2, 2007

IT’S ALL A MATTER OF SEMANTICS

WEB VERSUS PRINT – ROUND TWO

WEB VERSUS TV

YOUTUBE AWARD WINNERS

A LIST OF LISTS

A LIST OF PEOPLE

COCKTAIL CHATTER


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IT’S ALL A MATTER OF SEMANTICS: Except that it’s not. The experts call it the Semantic Web, but we would probably call it Web 3.0. In my never-ending effort to keep you not just one or two steps ahead of the curve but three and four, I think this is something you should know about. You’ve already heard about Web 2.0, a term coined by Webmaster Tim O’Reilly. It’s the next generation of the web and is defined as the social networking, wiki’ing (if that’s a word, and it isn’t) and collaboration which takes place on the Internet and which turns the Internet into a new platform and business model. (The big word for this is folksonomy.) But Web 2.0 isn’t a change or update to the Web, although many people seem to confuse it with that; it is simply a change in the use of the Internet. Semantic Web is an update. If I haven’t lost you yet, let me use one name – Tim Berners-Lee. The person credited with inventing the Web says the Semantic Web has the potential of creating a sea change even greater than the original Web. Now, let me see if I can explain it. The magic of the Web as it exists now is the hypertext linking where you can go from point A to B to C and even to Z to the Nth degree. But all those links are to documents and websites. The Semantic Web will actually correlate data and cut across documents and websites to the actual data. So, instead of a web of documents there will be a web of data, as Berners Lee explained it. All data linked and correlated to establish patterns. Okay, I know this is all a little heavy, but what the heck… A year from now you’ll be able to say you heard it here first.

Completely un-related but I couldn’t figure where else to put it, one of the founders of Wikipedia has created a new Wiki project titled Citizendium. They’re calling it a “citizens compendium of everything” – like Wikipedia, but the difference is that this time there will be “gentle expert oversight” with contributors using their actual name. This comes after the revelation that a Wiki editor who claimed to be a professor of classics was a hoax.

WEB VERSUS PRINT – ROUND TWO: And the winner is the web. And I’m not talking about the well-known development in which online news use is growing while print news use is shrinking. A study by the Poynter Institute has implications for anybody producing for the Web. Contrary to the popular belief that people online have short attention spans, the study shows that people read more much more of a story when it’s online than they do when it’s in print. Readers will actually read 77% of an article when it’s online, but ‘only’ 62% when it’s published in the classic broadsheet newspaper format and even less (57%) when in a tabloid format. The researchers at Poynter used software which actually tracks eye movement when someone is reading. It showed that while three-quarters of print readers are methodical readers, online readers are evenly split 50-50 between those who read in a methodical fashion and those who scan articles. Regardless of which type they are though, once they fix on an article online more people read it all the way through. The study also showed that people understood a story better when it was broken out into elements, like Q&A sections, timelines, sidebars and lists. Online readers also liked navigation bars and teases. Not surprisingly, readers paid more attention to ‘documentary’ news photos – real people doing real things – than staged photos; and color photos got more attention than black and white photos while mugshots got relatively little attention.

WEB VERSUS TV: On-air the ratings race between the big broadcast networks has Fox in first place in the season to date, followed by CBS, then ABC and NBC. But on-line it is a different story, according to reporter James Hibberd writing in TVWeek.com. On-line ABC.com and NBC.com are in a dead heat for first place with 9 million unique visitors a month, according to Nielsen/ Net Ratings. They’re followed by a distant CBS.com at 5.6 million and an even more distant Fox.com at 3.7 million. The CW which launched in September and did not have a measurable website until October averages 1 million. But in a separate article, Hibberd notes that all of the networks are planning to ramp up their online offerings dramatically.

YOUTUBE AWARD WINNERS: Just in case you missed it, here’s the list of the first YouTube award winners. They range from the weird to the wonderful. You should be able to control-click or copy and paste them in your browser: Most Creative - OK Go: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pv5zWaTEVkI Most Inspirational - Free Hugs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4 Best Series - Ask a Ninja: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OEmss2lg-ug Best Comedy - Smosh: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCd_i7wW87Q Best Music- Terranaomi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARHyRI9_NB4 Best Commentary - The Winekone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-rcjaBWvx0 Most Adorable Video - Kiwi!: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdUUx5FdySs .

On a related note, two video websites: First is theointment.com which is the online video version of the news parody website The Onion, and veryfunnyads.com which, as its name implies, has some funny, very funny and not so funny ads. And don’t let your general manager see you visiting these sites, although I guess we could make the argument that news people and marketing people should watch them… just to keep up with trends.

A LIST OF LISTS: The magazine Wired in its latest issue talks about how we have become a bite-sized entertainment culture. In particular it notes how we all seem to want things shortened and in lists. It humorously refers to the Ten Commandments as the “Biblical PowerPoint.” Here are five websites cited by the magazine as some of the best list of lists websites: Tenspotting.com, which lets you compare your top ten list to other people’s top ten choices for everything from movies to TV shows to (showing its origins) Japanese female celebrities; Allconsuming.net, which lists what books/music you should consume next; Tadalist.com, which allows you to create a to-do list that you can share online; list of bests.com, which bills itself as ‘what you need, when you need it’ for everything from public records to airline tickets to ‘things to do before you die’; and finally, 43things.com which asks what you want to do with your life (your 43 things) and shows how that compares to, at last check, 947,327 people in 12,113 cities.

A LIST OF PEOPLE: As long as we’re talking about magazine articles, in a previous we showed a partial list of most influential people on the Internet from PC World magazine. Here are a few others from that list: Lawrence Lessig described as the ‘Elvis of Cyberlaw’ because of his ‘kinglike status in the field’ is a professor at Stanford University Law School. He is also CEO of Creative Commons, a nonprofit aimed at promoting an alternative form of copyrighting which allows greater use and distribution for online works. David Farber started Interesting-People.org as an e-mail mailing list for friends and colleagues and turned it into “the mother lode of online mailing lists” with commentary from influential people. Farber is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and former chief technologist for the Federal Communications Commission. Robert Scoble is the guy who got into trouble for blogging about the Microsoft Empire but whose blogs eventually convinced the company to make blogs part of the company’s communication with users. He now heads PodTech.net. On the legislative side, PC World says Oregon Senator Ron Wyden is one of Capitol Hill’s “most influential voices on technology issues.”

COCKTAIL CHATTER: Tiny Holland has the tallest people in the world at an average 6 ft., 1 in., according to a report on ABCNews.com, which says Americans at an average 5ft., 10 in., haven’t been the tallest people in the world for 50 years. An adult-oriented business on virtual world Second Life was sold on e-Bay (where else) for $50,000, according to Information Week. ICANN, the agency which oversees the Internet and domain names, turned down a request (for the third time) to create a XXX domain extension for porno sites after both the adult entertainment industry and religious groups objected. Nearly half of Americans (48%) say they are more likely to vote for a candidate if they had military service while just slightly less, four out of ten (39%), say they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who is ‘Christian,” according to a Pew Research Project poll. The Pew Research groups weekly list of top news items of interest found that Iraq was the dominant story of interest to the public (29%) and got the most coverage (21%). The missing boy scout was cited by 12% of the public as a story they followed closely even though only 2% of the news coverage was devoted to the story. And the story about the firing of the U.S. Attorneys got 18% of the news coverage but only 8% of the public were following the story closely.

PERSONAL NOTE OF CONGRATULATIONS: To friend (and MfM reader) Russ Mitchell, anchor and reporter for CBS News who has been named anchor for CBS This Morning and who will be filling in all this week for Katie Couric on the CBS Evening News.

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