Message From Michael -- November 5, 2007

WORLDWIDE PRESS FREEDOM REPORT

HUMONGOUS AMOUNTS OF MONEY

CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG

HEY NIELSEN

MORE ONLINE PROGRAMMING COMPETITION

COCKTAIL CHATTER – COLLEGE MINDSET

NEWSPAPER ERRORS


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WORLDWIDE PRESS FREEDOM REPORT: The French-based but international organization Reporters Without Borders puts The United States at 48th in a list of 169 countries when it comes to press freedom. That actually is an improvement from last year when the U.S. ranked 53rd. The countries of Iceland and Norway tied for first place in the 2007 list just released. In fact, the top 14 countries listed were all European. Eritrea replaced North Korea as the worst country in the world when it comes to press freedom. Our neighbor to the north, Canada, came in 18th while Britain came in 24th and France was 31st. India came in 120th while Pakistan came in 152nd. Iraq was 157th and Iran was 166th. Russia was 144th while China was 163rd.

Of the 20 countries at the bottom of the index, seven are Asian (Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Laos, Vietnam, China, Burma, and North Korea), five are African (Ethiopia, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Somalia and Eritrea), four are in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, Palestinian Territories and Iran), three are former Soviet republics (Belarus, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan) and one is in the Americas (Cuba).

The report authors say the Internet is “occupying more and more space in the breakdown of press freedom violations” with an increase in the number of cases of online censorship. The group says more and more governments have realized that the Internet can play “a key role in the fight for democracy” and have developed new ways to censor people online. It notes that “the governments of repressive countries are now targeting bloggers and online journalists as forcefully as journalists in the traditional media.”

HUMONGOUS AMOUNTS OF MONEY: That’s what the “information industry” will generate in less than three years, according to Outsell – the ‘only’ worldwide market research and consulting company. Let me define ‘humongous.’ That’s $448 Billion worldwide. The company says the ‘information industry’ – isn’t that a weird term? – will have sustained but moderate ‘combined annual growth rate’ (CAGR) of 5.5% over the next three years. Not surprisingly the Search, Aggregation and Syndication segment of the industry (aka Google, Yahoo, etc.,) will leave the other segments “in the dust” with a CAGR of 22.7%. What the group calls the “news providers and publishers” segment will actually have a 2.5% decline in revenue in that time. Of course, the ‘information industry’ is broadly defined to include everything from credit and financial information to B2B trade publishing, education and training, IT & Telecom Research, etc…etc..etc…

CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG: That’s what Google is saying as it develops an open social networking platform so you can “take your friends with you.” The Internet behemoth already has its own social network – Orkut… no, I never heard of it either. And for good reason, more than half of its user are Portuguese-speaking Brazilians. Why? I don’t know. Google has been working with several other social networking sites to develop an open platform, transportable kind of social networking which experts say could have a dramatic impact. Called OpenSocial, the concept is to let software developers and websites develop a single set of software standards for the little software widgets that can add a social networking layer to all Web sites. The other ones include Bebo (the #1 site in the U.K.), SixApart, HI5, Friendster, LinkedIn and Ning. Now, social network giant MySpace has joined as well, adding much more weight to the concept. The two other giants in the social network arena – Facebook and Craigslist – have not joined… yet. Tech writer and San Jose State University business professor Randall Stross writes in The New York Times that “Google’s self interest is plain enough.” It doesn’t want to lose web users to the social networking sites, but it hasn’t added OpenSocial to its own Websites because, quoting a Google type, “trust builds up over a very long time… and can be lost very quickly.”

Footnotes: The same New York Times edition profiled Andy Rubin, who is “Google’s resident gadget guru” and in charge of developing the ‘Google phone” due out next year. Social networking site Twitter which specializes in very brief IM’s, called ‘tweets’, was the source of recent controversy when one user sent a ‘tweet’ that he was going to commit suicide. He didn’t in the end, but it pointed out the growing public display of everybody’s desire to be Warholian. And research firm Ipsos Insight reports that social networkers are three times more likely to download music or video to their phones, twice as likely to send a text message or pay a bill through their mobile devices.

HEY NIELSEN: Continuing the social networking theme, the folks have created a website heynielsen.com which we’ve mentioned before in MfM. But I recently decided to re-visit the site, and it’s interesting to me just how little traffic it generates. Many of the highlighted TV shows, movies and music get one or two “votes” but little else. The most popular TV shows highlighted (The Dresden Files and Stargate Atlantis) did get anywhere from 500 to 600 votes, but most everything else got zippo. Now the website has named the top TV blog sites. First place went to jerichomonster.blogspot.com; second to cultural leanings, whose website is memles.wordpress.com. Honorable mentions went to televisionary.blogspot.com, tvsquad.com and tvovereasy.com.

MORE SOCIAL NETWORKING NEWS: A social networking site aimed at the disabled has been launched – Disaboom.com. Another social networking site you probably haven’t heard of is Belgian website Netlog, even though it has 28 Million members and is in 13 languages and does it all with a staff of only 35 people. A survey of advertising executives by digital marketing firm CoreMetrics finds that three-quarters (78%) believe social networking offers a marketing advantage; yet the average percentage of online marketing dollars allocated to social media is only 7.8%.

MORE ONLINE PROGRAMMING COMPETITION. The newest competitor to Joost which we beta-tested and mentioned in previous MfM’s, is Hulu, an online video service put together by NBC-Universal and News Corp. The site is in the beta testing phase right now, but it promises to offer programs from NBC, Fox as well as Sony and MGM. Under the Hulu model, advertisers – which include Cisco, Intel, General Motors, Nissan and Toyota – get to embed their ads in a form of product placement.

COCKTAIL CHATTER: Every year Beloit College in Wisconsin puts out a Mindset List which lists what the students entering college would be familiar with and NOT familiar with. For example, students entering this fall, who will – maybe, hopefully – graduate in 2011 have never “rolled down” a car window but have always had bottled water. The phrase “off the hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone and music has always been “unplugged.” MTV has never featured music videos; and stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names. High definition television has always been ubiquitous. Chavez has nothing to do with iceberg lettuce and everything to do with oil. Burma has always been Myanmar. The Berlin Wall never existed for them but Humvees, minus the artillery, have. Women have always been police chiefs in major cities. Wolf Blitzer has always been serving up the news on CNN and Katie Couric has always – as list compilers Tom McBride and Ron Nief put it – “had screen cred.” And the World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.

A study by the Pew Global Research Project finds a high level of distrust between Muslims and non-Muslims, but with Muslims having more negative views of Westerners. The e-Voter Institute says a survey of political consultants find nearly half (46%) will allocate between 6% and 20% of their communications budget to the Internet – an increase from the 38% in 2006. For those old enough to remember, former Gulf War “scud stud” Arthur Kent is running for office on the Tory party ticket in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

NEWSPAPER ERRORS: This didn’t fit anywhere else, but I found it too interesting not to include. The Tribune-owned Orlando Sentinel newspaper (which I used to work for) has admitted that it has had an increasing number of errors in the newspaper since it went through a financial belt-tightening. The paper’s public editor Manning Pynn wrote that the reason was fairly simple. The paper lost a number of seasoned veterans, mainly editors, “and the result is more published errors.” He writes, ““Every business’ success depends on the reliability of its products or services. If their reliability declines, people are less likely to buy them. Newspapers are particularly susceptible to that phenomenon.”

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