OVERVIEW: It was the year of micro-blogging site Twitter and an attack on Mumbai, India’s financial center, in which ‘twitterers’ did much of the reporting; the rise of social networking and the rise of America’s first African-American president through the use of social networking; a surge in the use of online video and along with it a surge in video providers like Hulu. And before this gets too esoteric for all of you, a little back to planet earth moment – Yahoo’s number one search item in 2008 was the same one as a year ago in 2007 – BRITNEY SPEARS. As website TechCrunch put it, maybe it’s a train wreck kind of thing. The number two most searched item was…. WWE, and for those not familiar – that’s World Wrestling Entertainment, which, BTW, was also #2 in 2007. Barack Obama came in third. Anyway, on to this slightly longer than usual review in which we give you a snapshot of 2008.
MAN IS A SOCIAL ANIMAL: Philosopher Aristotle would have found proof of that in 2008 as social networks metastasized around the world. The poster child of social networking is the not-even-two-years-old (March, 2006) micro-blogging site Twitter which, as Technology Review put it, has “spawned an ecosystem of competitors, knock-offs, plug-ins and add-ons.” Of course the giants are Facebook and MySpace with more than 100 Million unique users each month, but there are plenty of would-be giant killers out there as well. How about badoo and bebo, which both claim a worldwide focus; fark (talking about news that isn’t news) and newsvine (talking about news that people are talking about); iambored (which, well… you can guess); gather (for the NPR crowd) and habbo (for the teenagers). As fast as the Internet audience is growing (11% a year, according to comScore), social networking sites are growing even faster (25%) with some lesser known sites (hi5, Mixx and Yelp) growing faster still, according to web analysis site ignitesocialmedia.com.
And I’ve just been talking about the English sites so far. According to Google’s end of year Zeitgeist report which looks at the fastest growing search items in the U.S., and world, three of the top ten search items were Tuenti (a Spanish social networking site), Nasza Klasa (a Polish site) and Wer Kennt Wen (a German site). That may explain that while social networking site growth in the U.S. is a modest 9%, it is nearly triple that worldwide, at 25%. Here’s the fact that says a lot -- Of the nearly 861 Million Internet cited by comScore, two thirds (581 Million) are on social networking sites. There is even a website, ning.com, where you can create your own social network. Founders Gina Bianchini and Marc Andreesen were named to Fast Company’s list of the 12 most creative minds of 2008.
As a FOOTNOTE to all this, let me apologize to the numerous people who’ve invited me to join Plaxo, Pulse, Pownce and other social networking sites. I’m already on half a dozen and I can’t keep up with them.
MAN IS A POLITICAL ANIMAL: So says our good buddy Aristotle. In fact that was the original translation, until someone decided that politikos in Greek more closely translated to social in English than political. Anyway, I digress. In its end of the year review of searches, Yahoo! said it was “politics as unusual” that dominated much of the year’s search with political debates replacing the ‘rubbernecking at the scene of celebrity train wrecks” as a prime activity. (Isn’t it interesting that the train wreck analogy was used again?) Right up there with the celebrity searches were searches for Barack Obama, and most particularly, Sara Palin who made #4 on Ask.com’s list of ‘top celebrity baby mamas of 2008’, just behind Angelina Jolie, Jessica Alba and Jamie Lynn Spears. Also on the political search hit list was the Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s favorite word, ‘maverick’ which topped the Dictionary.com list of top gainers, just ahead of socialism. The word also made Google’s list of campaign ‘buzzwords’ just behind Joe the Plumber and Jeremiah Wright. As a side note, the Google list of top sources for political news included SNL… as in Saturday Night Live, for what Google called its “up-to-the-minute spoofs of the campaign.”
As a FOOTNOTE, you may recall that the Pew Research Center survey showed that the Internet had emerged this year as the leading source for political and campaign news this year. In its latest report just released, the folks at Pew say the Internet has now officially taken the lead over newspapers as the main source of national and international news with two out of five (40%) saying they get most of such news from the Internet compared to a third (35%) who cite newspapers. Television is still the dominant source of such news at 70%, but in the under-30 crowd it’s a dead heat (59% to 59%).
And as a Footnote to the Footnote, the Pew report shows that three of the top 15 news stories followed “very closely” were political stories, the same number as natural disasters (Hurricanes Ike and Gustav and flooding in the Midwest), but way behind the eight stories about the economy which dominated the top 15 selections. And dominated not just by numbers but by percentages with 70% saying they followed the U.S. economy stories ‘very closely.’
ONLINE VIDEO: No cute headline here. Just one basic fact from a previous MfM, quoting a New York Times article. YouTube alone consumed as much bandwidth last year as ALL providers did in the year 2000. And from another one – founder Chad Hurley says that YouTube receives more than ten hours of video every minute on its site. And the latest figures I saw, show YouTube averaging just over 5.3 Billion video streams a month. Add to that the Hulu’s, Yahoo’s, Joost’s, Veoh’s, Blinkxx’s, Flickr’s and so on and so on… and you get the picture. As a side note, Nielsen’s Three Screen Report makes the point that the average user spends 142 hours and 29 minutes watching TV in the home compared to two hours and 31 minutes watching video on the Internet BUT while there were 282 Million people watching TV in the home, there was a substantial 120 Million people watching video on the Internet. And as a side note to the side note, I should reference TVWeek’s Daisey Whitney’s ‘experiment’ in which she relied solely on the Internet for her video needs and, in the words of Maxwell Smart, loved every minute of it.
I WANT PLAYERS WHO ARE AGILE, MOBILE AND HOSTILE. Famed Alabama coach Bear Bryant said that about his players and now media mavens are saying that may apply to mobile video. Here is the interesting factoid from the Nielsen Three Screen report. Mobile subscribers with video capability actually spent more time watching video on their mobile devices than people spent watching video online – 3 hours and 37 minutes on a mobile phone versus 2 hours and 31 minutes watching video on the Internet. Again, that applies only to mobile subscribers, but it’s still interesting. Much of that mobile interactivity can be attributed to the growth of the iPhone and its various knock-off and copy cat versions, according to those same media mavens. But, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, anyone expecting 2008, or 2009 for that matter, to be the “year of the mobile” is mistaken. Another “but” – But by the year 2020, according to its survey of Internet experts, “the combination of portability and relative affordability will turn the cell phone into the leading Internet gateway.” The report, Future of the Internet III, says there will be about 4 Billion cell phones worldwide by the end of 2008, with up to 15% of them ‘Internet enabled.’ The report’s best quote comes from Susan Crawford, founder of OneWebDay, who says they will no longer be ‘cell phones’ but “simply lenses on the online world.”
I WANT MY STV: Replace the M with S, for sports, and you have a better picture of the most popular one-time telecasts in 2008. In fact you could make the letter an F – for Football. Five of the top ten telecasts were the Superbowl (43% of the audience) and post bowl coverage, along with the NFC playoff and championship and the AFC divisional playoff game. Four others were the Olympics which hovered around 18%. The one ringer? Can you guess? The Academy Awards (18.7).
More interesting for what it tells you is Nielsen’s list of the top ten “timeshifted” primetime TV programs. Topping the list was NBC favorite Heroes which gained an extra 35% in viewership when the 7-day viewing was added to the live ratings. It was followed by Fringe (26%), Lost (25%), Bones (21%), Grey’s Anatomy (20%), House (18%), Survivor: Gabon (18%), American Idol – Tuesday (13%), The Mentalist (13%) and American Idol – Wednesday (12%). Even more interesting (as I always say, at least to me) only four of the programs made Nielsen’s top ten for regularly scheduled programs: both American Idols (with a 15.5 and 15.3 rating), The Mentalist with a 10 rating and Survivor with a 7.6 rating, based on Live and ‘same day timeshifted’ viewing.
As a Footnote, American viewing of television increased yet again in 2008, another four minutes per household to 8 hours and 18 minutes a day, says Nielsen.
YOU ARE WHAT YOU READ: At least some people seem to believe that and if it’s true the theme for 2008 is that we are all looking for a greater purpose in life. That seems to be the message looking at the top seller list of non-fiction books from Nielsen. Self-described spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle claims two of the top spots with his books A New Earth and The Power of Now, which promise to help awaken you to your life’s purpose through “transcending our ego-based state of consciousness.” Now, admittedly President-elect Barack Obama also scored two books on the non-fiction list, but when you look at the other books, there is a clear theme. The book The Secret which we’ve mentioned in previous MfM’s promises to transform your weakness and suffering into strength and health using ‘secrets’ discovered by sages and seers. The book Three Cups of Tea looks at one man’s journey to “promote peace with books, not bombs” building schools in Afghanistan. And, of course, Randy Pausch’s book The Last Lecture (also mentioned in a previous MfM) is an inspirational look at life and living by the professor who died of cancer at an early age.
Just for the record, none of the best selling books made either of the lists of best books of 2008 compiled by Time Magazine and The New York Times. But then again, only three books made both lists. In the non-fiction category, The Forever War looking at “the gaping wounds of Iraq and Afghanistan” by reporter Dexter Filkins was recommended by both sets of editors. In the fiction category, the book 2666 by Robert Bolano who died in 2003 made both lists along with Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lapiri. Her book traces the life of Bengali families finding their way in America while Bolano’s book which tells the story of the killings of hundreds of women in a seedy Mexican town is described as “baffling, maddening, difficult, violent, obscene, over-indulgent, way too long” and the best book of 2008.
GADGETS, GIZMOS AND GAMES: Inspector Gadget would have loved 2008. Okay, as much as I thought the solar panel that fit on the top of the Prius Hybrid was way cool, this is a newsletter about media things. So, forget the solar panel and the electric powered motorcycle and the meticulously engineered Embody chair. Instead, let’s talk about Fast Company’s recommendations for the Panasonic P2 HD camera (which, BTW, the Grady College has bought), the ASUS EEE 9c1000 miniature netbook, the Sony XEL incredibly flat screen TV, the FLIP Mino mini-camera that is Facebook friendly, and the Lenovo Ideapad S10 computer. Or, instead, we could look at Wired.com’s counter gadgetry, which is similar but different. For example, instead of the solar panel for the Toyota Prius Hybrid, Wired likes the Honda Insight Hybrid. Or, to get a little fancier, instead of the Canon DSLR, the folks at Wired like Nikon D90. Instead of the Flip, Wired folks like the Kodak Z16 mini-cam. Instead of the Asus, the wired editors (doesn’t that sound like an oxymoron?) like the MSI Wind. BUT… BUT… if you really want to be cool in the gadget world, you need to get yourself a Chumby which does streaming video along with streaming music along with weather and news, all in a Wi-Fi connection that sits on your bedside table. (Side note -- This is the one I was going to buy for my son-in-law for Christmas but couldn’t find.)
Despite all the hoopla about Guitar Hero, the number one mobile game is the old standby Tetris with nearly double the share of revenue (7% vs. 3.6%), according to Nielsen. The rarely mentioned Bejeweled puzzle game is #2 (at 4%) ahead of GH. In fact most of the so-called mobile games are old standbys – Wheel of Fortune, PAC-MAN, The Oregon Trail, Ms. PAC-MAN and Tetris Mania. The popular TV show, Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader, also made it to the top ten list as a game. Now, here’s the kicker. The #1 PC Game title in the U.S. is World of Warcraft with slightly more than 7% of the total audience. No great surprise there, BUT the average player spends 671 minutes a week playing the game. That’s more than 11 hours a week. The next highest in terms of minutes played is Runescape (451 minutes – 7 ½ hours). What may be a predictor of the future, Runescape also scored as the number five top search item in the Yahoo top ten search list for 2008. As a side note, the Japanese manga (comic or cartoon) Naruto came in at #7 on the search list. And as a footnote to all this, a study by Deloitte titled State of the Media Democracy found that video games, once frowned upon by parents, are becoming ‘family time.’
THINGS THEY MISSED: Oddly I didn’t see as much as I would have expected in all the 2008 reviews about Widgets or Cloud Computing. As a personal aside, these are major developments (IMHO – In My Humble Opinion) that seeded this year and will blossom next. A development that may have come a little late to make the year in review articles possibly, but which I have to note: the announcement by the Christian Science Monitor that it will switch from print to a purely online edition coupled with the announcement by the Detroit newspapers that they are cutting their print versions to three days a week and replacing it with a digital version. But more on all that in next week’s edition of MFM in which we will look at the predictions and prognostications for 2009.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Monday, December 01, 2008
Message From Michael - December 1, 2008
WHEN LIFE-CASTING BECOMES DEATH-CASTING
FEAR RULES THE NEWSROOM
LIVING IN SPAMALOT
LICENSE TO BE A RICH IDIOT
DO IT YOURSELF IDIOCY
COCKTAIL CHATTER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
WHEN LIFE-CASTING BECOMES DEATH-CASTING: A 19-year-old Florida college student committed suicide online while upwards of 15-hundred people watched, some reacting in horror, some ‘egging’ him on, according to a variety of media reports. Abraham Briggs Jr., who went by the name Candyjunkie on the website Bodybuilding.com and Feels Like Ecstacy on Justin.TV, had threatened suicide in the past. He took a drug over-dose and left a suicide note which was a combination of two other suicide notes from other posts. When it became apparent he was not moving, a viewer from India urged the forum moderators to do something but was initially dismissed, and then contacted other viewers living in the States. Other viewers watching reacted with either OMG (Oh My God) or LOL (Laugh Out Loud). The video of the cops breaking into his room, along with his actual suicide note are still available online. The CEO of Justin.TV issued a statement that, “we regret that this has happened and respect the privacy of the broadcaster and his family during this time.” Police in the young man’s home town of Pembroke Pines are investigating the role of the website which calls itself a “life-casting” site.
The suicide is not the first on line. A British electrical engineer hanged himself on line last year. British newspapers report at least 17 deaths in Britain since 2001 involving chatrooms that give advice on committing suicide. There have been several ‘cybersuicide’ pacts formed, most notably in Japan where more than 140 deaths have been attributed to this phenomenon since 2004. A memorial site has been established on MySpace.com by friends of the young man. If you go to the Justin.tv website and enter suicide as a search item, you will find a series of videos, mostly animes, but including one in which a young man televises his call to a suicide hotline. If you go to MySpace.com and enter suicide as a search item, you’ll get nearly 3 Million returns, including Bludgeoned to Death by Suicide Silence and a suicide prevention website. Funeral services for Briggs were held this past Saturday.
As a footnote, I know this story has been reported fairly widely, but frankly it was too important not to report it again, with hopefully a few more details for you.
FEAR RULES THE NEWSROOM. So says former CBS anchorman Dan Rather in one of the many vignettes created for the IFC Media Project. It’s the fear of being beaten on a news story, the fear of loss of ratings, and the fear for one’s job. His brief interview is one of many examining the role of the media, along with a cartoon character called the “news junkie” who gives his spin on the media. The project offers a handbook on “decoding the media” with an in-depth look at terms, resources and milestones but also a somewhat asinine media quiz, loaded with pretty obvious, expected responses to prove that you’re ‘media savvy.’ But still an interesting site. Meanwhile, in a similar vein, The New York Times recently profiled a series of web-based, independent news sites doing investigative reporting. The article points out that these sites have arisen in several cities as newspapers and television stations have cut back on staff. Some of those cited include voiceofsandiego.com, MinnPost in the Twin Cites and St. Louis Beacon. Other sites without a specific geographic focus include ProPublica, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the three-decades-old Center for Investigative Reporting. All well worth a visit.
LIVING IN SPAMALOT. It seems we all do. According to a report by the BBC, spammers are turning a profit, even though they’re only getting one response for every 12.5 Million emails they send. Quoting a study by the University of California, Berkeley, the report says spammers churn out so many messages that they are still able to turn over “millions of pounds in profit every year.” The study investigators infiltrated a spam network called Storm and found that it had One Million machines under its control. The researchers sent about 469 million junk email messages, got a response of only 0.00001%, but still this came out to $100 a day – not the vast sums some people think but when the numbers are scaled higher, the profits increase as well. On a related note, China led the way but closely followed by the U.S. as the leading source of “attack traffic” on the Internet. Of the 179 countries involved, the two accounted for nearly half (45%) of all the attack traffic worldwide, according to the quarterly report State of the Internet by Akamai.
LICENSE TO BE A RICH IDIOT. A Statesville, North Carolina, man has just won $5,000 plus a trip for two to New York City for coming up with a new catch phrase (fan-taste-ic) and setting it to music for an ad for Crest toothpaste. But that’s nothing compared to Joel Moss Levinson, a college dropout whose declared major was medieval weaponry and who has won more than $200,000 creating “digital ditties” – home-made advertisements. His consumer generated pieces have generated a viral buzz for everything from Klondike ice cream bars to Little Penguin wine, to Delta Air Lines and even an Israeli advocacy group. Levinson who admits to having held, and lost, more than 40 jobs is quoted in The New York Times as saying, “it’s great to have a license to be an idiot.” Levinson is also one of the 1,773 entrants in what is becoming an annual event for chip-maker Doritos, looking for the ‘best’ consumer generated advertising spot to run during the SuperBowl. The winner gets $1 Million. Sorry, entries have closed, but you can see the entries at website crashthesuperbowl.com. You can enter the $25,000 contest by Truth North snacks which is looking for an inspirational life story which will be played during the Oscars in February of next year.
The point of all this is a claim by Current.TV founder Joel Hyatt that his video and TV site has landed multiple million-dollar deals based on non-professional commercials created by fans. He says surveys (un-named) show that viewers prefer consumer generated ads 9-to-1 over the Madison Avenue creations, according to website ReadWriteWeb.com. Meanwhile a senior executive with advertising giant Ogilvy says that while user generated content can be difficult to ‘monetize’ because of its edgy nature, it can be done. Gina de Mendonca told Beet.TV that UGC video mash ups and contests are especially appealing. But all is not wine and roses in the consumer generated world. AOL has announced it’s dropping its consumer generated content site, uncutvideo, on December 18th and turning over operations to Motionbox.com. I should also note previous MfM reports in which consumer generated reviews and comments, on websites and in blogs, did prove to be critical to users’ decision making. On a semi-related note, eMarketer reports that two thirds (67%) of the U.S. Internet population – 145 Million people – will be reading blogs at least monthly by 2012, and that one out of every six (16%) of the people on the Internet will actually have a blog.
DO IT YOURSELF IDIOCY. In a semi-related vein, several Internet websites have popped up, that promise to show you how to do virtually anything. The granddaddy site is learn2.com which focuses on how to get the most out of your Microsoft Office and Windows software, but others are decidedly more interesting and often risqué. Website Instructables.com recently announced its winning entries which included scavenging free electronics and food while helping the environment, renewing old children’s toys and how to convert an old cell phone (Nokia 6600 to be exact) into a “super gadget microcomputer.” Website Howcast.com shows you how to do simple magic tricks, to how play iPod videos on your TV, to how to break out of prison. Website WonderHowTo.com shows you how to curse in several languages, change the PCV valve in your car and how to turn old underpants into a bra. Website Tricklife.com shows you how to get over autumn depression, how to tie a surgeon’s knife and how to be a Ninja. Website 5Min.com shows you how to pick the perfect Christmas tree, how to prevent acne and what parents should know about giving their kids a debit card. Website VideoJug.com shows you how to play the Ukulele, how many fish you should have in your aquarium and how to give the ‘perfect hug.’ I am offering this all up this week as an alternative to my weekly Cocktail Chatter (since last week’s Message was all CC), but I warn you that these sites, while having many useful tips, can also be addictive time-eaters.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
FEAR RULES THE NEWSROOM
LIVING IN SPAMALOT
LICENSE TO BE A RICH IDIOT
DO IT YOURSELF IDIOCY
COCKTAIL CHATTER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
WHEN LIFE-CASTING BECOMES DEATH-CASTING: A 19-year-old Florida college student committed suicide online while upwards of 15-hundred people watched, some reacting in horror, some ‘egging’ him on, according to a variety of media reports. Abraham Briggs Jr., who went by the name Candyjunkie on the website Bodybuilding.com and Feels Like Ecstacy on Justin.TV, had threatened suicide in the past. He took a drug over-dose and left a suicide note which was a combination of two other suicide notes from other posts. When it became apparent he was not moving, a viewer from India urged the forum moderators to do something but was initially dismissed, and then contacted other viewers living in the States. Other viewers watching reacted with either OMG (Oh My God) or LOL (Laugh Out Loud). The video of the cops breaking into his room, along with his actual suicide note are still available online. The CEO of Justin.TV issued a statement that, “we regret that this has happened and respect the privacy of the broadcaster and his family during this time.” Police in the young man’s home town of Pembroke Pines are investigating the role of the website which calls itself a “life-casting” site.
The suicide is not the first on line. A British electrical engineer hanged himself on line last year. British newspapers report at least 17 deaths in Britain since 2001 involving chatrooms that give advice on committing suicide. There have been several ‘cybersuicide’ pacts formed, most notably in Japan where more than 140 deaths have been attributed to this phenomenon since 2004. A memorial site has been established on MySpace.com by friends of the young man. If you go to the Justin.tv website and enter suicide as a search item, you will find a series of videos, mostly animes, but including one in which a young man televises his call to a suicide hotline. If you go to MySpace.com and enter suicide as a search item, you’ll get nearly 3 Million returns, including Bludgeoned to Death by Suicide Silence and a suicide prevention website. Funeral services for Briggs were held this past Saturday.
As a footnote, I know this story has been reported fairly widely, but frankly it was too important not to report it again, with hopefully a few more details for you.
FEAR RULES THE NEWSROOM. So says former CBS anchorman Dan Rather in one of the many vignettes created for the IFC Media Project. It’s the fear of being beaten on a news story, the fear of loss of ratings, and the fear for one’s job. His brief interview is one of many examining the role of the media, along with a cartoon character called the “news junkie” who gives his spin on the media. The project offers a handbook on “decoding the media” with an in-depth look at terms, resources and milestones but also a somewhat asinine media quiz, loaded with pretty obvious, expected responses to prove that you’re ‘media savvy.’ But still an interesting site. Meanwhile, in a similar vein, The New York Times recently profiled a series of web-based, independent news sites doing investigative reporting. The article points out that these sites have arisen in several cities as newspapers and television stations have cut back on staff. Some of those cited include voiceofsandiego.com, MinnPost in the Twin Cites and St. Louis Beacon. Other sites without a specific geographic focus include ProPublica, the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting and the three-decades-old Center for Investigative Reporting. All well worth a visit.
LIVING IN SPAMALOT. It seems we all do. According to a report by the BBC, spammers are turning a profit, even though they’re only getting one response for every 12.5 Million emails they send. Quoting a study by the University of California, Berkeley, the report says spammers churn out so many messages that they are still able to turn over “millions of pounds in profit every year.” The study investigators infiltrated a spam network called Storm and found that it had One Million machines under its control. The researchers sent about 469 million junk email messages, got a response of only 0.00001%, but still this came out to $100 a day – not the vast sums some people think but when the numbers are scaled higher, the profits increase as well. On a related note, China led the way but closely followed by the U.S. as the leading source of “attack traffic” on the Internet. Of the 179 countries involved, the two accounted for nearly half (45%) of all the attack traffic worldwide, according to the quarterly report State of the Internet by Akamai.
LICENSE TO BE A RICH IDIOT. A Statesville, North Carolina, man has just won $5,000 plus a trip for two to New York City for coming up with a new catch phrase (fan-taste-ic) and setting it to music for an ad for Crest toothpaste. But that’s nothing compared to Joel Moss Levinson, a college dropout whose declared major was medieval weaponry and who has won more than $200,000 creating “digital ditties” – home-made advertisements. His consumer generated pieces have generated a viral buzz for everything from Klondike ice cream bars to Little Penguin wine, to Delta Air Lines and even an Israeli advocacy group. Levinson who admits to having held, and lost, more than 40 jobs is quoted in The New York Times as saying, “it’s great to have a license to be an idiot.” Levinson is also one of the 1,773 entrants in what is becoming an annual event for chip-maker Doritos, looking for the ‘best’ consumer generated advertising spot to run during the SuperBowl. The winner gets $1 Million. Sorry, entries have closed, but you can see the entries at website crashthesuperbowl.com. You can enter the $25,000 contest by Truth North snacks which is looking for an inspirational life story which will be played during the Oscars in February of next year.
The point of all this is a claim by Current.TV founder Joel Hyatt that his video and TV site has landed multiple million-dollar deals based on non-professional commercials created by fans. He says surveys (un-named) show that viewers prefer consumer generated ads 9-to-1 over the Madison Avenue creations, according to website ReadWriteWeb.com. Meanwhile a senior executive with advertising giant Ogilvy says that while user generated content can be difficult to ‘monetize’ because of its edgy nature, it can be done. Gina de Mendonca told Beet.TV that UGC video mash ups and contests are especially appealing. But all is not wine and roses in the consumer generated world. AOL has announced it’s dropping its consumer generated content site, uncutvideo, on December 18th and turning over operations to Motionbox.com. I should also note previous MfM reports in which consumer generated reviews and comments, on websites and in blogs, did prove to be critical to users’ decision making. On a semi-related note, eMarketer reports that two thirds (67%) of the U.S. Internet population – 145 Million people – will be reading blogs at least monthly by 2012, and that one out of every six (16%) of the people on the Internet will actually have a blog.
DO IT YOURSELF IDIOCY. In a semi-related vein, several Internet websites have popped up, that promise to show you how to do virtually anything. The granddaddy site is learn2.com which focuses on how to get the most out of your Microsoft Office and Windows software, but others are decidedly more interesting and often risqué. Website Instructables.com recently announced its winning entries which included scavenging free electronics and food while helping the environment, renewing old children’s toys and how to convert an old cell phone (Nokia 6600 to be exact) into a “super gadget microcomputer.” Website Howcast.com shows you how to do simple magic tricks, to how play iPod videos on your TV, to how to break out of prison. Website WonderHowTo.com shows you how to curse in several languages, change the PCV valve in your car and how to turn old underpants into a bra. Website Tricklife.com shows you how to get over autumn depression, how to tie a surgeon’s knife and how to be a Ninja. Website 5Min.com shows you how to pick the perfect Christmas tree, how to prevent acne and what parents should know about giving their kids a debit card. Website VideoJug.com shows you how to play the Ukulele, how many fish you should have in your aquarium and how to give the ‘perfect hug.’ I am offering this all up this week as an alternative to my weekly Cocktail Chatter (since last week’s Message was all CC), but I warn you that these sites, while having many useful tips, can also be addictive time-eaters.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Message from Michael - November 24, 2008 - Cocktail Chatter
THE COCKTAIL CHATTER EDITION
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
THE COCKTAIL CHATTER EDITION: Or, put another way, the catch-up edition. The last two editions of MfM focused on the President-elect and media and technology. That didn’t leave a lot of room for the various facts and factoids, bits and pieces, trivia and not-so-trivia that come across my desk every day. So, here in no particular order, is a plethora of cocktail chatter points for you to use at your next holiday party.
Conservative policy group, the Leadership Institute, based in Arlington, Virginia, is offering courses to teach would-be pundits exactly that – how to be pundits. For anywhere from $75 for a lecture to $1,500 for three-hour one-on-one sessions, the New York Times reports, the young American Idol-esque commentators learn how to give soundbites “you can expect to hear on Hannity later.” Nearly 600 people have signed up so far this year, up from 461 in 2005.
Okay, one last election related note – the two ‘hot’ items online for the Presidential transition sound like a dietary recommendation for the over-80 crowd – prunes and plums. PrunesOnline is described as a “must have” for Presidential appointees. Known as the “prune book,” the listing of presidential appointment positions has been around since 1988. In a very similar vein is “The Plum Book” which also identifies key presidential appointment positions.
You remember in Forrest Gump when Tom Hanks was somehow inserted into an old scene involving L.B.J.; or have you seen those commercials in which a modern day person is inserted into an old movie. Well, a company which creates speaking avatars, Oddcast, has created a site, mymoviemoment.com, where you can do the same thing. It’s a little late for Halloween, but Oddcast has struck a deal with Twentieth Century Fox and MGM to allow you integrate your submitted photos into clips from some old B-grade horror movies. They reportedly have cut a deal to do a similar promotion for a selection of holiday films.
At the end of the other end of the spectrum is something called rotoscoping. This time it’s the reverse, with live video images turned into comic book-like animations. As reported in Advertising Age, the CMO of Charles Schwab says she’s seen nothing like it, when it comes to viewer response. It refers to a technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate, according to Wikipedia, so it may be composited over another background. In case you want to try it, there are a couple of websites providing software, including rotofactory.com and videomaker.com.
Okay, you’ve heard about behavioral targeting and contextual targeting and… maybe.. micro-targeting in which you can narrow the focus of your online ads. But now there’s ‘nano-targeting’ in which you can create a series of ads on Facebook that are targeted at specific individuals. Writer Sam Lessin shows how he did it in an article in Advertising Age. All he had to do was target an ad to “Wall Street Journal reporters who are 25, graduated from Harvard with a history degree and live in San Francisco.” The Facebook told him there were less than 20 people who fit that… and one of those 20 was his girlfriend.
The number one video of all time on YouTube is the Evolution of Dance, according to website ReadWriteWeb.com. Comedian Judson Laipply uploaded the video in April of 2006 and it has garnered 55.8 Million views and it has been ‘favorited’ 252,082 times, making it the most viewed and most favorited video of all time. I think I mentioned the video in a previous MfM but I didn’t know it was the #1 video. This is another of my – do yourself a favor and watch it – recs. As a side note, the website notes that seven of the top ten videos are music based and five of those are professional videos.
The U.S. Military has created its own video sharing site, after blocking YouTube, MySpace and even Twitter, because (and I am not making this up) “terrorists could theoretically use Twitter social networking in the U.S. as an operation tool.” The website is called TroopTube and was created by a Seattle-based video services company, Delve Networks. Troops can send videos to families at home and families can do the same. When I checked out the site, the most popular video (and I am not making this up either) was General David Petraeus’ message to the troops.
More than two-thirds (68%) of technology companies were slapped with a lawsuit last year, according to law firm Fulbright & Jaworski which annually surveys U.S. litigation trends. Nearly a third (30%) faced six or more law suits and nearly half (47%) reported spending over $1 Million a year on business disputes.
While nearly half of iPhone owners (43%) earn in excess of $100,000 a year, the fastest growth in iPhone buying is among those earning between $25,000 and $50,000 (48% growth) and $25,000 to $75,000 (46% growth). Senior analyst Jen Wu of comScore says the reason may be that these people are using the iPhone in lieu of multiple digital devices and services, “transforming the iPhone from a luxury item to a practical communication and entertainment tool.”
Silicon Valley company Better Place has announced a plan to develop an electric-car infrastructure for Australia, which will eventually eliminate the need for Australia to import any oil. Before you dismiss this completely, publication Technology Review notes that the company has already developed such an infrastructure for Israel and Denmark. The difference is those countries are small, and Australia is the same size as the U.S. The company says it plans to sell the cars the same way mobile-phone companies sell phones, with a subsidized low cost and a monthly plan.
From the New York Times business section, the world’s largest corporation is Exxon/Mobil, worth $375 Billion – more than General Electric, Bank of America and Google combined. Quoting a Bernstein Research analyst, the report also says Exxon has the highest per barrel profit ($17) of any oil company, including Chevron ($16), Shell ($14) and BP ($12).
The Society for New Communication Research has named Twitter founders Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams their Innovators of the year. The Visionary of the Year award went to Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, co-authors of blogging website Groundswell which claims to tell you “how people with social technologies are changing everything.” A side note, they must be changing things awfully slowly – when I visited the site, the latest posting was a week old.
Actor George Clooney has been named “distinguished journalist in residence” at American University’s School of Communication. He is hosting the Reel Journalism series, looking at how journalism is portrayed in the movies.
Quinnipiac University whose polling institute has garnered it national fame has now garnered national notoriety for attempting to curb the activities of student journalists running an independent, online newspaper. First the university imposed a gag order on administrators, coaches and athletes to keep them from talking to the online reporters. Then it threatened to ban the student chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. The university since backed off after several national groups and national media criticized the school.
Gossip website JuicyCampus.com is also gaining national notoriety, with its publication of detailed rumors about sex, drugs and college life with contributors naming people anonymously. The rapidly growing year-old site has such gossip about 500 campuses nationwide. It also has spawned hate groups on Facebook, is under investigation by two state’s attorney generals and been voted to be banned by several student governments. Founder Matt Ivester told a group of Georgetown University who complained that the site has caused some students to drop out of school and raised fears about their job prospects that “they’re going to have to start developing a sense of humor,” according to a recent article in the Washington Post.
A website claiming to be the blog of a senior adviser to Sen. John McCain has generated lots of juicy gossip about the campaign and politics in general. It turns out though it’s the work of two guys trying to create a buzz for a movie they want, but they managed to fool MSNBC, The Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, and The New Republic. The fake author of the website was supposedly one Martin Eisenstadt, a fellow at the fake Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy. The two would-be film-makers say yes they want to make a movie but they also want to make the point that in the 24 hour news cycle there is a lot of shoddiness in the reporting. And although The New York Times and the Associated Press both say the main “victims” (please note, that’s in quotes) were bloggers, it was also a blogger who eventually tracked down the hoax.
China’s leading video site, Youku.com, has obtained licenses from Chinese producers to stream more than 1,000 TV series on its site. That converts to more than 40,000 episodes and 50,000 hours of content. But here’s the part I love, the site is partnering with website Sina.com to produce a Chinese-language version of Sofia’s Diary, a ‘confessional type’ web show that first appeared in Portugal in 2002, well before Lonelygirl15 hit it bit in the U.S. A look at the site, BTW, and you can see it is pretty slickly produced.
From the annual “Oh My Gosh” category of news, a thirty second spot on the SuperBowl has jumped from $2.7 Million for the Fox carried game last year to $3 Million for the NBC carried game this year.
A California-based company is offering single-serve wine called Volute that can be drunk anywhere, including no-glass zones like concerts, camping grounds and beaches. According to trend watching website, Springwise, the aluminum bottle is “eco-friendlier” than traditional glass bottles, according to the makers, because it can be recycled and is actually better than glass because it blocks UV rays.
Students at Rice University in Texas are trying to create a beer with the health advantages of red wine. The six undergrads say they are engineering a yeast that produces the antiaging chemical, resveratrol, found in red wine. The so-called “BioBeer” is an entrant in the International Genetic Engineering Machine competition held in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Student Taylor Stevenson says, “it’s not going to prevent you from getting a beer gut from drinking too much beer or from getting cirrhosis of the liver, but people are already drinking beer, so why not make it a little healthier.”
LASTLY: A study reported by website TV by the Numbers says happy people watch less TV—48 minutes a day less, to be exact. That’s the difference between very happy and very unhappy people, according to the study published by Springer Science and Business Media. The study also notes that very happy people had sex ten times more than unhappy people, but I digress. Sociology professor John Robinson at the University of Maryland says his analysis of General Social Survey data shows that, “TV may provide viewers with short-run pleasure, but at the expense of long-term malaise.” The professor adds the ironic note that, “what viewers seem to be saying is that while TV in general is a waste of time and not particularly enjoyable, the shows I saw tonight were pretty good.” I should also footnote this by saying that my hoax antenna went up when I saw the name of the author. Professor John Robinson is also the name of one of the characters in the old TV series, Lost In Space. But I double-checked and yes indeed there is a real version as well.
DISCLAIMER: This is a longer than usual MfM, and I still didn’t get all my CC tidbits in. In any case, have a happy Thanksgiving and may the consulting gods help you cook your Turkey so it’s not too dry.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
THE COCKTAIL CHATTER EDITION: Or, put another way, the catch-up edition. The last two editions of MfM focused on the President-elect and media and technology. That didn’t leave a lot of room for the various facts and factoids, bits and pieces, trivia and not-so-trivia that come across my desk every day. So, here in no particular order, is a plethora of cocktail chatter points for you to use at your next holiday party.
Conservative policy group, the Leadership Institute, based in Arlington, Virginia, is offering courses to teach would-be pundits exactly that – how to be pundits. For anywhere from $75 for a lecture to $1,500 for three-hour one-on-one sessions, the New York Times reports, the young American Idol-esque commentators learn how to give soundbites “you can expect to hear on Hannity later.” Nearly 600 people have signed up so far this year, up from 461 in 2005.
Okay, one last election related note – the two ‘hot’ items online for the Presidential transition sound like a dietary recommendation for the over-80 crowd – prunes and plums. PrunesOnline is described as a “must have” for Presidential appointees. Known as the “prune book,” the listing of presidential appointment positions has been around since 1988. In a very similar vein is “The Plum Book” which also identifies key presidential appointment positions.
You remember in Forrest Gump when Tom Hanks was somehow inserted into an old scene involving L.B.J.; or have you seen those commercials in which a modern day person is inserted into an old movie. Well, a company which creates speaking avatars, Oddcast, has created a site, mymoviemoment.com, where you can do the same thing. It’s a little late for Halloween, but Oddcast has struck a deal with Twentieth Century Fox and MGM to allow you integrate your submitted photos into clips from some old B-grade horror movies. They reportedly have cut a deal to do a similar promotion for a selection of holiday films.
At the end of the other end of the spectrum is something called rotoscoping. This time it’s the reverse, with live video images turned into comic book-like animations. As reported in Advertising Age, the CMO of Charles Schwab says she’s seen nothing like it, when it comes to viewer response. It refers to a technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate, according to Wikipedia, so it may be composited over another background. In case you want to try it, there are a couple of websites providing software, including rotofactory.com and videomaker.com.
Okay, you’ve heard about behavioral targeting and contextual targeting and… maybe.. micro-targeting in which you can narrow the focus of your online ads. But now there’s ‘nano-targeting’ in which you can create a series of ads on Facebook that are targeted at specific individuals. Writer Sam Lessin shows how he did it in an article in Advertising Age. All he had to do was target an ad to “Wall Street Journal reporters who are 25, graduated from Harvard with a history degree and live in San Francisco.” The Facebook told him there were less than 20 people who fit that… and one of those 20 was his girlfriend.
The number one video of all time on YouTube is the Evolution of Dance, according to website ReadWriteWeb.com. Comedian Judson Laipply uploaded the video in April of 2006 and it has garnered 55.8 Million views and it has been ‘favorited’ 252,082 times, making it the most viewed and most favorited video of all time. I think I mentioned the video in a previous MfM but I didn’t know it was the #1 video. This is another of my – do yourself a favor and watch it – recs. As a side note, the website notes that seven of the top ten videos are music based and five of those are professional videos.
The U.S. Military has created its own video sharing site, after blocking YouTube, MySpace and even Twitter, because (and I am not making this up) “terrorists could theoretically use Twitter social networking in the U.S. as an operation tool.” The website is called TroopTube and was created by a Seattle-based video services company, Delve Networks. Troops can send videos to families at home and families can do the same. When I checked out the site, the most popular video (and I am not making this up either) was General David Petraeus’ message to the troops.
More than two-thirds (68%) of technology companies were slapped with a lawsuit last year, according to law firm Fulbright & Jaworski which annually surveys U.S. litigation trends. Nearly a third (30%) faced six or more law suits and nearly half (47%) reported spending over $1 Million a year on business disputes.
While nearly half of iPhone owners (43%) earn in excess of $100,000 a year, the fastest growth in iPhone buying is among those earning between $25,000 and $50,000 (48% growth) and $25,000 to $75,000 (46% growth). Senior analyst Jen Wu of comScore says the reason may be that these people are using the iPhone in lieu of multiple digital devices and services, “transforming the iPhone from a luxury item to a practical communication and entertainment tool.”
Silicon Valley company Better Place has announced a plan to develop an electric-car infrastructure for Australia, which will eventually eliminate the need for Australia to import any oil. Before you dismiss this completely, publication Technology Review notes that the company has already developed such an infrastructure for Israel and Denmark. The difference is those countries are small, and Australia is the same size as the U.S. The company says it plans to sell the cars the same way mobile-phone companies sell phones, with a subsidized low cost and a monthly plan.
From the New York Times business section, the world’s largest corporation is Exxon/Mobil, worth $375 Billion – more than General Electric, Bank of America and Google combined. Quoting a Bernstein Research analyst, the report also says Exxon has the highest per barrel profit ($17) of any oil company, including Chevron ($16), Shell ($14) and BP ($12).
The Society for New Communication Research has named Twitter founders Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams their Innovators of the year. The Visionary of the Year award went to Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, co-authors of blogging website Groundswell which claims to tell you “how people with social technologies are changing everything.” A side note, they must be changing things awfully slowly – when I visited the site, the latest posting was a week old.
Actor George Clooney has been named “distinguished journalist in residence” at American University’s School of Communication. He is hosting the Reel Journalism series, looking at how journalism is portrayed in the movies.
Quinnipiac University whose polling institute has garnered it national fame has now garnered national notoriety for attempting to curb the activities of student journalists running an independent, online newspaper. First the university imposed a gag order on administrators, coaches and athletes to keep them from talking to the online reporters. Then it threatened to ban the student chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. The university since backed off after several national groups and national media criticized the school.
Gossip website JuicyCampus.com is also gaining national notoriety, with its publication of detailed rumors about sex, drugs and college life with contributors naming people anonymously. The rapidly growing year-old site has such gossip about 500 campuses nationwide. It also has spawned hate groups on Facebook, is under investigation by two state’s attorney generals and been voted to be banned by several student governments. Founder Matt Ivester told a group of Georgetown University who complained that the site has caused some students to drop out of school and raised fears about their job prospects that “they’re going to have to start developing a sense of humor,” according to a recent article in the Washington Post.
A website claiming to be the blog of a senior adviser to Sen. John McCain has generated lots of juicy gossip about the campaign and politics in general. It turns out though it’s the work of two guys trying to create a buzz for a movie they want, but they managed to fool MSNBC, The Los Angeles Times, Mother Jones, and The New Republic. The fake author of the website was supposedly one Martin Eisenstadt, a fellow at the fake Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy. The two would-be film-makers say yes they want to make a movie but they also want to make the point that in the 24 hour news cycle there is a lot of shoddiness in the reporting. And although The New York Times and the Associated Press both say the main “victims” (please note, that’s in quotes) were bloggers, it was also a blogger who eventually tracked down the hoax.
China’s leading video site, Youku.com, has obtained licenses from Chinese producers to stream more than 1,000 TV series on its site. That converts to more than 40,000 episodes and 50,000 hours of content. But here’s the part I love, the site is partnering with website Sina.com to produce a Chinese-language version of Sofia’s Diary, a ‘confessional type’ web show that first appeared in Portugal in 2002, well before Lonelygirl15 hit it bit in the U.S. A look at the site, BTW, and you can see it is pretty slickly produced.
From the annual “Oh My Gosh” category of news, a thirty second spot on the SuperBowl has jumped from $2.7 Million for the Fox carried game last year to $3 Million for the NBC carried game this year.
A California-based company is offering single-serve wine called Volute that can be drunk anywhere, including no-glass zones like concerts, camping grounds and beaches. According to trend watching website, Springwise, the aluminum bottle is “eco-friendlier” than traditional glass bottles, according to the makers, because it can be recycled and is actually better than glass because it blocks UV rays.
Students at Rice University in Texas are trying to create a beer with the health advantages of red wine. The six undergrads say they are engineering a yeast that produces the antiaging chemical, resveratrol, found in red wine. The so-called “BioBeer” is an entrant in the International Genetic Engineering Machine competition held in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Student Taylor Stevenson says, “it’s not going to prevent you from getting a beer gut from drinking too much beer or from getting cirrhosis of the liver, but people are already drinking beer, so why not make it a little healthier.”
LASTLY: A study reported by website TV by the Numbers says happy people watch less TV—48 minutes a day less, to be exact. That’s the difference between very happy and very unhappy people, according to the study published by Springer Science and Business Media. The study also notes that very happy people had sex ten times more than unhappy people, but I digress. Sociology professor John Robinson at the University of Maryland says his analysis of General Social Survey data shows that, “TV may provide viewers with short-run pleasure, but at the expense of long-term malaise.” The professor adds the ironic note that, “what viewers seem to be saying is that while TV in general is a waste of time and not particularly enjoyable, the shows I saw tonight were pretty good.” I should also footnote this by saying that my hoax antenna went up when I saw the name of the author. Professor John Robinson is also the name of one of the characters in the old TV series, Lost In Space. But I double-checked and yes indeed there is a real version as well.
DISCLAIMER: This is a longer than usual MfM, and I still didn’t get all my CC tidbits in. In any case, have a happy Thanksgiving and may the consulting gods help you cook your Turkey so it’s not too dry.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Message From Michael - November 17,2008
THE TECHNOLOGY PRESIDENT – ANOTHER SPECIAL REPORT
THE CRACKBERRY ADDICT
THE GREATEST DIGITAL GENERATION
THE NON-DIGITAL PART OF THE EQUATION
WI-FI ON STEROIDS
COCKTAIL CHATTER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
THE TECHNOLOGY PRESIDENT. No doubt by now you’ve heard the description; now it’s not just a matter of how he uses technology but how he lets, or helps, others use it. After seeing so many different references, I decided to do my own research and the result is this abbreviated special report.
THE CRACKBERRY ADDICT. That’s one of the descriptions of people who can’t seem to live without their PDA. Obama had a Blackberry strapped to his belt constantly during the campaign, although as the New York Times points out, as President he may have to give it up for security reasons. His campaign e-mail database of supporters numbers more than 3 Million, a database which may end up being relinquished to the Democratic National Committee. Of course his campaign had a barackobama.com website, but it was the social networking site, mybarackobama.com, which racked up the impressive numbers. There is an obamafortechnology.com website which further enlists technology on behalf of the president-elect as well as a barack20.com site which purports to show businesses how to use the 2.0 social media lessons from Obama’s campaign to “win friends and influence millions.” As readers of MfM will remember, the number of Obama followers and subscribers on MySpace, YouTube, and Twitter far outnumbered Sen. John McCain. Just for laughs, btw, I checked Obama on LinkedIn and found that we’re only two degrees apart. How, I don’t know. Then there is the president-elect’s website, change.gov, which is focused on the transition process even though there is an ‘official’ transition site titled presidentialtransition.gov, which has such useful information as a “survivor’s guide” in case you’re asked to be part of the new government. (No, I’m not kidding.) The change website has specifics about his agenda, including technology, and that’s where it gets particularly interesting.
THE GREATEST DIGITAL GENERATION: The agenda technology page starts off with a call to “let us be the generation that reshapes our economy to compete in the digital age.” Although the ‘change’ website drops the campaign rhetoric which noted that American students finished behind 16 developing countries in math and science scores and 20 developed countries, the site says we need to prepare our children for the 21st Century by making math and science a national priority – by recruiting math and science graduates to the teaching profession and improving science and math education in K-12.
MORE SPECIFICALLY, for those in the media business, the Obama-Biden ticket comes out as a strong supporter of net neutrality, and an equally strong supporter for “encouraging diversity in media ownership.” In previous campaign statements, the campaign has criticized the FCC for promoting “consolidation over diversity.” The ‘change’ website also says the Obama administration will push for “true broadband” in every community by reforming the Universal Service Fund (which telecommunications companies contribute to, through an assessment fee) and better use of the wireless spectrum. In previous campaign statements, the campaign criticized the FCC for defining broadband “as an astonishingly low 200 Kbps” which the campaign says distorted federal policy and hamstrung efforts to broaden access. They also call for Public Media 2.0, or in more cutesy language – the sesame street of the digital age – the next generation of public broadcasting.
LESS SPECIFICALLY, but still interesting, the technology agenda emphasizes the need to protect the First Amendment while protecting children online. Again, while the website does not have details, previous statements refer to such groups as Common Sense Media which promotes “sanity not censorship.” Also, on the technology agenda, is a call for strengthening privacy protections in the digital age, holding government and businesses accountable for violations of privacy; and a call to create a ‘transparent and connected democracy’ – opening up government to its citizens through technology. In previous campaign statements, the Obama campaign criticized the Bush Administration “as one of the most secretive, closed administrations in American history.”
THE NON-DIGITAL PART OF THE EQUATION. It’s easy for us in the media to think of technology in terms of telecommunications, IT and new media, but the technology agenda also includes a reform of the patent process, to “protect legitimate rights while not stifling innovation and collaboration”; restoring scientific integrity to the White House, so that decisions are based on “the best-available, scientifically-valid evidence and not on ideological predispositions”; investing in climate-friendly energy development and deployment; advancing biomedical research; and advancing stem cell research.
FINALLY, as most have heard, the president-elect plans to appoint a Chief Technology Officer, although as CNet.com points out, the question is whether the position will be symbolic or one with actual power. And although some people talk about Google CEO Eric Schmidt as the choice, others point to LaunchBoxDigital founder and technology transition team member Julius Genachowski as a more likely choice. More pragmatically the president-elect has to name a new Federal Communications Commission chairman, and as TVWeek points out, the inauguration takes place January 20th, just 29 days before the February 17th digital switchover.
If you want to read more about the technology agenda of the Obama-Biden administration than this very abbreviated report provides, you can go to two websites: http://www.change.gov/agenda/technology_agenda OR http://www.docstoc.com/docs/201649/Barack-Obamas-technology-policy .
WI-FI ON STEROIDS. One of the other things that seems to have dominated the e-mails and newsletters I receive is the “discovery” of Wi-Max technology. So, again, a little research was in order. Like so many other ‘discoveries,’ it turns out that Wi-Max has been around for much longer than you would expect. First off, the headline. Wi-Fi is the wireless connection to digital content that allows you to sit at Starbucks, have a cup of overly-expensive coffee and surf the Internet. Technically it transmits, usually at 2.4 Ghz, and only has a range of 120 feet to 300 feet. Wi-Max also operates in the 2 to 11 Ghz range, up to 66 Ghz, and theoretically can transmit a whopping 70 Mbps up to 30 miles. It’s for that reason that many television stations are looking at Wi-Max as an alternative to microwave live shots. The reality is that the further the distance the higher the bit rate error. Okay, I know, this is way too much 4-1-1 on technology. I’m sorry, but one last note. The other technology you hear about is 3G Technology, which stands for Third Generation of mobile phone technology. Reference site Wikipedia says that 3G provides “a wider range of more advanced services while achieving greater network capacity through improved spectral efficiency” giving you download speeds of 14.4 Mbps. Remember, Wi-Max can theoretically provide up to 70 Mbps.
Anyway, enough of the technical. This stuff is way above my pay grade. What I found interesting that this technology of the future has been around for nearly a decade. This probably tells you something – according to Wikipedia, the country of Pakistan has the largest fully functional network in the world. Iraq’s national telecom operator is launching that nation’s first Wi-Max Network. When the tsunami of December, 2004, practically destroyed all infrastructures in Indonesia, it was Wi-Max that provided the infrastructure connections. One of the reasons we in the States may have not heard so much about Wi-Max is that we have one of the lowest deployments of Wi-Max in the world – at 14 for North America, behind Asia and the Pacific at 26, Latin America at 22, Africa at 21, Europe at 21, Eastern Europe at 18 but ahead of the Middle East at 4, according to website telegeography.com. There are numerous websites about the technology, from wimax.com, to wimax360.com and wimaxforum.org. Bottomline: as this much more powerful technology becomes implemented in everything from iphones to computers and mp3 players, you will want to know about it, and now you do.
COCKTAIL CHATTER. Online classifieds website Craigslist has announced a deal in which it will crack down on advertising by prostitutes, sex massage and ‘boudoir’ photo services offered under its erotic listings. Anti-smoking groups are protesting a move by Phillip Morris USA to sell cigarettes in its Virginia Slim line of products in pink-colored, specially designed packs, designed to appeal to young women. Environmental activist group Greenpeace has produced a digitally altered advertisement showing President John F. Kennedy supposedly making a speech about global warming. The Federal Trade Commission has launched a website aimed at children, explaining things like target marketing. If you just said, ‘you’re kidding me,’ I agree, after looking at the site. Japan has one of the highest percentages (40%) of online population visiting music entertainment sites and the highest percentage of iTunes users of any country, according to comScore.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
THE CRACKBERRY ADDICT
THE GREATEST DIGITAL GENERATION
THE NON-DIGITAL PART OF THE EQUATION
WI-FI ON STEROIDS
COCKTAIL CHATTER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
THE TECHNOLOGY PRESIDENT. No doubt by now you’ve heard the description; now it’s not just a matter of how he uses technology but how he lets, or helps, others use it. After seeing so many different references, I decided to do my own research and the result is this abbreviated special report.
THE CRACKBERRY ADDICT. That’s one of the descriptions of people who can’t seem to live without their PDA. Obama had a Blackberry strapped to his belt constantly during the campaign, although as the New York Times points out, as President he may have to give it up for security reasons. His campaign e-mail database of supporters numbers more than 3 Million, a database which may end up being relinquished to the Democratic National Committee. Of course his campaign had a barackobama.com website, but it was the social networking site, mybarackobama.com, which racked up the impressive numbers. There is an obamafortechnology.com website which further enlists technology on behalf of the president-elect as well as a barack20.com site which purports to show businesses how to use the 2.0 social media lessons from Obama’s campaign to “win friends and influence millions.” As readers of MfM will remember, the number of Obama followers and subscribers on MySpace, YouTube, and Twitter far outnumbered Sen. John McCain. Just for laughs, btw, I checked Obama on LinkedIn and found that we’re only two degrees apart. How, I don’t know. Then there is the president-elect’s website, change.gov, which is focused on the transition process even though there is an ‘official’ transition site titled presidentialtransition.gov, which has such useful information as a “survivor’s guide” in case you’re asked to be part of the new government. (No, I’m not kidding.) The change website has specifics about his agenda, including technology, and that’s where it gets particularly interesting.
THE GREATEST DIGITAL GENERATION: The agenda technology page starts off with a call to “let us be the generation that reshapes our economy to compete in the digital age.” Although the ‘change’ website drops the campaign rhetoric which noted that American students finished behind 16 developing countries in math and science scores and 20 developed countries, the site says we need to prepare our children for the 21st Century by making math and science a national priority – by recruiting math and science graduates to the teaching profession and improving science and math education in K-12.
MORE SPECIFICALLY, for those in the media business, the Obama-Biden ticket comes out as a strong supporter of net neutrality, and an equally strong supporter for “encouraging diversity in media ownership.” In previous campaign statements, the campaign has criticized the FCC for promoting “consolidation over diversity.” The ‘change’ website also says the Obama administration will push for “true broadband” in every community by reforming the Universal Service Fund (which telecommunications companies contribute to, through an assessment fee) and better use of the wireless spectrum. In previous campaign statements, the campaign criticized the FCC for defining broadband “as an astonishingly low 200 Kbps” which the campaign says distorted federal policy and hamstrung efforts to broaden access. They also call for Public Media 2.0, or in more cutesy language – the sesame street of the digital age – the next generation of public broadcasting.
LESS SPECIFICALLY, but still interesting, the technology agenda emphasizes the need to protect the First Amendment while protecting children online. Again, while the website does not have details, previous statements refer to such groups as Common Sense Media which promotes “sanity not censorship.” Also, on the technology agenda, is a call for strengthening privacy protections in the digital age, holding government and businesses accountable for violations of privacy; and a call to create a ‘transparent and connected democracy’ – opening up government to its citizens through technology. In previous campaign statements, the Obama campaign criticized the Bush Administration “as one of the most secretive, closed administrations in American history.”
THE NON-DIGITAL PART OF THE EQUATION. It’s easy for us in the media to think of technology in terms of telecommunications, IT and new media, but the technology agenda also includes a reform of the patent process, to “protect legitimate rights while not stifling innovation and collaboration”; restoring scientific integrity to the White House, so that decisions are based on “the best-available, scientifically-valid evidence and not on ideological predispositions”; investing in climate-friendly energy development and deployment; advancing biomedical research; and advancing stem cell research.
FINALLY, as most have heard, the president-elect plans to appoint a Chief Technology Officer, although as CNet.com points out, the question is whether the position will be symbolic or one with actual power. And although some people talk about Google CEO Eric Schmidt as the choice, others point to LaunchBoxDigital founder and technology transition team member Julius Genachowski as a more likely choice. More pragmatically the president-elect has to name a new Federal Communications Commission chairman, and as TVWeek points out, the inauguration takes place January 20th, just 29 days before the February 17th digital switchover.
If you want to read more about the technology agenda of the Obama-Biden administration than this very abbreviated report provides, you can go to two websites: http://www.change.gov/agenda/technology_agenda OR http://www.docstoc.com/docs/201649/Barack-Obamas-technology-policy .
WI-FI ON STEROIDS. One of the other things that seems to have dominated the e-mails and newsletters I receive is the “discovery” of Wi-Max technology. So, again, a little research was in order. Like so many other ‘discoveries,’ it turns out that Wi-Max has been around for much longer than you would expect. First off, the headline. Wi-Fi is the wireless connection to digital content that allows you to sit at Starbucks, have a cup of overly-expensive coffee and surf the Internet. Technically it transmits, usually at 2.4 Ghz, and only has a range of 120 feet to 300 feet. Wi-Max also operates in the 2 to 11 Ghz range, up to 66 Ghz, and theoretically can transmit a whopping 70 Mbps up to 30 miles. It’s for that reason that many television stations are looking at Wi-Max as an alternative to microwave live shots. The reality is that the further the distance the higher the bit rate error. Okay, I know, this is way too much 4-1-1 on technology. I’m sorry, but one last note. The other technology you hear about is 3G Technology, which stands for Third Generation of mobile phone technology. Reference site Wikipedia says that 3G provides “a wider range of more advanced services while achieving greater network capacity through improved spectral efficiency” giving you download speeds of 14.4 Mbps. Remember, Wi-Max can theoretically provide up to 70 Mbps.
Anyway, enough of the technical. This stuff is way above my pay grade. What I found interesting that this technology of the future has been around for nearly a decade. This probably tells you something – according to Wikipedia, the country of Pakistan has the largest fully functional network in the world. Iraq’s national telecom operator is launching that nation’s first Wi-Max Network. When the tsunami of December, 2004, practically destroyed all infrastructures in Indonesia, it was Wi-Max that provided the infrastructure connections. One of the reasons we in the States may have not heard so much about Wi-Max is that we have one of the lowest deployments of Wi-Max in the world – at 14 for North America, behind Asia and the Pacific at 26, Latin America at 22, Africa at 21, Europe at 21, Eastern Europe at 18 but ahead of the Middle East at 4, according to website telegeography.com. There are numerous websites about the technology, from wimax.com, to wimax360.com and wimaxforum.org. Bottomline: as this much more powerful technology becomes implemented in everything from iphones to computers and mp3 players, you will want to know about it, and now you do.
COCKTAIL CHATTER. Online classifieds website Craigslist has announced a deal in which it will crack down on advertising by prostitutes, sex massage and ‘boudoir’ photo services offered under its erotic listings. Anti-smoking groups are protesting a move by Phillip Morris USA to sell cigarettes in its Virginia Slim line of products in pink-colored, specially designed packs, designed to appeal to young women. Environmental activist group Greenpeace has produced a digitally altered advertisement showing President John F. Kennedy supposedly making a speech about global warming. The Federal Trade Commission has launched a website aimed at children, explaining things like target marketing. If you just said, ‘you’re kidding me,’ I agree, after looking at the site. Japan has one of the highest percentages (40%) of online population visiting music entertainment sites and the highest percentage of iTunes users of any country, according to comScore.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Message From Michael - November 10, 2008
THE THREE SCREEN ELECTION – A SPECIAL REPORT
THE POLITICAL INTERNET TRAFFIC JAM
THE ELECTION NEWS VICTOR
THE ELECTION NEWS FUTURE
AN MFM FOLLOW-UP AND TOO IMPORTANT NOT TO NOTE
PAID ADVERTISEMENT – NEWS DIRECTOR
COCKTAIL CHATTER – ONLINE MURDER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
THE THREE SCREEN ELECTION. In this special edition of Message from Michael, we’re going to sum up some of the new media and mainstream media numbers from the campaign. I know you’ve already heard about this being the year of the Internet when it comes to politics, but this is really more of what I would call the three screen election, because the out-reach and the two-way conversation between the public and the politicians did reach across the TV screen, the computer screen and the hand-held screen.
THE POLITICAL INTERNET TRAFFIC JAM. The election of Sen. Barack Obama scored the highest per minute net usage worldwide of any news event since Internet backbone firm Akamai began monitoring such usage three years ago. Nearly 8.6 Million people hit the Internet every minute starting at 11 p.m. election night. The next highest event was the elimination of the U.S. in the World Cup finals by Ghana in June of 2006 (7.2 Million). Sporting events took nine of the top 15 net usage events. Even the next day’s post-election usage scored high (# 7 in ranking) at 4,885,406 users per minute – just barely ahead of the 8th highest event – the death of Anna Nicole Smith (4,885,065). The post election day resignation of Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on November 8th, 2006, came in 15th. And just in case you’re curious – the other non-sporting events that generated heavy traffic, besides Anna Nicole Smith’s death, were Cory Lidle’s plane crashing into the New York apartment building on October 11, 2006 and the deadline shootings at Virginia Tech on October 17, 2007.
Former Howard Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi who helped start the Internet political machine says the Internet in 2008 allowed both campaigns to create the “greatest get-out-the-vote campaign in U.S. History.” Although both candidates used the Internet, Obama’s campaign is credited with meshing the social networking aspects of the Internet better. For example, according to senior analyst Jeremiah Owyang at Forrester Research, Obama had four times as many YouTube subscribers as Sen. John McCain, four times as many Facebook subscribers, four times as many MySpace subscribers and 240 times more followers on Twitter (112,474 followers compared to McCain’s 4,603). It’s also probably indicative of the youth support that the number of Facebook subscribers for Obama (2,379,102) is nearly three times the number of his MySpace subscribers (833,161). And in the same vein, and not surprisingly, in a survey by micro-blogging site Twitter, Obama out-polled McCain six to one. Interestingly, at least to me, people are still twittering on the election.twitter.com site, and for all four candidates.
And although Obama also dominated the online video (the “yes, we can” video had 10 Million views), according to website UTubeblog, it was Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin who really scored. Her first interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson scored as many viewers online as it did on TV while the Tina Fey portrayal of her actually scored more viewing on-line than it did on TV. Indicative of the Obama campaign’s multi-platform out-reach, they even placed ads in video games like Nascar 09, NHL 09, NFL Tour and Need for Speed. Not to be out-done, the McCain campaign established a campaign headquarters on the Linden Lab’s virtual world Second Life where people could hang out at the – Straight Talk Café.
THE ELECTION NEWS VICTOR. Before the pundits officially declare this the Internet election, a note of reality – three quarters of the public (72%) still cite TV as their primary source for election news, according to the Pew Research Center for People and the Press. That number is more than double the number who cite the Internet (33%). BUT – and it’s a big BUT – the percentage citing the Internet either first or second in terms of campaign news has tripled from the last presidential election when only one in ten (10%) cited the Internet. The Internet has also officially over-taken newspapers as the campaign news source. In 2004, one in four (28%) cited newspapers – a number that stayed basically flat in this presidential election year (29%), while, as I noted, the Internet has climbed past newspapers with 33%. And before television people gloat, the percentage citing TV is down four points election to election (76% to 72%). Not surprisingly, the Pew study shows younger Americans cite the Internet in much greater numbers with nearly half (49%) calling it as a main source of election. That’s three times newspapers in that group (17%) and not nearly as far behind television (61%). Even less surprising, the study says the audiences for major cable news networks are highly partisan while the audiences for network TV and the Internet are more in line with the general public.
THE ELECTION NEWS FUTURE. According to an article in MediaWeek by reporter Mike Shields, the intense interest in this election may signal a shift of people becoming “online-news junkies” for good. As support for that, he notes that MSNBC.com has added more than 13 Million unique users, pushing its site to 43.2 Million total users. Citing figures from Nielsen Online, Yahoo News is up 5.7 Million uniques to 38 Million while CNN is up 6.4 Million users to 37 Million. Left-leaning political website HuffingtonPost.com saw its user base jump 457% to 7.5 Million uniques. Shields talked to several of the website chiefs who admit that while many of the newcomers are “light users” who come aboard only during special events, but they expect their numbers to still stay high. The trick is to use some of the strategies developed in the election coverage for their non-political news stories.
AN MFM FOLLOW-UP. The Federal Communications Commission has approved the use of the so-called white spaces in the broadcast spectrum (mentioned in a previous MfM headlined “Knights in White Spaces”), despite the opposition of broadcast groups. The commission also approved Verizon’s acquisition of Alltell, making it the largest wireless carrier in the U.S., and SprintNextel was given the go-ahead to buy Clearwire. That last part all sounds like just so much business news, but the significance of this is that it clears the way for the creation of Wi-Max, a substantially more robust wireless transmission system. We’ll talk about that more in a future MfM. In a previous MfM, headlined, “Hey, You, Get On To My Cloud,” we talked about the cloud computing future. Microsoft has unveiled a new Windows program called Azure which it says is a cloud computing system for the Internet, allowing developers to build applications on line in real time using existing Windows languages. Okay, you know the real reason I did this follow-up. I just had to use those headlines again.
PAID ADVERTISEMENT – NEWS DIRECTOR. Hey, cool, my first paid advertisement on the MfM newsletter… except I had to pay for it myself. Oh, well. Anyway, here it is: WNEG-TV, the television station recently acquired by the University of Georgia, is looking for a news director. The station is one of only three university-owned commercial television operations in the country. We’re looking for someone who understands the realities of small market television (and all that implies) but also understands the vision that comes with a university-owned operation (and all that implies). Our core product is news, delivered primarily by television but eventually through multiple delivery systems. The small professional staff is supplemented by university students, but will eventually include trained citizen media and user generated content. The position will initially be based in Toccoa, Georgia, but moved to Athens within a year. An unusual opportunity and challenge for the right person. Contact Michael Castengera at mcasteng@uga.edu.
TOO IMPORTANT NOT TO NOTE: Both of these items have gotten a lot of press, but I still have to mention them. Maybe we’ll talk about them more later. The Christian Science Monitor has announced that it will stop printing a weekday paper version of the century-old newspaper in April and only publish online. The paper’s editor, John Yemma, says the newspaper has the “luxury and opportunity” to do something every newspaper will have to do in five years time. And CNN has announced that it is launching a wire service in direct competition to the Associated Press and is courting major newspapers. The A.P. has been under fire recently for a rate change, with several major newspapers dropping the service.
COCKTAIL CHATTER. According to attorney Michael C. Dorf at Findlaw.com, when Barack Obama was born in 1961, twenty-one American states still banned inter-racial marriages. A little perspective on the online video phenomenon: the head of MySpace’s TV content and marketing area says two-thirds of the videos viewed are on viewer profiles. In other words, friends telling friends about stuff they’ve put on their space. One of the princesses of those online videos is Justine Ezarik who may not be someone you want to know but someone you should know about. She may be the latest online phenomenon. Her video about ordering a cheeseburger has garnered 600,000 views while her video complaining about her iPhone bill has generated 1,336,000 views (let me put that in words – more than one million, three hundred and thirty six thousand views). And, finally, a person you probably don’t want to know –a 43-year-old Japanese piano teacher has been arrested for murdering her online husband. Let me be clear. This is her avatar husband, her virtual husband in the virtual world Maple Story, NOT a ‘real’ husband. Let me also be clear. She wasn’t arrested for murder. She was actually arrested for illegally accessing a computer. But the fact remains that she became so upset with her 33-year-old office worker avatar husband that she… well, killed him after what The Times of London called “an abrupt but messy online divorce.”
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
THE POLITICAL INTERNET TRAFFIC JAM
THE ELECTION NEWS VICTOR
THE ELECTION NEWS FUTURE
AN MFM FOLLOW-UP AND TOO IMPORTANT NOT TO NOTE
PAID ADVERTISEMENT – NEWS DIRECTOR
COCKTAIL CHATTER – ONLINE MURDER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
THE THREE SCREEN ELECTION. In this special edition of Message from Michael, we’re going to sum up some of the new media and mainstream media numbers from the campaign. I know you’ve already heard about this being the year of the Internet when it comes to politics, but this is really more of what I would call the three screen election, because the out-reach and the two-way conversation between the public and the politicians did reach across the TV screen, the computer screen and the hand-held screen.
THE POLITICAL INTERNET TRAFFIC JAM. The election of Sen. Barack Obama scored the highest per minute net usage worldwide of any news event since Internet backbone firm Akamai began monitoring such usage three years ago. Nearly 8.6 Million people hit the Internet every minute starting at 11 p.m. election night. The next highest event was the elimination of the U.S. in the World Cup finals by Ghana in June of 2006 (7.2 Million). Sporting events took nine of the top 15 net usage events. Even the next day’s post-election usage scored high (# 7 in ranking) at 4,885,406 users per minute – just barely ahead of the 8th highest event – the death of Anna Nicole Smith (4,885,065). The post election day resignation of Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on November 8th, 2006, came in 15th. And just in case you’re curious – the other non-sporting events that generated heavy traffic, besides Anna Nicole Smith’s death, were Cory Lidle’s plane crashing into the New York apartment building on October 11, 2006 and the deadline shootings at Virginia Tech on October 17, 2007.
Former Howard Dean campaign manager Joe Trippi who helped start the Internet political machine says the Internet in 2008 allowed both campaigns to create the “greatest get-out-the-vote campaign in U.S. History.” Although both candidates used the Internet, Obama’s campaign is credited with meshing the social networking aspects of the Internet better. For example, according to senior analyst Jeremiah Owyang at Forrester Research, Obama had four times as many YouTube subscribers as Sen. John McCain, four times as many Facebook subscribers, four times as many MySpace subscribers and 240 times more followers on Twitter (112,474 followers compared to McCain’s 4,603). It’s also probably indicative of the youth support that the number of Facebook subscribers for Obama (2,379,102) is nearly three times the number of his MySpace subscribers (833,161). And in the same vein, and not surprisingly, in a survey by micro-blogging site Twitter, Obama out-polled McCain six to one. Interestingly, at least to me, people are still twittering on the election.twitter.com site, and for all four candidates.
And although Obama also dominated the online video (the “yes, we can” video had 10 Million views), according to website UTubeblog, it was Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin who really scored. Her first interview with ABC’s Charlie Gibson scored as many viewers online as it did on TV while the Tina Fey portrayal of her actually scored more viewing on-line than it did on TV. Indicative of the Obama campaign’s multi-platform out-reach, they even placed ads in video games like Nascar 09, NHL 09, NFL Tour and Need for Speed. Not to be out-done, the McCain campaign established a campaign headquarters on the Linden Lab’s virtual world Second Life where people could hang out at the – Straight Talk Café.
THE ELECTION NEWS VICTOR. Before the pundits officially declare this the Internet election, a note of reality – three quarters of the public (72%) still cite TV as their primary source for election news, according to the Pew Research Center for People and the Press. That number is more than double the number who cite the Internet (33%). BUT – and it’s a big BUT – the percentage citing the Internet either first or second in terms of campaign news has tripled from the last presidential election when only one in ten (10%) cited the Internet. The Internet has also officially over-taken newspapers as the campaign news source. In 2004, one in four (28%) cited newspapers – a number that stayed basically flat in this presidential election year (29%), while, as I noted, the Internet has climbed past newspapers with 33%. And before television people gloat, the percentage citing TV is down four points election to election (76% to 72%). Not surprisingly, the Pew study shows younger Americans cite the Internet in much greater numbers with nearly half (49%) calling it as a main source of election. That’s three times newspapers in that group (17%) and not nearly as far behind television (61%). Even less surprising, the study says the audiences for major cable news networks are highly partisan while the audiences for network TV and the Internet are more in line with the general public.
THE ELECTION NEWS FUTURE. According to an article in MediaWeek by reporter Mike Shields, the intense interest in this election may signal a shift of people becoming “online-news junkies” for good. As support for that, he notes that MSNBC.com has added more than 13 Million unique users, pushing its site to 43.2 Million total users. Citing figures from Nielsen Online, Yahoo News is up 5.7 Million uniques to 38 Million while CNN is up 6.4 Million users to 37 Million. Left-leaning political website HuffingtonPost.com saw its user base jump 457% to 7.5 Million uniques. Shields talked to several of the website chiefs who admit that while many of the newcomers are “light users” who come aboard only during special events, but they expect their numbers to still stay high. The trick is to use some of the strategies developed in the election coverage for their non-political news stories.
AN MFM FOLLOW-UP. The Federal Communications Commission has approved the use of the so-called white spaces in the broadcast spectrum (mentioned in a previous MfM headlined “Knights in White Spaces”), despite the opposition of broadcast groups. The commission also approved Verizon’s acquisition of Alltell, making it the largest wireless carrier in the U.S., and SprintNextel was given the go-ahead to buy Clearwire. That last part all sounds like just so much business news, but the significance of this is that it clears the way for the creation of Wi-Max, a substantially more robust wireless transmission system. We’ll talk about that more in a future MfM. In a previous MfM, headlined, “Hey, You, Get On To My Cloud,” we talked about the cloud computing future. Microsoft has unveiled a new Windows program called Azure which it says is a cloud computing system for the Internet, allowing developers to build applications on line in real time using existing Windows languages. Okay, you know the real reason I did this follow-up. I just had to use those headlines again.
PAID ADVERTISEMENT – NEWS DIRECTOR. Hey, cool, my first paid advertisement on the MfM newsletter… except I had to pay for it myself. Oh, well. Anyway, here it is: WNEG-TV, the television station recently acquired by the University of Georgia, is looking for a news director. The station is one of only three university-owned commercial television operations in the country. We’re looking for someone who understands the realities of small market television (and all that implies) but also understands the vision that comes with a university-owned operation (and all that implies). Our core product is news, delivered primarily by television but eventually through multiple delivery systems. The small professional staff is supplemented by university students, but will eventually include trained citizen media and user generated content. The position will initially be based in Toccoa, Georgia, but moved to Athens within a year. An unusual opportunity and challenge for the right person. Contact Michael Castengera at mcasteng@uga.edu.
TOO IMPORTANT NOT TO NOTE: Both of these items have gotten a lot of press, but I still have to mention them. Maybe we’ll talk about them more later. The Christian Science Monitor has announced that it will stop printing a weekday paper version of the century-old newspaper in April and only publish online. The paper’s editor, John Yemma, says the newspaper has the “luxury and opportunity” to do something every newspaper will have to do in five years time. And CNN has announced that it is launching a wire service in direct competition to the Associated Press and is courting major newspapers. The A.P. has been under fire recently for a rate change, with several major newspapers dropping the service.
COCKTAIL CHATTER. According to attorney Michael C. Dorf at Findlaw.com, when Barack Obama was born in 1961, twenty-one American states still banned inter-racial marriages. A little perspective on the online video phenomenon: the head of MySpace’s TV content and marketing area says two-thirds of the videos viewed are on viewer profiles. In other words, friends telling friends about stuff they’ve put on their space. One of the princesses of those online videos is Justine Ezarik who may not be someone you want to know but someone you should know about. She may be the latest online phenomenon. Her video about ordering a cheeseburger has garnered 600,000 views while her video complaining about her iPhone bill has generated 1,336,000 views (let me put that in words – more than one million, three hundred and thirty six thousand views). And, finally, a person you probably don’t want to know –a 43-year-old Japanese piano teacher has been arrested for murdering her online husband. Let me be clear. This is her avatar husband, her virtual husband in the virtual world Maple Story, NOT a ‘real’ husband. Let me also be clear. She wasn’t arrested for murder. She was actually arrested for illegally accessing a computer. But the fact remains that she became so upset with her 33-year-old office worker avatar husband that she… well, killed him after what The Times of London called “an abrupt but messy online divorce.”
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Monday, October 27, 2008
Message from Michael -- October 27, 2008
HEY, YOU, GET ONTO MY CLOUD
KNIGHTS IN WHITE SPACES
OUTSOURCING THE NEWS
HOW BAD ARE J-SCHOOLS?
COCKTAIL CHATTER – FOR WRITERS
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
HEY, YOU, GET ONTO MY CLOUD: It seems that Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer is singing his own variation of the Mick Jagger hit, along with Yahoo’s Jerry Yang and Google’s Eric Schmidt as they all battle like World War I fighter pilots in the clouds of computing. Once known as grid computing, utility computing or distributed computing, the much sexier sounding “cloud computing” is being heralded as the biggest thing since the Internet started. We’ve talked about it in previous MfM’s, but the difference is that this week Microsoft is jumping into the fray with a vengeance at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. As usual Microsoft is late getting into the field but as always Microsoft is raising the stakes dramatically. Also, next month the first International Cloud Computing Conference will be held in San Jose. Sys-Con, which focuses on i-Technology media and actually produces a cloud computing journal, will host a cloud computing ‘boot camp.’ It probably tells you something that although there is agreement that cloud computing represents “an infrastructural paradigm shift,” there is no agreement on an exact definition. My untutored definition is that all your documents, all your storage, all your software, even all your applications are provided through a massive system of inter-connected servers so that you are no longer restricted by the size or speed of your computer. Amazon has its own version, EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) which provides “resizable compute capacity in the cloud,” making web-scale computing easier for developers. Earlier this year, Intel, Hewlett Packard and Yahoo joined forces with three international research institutions to develop six data centers to test the stability and security of cloud computing. And as noted before, Google is already providing a cloud of apps online which runs on an estimated 100,000 nodes – a fancy term for servers -- although the recent 24-hour outage of Google’s Gmail system has raised questions about just how reliable cloud computing can be.
If you want to follow Microsoft’s foray into the field, go to website microsoftpdc.com; if you want to follow the computing conference, go to cloudcomputingexpo.com. And if you just want to keep up with the concept, go to cloudcomputing.sys-con.com.
KNIGHTS IN WHITE SPACES: Okay, I know I’m pushing my luck with these headline variations of rock and roll hits. But like the knights of olde, TV and Internet groups are jousting over what to do with the so-called “white spaces” which are the unused radio waves in the VHF and UHF band of television transmission. On this issue at least, Microsoft, Google, HP, and Intel are all on the same side. They say they can use the white space to deliver high speed wireless broadband internet access, with speeds anywhere from 10Mbytes to 50 and 100 Mbytes, which is much powerful than the Wi-Fi spectrum. On the other side are all the major networks and the National Association of Broadcasters. They say that the use of the white spaces in the signals will interfere with television broadcasts if unlicensed devices operate in the same spectrum. Both sides have formed groups with cutesy, catchy names. The broadcasters have formed The Association for Maximum Service Television while the Internet groups have formed the Wireless Innovation Alliance. The Federal Communications Commission Office of Engineering and Technology submitted a report a year ago that said the devices did not reliably detect the presence of television transmission and so therefore could not be relied upon. But this month the same office issued another report that “tentatively concludes… that… AWS-3 devices could operate at a power level of up to 23 dBm/MHz equivalent isotropic radiated power (EIRP) and with out-of-band emissions (OOBE) attenuated… without a significant risk of harmful interference.” Don’t you love it when I talk like this? It just goes to show you the level of technical detail that goes into these arguments. It may sound esoteric, but it isn’t. This is going to be the next ‘net neutrality’ debate that you will be hearing more and more about.
Side Note: Another group that you may never have heard of, but that directly affects you (at least it does, if you listen to Internet Radio), is SoundExchange. It collects the fees for the use of the different recording labels’ music. The group had applied to the federal Copyright Royalty Board to set royalty fees at a rate that many Internet radio operations said would put them out of business. Now, Congress has stepped in, passing the Webcaster Settlement Act to allow radio webcasters to negotiate lower royalty fee.
OUTSOURCING THE NEWS: The head of a major American newspaper group, who is also chairman of the Associated Press, says newspaper publishers should look at outsourcing news, possibly overseas. The CEO of Media News Group which publishes 52 newspapers says most of the preproduction work for its newspapers in California is already done in India, but now he says the group is looking at creating one “media desk” for all its newspapers and even possibly locating it “offshore.” As reported in USA Today, CEO Dean Singleton who also chairs the A.P. says no final decision has been made about outsourcing editorial functions, but they were looking at consolidating all editing and design. Regular readers of MfM will remember that an online news operation in California, pasadenanow.com, has outsourced its news, by having people in India write stories based on webcasts of city council meetings and information provided by ‘citizen volunteers.’ The proposal is obviously a response to the troubled economic times, which the former executive editor of The Washington Post says could mean local television news will disappear as fast, or faster, than local newspapers. Talking to the Cronkite News Service, former editor Len Downie Jr. says newspapers may win out on the rapidly growing Web with their growing use of video for the simple reason that newspapers can out-gun local television. For example, the Post has around 100 reporters covering the Washington area while the largest TV station in the market has, at most, a dozen reporters. He says that while newspapers are being squeezed, local television is being squeezed even more.
HOW BAD ARE J-SCHOOLS? Pretty bad if you believe the scoring on media website TVSpy.com. Its offspring newsletter, Shoptalk, ran an article listing the top ten schools based on a poll of its readers. They were: Columbia, Northwestern, UNC-Chapel Hill, Missouri, Syracuse, Indiana, California, Illinois, Maryland (Philip Merrill College), Ohio. Curious I went to the site to see the actual numbers. On a scale of 0 to 100, the top ranked school, Columbia, got a whopping 12. Yes, 12. Number 2, Northwestern, got a 6. Even more interesting, of the 16 schools listed, only four got positive grades; the other 12 were in the negative column. And I thought I was a tough grader! A sampling of others: Syracuse (-1), UNC and the Cronkite School at Arizona (-4), Ohio (-7), California (-8). The lowest scores: Montana (-37), Nevada (-38), and lowest scorer, Michigan (-43), which may be some consolation to football rival Michigan (-15). It’s not much consolation to us at the Grady College/ University of Georgia that football rival Florida also was in the negative column (-18), since we weren’t even on the list. I should note the grades vary daily as people vote, but the overwhelming theme remains the same – three quarters of the schools got negative grades. So, the obvious question is – why. And the reader with the best answer to that question will get a free subscription to Message from Michael. Oh, never mind, it’s already free.
COCKTAIL CHATTER. The creator of Harry Potter and the one-time single mother on welfare, J.K. Rowling, is the best paid author in the world with a ‘jaw-dropping’ $300 Million, according to Forbes magazine. The money drops dramatically for second place winner James Patterson but still isn’t too shabby at $50 Million. The ‘king of horror’ Stephen King came in third with $45 Million, followed by the master of the political thriller, Tom Clancy ($35 Million) and the doyenne of romance novels, Danielle Steel ($30 Million.) The rest of the top ten list includes John Grisham and Dean Koontz (both tied at $25 Million) followed by -- as Forbes puts it, thanks to a little Oprah magic -- Ken Follett ($20 Million), Janet Evanovich ($17 Million) and Nicholas Sparks ($16 Million). The winner of this year’s Writer’s Digest Best Writer’s Website is claudialuiz.com, so named of course for its creator, Claudia Luiz, a writer, psychoanalyst, and mother of two who does a column for her hometown newspaper in Norwood, Massachusetts. And as long as I’m on a writing kick, a reminder that NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), in which you have one month to write a complete novel, kicks off November 1st.
Apropos of nothing in particular, except that I found it interesting… the Central Intelligence Agency took out a full-page ad in the New York Times magazine. In a special advertising section on diversity, the agency advertises for people who can “make a world of difference” working for the national clandestine service.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
KNIGHTS IN WHITE SPACES
OUTSOURCING THE NEWS
HOW BAD ARE J-SCHOOLS?
COCKTAIL CHATTER – FOR WRITERS
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
HEY, YOU, GET ONTO MY CLOUD: It seems that Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer is singing his own variation of the Mick Jagger hit, along with Yahoo’s Jerry Yang and Google’s Eric Schmidt as they all battle like World War I fighter pilots in the clouds of computing. Once known as grid computing, utility computing or distributed computing, the much sexier sounding “cloud computing” is being heralded as the biggest thing since the Internet started. We’ve talked about it in previous MfM’s, but the difference is that this week Microsoft is jumping into the fray with a vengeance at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles. As usual Microsoft is late getting into the field but as always Microsoft is raising the stakes dramatically. Also, next month the first International Cloud Computing Conference will be held in San Jose. Sys-Con, which focuses on i-Technology media and actually produces a cloud computing journal, will host a cloud computing ‘boot camp.’ It probably tells you something that although there is agreement that cloud computing represents “an infrastructural paradigm shift,” there is no agreement on an exact definition. My untutored definition is that all your documents, all your storage, all your software, even all your applications are provided through a massive system of inter-connected servers so that you are no longer restricted by the size or speed of your computer. Amazon has its own version, EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) which provides “resizable compute capacity in the cloud,” making web-scale computing easier for developers. Earlier this year, Intel, Hewlett Packard and Yahoo joined forces with three international research institutions to develop six data centers to test the stability and security of cloud computing. And as noted before, Google is already providing a cloud of apps online which runs on an estimated 100,000 nodes – a fancy term for servers -- although the recent 24-hour outage of Google’s Gmail system has raised questions about just how reliable cloud computing can be.
If you want to follow Microsoft’s foray into the field, go to website microsoftpdc.com; if you want to follow the computing conference, go to cloudcomputingexpo.com. And if you just want to keep up with the concept, go to cloudcomputing.sys-con.com.
KNIGHTS IN WHITE SPACES: Okay, I know I’m pushing my luck with these headline variations of rock and roll hits. But like the knights of olde, TV and Internet groups are jousting over what to do with the so-called “white spaces” which are the unused radio waves in the VHF and UHF band of television transmission. On this issue at least, Microsoft, Google, HP, and Intel are all on the same side. They say they can use the white space to deliver high speed wireless broadband internet access, with speeds anywhere from 10Mbytes to 50 and 100 Mbytes, which is much powerful than the Wi-Fi spectrum. On the other side are all the major networks and the National Association of Broadcasters. They say that the use of the white spaces in the signals will interfere with television broadcasts if unlicensed devices operate in the same spectrum. Both sides have formed groups with cutesy, catchy names. The broadcasters have formed The Association for Maximum Service Television while the Internet groups have formed the Wireless Innovation Alliance. The Federal Communications Commission Office of Engineering and Technology submitted a report a year ago that said the devices did not reliably detect the presence of television transmission and so therefore could not be relied upon. But this month the same office issued another report that “tentatively concludes… that… AWS-3 devices could operate at a power level of up to 23 dBm/MHz equivalent isotropic radiated power (EIRP) and with out-of-band emissions (OOBE) attenuated… without a significant risk of harmful interference.” Don’t you love it when I talk like this? It just goes to show you the level of technical detail that goes into these arguments. It may sound esoteric, but it isn’t. This is going to be the next ‘net neutrality’ debate that you will be hearing more and more about.
Side Note: Another group that you may never have heard of, but that directly affects you (at least it does, if you listen to Internet Radio), is SoundExchange. It collects the fees for the use of the different recording labels’ music. The group had applied to the federal Copyright Royalty Board to set royalty fees at a rate that many Internet radio operations said would put them out of business. Now, Congress has stepped in, passing the Webcaster Settlement Act to allow radio webcasters to negotiate lower royalty fee.
OUTSOURCING THE NEWS: The head of a major American newspaper group, who is also chairman of the Associated Press, says newspaper publishers should look at outsourcing news, possibly overseas. The CEO of Media News Group which publishes 52 newspapers says most of the preproduction work for its newspapers in California is already done in India, but now he says the group is looking at creating one “media desk” for all its newspapers and even possibly locating it “offshore.” As reported in USA Today, CEO Dean Singleton who also chairs the A.P. says no final decision has been made about outsourcing editorial functions, but they were looking at consolidating all editing and design. Regular readers of MfM will remember that an online news operation in California, pasadenanow.com, has outsourced its news, by having people in India write stories based on webcasts of city council meetings and information provided by ‘citizen volunteers.’ The proposal is obviously a response to the troubled economic times, which the former executive editor of The Washington Post says could mean local television news will disappear as fast, or faster, than local newspapers. Talking to the Cronkite News Service, former editor Len Downie Jr. says newspapers may win out on the rapidly growing Web with their growing use of video for the simple reason that newspapers can out-gun local television. For example, the Post has around 100 reporters covering the Washington area while the largest TV station in the market has, at most, a dozen reporters. He says that while newspapers are being squeezed, local television is being squeezed even more.
HOW BAD ARE J-SCHOOLS? Pretty bad if you believe the scoring on media website TVSpy.com. Its offspring newsletter, Shoptalk, ran an article listing the top ten schools based on a poll of its readers. They were: Columbia, Northwestern, UNC-Chapel Hill, Missouri, Syracuse, Indiana, California, Illinois, Maryland (Philip Merrill College), Ohio. Curious I went to the site to see the actual numbers. On a scale of 0 to 100, the top ranked school, Columbia, got a whopping 12. Yes, 12. Number 2, Northwestern, got a 6. Even more interesting, of the 16 schools listed, only four got positive grades; the other 12 were in the negative column. And I thought I was a tough grader! A sampling of others: Syracuse (-1), UNC and the Cronkite School at Arizona (-4), Ohio (-7), California (-8). The lowest scores: Montana (-37), Nevada (-38), and lowest scorer, Michigan (-43), which may be some consolation to football rival Michigan (-15). It’s not much consolation to us at the Grady College/ University of Georgia that football rival Florida also was in the negative column (-18), since we weren’t even on the list. I should note the grades vary daily as people vote, but the overwhelming theme remains the same – three quarters of the schools got negative grades. So, the obvious question is – why. And the reader with the best answer to that question will get a free subscription to Message from Michael. Oh, never mind, it’s already free.
COCKTAIL CHATTER. The creator of Harry Potter and the one-time single mother on welfare, J.K. Rowling, is the best paid author in the world with a ‘jaw-dropping’ $300 Million, according to Forbes magazine. The money drops dramatically for second place winner James Patterson but still isn’t too shabby at $50 Million. The ‘king of horror’ Stephen King came in third with $45 Million, followed by the master of the political thriller, Tom Clancy ($35 Million) and the doyenne of romance novels, Danielle Steel ($30 Million.) The rest of the top ten list includes John Grisham and Dean Koontz (both tied at $25 Million) followed by -- as Forbes puts it, thanks to a little Oprah magic -- Ken Follett ($20 Million), Janet Evanovich ($17 Million) and Nicholas Sparks ($16 Million). The winner of this year’s Writer’s Digest Best Writer’s Website is claudialuiz.com, so named of course for its creator, Claudia Luiz, a writer, psychoanalyst, and mother of two who does a column for her hometown newspaper in Norwood, Massachusetts. And as long as I’m on a writing kick, a reminder that NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), in which you have one month to write a complete novel, kicks off November 1st.
Apropos of nothing in particular, except that I found it interesting… the Central Intelligence Agency took out a full-page ad in the New York Times magazine. In a special advertising section on diversity, the agency advertises for people who can “make a world of difference” working for the national clandestine service.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Message From Michael -- October 20, 2008
RETURN TO SENDER; ADDRESS UNKNOWN.
WHAT GETS MEASURED GETS DONE
WE HAVE TO INNOVATE OUR WAY OUT OF THIS
COCKTAIL CHATTER -- MILESTONES
OF BRICK WALLS AND HEAD FAKES
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
RETURN TO SENDER. ADDRESS UNKNOWN. The lyrics from the old Elvis Presley song may soon apply to the Internet. In the growing category of things I didn’t know -- In roughly two years time the last Internet address available on the original Internet naming system will be given out. That totals 4.3 Billion numbers. (Internet addresses are, of course, actual numbers.) Just for perspective, there are 6.7 Billion people in the world. Part of the problem, and the solution, according to research by computer scientists at University of Southern California, is the management of the original addressing system. They say there are whole blocks of numbers, maybe as much as half, that are only lightly used. Now you’ve probably heard about ICANN which stands for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. They’re the ones who decide if you get a dot-com, dot-net, or dot-tv domain extension. Well, part of that group is another group – the IANA, which stands for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. They’re the ones that actually give out the blocks of Internet address numbers. Starting today (Monday, October 20th) they’re all getting together for the Internet Measurement Conference in a seaside resort near Athens, Greece. To further share with you something you probably don’t need to know but that’s interesting to know… the original Internet Protocol number system (IPv4) was ‘deployed’ on January 1, 1983. That’s the one used by all of us and the one that’s about to run out. The next version (IPv6) was ‘deployed’ 16 years later in 1999. It has – get this – 51 Thousand Trillion Trillion addresses. So, there’s obviously more than enough, except that the move to that system is costly and complex. Several groups including the U.S. government have mandated users switch to IPv6, and for good reason. IANA figures that the last block of IPv4 addresses will be given out somewhere between 2010 and 2011.
WHAT GETS MEASURED GETS DONE. You’ve no doubt heard that old management maxim. Advertisers have a variation of that – what gets measured gets sold. The challenge is being able to measure all the various platforms people use. You will recall NBC’s TAMI (Total Audience Measurement Index) launched during the Olympics to measure its cross-platform delivery system. Now a small research firm called Integrated Media Measurement is trying to do that using cell phones. The company has embedded software into the cell phones of 4,900 panelists, to catch the audio from ads on TV, radio or the Internet. The audio is then coded with the company’s database, so that it can tell if a consumer who listened to a movie trailer or an ad for a TV show actually watch that movie or TV show. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the company is now working with a national grocery chain to see if it can use the same technology for shampoos and toothpaste. Meanwhile Federated Media has launched a beta version of its ‘measurement tool box’ to track ‘conversational media campaigns’ – aka, social networking. It pulls together standard metrics such as impressions and click-through-rates along with data points such as whether people post blogs, use widgets, and bookmark sites. Finally, before you jump all over the new forms of advertising, take note of a study by Montreal-based research firm iPerceptions which found that simple text ads work better than rich media ads. A survey found that a quarter (25%) of the 14,000 visitors to leading media sites clicked on text ads while one in five (20%) clicked on display ads on the right side of the page and only one in eight (12%) clicked on the top of the page banners. Rich media ads only snagged between 7% and 11% of the clicks.
WE HAVE TO INNOVATE OUR WAY OUT OF THIS. That’s what a consulting colleague of mine used to say when faced with a client challenge. And it’s what the young people on the M.I.T. Technology Review’s list of 35 innovators under 35 have done and are doing – on everything from the Internet to medicine, from biotechnology to nanotechnology. These are the people whose work is changing our world. So, besides Twitter (whose creator is on the list), be prepared to add to your lexicon -- synths, Drupal, FLOw, SRAM as well as DRAM, Graphene, Instructables and Xobni. That last one is Inbox spelled backwards and is the brain child of Adam Smith who, the Technology Review editors say, is helping to make sense out of “e-mail madness” by scanning every e-mail you receive, extracting information from phone numbers to files exchanged – translating it all into a sort of e-mail social networking display of the most relevant information. Drupal is Dutch for droplet and is the creation of Dries Buytaert. While the idea of publishing on a global scale seems to be inherent with the Internet, in actual fact all you have with the Internet is the ability to distribute globally. Actual publishing is much more and Buytaert has developed a system to do just that. Synths is short hand (I’m semi-assuming) for synthetics and are 3-D renderings of such things as the Rocky Mountains from photos you’ve taken. Creator Blaise Aquera Y Arcas who works for Microsoft created the Photosynth system which allows you to create full scale three dimensional worlds. FLOw is the creation of 26-year-old Jenova Chen who has been, according to the TR editors, playing video games for 20 years. It comes from a psychologist’s theory identifying “a state of focus that people find enjoyable and fulfilling.” The result is a Web-based ZEN game in which players control a sea creature that swims, eats… and evolves. You all know about Blinkx (because you read MfM) but innovator Xiang-Sheng Hua has taken online video search to a whole other level. The TR editors say Hua is “teaching computers” to recognize objects, scenes and elements of digital images using tags provided by experts but also descriptions written by grassroots Internet users which is then put through an automated filter.
Side Observations: Out of the 35 innovators named, three work for Microsoft. Most are associated with universities. Also interesting (as always – at least to me) only four had what you might call westernized or Americanized names. To state the obvious, I have barely touched the range of topics and ideas from these young innovators. I will do updates in later MfM reports. In the meantime, you can see them for yourself at http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35.
A TELEVISION MILESTONE: All right, that may be somewhat of an exaggeration but not if you’re the one doing it. The University Of Georgia’s Research Foundation officially took possession of former Media General-owned WNEG-TV. This will make it one of only three commercial television stations owned and operated by a university. The others are WVUA-TV owned by the University of Alabama and KOMU-TV owned by the University of Missouri-Columbia.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Another milestone of sorts as Facebook reaches one petabyte of storage space and that’s just for photos alone. That translates into 10 Billion photos. A petabyte is the equivalent of 1000 terabytes and a terabyte is 1000 gigabytes. The latest ‘hot’ device hitting the market is a sort of poor man’s Blackberry called Peek, which does only e-mail, but does it well and does it everywhere. Maybe just to prove it isn’t an old line college, even though it is celebrating the 800th anniversary of its founding next year (makes some of our colleges seem like freshmen, doesn’t it?) the University of Cambridge is offering lectures on history, arts, and business free online at the iTunes store.
OF BRICK WALLS AND HEAD FAKES. Here are some thoughts to share: brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want something bad enough. The best way to teach somebody something is to make them think they’re learning something else. (That’s called a head fake.) Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. When you’re screwing up and no-one says anything to you, that means they’ve given up on you. Your critics are the ones telling you they still love you and care for you. Wait long enough and people will surprise and impress you. The best gift an educator can give is to teach students to be self reflective. You don’t know where the bar is, so you do a disservice to students by putting it anywhere.
Okay, this has nothing to do with media, new or old, except that you can find it on YouTube and other video websites. It’s all from The Last Lecture by former Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch. The lecture was given in September of last year after Pausch had learned he had terminal pancreatic cancer and six months to live. But there is nothing maudlin about the lecture. This is a guy who tells the audience that after he learned of his situation, he did have a death bed conversion – he bought a Macintosh. The lecture is peppered with such jokes, along with witticisms and pointed observations. Normally, I give you a summary of longer reports so you don’t have to read, watch or listen to them. But in this case, do yourself a favor. Get up early one morning -- an hour and sixteen minutes early, to be exact -- and watch the lecture. Actually… there is another media element to this. Pausch was an expert in human-computer interactions and virtual worlds. Pausch who also worked with the Walt Disney Imagineering Team had created the Entertainment Technology Center and was working on an infinitely scalable technology teaching model for virtual worlds titled Alice. As he himself put it, like Moses, he got to see the Promised Land but he never got to set foot in it. He died on July 25, 2008.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
WHAT GETS MEASURED GETS DONE
WE HAVE TO INNOVATE OUR WAY OUT OF THIS
COCKTAIL CHATTER -- MILESTONES
OF BRICK WALLS AND HEAD FAKES
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
RETURN TO SENDER. ADDRESS UNKNOWN. The lyrics from the old Elvis Presley song may soon apply to the Internet. In the growing category of things I didn’t know -- In roughly two years time the last Internet address available on the original Internet naming system will be given out. That totals 4.3 Billion numbers. (Internet addresses are, of course, actual numbers.) Just for perspective, there are 6.7 Billion people in the world. Part of the problem, and the solution, according to research by computer scientists at University of Southern California, is the management of the original addressing system. They say there are whole blocks of numbers, maybe as much as half, that are only lightly used. Now you’ve probably heard about ICANN which stands for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. They’re the ones who decide if you get a dot-com, dot-net, or dot-tv domain extension. Well, part of that group is another group – the IANA, which stands for the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. They’re the ones that actually give out the blocks of Internet address numbers. Starting today (Monday, October 20th) they’re all getting together for the Internet Measurement Conference in a seaside resort near Athens, Greece. To further share with you something you probably don’t need to know but that’s interesting to know… the original Internet Protocol number system (IPv4) was ‘deployed’ on January 1, 1983. That’s the one used by all of us and the one that’s about to run out. The next version (IPv6) was ‘deployed’ 16 years later in 1999. It has – get this – 51 Thousand Trillion Trillion addresses. So, there’s obviously more than enough, except that the move to that system is costly and complex. Several groups including the U.S. government have mandated users switch to IPv6, and for good reason. IANA figures that the last block of IPv4 addresses will be given out somewhere between 2010 and 2011.
WHAT GETS MEASURED GETS DONE. You’ve no doubt heard that old management maxim. Advertisers have a variation of that – what gets measured gets sold. The challenge is being able to measure all the various platforms people use. You will recall NBC’s TAMI (Total Audience Measurement Index) launched during the Olympics to measure its cross-platform delivery system. Now a small research firm called Integrated Media Measurement is trying to do that using cell phones. The company has embedded software into the cell phones of 4,900 panelists, to catch the audio from ads on TV, radio or the Internet. The audio is then coded with the company’s database, so that it can tell if a consumer who listened to a movie trailer or an ad for a TV show actually watch that movie or TV show. As the Wall Street Journal reports, the company is now working with a national grocery chain to see if it can use the same technology for shampoos and toothpaste. Meanwhile Federated Media has launched a beta version of its ‘measurement tool box’ to track ‘conversational media campaigns’ – aka, social networking. It pulls together standard metrics such as impressions and click-through-rates along with data points such as whether people post blogs, use widgets, and bookmark sites. Finally, before you jump all over the new forms of advertising, take note of a study by Montreal-based research firm iPerceptions which found that simple text ads work better than rich media ads. A survey found that a quarter (25%) of the 14,000 visitors to leading media sites clicked on text ads while one in five (20%) clicked on display ads on the right side of the page and only one in eight (12%) clicked on the top of the page banners. Rich media ads only snagged between 7% and 11% of the clicks.
WE HAVE TO INNOVATE OUR WAY OUT OF THIS. That’s what a consulting colleague of mine used to say when faced with a client challenge. And it’s what the young people on the M.I.T. Technology Review’s list of 35 innovators under 35 have done and are doing – on everything from the Internet to medicine, from biotechnology to nanotechnology. These are the people whose work is changing our world. So, besides Twitter (whose creator is on the list), be prepared to add to your lexicon -- synths, Drupal, FLOw, SRAM as well as DRAM, Graphene, Instructables and Xobni. That last one is Inbox spelled backwards and is the brain child of Adam Smith who, the Technology Review editors say, is helping to make sense out of “e-mail madness” by scanning every e-mail you receive, extracting information from phone numbers to files exchanged – translating it all into a sort of e-mail social networking display of the most relevant information. Drupal is Dutch for droplet and is the creation of Dries Buytaert. While the idea of publishing on a global scale seems to be inherent with the Internet, in actual fact all you have with the Internet is the ability to distribute globally. Actual publishing is much more and Buytaert has developed a system to do just that. Synths is short hand (I’m semi-assuming) for synthetics and are 3-D renderings of such things as the Rocky Mountains from photos you’ve taken. Creator Blaise Aquera Y Arcas who works for Microsoft created the Photosynth system which allows you to create full scale three dimensional worlds. FLOw is the creation of 26-year-old Jenova Chen who has been, according to the TR editors, playing video games for 20 years. It comes from a psychologist’s theory identifying “a state of focus that people find enjoyable and fulfilling.” The result is a Web-based ZEN game in which players control a sea creature that swims, eats… and evolves. You all know about Blinkx (because you read MfM) but innovator Xiang-Sheng Hua has taken online video search to a whole other level. The TR editors say Hua is “teaching computers” to recognize objects, scenes and elements of digital images using tags provided by experts but also descriptions written by grassroots Internet users which is then put through an automated filter.
Side Observations: Out of the 35 innovators named, three work for Microsoft. Most are associated with universities. Also interesting (as always – at least to me) only four had what you might call westernized or Americanized names. To state the obvious, I have barely touched the range of topics and ideas from these young innovators. I will do updates in later MfM reports. In the meantime, you can see them for yourself at http://www.technologyreview.com/TR35.
A TELEVISION MILESTONE: All right, that may be somewhat of an exaggeration but not if you’re the one doing it. The University Of Georgia’s Research Foundation officially took possession of former Media General-owned WNEG-TV. This will make it one of only three commercial television stations owned and operated by a university. The others are WVUA-TV owned by the University of Alabama and KOMU-TV owned by the University of Missouri-Columbia.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Another milestone of sorts as Facebook reaches one petabyte of storage space and that’s just for photos alone. That translates into 10 Billion photos. A petabyte is the equivalent of 1000 terabytes and a terabyte is 1000 gigabytes. The latest ‘hot’ device hitting the market is a sort of poor man’s Blackberry called Peek, which does only e-mail, but does it well and does it everywhere. Maybe just to prove it isn’t an old line college, even though it is celebrating the 800th anniversary of its founding next year (makes some of our colleges seem like freshmen, doesn’t it?) the University of Cambridge is offering lectures on history, arts, and business free online at the iTunes store.
OF BRICK WALLS AND HEAD FAKES. Here are some thoughts to share: brick walls are there to stop the people who don’t want something bad enough. The best way to teach somebody something is to make them think they’re learning something else. (That’s called a head fake.) Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want. When you’re screwing up and no-one says anything to you, that means they’ve given up on you. Your critics are the ones telling you they still love you and care for you. Wait long enough and people will surprise and impress you. The best gift an educator can give is to teach students to be self reflective. You don’t know where the bar is, so you do a disservice to students by putting it anywhere.
Okay, this has nothing to do with media, new or old, except that you can find it on YouTube and other video websites. It’s all from The Last Lecture by former Carnegie Mellon University professor Randy Pausch. The lecture was given in September of last year after Pausch had learned he had terminal pancreatic cancer and six months to live. But there is nothing maudlin about the lecture. This is a guy who tells the audience that after he learned of his situation, he did have a death bed conversion – he bought a Macintosh. The lecture is peppered with such jokes, along with witticisms and pointed observations. Normally, I give you a summary of longer reports so you don’t have to read, watch or listen to them. But in this case, do yourself a favor. Get up early one morning -- an hour and sixteen minutes early, to be exact -- and watch the lecture. Actually… there is another media element to this. Pausch was an expert in human-computer interactions and virtual worlds. Pausch who also worked with the Walt Disney Imagineering Team had created the Entertainment Technology Center and was working on an infinitely scalable technology teaching model for virtual worlds titled Alice. As he himself put it, like Moses, he got to see the Promised Land but he never got to set foot in it. He died on July 25, 2008.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Message From Michael -- October 13, 2008
VETTING THE VEXING VIDEO REVOLUTION
ADVENTURES IN VIDEO LAND
THE UNKNOWN INFLUENTIALS
LEADING MEDIA COMPANIES COMPARISON
COCKTAIL CHATTER – RICH AND RICHER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
VETTING THE VEXING VIDEO REVOLUTION. Whew… you know that headline caused some headaches to create. Anyway, you’ve all heard about the amazing growth in online video. Research firm, ABI Research, notes that while just under a third of online households had watched video streamed through a browser a year ago, now the ratio is more like six out of ten. Even with a recent downward revision, online video ad spending is expected to grow an incredible 55% this year, after jumping 74% last year. Now for a little perspective. That translates to $505 Million a year, and research firm eMarketer predicts that with an annual growth rate of between 50% and 70% that by 2012 online video ad spending will reach $3.4 Billion. Putting that figure into perspective, total Internet advertising is expected to reach $51.1 Billion in 2012, according to market intelligence firm IDC. U.S. Internet advertising will reach $23 Billion this year alone. Another note of perspective, the eMarketer firm notes that the TV market already hovers around $70 Billion a year.
Much of that growth is also dependent on growth in broadband access and broadband speeds. Which brings us to another piece of perspective. Internet network connectivity firm Cisco says that by 2012, Internet video will be – get this -- nearly 400 times the U.S. Internet backbone just eight years ago in 2000. The company says that even now, online video (PC and TV) accounts for a third (32.2%) of all consumer traffic worldwide. And, in a report that received a lot of press, research by Forrest Consulting for Veoh Networks shows heavy users and younger users of video account for much of that use. Consumers between the ages of 13 and 24 account for only 15% of the online population but represent 35% of active online video users. Add to that, says Veoh, consumers who watch more than an hour of video account for 40% of all viewers and three-quarters (75%) of ALL online video viewing. Research firm TeleGeography Research (which has a very cool submarine cable map showing all the under sea connections) says the amount of Internet bandwidth grew more than the Internet demand… at least this year. And a final footnote, Congress has passed the Broadband Data Improvement Act which promises to keep better track of who has access to the Internet and who does not, as well as better track the oft-criticized data standards.
ADVENTURES IN VIDEO LAND. The shoot-out at the Wild Wild Web’s version of the O.K. Corral may well be with video. Just keeping up with the proliferation of choices has produced a proliferation of sites. You know of course about NBC and Fox venture, Hulu, and regular readers will know about Joost which boasts 40,000 titles and a recent upgrade to work around plug-ins. Then there’s the Veoh networks which describes itself as an “Internet TV service” bringing together large TV and film studios with independent producers and user-generated content. But more keep coming: From the people who brought you the Slingbox comes video portal Sling.com. From the venerable TV guide group comes OVGuide, which really has an amazing list of video sites on everything from anime to wine, from Asian films to adult films, from fitness films to videos about pets. Then there’s the video search engine, Blinkx, which says it searches 26 Million hours of videos on everything from world news to travel, and then allows you to email it or embed it.
Then there’s the Holy Grail of PC to TV and vice versa video. The folks at Sling have created Slingcatcher which it describes as a “universal media player” which can access video from your Slingbox, PC or the Internet and put it on your TV. The folks at TiVo meanwhile have teamed up with Nero AG of Germany to actually replicate the TiVo recordable experience onto your PC. Of course, some versions of Microsoft Corp’s Vista operating system already have some of these same capabilities. Meanwhile, the growing user-generated video production capabilities continue to keep growing. There are the established sites like Photobucket. But they’re being joined by both established companies and up-starts. From established company Adobe comes Adobe AIR which allows you to develop rich Internet applications, including video, onto your desktop and across operating systems. From The Participatory Culture Foundation comes makeinternettv.org which provides, along with a Wiki, a simple six-step process to get your video polished and published on the Internet. And, to quote the old song… the beat goes on. There are too many options out there to list them all. So, we’ll have future video updates on MfM.
THE UNKNOWN INFLUENTIALS. A list compiled by BusinessWeek of the most influential people on the Web is a round-up of the usual suspects – Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker, Craig Newmark, Steve Jobs, Jerry Yang and Jimmy Wales. You might even have picked Jon Stewart or Arianna Huffington. But how about Jonathan Kaplan, Maria Thomas, Loic Le Meur, Gabe Rivera or Jack Ma. Kaplan is the mastermind behind the Flip camera; Le Meur created Seesmic.com, a sort of video Twitter; Rivera created Techmeme, ‘the tech news source of record’; Thomas created Etsy, a site that buys and sells homemade arts and crafts but who is probably better known for her NPR connections; Ma is the CEO of China’s premier e-commerce player Alibaba. And then there are the ones you want to know – Joi Ito, an entrepreneur and angel investor in operations like Flickr and Six Apart who works with Creative Commons; or Peter Thiel, a PayPal alum whose The Founders Fund has helped startups Slide and Yammer.
LEADING MEDIA COMPANIES COMPARISON. The #1 media company, based on ‘total net U.S. media revenue’, is Time Warner with $35.6 Billion. Following up in second place is Comcast Corp with $26.9 Billion, Walt Disney Co. with $17.5 Billion, followed by News Corp. with $15.7 Billion and DirecTV Group at #5 with $15.5 Billion. No great surprises. You can check the list out for yourself by searching Advertising Age’s site. What is somewhat surprising is the number of companies that reach the top 100 list simply on the basis of search. Aside from Google and Yahoo, there’s Idearc (which oddly lists its home base as DFW Airport) and is the backer of Switchboard.com and Localsearch.com; Donnelley Corp which has a $2.7 Billion revenue stream based on yellow pages; and Yellow Book whose $2 Billion revenue is based on the obvious. Also somewhat surprising is the number of companies I’ve never heard of – Vallassis which has $2.3 Billion in revenue based primarily on newspaper inserts; or Bonnier, a Stockholm-based magazine company which made its foray into the U.S. after buying 18 magazine titles from Time Warner. Then there are the other surprises – like Major League Baseball which makes it into the top 100 media list based on $400 Million in net revenue.
But, for me at least, the surprise is the difference in revenue generated by some firms between their U.S. and their worldwide operations. For example, based on worldwide revenues, AT&T would be far and away the number one media company with a whopping $118.9 Billion. Second place would go to Sony Corp (which, interestingly, bills its address as both Tokyo and New York) with $75.2 Billion, and third would go to Microsoft Corp., with $60.4 Billion in worldwide revenue. And this is what I found particularly surprising. Of that $60 Billion, ‘only’ $1.9 Billion comes from its U.S. operations. Doesn’t that strike you as odd? In a similar, but somewhat less surprising vein, of number 12 Google’s $16.6 Billion in worldwide revenue, a mere $6 Billion comes from the U.S., while number 20 Yahoo gets ‘only’ $3.8 Billion from the U.S. of its $6.9 Billion in worldwide revenue. Both Disney and News Corp earn the same amount of revenue overseas as they do in the U.S. Even QVC/Expedia/DirecTV-owning Liberty Media Corp. made most of its money worldwide ($9.4 Billion) with the U.S. part accounting for ‘only’ $1.3 Billion.
COCKTAIL CHATTER. Okay, I’ll admit I’m on some kick about lists, but anyway, to carry on -- The richest member of Congress is Sen. John Kerry whose fortune of $231 Million includes his wife’s claim to the Heinz ketchup fortune and which Roll Call magazine says is probably under-stated. The magazine says the second wealthiest member of Congress is Democratic representative Jane Harman of California whose $226 Million in declared wealth comes from those JBL, Infinity and AKG Acoustics you buy. Third is Republican representative Darrell Issa of California whose $161 Million declared net worth is based on car alarms. And fourth at $81 Million is Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California comes in 8th at $52 Million and Senator Edward Kennedy comes in 9th at $47 Million. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain comes in 13th at $20 Million. At 17th is Democratic representative Nancy Pelosi at $19 Million. New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton came in 29th at $10 Million. The Roll Call article only named the top 50 and did not include Sen. Barack Obama. On a semi-related note, thirty of America’s richest CEO’s lost more money in two minutes than most people earn in a year ($50,000), according to Forbes.com. And that was before the latest stock market free-fall. For example, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett lost $63.38 a second last year. Of course that still left them with a net worth of $50 Billion for Buffett and $6.8 Billion for Murdoch.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
ADVENTURES IN VIDEO LAND
THE UNKNOWN INFLUENTIALS
LEADING MEDIA COMPANIES COMPARISON
COCKTAIL CHATTER – RICH AND RICHER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
VETTING THE VEXING VIDEO REVOLUTION. Whew… you know that headline caused some headaches to create. Anyway, you’ve all heard about the amazing growth in online video. Research firm, ABI Research, notes that while just under a third of online households had watched video streamed through a browser a year ago, now the ratio is more like six out of ten. Even with a recent downward revision, online video ad spending is expected to grow an incredible 55% this year, after jumping 74% last year. Now for a little perspective. That translates to $505 Million a year, and research firm eMarketer predicts that with an annual growth rate of between 50% and 70% that by 2012 online video ad spending will reach $3.4 Billion. Putting that figure into perspective, total Internet advertising is expected to reach $51.1 Billion in 2012, according to market intelligence firm IDC. U.S. Internet advertising will reach $23 Billion this year alone. Another note of perspective, the eMarketer firm notes that the TV market already hovers around $70 Billion a year.
Much of that growth is also dependent on growth in broadband access and broadband speeds. Which brings us to another piece of perspective. Internet network connectivity firm Cisco says that by 2012, Internet video will be – get this -- nearly 400 times the U.S. Internet backbone just eight years ago in 2000. The company says that even now, online video (PC and TV) accounts for a third (32.2%) of all consumer traffic worldwide. And, in a report that received a lot of press, research by Forrest Consulting for Veoh Networks shows heavy users and younger users of video account for much of that use. Consumers between the ages of 13 and 24 account for only 15% of the online population but represent 35% of active online video users. Add to that, says Veoh, consumers who watch more than an hour of video account for 40% of all viewers and three-quarters (75%) of ALL online video viewing. Research firm TeleGeography Research (which has a very cool submarine cable map showing all the under sea connections) says the amount of Internet bandwidth grew more than the Internet demand… at least this year. And a final footnote, Congress has passed the Broadband Data Improvement Act which promises to keep better track of who has access to the Internet and who does not, as well as better track the oft-criticized data standards.
ADVENTURES IN VIDEO LAND. The shoot-out at the Wild Wild Web’s version of the O.K. Corral may well be with video. Just keeping up with the proliferation of choices has produced a proliferation of sites. You know of course about NBC and Fox venture, Hulu, and regular readers will know about Joost which boasts 40,000 titles and a recent upgrade to work around plug-ins. Then there’s the Veoh networks which describes itself as an “Internet TV service” bringing together large TV and film studios with independent producers and user-generated content. But more keep coming: From the people who brought you the Slingbox comes video portal Sling.com. From the venerable TV guide group comes OVGuide, which really has an amazing list of video sites on everything from anime to wine, from Asian films to adult films, from fitness films to videos about pets. Then there’s the video search engine, Blinkx, which says it searches 26 Million hours of videos on everything from world news to travel, and then allows you to email it or embed it.
Then there’s the Holy Grail of PC to TV and vice versa video. The folks at Sling have created Slingcatcher which it describes as a “universal media player” which can access video from your Slingbox, PC or the Internet and put it on your TV. The folks at TiVo meanwhile have teamed up with Nero AG of Germany to actually replicate the TiVo recordable experience onto your PC. Of course, some versions of Microsoft Corp’s Vista operating system already have some of these same capabilities. Meanwhile, the growing user-generated video production capabilities continue to keep growing. There are the established sites like Photobucket. But they’re being joined by both established companies and up-starts. From established company Adobe comes Adobe AIR which allows you to develop rich Internet applications, including video, onto your desktop and across operating systems. From The Participatory Culture Foundation comes makeinternettv.org which provides, along with a Wiki, a simple six-step process to get your video polished and published on the Internet. And, to quote the old song… the beat goes on. There are too many options out there to list them all. So, we’ll have future video updates on MfM.
THE UNKNOWN INFLUENTIALS. A list compiled by BusinessWeek of the most influential people on the Web is a round-up of the usual suspects – Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker, Craig Newmark, Steve Jobs, Jerry Yang and Jimmy Wales. You might even have picked Jon Stewart or Arianna Huffington. But how about Jonathan Kaplan, Maria Thomas, Loic Le Meur, Gabe Rivera or Jack Ma. Kaplan is the mastermind behind the Flip camera; Le Meur created Seesmic.com, a sort of video Twitter; Rivera created Techmeme, ‘the tech news source of record’; Thomas created Etsy, a site that buys and sells homemade arts and crafts but who is probably better known for her NPR connections; Ma is the CEO of China’s premier e-commerce player Alibaba. And then there are the ones you want to know – Joi Ito, an entrepreneur and angel investor in operations like Flickr and Six Apart who works with Creative Commons; or Peter Thiel, a PayPal alum whose The Founders Fund has helped startups Slide and Yammer.
LEADING MEDIA COMPANIES COMPARISON. The #1 media company, based on ‘total net U.S. media revenue’, is Time Warner with $35.6 Billion. Following up in second place is Comcast Corp with $26.9 Billion, Walt Disney Co. with $17.5 Billion, followed by News Corp. with $15.7 Billion and DirecTV Group at #5 with $15.5 Billion. No great surprises. You can check the list out for yourself by searching Advertising Age’s site. What is somewhat surprising is the number of companies that reach the top 100 list simply on the basis of search. Aside from Google and Yahoo, there’s Idearc (which oddly lists its home base as DFW Airport) and is the backer of Switchboard.com and Localsearch.com; Donnelley Corp which has a $2.7 Billion revenue stream based on yellow pages; and Yellow Book whose $2 Billion revenue is based on the obvious. Also somewhat surprising is the number of companies I’ve never heard of – Vallassis which has $2.3 Billion in revenue based primarily on newspaper inserts; or Bonnier, a Stockholm-based magazine company which made its foray into the U.S. after buying 18 magazine titles from Time Warner. Then there are the other surprises – like Major League Baseball which makes it into the top 100 media list based on $400 Million in net revenue.
But, for me at least, the surprise is the difference in revenue generated by some firms between their U.S. and their worldwide operations. For example, based on worldwide revenues, AT&T would be far and away the number one media company with a whopping $118.9 Billion. Second place would go to Sony Corp (which, interestingly, bills its address as both Tokyo and New York) with $75.2 Billion, and third would go to Microsoft Corp., with $60.4 Billion in worldwide revenue. And this is what I found particularly surprising. Of that $60 Billion, ‘only’ $1.9 Billion comes from its U.S. operations. Doesn’t that strike you as odd? In a similar, but somewhat less surprising vein, of number 12 Google’s $16.6 Billion in worldwide revenue, a mere $6 Billion comes from the U.S., while number 20 Yahoo gets ‘only’ $3.8 Billion from the U.S. of its $6.9 Billion in worldwide revenue. Both Disney and News Corp earn the same amount of revenue overseas as they do in the U.S. Even QVC/Expedia/DirecTV-owning Liberty Media Corp. made most of its money worldwide ($9.4 Billion) with the U.S. part accounting for ‘only’ $1.3 Billion.
COCKTAIL CHATTER. Okay, I’ll admit I’m on some kick about lists, but anyway, to carry on -- The richest member of Congress is Sen. John Kerry whose fortune of $231 Million includes his wife’s claim to the Heinz ketchup fortune and which Roll Call magazine says is probably under-stated. The magazine says the second wealthiest member of Congress is Democratic representative Jane Harman of California whose $226 Million in declared wealth comes from those JBL, Infinity and AKG Acoustics you buy. Third is Republican representative Darrell Issa of California whose $161 Million declared net worth is based on car alarms. And fourth at $81 Million is Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia. Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein of California comes in 8th at $52 Million and Senator Edward Kennedy comes in 9th at $47 Million. Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain comes in 13th at $20 Million. At 17th is Democratic representative Nancy Pelosi at $19 Million. New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton came in 29th at $10 Million. The Roll Call article only named the top 50 and did not include Sen. Barack Obama. On a semi-related note, thirty of America’s richest CEO’s lost more money in two minutes than most people earn in a year ($50,000), according to Forbes.com. And that was before the latest stock market free-fall. For example, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett lost $63.38 a second last year. Of course that still left them with a net worth of $50 Billion for Buffett and $6.8 Billion for Murdoch.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
Message from Michael -- October 6, 2008
IS THE MEDIA CUP HALF SEEN OR HALF HEARD
THE GRAND-DADDY OF MULTI MEDIA STUDIES
THE RICH ARE DIFFERENT FROM US
THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD
IT’S EVERYWHERE; IT’S EVERYWHERE
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
IS THE MEDIA CUP HALF SEEN OR HALF HEARD. That seems to be the question raised by the latest research from MRI (Media Research and Intelligence). As opposed to so many reports on people’s multi-tasking media habits, the MRI study says “much media consumption occurs individually.” The study emphasizes that half of at-home media usage is exclusive – meaning that the consumer is using only that medium. For example: newspaper reading (55%), Internet usage (53.8%), magazine reading (53.6%) and TV viewing (49.4%). Regular readers of MfM will remember an earlier BIGresearch report on simultaneous media usage which emphasized that “the only way for people to keep up with the deluge of media options is to multi-task with other media.” That report released earlier this year said simultaneous media consumption was up from its previous year’s report by anywhere from 1% to 35% depending on the medium. How do you reconcile the two reports? The answer is I can’t, or at least not fully. For example: The MRI study says 15.3% of at-home newspaper reading is done while watching TV. The BIGresearch study says the figure is double that with 30% of the consumers saying they watch TV while reading the newspaper. Another example: The MRI study says the number one non-media activity that consumers engage in while using media is chores. The BIGresearch report says the number one non-media activity engaged in while using media is eating.
That doesn’t mean the reports are completely contradictory. For example, both reports point to television as the dominant medium. The BIGresearch study says that when more than one medium is used in the home, it is typically television and another medium, a fact echoed by the MRI study; The MRI study also goes on to say that television is used by four out of five people (83.6%) followed by radio (63.2%) newspapers (55.6%), the Internet (52.6%) and magazines (37.6%). And both reports raise questions about television’s influence. The BIGresearch report says its study shows TV’s influence on consumers to purchase products has declined while new media options have increased. The MRI report says the percentage of people saying they were “very focused” when using television is significantly lower than for all other medium, except radio. Only a third (34.7%) of TV viewers report being “very focused” which is double radio (16.5%) but lower than magazines (41.8%), newspapers (50%) and especially the Internet (54.6%).
Both reports have some interesting, although somewhat expected, insights. For example: The MRI study shows a dramatic drop in exclusive media usage for Television and the Internet in out-of-home usage. The Internet drops from a half (53.8%) in usage in home to a fifth (20.4%) out of home (mainly because it is used in conjunction with work – remember the word exclusive.) Television drops to a third (32.6%) from a half (49.4%) while magazines drop only four points to 49% and newspaper exclusive use remains the same in home and out of home at 55%. Only radio increases slight (from 28.6% to 34.6%). The BIGresearch report shows channel surfing as the #1 activity during TV commercials (41.2%) followed by talking with others by phone or in the room (33.5%) and my favorite – mentally tuning out (30.2%).
THE GRAND-DADDY OF MULTI-MEDIA STUDIES. Regular and long-time readers of MfM will remember the Middletown Media Studies by Ball State University which in 2004 raised the consciousness of just how pervasive multi-media use is. That report said that if you summed up all media use in a day, it came to a staggering 15.4 hours a day, but that if you took into account multi-media use it dropped, but to a still huge average of 11.7 hours a day. The ‘most active’ person spent more than 17 hours a day – virtually every waking moment – with the media; the ‘least active’ person spent a still sizable 5.25 hours a day with the media. That study showed that people spend double the amount of time with media than they think they do. That may be because the Middletown study used observational data instead of either diary or telephone surveys.
THE RICH ARE DIFFERENT FROM US. So said F. Scott Fitzgerald. To which Ernest Hemingway is purported to have said, “yes, they have more money.” Well, depending on how you look at it, they’re both right, according to a report by Ipsos/ Mendelsohn dubbed the Affluent Survey. According to the study, there are 23.3 Million households with an annual income of more than $100,000; 2.5 Million with an annual income of more than $250,000; and 2.67 Million households with liquid assets of more than $1 Million. Shock of shocks, the study reports that the affluent fly more frequently and stay at hotels more often, and when they vacation they are more likely to go to Aspen, Martha’s Vineyard or Maui. And when they play sports, they’re more likely to go sailing, play tennis, go snow skiing or play golf. (I suspect they don’t take part in a lot of pick-up basketball games, but that wasn’t included.) But, semi-serious shock of shocks, when they shop, they are more likely to go to Target (84.9%) or Wal-Mart (80.2%), than Saks Fifth Avenue (12.6%) or Nieman Marcus (13.5%).
When it comes to media, the use of television and radio by the affluent has declined steadily over the past five years while magazine readership has held steady. They watch the four networks in greater numbers (an average of 32 Million of them) than PBS (an average of 18 Million); more will watch CNN (26 Million) than Fox (17 Million). Their favorite non-news cable network (as I read the numbers) is Discovery (with 25.4 Million affluent viewers), followed by ESPN (22 Million), The Weather Channel and A&E (with roughly 21 Million each) and The Food Network (20 Million). The most popular magazine is…. drum roll please… People magazine (with 7.1 Million affluent heads of household), followed by National Geographic/ Traveler (6.8 Million), followed by (the one surprise) Pace Airline Media (5.6 Million) (and, no, I’ve never heard of it.). And, as has been reported elsewhere, the affluent spend more time online (an average of 23.4 hours a week) and make greater use of cell phones – 40% use hand-held devices to access the Internet and 10% make Internet purchases using their mobiles.
THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD: Or possibly I could have headlined this, the giant slayer. The little known India-based company Zoho has launched a suite of services to take on behemoths Google and Microsoft – everything from e-mail to word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations to project management, database applications and customer relationship management. All online in a cloud computing environment that reviewers (such as websites WebGuild.org and ReadWriteWeb.com) have given good marks. Such good marks, in fact, that General Electric (a behemoth in its own right) has picked Zoho as its strategic partner for its 400,000 desktops. Zoho was the winner of webguild’s best web 2.0 apps content, and website readwriteweb (interestingly and coincidentally) used the same headline I did in referring to Zoho. And here’s the kicker: As if the fact that Zoho is competing successfully with Google et al is not enough, Zoho’s team of developers are straight out of school – NOT College… School. Zoho pays the young developers the equivalent of one year of college. At the end of that year, many stay on; some actually go on to college.
IT’S EVERYWHERE; IT’S EVERYWHERE. If radio series crime fighter Chickenman were around today, that’s what he would be saying about the blogosphere. According to the annual state of the blogosphere report by Technorati, blogs attract 77 Million unique visitors in the U.S. alone. That’s more than either MySpace (75 Million) or Facebook (41 Million), and that is out of a total of nearly 189 Million in the total Internet audience. Since 2002, Technorati has indexed 133 Million blogs. Of that number, 7.4 Million blogs were posted in the last 120 days, 1.5 Million blogs in the last week, and 900,000 blogs in the past 24 hours. The company tracks blogs in 81 languages across 66 countries and six continents. North America accounts for nearly half (48%) of all bloggers, followed by Europe (27%) and Asia (13%). South America only accounts for 7% while little Australia accounts for 3% and Africa has one percent. Despite the come-and-go nature of blogs, the average blogger has been at it an average of three years. Blogs are profitable, too, with most people investing $1,800 and the mean annual revenue hitting $6,000. (So, what’s wrong with my blog, I wonder.) Three out of four U.S. bloggers are college graduates with nearly half (42%) having attended graduate school. Two-thirds are male with half between the ages of 18 and 34. And although the highest concentration of bloggers is in the San Francisco Bay area, followed by New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles, the folks at Technorati say the majority of bloggers do NOT live near the largest metropolitan areas.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
THE GRAND-DADDY OF MULTI MEDIA STUDIES
THE RICH ARE DIFFERENT FROM US
THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD
IT’S EVERYWHERE; IT’S EVERYWHERE
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
IS THE MEDIA CUP HALF SEEN OR HALF HEARD. That seems to be the question raised by the latest research from MRI (Media Research and Intelligence). As opposed to so many reports on people’s multi-tasking media habits, the MRI study says “much media consumption occurs individually.” The study emphasizes that half of at-home media usage is exclusive – meaning that the consumer is using only that medium. For example: newspaper reading (55%), Internet usage (53.8%), magazine reading (53.6%) and TV viewing (49.4%). Regular readers of MfM will remember an earlier BIGresearch report on simultaneous media usage which emphasized that “the only way for people to keep up with the deluge of media options is to multi-task with other media.” That report released earlier this year said simultaneous media consumption was up from its previous year’s report by anywhere from 1% to 35% depending on the medium. How do you reconcile the two reports? The answer is I can’t, or at least not fully. For example: The MRI study says 15.3% of at-home newspaper reading is done while watching TV. The BIGresearch study says the figure is double that with 30% of the consumers saying they watch TV while reading the newspaper. Another example: The MRI study says the number one non-media activity that consumers engage in while using media is chores. The BIGresearch report says the number one non-media activity engaged in while using media is eating.
That doesn’t mean the reports are completely contradictory. For example, both reports point to television as the dominant medium. The BIGresearch study says that when more than one medium is used in the home, it is typically television and another medium, a fact echoed by the MRI study; The MRI study also goes on to say that television is used by four out of five people (83.6%) followed by radio (63.2%) newspapers (55.6%), the Internet (52.6%) and magazines (37.6%). And both reports raise questions about television’s influence. The BIGresearch report says its study shows TV’s influence on consumers to purchase products has declined while new media options have increased. The MRI report says the percentage of people saying they were “very focused” when using television is significantly lower than for all other medium, except radio. Only a third (34.7%) of TV viewers report being “very focused” which is double radio (16.5%) but lower than magazines (41.8%), newspapers (50%) and especially the Internet (54.6%).
Both reports have some interesting, although somewhat expected, insights. For example: The MRI study shows a dramatic drop in exclusive media usage for Television and the Internet in out-of-home usage. The Internet drops from a half (53.8%) in usage in home to a fifth (20.4%) out of home (mainly because it is used in conjunction with work – remember the word exclusive.) Television drops to a third (32.6%) from a half (49.4%) while magazines drop only four points to 49% and newspaper exclusive use remains the same in home and out of home at 55%. Only radio increases slight (from 28.6% to 34.6%). The BIGresearch report shows channel surfing as the #1 activity during TV commercials (41.2%) followed by talking with others by phone or in the room (33.5%) and my favorite – mentally tuning out (30.2%).
THE GRAND-DADDY OF MULTI-MEDIA STUDIES. Regular and long-time readers of MfM will remember the Middletown Media Studies by Ball State University which in 2004 raised the consciousness of just how pervasive multi-media use is. That report said that if you summed up all media use in a day, it came to a staggering 15.4 hours a day, but that if you took into account multi-media use it dropped, but to a still huge average of 11.7 hours a day. The ‘most active’ person spent more than 17 hours a day – virtually every waking moment – with the media; the ‘least active’ person spent a still sizable 5.25 hours a day with the media. That study showed that people spend double the amount of time with media than they think they do. That may be because the Middletown study used observational data instead of either diary or telephone surveys.
THE RICH ARE DIFFERENT FROM US. So said F. Scott Fitzgerald. To which Ernest Hemingway is purported to have said, “yes, they have more money.” Well, depending on how you look at it, they’re both right, according to a report by Ipsos/ Mendelsohn dubbed the Affluent Survey. According to the study, there are 23.3 Million households with an annual income of more than $100,000; 2.5 Million with an annual income of more than $250,000; and 2.67 Million households with liquid assets of more than $1 Million. Shock of shocks, the study reports that the affluent fly more frequently and stay at hotels more often, and when they vacation they are more likely to go to Aspen, Martha’s Vineyard or Maui. And when they play sports, they’re more likely to go sailing, play tennis, go snow skiing or play golf. (I suspect they don’t take part in a lot of pick-up basketball games, but that wasn’t included.) But, semi-serious shock of shocks, when they shop, they are more likely to go to Target (84.9%) or Wal-Mart (80.2%), than Saks Fifth Avenue (12.6%) or Nieman Marcus (13.5%).
When it comes to media, the use of television and radio by the affluent has declined steadily over the past five years while magazine readership has held steady. They watch the four networks in greater numbers (an average of 32 Million of them) than PBS (an average of 18 Million); more will watch CNN (26 Million) than Fox (17 Million). Their favorite non-news cable network (as I read the numbers) is Discovery (with 25.4 Million affluent viewers), followed by ESPN (22 Million), The Weather Channel and A&E (with roughly 21 Million each) and The Food Network (20 Million). The most popular magazine is…. drum roll please… People magazine (with 7.1 Million affluent heads of household), followed by National Geographic/ Traveler (6.8 Million), followed by (the one surprise) Pace Airline Media (5.6 Million) (and, no, I’ve never heard of it.). And, as has been reported elsewhere, the affluent spend more time online (an average of 23.4 hours a week) and make greater use of cell phones – 40% use hand-held devices to access the Internet and 10% make Internet purchases using their mobiles.
THE LITTLE ENGINE THAT COULD: Or possibly I could have headlined this, the giant slayer. The little known India-based company Zoho has launched a suite of services to take on behemoths Google and Microsoft – everything from e-mail to word processing, spreadsheets, and presentations to project management, database applications and customer relationship management. All online in a cloud computing environment that reviewers (such as websites WebGuild.org and ReadWriteWeb.com) have given good marks. Such good marks, in fact, that General Electric (a behemoth in its own right) has picked Zoho as its strategic partner for its 400,000 desktops. Zoho was the winner of webguild’s best web 2.0 apps content, and website readwriteweb (interestingly and coincidentally) used the same headline I did in referring to Zoho. And here’s the kicker: As if the fact that Zoho is competing successfully with Google et al is not enough, Zoho’s team of developers are straight out of school – NOT College… School. Zoho pays the young developers the equivalent of one year of college. At the end of that year, many stay on; some actually go on to college.
IT’S EVERYWHERE; IT’S EVERYWHERE. If radio series crime fighter Chickenman were around today, that’s what he would be saying about the blogosphere. According to the annual state of the blogosphere report by Technorati, blogs attract 77 Million unique visitors in the U.S. alone. That’s more than either MySpace (75 Million) or Facebook (41 Million), and that is out of a total of nearly 189 Million in the total Internet audience. Since 2002, Technorati has indexed 133 Million blogs. Of that number, 7.4 Million blogs were posted in the last 120 days, 1.5 Million blogs in the last week, and 900,000 blogs in the past 24 hours. The company tracks blogs in 81 languages across 66 countries and six continents. North America accounts for nearly half (48%) of all bloggers, followed by Europe (27%) and Asia (13%). South America only accounts for 7% while little Australia accounts for 3% and Africa has one percent. Despite the come-and-go nature of blogs, the average blogger has been at it an average of three years. Blogs are profitable, too, with most people investing $1,800 and the mean annual revenue hitting $6,000. (So, what’s wrong with my blog, I wonder.) Three out of four U.S. bloggers are college graduates with nearly half (42%) having attended graduate school. Two-thirds are male with half between the ages of 18 and 34. And although the highest concentration of bloggers is in the San Francisco Bay area, followed by New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles, the folks at Technorati say the majority of bloggers do NOT live near the largest metropolitan areas.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Message From Michael --September 29, 2008
PORNOGRAPHY
THEY’RE WEBSITE WIZARDS
THE OTHER WEBSITE WIZARDS
TEENAGE SENSATIONS ON THE INTERNET
FACTOID OF THE WEEK – CORD CUTTERS
CASTING CALL – PRINCESSES AND GHOST HUNTERS
COCKTAIL CHATTER – BRAD PITT DANGER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
PORNOGRAPHY. How’s that for a headline? One word. Two stories. The first comes from the Adult Internet Market Research Company. It tells you something about the size of the pornography industry that there is a research company focused on adult entertainment websites. Anyway, according to the company, many of these sites have experienced a 20% to 30% growth in membership rates since the tax stimulus checks were first sent out. The second comes via Reuters from Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, which tracks Internet usage. According to Tancer, social networking sites have ‘dethroned’ pornography sites as the top search interest. He says surfing for porn has been declining steadily, dropping to about 10 percent from a high of 20 percent a decade ago. Tancer speculates that it is because the 18 to 24 year old demographic, in particular, is spending so much more time on social networking sites. For another perspective on all this, Tancer also notes that celebrity websites garner more attention than sites devoted to religion, politics, well-being and diets COMBINED. Further proof of interest in the trivial (maybe), he says web surfers spent more time looking for images of Republican vice presidential candidate Sara Palin than looking for her policies.
As an interesting side note to this, Tancer says the speed of the Internet means that much of the information comes from consumers generating the stories, long before the media either sees it or “fact checks” it. He suggests that with the explosion of false information on the Internet, the next big development may come when someone develops software that filters for accurate information. Finally, if you want to really get a perspective on American society, Tancer has written a book on search interests and what they tell us, titled Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters which shows, for example, that searches for anti-depressants spike around Thanksgiving in the United States.
THEY’RE WEBSITE WIZARDS: And they play a mean news ball. Okay, the Pete Townshend reference may be a little obscure, but if The Who were to do a rock opera about websites, these would be the ones they would sing about. Instead, the Online News Association is singing the praises of these sites which run the gamut from CNN.com and NyTimes.com to ArmyTimes.com and Beliefnet.com. Subjects run the gamut from Iraq and Presidential politics to religion in politics, the murder of a prostitute and a first-hand, personal account of a woman committing suicide under Oregon’s Death with Dignity act. The categories range from breaking news to investigative, multimedia and commentary. Some of the comments from the judges range from “crisp and addicting… legendary images…” to “remarkable… affective and effective.” The key point that comes out of the reviews by the judges is the fact that the online presentation as a “genre reinvented and re-architected for the digital age” made these presentations something that “couldn’t have worked in any other medium.” If you want a glimpse at the online future, visit http://journalist.org/awards/archives/001258.php.
As a FOOTNOTE (and I will leave it up to you all to decide what it means) out of the nearly 90 websites cited as either winners or finalists, only five were television or broadcasting sites – CNN, MSNBC, WRAL, NPR and Minnesota Public Radio. Another ten were web only (Smoking Gun, Salon, Slate, Politico, WebMD, Beliefnet, online news site rawstory.com and comic commentator Mark Fiore.) The rest were all newspaper sites. Finally, a personal salute to the student winners who tied for first place – those at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill who teamed up with students at the Universidad de los Andes to produce a stunning portrayal of Tierra del Fuego and student Taylor Hayden of Western Kentucky University who produced an incredibly powerful portrayal of a woman who becomes caregiver for her mother.
THE OTHER WEBSITE WIZARDS: A more pragmatic view of website wizardry comes from blog site publishing2.com which argues that the most successful news site on the Internet is The Drudge Report. And it says that’s because it actually has the smarts to send visitors away. At least that’s the argument made by publishing2.com which describes itself as an aggregation site focusing on how technology is transforming media and aimed at journalists, editors and newsrooms. The blog editor cites two statistics to make the case. One, drudgereport.com records the highest number of sessions per person (21.2) out of the top 30 news websites defined by Nielsen Online. Only the DailyKos.com comes close with ten sessions per person. Most of the news websites average between three sessions to eight sessions. Second, drudgereport.com scores the longest visit duration (59 minutes and 39 seconds) of the top news sites cited in June of this year. The closest was Fox News Digital Network which averaged slightly over 40 minutes; only nine sites averaged more than 20 minutes. Most sites ran between a low of three minutes to a high of eleven minutes. Publishing 2.0 founder and CEO Scott Karp says most websites are afraid that linking to third-party websites will send people away who won’t come back, or that the links will result in ‘low engagement.’ He says the fact that the Drudge Report is completely built on links proves those arguments to be wrong. He also notes that drudge is one of the largest referrers of traffic to newspaper websites.
TEENAGE SENSATIONS ON THE INTERNET: Regular readers of MfM will remember us telling you about lonelygirl15 nearly two years ago. It was a web sensation purportedly about a teenage girl sharing her angst on the web. It turned out to be a hoax designed to build online buzz and lonelygirl15 turned out to be 21 year old actress Jessica Lee Rose. However, that hasn’t stopped it from continuing to be a web sensation with spin-offs, just like network television. Now it has its own website, lg15.com, with major production backing and recently premiered its latest episodes. Here’s the next online teenage sensation to watch – Fred. It’s the creation of 15-year-old Lucas Cruikshank of Nebraska, who does two to three minute video clips playing a ‘mischievous’ six year old going through life – losing his meds, getting detention, going to the dentist, and oh yes, stalking Judy. The Wall Street Journal reports Fred has the third highest number of subscribers in YouTube history and Cruikshank has now been hired to promote the family film, City of Ember.
FACTOID OF THE WEEK: I actually mentioned this in a previous MfM, but it’s so interesting that it’s worth re-noting. One in six American households (17%) relies solely on mobile phones for home telecommunication. And that number is expected to reach one in five by the end of the year, according to a study from Nielsen Mobile. Ten percent of landline phone customers experimented with wireless-only, but returned to landlines, mainly for other services such as satellite TV and pay-per-view. Wireless homes, or as Nielsen prefers to call it, “cord cutters” tend to have lower income levels and be smaller households.
CASTING CALL: One of the odder/stranger/more interesting features on the programming newsletter Cynopsis is a regular ‘casting call’ by companies looking for people who want their 15 minutes of fame. For example, an unidentified “major television network” is looking for a female 18 to 25 who is rich and acts like a privileged ‘princess’ who wants to star in her own show about moving into her new apartment (and, you feel like saying, who wants to be held up to public ridicule.) Another unidentified ‘major television network’ is looking for a “high-energy, comedic guy” to host a Japanese game show pilot. And to prove these casting calls aren’t just come-ons, there are some identifiable groups, such as the producers behind Ghost Hunters on the Sci-Fi channel looking for a ghost hunter, or somebody just interested in the supernatural to be part of a new series, or the search by Fox Reality Network for ‘attractive’ men and women between the ages of 18 and 30 for season two of Battle of the Bods.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Searching for actor Brad Pitt online is dangerous, according to a study by McAfee, which found that you have a one-in-five chance (18%) of encountering malware when you search using his name. The most dangerous actress to search for is Beyonce. The study says malware creators use the actors’ names to bait fake websites. Last year Paris Hilton and Britney Spears were the most dangerous celebrities to search for. This year neither one even appeared in the top 20 list. Two thirds of Americans (68%) currently have a library card, according to research by Harris Poll, done in conjunction with September’s library sign-up month. A woman who describes herself as a wellness educator has posted a picture on her blog showing a McDonald’s hamburger she says she bought in 1996 next to one she bought this year. They look identical. Karen Hanrahan says the only difference is that the 2008 burger is “a tad darker” and the 1996 burger has begun to “crumble a bit” and it has “the oddest smell.”
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
THEY’RE WEBSITE WIZARDS
THE OTHER WEBSITE WIZARDS
TEENAGE SENSATIONS ON THE INTERNET
FACTOID OF THE WEEK – CORD CUTTERS
CASTING CALL – PRINCESSES AND GHOST HUNTERS
COCKTAIL CHATTER – BRAD PITT DANGER
We encourage people to pass on copies of Message from Michael. But if you would like to get your own copy, you can subscribe by sending an e-mail to Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
PORNOGRAPHY. How’s that for a headline? One word. Two stories. The first comes from the Adult Internet Market Research Company. It tells you something about the size of the pornography industry that there is a research company focused on adult entertainment websites. Anyway, according to the company, many of these sites have experienced a 20% to 30% growth in membership rates since the tax stimulus checks were first sent out. The second comes via Reuters from Bill Tancer, general manager of global research at Hitwise, which tracks Internet usage. According to Tancer, social networking sites have ‘dethroned’ pornography sites as the top search interest. He says surfing for porn has been declining steadily, dropping to about 10 percent from a high of 20 percent a decade ago. Tancer speculates that it is because the 18 to 24 year old demographic, in particular, is spending so much more time on social networking sites. For another perspective on all this, Tancer also notes that celebrity websites garner more attention than sites devoted to religion, politics, well-being and diets COMBINED. Further proof of interest in the trivial (maybe), he says web surfers spent more time looking for images of Republican vice presidential candidate Sara Palin than looking for her policies.
As an interesting side note to this, Tancer says the speed of the Internet means that much of the information comes from consumers generating the stories, long before the media either sees it or “fact checks” it. He suggests that with the explosion of false information on the Internet, the next big development may come when someone develops software that filters for accurate information. Finally, if you want to really get a perspective on American society, Tancer has written a book on search interests and what they tell us, titled Click: What Millions of People are Doing Online and Why It Matters which shows, for example, that searches for anti-depressants spike around Thanksgiving in the United States.
THEY’RE WEBSITE WIZARDS: And they play a mean news ball. Okay, the Pete Townshend reference may be a little obscure, but if The Who were to do a rock opera about websites, these would be the ones they would sing about. Instead, the Online News Association is singing the praises of these sites which run the gamut from CNN.com and NyTimes.com to ArmyTimes.com and Beliefnet.com. Subjects run the gamut from Iraq and Presidential politics to religion in politics, the murder of a prostitute and a first-hand, personal account of a woman committing suicide under Oregon’s Death with Dignity act. The categories range from breaking news to investigative, multimedia and commentary. Some of the comments from the judges range from “crisp and addicting… legendary images…” to “remarkable… affective and effective.” The key point that comes out of the reviews by the judges is the fact that the online presentation as a “genre reinvented and re-architected for the digital age” made these presentations something that “couldn’t have worked in any other medium.” If you want a glimpse at the online future, visit http://journalist.org/awards/archives/001258.php.
As a FOOTNOTE (and I will leave it up to you all to decide what it means) out of the nearly 90 websites cited as either winners or finalists, only five were television or broadcasting sites – CNN, MSNBC, WRAL, NPR and Minnesota Public Radio. Another ten were web only (Smoking Gun, Salon, Slate, Politico, WebMD, Beliefnet, online news site rawstory.com and comic commentator Mark Fiore.) The rest were all newspaper sites. Finally, a personal salute to the student winners who tied for first place – those at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill who teamed up with students at the Universidad de los Andes to produce a stunning portrayal of Tierra del Fuego and student Taylor Hayden of Western Kentucky University who produced an incredibly powerful portrayal of a woman who becomes caregiver for her mother.
THE OTHER WEBSITE WIZARDS: A more pragmatic view of website wizardry comes from blog site publishing2.com which argues that the most successful news site on the Internet is The Drudge Report. And it says that’s because it actually has the smarts to send visitors away. At least that’s the argument made by publishing2.com which describes itself as an aggregation site focusing on how technology is transforming media and aimed at journalists, editors and newsrooms. The blog editor cites two statistics to make the case. One, drudgereport.com records the highest number of sessions per person (21.2) out of the top 30 news websites defined by Nielsen Online. Only the DailyKos.com comes close with ten sessions per person. Most of the news websites average between three sessions to eight sessions. Second, drudgereport.com scores the longest visit duration (59 minutes and 39 seconds) of the top news sites cited in June of this year. The closest was Fox News Digital Network which averaged slightly over 40 minutes; only nine sites averaged more than 20 minutes. Most sites ran between a low of three minutes to a high of eleven minutes. Publishing 2.0 founder and CEO Scott Karp says most websites are afraid that linking to third-party websites will send people away who won’t come back, or that the links will result in ‘low engagement.’ He says the fact that the Drudge Report is completely built on links proves those arguments to be wrong. He also notes that drudge is one of the largest referrers of traffic to newspaper websites.
TEENAGE SENSATIONS ON THE INTERNET: Regular readers of MfM will remember us telling you about lonelygirl15 nearly two years ago. It was a web sensation purportedly about a teenage girl sharing her angst on the web. It turned out to be a hoax designed to build online buzz and lonelygirl15 turned out to be 21 year old actress Jessica Lee Rose. However, that hasn’t stopped it from continuing to be a web sensation with spin-offs, just like network television. Now it has its own website, lg15.com, with major production backing and recently premiered its latest episodes. Here’s the next online teenage sensation to watch – Fred. It’s the creation of 15-year-old Lucas Cruikshank of Nebraska, who does two to three minute video clips playing a ‘mischievous’ six year old going through life – losing his meds, getting detention, going to the dentist, and oh yes, stalking Judy. The Wall Street Journal reports Fred has the third highest number of subscribers in YouTube history and Cruikshank has now been hired to promote the family film, City of Ember.
FACTOID OF THE WEEK: I actually mentioned this in a previous MfM, but it’s so interesting that it’s worth re-noting. One in six American households (17%) relies solely on mobile phones for home telecommunication. And that number is expected to reach one in five by the end of the year, according to a study from Nielsen Mobile. Ten percent of landline phone customers experimented with wireless-only, but returned to landlines, mainly for other services such as satellite TV and pay-per-view. Wireless homes, or as Nielsen prefers to call it, “cord cutters” tend to have lower income levels and be smaller households.
CASTING CALL: One of the odder/stranger/more interesting features on the programming newsletter Cynopsis is a regular ‘casting call’ by companies looking for people who want their 15 minutes of fame. For example, an unidentified “major television network” is looking for a female 18 to 25 who is rich and acts like a privileged ‘princess’ who wants to star in her own show about moving into her new apartment (and, you feel like saying, who wants to be held up to public ridicule.) Another unidentified ‘major television network’ is looking for a “high-energy, comedic guy” to host a Japanese game show pilot. And to prove these casting calls aren’t just come-ons, there are some identifiable groups, such as the producers behind Ghost Hunters on the Sci-Fi channel looking for a ghost hunter, or somebody just interested in the supernatural to be part of a new series, or the search by Fox Reality Network for ‘attractive’ men and women between the ages of 18 and 30 for season two of Battle of the Bods.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Searching for actor Brad Pitt online is dangerous, according to a study by McAfee, which found that you have a one-in-five chance (18%) of encountering malware when you search using his name. The most dangerous actress to search for is Beyonce. The study says malware creators use the actors’ names to bait fake websites. Last year Paris Hilton and Britney Spears were the most dangerous celebrities to search for. This year neither one even appeared in the top 20 list. Two thirds of Americans (68%) currently have a library card, according to research by Harris Poll, done in conjunction with September’s library sign-up month. A woman who describes herself as a wellness educator has posted a picture on her blog showing a McDonald’s hamburger she says she bought in 1996 next to one she bought this year. They look identical. Karen Hanrahan says the only difference is that the 2008 burger is “a tad darker” and the 1996 burger has begun to “crumble a bit” and it has “the oddest smell.”
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail Michael@MediaConsultant.tv with the word “unsubscribe-MM” in the subject line. Also, back issues of MfM are available at the website, media-consultant.blogspot.com. You can reach me directly at Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
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