Message From Michael -- April 21, 2008

THE SOCIAL NETWORK ECOSYSTEM

SIDENOTES AND FOOTNOTES

KEEPING YOUR FINGER ON THE PULSE

MAYBE I’M GETTING OLD

SLAMMING THE SLAMMER

FACTOID OF THE WEEK -- GM

COCKTAIL CHATTER


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THE SOCIAL NETWORK ECOSYSTEM: Like politicians talking about issues, recent reports about social networking paint surprisingly different pictures. In a special white paper, the Interactive Advertising Bureau says, “in 2008, if you’re not on a social networking site, you’re not on the Internet” calling social networking “the ultimate manifestation” of User Generated Content (UGC) with “more potential for growth than any other content on the Web today.” The Economist magazine argues that while big media companies have bid up the valuations of major social networking sites to incredible figures, “that does not mean there is a working revenue model” although the magazine says the lack of money does not detract from the fact that social networking has “enormous utility” and is in fact an “ubiquitous part of Internet life.” Both articles, interestingly, refer to social networking as an “ecosystem” and talk about the history of the system, starting with Usenet, Compuserve and Prodigy. (Anybody else remember these services?). Supporting the case made by the IAB is a report by Nielsen Online which notes that while leading social networking site MySpace only grew four percent year to year, that still translates into more than 55.4 Million people and second place site Facebook grew 102% year to year to reach more than 20 Million people. Supporting the case made by The Economist is a report by eMarketer that says that while anybody can become a director or star on the video-sharing sites, “not everyone can make money” because advertisers are shy about being associated with much of the user-generated video because of its low quality, or worse, low standards of taste. The IAB report makes the case that UGC, or as it is sometimes referred to, Consumer Generated Media (CGM) and social networking are intertwined along with blogs and wikis into a “collaborative, collective, customized and shared” model that reaches ‘over a billion content creators and hundreds of millions of distributors.’ It emphasizes sites that include consumer reviews and comments as particularly valuable to advertisers and users. Meanwhile The Economist makes the case that the old, stand-by technology of web mail with its extended in-box of calendars, contacts and addresses and “invaluable (and) dynamically updated” information may be the next big thing that makes social networking “end up being everywhere, yet nowhere.”

Side note #1: According to the mammoth advertising agency Universal McCann, the U.S. is no longer the “top dog” in social media adoption. That honor goes to China which has nearly twice as many bloggers (43 Million) as the U.S. (26.4 Million). To add insult to injury, so to speak, social networking sites are growing faster in Brazil, Russia, Taiwan and Mexico (70%) than in the U.S. (49%).

Side note #2: There is a social networking site “designed to empower journalists to discover, organize and rank the most important news” – Publish2.com. But it only is the tip of the iceberg. Website doshdosh.com has put together a list of more than 380 ‘social news websites’ but with a top 40 list that includes everything from Reddit, Digg, Propeller, Fark and Newsvine to Indianpad, Hugg, Plime, Nowpublic, Truemors, Stumbleupon and I Am Bored. You can get the complete list at: http://www.doshdosh.com/list-of-social-media-news-websites/.

Footnote #1: The other social networking sites making the Nielsen Online top ten are Classmates Online (12.9 Million), Windows Live Spaces (7.8 Million), LinkedIn (7.4 Million), AOL Hometown (6 Million), Club Penguin (4.7 Million), Reunion (4.3 Million), AOL Community (3.3 Million), Flixster (2.6 Million) and Buzznet (2.5 Million).

Footnote #2: The top ten blogging sites are Blogger (37.2 Million), WordPress (16.5 Million) Six Apart TypePad (9.6 Million), TMZ (8.1 Million), TheHuffington Post (3.75 Million), LiveJournal (3.7 Million), Gadling (3.6 Million), Thatsfit (2.4 Million), Xanga (2.2 Million) and Engadget (2.1 Million).

KEEPING YOUR FINGER ON THE PULSE: As long as we’re pointing out top sites, we should note the voting is on for the annual Webby awards which are a good indicator of what is going on in the new media world. There are more than 10,000 entries in 70 categories ranging from activism to art, television to telecommunications along with news, social networking and everything in between. The Webby Awards also pick out honorees in each category. In the news category, for example, honorees range from CNBC and Reuters to Democracy Now, which calls itself ‘the war and peace report’ providing “perspectives rarely heard in the U.S. corporate-sponsored media” as well as Orato, which calls itself a ‘pioneering grassroots citizen journalism Web site’ which puts “a human face on the news.” Television honorees include Bravo and the Sundance Channel along with Sony Pictures’ minisode site on MySpace which provides shortened versions of old TV classics and Soap Creative’s Feelsomething.com website which warns that it contains graphic material which some viewers may find “emotive.” Newspaper honorees include U.S. News and World Report, The Washington Post along with New York and British newspapers. Social networking website honorees include CampusU, JDate (a website for Jewish singles), Plentyoffish which is a free online dating service, Bakespace (guess what that’s about) and Wis.dm which asks and answers odd questions. And check out the Best Copy/ Writing honorees for some amazing examples of just that. Actually the point is you should check out virtually all of the Websites to see some of the best creative new media going.

MAYBE I’M GETTING OLD: That’s what I told a colleague after watching the 2007 winners of the YouTube video awards. I watched these for the same reason I looked at the Webby awards, to see what’s ‘hip and happening,’ but I’m not sure I get it with several of the winners. You may be familiar with some of them, including Chocolate Rain, the original song by young Tay Zonday, and Battle at Kruger which shows the clash between a herd of water buffaloes and a pride of lions. In any case, you can check them out for yourself at: http://www.youtube.com/ytawards07winners.

SLAMMING THE SLAMMER: The Federal Communication Commission which investigates broadcast operations, among other things, is the subject of an investigation by the Government Accountability Office which says that the commission doesn’t take enforcement action on four-fifths (83%) of the complaints filed, but even worse says the GAO, it can’t figure out why because the FCC data is so poorly collected. The report said the FCC received about 454,000 complaints from 2003 to 2006 with the number of annual complaints growing from 85,000 to 132,000. The commission opened 46,000 investigations, of which only 9% led to any enforcement action.

Side note: The side note may be more important than the main article. The FCC has decided to change the way it measures broadband. As reported previously in MfM, the commission had been defining ‘high speed’ as 200 kilobits per second, a standard much lower than that used in most other countries and which has subjected the commission reports to criticism. Now, CNET reports, the commission has adopted 768 Kbps, which is the entry-level speed offered by major DSL providers as ‘basic broadband.’ In addition, providers will have to report upload as well as download speeds, and the FCC has broken out the various tiers of service into five levels from the present two-level system.

FACTOID OF THE WEEK: This is a little late to be part of this week, but the factoid has gotten so little coverage and it is so MASSIVE that I think it is worth re-stating. General Motors, the THIRD largest advertiser in the U.S., plans to shift half of its $3 Billion advertising budget from traditional media into digital and one-to-one marketing over the next three years. As Advertising Age reporter Jean Halliday so eloquently put it, “as GM goes, so goes the entire automotive industry.” And that folks is $9.42 Billion in advertising dollars.

COCKTAIL CHATTER: The protests in San Francisco during the Olympic Torch run were apparently organized and orchestrated using the micro-blogging service Twitter, according to Wired Magazine. You may soon be able to plug in and play guitar in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, with a report that the publisher of the Beatles music may agree to a Beatles edition of Guitar Hero, the popular video game franchise. Amazon CEO Jeff Kindle issued a public apology to readers because the company hasn’t been able to keep up with the demand for its e-book reader, Kindle.

YEESH: So, some of you responded to my request to take part in an online survey being conducted by The Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, but I need more, please. The school is looking for feedback from people in the industry so it can evaluate its educational goals. Since the promise of my undying gratitude didn’t work, I thought the offer of a drink (when we meet next) might work. At least it did with a certain un-named VP of Marketing. So I thought I would extend the offer to everybody. You can access the survey by copying and pasting the link below:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=WaF_2f1G6F1rrZ55kJ6ATpVw_3d_3d

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