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


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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.”

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