Message from Michael - Internet Enemies and History - March 15, 2010

Message From Michael                                 

                                                                                                                        March 15, 2010                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

      INTERNET ENEMIES

      THE INTERNET IN FIVE MINUTES

      A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INTERNET HISTORY

      FOLLOW THE LEADER

      NOT CHAMPAGNE

      COCKTAIL CHATTER – TV STATION FOR SALE

      BUMMER FOOTNOTE

 

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      INTERNET ENEMIES:  More than 60 countries experienced some form of Internet censorship last year, according to a report just released by Reporters Without Borders.  That is twice as many as the year before.  Several of those countries qualify as “Internet Enemies” – Saudi Arabia, Burma, China, North Korea, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, Uzbekistan, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan and Vietnam. The group says these countries “are determined to use any means necessary” to stop people from using the Internet.  China has created “the world’s largest netizens prison” with 72 people arrested.  The enemies list may not be surprising.  A little more surprising are the countries “under surveillance.”  Okay, Turkey and Russia may be not so.  But Australia and South Korea?  South Korea is often cited as having the best Internet infrastructure in the world, but it also has the “best” laws aimed at restricting Web users by challenging their anonymity, according to the group; while Australia, claiming it is protecting citizens against pornography, is looking at implementing a highly developed Internet filtering system.  The report was released on what the group dubbed Cyber Censorship Day.  The group also awarded the Iranian women’s activist group (we-change.org) its first “Netizen Prize” for their efforts to use the Internet.  The reporters without borders report also notes that many countries have made Internet access and freedom a major goal, including the U.S. which, it says, in January made freedom of expression on the Internet the number one goal of its foreign policy.       

      THE INTERNET IN FIVE MINUTES:  That’s the promise of a creative agency specializing in web design and data visualization, known as JESS3.  It may not be exactly true but it’s pretty dang interesting nevertheless, as it lays out such stats as the fact that Facebook serves 6 Million page views each minute on its more than 30,000 servers.  Or that YouTube serves more than One Billion videos every day while Twitter serves up 27.3 Million tweets a day.  Of the 247 Billion emails sent round the world last year, 200 Billion of them were spam, and that 148 Thousand ‘zombie computers’ (used for botnet spamming) are created every day by hackers who have created more than 2.6 Million bits of malicious code last year.  None of the stats are attributed (as we are so careful to do in our Message) but many of the facts are ones that we have talked about in messages.  In any case, if you want to see for yourself, go to http://www.jess3.com/blog/2010/02/our-social-media-history-animation.html .

      A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INTERNET HISTORY:  This Wednesday when the Federal Communications Commission is expected to unveil its plan to bring the benefits of broadband to (and I’m quoting) “healthcare, education, energy and the environment, government, public safety and homeland security, job training and small business.”  One of the most controversial aspects of the plan is the possibility that the federal government will reclaim some of the digital spectrum bought by broadcasters when they had to switch from analog signals.  The executive director of the “Broadband Omnibus Initiative”, Blair Levin, says more than 25,000 filings have been made.  As a side note to that, YouTube has set up a “citizen tube” site which allows people to pose questions to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.  So far, there are only eight questions from 76 people which gathered all of 172 votes.  Anyway, moving on… Levin says the most interesting set of filings focus on the role of personal data in the Online world and what it means to privacy.  As he says, many of the innovative applications developed by businesses involve consumers sharing personal data.  As he puts it in his latest blog, “20^th century notions of privacy protection break down once information is put into digital format.”  And, as a side note to this… a study commissioned by Microsoft shows that fewer than 15% of consumers surveyed in the U.S. and U.K. believe that information online would have an affect on them getting a job.  In the U.S., it was only 7%.  Yet, in reality, it’s ten times that number with 70% of recruiters and HR professionals saying they’ve rejected applicants because of information they found online.            

      FOLLOW THE LEADER:  Okay, so Ashton Kucher has more than 4.6 Million Twitter followers.  But the vast majority of tweet-makers (a term I just made up) have less than ten followers.  Specifically, only a quarter (26%) had ten followers or more, according to an analysis by Internet security firm Barracuda Labs.  Much less than half (40%) were following ten or more people.  However, while those low numbers have gotten a lot of media coverage, it should be noted that the report shows the percentage of people with ten or more followers was actually up from a year ago when only 20% had ten or more followers.  But then again, the report says you have never even heard a single peep from a third (34%) of them since the day they opened their account.  Of course, since this is an Internet security firm, it looks at the Twitter “crime rate.”  When Twitter first started in 2006, only one percent qualified as crime – meaning they had malware or other malicious content.  By 2009 that figure had jumped to 12%.  The report also notes a slowdown in the Twitter growth rate.  In what it called the “Twitter Red Carpet Era”, the social networking site was growing a whopping 20% a month, driven mainly by the influx of celebrities like Kucher and Oprah and others.  Now it’s down to 0.34%.  As always, in the interest of balance, there is another dimension to the Twitter phenomenon.  A market research firm reports that Twitter and Facebook fans are good for business, because they are more likely to buy products they follow (67%) or recommend those brands (79%). 

      NOT CHAMPAGNE:  But they may soon be popping the cork over a new service called Bubbly which is basically a voice-based form of Twitter.  Instead of texting, people leave very short audio messages, from 30 seconds to a maximum of a minute.  And it is catching on like wildfire in India as well as Japan and India.  Just like the Twitter growth, Bubbly’s growth has been fueled by celebrity adoption… in this case, the stars of Bollywood.  The company that launched the service says it plans to skip North America and Europe for now and focus on areas which rely heavily on mobile use, such as India where, by 2012, it is expected there will be 650 Million cell phone users.  Also, just as in the U.S., where media companies quickly adopted Twitter, media companies in Asia are doing that with Bubbly.  The BBC is already using it to send out breaking news announcements in India.

      COCKTAIL CHATTER:  You could become a media mogul.  A Michigan man who has decided he’s tired of the cold weather and wants to retire in Florida is selling his television station on eBay.  He originally was asking for a Million dollars, but says he’s willing to take half that for a ‘cash sale.’  Bud Kelley says the station is profitable, but things like the weekly Bingo game which is one of the station’s most popular shows just take up too much energy.  The station, WKMG-LP, is located in Muskegon (West Michigan’s Shoreline City, according to the official city website), population 40,000.  The station is a low power station, but is in the Grand Rapids market and the station signal is carried on cable. 

       GO SOUTH BY SOUTHWEST, YOUNG MAN:  It doesn’t have quite the ring of Horace Greeley’s original exhortation, but no doubt the newspaperman turned politician would be urging that today because SXSW is the place to be.  SXSW is the acronym for a week long festival held in Austin, Texas, and which features an eclectic combination of new media, new music, independent films and technology.  As long as I was pointing out dates to watch, add SXSW which runs from March 12 to March 21.    

      BUMMER FOOTNOTE:  The “News Industry” has lost jobs at three times the rate of job loss in the economy as a whole.  That discouraging piece of news comes from the Unity (Journalists of Color) report tracking layoffs.  Now, confession here, the news is old.  The report came out last year, but I recently came across it again, as I researched the issue of layoffs and cutbacks for a message reader.  Since the collapse of Lehman Brothers on September 15, 2008, there have been 24,511 layoffs in the print area, 8,333 in broadcast and 1,172 in magazines.  And since January of 2008, more than 200 news operations have shut their doors.

      BLATANT PLUG:  The Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication is holding its annual Bluejeans Workshop this Saturday.  It’s a one-day hands-on training and learning experience in which “veteran journalists… give you the tools to take back to your newsroom.”  Topics range from blogging, ethics, job skills for the new age of journalism, multi-platform journalism and on-air performance.    

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