Message From Michael 
August 30, 2010
JUST ONE WORD AND IT’S NOT PLASTICS
MRS. ROBINSON WOULD HAVE LOVED SOCIAL NETWORKING
SOCIAL MEDIA MAGIC
FACTOID OF THE WEEK -- MEDIA MOGULS
COCKTAIL CHATTER – SHIPS AHOY, MATEY
JUST ONE WORD AND IT’S NOT PLASTICS: For the Benjamin’s of the class of 2009, the word is “mobile.” The survey, noted in last week’s Message, of journalism and mass communication graduates, shows that the percentage of graduates using a mobile device for news has doubled in only a year. More than a third (34.8%) say they watched or viewed news on a mobile device the day before taking the survey, compared to less than a fifth (17.8%) the year before. And if the graduates were being told the future in two words instead of one, it would be “social networking.” Not too surprisingly nine out of ten (89.7%) say they visited a social networking site the day before the survey. As the authors from the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication somewhat understatedly put it, “future graduates can not be expected to be much more committed to this form of communication.” Also, perhaps not surprisingly, more graduates got their news online (74.4%) than from the traditional news leader, television (70.5%). Maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention, but online news and television news consumption were basically in a dead heat amongst graduates in 2007 – 75.4% for TV and 75.1% for online. In 2008, online took the lead (74.6%) from television (69.8%). Television still leads all other media. For example, less than half (46.8%) read a newspaper the day before, although that’s up slightly from the year before (44.1%), but way down from its 1994 high point (81.7%). It’s basically the same story with magazines with less than half (48.7%) reading a magazine the day before, compared to a high of two thirds (67.8%) in 1994. Interestingly, half of the graduates (50.7%) say they read a book the day before, and even more interesting, that percentage has been pretty consistent since 1994.
MRS. ROBINSON WOULD HAVE LOVED SOCIAL NETWORKING: For those of you who only think Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn when thinking about social networking sites, the free encyclopedia website Wikipedia lists 190 active social networking sites worldwide. Yes, I did actually stop and count them one by one. And Wikipedia notes the list is ‘not comprehensive’; Nor does it include dating sites (13 by my count) or defunct social networking sites (add another 11). According to the Wikipedia listing which relies on web info company Alexa for its rankings, Facebook, which you probably already know, passed the Half Billion user mark earlier this year, is the second highest rated social networking site in the world. No site on the Wikipedia reference is listed as number one. Visit the Wikipedia site and type in ‘social networking websites’ and you will find the list and several hours of entertainment. It includes the most popular Indian social networking site (Bigadda), the Norwegian social networking site (Blip.no), Iran’s (Cloob), South Korea’s (CyWorld), Poland’s (Grono.net), Hungary’s (iWiW), Sweden’s (LunarStorm), Russia’s (Vkontakte) and Japan’s (Mixi). There are numerous social networking sites for music, of course, but also research scientists (Epernicus), Christian Churches (MyChurch) and Muslims (Muxlim), as well as knitting and crochet (Ravelry), and BDSM (FetLife).
SOCIAL MEDIA MAGIC: According to an analysis by social media experts for Forbes magazine, the best social media campaign of all time is one that originated more than a decade ago. The campaign? The Blair Witch Project movie whose student creators managed to stir up a tsunami size surge of interest using websites and message boards. Enough to generate $500 Million in revenue since its creation in 1999. The actual production by the amateur auteurs was $30,000. It actually cost much more ($320,000) for sound and color correction and 35 mm blowup after its acquisition. The Blendtec “Will it Blend” video showing everything from a baseball to an iPad being ‘blended’ came in second. But the more important number to the company – home sales of its blenders have increased 700% since the viral video began being viewed in 2006. Okay, you won’t have to dig into your memory banks for number three – it’s the current Old Spice interactive video which turned the TV commercial into an online sensation using Twitter and other social media approaches. After that, it’s Burger King’s Subservient Chicken (which I am proud to say was highlighted in one of my first messages), followed by Pepsi’s What Do You Care About, VW’s Swedish subway-escalator-turned-piano, Office Max’s Elf Yourself, Evian’s Roller Babies, Ikea’s Facebook Showroom and, finally and controversially, Hotmail’s Hotmail campaign which ran an ad at the bottom of every email. Controversial because the judges weren’t sure that actually qualifies as truly a social media effort, or just an old fashioned advertising effort.
THE
GOOGLE ME THIS: According to the Alexa site, Google is the top website in the world (social networking aside), while Google India comes in at number 11 with Google Germany at number 17, Google Hong Kong at number 18 and Google U.K. coming in at number 20. The only non-American website to make the top ten is Chinese search engine, Baidu, which comes in at number six, although just out of the top ten at #11 is QQ.com, which is a Chinese instant messaging service owned by Tencent which also owns one of the most popular Chinese social networking site, Qzone. A quick browse through the Alexa site shows an enormous number of Chinese websites. (A disclaimer about the Alexa rankings, it requires that the site have the Alexa toolbar; so some would argue that it is not as accurate as comScore or Nielsen.) The top rated porn website, according to the Alexa rankings, is XVideos.com at #56 followed by PornHub.com at #58. And I can’t help but point out that sandwiched in between them at #57 is CNN Interactive.
FACTOID OF THE WEEK: One of the leading ‘content farms’, or if you prefer the more derogatory term ‘content mills,’ Demand Media has filed for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) of $125 Million. No, that’s not the interesting factoid. The interesting factoid is that analysts say the IPO filing would put the valuation for Demand Media at $1.5 Billion. That’s more than The New York Times! (We journalism teachers always tell students not to use an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, but that sentence deserves one.) And here’s the kicker – that is even though the company lost $22 Million in its first year and $6 Million in its second. Finally, as an aside to all this, the CEO of Demand Media is Richard Rosenblatt who previously founded MySpace which, if memory serves me, he sold to News Corporation for $650 Million in 2005.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Website MarineTraffic.com lists every ship sailing the high seas (and low seas, too, for that matter) as well as those docked and moored at the innumerable ports around the world in real time. Apparently ships have to GPS their location on a continual basis, and the Marine Traffic site tracks all that. The site shows you everything from cargo ships, tankers, and passenger ships to tugs and yachts, complete with pictures, ship statistics and location. You can even find off-shore oil rigs from the North Sea to the
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