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.
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label facebook. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Message From Michael -- November 12, 2007
THE FACEBOOK RIFLE SHOT
IT’S NOT YOUR COLLEGE STUDENTS’ FACEBOOK ANY MORE
THE BLOGGING JOURNALISTS
STRANDED ON A BLOG DESERT ISLAND
THE BEAUTY OF AN INDEPENDENT PRESS
COCKTAIL CHATTER -- PERFECT PITCH
TRAVEL WEBSITES WEIRD AND WONDERFUL
CONTRIBUTORS NOTES – WINE AND CRIME
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 FACEBOOK RIFLE SHOT: Depending on how you look at it, the new Facebook advertising strategy dubbed “social ads” is a rifle shot approach that targets consumers to a degree not seen before as opposed to the scattered shotgun approach of most advertisers, but it may backfire on them. The former Harvard college student who founded Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, describes the ad approach as “revolutionary targeting” in part because Facebook users supply so much real information about themselves in their profiles. Add to that the ability to track and filter their on-line movements and purchases, it makes the Amazon process of recommending books based on past purchases seem like child’s play. Facebook is able to whittle down the target audience for a specific brand from millions to thousands, even down to hundreds. You can almost hear the tone of incredulity in the overview Microsoft, which recently bought a stake in Facebook, gives in its sales pitch: Facebook users communicate details about their demographics, interests, photos and even their contact information.” The head of Fox Interactive Media is quoted in AdWeek as saying, “it changes everything.” It’s behavioral and contextual advertising on steroids, but it is also, as one article put it, “creepy.” The Facebook and MySpace ad programs have already drawn complaints from the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups. Yes, indeed, it will change everything.
IT’S NOT YOUR COLLEGE STUDENTS’ FACEBOOK ANY MORE: Since Facebook opened its doors to people outside education, the growth has been amazing. That part you know, but do you know where it’s grown the most? How about Turkey, where the growth rate is 280%, followed by Israel with 87%; and then Malaysia, Singapore, France and China all hovering around 50% while the U.S. has grown a mere 7.4%. Of course, the U.S. still makes up the mass of subscribers with 21.4 Million subscribers as of November 11th, compared to Turkey’s mere 1.24 Million and Israel’s even merer (yes, I know that’s not a word) 175 Thousand. According to figures from Facebook guru and blogger Jeff Pulver, the total Facebook subscription outside the U.S. is about 25 Million, and it includes places you might not expect such as Pakistan, India, Lebanon and Columbia. (Yes, I know, you didn’t expect Turkey either.)
THE BLOGGING JOURNALISTS: Four out of five business journalists (84%) use blogs as either primary or secondary sources of information while more than half (54%) say blogs help spark ideas for news stories and a quarter (25%) say blogs make their jobs easier. The survey by marketing and public relations consultancy Arketi Group out of Atlanta also shows that the majority of these journalists say that their online publication is allowed to “scoop” their print publication in what the group says is “a trend that continues to blur the line between print and online media.” Nine out of ten of these journalists turn to industry sources for story ideas, but the same number relies on news releases or public relations contacts. Not surprisingly the business journalists are heavy Internet users with all of them saying they use the Internet to do their work. The news release from the company quotes Professor Kaye Sweetser from our own Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication who says business journalists are embracing user-generated content like blogs, webinars and podcasts in their day-to-day reporting and that, “savvy companies know this and are looking for ways to legitimately increase their participation in creating and growing online content using Web 2.0 methods.”
STRANDED ON A BLOG DESERT ISLAND: You’re stranded on a desert island and you can have only one book, what would it be? Remember that old challenge? The modern day version is that you’re stranded on a digital desert island and you have only limited Internet access, what would that be? Five grad students at Carnegie Mellon University have answered that question using what else – an algorithm. They have developed a list, out of the 10-Million-plus blogs available, of the top 100 blogs which are the most up to date and which catch most of the stories that propagate over the blogosphere. And they found some “counterintuitive results” showing that the popular blogs might not be the most effective way to “catch information.” The sites range from well known ones like Instapundit to lesser known ones like BasicThinkingBlog – which, by the way, is in German and which, interestingly, to me at least, had only two English words that I could detect – Videos and YouTube. Many moons ago, I remember a report that said the three most popular blog topics are politics, technology and ‘mom’ issues. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the blogs on this list are disappointingly (my opinion) about politics. Still there are some interesting ones, including Pajamas Media and TheNoseOnYOurFace which bills itself as “news so fake you’ll swear it came from the mainstream media.”
Everything on the Internet is an algorithm, it seems. The algorithm used by the students for detecting the ‘best’ blogs is the same used to determine where to put sensors in a water distribution system to most quickly detect the spread of contaminants. The underlying concept is that the spread of information between blogs is an “information cascade” where the information pours over the blogosphere. They then examined a number of differing factors so that it wasn’t just PA (people affected) which would favor the bigger blogs or NP (number of posts) which would favor the summarizer blogs, but in-links, out-links, scalability and so-on to develop a “cost unit” model. By the way, the report did win “best student paper” award in the computer sciences. However, it may say something about the list that when I checked all 100, the links were broken on four of them. Also, it might raise questions about the validity of the system when the Austinist, Phillyist, DCist, Bostonist, Londonist, Shanghaiist, SFist and Seattlest all make the list. LINK: http://www.bloggersblog.com/cgi-bin/bloggersblog.pl?bblog=1024072
COCKTAIL CHATTER: People who speak Mandarin are more likely than the speakers of any other language to have the rare gift of perfect pitch, according to Oliver Sacks, author of the book Musicophilia. One of the stars of the NBC hit series Heroes has been named ‘global ambassador’ for the One Laptop Per Child program we’ve mentioned before in MfM. But this isn’t one of those celebrity spokesperson things. Masi Oka is a Brown University Math/Computer Science grad who is also an SFX guru with George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic company. A third of the American public (33%) believe that electing a woman President would be a good thing while only one in ten (9%) believe it would be a bad thing, but more than half (55%) say gender doesn’t matter, according to the Pew Research Center.
WEBSITES WEIRD AND WONDERFUL: There are numerous websites around the world which provide an actual real life look at the world today. Want to watch for the Loch Ness monster? Go to camvista.com. It will provide a link to a live camera focused on the lake, or you can pick out various sites around the British Isles and elsewhere. Want to see what Tutankhamen saw when he grew up? Visit pyramidcam.com and watch the sun set over the pyramids of Egypt. Planning a trip to Brisbane with a stopover in London? Visit trafficland.com and see what the traffic and weather is like. Or maybe you want to check on your cousin Minerva in Ponca City, Oklahoma. Visit http://www.wunderground.com/webcams/index.html and see what the weather is like.
CONTRIBUTOR NOTES: Crime and wine. I’m proud of the fact that MfM runs the gamut of interests and the readers reflect that variety of interests. From Nick Simonette, GM/ WAFB/ Baton Rouge, comes a conversation about “two buck chuck.” For those who haven’t heard of this, it is a California wine that originally cost $2, but has risen as the popularity has risen, but which can match wines ten times the price. Ask your local sommelier or liquor store. From Lee Brantley, GM/ WTVM/ Columbus, comes a link to a website that shows a world map of all the crime or disaster related incidents going on in the world. Visit globalincident.com for a fascinating snapshot look at your world.
CONGRATULATIONS: To Scott Libin. Scott takes over the reins of news director at CBS O-and-O WCCO, leaving his position of Managing Editor at the Poynter Institute but returning to adopted hometown Minneapolis where he was previously ND at WTSP.
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 my website MediaConsultant.tv.
IT’S NOT YOUR COLLEGE STUDENTS’ FACEBOOK ANY MORE
THE BLOGGING JOURNALISTS
STRANDED ON A BLOG DESERT ISLAND
THE BEAUTY OF AN INDEPENDENT PRESS
COCKTAIL CHATTER -- PERFECT PITCH
TRAVEL WEBSITES WEIRD AND WONDERFUL
CONTRIBUTORS NOTES – WINE AND CRIME
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 FACEBOOK RIFLE SHOT: Depending on how you look at it, the new Facebook advertising strategy dubbed “social ads” is a rifle shot approach that targets consumers to a degree not seen before as opposed to the scattered shotgun approach of most advertisers, but it may backfire on them. The former Harvard college student who founded Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, describes the ad approach as “revolutionary targeting” in part because Facebook users supply so much real information about themselves in their profiles. Add to that the ability to track and filter their on-line movements and purchases, it makes the Amazon process of recommending books based on past purchases seem like child’s play. Facebook is able to whittle down the target audience for a specific brand from millions to thousands, even down to hundreds. You can almost hear the tone of incredulity in the overview Microsoft, which recently bought a stake in Facebook, gives in its sales pitch: Facebook users communicate details about their demographics, interests, photos and even their contact information.” The head of Fox Interactive Media is quoted in AdWeek as saying, “it changes everything.” It’s behavioral and contextual advertising on steroids, but it is also, as one article put it, “creepy.” The Facebook and MySpace ad programs have already drawn complaints from the Center for Digital Democracy and the U.S. Public Interest Research Groups. Yes, indeed, it will change everything.
IT’S NOT YOUR COLLEGE STUDENTS’ FACEBOOK ANY MORE: Since Facebook opened its doors to people outside education, the growth has been amazing. That part you know, but do you know where it’s grown the most? How about Turkey, where the growth rate is 280%, followed by Israel with 87%; and then Malaysia, Singapore, France and China all hovering around 50% while the U.S. has grown a mere 7.4%. Of course, the U.S. still makes up the mass of subscribers with 21.4 Million subscribers as of November 11th, compared to Turkey’s mere 1.24 Million and Israel’s even merer (yes, I know that’s not a word) 175 Thousand. According to figures from Facebook guru and blogger Jeff Pulver, the total Facebook subscription outside the U.S. is about 25 Million, and it includes places you might not expect such as Pakistan, India, Lebanon and Columbia. (Yes, I know, you didn’t expect Turkey either.)
THE BLOGGING JOURNALISTS: Four out of five business journalists (84%) use blogs as either primary or secondary sources of information while more than half (54%) say blogs help spark ideas for news stories and a quarter (25%) say blogs make their jobs easier. The survey by marketing and public relations consultancy Arketi Group out of Atlanta also shows that the majority of these journalists say that their online publication is allowed to “scoop” their print publication in what the group says is “a trend that continues to blur the line between print and online media.” Nine out of ten of these journalists turn to industry sources for story ideas, but the same number relies on news releases or public relations contacts. Not surprisingly the business journalists are heavy Internet users with all of them saying they use the Internet to do their work. The news release from the company quotes Professor Kaye Sweetser from our own Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication who says business journalists are embracing user-generated content like blogs, webinars and podcasts in their day-to-day reporting and that, “savvy companies know this and are looking for ways to legitimately increase their participation in creating and growing online content using Web 2.0 methods.”
STRANDED ON A BLOG DESERT ISLAND: You’re stranded on a desert island and you can have only one book, what would it be? Remember that old challenge? The modern day version is that you’re stranded on a digital desert island and you have only limited Internet access, what would that be? Five grad students at Carnegie Mellon University have answered that question using what else – an algorithm. They have developed a list, out of the 10-Million-plus blogs available, of the top 100 blogs which are the most up to date and which catch most of the stories that propagate over the blogosphere. And they found some “counterintuitive results” showing that the popular blogs might not be the most effective way to “catch information.” The sites range from well known ones like Instapundit to lesser known ones like BasicThinkingBlog – which, by the way, is in German and which, interestingly, to me at least, had only two English words that I could detect – Videos and YouTube. Many moons ago, I remember a report that said the three most popular blog topics are politics, technology and ‘mom’ issues. Unfortunately, the vast majority of the blogs on this list are disappointingly (my opinion) about politics. Still there are some interesting ones, including Pajamas Media and TheNoseOnYOurFace which bills itself as “news so fake you’ll swear it came from the mainstream media.”
Everything on the Internet is an algorithm, it seems. The algorithm used by the students for detecting the ‘best’ blogs is the same used to determine where to put sensors in a water distribution system to most quickly detect the spread of contaminants. The underlying concept is that the spread of information between blogs is an “information cascade” where the information pours over the blogosphere. They then examined a number of differing factors so that it wasn’t just PA (people affected) which would favor the bigger blogs or NP (number of posts) which would favor the summarizer blogs, but in-links, out-links, scalability and so-on to develop a “cost unit” model. By the way, the report did win “best student paper” award in the computer sciences. However, it may say something about the list that when I checked all 100, the links were broken on four of them. Also, it might raise questions about the validity of the system when the Austinist, Phillyist, DCist, Bostonist, Londonist, Shanghaiist, SFist and Seattlest all make the list. LINK: http://www.bloggersblog.com/cgi-bin/bloggersblog.pl?bblog=1024072
COCKTAIL CHATTER: People who speak Mandarin are more likely than the speakers of any other language to have the rare gift of perfect pitch, according to Oliver Sacks, author of the book Musicophilia. One of the stars of the NBC hit series Heroes has been named ‘global ambassador’ for the One Laptop Per Child program we’ve mentioned before in MfM. But this isn’t one of those celebrity spokesperson things. Masi Oka is a Brown University Math/Computer Science grad who is also an SFX guru with George Lucas’ Industrial Light and Magic company. A third of the American public (33%) believe that electing a woman President would be a good thing while only one in ten (9%) believe it would be a bad thing, but more than half (55%) say gender doesn’t matter, according to the Pew Research Center.
WEBSITES WEIRD AND WONDERFUL: There are numerous websites around the world which provide an actual real life look at the world today. Want to watch for the Loch Ness monster? Go to camvista.com. It will provide a link to a live camera focused on the lake, or you can pick out various sites around the British Isles and elsewhere. Want to see what Tutankhamen saw when he grew up? Visit pyramidcam.com and watch the sun set over the pyramids of Egypt. Planning a trip to Brisbane with a stopover in London? Visit trafficland.com and see what the traffic and weather is like. Or maybe you want to check on your cousin Minerva in Ponca City, Oklahoma. Visit http://www.wunderground.com/webcams/index.html and see what the weather is like.
CONTRIBUTOR NOTES: Crime and wine. I’m proud of the fact that MfM runs the gamut of interests and the readers reflect that variety of interests. From Nick Simonette, GM/ WAFB/ Baton Rouge, comes a conversation about “two buck chuck.” For those who haven’t heard of this, it is a California wine that originally cost $2, but has risen as the popularity has risen, but which can match wines ten times the price. Ask your local sommelier or liquor store. From Lee Brantley, GM/ WTVM/ Columbus, comes a link to a website that shows a world map of all the crime or disaster related incidents going on in the world. Visit globalincident.com for a fascinating snapshot look at your world.
CONGRATULATIONS: To Scott Libin. Scott takes over the reins of news director at CBS O-and-O WCCO, leaving his position of Managing Editor at the Poynter Institute but returning to adopted hometown Minneapolis where he was previously ND at WTSP.
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 my website MediaConsultant.tv.
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
Message From Michael -- October 29, 2007
THE EVENING NEWS RACE
THE OLD MEDIA’S NEW MEDIA TARGET
YOUR NEW MEDIA TARGET
THE MOST FAMOUS PERSON YOU DON’T KNOW
STEP INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE -- WASTELAND
COCKTAIL CHATTER – NOVELS, THE LAST SUPPER AND CURRENT 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 EVENING NEWS RACE: You all know of course about the race between ABC with Charles Gibson and NBC with Brian Williams for first place. According to Nielsen, on average only 34,000 viewers separate the two in the ratings season to date. With Sweeps coming up, I thought it would be interesting to take a historical look. For example, as tight as the present ratings battle seems, in the 1998-99 season, NBC took first place for the season with an average edge of only a thousand viewers, a look back through Nielsen’s records shows. The last time CBS held the #1 spot was in 1988-89, although only by the skin of its teeth, after dominating the ratings for nearly two decades starting in 1970. And in case, you’re wondering, because I know you are, Dan Rather took over the anchor chair from Walter Cronkite in March of 1981. So he was able to hold on to it for seven years. CBS lost the #1 spot to ABC which held on to that position for seven years from 1989-90 to 1995-96. Peter Jennings became sole anchor in 1983, after sharing the anchor duties for five years in the unusual three-anchor format with Frank Reynolds and Max Robinson and after an early disastrous stint as ABC’s evening news anchor in 1965 at the age of 26. NBC took over the #1 ranking in the 1996-97 season. Tom Brokaw had taken over the solo anchor duties 16 years earlier in 1983 after co-anchoring with Roger Mudd for two years. And, continuing to prove I am anal retentive, some last facts from the historic trends. The Networks combined had a 30-plus rating through the 70’s and halfway through the 80’s. In 1988-89, the ratings dropped for the first time below 30. The ratings declined steadily until 2002-03 when it dipped for the first time below 20. So far this season, the average is a 15.2 for the three networks combined.
THE OLD MEDIA’S NEW MEDIA TARGET: The folks at Standard & Poor’s predict that traditional media companies are going to go on a buying splurge for Blogs. As they say in their investing newsletter The Outlook – “they reach large, loyal audiences, they’re fairly cheap to run, and they can be lucrative.” What’s not to like? In classic understatement they say it’s “an attractive business model.” To put it in context, the S&P newsletter points out that the number one blog on the Internet is technology blog Boing Boing which attracts 7.5 Million page views a month. By way of comparison, technology magazine Wired has 1.9 Million print readers. As of September, 2007, blog monitor Technorati says it is indexing 106 Million blogs – 12 Million more than the month before. Newspapers in particular are predicted to turn to bloggers to augment their own strong Web presence. The Outlook report says the move is a recognition by ‘old media companies’ that “Internet users would rather participate in the news than simply consume it.”
A similar but slightly different view comes from former entertainment executive and IAC/ InterActive Corp CEO Barry Diller who says traditional media companies still ‘don’t get it’ when it comes to the ‘disruptive power’ of the Internet. He says they should invest more in research and development and build new things online from scratch.
To provide a little further perspective, the Television Bureau of Advertising projects spot television revenue to ‘surge’ 9% to 10% in 2008, because of the political races and Olympics. BUT it predicts that station web-site advertising will grow 40% to 50% and station wireless 50% to 70%.
YOUR NEW MEDIA TARGET: Looking for your own ‘attractive business model’ for investing? Research firm Hitwise picks five potential Internet Superstars that are getting the attention of the hip, techno savvy younger generation. KeepVid lets users capture and replay streaming video from various sites such as YouTube, Metacafe and iFilm. And there is an online talent show Bix where you can upload comedy videos and karaoke performances. WikiMedia Commons is a central repository for freely licensed photos, music and video. Stickam is a community-based Webcam which allows live video streaming and video conferencing. And, finally, Hitwise picks out Veoh, an online video destination that we’ve mentioned in previous MfM’s.
THE MOST FAMOUS PERSON YOU DON’T KNOW: Or maybe you do. After all she has 1,791,920 MySpace friends. Her name -- Tila Tequila. I’ve mentioned her before in MfM, but now she has her own MTV show which reportedly is #1 in its time period for the 18-34 demographic. Ms. Tequila (real name Nguyen) emigrated to MySpace from a Houston public housing project after her family emigrated from Vietnam. The only reason I mention her is that a) it is part of my never-ending quest to make sure the readers of MfM are ‘in the know’ even if, sometimes, it may be question whether it’s worth knowing and b) because of a great line in Sunday’s New York Times by writer Guy Trebay trying to explain the phenomenon: “When exactly in the Warholian arc of fame did we arrive at a point where we create celebrities of people so little accomplished that they make Paris Hilton look like Marie Curie?” Plus, even more interesting and worth knowing is a series of studies cited by write Jake Halpern in his book Fame Junkies that a third of American teenagers (31%) have the honest expectation that they will one day be famous and four out of five of them (80%) think of themselves as truly important.
STEP INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE: On May 9, 1961, then Federal Communications Chairman Newton Minnow referred to television as a “vast wasteland.” Years afterward, he said he wished the two words that people remembered from his speech were “public interest.” Proving yet again that I need a life, I recently listened to the 40-minute speech. A couple of notes. He was only interrupted four times and then only with very light applause when he said the free enterprise system must be allowed to work and that he would fight any kind of censorship. Also, interestingly for the time, he urged stations to do editorials. And his quote about television being a vast wasteland was one of only several great quotes in his speech:
To networks – “tell your sponsors to be less concerned with costs per thousands and more concerned with understanding per millions… remind your stockholders than an investment in broadcasting is buying a share in public responsibility.” Public interest isn’t just what interests the public. Talking about his role as FCC chairman, “either one takes this job seriously – or one can be seriously taken.”
About ratings – He said the three great influences on a child were home, school and church, and that television was becoming the fourth. But that if the first three followed ratings, like television did, children would eat a steady diet of ice cream, there would be school holidays all the time and there would be no Sunday school. “If some of you persist in a relentless search for the highest rating and the lowest common denominator, you may very well lose your audience.”
And as an interesting footnote to all this, Minnow noted in his speech that broadcasters were in good financial health, noting that the gross broadcast revenues for all television in 1960 was roughly $1.2 Billion with a before taxes profit of $243 Million, yielding an average return on revenue of 19.2%. Just for perspective, BIA Financial Network reported television revenues in 2006 of $22.5 Billion.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Besides the countdown to sweeps, there is another countdown – to NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. The idea is simple – write a 175-page, 50,000 word novel in a month. You can register at NaNoWriMo.org. You start writing November 1st and you have to have it finished by November 30th. A high resolution rendering (16-17 giga pixels) of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper has been posted on the Internet at the site www.haltadefinizione.com by digital imaging company Hal9000 for – as Reuters put it – art lovers and conspiracy theorists alike to study. More than half of the U.S. public (58%) believe that “as Americans we can always solve our problems and get what we want,” according to a survey by the folks at the Pew Research Center. Sounds pretty good until you read further on that the number is a 16 point drop from the three-quarters (74%) who believed that way five years ago. And I know you already have heard this, but it’s so amazing that it’s worth repeating: Microsoft has bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 Million which, when projected, values the company headed by a 23-year-old at $15 Billion. One you may not have heard comes from that same Forbes conference mentioned earlier – investment company Yucaipa founder Ron Burkle says one of his investments, Current TV, is worth up to $2 Billion after just a few years in existence.
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 my website MediaConsultant.tv.
THE OLD MEDIA’S NEW MEDIA TARGET
YOUR NEW MEDIA TARGET
THE MOST FAMOUS PERSON YOU DON’T KNOW
STEP INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE -- WASTELAND
COCKTAIL CHATTER – NOVELS, THE LAST SUPPER AND CURRENT 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 EVENING NEWS RACE: You all know of course about the race between ABC with Charles Gibson and NBC with Brian Williams for first place. According to Nielsen, on average only 34,000 viewers separate the two in the ratings season to date. With Sweeps coming up, I thought it would be interesting to take a historical look. For example, as tight as the present ratings battle seems, in the 1998-99 season, NBC took first place for the season with an average edge of only a thousand viewers, a look back through Nielsen’s records shows. The last time CBS held the #1 spot was in 1988-89, although only by the skin of its teeth, after dominating the ratings for nearly two decades starting in 1970. And in case, you’re wondering, because I know you are, Dan Rather took over the anchor chair from Walter Cronkite in March of 1981. So he was able to hold on to it for seven years. CBS lost the #1 spot to ABC which held on to that position for seven years from 1989-90 to 1995-96. Peter Jennings became sole anchor in 1983, after sharing the anchor duties for five years in the unusual three-anchor format with Frank Reynolds and Max Robinson and after an early disastrous stint as ABC’s evening news anchor in 1965 at the age of 26. NBC took over the #1 ranking in the 1996-97 season. Tom Brokaw had taken over the solo anchor duties 16 years earlier in 1983 after co-anchoring with Roger Mudd for two years. And, continuing to prove I am anal retentive, some last facts from the historic trends. The Networks combined had a 30-plus rating through the 70’s and halfway through the 80’s. In 1988-89, the ratings dropped for the first time below 30. The ratings declined steadily until 2002-03 when it dipped for the first time below 20. So far this season, the average is a 15.2 for the three networks combined.
THE OLD MEDIA’S NEW MEDIA TARGET: The folks at Standard & Poor’s predict that traditional media companies are going to go on a buying splurge for Blogs. As they say in their investing newsletter The Outlook – “they reach large, loyal audiences, they’re fairly cheap to run, and they can be lucrative.” What’s not to like? In classic understatement they say it’s “an attractive business model.” To put it in context, the S&P newsletter points out that the number one blog on the Internet is technology blog Boing Boing which attracts 7.5 Million page views a month. By way of comparison, technology magazine Wired has 1.9 Million print readers. As of September, 2007, blog monitor Technorati says it is indexing 106 Million blogs – 12 Million more than the month before. Newspapers in particular are predicted to turn to bloggers to augment their own strong Web presence. The Outlook report says the move is a recognition by ‘old media companies’ that “Internet users would rather participate in the news than simply consume it.”
A similar but slightly different view comes from former entertainment executive and IAC/ InterActive Corp CEO Barry Diller who says traditional media companies still ‘don’t get it’ when it comes to the ‘disruptive power’ of the Internet. He says they should invest more in research and development and build new things online from scratch.
To provide a little further perspective, the Television Bureau of Advertising projects spot television revenue to ‘surge’ 9% to 10% in 2008, because of the political races and Olympics. BUT it predicts that station web-site advertising will grow 40% to 50% and station wireless 50% to 70%.
YOUR NEW MEDIA TARGET: Looking for your own ‘attractive business model’ for investing? Research firm Hitwise picks five potential Internet Superstars that are getting the attention of the hip, techno savvy younger generation. KeepVid lets users capture and replay streaming video from various sites such as YouTube, Metacafe and iFilm. And there is an online talent show Bix where you can upload comedy videos and karaoke performances. WikiMedia Commons is a central repository for freely licensed photos, music and video. Stickam is a community-based Webcam which allows live video streaming and video conferencing. And, finally, Hitwise picks out Veoh, an online video destination that we’ve mentioned in previous MfM’s.
THE MOST FAMOUS PERSON YOU DON’T KNOW: Or maybe you do. After all she has 1,791,920 MySpace friends. Her name -- Tila Tequila. I’ve mentioned her before in MfM, but now she has her own MTV show which reportedly is #1 in its time period for the 18-34 demographic. Ms. Tequila (real name Nguyen) emigrated to MySpace from a Houston public housing project after her family emigrated from Vietnam. The only reason I mention her is that a) it is part of my never-ending quest to make sure the readers of MfM are ‘in the know’ even if, sometimes, it may be question whether it’s worth knowing and b) because of a great line in Sunday’s New York Times by writer Guy Trebay trying to explain the phenomenon: “When exactly in the Warholian arc of fame did we arrive at a point where we create celebrities of people so little accomplished that they make Paris Hilton look like Marie Curie?” Plus, even more interesting and worth knowing is a series of studies cited by write Jake Halpern in his book Fame Junkies that a third of American teenagers (31%) have the honest expectation that they will one day be famous and four out of five of them (80%) think of themselves as truly important.
STEP INTO THE WAYBACK MACHINE: On May 9, 1961, then Federal Communications Chairman Newton Minnow referred to television as a “vast wasteland.” Years afterward, he said he wished the two words that people remembered from his speech were “public interest.” Proving yet again that I need a life, I recently listened to the 40-minute speech. A couple of notes. He was only interrupted four times and then only with very light applause when he said the free enterprise system must be allowed to work and that he would fight any kind of censorship. Also, interestingly for the time, he urged stations to do editorials. And his quote about television being a vast wasteland was one of only several great quotes in his speech:
To networks – “tell your sponsors to be less concerned with costs per thousands and more concerned with understanding per millions… remind your stockholders than an investment in broadcasting is buying a share in public responsibility.” Public interest isn’t just what interests the public. Talking about his role as FCC chairman, “either one takes this job seriously – or one can be seriously taken.”
About ratings – He said the three great influences on a child were home, school and church, and that television was becoming the fourth. But that if the first three followed ratings, like television did, children would eat a steady diet of ice cream, there would be school holidays all the time and there would be no Sunday school. “If some of you persist in a relentless search for the highest rating and the lowest common denominator, you may very well lose your audience.”
And as an interesting footnote to all this, Minnow noted in his speech that broadcasters were in good financial health, noting that the gross broadcast revenues for all television in 1960 was roughly $1.2 Billion with a before taxes profit of $243 Million, yielding an average return on revenue of 19.2%. Just for perspective, BIA Financial Network reported television revenues in 2006 of $22.5 Billion.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Besides the countdown to sweeps, there is another countdown – to NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. The idea is simple – write a 175-page, 50,000 word novel in a month. You can register at NaNoWriMo.org. You start writing November 1st and you have to have it finished by November 30th. A high resolution rendering (16-17 giga pixels) of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper has been posted on the Internet at the site www.haltadefinizione.com by digital imaging company Hal9000 for – as Reuters put it – art lovers and conspiracy theorists alike to study. More than half of the U.S. public (58%) believe that “as Americans we can always solve our problems and get what we want,” according to a survey by the folks at the Pew Research Center. Sounds pretty good until you read further on that the number is a 16 point drop from the three-quarters (74%) who believed that way five years ago. And I know you already have heard this, but it’s so amazing that it’s worth repeating: Microsoft has bought a 1.6% stake in Facebook for $240 Million which, when projected, values the company headed by a 23-year-old at $15 Billion. One you may not have heard comes from that same Forbes conference mentioned earlier – investment company Yucaipa founder Ron Burkle says one of his investments, Current TV, is worth up to $2 Billion after just a few years in existence.
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 my website MediaConsultant.tv.
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