THE HEADLINE: Let’s just get the major forecast issue out of the way at the start – 2009 will stink… stink being a relative term. If you’re in traditional media, it will stink bad. If you’re in new media, it will stink less. But, regardless, it will stink. The Television Bureau of Advertising predicts total TV spot advertising will drop anywhere from 7% to 11%. The BIA Advisory Services says radio will drop 10% and MediaWeek says 2009 will be the worst year for radio since 1954 when The Lone Ranger went off the air. Online advertising will actually grow, but at a much slower rate. Research firm eMarketer puts the growth at 9% which is a significant drop from the double digit growth of the past. And as Borrell Associates points out, online is a small part (3.5%) of radio and television revenue. Rating service Fitch Ratings has similar dire predictions for newspaper, even going so far as to say that some major cities will be without a newspaper by 2010. So, now that we’ve gotten all the depressing news out of the way, let’s move on to the rest of the predictions.
DIGITAL TV. It’s an obvious point, but it should be made anyway. The big change for many of us is the transition to digital TV scheduled for February 17, 2009… unless President-elect Barack Obama does delay it. Not surprising, the Consumer Electronics Association which is putting on its annual show as we speak, says unit shipments of digital TV’s will increase six percent in 2009 with an expected 35 Million units being shipped out. The association notes that digital TV’s are the primary revenue driver for the industry. Okay, now that we’ve gotten that other obvious point out of the way, let’s really move on to the rest of the predictions.
SOCIALIZE YOUR WAY TO SUCCESS: That seems to be the main message for 2009. Social network this… social media that… Many of the articles I read talk about social media coming of age in 2008 and growing in 2009 as a marketing and branding tool. One of the reasons for companies and marketers to focus on social networking is the growth and interest in ratings and review sites. That is why several groups recommend companies create a kind of CCO position – Chief Conversation Officer – to monitor the online conversation. Here’s a simple metric that says a lot. When I did a search with the key terms media, predictions and 2009, more than 80% of the responses came back with “social media.” However, a note of reality -- our friends at eMarketer predict that while social network spending will outpace other online advertising (10% versus 8.9%), that is down from 126% growth in 2007 and 34% growth in 2008. Several other reports noted the demise of Pownce and Values of n social networks, plus the cutbacks at LinkedIn, Hi5 and Jive. And the much bally-hooed Twitter still is not generating revenue. Be that as it may, several groups, including MediaPost and OMMA (Online Media Marketing Advertising) are planning events and offering webinars to show you how to “make money making friends.” As Marketing Daily’s Diane Mermigas so well puts it, “social media is becoming the new CRM (customer relationship management.) The new ROI is Return On Involvement.”
WHAT YOU GET IS WHAT YOU SEE: And more and more people want to get it at their convenience, which is cited as one of the main reasons for the growth in online video. Research firm Mediamark Research and Intelligence (MRI) reports that downloading TV programs posted the greatest gain in the online world with a 141% jump; but to put that in perspective, that ‘whopping’ increase amounted to a relatively insignificant 3.2% of the online users. Still, watching video online also posted a strong gain (35.4%) but even more significant, that translated into a quarter (23.3%) of all online users which was actually just one step ahead of the popular downloading of music (21.6%), according to MRI. Earlier this year, marketing and research firm Magna Insights predicted a 45% growth in online video in 2009, lower than the 67% in 2007 and the 54% in 2008, but still huge. Researcher Jack Myers goes even further, forecasting a 70% growth in 2009 in online video along with social networking and widgets, which he lumps all together. Looking even further ahead tech research firm ABI Research says the number of online video viewers will grow from the present 563 Million to 941 Million in 2013 because, as research director Michael Wolf puts it, “all stakeholders in the online video ecosystem are eyeing the living room.”
As a Side Note that probably deserves to be more than that, networked video games online is the other major category to watch in 2009. According to projections from the Consumer Electronics Show, the online video game market is expected to grow 11% this year generating a high mark of $22 Billion a year in revenue. The Magna Insights report more than doubles that estimate with a forecast of a 27.4% growth in video gaming, including off-line as well as online.
CLOUDS GET IN YOUR WAY: Despite the lyrics of the Joni Mitchell song, most people in the media technology world believe just the opposite – clouds will guide the way for future computing. Several groups are predicting that 2009 will be the year of cloud computing. Shock of shocks, most of those projections come from the major cloud computing sites, but as website cloudcomputing.sys-con.com points out, with Amazon rolling out CloudFront, Microsoft rolling out Azure, Hosting.com rolling out CloudNine and VMware rolling out vCloud, there is a lot of validity to the claim. Just as a reminder about what cloud computing is, Wikipedia callsit is a metaphor for the Internet. It means all your applications plus IT-technology infrastructure and data are hosted on-line and not on your computer. Much of the future of cloud computing will be seen when the 2nd international cloud computing conference takes place in New York City at the end of March. As the expo website puts it, “entrepreneurial opportunities abound as this classic disruptive technology begins to proliferate.”
As a Side Note, watch for the sale of ‘netbooks’ to grow in 2009. These mini-me’s of computers are becoming mainstream with Hewlett Packard jumping into the manufacture of the devices along with Lenovo. Weighing less than three pounds and with a small solid state hard drive, their main purpose is just to get you on the Internet where cloud computing offerings will replace your maxed out home computer. (I will confess that I am looking at trying this approach.)
And as an only semi-related side note to the side note, look for the acronym OLPC to emerge this year. It stands for One Laptop Per Child. A non-profit U.S. organization funded by several major corporations has been established to provide these ‘educational devices’ to children in third world, developing nations.
BUSINESS LOOK AT TECHNOLOGY IN 2009. As much, if not more, than any of the media guru’s prognostications, the recommendation by Forbes Magazine of “dirt cheap” tech stocks to buy, may tell us more about the upcoming year. At less than six bucks a share ($5.93 at last check), Harmonic (listed as HLIT) is worth a look as the transition from SDTV to HDTV gathers momentum. The company makes and sells high-performance products designed to deliver the next generation of broadcast and on-demand services. If you have a little more money, take a look at Skyworks Solutions ($6.42 and listed as SWKS), which makes and markets high performance analog and mixed signal semi-conductors used for wireless communication. Old-line company Corning (GLW and $10) is worth a look because it is definitely not old-line in its products. It is the leading global maker of advanced glass products used in LCD’s. Forbes editors say they expect an ‘inventory correction’ and the transition from tube TV’s to LCD TV’s is far from over. Netgear (NTGR and $10.74) specializes in networking products and solutions – LAN’s – for the home and small business market. The Forbes editors cite the ongoing transition from wired to wireless markets. Another old stand-by is Western Digital (WDC and $15.35), the leading maker and supplier of hard drives used not just in personal computers but consumer electronics in general. The Forbes editors say the weakened consumer spending will put pressure on hard drive sales short-term, but long-term, the need for greater data storage will only grow and grow. Lastly a complete unknown (at least, to me) is MEMC Electronic Materials (WFR and $17.76) which is one of the world’s largest makers of wafers for the semiconductor and solar industries. The Forbes forecasters admit the semiconductor market is down and that may last a while, but they anticipate another ‘inventory correction’ with growth in markets like China and India. But more particularly, the solar application wafer business should grow.
OTHER THINGS TO LOOK OUT FOR: This is my addition to the list – things I didn’t see mentioned in great detail in other reports, but which I think will be worth noting. Watch for WiMax to become more prevalent in 2009, replacing WiFix transmission in many cases. Microsoft may actually get it right, or at least closer to right, when it releases Windows v.7, replacing the clunky Vista operating system, but there will still be bugs. Google will release its new browser system, Chrome, onto an unsuspecting public as it continues its efforts to dominate the on-line world.
Last year the buzz phrase was ‘cause marketing’ – tying your product to a public service, ‘feel good’ cause. This year watch for the new buzz phrase to be ‘content marketing’ – in which relevant information is made part of your advertising message to provide value to the consumer. Also look for “personal branding” to come into the ‘buzz-ophere’ (a word I just made up) as blogging, web 2.0 and Internet Interactivity spreads people’s individual social networking needs.
But the big issue of the year, especially considering the economy situation, will be measurement and metrics. Several groups are offering differing measures for everything from the Internet to social networking to word of mouth. Stay tuned for more, as marketers and companies look to get more “bang for their buck.”
FOOTNOTE #1: We didn’t mention Mobile growth in this report although several reports predict continuing growth in this area. The reason I didn’t is that we talked about it in the previous MfM report looking back at 2008, and besides, I couldn’t beat the headline I wrote in the last MfM – Bear Bryant’s Agile, Mobile and Hostile. I would note that the Magna Insight report cited earlier, predicts that mobile will grow 42.6% in 2009 which is pretty impressive given other areas, but not as impressive as the doubling (118.2%) in 2007 and the 73.4% in 2008.
I also made a brief mention of the newspaper dilemma at the top of this report. Again, I touched on it in the previous MfM, but it too is probably one of the scarier scenarios. On the upside of this, there are several prognostications that journalists may find unexpected sources of work with corporations as marketers realize they need the natural story telling skills of journalists to tell the narrative of their particular product. Ann Handley of MarketingProfs says such writers are ‘natural’ content managers, a sentiment echoed by content management site Junta42.com. Columnist Jon Fine of BusinessWeek goes several steps further, predicting a “shadow” media industry staffed by the laid off journalists. Lastly I didn’t talk much about Widgets, but this is another area to watch as they become – in the words of one group – the new ad unit. Or as I put, the new coin of the realm.
FOOTNOTE #2: My list of subscribers (I am happy to say) has continued to grow. But that will mean I will have to look at another way to distribute this newsletter. So, in the coming year, I will be switching to ConstantContact, an email and newsletter managing service. Stay tuned as I experiment with this.
Showing posts with label social networking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social networking. Show all posts
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Message from Michael -- 2008 Review - Dec 30, 2008
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.
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.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Message from Michael - December 20, 2007
SOCIAL MEDIA SEND-OFF
WIDGETS GONE WILD
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BLOGGERS
NOT SO HAPPY BLOGGERS
BEST VIRAL VIDEO
COCKTAIL CHATTER – GRANDPARENTS AND W00T
AWARD CONGRATULATIONS
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.
SOCIAL MEDIA SEND-OFF: Next year may be the year of social media (that’s if 2007 wasn’t already), according to several recently released studies. The most prominent was by eMarketer which says spending on social networks will soar in 2008 from a ‘mere’ $920 Million this year to $1.6 Billion next – an increase of 74%. And in five years half (49%) of all Internet users in the U.S. will visit a social network site and four out of five (80%) of all teenagers will visit such a site. The American Marketing Association says that “social networking shopping” is one of the leading trends this holiday season (along with cause-related marketing) as consumers seek out recommendations about holiday gifts. Another report, this one by the Pew Internet Project found nearly two-thirds of online teenagers, aged 12 to 17, have engaged in some form of content creation, mainly through social network domains. A report by the Society for New Communications Research found that more than half (57%) of public relations and marketing professionals believe ‘social media tools’ are becoming more critical to their work and that more than a quarter (27%) say social media is a core part of their communications strategy. A slightly contrary point of view is offered by the Gartner group which warns that the “hype” around social network does not necessarily translate into good business strategy. It should also be noted that the survey by the Society for New Communications Research says more than half (51%) of those surveyed say it’s important to measure the impact of social networking by determining how it enhances their company’s reputation and their relationship with their audience.
And an article by Brian Morrissey writing for Mediaweek’s Digital Download argues that search, which initially drove the Internet, is falling behind social networking and he quotes Carat CEO Sara Fay as saying, “the way search has infiltrated our lives, social networking becomes the fabric of our lives.” Even further proof that social media has arrived is an article in The Washington Post that “now come the academics” to the field with several universities, including the Rochester Institute of Technology, Cornell University and the University of Michigan scoring grants and starting programs to study social networking. The report says the “high priestess of social networking” is what it calls “celebrademic” Dana Boyd, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California-Berkeley. There is even a “bookazine” now being published by Dennis Publishing that is titled “Facebook.” In actuality, the real indicator may come from moves by two of the leading social networking sites. Google is letting users tap into their social networks by integrating its Gmail address books into the social aspects of its other applications. Facebook is letting other social networking sites run applications developed for its sites. This is similar to Google’s OpenSocial initiative to create standard API’s (application programming interfaces.) I should also note a particularly interesting side development is Google’s creation of KNOL, which is being billed as a competitor to Wikipedia.
Finally, let me just put some numbers next to all this. The top social networking sites, according to Nielsen Online, in November were: MySpace (57 Million unique visitors), Facebook (22 Million), Classmates Online (11.5 Million), Windows Live Spaces (9.5 Million), AOL Hometown (7.6 Million), LinkedIn (5.4 Million from 1.6 Million a year ago), Club Penguin (4.4 Million), Reunion.com (4 Million), AOL Community (3.5 Million) and Flixster which has grown from less than a million users a year ago to 3.4 Million this November.
WIDGETS GONE WILD: That was the headline on an AdWeek article which reported on the other big development to watch next year. We reported on this phenomenon in an earlier MfM, but several recent reports only further reinforce the development. The article notes that the concept has arrived when there is a conference, WidgetCon 2007, about the applications which more marketers are using. Company Clearspring is creating a Widget Ad Network so media companies can create ad-embedded widgets on social networking sites.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BLOGGERS: According to an article on the BBC News website, this week is the 10th anniversary of the term “weblog” being coined. On December 17th, 1997, John Barger, editor of Robot Wisdom, made a note that he was “logging” interesting “web” sites in his daily online journal. The term was shortened to “blog” two years later. The website article notes that numbers are hard to come by, but as much as anyone can figure, there were 23 “weblogs” in 1998. Now blog monitoring site Technorati keeps tabs on more than 70 Million blogs.
NOT SO HAPPY BLOGGERS: On a somewhat personal aside, colleague David Hazinski has learned that hell hath no fury like a blogger shorn. He wrote a commentary in the Atlanta Journal Constitution saying there should be standards for so-called ‘citizen journalists’ just as mainstream media adhere to certain ethical standards. Bloggers and talk radio hosts, including Rush Limbaugh, called him every name in the book and some even sent death threats. All of which probably own proves his point. (Disclaimer: IN MY OPINION)
BEST VIRAL VIDEO: Two different reports with two different sets of the top viral video’s of 2007. Video website Truveo.com list of the top ten viral video searches starts with Miss Teen South Carolina Answering Questions, followed by Leave Britney Alone and then Prison Inmates Performing “Thriller.” After that it’s Paris in Jail: The Music Video, The Landlord, Featuring Will Ferrell, Safari Animals Battle at Kruger, Chocolate Rain by Tay Zonday, I Got a Crush on Obama by Obama Girl, Karl Rove’s Rap Debut as MC Rove and the College Student Tazered at the Kerry Forum. Online marketing agency GoViral reports that the top five viral video advertisements are the Cadbury Gorilla Drummer, Smirnoff Green Tea Partay, Ray Ban Catch Sunglasses, Blendtec Will It Blend and Lynx/Axe Born chicka wah wah. You have to see these to believe them and you can at the Financial Times link: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1560d954-a81c-11dc-9485-0000779fd2ac.html. Maybe it’s me, but the Cadbury Gorilla is funnier than heck.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Website grandparents.com reports that grandparents spend an average of $1,700 per grandchild, that the 70 Million grandparents in the U.S. represent one of the largest and most powerful consumer segments in the country, and that by 2025 one in four Americans will be a grandparent. Merriam Webster has picked w00t, typically spelled with two zeros and defined as “an expression of joy coined by online gamers,” as its word of the year. The latest craze in Japan is keitai shousetus, mobile phone novels, written on a cell phone and distributed to other cell phones. A story about high school romance written by a nursery school teacher from Kokura in Japan’s south has written several, one of which has since sold 420,000 copies in hardcopy format. Japan also held what may be the first film festival featuring works shot on camera-equipped cell phones. OfficeMax has brought back its elfyourself.com website where you can add a face to a dancing elf.
AWARD CONGRATULATIONS: To my friends at my former station KMOV-TV in St. Louis for winning a DuPont Columbia silver baton for excellence in broadcast journalism. The station was one of three Belo stations (others were KHOU-TV and WFAA-TV) to win one of the 13 awards given. Even more impressive was the win by little KNOE-TV in Monroe, Louisiana, for its examination of the National Guard and the Katrina disaster. As a slight brag (okay, a big brag), we won a silver baton at KMOV when I was there as well.
FOOTNOTE: This is the last MfM for this year. As noted in last week’s newsletter, we will be going on a short hiatus over the holidays, unless of course something huge develops that I just have to report on. Happy Holidays!
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail 0 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.
WIDGETS GONE WILD
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BLOGGERS
NOT SO HAPPY BLOGGERS
BEST VIRAL VIDEO
COCKTAIL CHATTER – GRANDPARENTS AND W00T
AWARD CONGRATULATIONS
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.
SOCIAL MEDIA SEND-OFF: Next year may be the year of social media (that’s if 2007 wasn’t already), according to several recently released studies. The most prominent was by eMarketer which says spending on social networks will soar in 2008 from a ‘mere’ $920 Million this year to $1.6 Billion next – an increase of 74%. And in five years half (49%) of all Internet users in the U.S. will visit a social network site and four out of five (80%) of all teenagers will visit such a site. The American Marketing Association says that “social networking shopping” is one of the leading trends this holiday season (along with cause-related marketing) as consumers seek out recommendations about holiday gifts. Another report, this one by the Pew Internet Project found nearly two-thirds of online teenagers, aged 12 to 17, have engaged in some form of content creation, mainly through social network domains. A report by the Society for New Communications Research found that more than half (57%) of public relations and marketing professionals believe ‘social media tools’ are becoming more critical to their work and that more than a quarter (27%) say social media is a core part of their communications strategy. A slightly contrary point of view is offered by the Gartner group which warns that the “hype” around social network does not necessarily translate into good business strategy. It should also be noted that the survey by the Society for New Communications Research says more than half (51%) of those surveyed say it’s important to measure the impact of social networking by determining how it enhances their company’s reputation and their relationship with their audience.
And an article by Brian Morrissey writing for Mediaweek’s Digital Download argues that search, which initially drove the Internet, is falling behind social networking and he quotes Carat CEO Sara Fay as saying, “the way search has infiltrated our lives, social networking becomes the fabric of our lives.” Even further proof that social media has arrived is an article in The Washington Post that “now come the academics” to the field with several universities, including the Rochester Institute of Technology, Cornell University and the University of Michigan scoring grants and starting programs to study social networking. The report says the “high priestess of social networking” is what it calls “celebrademic” Dana Boyd, a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California-Berkeley. There is even a “bookazine” now being published by Dennis Publishing that is titled “Facebook.” In actuality, the real indicator may come from moves by two of the leading social networking sites. Google is letting users tap into their social networks by integrating its Gmail address books into the social aspects of its other applications. Facebook is letting other social networking sites run applications developed for its sites. This is similar to Google’s OpenSocial initiative to create standard API’s (application programming interfaces.) I should also note a particularly interesting side development is Google’s creation of KNOL, which is being billed as a competitor to Wikipedia.
Finally, let me just put some numbers next to all this. The top social networking sites, according to Nielsen Online, in November were: MySpace (57 Million unique visitors), Facebook (22 Million), Classmates Online (11.5 Million), Windows Live Spaces (9.5 Million), AOL Hometown (7.6 Million), LinkedIn (5.4 Million from 1.6 Million a year ago), Club Penguin (4.4 Million), Reunion.com (4 Million), AOL Community (3.5 Million) and Flixster which has grown from less than a million users a year ago to 3.4 Million this November.
WIDGETS GONE WILD: That was the headline on an AdWeek article which reported on the other big development to watch next year. We reported on this phenomenon in an earlier MfM, but several recent reports only further reinforce the development. The article notes that the concept has arrived when there is a conference, WidgetCon 2007, about the applications which more marketers are using. Company Clearspring is creating a Widget Ad Network so media companies can create ad-embedded widgets on social networking sites.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BLOGGERS: According to an article on the BBC News website, this week is the 10th anniversary of the term “weblog” being coined. On December 17th, 1997, John Barger, editor of Robot Wisdom, made a note that he was “logging” interesting “web” sites in his daily online journal. The term was shortened to “blog” two years later. The website article notes that numbers are hard to come by, but as much as anyone can figure, there were 23 “weblogs” in 1998. Now blog monitoring site Technorati keeps tabs on more than 70 Million blogs.
NOT SO HAPPY BLOGGERS: On a somewhat personal aside, colleague David Hazinski has learned that hell hath no fury like a blogger shorn. He wrote a commentary in the Atlanta Journal Constitution saying there should be standards for so-called ‘citizen journalists’ just as mainstream media adhere to certain ethical standards. Bloggers and talk radio hosts, including Rush Limbaugh, called him every name in the book and some even sent death threats. All of which probably own proves his point. (Disclaimer: IN MY OPINION)
BEST VIRAL VIDEO: Two different reports with two different sets of the top viral video’s of 2007. Video website Truveo.com list of the top ten viral video searches starts with Miss Teen South Carolina Answering Questions, followed by Leave Britney Alone and then Prison Inmates Performing “Thriller.” After that it’s Paris in Jail: The Music Video, The Landlord, Featuring Will Ferrell, Safari Animals Battle at Kruger, Chocolate Rain by Tay Zonday, I Got a Crush on Obama by Obama Girl, Karl Rove’s Rap Debut as MC Rove and the College Student Tazered at the Kerry Forum. Online marketing agency GoViral reports that the top five viral video advertisements are the Cadbury Gorilla Drummer, Smirnoff Green Tea Partay, Ray Ban Catch Sunglasses, Blendtec Will It Blend and Lynx/Axe Born chicka wah wah. You have to see these to believe them and you can at the Financial Times link: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1560d954-a81c-11dc-9485-0000779fd2ac.html. Maybe it’s me, but the Cadbury Gorilla is funnier than heck.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Website grandparents.com reports that grandparents spend an average of $1,700 per grandchild, that the 70 Million grandparents in the U.S. represent one of the largest and most powerful consumer segments in the country, and that by 2025 one in four Americans will be a grandparent. Merriam Webster has picked w00t, typically spelled with two zeros and defined as “an expression of joy coined by online gamers,” as its word of the year. The latest craze in Japan is keitai shousetus, mobile phone novels, written on a cell phone and distributed to other cell phones. A story about high school romance written by a nursery school teacher from Kokura in Japan’s south has written several, one of which has since sold 420,000 copies in hardcopy format. Japan also held what may be the first film festival featuring works shot on camera-equipped cell phones. OfficeMax has brought back its elfyourself.com website where you can add a face to a dancing elf.
AWARD CONGRATULATIONS: To my friends at my former station KMOV-TV in St. Louis for winning a DuPont Columbia silver baton for excellence in broadcast journalism. The station was one of three Belo stations (others were KHOU-TV and WFAA-TV) to win one of the 13 awards given. Even more impressive was the win by little KNOE-TV in Monroe, Louisiana, for its examination of the National Guard and the Katrina disaster. As a slight brag (okay, a big brag), we won a silver baton at KMOV when I was there as well.
FOOTNOTE: This is the last MfM for this year. As noted in last week’s newsletter, we will be going on a short hiatus over the holidays, unless of course something huge develops that I just have to report on. Happy Holidays!
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail 0 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.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Message From Michael --May 7, 2007
THE NEVER ENDING FRIENDING
THE OSCARS OF THE INTERNET
COMPUTERS VERSUS TELEVISION
MEGALITHIC MONSTERS
TRENDS OF NOTE – CD’S AND FARSI
COCKTAIL CHATTER -- BEER
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 newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
THE NEVER ENDING FRIENDING: More than 70% of Americans aged 15 to 34 actively use online social networks, according to a study released at the News Corp’s Fox Interactive Media conference. (BTW, the conference is called The Never Ending Friending.) Now, we’ve dealt with the Social Networking phenomenon in previous MfM’s but the phenomenon, as this study shows, is growing at a phenomenal rate. You know about social networking sites built around music and user generated videos, but how about charitable causes, special interests, and your pet. There is a social networking site called dogster.com, but now a company called Snif (Social Networking In Fur) Labs has created special tags that dogs wear on their collar and which transmits and receives information from other dogs in the SNIF network that their owners can share online when they get home. The point is that social networking is become all pervasive. Radio giant Clear Channel is getting into the social networking business with a dozen station-branded social networks acting as a mini-MySpace for their local community. Technology company Onesite.com has developed the protocol. Television station WCAU-TV has launched DigPhilly.com, a social networking site featuring current events, nightlife, music, restaurant reviews for the Philadelphia area. Lost Remote’s Cory Bergman calls it “a great example of a TV station branching out into new audiences and local niches.”
A semi-related survey by Forrester Research of mainstream marketing agencies found that more and more are turning to social media to get their message across. Another study, this time by Jupiter Research, found that small businesses are turning to social media as a way to market. I won’t say anything about the fact that I recommended this to media operations in a previous MfM.
Anyway, back to the original study…The research showed that U.S. social networkers chose interacting on such sites as their favorite activity, whether online or offline. That was ahead of television viewing but on par with cell phone usage. Of those, more than two-thirds (69%) say they use social networks to connect with people who are already their friends and nearly half (41%) say they use it to connect with family members. And before you dismiss them as people without a life, nearly half (48%) say they are “having more fun in life in general” with more than half (52%) saying they feel more in tune with what’s happening socially in their lives due to social networking sites because (57%) said they’ve found more people with similar interests.
Back to some more unusual social networking examples… website PathConnect which labels itself as “social networking for the ambitious lifestyle” is backing websites with a social agenda, such as MTDN.com (Make The Difference Network) founded in part by Jessica Biel who starts in the WB’s 7th Heaven. Check out ElHood.com which is described in an Associated Press article as a sort of bi-lingual MySpace with a focus on Latin music. It is the latest example of social networking sites linking Hispanic youth across the U.S., Latin America and Spain. Lastly, my favorite is twitter.com which makes no bones about the fact that it is a cross between a social networking site and instant messaging program which focuses simply on what people are “doing right now.” And that ‘doing right now’ can be anything from listening to a favorite song, going to softball practice, to visiting the local Starbucks. Yes, it sounds inane, but it has become such a phenomenon (I’m sorry… there I go, using that word again) that people talk about “twittering.”
THE OSCARS OF THE INTERNET: Most often called The Webby Awards. Forget about David Bowie getting the Lifetime Achievement Award. Forget about eBay getting the other Lifetime Achievement Award. Forget about Steve Chen and Chad Hurley getting the Webby Person of the Year award. Instead, learn about Jonathon Yuen who won awards for animation, for best visual design and for best personal website (you really should visit his site -- jonathonyuen.com). Or how about the MGM Grand in Las Vegas for its incredible site which won for corporate communications. Or how about the unusual Clearification.com which uses webisodes and interactivity with a different approach to win the IT Hardware/Software category. Or how about website thatguy.com which won in the Health category with its interactive website about guys who drink too much. In short, if you want to see the future of broadband technology and creative gestalt, visit http://www.webbyawards.com.
COMPUTERS VERSUS TELEVISION: Or, more accurately, computers AND television. We’ve talked about broadband video provider Joost in previous MfM’s. It’s now inked deals with, it seems, half the universe – content providers like Sony, Turner Broadcasting Systems, the National Hockey League, CBS, Sports Illustrated and advertisers like Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Nike, General Motors and Visa. Since several people have asked me about video providers besides Joost, here’s a partial list of sites that I have found: Brightcove, Splashcast, Blip.tv, Blinkx.tv, Revver, Flickr (which also won several Webby awards), Metacafe, MeTV, Nogoodtv, along with Microsoft’s new cross platform media player Silverlight, as well as Jumpcut which provides online editing tools and which is sponsoring an unusual online video contest called Filmyourissue.com, awarding prizes for short films.
MEGALITHIC MONSTERS: By now, you’ve no doubt heard about Rupert Murdoch’s bid for Dow Jones, publishers of the Wall Street Journal. I would like to claim prescience, considering my previous MfM. I think his desire to own a name brand and his ‘love’ – definitely in quotes, of newspapers played into it, but analysts say the reality is he is just working on synergies – a name brand Wall Street Journal to launch his television business channel, and a brand with a heavy investment in digital. The WSJ.com site is one of only two newspaper websites able to sustain a subscription-based, money-making online presence. The other is the Financial Times of London. Overlooked in the hoopla is the bid by Canadian newspaper giant Thomson for financial and news reporting agency Reuters and the take-over or partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo – all deals with enormous implications. A very interesting website that provides insight into these deals is newsvisual.com, which shows, graphically, the 6-degrees of connectivity (not separation) between major corporations and major players.
NEWS OF NOTE: If you listen to music on the Internet, (and, according to reports, 29 Million Americans do) here is a phrase you will be hearing more about – Net Radio Royalties. The Copyright Royalty Board has proposed a “per performance” fee for each time a song is webcast, payable to a subsidiary of the Recording Industry Association of America. Up to now, the board had given a special rate to small webcasters and public radio outlets streaming on the Internet. The Rocky Mountain News argues that the new rate structure would force many of the more “vibrant” entities to go dark because their royalty costs would actually exceed their revenue. The board has delayed imposition of the fees until June, after the public outcry.
TRENDS OF NOTE: The proportion of Americans who have purchased a CD in the past six months has dropped 15% since 2002, according to a study by Ipsos/ Tempo. The study indicates that Americans will still purchase CD’s by their favorite artists, but when it comes to sampling new and unfamiliar music, they’ll go the download route instead of buying CD’s.
The Farsi language has joined the list of top 10 languages being used by bloggers, behind the surprising (to me, at least) #1 – Japanese – which accounts for 37% of all blogs, followed by English (36%), Chinese (8%), Italian and Spanish (at 3% each), Russian, French and Portuguese (2%) and finally German and Farsi (1%), according to blog researcher Technorati. As a side note, the company says new blogs are being created at the rate of 1.4 new blogs per second, adding up to more than 70 Million blogs being tracked by the firm.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Sweeps killer American Idol set a record for call-ins with more than 70 Million toll-free and AT&T sms votes during its charity telecasts. An average of 6.1% of Americans drink beer on a frequent basis – meaning six or more times in a two-week period, according to The Media Audit which regularly surveys 87 U.S. markets. The biggest beer drinkers are in Melbourne, Florida where 10.2% of adults consumer beer on a frequent basis, followed by Wilmington, North Carolina with 10.1%. And even though it’s the home of Anheuser Busch, St. Louis came in 9th with 8.6% just ahead of Columbia, South Carolina with 8.4%. Okay, I promise, one last Warren Buffett mention: two books he recommends are Poor Charlie’s Almanack written by Buffett business partner Charlie Munger and Where are the Customers’ Yachts written by Fred Schwed… in 1940!
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com 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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
THE OSCARS OF THE INTERNET
COMPUTERS VERSUS TELEVISION
MEGALITHIC MONSTERS
TRENDS OF NOTE – CD’S AND FARSI
COCKTAIL CHATTER -- BEER
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 newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
THE NEVER ENDING FRIENDING: More than 70% of Americans aged 15 to 34 actively use online social networks, according to a study released at the News Corp’s Fox Interactive Media conference. (BTW, the conference is called The Never Ending Friending.) Now, we’ve dealt with the Social Networking phenomenon in previous MfM’s but the phenomenon, as this study shows, is growing at a phenomenal rate. You know about social networking sites built around music and user generated videos, but how about charitable causes, special interests, and your pet. There is a social networking site called dogster.com, but now a company called Snif (Social Networking In Fur) Labs has created special tags that dogs wear on their collar and which transmits and receives information from other dogs in the SNIF network that their owners can share online when they get home. The point is that social networking is become all pervasive. Radio giant Clear Channel is getting into the social networking business with a dozen station-branded social networks acting as a mini-MySpace for their local community. Technology company Onesite.com has developed the protocol. Television station WCAU-TV has launched DigPhilly.com, a social networking site featuring current events, nightlife, music, restaurant reviews for the Philadelphia area. Lost Remote’s Cory Bergman calls it “a great example of a TV station branching out into new audiences and local niches.”
A semi-related survey by Forrester Research of mainstream marketing agencies found that more and more are turning to social media to get their message across. Another study, this time by Jupiter Research, found that small businesses are turning to social media as a way to market. I won’t say anything about the fact that I recommended this to media operations in a previous MfM.
Anyway, back to the original study…The research showed that U.S. social networkers chose interacting on such sites as their favorite activity, whether online or offline. That was ahead of television viewing but on par with cell phone usage. Of those, more than two-thirds (69%) say they use social networks to connect with people who are already their friends and nearly half (41%) say they use it to connect with family members. And before you dismiss them as people without a life, nearly half (48%) say they are “having more fun in life in general” with more than half (52%) saying they feel more in tune with what’s happening socially in their lives due to social networking sites because (57%) said they’ve found more people with similar interests.
Back to some more unusual social networking examples… website PathConnect which labels itself as “social networking for the ambitious lifestyle” is backing websites with a social agenda, such as MTDN.com (Make The Difference Network) founded in part by Jessica Biel who starts in the WB’s 7th Heaven. Check out ElHood.com which is described in an Associated Press article as a sort of bi-lingual MySpace with a focus on Latin music. It is the latest example of social networking sites linking Hispanic youth across the U.S., Latin America and Spain. Lastly, my favorite is twitter.com which makes no bones about the fact that it is a cross between a social networking site and instant messaging program which focuses simply on what people are “doing right now.” And that ‘doing right now’ can be anything from listening to a favorite song, going to softball practice, to visiting the local Starbucks. Yes, it sounds inane, but it has become such a phenomenon (I’m sorry… there I go, using that word again) that people talk about “twittering.”
THE OSCARS OF THE INTERNET: Most often called The Webby Awards. Forget about David Bowie getting the Lifetime Achievement Award. Forget about eBay getting the other Lifetime Achievement Award. Forget about Steve Chen and Chad Hurley getting the Webby Person of the Year award. Instead, learn about Jonathon Yuen who won awards for animation, for best visual design and for best personal website (you really should visit his site -- jonathonyuen.com). Or how about the MGM Grand in Las Vegas for its incredible site which won for corporate communications. Or how about the unusual Clearification.com which uses webisodes and interactivity with a different approach to win the IT Hardware/Software category. Or how about website thatguy.com which won in the Health category with its interactive website about guys who drink too much. In short, if you want to see the future of broadband technology and creative gestalt, visit http://www.webbyawards.com.
COMPUTERS VERSUS TELEVISION: Or, more accurately, computers AND television. We’ve talked about broadband video provider Joost in previous MfM’s. It’s now inked deals with, it seems, half the universe – content providers like Sony, Turner Broadcasting Systems, the National Hockey League, CBS, Sports Illustrated and advertisers like Procter & Gamble, Coca-Cola, Nike, General Motors and Visa. Since several people have asked me about video providers besides Joost, here’s a partial list of sites that I have found: Brightcove, Splashcast, Blip.tv, Blinkx.tv, Revver, Flickr (which also won several Webby awards), Metacafe, MeTV, Nogoodtv, along with Microsoft’s new cross platform media player Silverlight, as well as Jumpcut which provides online editing tools and which is sponsoring an unusual online video contest called Filmyourissue.com, awarding prizes for short films.
MEGALITHIC MONSTERS: By now, you’ve no doubt heard about Rupert Murdoch’s bid for Dow Jones, publishers of the Wall Street Journal. I would like to claim prescience, considering my previous MfM. I think his desire to own a name brand and his ‘love’ – definitely in quotes, of newspapers played into it, but analysts say the reality is he is just working on synergies – a name brand Wall Street Journal to launch his television business channel, and a brand with a heavy investment in digital. The WSJ.com site is one of only two newspaper websites able to sustain a subscription-based, money-making online presence. The other is the Financial Times of London. Overlooked in the hoopla is the bid by Canadian newspaper giant Thomson for financial and news reporting agency Reuters and the take-over or partnership between Microsoft and Yahoo – all deals with enormous implications. A very interesting website that provides insight into these deals is newsvisual.com, which shows, graphically, the 6-degrees of connectivity (not separation) between major corporations and major players.
NEWS OF NOTE: If you listen to music on the Internet, (and, according to reports, 29 Million Americans do) here is a phrase you will be hearing more about – Net Radio Royalties. The Copyright Royalty Board has proposed a “per performance” fee for each time a song is webcast, payable to a subsidiary of the Recording Industry Association of America. Up to now, the board had given a special rate to small webcasters and public radio outlets streaming on the Internet. The Rocky Mountain News argues that the new rate structure would force many of the more “vibrant” entities to go dark because their royalty costs would actually exceed their revenue. The board has delayed imposition of the fees until June, after the public outcry.
TRENDS OF NOTE: The proportion of Americans who have purchased a CD in the past six months has dropped 15% since 2002, according to a study by Ipsos/ Tempo. The study indicates that Americans will still purchase CD’s by their favorite artists, but when it comes to sampling new and unfamiliar music, they’ll go the download route instead of buying CD’s.
The Farsi language has joined the list of top 10 languages being used by bloggers, behind the surprising (to me, at least) #1 – Japanese – which accounts for 37% of all blogs, followed by English (36%), Chinese (8%), Italian and Spanish (at 3% each), Russian, French and Portuguese (2%) and finally German and Farsi (1%), according to blog researcher Technorati. As a side note, the company says new blogs are being created at the rate of 1.4 new blogs per second, adding up to more than 70 Million blogs being tracked by the firm.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Sweeps killer American Idol set a record for call-ins with more than 70 Million toll-free and AT&T sms votes during its charity telecasts. An average of 6.1% of Americans drink beer on a frequent basis – meaning six or more times in a two-week period, according to The Media Audit which regularly surveys 87 U.S. markets. The biggest beer drinkers are in Melbourne, Florida where 10.2% of adults consumer beer on a frequent basis, followed by Wilmington, North Carolina with 10.1%. And even though it’s the home of Anheuser Busch, St. Louis came in 9th with 8.6% just ahead of Columbia, South Carolina with 8.4%. Okay, I promise, one last Warren Buffett mention: two books he recommends are Poor Charlie’s Almanack written by Buffett business partner Charlie Munger and Where are the Customers’ Yachts written by Fred Schwed… in 1940!
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com 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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Message From Michael --March 12, 2007
TAKE A BYTE OUT OF TIME
CITIZEN JOURNALISM ADDS TO THE MIX
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW; IT’S WHO YOU KNOW
MORE SOCIALIZING AND NICHE NETWORKING
R.E.M. TO THE RESCUE
COCKTAIL CHATTER – BIG BYTES
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 newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
TAKE A BYTE OUT OF TIME: The amount of digital information generated in the world last year alone was equal to 3 million times the amount of information in all the books ever written, according to research firm IDC. An article in MIT’s Technology Review says that’s like 12 stack of books that each reach from the Earth to the Sun. In tech talk, that’s 161 exabytes of data. (An Exabyte is a billion gigabytes.) A study three years earlier in 2003 by researchers at the University of California-Berkeley totaled the global information production that year at 5 exabytes. That’s the equivalent of 37,000 libraries of Congress. By the year 2010, three years from now, there will be more data generated than there will be places to put it. Technically speaking. A report by research firm IDC says last year the world had 185 exabytes of storage available and by 2010 it will have 601 exabytes. But the amount of ‘stuff’ generated will jump from 161 exabytes last year to 988 exabytes in 2010. (And if you want another techie word to throw around in cocktail conversation, 1,000 exabytes equal one zettabyte.) Luckily, the report cited in MIT’s Technology Review notes that much of the data does get deleted and the methods of storage continue to improve. Even so, the article notes that the amount of information being generated will put pressure on developing better technologies to find, sort and secure the material. One last interesting factoid in this age of YouTube and MySpace from the report – by the year 2010, 70% of the world’s digital data will be created by individuals not corporations.
CITIZEN JOURNALISM ADDS TO THE MIX: Starting this week, several broadcast groups are joining in the citizen journalism movement. Television stations owned by Fisher Communications, Journal Broadcast Group and Granite Broadcasting will invite citizen journalists’ to produce anything from online news footage to complete reports. The groups plan to start airing pieces later this month in the different markets under the umbrella name of YouNewsTV. Regular readers of MfM know that several national and international news organizations, including MSNBC, Reuters and The Weather Channel, have already started similar programs. And although the Broadcasting and Cable magazine article emphasizes that this is a local effort, I should note it is not the first. Pappas Telecasting has its own citizen journalism website called communitycorrespondent.com. The president and CEO of Broadcast Interactive Media which put together the three group plan emphasized that it is a “revenue-driving initiative (and) if the video is not suitable to have advertising or is copyrighted material, it is not going up.”In a very much related note, BusinessWeek’s Jackie Coyle reports that TV networks and advertisers are increasingly adopting the YouTube model of viewer created content for a simple reason – they know a good trend when they see it. She makes the interesting point that those people creating videos for the web want to be on TV because it’s “the big leagues.” On the flip side, with traditional media in something of a free-fall, executives are looking for anything to stop it. Coyle scores the quote of the week, from Current TV co-creator Joel Hyatt who says, “this is not a genie that’s going back in the bottle.”
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW; IT’S WHO YOU KNOW: Remember that old saw? Well, here are some people you should know. It’s PC World’s list of the most important people on the web. Now, some you know, or at least know of – Larry Page, Sergey Brin who founded Google and Eric Schmidt who runs it; Steve Jobs whose name is synonymous with Apple; Bram Cohen, co-founder of BitTorrent; Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia; Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist; Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, co-founders of YouTube; Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, co-founders of Skype and KaZaA. What I liked about the PC World article is the semi debunking note that Time magazine’s Person of the Year – You – would not be making all those viral videos and doing all that social networking without these people. What I found particularly interesting was the people I don’t know but would like to know. People like John Doerr, a Venture Capitalist with the firm of Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers, whose investing in tech businesses, the magazine says, puts him at “the center of gravity in the Internet.” Or how about Paul Graham, Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris and Jessica Livingston, co-founders of Y-Combinator, which the magazine says doles out smaller amounts of money, instead of huge chunks, to ‘potential mini-Googles.’ Then there’s the people I vaguely know but would like to know. For example, if you want to understand the war in Iraq, Mohammed and Omar Fadhill are Iraqis living in Baghdad whose blog, Iraq the Model, shows you the war from the citizen journalist power of view. If you really want to keep up with the best of the best in news, you have to keep up with Gabe Rivera, who created website Techmeme, which, as the magazine puts it, harnesses the blogosphere’s investigative power. After writing a news story headlined, “Anna Nicole Smith’s condition downgraded to dead,” how could you not want to read about Drew Curtis, founder of Fark.com where current news is dissected. And if you want to know if you’re in with the in crowd, then you need to know Tila Tequila. The singer/ model/ actress has redefined the word ‘friend’ with – count them – 1.6 Million MySpace user-friends, 56 million page views and 1,734,374 comments
MORE SOCIALIZING: You may remember a previous MfM talked about the social networking or social media revolution (which is the word all the studies used) coming to the digital and business world. Well, as further proof, add all these companies to the list. – Reuters, Netscape, Cisco, USA Today, Royal Dutch Airlines and Velvet Puffin. Now, if you just went, “huh?” on that last name, I understand. Velvet Puffin is a Singapore-based firm that has joined the long list of companies jumping on the social networking bandwagon, with networking software for use on mobile devices. Reuters is building a social networking site for fund managers and traders; Royal Dutch Airlines is building a social networking site for entrepreneurs with special interests in China and Africa; Cisco which is better known for development of the Internet technical backbone has bought Tribe.net, an also-ran in social networking websites overshadowed by YouTube and MySpace; and USA Today has revamped its website to add in social networking features. All of which seems to confirm the prediction by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreesen in an article in The New York Times that social networks will be everywhere, becoming more specialized and personalized niche websites. His Ning.com website is designed to provide the interface and bandwidth for people interested in starting their own social networks. Marketing website Marketingprofs.com says social networks are part of a “democratization of content creation.”
NICHE NETWORKING: A sort of variation on the specialized social networking movement noted in the previous article is the announcement that startup webcompany Next New Networks plans to launch 101 ‘micro-networks’ over the next five years. The websites will target small, different communities and brands. For example, the first ones to launch include channelfederator.com which are cartoons sent in by users, pulpsecret.com which focuses on comic book news, and threadbanger.com which looks at fashion designers.
R.E.M. TO THE RESCUE: Athens-based band R.E.M. will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tonight. Now, aside from the fact that I live in Athens, why is this worth noting? The event tonight (March 12th) will be carried Live – not just on television (on VH1) but also on-line (on AOL). Remember the worldwide on-line live presentation of the Live Concert? The move marks another milestone in the merging, converging, diverging digital and analog world.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Presidential candidate John Edwards opened up a campaign headquarters on virtual world Second Life. Okay, that’s weird enough, but what’s even weirder is a group of “anarchist hippies” attacked his virtual world headquarters. On a semi-related note, Sony has announced it is planning to launch virtual worlds as part of its Game 3.0 push. China has launched a successful anti-satellite weapons test, knocking out one of its own weather satellites with a ballistic missile. Okay, that’s bad enough because it raises concerns the Chinese could do the same to an American or other nation’s satellite; but what’s been missed is that this is the largest debris-generating event in earth orbit ever recorded, with 917 pieces of debris recorded – debris which can hit other satellites.
SELF-SERVING PLUG: But a good one nevertheless. We here at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication are offering an all-day Bluejeans Workshop which is “short on philosophy but long on helpful, practical information.” The workshop is actually four concurrent workshops on reporting, shooting and editing but all with one theme – good storytelling. Presenters include Wayne Freedman, storyteller extraordinaire from KGO-TV and author of the book – It Takes More Than Good Looks; WYFF-TV photographer John Hendon who has won more videography awards than just about anybody; former NBC editor and NPPA video editing instructor James ‘Butch” Townsley; and CNN ‘digital news gatherer’ Bryan Pearson. The workshop on Saturday, March 31, costs all of $25, (and that includes lunch) thanks in part to corporate partner, CNN. For more info, go to http://www.grady.uga.edu/Bluejeans/.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com 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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
CITIZEN JOURNALISM ADDS TO THE MIX
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW; IT’S WHO YOU KNOW
MORE SOCIALIZING AND NICHE NETWORKING
R.E.M. TO THE RESCUE
COCKTAIL CHATTER – BIG BYTES
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 newsconsultant@aol.com with the word “subscribe-MM” in the subject line.
TAKE A BYTE OUT OF TIME: The amount of digital information generated in the world last year alone was equal to 3 million times the amount of information in all the books ever written, according to research firm IDC. An article in MIT’s Technology Review says that’s like 12 stack of books that each reach from the Earth to the Sun. In tech talk, that’s 161 exabytes of data. (An Exabyte is a billion gigabytes.) A study three years earlier in 2003 by researchers at the University of California-Berkeley totaled the global information production that year at 5 exabytes. That’s the equivalent of 37,000 libraries of Congress. By the year 2010, three years from now, there will be more data generated than there will be places to put it. Technically speaking. A report by research firm IDC says last year the world had 185 exabytes of storage available and by 2010 it will have 601 exabytes. But the amount of ‘stuff’ generated will jump from 161 exabytes last year to 988 exabytes in 2010. (And if you want another techie word to throw around in cocktail conversation, 1,000 exabytes equal one zettabyte.) Luckily, the report cited in MIT’s Technology Review notes that much of the data does get deleted and the methods of storage continue to improve. Even so, the article notes that the amount of information being generated will put pressure on developing better technologies to find, sort and secure the material. One last interesting factoid in this age of YouTube and MySpace from the report – by the year 2010, 70% of the world’s digital data will be created by individuals not corporations.
CITIZEN JOURNALISM ADDS TO THE MIX: Starting this week, several broadcast groups are joining in the citizen journalism movement. Television stations owned by Fisher Communications, Journal Broadcast Group and Granite Broadcasting will invite citizen journalists’ to produce anything from online news footage to complete reports. The groups plan to start airing pieces later this month in the different markets under the umbrella name of YouNewsTV. Regular readers of MfM know that several national and international news organizations, including MSNBC, Reuters and The Weather Channel, have already started similar programs. And although the Broadcasting and Cable magazine article emphasizes that this is a local effort, I should note it is not the first. Pappas Telecasting has its own citizen journalism website called communitycorrespondent.com. The president and CEO of Broadcast Interactive Media which put together the three group plan emphasized that it is a “revenue-driving initiative (and) if the video is not suitable to have advertising or is copyrighted material, it is not going up.”In a very much related note, BusinessWeek’s Jackie Coyle reports that TV networks and advertisers are increasingly adopting the YouTube model of viewer created content for a simple reason – they know a good trend when they see it. She makes the interesting point that those people creating videos for the web want to be on TV because it’s “the big leagues.” On the flip side, with traditional media in something of a free-fall, executives are looking for anything to stop it. Coyle scores the quote of the week, from Current TV co-creator Joel Hyatt who says, “this is not a genie that’s going back in the bottle.”
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU KNOW; IT’S WHO YOU KNOW: Remember that old saw? Well, here are some people you should know. It’s PC World’s list of the most important people on the web. Now, some you know, or at least know of – Larry Page, Sergey Brin who founded Google and Eric Schmidt who runs it; Steve Jobs whose name is synonymous with Apple; Bram Cohen, co-founder of BitTorrent; Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia; Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist; Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, co-founders of YouTube; Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, co-founders of Skype and KaZaA. What I liked about the PC World article is the semi debunking note that Time magazine’s Person of the Year – You – would not be making all those viral videos and doing all that social networking without these people. What I found particularly interesting was the people I don’t know but would like to know. People like John Doerr, a Venture Capitalist with the firm of Kleiner, Perkins, Caulfield & Byers, whose investing in tech businesses, the magazine says, puts him at “the center of gravity in the Internet.” Or how about Paul Graham, Trevor Blackwell, Robert Morris and Jessica Livingston, co-founders of Y-Combinator, which the magazine says doles out smaller amounts of money, instead of huge chunks, to ‘potential mini-Googles.’ Then there’s the people I vaguely know but would like to know. For example, if you want to understand the war in Iraq, Mohammed and Omar Fadhill are Iraqis living in Baghdad whose blog, Iraq the Model, shows you the war from the citizen journalist power of view. If you really want to keep up with the best of the best in news, you have to keep up with Gabe Rivera, who created website Techmeme, which, as the magazine puts it, harnesses the blogosphere’s investigative power. After writing a news story headlined, “Anna Nicole Smith’s condition downgraded to dead,” how could you not want to read about Drew Curtis, founder of Fark.com where current news is dissected. And if you want to know if you’re in with the in crowd, then you need to know Tila Tequila. The singer/ model/ actress has redefined the word ‘friend’ with – count them – 1.6 Million MySpace user-friends, 56 million page views and 1,734,374 comments
MORE SOCIALIZING: You may remember a previous MfM talked about the social networking or social media revolution (which is the word all the studies used) coming to the digital and business world. Well, as further proof, add all these companies to the list. – Reuters, Netscape, Cisco, USA Today, Royal Dutch Airlines and Velvet Puffin. Now, if you just went, “huh?” on that last name, I understand. Velvet Puffin is a Singapore-based firm that has joined the long list of companies jumping on the social networking bandwagon, with networking software for use on mobile devices. Reuters is building a social networking site for fund managers and traders; Royal Dutch Airlines is building a social networking site for entrepreneurs with special interests in China and Africa; Cisco which is better known for development of the Internet technical backbone has bought Tribe.net, an also-ran in social networking websites overshadowed by YouTube and MySpace; and USA Today has revamped its website to add in social networking features. All of which seems to confirm the prediction by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreesen in an article in The New York Times that social networks will be everywhere, becoming more specialized and personalized niche websites. His Ning.com website is designed to provide the interface and bandwidth for people interested in starting their own social networks. Marketing website Marketingprofs.com says social networks are part of a “democratization of content creation.”
NICHE NETWORKING: A sort of variation on the specialized social networking movement noted in the previous article is the announcement that startup webcompany Next New Networks plans to launch 101 ‘micro-networks’ over the next five years. The websites will target small, different communities and brands. For example, the first ones to launch include channelfederator.com which are cartoons sent in by users, pulpsecret.com which focuses on comic book news, and threadbanger.com which looks at fashion designers.
R.E.M. TO THE RESCUE: Athens-based band R.E.M. will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tonight. Now, aside from the fact that I live in Athens, why is this worth noting? The event tonight (March 12th) will be carried Live – not just on television (on VH1) but also on-line (on AOL). Remember the worldwide on-line live presentation of the Live Concert? The move marks another milestone in the merging, converging, diverging digital and analog world.
COCKTAIL CHATTER: Presidential candidate John Edwards opened up a campaign headquarters on virtual world Second Life. Okay, that’s weird enough, but what’s even weirder is a group of “anarchist hippies” attacked his virtual world headquarters. On a semi-related note, Sony has announced it is planning to launch virtual worlds as part of its Game 3.0 push. China has launched a successful anti-satellite weapons test, knocking out one of its own weather satellites with a ballistic missile. Okay, that’s bad enough because it raises concerns the Chinese could do the same to an American or other nation’s satellite; but what’s been missed is that this is the largest debris-generating event in earth orbit ever recorded, with 917 pieces of debris recorded – debris which can hit other satellites.
SELF-SERVING PLUG: But a good one nevertheless. We here at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication are offering an all-day Bluejeans Workshop which is “short on philosophy but long on helpful, practical information.” The workshop is actually four concurrent workshops on reporting, shooting and editing but all with one theme – good storytelling. Presenters include Wayne Freedman, storyteller extraordinaire from KGO-TV and author of the book – It Takes More Than Good Looks; WYFF-TV photographer John Hendon who has won more videography awards than just about anybody; former NBC editor and NPPA video editing instructor James ‘Butch” Townsley; and CNN ‘digital news gatherer’ Bryan Pearson. The workshop on Saturday, March 31, costs all of $25, (and that includes lunch) thanks in part to corporate partner, CNN. For more info, go to http://www.grady.uga.edu/Bluejeans/.
SUBSCRIPTIONS: If you wish to stop receiving this newsletter, e-mail newsconsultant@aol.com 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 Michael@MediaConsultant.tv.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
