Archive for September, 2007
NY Times debuts video ‘Letter to the Editor’
September 21st, 2007
The NY Times has today published its first ever video ‘Letter to the Editor’.
Filmmaker Charles Ferguson sent the newspaper a video rebuttal to an opinion piece that L. Paul Bremer III (former head of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq) wrote about disbanding the Iraqi army.
The 10-minute video letter is a shining example of how newspapers should be embracing UGC content. As far as I’m aware, the use of video for this purpose is a global first. It’s worth a watch.
Is this the beginning of the end for online news subscription?
September 20th, 2007
It seems subscription models for US online publishers are dropping like Chelsea managers at the moment..sorry I couldn’t resist!
Hot on the heels of the New York Times, which decided to end its Times-Select subscription service earlier this week, Rupert Murdoch has suggested that The Wall Street Journal, unique as the only major US newspaper to charge for access to its web site, will soon follow suit.
Of course Mr Murdoch is a central character in both cases, but this change could spell the beginning of the end for those that cling to the subscription model.
So why the change? Well, as confirmed by the man himself - ‘making the site free will help boost readership and revenues’, simple really.
Does this mean that subscription models for online news publishers are self-defeating - an argument that has raged for sometime? Well not necessarily, it’s the environment that has changed. Search engines can deliver huge amounts of traffic to the leading news-driven publishers, only to be batted back by demands for subscription. This slows growth, as the vast majority refuse to pay, and ultimately means the publishers are confined to their subscribers, missing out on all other revenue opportunities.
Now that newspapers are beginning the realise that online growth opportunities begin with free content, which swells traffic figures and attracts advertisers, we could see more publishers dropping the subscription model and putting their faith in traffic delivered by search engines.
Will it happen? Are the news sites leading the way? Time will tell, but where Mr Murdoch leads the others tend to follow.
Full story on Media Guardian.
Retailers active in social media
September 19th, 2007
E-commerce blog Get Elastic has a useful round-up of 110 ways in which retailers (mainly US) are engaging with their online audiences. If offers a good snapshot of where the retail industry is investing in social media, and the creativity is in some cases very impressive.
As you’d expect, MySpace remains the most popular social media platform, but Facebook and YouTube are quickly catching-up.
If you have time to click-through to some of the examples, it’s really worth a look.
Here is Victoria Secret’s Facebook group PINK:
And here is Adidas’ YouTube video explaining how its Second Life environment works:
Microsoft-focused ‘Social Object’ launched
September 17th, 2007
You may have seen this story covered in a few places today, such as the FT or TechCrunch, but it’s certainly worth further investigation.
At first glance, the story is that Microsoft has unveiled an own-label wine. Yes, you did read that right, an own-label wine. It’s called Blue Monster Reserve, and it’s exclusively for Microsoft employees and partners, as well as members of “Friends of Blue Monster” Facebook group, but that really isn’t the point, although the clue is in the Facebook group reference.
This is the brain child of Hugh Macleod and winery Stormhoek, and has been designed to promote innovation inside Microsoft, and of course Stormhoek!
You’ve undoubtedly heard of Hugh Macleod, either as a cartoonist - that’s his handywork on the label, as a web 2.0 strategist, or blogger…this is part of what he had to say in his post overviewing the launch which can be quaffed in full - here.
‘Personally, I like this idea because it directly connects to a lot of different things I’m interested in. “Social Objects”, Microsoft, cartoons, Stormhoek, Marketing 2.0, corporate-reinvention, geek dinners etc etc.’
Social Objects, (or Object Centered Sociality) is where it started getting interesting for me. The term, as Hugh points out, can be tracked back to Jyri Zengestrom. The basic idea is that a collection of people need something to talk about, otherwise they just mingle around, get bored and leave. The theory has been translated to online communities and how they may fail because that ‘object’ is either missing, unsuitable or uninteresting.
This goes against the theory that social networks are just made up of people, and argues that in fact social networks consist of people who are connected by a shared object. It’s a fascinating subject, and this campaign should form the basis for a good case study on the theory.
Hugh also overviews the five key principles of building a useful service around social objects in an earlier post.
Apparently the tagline; “Microsoft – change the world or go home”, has now been adopted by some Microsoft employees and fans as a symbol of the company’s innovation. Judging by the discussion this has already caused, the message and therefore object, is focusing attention.
I’ll be following Blue Monster’s progress with interest.
GCap says ‘no’ to social network
September 14th, 2007
It seems madness to be turning down a golden opportunity to engage better with your online network, but GCap has done just that.
NMA reports today that the radio network has decided against launching a social network as part of the major investment strategy in its One Network. Apparently GCap felt money would be better spent on its core proposition.
To quote directly from Ed Dorrell’s article, Tom Laidlaw, new media director of GCap comments:
“We thought about developing a social network to go on these sites and it was tempting, but we decided against it…Everyone is doing it and we doubted people would go on a social network on a radio station as opposed to others.”
I think Laidlaw might be eating his words in a few months time.
GCap is right to not want to jump on any bandwaggon, but strategically speaking, launching a social network could have been a great move for the UK’s largest commercial radio company.