Archive for May, 2010
Is the mainstream media changing to meet news consumption trends?
May 27th, 2010
Two very interesting stories caught my eye this week in the world of traditional and online news consumption. The first is that The Times, and Sunday Times, launched redesigned websites and will begin charging next month after offering registered users a free trial for four weeks. The Guardian has done a good write up.
The second story, well it’s a piece of research actually, is the latest from Pew Research Center, this time focused on its Project for Excellence in Journalism, Mashable has done a good overview.
To my mind these two announcements couldn’t have been better timed as they show how the consumption of news is changing (at least in the U.S), next to the reaction of a traditional media outlet to this change.
I’ve gone on record in the past and said that switching to a paid-for content model, with only minor changes to the offering, is often an old-media reaction to a new media problem, i.e. ‘Our content is available online for free, and we’re losing money, so let’s charge for the content – that will work!’ Well, yes it would, assuming those that currently consume your content are willing to pay for it, or at least a certain percentage are willing to pay.
The obvious issue with this approach is most are not willing to pay for the content as it’s not really differentiated from the reams of other content that is accessible online for free. Plus, if you really want to get paid-for content for free, there are always ways in which you can do that, as long as you don’t want immediate access to it.
So, will The Times new website help in its objective of securing enough paying customers? Well, on the face of it the new website is pretty good, it’s been relatively well received, but when asked if you would pay for it, the majority have said ‘no’. That pretty much tells its own story. The Sunday Times has a loyal following, but the majority of those followers are hardcopy readers, and I don’t feel the Times brand has enough of a loyal following online, nor is the new website embracing the opportunities to become ‘social’ although it will likely gain revenue at least until more of the UK’s national newspapers follow suit and there is then a more level playing field.
To help understand this change in policy from The Times, and more accurately News International, let’s look at what the Pew research* can tell us about user behaviour.
The headlines from the research include: ‘News today is a shared, social experience. Half of Americans say they rely on people around them to find out at least some of the news they need to know. 44% of online news users get news at least a few times a week through emails, automatic updates or posts from social networking sites.’
Interestingly the stories and issues that gain traction in social media differ substantially from those that lead in the mainstream press, Roy Greenslade covers of this issue in more detail.
However, social media stories also differ greatly from each other. ‘Of the 29 weeks that Pew tracked on all three social platforms, blogs, Twitter and YouTube shared the same top story just once. That was the week of June 15-19, 2009, when the protests that followed the Iranian elections led on all three.’
‘Across all three social platforms, though, attention spans are brief. Just as news consumers don’t stay long on any website; social media doesn’t stay long on any one story. On blogs, 53% of the lead stories in a given week stay on the list no more than three days. On Twitter that is true of 72% of lead stories, and more than half (52%) are on the list for just 24 hours.’
Interestingly, most of those top weekly stories differ dramatically from what is receiving attention in the traditional press. Social media tend to home in on stories that get much less attention in the mainstream press.
So, how does this help us to reflect on The Times decision? Well, it shows that the public are choosing to consume their news in whichever way fits them, by whichever method or platform suits them.
Increasingly the confines of traditional media outlets, and in many cases that includes their websites, are being shunned simply because we all have choice and many of the alternatives are more flexible for social interaction online. Sure, traditional sources are important to get the details on breaking events, but on a day-to-day basis, we chose our outlets according to our need.
This doesn’t mean traditional media will die, and its authority still carries huge weight – much more so than the individual social outlets, but the fact of the matter is the consumption of media has changed, and until traditional media outlets realise that, evolve their offerings to meet this change and stop trying to cram traditional media methods into the digital world they are going to continue to struggle. It’s not the reader that needs to change to suit the platform, it’s the platform that needs to change, go beyond its own confines and change to meet the reader’s environment.
If you would like to hear more from The Times, you can listen to the Radio 4 interview with James Harding, editor, speaking earlier this week.
*The Pew Research Center, Project for Excellence in Journalism study examined the blogosphere and social media by tracking the news linked to on millions of blogs and social media pages tracked by Icerocket and Technorati from Jan.19, 2009, through Jan. 15, 2010. It also tracked the videos on YouTube’s news channel for the same period. It measured Twitter by tracking news stories linked to within tweets as monitored by Tweetmeme from June 15, 2009, through January 15, 2010.
Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up (21-05-2010)
May 21st, 2010
Welcome to another instalment of the ‘Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up’.
1. Copy Gater. “This is a free service designed to monitor your RSS feed and find where your content has been republished in the blogosphere. We automatically notify you when a new post is copied to another feed, we also build an overview page you can view to see how/when/where your content is being duplicated, quoted or plagiarised. This is an entirely free service and is powered by the feed spidering power of ://URLFAN. Learn more on how the CopyGator does what he does. or view an example of our content overview page for Gizmodo.com”
2. Default Icon are a set a free simple icons you can use in your blog or next PPT, they are under creative commons license so do acknowledge Default if you use them.
3. Bloop is a free service that lets you add events to its directory. You then sign into that event via a social profile, and start chatting to attendees or those interested in the event.
4. Favitt is a search engine that you can personalise. Currently you can only upload a background image but they claim more personalisation features are coming soon.
5.GT Metrix. GTmetrix uses Google Page Speed and Yahoo! YSlow to grade your site’s performance and provides actionable recommendations to fix these issues.
SEO post of the week: The Landing Page Design Toolbox: 100 Tools, Tips and Resources
More of the same next week.
Check out previous issues of the ‘Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up’
Welcome Cynthia, the first artificial life form created by Craig Venter and his team
May 20th, 2010
I was going to write about HTML 5.0 and Flash, how the Semantic Web would sweep away obsolete standards and other things that get me, an old man, excited beyond belief.
But that can wait – today we can celebrate one of those defining moments when things change dramatically, for all time. It’s all about Cynthia – the first artificial life form – created by US geneticist Craig Venter.
This is stupendous. Beyond words. I can’t embed the video but you can see it on the Guardian.
I’m off to dance the night away and normal service will be resumed as soon as possible. Enjoy!!
Corporate social media, walking-the-walk
May 20th, 2010
I read an interesting article by Tom Foremski on ZD Net yesterday, titled: ‘Corporate social media is not social – it’s sales media‘
As you can see the piece is focused on the issues of corporate social media efforts that are really just focused on selling, or as Tom says: ‘When it comes to corporate use of social media I have problems with the use of the word “social” because it’s not accurate. It’s not social it’s all about sales.’
On the whole I agree with Tom’s conclusions, the simple truth is; direct sales tactics do not work in social media. However, I don’t believe corporates should not engage via social media at all, they simply need to understand the medium, adjust their approach and get involved where they can be useful. They have to understand the rules have changed; social media isn’t a broadcast medium nor is it a sales channel.
Fundamentally, this is a difficult issue for many corporates to grasp. Sure, the theory of listening, understanding, developing a conversation and engaging usefully sounds good, but the next question is usually; ‘When do we get to the part where I make money?’
There-in lies the problem. The part about listening, understanding your community and developing conversation is the key, and those that walk-the-walk, quickly discover the many new opportunities that social media offers if done right. After all what price would you place on real engagement and feedback from your customers, understanding their real needs and opening a constant flow of feedback – isn’t that valuable? Doesn’t that lead to reputation development, and yes eventually the coveted sale?
The value here is in the conversation and learning, something marketers have been trying to develop with their audiences for many years, and now have the opportunity to achieve relatively easily.
The difficulty comes in the mindset, i.e. helping a corporate to understand that social media isn’t a direct sales channel. In my experience, part of the problem is that social media has been hyped up to such a degree with many corporates, that it’s like showing a child a huge tub of ice cream, telling them it’s the best they’ll ever have, but then saying they can’t eat it in the same way they’ve eaten ice cream before, otherwise it’ll react badly with them. The natural reaction is to ignore such advice and dive in with spoon at the ready, and later discover the error of their ways when the stomach pains begin.
Getting back to Tom’s piece, I can appreciate that many corporates have jumped straight in, tried to apply non-social approaches and this has not only failed to deliver sales, but probably only served to damage the brand.
However, the same isn’t true for everyone, there are many examples of brands engaging in social media in an honest and open fashion, and getting their just desserts (excuse the pun). I also think these examples are on the increase, even if it’s up for debate whether the bad still outweighs the good, at least at the moment.
So, should we be surprised that corporate’s first few shaky steps into the world of social media are not always in the right direction? No. Hopefully the more case studies we see of positive results from social media (not necessarily sales-related), the more corporates will be willing to walk-the-walk about social media theories and strategies, as well as talk-the-talk.
Did Facebook and Twitter influence the General Election?
May 7th, 2010
As I took up my blunt pencil attached to a piece of string in the polling booth yesterday, and made a cross against my chosen candidate, it struck me how much Twitter and Facebook have enhanced my interest and understanding around this General Election, but similarly how far the UK still has to go before we can experience a truly, socially-connected election.
This was the first General Election where Twitter and Facebook played a part. They gave the electorate a new ‘voice’ aside from their vote, enabling them to freely discuss election issues in an uncensored environment within a much wider network of individuals.
Facebook set-up a live voter counter on its website (via a tie-up with the Electoral Commission) – according to the final tally, 107,892 Facebook users voted. A poll was also conducted through this group, aka the Facebook election, which saw Nick Clegg and the LibDems emerge victorious. Facebook groups and political pages have been hugely active – today a particularly active one seems to be ‘I bet I can find 1,000,000 people who want Proportional Representation – UK‘.
But how much of this social network activity and buzz was two-way conversation and engagement?
A comment on the BBC blog is telling:
“I asked questions via Twitter of the main parties, but no reply was ever returned. In fact, the only politician who replied was John Prescott. The political parties were treating Twitter just like another letterbox through which to poke leaflets – but failing to grasps the idea that such systems require two-way communication to be effective. I just felt ignored by them online.”
Today across Twitter in particular, and to a lesser degree Facebook, there seems to be a general feeling that today’s election results do not match with their political learnings and discussions over the past few weeks. BBC blogger, Rory Cellan-Jones, makes the same conclusion in his blog post: So was it an Internet Election?. He opens the post saying: “The verdict was already in, even before polling day. This was not an internet election, and all those who had suggested it might be had got it completely wrong. It was a television election, and all of those tweeters and bloggers were sad political obsessives talking to each other.”
Facebook and Twitter have undoubtedly provided a gateway to political engagement, and importantly among the younger generation. A YouGov survey found that a quarter of 18-24-year-olds had commented on politics via social networks. But at the end of the day, this activity seems to have had little impact on the final election outcome.
Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up (07-05-2010)
May 7th, 2010
Welcome to another instalment of the ‘Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up’.
1. Embedable Tweets. No more need for screen grabs and Photoshop. Simply copy and paste the Tweet URL page and add the code to your blog post.
2. Copyc.at allows you to add your website to the search bar , which in turn generates a usability score based on the readability of your website.
3. Zoofs has all the most recent talked about videos on Twitter, viewable straight from its platform.
4. Find Icons is a great search tool for finding icons of any type, which is handy if you need icons for PowerPoint presentations or similar.
5. Wave. What they say: “WAVE is a free web accessibility evaluation tool provided by WebAIM. It is used to aid humans in the web accessibility evaluation process. Rather than providing a complex technical report, WAVE shows the original web page with embedded icons and indicators that reveal the accessibility of that page.”
Social Media post of the week: 6 terrific examples of social media policies for employees
SEO post of the week: Most common SEO mistakes
More of the same next week.
Check out previous issues of the ‘Weekly Social Media sites, tools and posts round-up’
10 top RSS feed directories to submit your blog to
May 6th, 2010
If you are just starting a new blog or have very low readership, one tactic you can use to gain traction is to add your blog’s RSS feed to blog directories. There are many out there of varying qualities. Below are some of the better ones you may or may not be familiar with.
Alexa rank: 36,430
Google page rank: 7
Alexa rank: 6
Google page rank: 30,720
Alexa rank: 70,939
Google page rank: 6
Alexa rank: 62,936
Google page rank: 6
Alexa rank: 14,715
Google page rank: 5
Alexa rank: 4,394
Google page rank: 6
Alexa rank: 19,611
Google page rank: 6
Alexa rank: 6
Google page rank: 25,967
Alexa rank: 30,634
Google page rank: 5
Alexa rank: 33,962
Google page rank: 5
Any others you can recommend? If you can, please add them to the comments section. Thanks!
Popular telecommunications viral videos
May 5th, 2010
Following on from our Creative computing-related social media video campaigns post and the Creative electronics-related social media video campaigns post, here are some more creative ideas to inspire your next campaign.
Below are some of the Telecommunications-focused videos currently doing the viral rounds. I did intend to show you the Megan Fox Motorola Super Bowl ad but unfortunately that’s been removed from YouTube!
Brand: Vodaphone
Brand: Vodaphone
Brand: Verizon Wireless
Brand: T-Mobile