Open (finds, minds, conversations)...

Quote of the day: "Beware the cash cow in the coal mine"

Jeff Jarvis recounts the decline of a publishing industry cash cow - the TV guide, specifically TV Guide, the US publication that News Corp's just sold at a loss.

I love that phrase, and hereby give notice of re-appropriating it for whenever it seems appropriate. What Jeff says he means by it is that organisations need to watch out for being beholden to "the money machine that blinds you to the strategic imperative for change".

Candidate number one to earn this phrase is advertising's reliance on big creative and buying eyeballs. These cash cows keep agencies from looking too closely at the complexity business, the work of operating on a human level in networks.

Technorati Tags: jeffjarvis, advertising

New Channel 4 education programming gives glimpse of media future

* Corrected *

Dontcha just love synchronicity? There's me wondering about young people and online privacy and reputation and meanwhile Matt Locke and the gang at Channel 4 are launching new cross-platform programming, including social spaces and online games, that are all about just that, says Kevin Anderson:

One of Channel 4's game will be called Ministry, an online, networked ARG that challenges teens to think about online privacy and identity and how they apply to their lives. How do you develop trust with people you can't see? Do you think about the information that you are posting online when it "remains persistent and public"? Those are issues that everyone, not just teens, should be thinking about.

The coverage of Channel 4's slate of educational programming is well worth a read. What's going on over there is bold and exciting and as it plays out will help us understand not just how education but how TV and media will evolve in the the super-complexity of the 21st century's attention markets.

Channel 4's team has begun with the facts, and hasn't hid from them: teens aren't watching their education programmes. Why? They're all online. What to do? Create programming that will reach them where they are.

Kevin Anderson picks up on a quote from Matt that gets straight to the strategic heart of how media organisations should be thinking about 360-degree commissioning, total TV, trans-media or however you'd like to describe this new way of thinking about how programming gets made:

Cross platform commissioning is not about asking: Is it tele or is it web? But where is the audience? We have to commission for our audience wherever they are.

Photo: Matt Locke telling production companies how it is... 

And I utterly empathise with the C4 team when Kevin points out that:

they are moving into new areas, and they don't have established models to use. Not everything will be a raging success, but they have a three to four year plan that will incorporate feedback from the projects and teens uptake and participation.

I feel exactly the same about marketing and communicating inside networks. You have to get engaged now without certainties beyond an understanding of the fundamentals and a strong set of principles about how to behave. The models, the successes, to coin a phrase, will be emergent.

The thing about networks is that you can't just thing about them as another channel - that's missing the challenge and the opportunity completely. We need to innovate and create new mental and practice models for what is a completely new media environment.

The only sane thing to do is to follow the attention. Not the eyeballs, not the money, the attention: of individuals, of communities as they traverse and take up (often nomadic) residence in the networks.

Matt's told me about these projects before, but reading about people's perspectives on them now they are beginning to see the light of day I have to once more shout three hurrahs for determined vision of him, Alice WalkerTaylor , Janey Walker and everyone else in that team that is literally being brave enough to reinvent TV for the way the world is now.

Also good reading and listening:

• Jemima Kiss's coverage on the Guardian
• Ewan McIntosh, C4 Education board member: love his headline: Do it first. Make Trouble. Inspire Change.
• Matt Locke explains C4's cross-platform strategy to production companies - challenging stuff.
• Channel 4 Education Briefing - laying out how C4 education sees the world it is living in and what it wants to do about it.

Technorati Tags: channel4, tv, media, web, education

Facebook continues to be burned by Beacon: lawsuits imminent?

Photo: James Grimmelman of New York Law School.

As if being disowned by major brands and vilified by commentators of all shapes and sizes weren't enough, Facebook's Beacon advertising system (which broadcast purchases people made to their friends) may leave it open to lawsuits from 1.6 million of its users.

James Grimmelman, assistant professor at New York Law School thinks that due to the Beacon's tie-up with Blockbuster both companies may have violated some privacy laws around video tapes of all things:

Facebook and Blockbuster should hunker down and prepare for the lawsuits. Their recent move to allowing a global opt-out may cut them off from accruing further liability, but there’s probably an overhang of damages facing them from their past mistakes. I should note that this isn’t my usual area of law, so salt the analysis appropriately. Caselaw on the VPPA is thin, but there might be other rules of information privacy law out there that would significantly change the bottom line. That said, let us begin.

Meanwhile, Danah Boyd adds her voice to the cacophony of criticism of Facebook. She points out that the system was a deep betrayal of the trust of people who may not even appreciate the fundamental privacy and personal reputational issues that taking part in public social networks involve:

Given what I've learned from interviewing teens and college students over the years, they have *no* idea that these changes are taking place (until an incident occurs). Most don't even realize that adding the geographic network makes them visible to thousands if not millions. They don't know how to navigate the privacy settings and they don't understand the implications. In other words, defaults are EVERYTHING.

I've talked before about the personal reputation issues online, especially for young people, around participation in social media. Once again, I say, this is an issue which we need to educate people about. At the very least schools and colleges should find ways of talking about these issues alongside those of online safety (they may be already, I'm not sure?).

Danah further points out that this is far from the first time that Facebook has mis-stepped on privacy (supporting Umair Haque's assertion that Facebook has trouble "not being evil"):

For all of the repentance by Facebook, what really bugs me is that this is the third time that Facebook has violated people's sense of privacy in a problematic way. I documented the first incident - the introduction of the News Feeds - in an essay called "Facebook's Privacy Trainwreck." In this incident, there were no privacy adjustments until public outcry. The second incident went primarily unnoticed. Back in September, Facebook quietly began making public search listings available to search engines. This means that users' primary photos are cached alongside their name and networks on Google. Once again, it was an opt-out structure, although finding the opt-out is tricky. Under privacy settings, under search, there is a question of "Which Facebook users can find me in search?" If you choose "everyone," that includes search engines, not just Facebook users. The third incident is Beacon.

Will a third grilling have taught Facebook a lesson? Umair would probably say no, and I'd be surprised if this was the last privacy scandal we see associated with Facebook.

(Legal story via Mashable)

Technorati Tags: facebook, privacy, blockbuster, law, US, jamesgrimmelman, reputation

What does journalism need most: union policies or more entrepreneurs?

I've written before about the NUJ's apparent derangement in the face of changes to new media. The organisation's attitude attracted some scathing criticisms from prominent online journlists.

It's latest effort is a report called Shaping the Future by its Commission on Multimedia Working. And actually, to judge by comments from Neil McIntosh, could be heading in the right direction:

The report has some problems - more of which later - but it seems only fair to lead on the news that the final report is substantially better than what was published in that controversial (if predictably rubbish) edition of The Journalist - the one that prompted Roy Greenslade’s departure from the union, and the scorn of many others.

Although, while being a step in the right direction, there still seems to be some committee-sim inspired nonsense:

...the union continues to flog the dead horse of its Witness Contributor Code of Conduct, which remains a profoundly silly document. For example, its insistence on, whenever possible, using “material produced by NUJ members […] when such alternatives to witness contributors are available” cheapens the latest, more savvy, report. It speaks more of a fear than an understanding or vision of what users might add to our traditional work. It looks old-fashioned alongside today’s report, and should be spiked.

I'm generally suspicious of inventing policies in the face of the almighty changes being wrought in the world by the shift to networks. Things move too fast for prescriptiveness to be helpful and the pace of things means that proctectionist and conservative instincts are self-deestructive. Innovation, trying things out, looking for new opportunities  seems much more sensible.

I refer you to Saul Hansell writing on the New York Times Bits blog:

It seems to be a great time to be starting out in journalism. Just don’t ask advice from anyone who has been in the business for more than five years.

The quote comes from a post Hansell wrote called "Entrepreneurial Journalism in the Facebook Age" (via Buzzmachine) following an amazing exercise at City University New York's Journalism School where students pitched their ideas for new web ventures.

Every now and then, I meet someone idealistic and perhaps foolish enough to want to embark on a career in journalism. Until recently, my advice was largely the same as anyone had given for many decades: Find a gig where you can write — a small town paper, freelancing for an alternative weekly, a business trade publication (my route). If you’re good, the story went, you would find you way to bigger publications and forge a career.

Today, it’s hard to give that advice, when the economic underpinnings of all those places you were supposed to be trying to work for are so shaky. Is there any good advice other than to learn how to trade mortgage-backed securities?.... In fact, there may well be many more interesting options today for someone who has a passion to find and tell stories.

Despite not being a journalist, I had the distinct honour this week to be invited to give a lecture to post-grad students at the Cardiff School of Journalism, where Matthew Yeomans runs the online journalism course.

One of the things I hope I got across was the amazing opportunities that the web presents for doing things differently and for going direct to (attention) market with interesting ideas and approaches.

Makes me wonder what the role of a union is in this age for journalists. Should it be to focus on employers and policies or ways of encouraging journalistic enterprise?

: : Bonus hidden post: No idea why but this post about advertising  is not appearing on the main page of me blog...

Technorati Tags: journalism, cardiff, nuj

Digg story graph

It's been a while since I posted some nice data visualisation images, so thanks very much indeed to Neoformix for providing an excuse to do so. Jeff Clark has created a visualisation of the most populaar stories on Digg and how they connect by user, date, topic, words, domains and topics.

On a practical level, this is an excellent  way to take in the Digg conversation in a single snapshot and to explore some of the connections between stories.

If we're to take this as representative of what's going on in Digg right now, one thing that's interesting is that the World and Business category is as big as Technology. Time was, not so long ago, that Digg's main focus was tech related stories.

But the real magic begins when you switch to looking at the relationships between words in stories...

...or indeed any of the other filters.

Technorati Tags: digg, data, news, visualisation, data mining

New model marketing language: "Let's go back to exploited"...

 

Check out the rest of this Penny Arcade strip - it's very good indeed.

The first line, in the window above is apparently based on an actual quote form Activision's CEO following the company's merger with Vivendi, thereby creating the largest video games company in the world. Robert Kotick (for it is he) said:

"expect virtually every one of those properties [its 10 multi-million-unit selling franchises] will be exploited on an annual or close to annual basis."

The Penny Arcade strip, part of the gamer community, mocks this way of talking about things, imagining Kotick in an interview backtracking and trying out "molesting" the game titles and "running these brands into the fucking ground".

How about "make the most of" or "do more with"? But of course, the inference is that he is saying what he means. He's not interested in the games, but in the bottom line first.

Makes me think once more about the military influence on language in business, the aggression of penetrating markets and exploiting consumer demand etc.

All a bit silly. Sometimes a bit offensive. Especially when we live in networks where everyone hear us show-off language about what we're going to do to *our* consumers.

Come on CEOs - inside voices please, there's no need to shout.

Thanks to Ben Bose for pointing me out this one...

Technorati Tags: marketing, language, gaming, activision, vivendi, business, cartoon, funny

Got dem red tops: smart marketing for The Wire fiends - but it could be smarter...

As I may have mentioned before I am a massive fan of The Wire, a US cops and robbers tale brought *bang* up to date. I don't think it's ever aired here in the UK on TV It's finally been aired on FX in the UK but it's mainly been a word of mouth and DVD thing for British viewers.

As part of the marketing for the fourth series of the programme's box set in the US Amazon has three exclusive prequels. As Grant McCracken

Have we seen Amazon used as the delivery mechanism in this way before?  Another channel opens!  Have we seen prequels used in this way?  The transmedia project expands!

It's a great idea. The short films are incidental, morsels, actually fairly meaningless to anyone who hasn't seen the previous three serious. But to the devotee - as so many of the show's viewers become - it's as sweet as spider bags ("twofer one") are to Bubs.

But, as is so often the case, the execution is all about "viral" rather than networks thinking. To get maximum benefit from the attention the videos will earn Amazon should be offering more options in "share" than just emailing.

People (me included) will want distribute this content on their blogs and social network profiles. But to do that I have to go to YouTube to find the videos in a format where I can do that. As expected, someone has ripped the videos and posted them there.

The vids still travel, to be sure, but YouTube's picking up more of the benefit in terms of network attention / reputation on the topic / Googlejuice / AdSense revenue / traffic directed to other places to buy the boxset.

Amazon's network presence is so huge that this probably doesn't matter hugely to them, one might think. But my guess is that they'll turn on to the "distribution by any means" model that means they'll keep.

Anyhow, here's the three prequels - useful, useful content, oh yes. So much better than a traditional trailer. Brilliant idea guys, just tweak the distribution to pick up all the rewards you're due...   

Technorati Tags: the wire, tv, viral, video, marketing, distribution, hbo, amazon

Facebook's dripping point: when will it begin to haemorrhage?

Facebook's taking a pummelling from all quarters recently. Oh, well that's just because it's a big target, I hear some say.

Well, yes, it's a big target. But it's reminding me of a certain accident prone British Prime Minister at the moment in its ordure-magnetism. In the eyes of some, it seems to be able to do no right.

For a steady stream of analysis of what makes Facebook's future far from certain, take a look at Umair Haque's commentary on Bubblegeneration over the past months. For him, it seems to boil down to Facebook's inability to follow Google's principle of being "not evil".

That is to say, flush with its own success it is tripping up over things like Beacon because its own interests rather than the interests of the community and the individuals therein are being prioritised.

In a great article for Information Week (called "How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook") Cory Doctorow sums this point of view up nicely:

Facebook is no paragon of virtue. It bears the hallmarks of the kind of pump-and-dump service that sees us as sticky, monetizable eyeballs in need of pimping.

And furthermore:

Emails from Facebook aren't helpful messages, they're eyeball bait, intended to send you off to the Facebook site, only to discover that Fred wrote "Hi again!" on your "wall."

In the meantime the trends are all up still for Facebook. It still has potentially a long way to go in terms of mainstream adoption - but is the steady drip-drip of criticism and cynicism among early adopters the first portents of doom for the service.

I think a lot could depend on its ability to learn from the shambolic Beacon affair and whether it can bring itself to open up even further and welcome OpenSocial as a standard.

: : Extra! Extra!: Check out the story about Facebook users rebelling and posting their own ads on their profiles... could be interesting.

Technorati Tags: facebook, strategy

Does not compute: Vista and Vodafone's ghosts in the machine

This reminds me of Vodafone's customer service last week when despite being apoplectic with ill-satisfaction (I won't bore you with the dreary details) and explaining why I was upset on a number of levels, I was told in a tired monotone "we've gone above and beyond the call of duty in your case".

Everyone I've told that story to since has laughed. It's almost good enough to become a replacement for the "computer says no" catchline in Little Britain.

Windows Vista's designers - like the designers and stewards of Vodafone's customer service -  really, honestly, want to communicate well, but a cog in the logic mill has gone awry and instead a weird parallel, twisted call centre script becomes the main mode of conversation. A nasty ghost in the machine that "customer experience" has been reduced to.

Like all things, of course, it comes down to two things: keeping things at a human level, and good design.

At least the Windows error message has brought a lot of joy to the world in its own little way...

Via Gizmodo via Marc Andreessen.

Technorati Tags: vodafone, microsoft, vista, customer service, communication

Get yer new groovy Google Maps Mobile!

If you have a smart(ish) phone I strongly advise pointing the browser at Google Maps Mobile and downloading it (www.google.co.uk/gmm).

If you already have Google Maps Mobile - download it again. Seriously - it's just had an update to include "poor man's GPS" - a system that detects your approximate location by checking which mobile phone masts you're near.

Makes a brilliant. useful little app even more useful.

I love Google Maps Mobile - whether it's just for finding my way round London with minimum use of tube and taxis or just the sheer joy of being in a foreign city and actually being able to orient yourself straight away.

Photo: Yep, the platform signs aren't lying: I am indeed at Waterloo. 

Technorati Tags: google, mobile, maps, travel

Why not dine in Didcot this evening?

Spotted on my way to Cardiff yesterday. An example of advertising by committee perhaps?

Technorati Tags: didcot, advertising

Digg the vote

Love the new Digg profiles for candidates in the US Presidential race.

Interesting to note that Barack Obama's friends outnumber Hillary Clinton's by almosst ten-to-one. Is it him that's popular with the Digg crowd or the news about him?

Via Buzzmachine.

Technorati Tags: politics, US, presidential, elections

Santa's Ghetto: Banksy in Bethlehem

Banksy has set up his Christmas shop in Bethlehem. If you're not passing by, you can take a look at some of the amazing images from The Wall at the Santa's Ghetto website.

Here's a couple of my favourites...

Apparently the shop's opening online soon, sso you can buy a "brace of great new work available over the internet in the usual punch-up we laughingly call an on-line business".

Via JoshSpear.com

Technorati Tags: banksy, bethlehem, art, graffiti

Networks beat channels: Glam beats iVillage

My big thing for the past couple of years has been to try and explain the implications of the web revolution as being about the shift from channel media (industrial age media, where the means of production and distribution of content are owned by organisations) to open networks (where everyone with a web connection can create and distribute whatever they like).

So you can imagine how excited I was when I saw Jeff Jarvis combined my twin likes of talking about media in the age of networks with a head-spinning data-visualisation. However, his post's sat in my "must blog" pile for too long now so I'm sharing it with just the scantest of accompanying analysis...

He recounts a presentation by Samir Arora, CEO of Glam (an online fashion site / network) which includes the following diagram that shows why Glam's network strategy is beating the iVillage channel strategy (to the tune of

The largest circle inside iVillage is astrology traffic and the dark circle in that represents people who come to iVillage for horoscopes and nothing else. That may bulk up your traffic numbers, but it’s not saleable to advertisers. iVillage is built in the Yahoo model of sites it owns or controls; it tries to lure people in and then bombards them with ads.

Glam, represented by the larger circle on the left, is a network. You’ll see clusters made up of smaller circles, representing their content areas: fashion, beauty, fashion, lifestyle, celebrity, teen. Inside each of those clusters, if you squint, you’ll see a small yellow circle. Those are Glam’s O&O (owned and operated) sites. All the many purple circles around those in each cluster represent outside, independent blogs and sites in Glam’s network. That is the secret to Glam’s quick growth without the cost and risk of doing everything itself.

If you're a marketer, think about how your campaigns and content can learn from this strategy. Where are the networks that you want to connect to, that can appropriate and remix your brand to suit them. Think about the power of live networks that go on adding value to what you to do with the human magic of their network effects.

Technorati Tags: networks, media, jeffjarvis, glam, ivillage, strategy

The myth of integrated marketing

Photo: An integrated entertainment experience in Brighton.

Ever seen an integrated marketing campaign?

In my years in PR I heard them talked about, even attended some "summits" and "integration workshops" but at the end of the day the chips always fell the same way: the ad agency called the shots and we "integrated" press releases about what they were doing.

My boss, Arjo Ghosh, is ruminating about this at the moment on our Search Sense blog, and has is down pat when he says:

For today’s marketing environment the integrated story is as tired as the 30 second slot it was built around.

Now that the TV advertising hegemony of marketing is crumbling there's a chance to redefine how marketing works. Will the dream of integrated marketing be finally realised?

Probably not. But maybe integrated is the wrong way to think about things. Conscious that I'm linking to John Hagel for the second time in one day, but there's something very important in his and John Seely Brown's ideas about FAST strategy and how loose coalitions of small teams can be the most effective way to organise.

Technorati Tags: marketing, integration, connected

Spannerworks What is social media? eBook update

Myself and the team at Spannerworks have  given the What is social media? eBook a bit of an update, it's second or third so far, I think, and it has a natty new cover as well...

 

If you read it, please let me know what you think. Remember, though, it's intended as a complete beginner's guide, so it is necessarily brief. 

Beyond what it was originally intended to be, though, this little eBook means a lot to me and I think it has achieved more than the sum of its parts, as it were...

• A reference point for my social media adventure: Written initially just over a year ago, so much has changed in the meantime, in terms of the ways we're using social media, the general levels of awareness, the challenges we're working on in the team at Spannerworks. Personally, it serves as a reminder of how fast things are moving and how far we've come.
• A case study for being useful to your networks: It was intended as a useful document, plain and simple. So we kept it short, trying to de-jargon and give lots of links and references. We published it, naturally, with a creative commons licence. And the rewards have been great, from goodwill from clients and contacts who've used it for briefing colleagues to graduates applying for jobs because they read our book on a course. Someone even came up to me at a new media conference and said they'd attached it to their business plan as an appendix.
• Google likes it too: Because it earned attention in its networks, What is social media? ranks number one in Google for its own name and number three for the phrase "social media". Which is nice.

Yes, on balance, I would highly recommend the idea of writing a book, even a little one like this. It's very simple on the one hand, but a real slog at the same time, even with more help than was available with the first edition.

I've been threatening to write another for a while, distilling some of the the themes about marketing and networks that I've been talking about at conferences and the like over the past 18 month, but have been foiled by general schedule insanity. 

Publishing this new edition of what feels like an old friend makes me doubly determined to find the time to write again soon.

: : Bonus link: When you are in a niche market or not very famous, giving away things like eBooks is a very good idea. For some thinking about how this changes for well known authors, take a look at a post called "Free is more complicated than you think" by Chris Anderson on the Long Tail blog.

Technorati Tags: ebook, spannerworks, socialmedia, marketing

Social objectsh (hic!)

Cross-posted from Brand Republic (free registration):

If you're interested in social media and marketing, or have wandered into a Forrester briefing of late, you'll most likely have heard of the Stormhoek wine marketing. The upstart South African winery crashed its way into the highly competitive UK market (we drink more than the French, apparently) by creating buzz about its wine among the blogging digerati, mainly by sponsoring "geek dinners" around the world.

The man behind this stuff, Hugh Macleod, posted this week on his Gapingvoid blog about how he's helping the brand with its sponsorship of the British Comedy Awards.

Sound a bit "over-ground"  for the brand its cunning social marketing genius? Well naturally they are going beyond slapping a logo on the stage and a bottle on each table:

We created a range of large bottles [Magnums], each with a different cartoon on it. Thirty cartoons in all.

....As everybody will have a different cartoon on each table, we're hoping people will check out the different bottles on the other tables. Yeah, you got it. Conversation starters.

It's a nice idea, and a blog post well worth reading. Not least because it could introduce you to an excellent insight about how social media sites and services work: the concept of social objects.

Social objects are the things around which social networks form: photos on Flickr, videos on YouTube, gossip, chatter and tidbits of information on Twitter.

As Hugh says, "I believe Social Objects are the future of marketing".

He's right you know: pass the bottle...

: : Read more about Hugh Macleod's thoughts on social objects here.

: : And if you want this idea from source, Kevin Anderson has a good summary of a talk by Jyri Engstrom on his social objects concept (along with the original slides). Jyri is the founder of Jaiku, a Twitter-like service that Google bought recently.

Technorati Tags: marketing, brands, sponsorship, hughmacleod, stormhoek, wine, comedy, social objects, jaiku, jyriengstrom, brandrepublic

Open mobile

Google's open standard for mobile (Android)will most likely take quite a while for its full effect to be felt, but some are already attributing big changes in the US mobile market to it.

Most notably, Verizon, a US mobile network among other things, announced last week that it would provide access to its network for devices not sold or supported by it directly. 

I'm not sure any telco would be able to move *that* quickly - although the wider trend towards open is certainly a factor, a trend that Android and Google are very much a part of.

Came across a nice insight into the team at Google working on mobile via John Battelle's blog.

Chris Sacca's post is interesting to me on a number of levels: it feels like a FAST strategy that has emerged as a major focus for the company, a strong expression of its vision (and a market-shaker for mobile). Well worth a read, but one paragraph that combines those elements for me reads:

The group is cooperatively managed by a handful of us as peers. Our meetings are open to any Googlers who want to contribute and our internal mailing list is available to any of our colleagues who want to subscribe. Our mission is ambitious, but clear: do what it takes to inspire or create a mobile ecosystem in the United States that will allow user choice to flourish and level the playing field for new applications and devices.

It's the openness at the macro level (a corporate and a specific sector strategy) and micro levels (the way that openness works within the company to allow that team and its amazing projects emerge) that inspires me about this.

: : ...for a strategic view on Google and mobile see, as ever, Umair Haque.

: : ...for some practical analysis of the Verizon announcement in the telecom market GigaOm has it covered for you.

Technorati Tags: google, mobile, android, telecom, strategy, openness, open, verizon