To the extent that news needs to produce profits, the demand ultimately will shape the supply... The choice is not between giving people what they want or what they need. The challenge is to induce people to want what they need.
The answer is not to figure out how to transport 20th century news presentation into 21st century delivery mechanisms but rather to create a new rhetoric of news that can get through to the changed and changing news audience.
Jack Fuller, author of What is happening to News
Read more here
Saturday, December 18
Blogging ‘Peaks,’ But Reports of Its Death Are Exaggerated
(A) new Pew Internet report finds that blogging by teenagers has fallen by half since 2006, and even young adults seem to be dropping the habit.
At the same time, however, blogging’s popularity increased among most older generations, and as a result the rate of blogging for all online adults rose slightly overall from 11 percent in late 2008 to 14 percent in 2010.
Yet, while the act formally known as blogging seems to have peaked, internet users are doing blog-like things in other online spaces as they post updates about their lives, musings about the world, jokes, and links on social networking sites and micro-blogging sites such as Twitter.
Read more at Wired
At the same time, however, blogging’s popularity increased among most older generations, and as a result the rate of blogging for all online adults rose slightly overall from 11 percent in late 2008 to 14 percent in 2010.
Yet, while the act formally known as blogging seems to have peaked, internet users are doing blog-like things in other online spaces as they post updates about their lives, musings about the world, jokes, and links on social networking sites and micro-blogging sites such as Twitter.
Read more at Wired
Translation App
Word Lens is an augmented-reality translation app. World Lens looks at any printed text through the iPhone’s camera, reads it, translates between Spanish and English. It does it in real time — but it also matches the color, font and perspective of the text, and remaps it onto the image. Read more at Wired or watch this video.
Friday, December 17
Top 2010 Tweets
#1 - Stephen Colbert: In honor of oil-soaked birds, 'tweets' are now 'gurgles'
#5 - AlQaeda: “Just noticed Twitter keeps prompting me to ‘Add a location to your tweets.’ Not falling for that one.”
Read more here
#5 - AlQaeda: “Just noticed Twitter keeps prompting me to ‘Add a location to your tweets.’ Not falling for that one.”
Read more here
Local Broadcast Ads Rise 30%
Local television advertising continues to climb -- now up over 30% for the third quarter over the same period a year ago. The TVB, the TV marketing group, says a booming automotive category -- up 74.1% over a year ago and big political advertising -- help lead the charge for stations, pulling in some $4.1 billion during the period, per data from Kantar Media.
Overall, broadcast television improved 12.5% during the period to $9.9 billion.
Read more at Media Post
Overall, broadcast television improved 12.5% during the period to $9.9 billion.
Read more at Media Post
Thursday, December 16
Web format has 'contaminated' online journalism
The problem with journalism on the Web today is that it's being contaminated by the Web form factor. What I mean is, journalists are being pushed to do things like slide shows -- stuff meant to attract page views. Articles themselves are condensed to narrow columns of text across 5, 6, 7 pages, and ads that are really distracting for the reader, so it's not a pleasant experience to 'curl up' with a good website.
Journalism is being pushed into a space where I don't think it should ever go, where it's trying to support the monetization model of the Web by driving page views. So what you have is a drop-off of long-form journalism, because long-form pieces are harder to monetize.
What the tablet does, for the first time, is let us hit the reset button on the presentation of content to readers.
So now you're getting these newspaper- and magazine-reading apps that do a much better job of showing the content on a full screen, and with nicer, larger advertisements.
Read more at the LA Times
Journalism is being pushed into a space where I don't think it should ever go, where it's trying to support the monetization model of the Web by driving page views. So what you have is a drop-off of long-form journalism, because long-form pieces are harder to monetize.
What the tablet does, for the first time, is let us hit the reset button on the presentation of content to readers.
So now you're getting these newspaper- and magazine-reading apps that do a much better job of showing the content on a full screen, and with nicer, larger advertisements.
Read more at the LA Times
Harvard, Google Map Cultural Trends
The word “God” peaked in usage in the world’s books about 1830. “Women” overtook “men” in print after 1985. Sigmund Freud has gotten more ink in the past 60 years than Charles Darwin or Albert Einstein.
Researchers at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, teamed up with Google Inc. to survey 5.2 million digitized books -- about 4 percent of all the volumes published in any language -- to analyze language patterns and quantify cultural trends from 1800 to 2000. The four-year project is described today in the journal Science.
The Harvard researchers dub their discipline “culturomics” -- evoking genomics, in which scientists use billions of bits of quantitative data to study genes. Google, which has digitized 12 percent of the 130 million books published worldwide, unveiled today an online tool that enables users to track the frequency of words and phrases.
About 72 percent of the database’s text is in English, followed by French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Russian, and Hebrew. It’s the largest data release in the history of humanities and is available for download, Michel said.
Read more at Businessweek
Researchers at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, teamed up with Google Inc. to survey 5.2 million digitized books -- about 4 percent of all the volumes published in any language -- to analyze language patterns and quantify cultural trends from 1800 to 2000. The four-year project is described today in the journal Science.
The Harvard researchers dub their discipline “culturomics” -- evoking genomics, in which scientists use billions of bits of quantitative data to study genes. Google, which has digitized 12 percent of the 130 million books published worldwide, unveiled today an online tool that enables users to track the frequency of words and phrases.
About 72 percent of the database’s text is in English, followed by French, Spanish, German, Chinese, Russian, and Hebrew. It’s the largest data release in the history of humanities and is available for download, Michel said.
Read more at Businessweek
Bigger and better than Wi-Fi
The spectrum released by TV’s switch to digital broadcasting will soon be put to good use. In some places, this “white space” of unused frequencies separating working channels amounted to as much as 70% of the total bandwidth available for television broadcasting. Mobile-phone operators and other would-be users of wireless spectrum have long lusted after television’s empty airwaves. In America, after two years of wrangling, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Washington, DC, has finally given the go-ahead for white-space frequencies to be put to use.
In 2008 the FCC voted to reallocate the various segments of white space and unused channels between 54MHz and 806MHz (channels two to 69), which would no longer be needed when the last of the country’s analogue television transmitters switched to digital broadcasting in June 2009. Unlike analogue transmissions, digital signals do not “bleed” into one another and can therefore be packed closer together. As a consequence, television broadcasters now need little more than half the spectrum they hogged before switching to digital. That has not stopped them fighting tooth and claw to hang on to their unused white space. Most had grand plans for using such frequencies to sell information services to the public.
It was not to be. Instead, the FCC has used the switch to digital as an opportunity to liberate huge swathes of bandwidth for others to use. The most valuable frequencies of all, those in the 700MHz band (channels 52-69), have been auctioned off to mobile-phone operators. Between them, Verizon, AT&T and others paid nearly $20 billion to clinch this prime spectrum. The reason these channels are so valuable—and why they were chosen for terrestrial television in the first place—is that their signals travel for miles, can carry a lot of information, are unaffected by weather and foliage, and go through walls to penetrate all the nooks and crannies within the bowels of buildings.
The white space freed up below 700MHz is to be made available for unlicensed use by the public. By doing this, the FCC hopes to trigger another wireless revolution—one potentially bigger than the wave of innovation unleashed a decade or so ago when Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other wireless technologies embraced the unlicensed 2.4GHz band previously reserved for microwave ovens, baby alarms and remote openers for garage doors.
The difference this time is that the frequencies being released will allow much higher data rates.
Enthusiasts talk about white-space devices offering a “third pipe” for access to the internet, to rival cable and telephone broadband. Others see them providing an alternative to mobile phones. When wireless zones cover entire university campuses rather than mere coffee shops, anyone with a smartphone running Skype or something similar would be free of usage charges and operators’ restrictions.
White-space consumer products could then hit the retail market by late 2012.
Read more at The Economist
In 2008 the FCC voted to reallocate the various segments of white space and unused channels between 54MHz and 806MHz (channels two to 69), which would no longer be needed when the last of the country’s analogue television transmitters switched to digital broadcasting in June 2009. Unlike analogue transmissions, digital signals do not “bleed” into one another and can therefore be packed closer together. As a consequence, television broadcasters now need little more than half the spectrum they hogged before switching to digital. That has not stopped them fighting tooth and claw to hang on to their unused white space. Most had grand plans for using such frequencies to sell information services to the public.
It was not to be. Instead, the FCC has used the switch to digital as an opportunity to liberate huge swathes of bandwidth for others to use. The most valuable frequencies of all, those in the 700MHz band (channels 52-69), have been auctioned off to mobile-phone operators. Between them, Verizon, AT&T and others paid nearly $20 billion to clinch this prime spectrum. The reason these channels are so valuable—and why they were chosen for terrestrial television in the first place—is that their signals travel for miles, can carry a lot of information, are unaffected by weather and foliage, and go through walls to penetrate all the nooks and crannies within the bowels of buildings.
The white space freed up below 700MHz is to be made available for unlicensed use by the public. By doing this, the FCC hopes to trigger another wireless revolution—one potentially bigger than the wave of innovation unleashed a decade or so ago when Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other wireless technologies embraced the unlicensed 2.4GHz band previously reserved for microwave ovens, baby alarms and remote openers for garage doors.
The difference this time is that the frequencies being released will allow much higher data rates.
Enthusiasts talk about white-space devices offering a “third pipe” for access to the internet, to rival cable and telephone broadband. Others see them providing an alternative to mobile phones. When wireless zones cover entire university campuses rather than mere coffee shops, anyone with a smartphone running Skype or something similar would be free of usage charges and operators’ restrictions.
White-space consumer products could then hit the retail market by late 2012.
Read more at The Economist
Wednesday, December 15
10 Ways Social Media Will Change in 2011
1. Social media will be supersized
Ad agencies, for example, will offer bundles that include layers of creative strategy, campaign management and advertising deals all handled through a central dashboard; telecommunications companies will offer video tools for businesses and consumers with greater bandwidth, storage and syndication; learning management systems (LMS) integrators will add engagement, archiving, training and collaboration tools for a deeper and more engaging academic experience.
2. Companies will integrate social feedback into their decision making process
In 2011 we will see a growing number of companies finally go beyond using social channels merely for building awareness and providing support. As “social thinkers,” these companies will use the social engine to inform strategic decisions, and execute on the organization’'s objectives, marketing plans, product roadmaps and more.
3. Mobile will become our gateway to the world
For the first time, sales of smartphones outpace sales of desktops and laptops, iPhone and iPad applications were downloaded more than 7 billion times and research shows e-mail access is now on the rise on the iPhone while declining on the computer.
4. Video will be everywhere
With plummeting video delivery costs and highly accessible and flexible video management platforms custom-use of video by enterprises online, on mobile devices, and across screens is on the rise across all sectors.
In the coming year, gaps in our video experience will be filled with the integration of filtering, tagging, editing and locating tools into each and every video feed.
5. The next big Online Social Network will not be a network at all
In the coming year we will see the rise of dynamic, engaging, easy-to-use community platforms and applications that will better mimic and facilitate the innate way people seek to manage relationships.
For consumers, this means the ability to create smaller, more intimate, context-specific communities using their existing social graph and livestreams. Every company should think of itself as a media company,” said Tom Foremski, journalist and thought-leader.
6. ROI will be redefined
Companies who hire social media strategists with proven marketing analytics background and business strategy experience will have the upper hand and will place first in the race to cracking the ROI code.
7. Psychology is shifting
We have new levels of cognitive flexibility, which is creating a new way of thinking about the world and about ourselves,” said Dr. Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center and co-founder of A Think Lab.
As the constructs of relationships, privacy and our ability to influence others evolve, we will also face important questions: How do we respond to the changing definition of relationships? How does the elimination of behavioral cues, only available face-to-face, impact our ability to connect? How does our need for emotional balance get addressed in the face of constant change?
8. Citizen activism brings back purpose and power
With the power made possible by social technologies to connect, inform and mobilize, we will see a surge in self-organized and managed citizen activism.
9. Social business intelligence will heat up and so will privacy
Wikileak’s' eruption on the social media waves and Do Not Track are just previews. Every company now looks to tap into the boundless user data being collected in the cloud.
In the year ahead we will witness (and be part of) major data virtualization initiatives designed to map our activities, preferences and choices.
10. The role of the social media strategist will be changing
In 2011, social media strategists will need to contend with much more actionable, and often mundane, tasks such as selecting and piloting new tools, integrating social widgets and analytics, helping to educate the organization, and integrating social-based thinking into the organization’'s process and culture.
Read more at ReadWriteWeb
Ad agencies, for example, will offer bundles that include layers of creative strategy, campaign management and advertising deals all handled through a central dashboard; telecommunications companies will offer video tools for businesses and consumers with greater bandwidth, storage and syndication; learning management systems (LMS) integrators will add engagement, archiving, training and collaboration tools for a deeper and more engaging academic experience.
2. Companies will integrate social feedback into their decision making process
In 2011 we will see a growing number of companies finally go beyond using social channels merely for building awareness and providing support. As “social thinkers,” these companies will use the social engine to inform strategic decisions, and execute on the organization’'s objectives, marketing plans, product roadmaps and more.
3. Mobile will become our gateway to the world
For the first time, sales of smartphones outpace sales of desktops and laptops, iPhone and iPad applications were downloaded more than 7 billion times and research shows e-mail access is now on the rise on the iPhone while declining on the computer.
4. Video will be everywhere
With plummeting video delivery costs and highly accessible and flexible video management platforms custom-use of video by enterprises online, on mobile devices, and across screens is on the rise across all sectors.
In the coming year, gaps in our video experience will be filled with the integration of filtering, tagging, editing and locating tools into each and every video feed.
5. The next big Online Social Network will not be a network at all
In the coming year we will see the rise of dynamic, engaging, easy-to-use community platforms and applications that will better mimic and facilitate the innate way people seek to manage relationships.
For consumers, this means the ability to create smaller, more intimate, context-specific communities using their existing social graph and livestreams. Every company should think of itself as a media company,” said Tom Foremski, journalist and thought-leader.
6. ROI will be redefined
Companies who hire social media strategists with proven marketing analytics background and business strategy experience will have the upper hand and will place first in the race to cracking the ROI code.
7. Psychology is shifting
We have new levels of cognitive flexibility, which is creating a new way of thinking about the world and about ourselves,” said Dr. Pamela Rutledge, director of the Media Psychology Research Center and co-founder of A Think Lab.
As the constructs of relationships, privacy and our ability to influence others evolve, we will also face important questions: How do we respond to the changing definition of relationships? How does the elimination of behavioral cues, only available face-to-face, impact our ability to connect? How does our need for emotional balance get addressed in the face of constant change?
8. Citizen activism brings back purpose and power
With the power made possible by social technologies to connect, inform and mobilize, we will see a surge in self-organized and managed citizen activism.
9. Social business intelligence will heat up and so will privacy
Wikileak’s' eruption on the social media waves and Do Not Track are just previews. Every company now looks to tap into the boundless user data being collected in the cloud.
In the year ahead we will witness (and be part of) major data virtualization initiatives designed to map our activities, preferences and choices.
10. The role of the social media strategist will be changing
In 2011, social media strategists will need to contend with much more actionable, and often mundane, tasks such as selecting and piloting new tools, integrating social widgets and analytics, helping to educate the organization, and integrating social-based thinking into the organization’'s process and culture.
Read more at ReadWriteWeb
Tuesday, December 14
North Korea Uses Social Media
South Korea has an aggressive effort to block its citizens from accessing the North’s Korean-language online content. To break past the firewall, the North jumped into social media this summer, according to an U.S. intelligence report disclosed today by Public Intelligence. The move was announced by a North Korean website called Urminjokkkiri that’s administered out of China.
South Koreans visiting Urminjokkkiri can find a link to proxy router programs to help them evade the firewall, according to the August report from the Director of National Intelligence’s Open Source Center, “suggesting a connection with efforts to neutralize South Korean censorship.” Pyongyang’s official Twitter account — which has over 10,000 followers — uses TinyURL links, so users don’t get directed to blocked North Korean web addresses.
A mock North Korean Urminjokkkiri account on Facebook is almost entirely blank, except for a message: “THE IMPERIALIST AMERIKAN CENSORS HAVE BLOCKED PUBLISHING RIGHTS, PLEASE KEEP UP GOOD FIGHT FOR DEAR LEADER!” Ridicule: the impenetrable firewall.
Read more at Wired
South Koreans visiting Urminjokkkiri can find a link to proxy router programs to help them evade the firewall, according to the August report from the Director of National Intelligence’s Open Source Center, “suggesting a connection with efforts to neutralize South Korean censorship.” Pyongyang’s official Twitter account — which has over 10,000 followers — uses TinyURL links, so users don’t get directed to blocked North Korean web addresses.
A mock North Korean Urminjokkkiri account on Facebook is almost entirely blank, except for a message: “THE IMPERIALIST AMERIKAN CENSORS HAVE BLOCKED PUBLISHING RIGHTS, PLEASE KEEP UP GOOD FIGHT FOR DEAR LEADER!” Ridicule: the impenetrable firewall.
Read more at Wired
Microsoft to Announce New Slates
Next month, at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft will (present) a slew of new slates that it hopes will offer some competition to the Apple iPad, which has quickly become the leader in this market. The Samsung device is described as “similar in size and shape to the Apple iPad, although it is not as thin. It also includes a unique and slick keyboard that slides out from below for easy typing.” The people familiar with this device said it would run the Windows 7 operating system when in landscape mode, but will also have a layered interface that will appear when the keyboard is hidden and the device is held in a portrait mode.
Read more at the New York Times
Read more at the New York Times
Reuters’ New Wire Service
Reuters will launch a new U.S. news service in an attempt to take on rivals including the Associated Press. Its first client will be Tribune Co., which said it will use less material from the AP and reduce its financial commitment to the news cooperative.
Thomson Reuters' new offering, dubbed Reuters America, will focus on state and regional news and incorporate material from a variety of other sources, including The Wrap.com for entertainment news, SportsDirect Inc. and others for sports, and Examiner.com for local coverage.
Tribune is one of several major news organizations that in recent years have complained about the AP's prices and rigid terms as steep advertising declines put newspapers under growing financial strain. The AP has responded by implementing several fee reductions totaling $65 million and introducing several classes of membership.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal
Thomson Reuters' new offering, dubbed Reuters America, will focus on state and regional news and incorporate material from a variety of other sources, including The Wrap.com for entertainment news, SportsDirect Inc. and others for sports, and Examiner.com for local coverage.
Tribune is one of several major news organizations that in recent years have complained about the AP's prices and rigid terms as steep advertising declines put newspapers under growing financial strain. The AP has responded by implementing several fee reductions totaling $65 million and introducing several classes of membership.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal
Monday, December 13
A Sense of Place
One sunny spring day in 2004, Dennis Crowley was running down Waverly Street dressed in yellow, avoiding ghosts. Crowley, then a 27-year-old grad student in New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program, was participating in a class project called Pac-Manhattan, which used the streets of Greenwich Village for a grueling physical version of the classic arcade game. He was Pac-Man, and—despite a support team that was logging his movements, tracking ghosts, and directing him to power pills—people dressed as Pac-Man spooks eventually cornered him near Fifth Avenue. The New York Times described the experience as “a kind of tableau of digital convergence with the physical world.”
Six years later, Crowley and I are sitting in a NoHo cafè pecking at our iPhones. Using Foursquare, an app Crowley cocreated, we are “checking in” to the restaurant. Like many mobile social applications that use GPS, Foursquare lets you broadcast your location to friends and strangers—and, of course, it lets you see where they are, too.
But Foursquare is more like a game than a newsfeed.
Read more at Wired
Six years later, Crowley and I are sitting in a NoHo cafè pecking at our iPhones. Using Foursquare, an app Crowley cocreated, we are “checking in” to the restaurant. Like many mobile social applications that use GPS, Foursquare lets you broadcast your location to friends and strangers—and, of course, it lets you see where they are, too.
But Foursquare is more like a game than a newsfeed.
Read more at Wired
Sunday, December 12
NYT Falls from S&P 500
Netflix was added to Standard & Poor’s S&P 500 index, which lists large-cap public companies, mostly from the U.S. It’s also a sign of the times as an old media giant, The New York Times, officially loses the large-cap company title and starts slumming with other mid-sized companies.
Read more at Mashable
Read more at Mashable
WikiLeaks May Impact Newsgathering
There are already indications that Congress could take steps to sanction the publication of certain classified information, moving beyond the current regime in which the confidential source, if exposed, faces the greatest legal exposure.
These moves have sparked intense debate, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other free speech organizations criticizing the U.S response to the leak as censorship akin to the pressure put by the Chinese government on Google. As these organizations point out, government interference with access to websites containing leaked classified documents may be tantamount to a prior restraint and thus may violate the First Amendment principles articulated in the Pentagon Papers case, which involved a high-profile leak of classified documents concerning the Vietnam War.
Read more at the Newsroom Law Blog
These moves have sparked intense debate, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and other free speech organizations criticizing the U.S response to the leak as censorship akin to the pressure put by the Chinese government on Google. As these organizations point out, government interference with access to websites containing leaked classified documents may be tantamount to a prior restraint and thus may violate the First Amendment principles articulated in the Pentagon Papers case, which involved a high-profile leak of classified documents concerning the Vietnam War.
Read more at the Newsroom Law Blog
Who Uses Twitter?
We added a straightforward question to our tracking survey that took place in November 2010 where we asked online adults: "Do you use Twitter?" In this survey, 8% of online adults said they do use Twitter -- with 2% doing so on a typical day. This survey also showed that 74% of American adults are internet users, meaning that the Twitter cohort amounts to 6% of the entire adult population.
Some of the groups who are notable for their relatively high levels of Twitter use include:
- Young adults: Internet users ages 18-29 are significantly more likely to use Twitter than are older adults.
- African-Americans and Latinos: Minority internet users are more than twice as likely to use Twitter as are white internet users.
- Urbanites: Urban residents are roughly twice as likely to use Twitter as rural dwellers.
Why NYT Cut Its Social Media Editor
Earlier this week, New York Times Social Media Editor Jennifer Preston tweeted that she would be returning to reporting full-time. The move is part of the Times’ efforts to more fully integrate its print and digital operations. It’s also an acknowledgment that social media needs to be — and is already — a shared responsibility.
Hiring a social media editor is an important first step for newsrooms, Preston said. But she sees the social media editor as more of a temporary role than a permanent one. It becomes less necessary, she said, once more people in the newsroom start regularly using social media.
Read more at Poynter
Hiring a social media editor is an important first step for newsrooms, Preston said. But she sees the social media editor as more of a temporary role than a permanent one. It becomes less necessary, she said, once more people in the newsroom start regularly using social media.
Read more at Poynter
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