The investment arms of the CIA and Google are both backing a company that monitors the web in real time — and says it uses that information to predict the future. The company is called Recorded Future, and it scours tens of thousands of websites, blogs and Twitter accounts to find the relationships between people, organizations, actions and incidents — both present and still-to-come. In a white paper, the company says its temporal analytics engine “goes beyond search” by “looking at the ‘invisible links’ between documents that talk about the same, or related, entities and events.”
“The cool thing is, you can actually predict the curve, in many cases,” says company CEO Christopher Ahlberg, a former Swedish Army Ranger with a PhD in computer science.
Read more at Wired.
Saturday, July 31
Friday, July 30
Thankful for WikiLeaks
The posting of 92,000 documents on WikiLeaks about the war in Afghanistan represents a triumph for what I like to call "data journalism." But it also has to be admitted that, within journalism, it has always been something of a minority sport, partially because it involved a lot of work and was anything but glamorous. In modern times, with increasing pressure on newsrooms to be more cost efficient, editors became increasingly reluctant to allow their staff to spend the hours necessary to delve through endless piles of documents.
The posting of the material on the internet is not in itself an act of journalism. It is merely the beginning of a journalistic process, requiring analysis, context and, in this particular instance, a form of necessary censorship in order to protect individuals identified in the documents.
We journalists should be delighted that WikiLeaks exists because our central task has always been one of disclosure, of revealing public interest material that others believe wish to be kept secret.
Read more at CNN.
The posting of the material on the internet is not in itself an act of journalism. It is merely the beginning of a journalistic process, requiring analysis, context and, in this particular instance, a form of necessary censorship in order to protect individuals identified in the documents.
We journalists should be delighted that WikiLeaks exists because our central task has always been one of disclosure, of revealing public interest material that others believe wish to be kept secret.
Read more at CNN.
Risky Paywall Experiment
The disastrous launch of the London Times' paid website is just the latest media "paywall" to run into trouble. Here, a history of how newspapers have failed — and succeeded — when asking readers to pay for online content. For every notable success like The Wall Street Journal's website, which boasts over 1 million online subscribers, there is a failure.
The Times puts its content behind a $3-a-week paywall, and promptly loses 90 percent of its online readership, according to some reports. This "could be indicative of what the rest of the newspaper industry can expect to undergo in the coming years," says Alla Goldman in the Bivings Report.
Read more at The Week
The Times puts its content behind a $3-a-week paywall, and promptly loses 90 percent of its online readership, according to some reports. This "could be indicative of what the rest of the newspaper industry can expect to undergo in the coming years," says Alla Goldman in the Bivings Report.
Read more at The Week
The Birth of Modern Advertising
The world of 'Mad Men' was really brought to you by a Chicago-based agency and its mercurial founder. In the nascent days of advertising, in the first half of the 20th century, no one was more successful—or more influential—than Albert Lasker. Lasker is the subject of "The Man Who Sold America" by Jeffrey Cruikshank and Arthur Schultz. As the authors note, Lasker's influence extended well beyond the confines of the advertising world. "He is the super-salesman of the generation," said Will Hays, who managed the 1920 presidential campaign that, with the super-salesman's help, put Warren Harding in the White House.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal.
Thursday, July 29
Injunction Against News Organization
The National Law Journal has been prohibited by court order from publishing information it obtained legally. D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith Bartnoff issued a temporary restraining order against the National Law Journal last Friday after she discovered the news organization was planning to publish a story regarding the fee dispute between District of Columbia-based law firm Hogan Lovells and one of its former clients. The news organization had legally obtained the information through public court documents.
“If I am throwing 80 years of First Amendment jurisprudence on its head, so be it,” the judge reportedly said. She also allegedly indicated that the court’s interest in maintaining the integrity of the docket overrides First Amendment concerns.
Read more here.
“If I am throwing 80 years of First Amendment jurisprudence on its head, so be it,” the judge reportedly said. She also allegedly indicated that the court’s interest in maintaining the integrity of the docket overrides First Amendment concerns.
Read more here.
No Anchors or Reporters
A Houston TV station is doing away with anchors and on-camera reporters in favor of a new format called “NewsFix.” The Houston Chronicle reports that KIAH will launch the new show this fall. “NewsFix” will be a pilot program for owner Tribune Broadcasting.
Read more at the Houston Chronicle.
Read more at the Houston Chronicle.
Newspapers Hit New Low
The number of Americans who say that newspapers are an important source of information continues to decline, according to a survey by the The Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism. Only 56 percent of Internet users surveyed agreed with the statement that newspapers were an important or very important source of information, while 68 percent said that television was, and 78 percent said that the Internet was.
The Center’s survey also found that newspapers are continuing to decline as a source of entertainment as well — only 29 percent of those surveyed said that newspapers were an important source of entertainment, down from 32 percent in 2008. Almost 20 percent of users said that they had canceled a subscription to a newspaper or magazine because they now get the same or related content online.
Read more here.
The Center’s survey also found that newspapers are continuing to decline as a source of entertainment as well — only 29 percent of those surveyed said that newspapers were an important source of entertainment, down from 32 percent in 2008. Almost 20 percent of users said that they had canceled a subscription to a newspaper or magazine because they now get the same or related content online.
Read more here.
Tuesday, July 27
Facebook Page for Journalists
Facebook officially launched a media page that's dedicated to journalists, developers and media partners to help them learn and use best practices and tools to drive referral traffic. Dubbed "Facebook + Media," the real juice for media companies is how the page offers data into how users engage with news content shared on Facebook.
This appears to be a PR move by Facebook. Regardless, "Facebook + Media" is a clear sign that one, the worlds biggest social network is looking to help arguably major content creators (media) stay engaged and relevant; and two, journalism will never be like it was 20, 10 or even five years ago. It's now called social journalism.
Read more here.
This appears to be a PR move by Facebook. Regardless, "Facebook + Media" is a clear sign that one, the worlds biggest social network is looking to help arguably major content creators (media) stay engaged and relevant; and two, journalism will never be like it was 20, 10 or even five years ago. It's now called social journalism.
Read more here.
Thursday, July 22
Where Are Facebook's Users?
Facebook announced this morning that they now reach 500 million active users (just five and half years after launching). But where do these half a billion users reside? Refreshing my post from February, the share of users from Asia continues to rise and now stands at 17% of all Facebook users.
Read more here.
Read more here.
Wednesday, July 21
Google On Newspaper Profits
The large profit margins newspapers enjoyed in the past were built on an artificial scarcity: Limited choice for advertisers as well as readers. With the Internet, that scarcity has been taken away and replaced by abundance. No policy proposal will be able to restore newspaper revenues to what they were before the emergence of online news. It is not a question of analog dollars versus digital dimes, but rather a realistic assessment of how to make money in a world of abundant competitors and consumer choice.
Read more here.
Read more here.
Tuesday, July 20
Worldwide Ad Growth
ZenithOptimedia has raised its worldwide advertising growth estimate again -- this time to a 3.5% hike in 2010 over the year before. The big media-buying group says strong growth in North America and Europe, as well as higher revenues from Internet, mobile and social media, is driving its estimates higher. Zenith says 2010 is estimated to hit $448 billion.
There is better news for 2011, where global ad spending is expected to climb 4.5% from a 4.1% previous estimate. Outer years will climb at better rates; 2012 will see 5.3% growth.
Zenith expects developed markets will grow by 2.4% in 2011 and 2.9% in 2012. Developing markets will grow much more substantially. They were expected to grow by 9.1% and 9.8%, mostly from Asia-Pacific and Latin America regions.
All this will be a reversal from 2009, which had a 10.3% decline.
Worldwide television is expected to get to a 40.8% share of the global ad market in 2012, up from 39.2% in 2009.
Internet ad spending will continue to be the biggest medium after TV and newspapers. In 2010, it will grow 13.1% in 2010 and gain another 16.1% in 2011. By 2012, there will be another big gain: 17.1%. Zenith notes that Internet ad spending was at 12.7% in 2009.
In North America, the agency is forecasting a 1.3% growth in 2010 -- up from an earlier estimate that pegged the market at a 1.5% decline. ZenithOptimedia now expects a 2.2% growth in Western Europe, up from 0.4% previous estimate.
Read more here.
There is better news for 2011, where global ad spending is expected to climb 4.5% from a 4.1% previous estimate. Outer years will climb at better rates; 2012 will see 5.3% growth.
Zenith expects developed markets will grow by 2.4% in 2011 and 2.9% in 2012. Developing markets will grow much more substantially. They were expected to grow by 9.1% and 9.8%, mostly from Asia-Pacific and Latin America regions.
All this will be a reversal from 2009, which had a 10.3% decline.
Worldwide television is expected to get to a 40.8% share of the global ad market in 2012, up from 39.2% in 2009.
Internet ad spending will continue to be the biggest medium after TV and newspapers. In 2010, it will grow 13.1% in 2010 and gain another 16.1% in 2011. By 2012, there will be another big gain: 17.1%. Zenith notes that Internet ad spending was at 12.7% in 2009.
In North America, the agency is forecasting a 1.3% growth in 2010 -- up from an earlier estimate that pegged the market at a 1.5% decline. ZenithOptimedia now expects a 2.2% growth in Western Europe, up from 0.4% previous estimate.
Read more here.
Sunday, July 18
TV Everywhere Study
Good news for those TV Everywhere cable proponents: Not only do consumers seem to like the idea, they may even pay extra for it. A new study from The Diffusion Group says 60% of adult broadband users -- 95 million consumers -- are "enthusiastic" about TV Everywhere. More interesting: 34% -- 54 million consumers -- are willing to pay at least $5 extra per month for those services. The study went further, saying that about 33% of consumers would pay about $10 extra a month, and 20% would pay more than $15 per month.
TV Everywhere is an attempt to keep consumers paying for those packages by demanding authentication of their cable or satellite programming deals, which would allow them to watch TV shows online.
Read more at Media Post.
TV Everywhere is an attempt to keep consumers paying for those packages by demanding authentication of their cable or satellite programming deals, which would allow them to watch TV shows online.
Read more at Media Post.
Gannett Broadcast Up
The Gannett Company, the nation’s largest newspaper publisher, said on Friday that its second-quarter profit more than doubled from a year ago, helped by a rebound in broadcast revenue, a one-time tax gain and a less severe drop in print advertising. But revenue at the company, which publishes USA Today, and owns more than 80 other daily newspapers and 23 TV stations, fell more than was expected and its share price fell 11 percent.
Read more at the NY Times.
Read more at the NY Times.
Saturday, July 17
Radio Show Droppred for Inappropriate Comments
On Monday, Mississippi Public Broadcasting announced it had dropped Terry Gross and Fresh Air because of "recurring inappropriate content." Mississippi Public Broadcasting shares a campus with offices for the state's colleges and universities, and we have learned that some of those offices play public radio for callers who are on hold. Recently, a caller got put on hold during Fresh Air and heard Terry Gross ask comedian Louis C.K. if he always has sex with his shirt on. The caller complained, the station's zero-tolerance policy for inappropriate conduct content* kicked in, and away went Terry Gross and Fresh Air for Mississippi.
Read more here.
Read more here.
On-Air Radio Endorsements
On-air endorsements may seem hopelessly retro -- more Bob Hope and Jack Benny than iPads and Foursquare. But for a small company priced out of television and most forms of celebrity endorsements, radio offers a good opportunity to build trust, boost brand awareness -- and drive sales. Carbonite, for example, found that visitors who came to its website via radio pitches were 40 percent more likely to make a purchase.
Many stations and production companies are more open to deploying their hosts as pitchmen. That credibility and recognition come at a premium, especially if you want a nationally syndicated host. Fortunately, both local radio programs and syndicated hosts are receptive to endorsement deals that target smaller markets. Packages often include mentions on a host's website and, in some cases, the chance to do product demonstrations at live events.
Read more at Ink.
Many stations and production companies are more open to deploying their hosts as pitchmen. That credibility and recognition come at a premium, especially if you want a nationally syndicated host. Fortunately, both local radio programs and syndicated hosts are receptive to endorsement deals that target smaller markets. Packages often include mentions on a host's website and, in some cases, the chance to do product demonstrations at live events.
Read more at Ink.
Thursday, July 15
Media’s two tribes
IS IT better to take a little money from a lot of people, or a lot of money from a few? In Britain the Times and the Sunday Times newspapers are about to take the latter course by asking people to pay for news online. Paywalls are rising across the media landscape as many firms conclude that revenue from online advertising alone is not enough to make ends meet.
Yet there is a strong drift in the opposite direction, too. For every outfit that is trying to build a premium subscription service, another is becoming more convinced of the virtues of giving away free content. This is not merely a difference of opinion over whether to charge for online content. It is a divide between a strategy based on “up-selling” people to premium subscriptions, and a strategy based on scale and market-share. More fundamentally, it reflects different views about the extent to which consumers can be steered towards the most profitable products.
This crack stretches all the way from newspapers to the film business. The hot issue in Hollywood these days is whether the studios should sell DVDs to cheap rental services on the same day they put them on sale to the public. Television is no closer to consensus. The big media firms are not wholly consistent. The two camps are likely to grow further apart. Online advertising is picking up, encouraging firms that have hitched their fortunes to it.
This lack of consensus worries many in the media industry. Those who pursue scale (and their many allies in the blogosphere) claim that premium strategies are doomed. The other side retorts that the practice of giving stuff away undermines the value of all content. But it is likely that winners will emerge on both sides. Some will find a way of profiting from scale, while others will carve out dedicated audiences and lucrative niches. There need not be a single right way to do things.
Read more at The Economist.
Yet there is a strong drift in the opposite direction, too. For every outfit that is trying to build a premium subscription service, another is becoming more convinced of the virtues of giving away free content. This is not merely a difference of opinion over whether to charge for online content. It is a divide between a strategy based on “up-selling” people to premium subscriptions, and a strategy based on scale and market-share. More fundamentally, it reflects different views about the extent to which consumers can be steered towards the most profitable products.
This crack stretches all the way from newspapers to the film business. The hot issue in Hollywood these days is whether the studios should sell DVDs to cheap rental services on the same day they put them on sale to the public. Television is no closer to consensus. The big media firms are not wholly consistent. The two camps are likely to grow further apart. Online advertising is picking up, encouraging firms that have hitched their fortunes to it.
This lack of consensus worries many in the media industry. Those who pursue scale (and their many allies in the blogosphere) claim that premium strategies are doomed. The other side retorts that the practice of giving stuff away undermines the value of all content. But it is likely that winners will emerge on both sides. Some will find a way of profiting from scale, while others will carve out dedicated audiences and lucrative niches. There need not be a single right way to do things.
Read more at The Economist.
Sunday, July 11
High-Tech News War
Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. are redefining the online news experience, but in diverging ways that underscore the evolving identities of the search giants. Last week, Yahoo unveiled the Upshot, a blog created by the Sunnyvale portal's growing staff of editors and reporters, who will use search and other user data to help determine what they'll cover and how. That announcement followed the introduction of a new version of Google News, which allows users to customize the content they see, but leaves the writing and editing to others.
"It reaffirms the fact that Yahoo is trying to be a media company, have its own content and keep people at Yahoo, whereas Google is the opposite," said Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land, a site covering the industry.
Yahoo is already the most popular news site, with nearly 41 million unique visitors in 2009, according to Nielsen. It licenses content from hundreds of newspapers, wire services and other sources, and supplements those stories with links to stories that its editors and search algorithms pull in from around the Web.
Read more at the SF Gate.
"It reaffirms the fact that Yahoo is trying to be a media company, have its own content and keep people at Yahoo, whereas Google is the opposite," said Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of Search Engine Land, a site covering the industry.
Yahoo is already the most popular news site, with nearly 41 million unique visitors in 2009, according to Nielsen. It licenses content from hundreds of newspapers, wire services and other sources, and supplements those stories with links to stories that its editors and search algorithms pull in from around the Web.
Read more at the SF Gate.
Owning the News
Facts, ruled America’s Supreme Court in 1918 in the “hot news doctrine”, cannot be copyrighted. But a news agency can retain exclusive use of its product so long as it has a commercial value. Now newspapers, fed up with stories being “scraped” by other websites, want that ruling made into law. Critics say that would extend copyright to facts. It would also be hard to make either regime work in practice.
Read more at The Economist.
Read more at The Economist.
The Emerging Online Giants
The websites of Digital Sky Technologies (DST) account for more than 70% of page-views on the Russian-language internet. Naspers is Africa’s biggest media group, both offline and online. And Tencent is China’s largest internet company by market capitalisation—and the third-largest in the world.
Based in Cape Town, Naspers is nearly 100 years old and is the publisher of the Daily Sun, South Africa’s biggest newspaper. But it is one of the most ambitious old-media companies anywhere in its move online. It still makes most of its sales—28 billion rand ($3.6 billion) in the year to March—from print and pay-television, but it uses the cash to buy online firms.
Tencent hails from Shenzhen, near Hong Kong. Founded in 1998, it had revenues of $1.8 billion in 2009. Although best known for QQ, a popular instant-messaging service with 567m users, much of its profits come from online games and a virtual currency, called Q coins. Users purchase this with real money and use it to buy digital wares, such as virtual weapons to increase the powers of their avatars.
In Russia DST has seen how quickly social networks can grow: latecomers to the internet, many Russians skipped e-mail and went right to social networks to communicate online.
Kindle no threat to college textbooks
The Amazon Kindle has been a hit with book lovers but is not going over well with students in college classrooms. Professors at seven universities around the nation tested the wireless e-reader in a pilot project over the past year. All reported that although students liked not lugging books around, the Kindle posed significant challenges that sometimes frustrated students and interrupted studying. "With respect to university courses, the Amazon Kindle is not ready for prime time," said Ted Humphrey, a professor who just wrapped up his pilot project of the Kindle DX at Arizona State University.
Read more here.
Read more here.
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