They swear like sailors, but boy, they’re smart.” That’s how NPR strategist Andy Carvin described the 1.4 million fans who comment and share stories through NPR’s Facebook page. The page — originally created by an NPR enthusiast from the UK — is one of the more popular media outlets on Facebook.
Carvin talked about NPR’s approach to Facebook last night as part of an ONA-sponsored media event at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto.
“We have better comments on Facebook than on our own site,” Carvin said, in response to an audience question about whether NPR was reluctant to divert audience engagement from its own homepage to an outside site.
In part, Carvin said, that’s because comments on NPR.org tend to be highly political and polarized, and because comments sections are also constantly beset by spammers.
But Carvin also emphasized the importance of audience expectations. “They still see our site as mainly dedicated to consuming news,” he said. Facebook, on the other hand, is a web venue in which people are used to chatting with their family and friends. The result, Carvin said, is that conversations on NPR’s Facebook page can become surprisingly intimate.
The referral traffic on NPR’s Facebook page has grown from 1.5 million to 4.5 million pageviews a month, Carvin said. While that traffic used to result largely from fans clicking on links that NPR posted, now as much as half of it comes from links that fans decide to share themselves.
NPR’s Facebook page is a complement to, not a substitute for, other kinds of NPR news consumption.
Read more here.
Thursday, January 20
Tablet Boom in 2011
44.6 million. That's how many tablet computers will be shipped worldwide this year - more than 2.5 times as many as in 2010, according to estimates from research firm IDC.
Read more at the San Francisco Chronicle
Read more at the San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, January 19
Lowest-Selling Debut Album of All-time
This week, Cake has the No. 1 album on the Billboard chart. (BuzzFeed says it) made it there with the lowest-selling debut album of all-time: “Showroom Of Compassion” sold just 44,000 copies in its first week. In March of 2000, 'N Sync set the record for the biggest-selling debut of all time with “No Strings Attached,” which moved 2.4 million copies.
Under Pay Model, Little Effect Seen on Papers’ Web Traffic
Steven Brill’s Journalism Online experiment, which developed a system that allows newspapers to charge their most regular online visitors, has analyzed its preliminary data and found on average that advertising revenue and overall traffic did not decline significantly despite predictions otherwise. The sample size of Journalism Online’s data was small — about two dozen mostly small- and medium-size papers that had been charging readers for several months — so divining any potential pattern for large newspapers is difficult.
But the initial findings showed that newspapers found success with a pay model by setting a conservative limit for the number of articles visitors could read free each month, and by making clear that most readers would not be affected. L. Gordon Crovitz, a former Wall Street Journal publisher who is helping run the project, said one lesson to be taken from the numbers so far is that readers were willing to pay for some, but not all, content online. Consumers “will pay for the few news brands they really rely on, if they use them a lot,” he said.
Read more at the New York Times
But the initial findings showed that newspapers found success with a pay model by setting a conservative limit for the number of articles visitors could read free each month, and by making clear that most readers would not be affected. L. Gordon Crovitz, a former Wall Street Journal publisher who is helping run the project, said one lesson to be taken from the numbers so far is that readers were willing to pay for some, but not all, content online. Consumers “will pay for the few news brands they really rely on, if they use them a lot,” he said.
Read more at the New York Times
Monday, January 17
Court: Filmmaker Not a Journalist
Documentary Filmmaker Doesn’t Qualify for a Journalist’s Privilege, a Court Says
A federal appeals court has ruled that Joe Berlinger, a filmmaker who was ordered to hand over footage from his 2009 documentary “Crude” to the Chevron Corporation, cannot invoke a journalist’s privilege in refusing to do so because his work does not constitute an act of independent reporting.
Mr. Berlinger’s film chronicles a lawsuit brought by a group of Ecuadoreans who say that the Lago Agrio oil field — initially run by Texaco, which Chevron now owns — polluted their water supply, and he has been locked in a legal battle against Chevron for months.
In May, the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that Mr. Berlinger would have to give his raw footage, about 600 hours of it, to Chevron. The company said the material would show an improper collaboration between the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the Ecuadorean lawsuit and an expert appointed by the Ecuadorean court as a neutral party.
Read more at the New York Times
A federal appeals court has ruled that Joe Berlinger, a filmmaker who was ordered to hand over footage from his 2009 documentary “Crude” to the Chevron Corporation, cannot invoke a journalist’s privilege in refusing to do so because his work does not constitute an act of independent reporting.
Mr. Berlinger’s film chronicles a lawsuit brought by a group of Ecuadoreans who say that the Lago Agrio oil field — initially run by Texaco, which Chevron now owns — polluted their water supply, and he has been locked in a legal battle against Chevron for months.
In May, the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that Mr. Berlinger would have to give his raw footage, about 600 hours of it, to Chevron. The company said the material would show an improper collaboration between the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the Ecuadorean lawsuit and an expert appointed by the Ecuadorean court as a neutral party.
Read more at the New York Times
AOL Bets on Hyperlocal News
Over the last year and a half, AOL, the former Internet colossus, has spent tens of millions of dollars to build local news sites across the country through Patch.com. Patch has already set up shop in nearly 800 towns. By the end of this year, it expects that to be in 1,000 — each one with an editor and a team of freelance writers. Traffic on individual sites is low; former editors say that the average post attracts just 100 views and that they considered 500 page views a wild success. But the overall traffic is growing quickly. In December, Patch had just over three million unique visitors, 80 times that of a year earlier, according to comScore. Yet over the years, a number of so-called hyperlocal news sites have failed, and the idea is largely unproved financially. For example, Backfence, a hyperlocal forerunner that invited readers to contribute articles, closed after it was unable to attract enough users and advertising.
Patch’s competitors also include Examiner.com, a news company of local sites that is controlled by the investor Philip F. Anschutz, as well as neighborhood news blogs. Patch has hired hundreds of journalists, each equipped with a laptop computer, digital camera, cellphone and police scanner. The journalists, which AOL calls local editors, generally earn $38,000 to $45,000 annually, and work from home. They are expected to publish up to five items daily — short articles, slide shows or video — in addition to overseeing freelance writers.
Patch’s competitors also include Examiner.com, a news company of local sites that is controlled by the investor Philip F. Anschutz, as well as neighborhood news blogs. Patch has hired hundreds of journalists, each equipped with a laptop computer, digital camera, cellphone and police scanner. The journalists, which AOL calls local editors, generally earn $38,000 to $45,000 annually, and work from home. They are expected to publish up to five items daily — short articles, slide shows or video — in addition to overseeing freelance writers.
But several plagiarism cases have tarnished Patch during its brief history. One journalist posted a photo from a rival site, and then denied it, while two freelancers published articles that were at least partly copied from other sources. A person familiar with the matter, who could not speak on the record about personnel matters, said they were all fired.
Read more at the New York Times.
For Magazines, a Bitter Pill in iPad
The (magazine) industry is discovering a lesson already learned by music labels and Hollywood studios: Apple may offer new opportunities with its devices, but it exacts a heavy toll. Magazine publishers argue in particular that limiting magazine sales on the iPad to single issues (except in a handful of cases) has hamstrung publishers from fully capitalizing on a new and lucrative business model.
“If you look at the Apple store,” said David Carey, president of Hearst Magazines, which offers five publications on the iPad, “the most common reason that people give an app a low rating is that it lacks a subscription option. They want to subscribe, and they don’t like the idea of paying $4.99 a month.”
Many applications cost almost as much as a printed copy of a magazine, a difficult concept for consumers to get their heads around.
In addition to limiting magazine sales to single issues, Apple has declined to share consumer data, meaning the Hearsts, Condé Nasts and Time Incs. of the publishing world know nothing about the people who are buying their digital magazines.
While they are far from writing off the iPad, publishers are eagerly awaiting the development of new tablet technologies from Google, BlackBerry and others that could at least give them some leverage.
Tablets, they believe, offer magazines a do-over in digital form. The picture quality can be far better on a tablet than on a computer screen; the ability to create multimedia, interactive storytelling is greater; and there are more opportunities for advertisers to innovate.
Read more at the New York Times.
“If you look at the Apple store,” said David Carey, president of Hearst Magazines, which offers five publications on the iPad, “the most common reason that people give an app a low rating is that it lacks a subscription option. They want to subscribe, and they don’t like the idea of paying $4.99 a month.”
Many applications cost almost as much as a printed copy of a magazine, a difficult concept for consumers to get their heads around.
In addition to limiting magazine sales to single issues, Apple has declined to share consumer data, meaning the Hearsts, Condé Nasts and Time Incs. of the publishing world know nothing about the people who are buying their digital magazines.
While they are far from writing off the iPad, publishers are eagerly awaiting the development of new tablet technologies from Google, BlackBerry and others that could at least give them some leverage.
Tablets, they believe, offer magazines a do-over in digital form. The picture quality can be far better on a tablet than on a computer screen; the ability to create multimedia, interactive storytelling is greater; and there are more opportunities for advertisers to innovate.
Read more at the New York Times.
Tuesday, January 11
Broadcasting Still Top Information Source In Emergencies
New media helped connect in the aid and recovery effort following last year's devastating earthquake in Haiti, but radio remained the most effective communications tool, though it proved even more effective in partnership with some of those new technologies. That is according to a just-released report from the Knight Foundation.
While interactive maps, crowd-sourcing information, texting and handheld GPS devices all played a part in the effort, the report cautions against calling it a new media success story, citing the fact that there was a lack of coordination and understanding of just how to use some of the new tools, given that it was a new experience for the new media.
"As in past crises around the world," Knight said, "radio continued to be the most effective tool for serving the information needs of the local population."
That said, Mark Frohardit, VP of humanitarian programs for Internews, which teamed with Knight on the study, said that some of those new technologies enhanced the effectiveness and reach of radio.
Read more at Broadcasting & Cable
While interactive maps, crowd-sourcing information, texting and handheld GPS devices all played a part in the effort, the report cautions against calling it a new media success story, citing the fact that there was a lack of coordination and understanding of just how to use some of the new tools, given that it was a new experience for the new media.
"As in past crises around the world," Knight said, "radio continued to be the most effective tool for serving the information needs of the local population."
That said, Mark Frohardit, VP of humanitarian programs for Internews, which teamed with Knight on the study, said that some of those new technologies enhanced the effectiveness and reach of radio.
Read more at Broadcasting & Cable
Sunday, January 9
Split Over Revenue Models
Practically every major publisher is rushing to get their publications on the iPad (and a seemingly endless array of other handheld devices) -- but not everyone agrees on exactly how they are going to make money from digital distribution.
At least that's what a new survey from Harrison Group and Zinio suggests. The survey of 476 publishing industry professionals found that 74% were already engaged in creating and distributing digital versions of their publications, with slightly less than half -- 43% -- maintaining separate print and digital operations.
A separate, parallel survey of consumers found that they placed the highest priority on being able to freely share content; they also expect to be able to view (and share) digital publications across multiple devices, including smartphones, tablets, e-readers, and the like.
Whereas 74% of publishers believe subscriptions are still the way to go with digital products, just 13% of consumers agreed; the other 87% of consumers were split among several options, including unlimited access at a set price (33%), single-copy sales (25%), micropayments for individual items and articles (16%), and prepaid credit plans (14%).
Read more at Media Post
At least that's what a new survey from Harrison Group and Zinio suggests. The survey of 476 publishing industry professionals found that 74% were already engaged in creating and distributing digital versions of their publications, with slightly less than half -- 43% -- maintaining separate print and digital operations.
A separate, parallel survey of consumers found that they placed the highest priority on being able to freely share content; they also expect to be able to view (and share) digital publications across multiple devices, including smartphones, tablets, e-readers, and the like.
Whereas 74% of publishers believe subscriptions are still the way to go with digital products, just 13% of consumers agreed; the other 87% of consumers were split among several options, including unlimited access at a set price (33%), single-copy sales (25%), micropayments for individual items and articles (16%), and prepaid credit plans (14%).
Read more at Media Post
Saturday, January 8
Open Govt. Initiatives
Online access to government data is not meeting the needs or expectations of the general public, a survey conducted by data aggregator Socrata found.
The study found that there is an overwhelming belief that open records should be available online, with 92.6% of government employees endorsing this idea. However, the survey found that only 23.8% of governments have launched a data site.
The study suggests that the general public do not want to simply download files. Sixty-three percent of respondents said they would prefer to be able to browse and interact with the information online. Only 16% preferred to download information.
Read more here
The study found that there is an overwhelming belief that open records should be available online, with 92.6% of government employees endorsing this idea. However, the survey found that only 23.8% of governments have launched a data site.
The study suggests that the general public do not want to simply download files. Sixty-three percent of respondents said they would prefer to be able to browse and interact with the information online. Only 16% preferred to download information.
Read more here
The Ted Williams Story For Marketers
Ted Williams (now known everywhere as "The Man With The Golden Voice") demonstrates in vitro just how efficiently the Web can digest an event and amplify it.
We love this notion that you can be in dog shit one day and turn around and be a superstar in a week. YouTube is the hardware. The software is the idea that the individual counts -- that the individual matters. And that a person's idea belongs to that person.
Scott Monty, Ford's digital and multimedia communications manager, says that while there's a "flavor of the month" zeitgeist to the Ted Williams phenom, it's a minute-and-a-half event people identify with. "People love a good story. As marketers, we need to hone our own storytelling."
Monty says that given where Williams has been, there's a certain amount of risk, but "There's inherent risk in anything marketers do because we don't have the same control we had. Brands are in the hands of customers. But I think people want to see him succeed; people love a turnaround."
Read more at Media Post
We love this notion that you can be in dog shit one day and turn around and be a superstar in a week. YouTube is the hardware. The software is the idea that the individual counts -- that the individual matters. And that a person's idea belongs to that person.
Scott Monty, Ford's digital and multimedia communications manager, says that while there's a "flavor of the month" zeitgeist to the Ted Williams phenom, it's a minute-and-a-half event people identify with. "People love a good story. As marketers, we need to hone our own storytelling."
Monty says that given where Williams has been, there's a certain amount of risk, but "There's inherent risk in anything marketers do because we don't have the same control we had. Brands are in the hands of customers. But I think people want to see him succeed; people love a turnaround."
Read more at Media Post
Friday, January 7
Newspaper Removes ‘homeless voice’ YouTube Clip
The YouTube video of the homeless man with the golden voice has to be one of the biggest social media hits in local media history. The YouTube clip surpassed 12 million views. Until it was pulled. Today, according to a message on YouTube, the clip has been removed “due to a copyright claim by The Dispatch. ”
What’s fascinating about this story is the role YouTube played in making this story viral in the first place. Nearly all of the social media links pointed to the YouTube clip, not to Dispatch.com, and YouTube’s own social community helped amplify the volume. While the content was compelling, the social distribution made it explode. Without it, we wonder if Ted Williams would still be roaming the roadside.
It must be maddening for the Dispatch, but welcome to the new reality of social distribution. For stories that take on a life of their own, the benefit of massive distribution — even if you don’t control it — outweighs the value of walling it off on your own site. Pulling the clip is like a slap in the face to the community that helped make the story explode.
Read more at Lost Remote.
Wednesday, January 5
E-book Sales Hit New Highs
E-book versions of the top six books outsold the print versions last week. And of the top 50 (on USA Today's Bestseller List), 19 had higher e-book than print sales. It's the first time the top-50 list has had more than two titles in which the e-version outsold print.
Whether that will continue and what it means for books and bookstores — the physical kind — isn't clear. Michael Cader, founder of Publishers Lunch, a digital newsletter, says: "What's most interesting is what happens next week or over the next month. About 3 million to 5 million e-readers were activated last week. Will the people who got them keep downloading e-books, and at what rate?"
Read more at USA Today.
Whether that will continue and what it means for books and bookstores — the physical kind — isn't clear. Michael Cader, founder of Publishers Lunch, a digital newsletter, says: "What's most interesting is what happens next week or over the next month. About 3 million to 5 million e-readers were activated last week. Will the people who got them keep downloading e-books, and at what rate?"
Read more at USA Today.
Tuesday, January 4
Facebook's Russian Campaign
There are plenty of big markets where Mark Zuckerberg's creation isn't dominant. In Japan, Facebook doesn't rank in the top three, and the site isn't much of a force in Brazil or China, two populous countries where Internet usage is off the charts.
The outlook for Facebook in Russia may be more promising, despite the popularity of homegrown social network sites. Facebook officially launched its site in April and only ranks No. 5 so far, according to Internet tracker comScore, but its growth has been impressive.
Read more at Business Week.
The outlook for Facebook in Russia may be more promising, despite the popularity of homegrown social network sites. Facebook officially launched its site in April and only ranks No. 5 so far, according to Internet tracker comScore, but its growth has been impressive.
Read more at Business Week.
Monday, January 3
TV Viewing Up
Americans watched more television than ever in 2010, according to the Nielsen Company. Total viewing of broadcast networks and basic cable channels rose about 1 percent for the year, to an average of 34 hours per person per week.
Despite a vast oil spill and a midterm election, all of the cable news channels posted declines from 2009. The Fox News Channel remained the most popular of the group by far.
Read more at the New York Times
Despite a vast oil spill and a midterm election, all of the cable news channels posted declines from 2009. The Fox News Channel remained the most popular of the group by far.
Read more at the New York Times
2010: The Decade That Killed (Newspaper) Classifieds
The much-publicized woes of the newspaper industry are due, in large part, to the collapse of classified advertising revenues, and 2010 may well have been the year that buried them for good.
Wherever you looked -- real estate, the job market, the auto industry -- the news was bad, not to say disastrous. Combine that with the secular shift to online classifieds, and you have a perfect storm of adverse business conditions.
Classifieds used to be a mainstay of the newspaper business, reflecting their once-dominant position in local media markets. In 2000, classifieds contributed $19.6 billion or 40% of total newspaper ad revenues of $48.7 billion, according to the Newspaper Association of America.
But beginning in 2006, the market begin softening noticeably, due to competition from free online classifieds offered by sites like Craigslist, compounded by the bursting of the real-estate bubble.
From $2.14 billion in the third quarter of 2000, employment classified revenue has fallen a breathtaking 91% to just $185 million in the third quarter of 2010. From a peak of $1.35 billion in the third quarter of 2006, real estate fell 78% to just $302 million in the same period this year. Meantime, automotive plunged from a peak of $1.22 billion in the third quarter of 2003 to $307 million this year -- a 75% decline.
Read more at Media Post
Wherever you looked -- real estate, the job market, the auto industry -- the news was bad, not to say disastrous. Combine that with the secular shift to online classifieds, and you have a perfect storm of adverse business conditions.
Classifieds used to be a mainstay of the newspaper business, reflecting their once-dominant position in local media markets. In 2000, classifieds contributed $19.6 billion or 40% of total newspaper ad revenues of $48.7 billion, according to the Newspaper Association of America.
But beginning in 2006, the market begin softening noticeably, due to competition from free online classifieds offered by sites like Craigslist, compounded by the bursting of the real-estate bubble.
From $2.14 billion in the third quarter of 2000, employment classified revenue has fallen a breathtaking 91% to just $185 million in the third quarter of 2010. From a peak of $1.35 billion in the third quarter of 2006, real estate fell 78% to just $302 million in the same period this year. Meantime, automotive plunged from a peak of $1.22 billion in the third quarter of 2003 to $307 million this year -- a 75% decline.
Read more at Media Post
How a small Arkansas TV station uses Facebook, Twitter to drive audience to newscasts, website
KAIT-TV in Jonesboro, Ark., is a small station with a large social media presence.
The station, which is in the 180th television market (out of 210) in a metro area with a population somewhere around 150,000, has found ways to gain about the same number of fans and followers as some of the country’s top newspapers.
The station had 19,447 Facebook fans and 2,828 Twitter followers the last I checked. By comparison, a new Bivings Group study found that the top 100 newspapers (by circulation) have an average of 21,214 Facebook fans.
News Director Hatton Weeks has four suggestions for news organizations that want to improve their social media presence.
1. Get everyone involved.
2. At a minimum, post items four or five hours before the news begins to push to the newscast.
3. Find an internal social media guru, and let that person lead the charge.
4. Make sure your website is updated often, and the stories also get shared on the appropriate social media.
Our audience is engaged more with our product, their voice is heard, and they feel like they’re part of the news.
Read more at Poynter
The station, which is in the 180th television market (out of 210) in a metro area with a population somewhere around 150,000, has found ways to gain about the same number of fans and followers as some of the country’s top newspapers.
The station had 19,447 Facebook fans and 2,828 Twitter followers the last I checked. By comparison, a new Bivings Group study found that the top 100 newspapers (by circulation) have an average of 21,214 Facebook fans.
News Director Hatton Weeks has four suggestions for news organizations that want to improve their social media presence.
1. Get everyone involved.
2. At a minimum, post items four or five hours before the news begins to push to the newscast.
3. Find an internal social media guru, and let that person lead the charge.
4. Make sure your website is updated often, and the stories also get shared on the appropriate social media.
Our audience is engaged more with our product, their voice is heard, and they feel like they’re part of the news.
Read more at Poynter
TV Apps
The Consumer Electronics Show gets underway in Las Vegas later this week, and while new tablets, phones and 3D television sets will grab much of the attention, the biggest development in the television business will be the dramatic surge of internet-connected sets and TV apps.
Jason Oxman, senior vice president of the Consumer Electronics Association. “I think you’ll be hard pressed to find a TV on the show floor that doesn’t have these kind of apps built in.”
Read more here.
Jason Oxman, senior vice president of the Consumer Electronics Association. “I think you’ll be hard pressed to find a TV on the show floor that doesn’t have these kind of apps built in.”
Read more here.
Everybody's a Journalist at Basetrack’s Facebook page
Three photojournalists embedded with the First Battalion in Afghanistan are posting dispatches on Basetrack.org, a cool map-based site funded by a Knight Foundation Grant. While the site is terrific, the project’s Facebook page has turned into a unique experience of its own — a sort of collaborative journalism crossed with a support group.
Basetrack updates are mixed with posts from family members. Some post photos, others ask for them, and Basetrack photographers respond in comments. The response has been overwhelming.
And all because Basetrack decided to set their wall to “Basetrack+others”, allowing anyone to post to a tight-knit community of military families, desperate to hear any development from the deserts and mountains of Afghanistan.
Read more here.
Apple's Cloud
Apple’s upcoming year is expected to feature upgrades to its existing product line, but the company is expected to prep a bevy of cloud services running into 2012. According to Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, Apple won’t enter new categories in 2011. This year will be about harvesting gains from the iPad, iPhone, App Store, Mac and iPod and upgrades. In 2011, Apple is expected to launch the iPhone at Verizon in the March quarter with iTunes cloud services also due this year. Going into 2012, Apple will have the stage set for cloud services.
Read more here.
Read more here.
Sunday, January 2
Ad Recovery
WHEN Stephen Colbert wanted to raise money for the recovery efforts after the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, he worked with a behemoth technology company, Microsoft. Every time Mr. Colbert said the word “Bing” on the “Colbert Report,” the company donated $2,500 to the Colbert Nation Gulf of America Fund. That effort at brand integration raised $100,000 for the charity and increased recognition for Microsoft’s search engine.
Television advertising, whether through integrated-brand campaigns like Microsoft’s or otherwise, has been one of the bright spots as the advertising industry begins to recover from the devastating effects of the recession and marketers experiment with a variety of new ways to reach the audience.
This year is likely to bring rapid growth for spending on ads in new media, resumed growth for spending on television advertising and struggles for print media, particularly newspapers.
According to data from Kantar Media, advertising expenditures for all media for the first half of 2010 increased 5.7 percent from 2009 to about $63.6 billion. Television advertising led the pack in spending because of an increase in demand from the automotive and retail markets, and political advertising.
Spending on advertising in local newspapers showed a significant decline over the last 19 quarters, with a 4.6 percent decrease for the first half of 2010 compared with the same period in 2009, according to data from Kantar Media.
For the first time, advertisers are projected to have spent more on online ads than on newspaper ads in 2010, according to data by eMarketer.
Read more at the New York Times.
Television advertising, whether through integrated-brand campaigns like Microsoft’s or otherwise, has been one of the bright spots as the advertising industry begins to recover from the devastating effects of the recession and marketers experiment with a variety of new ways to reach the audience.
This year is likely to bring rapid growth for spending on ads in new media, resumed growth for spending on television advertising and struggles for print media, particularly newspapers.
According to data from Kantar Media, advertising expenditures for all media for the first half of 2010 increased 5.7 percent from 2009 to about $63.6 billion. Television advertising led the pack in spending because of an increase in demand from the automotive and retail markets, and political advertising.
Spending on advertising in local newspapers showed a significant decline over the last 19 quarters, with a 4.6 percent decrease for the first half of 2010 compared with the same period in 2009, according to data from Kantar Media.
For the first time, advertisers are projected to have spent more on online ads than on newspaper ads in 2010, according to data by eMarketer.
Read more at the New York Times.
Saturday, January 1
Tanks in the Cloud
If you count web-based applications and online platforms, (the Cloud) is already huge and will become huger. Forrester predicts that it will grow to nearly $56 billion by 2020. But raw computing services, the core of the cloud, is much smaller—and will not get much bigger. Forrester, reckons it will be worth $4 billion in 2020 (although this has much to do with the fact that even in the cloud, the cost of computer hardware will continue to drop, points out Stefan Ried of Forrester).
Read more at The Economist
Read more at The Economist
Friday, December 31
Age Gap Narrows
The biggest online trend is... certain key internet uses are becoming more uniformly popular across all age groups. These online activities include seeking health information, purchasing products, making travel reservations, and downloading podcasts.
Even in areas that are still dominated by Millennials, older generations are making notable gains. While the youngest generations are still significantly more likely to use social network sites, the fastest growth has come from internet users 74 and older: social network site usage for this oldest cohort has quadrupled since 2008, from 4% to 16%.
Read More at the Pew Research Center
Even in areas that are still dominated by Millennials, older generations are making notable gains. While the youngest generations are still significantly more likely to use social network sites, the fastest growth has come from internet users 74 and older: social network site usage for this oldest cohort has quadrupled since 2008, from 4% to 16%.
Read More at the Pew Research Center
Amazon Sort-of Allows Kindle E-Book Lending
Amazon quietly launched a new feature for its Kindle e-books — the ability to lend them to others for a two-week period. The move mimics functionality already available on Barnes and Nobles’ competing Nook e-reader, but comes with a serious caveat — namely the publisher of the book has to allow it. Like with the Nook, a Kindle user can lend a book they have bought to another Kindle user for two weeks. During that time, the owner can’t read the book.
Read more at Wired
Read more at Wired
Sunday, December 26
Social Media Job Postings Up 600%
A recent study published by SocialMediaInfluence.com shows that 59 of the Fortune 100 companies have at least one employee who works full time in social media. It adds that job postings directly related to social media have soared 600% in the last five years.
Working with the job site Indeed.com. the Social Media Influence report researched online job listings. It found more than 21,000 postings related to social media. In 2005, that number was in the low thousands.
Curtis Hougland, founder of the New York-based marketing and social media firm Attention, warns that just as social media hiring has picked up, the pool of qualified talent has failed to keep pace and the resulting imbalance of supply and demand is a sign of hiring inflation.
Hougland says that demand for social media skills in the corporate world has outstripped the supply of candidates with training in communications and the analytical skills to track the effectiveness of a media campaign. He says this void has been filled by a burgeoning workforce of self-proclaimed social media experts, some of whom are qualified, but many are not.
Remember the dot-com boom-and-bust? After the bubble burst, Internet companies were left with an oversupply of programmers, which had been the hot job of the day. But you rarely hear about programmers going hungry.
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2010/12/the-social-media-sector-is-booming-especially-for-new-jobs.html
Working with the job site Indeed.com. the Social Media Influence report researched online job listings. It found more than 21,000 postings related to social media. In 2005, that number was in the low thousands.
Curtis Hougland, founder of the New York-based marketing and social media firm Attention, warns that just as social media hiring has picked up, the pool of qualified talent has failed to keep pace and the resulting imbalance of supply and demand is a sign of hiring inflation.
Hougland says that demand for social media skills in the corporate world has outstripped the supply of candidates with training in communications and the analytical skills to track the effectiveness of a media campaign. He says this void has been filled by a burgeoning workforce of self-proclaimed social media experts, some of whom are qualified, but many are not.
Remember the dot-com boom-and-bust? After the bubble burst, Internet companies were left with an oversupply of programmers, which had been the hot job of the day. But you rarely hear about programmers going hungry.
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2010/12/the-social-media-sector-is-booming-especially-for-new-jobs.html
Thursday, December 23
Bollywood Actress' Skin is 'Whitened'
Elle magazine has stumbled into a race row after allegedly whitening the skin of a Bollywood actress on its cover.Readers reacted with fury after it was suggested that the fashion magazine might have digitally ‘bleached’ the complexion of Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, a former Miss World who has also starred in Bride & Prejudice and The Pink Panther 2. The 37-year-old appears on the cover of this month’s Indian edition of the magazine. However, her skin appears to be several shades lighter than her normal colour.
Inside the magazine, she is again pictured in a series of shots, all showing her with pale skin.
In September this year, black actress Gabourey Sidibe appeared on the cover of the U.S. magazine with a much paler complexion. On that occasion Elle claimed it had not altered the Precious star’s skin any more than that of the other models photographed alongside her.
Read more at the Daily Mail
Cable TV's Ratings Put Networks on Notice
Nielsen figures show the Big 4 and basic cable gained 1% in 2010 as overall viewing continues to rise to a record 34 hours a week. But the fall season has been less kind: Fox is down 15% and ABC is off 5%, offsetting smaller gains by CBS and NBC.
Few cable series outpace broadcast hits, but increasingly the strongest are beating many of their big-network rivals.
"These are eye-popping numbers you didn't see a few years ago," says Jon Marks, senior VP of research at Turner.
Conversely, CNN continued to plummet, down 34%. Hitless VH1 is off 31%, and Hallmark fell 24%. Even top-rated USA is down 4% from a stellar 2009, while Fox News fell 7%.
Read more at USA Today
Few cable series outpace broadcast hits, but increasingly the strongest are beating many of their big-network rivals.
"These are eye-popping numbers you didn't see a few years ago," says Jon Marks, senior VP of research at Turner.
Conversely, CNN continued to plummet, down 34%. Hitless VH1 is off 31%, and Hallmark fell 24%. Even top-rated USA is down 4% from a stellar 2009, while Fox News fell 7%.
Read more at USA Today
Tuesday, December 21
Video Games Boost Brain Power
Daphne Bavelier is professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester. She studies young people playing action video games. Having now conducted more than 20 studies on the topic, Bavelier says... Her studies show that video gamers show improved skills in vision, attention and certain aspects of cognition. And these skills are not just gaming skills, but real-world skills. They perform better than non-gamers on certain tests of attention, speed, accuracy, vision and multitasking, says Bavelier.
Vision, for example, is improved in gamers. Specifically, the kind of vision called "contrast sensitivity," that is, the ability to see subtle shades of gray. Gamers, Bavelier has also found, have better attention than non-gamers — they stay focused. They are able to detect, for example, new information coming at them faster. So as a result, they are more efficient.
Read more at NPR
Vision, for example, is improved in gamers. Specifically, the kind of vision called "contrast sensitivity," that is, the ability to see subtle shades of gray. Gamers, Bavelier has also found, have better attention than non-gamers — they stay focused. They are able to detect, for example, new information coming at them faster. So as a result, they are more efficient.
Read more at NPR
Monday, December 20
10 Predictions for the News Media in 2011
In 2011, the focus on mobile will continue to grow with the launch of mobile- and iPad-only news products, but the greater focus for news media in 2011 will be on re-imagining its approach to the open social web. The focus will shift from searchable news to social and share-able news, as social media referrals close the gap on search traffic for more news organizations.
1. Leaks and Journalism: A New Kind of Media Entity
Even if WikiLeaks itself gets shut down, we’re going to see the rise of “leakification” in journalism, and more importantly we’ll see a number of new media entities, not just mirror sites, that will model themselves to serve whistle blowers — WikiLeaks copycats of sorts. Toward the end of this year, we already saw Openleaks, Brusselsleaks, and Tradeleaks.
2. More Media Mergers and Acquisitions
At the tail end of 2010, we saw the acquisition of TechCrunch by AOL and the Newsweek merger with The Daily Beast. In some ways, these moves have been a validation in the value of new media companies and blogs that have built an audience and a business.
3. Tablet-Only and Mobile-First News Companies
In 2010, as news consumption began to shift to mobile devices, we saw news organizations take mobile seriously. Aside from launching mobile apps across various mobile platforms, perhaps the most notable example is News Corp’s plan to launch The Daily, an iPad-only news organization that is set to launch early 2011.
4. Location-Based News Consumption
In 2011, with a continued shift toward mobile news consumption, we’re going to see news organizations implement location-based news features into their mobile apps. And of course if they do not, a startup will enter the market to create a solution to this problem or the likes of Foursquare or another company will begin to pull in geo-tagged content associated with locations as users check in.
5. Social vs. Search
Instead of focusing on search engine optimization (SEO), in 2011 we’ll see social media optimization become a priority at many news organizations, as they continue to see social close the gap on referrals to their sites. Ken Doctor, author of Newsonomics and news industry analyst at Outsell, recently pointed out that social networks have become the fastest growing source of traffic referrals for many news sites.
6. The Death of the ‘Foreign Correspondent’
What we’ve known as the role of the foreign correspondent will largely cease to exist in 2011.
7. The Syndication Standard and the Ultimate Curators
Syndication models will be disrupted in 2011. As Clay Shirky recently predicted, more news outlets will get out of the business of re-running the same story on their site that appeared elsewhere. Though this is generally true, the approach to syndication will vary based on the outlet. The reality is that the content market has become highly fragmented, and if content is king, then niche is certainly queen.
8. Social Storytelling Becomes Reality
What if Facebook had a news landing page of the trending news content that users are discussing? Or if Twitter filtered its content to bring you the most relevant and curated tweets around news events?
9. News Organizations Get Smarter With Social Media
In 2011, we’re going to see more news organizations decentralize their social media strategy from one person to multiple editors and journalists, which will create an integrated and more streamlined approach. It won’t just be one editor updating or managing a news organization’s process, but instead news organizations will work toward a model in which each journalist serves as his or her own community manager.
10. The Rise of Interactive TV
In 2011, the accessibility to Internet TV will transform television as we know it in not only the way content is presented, but it will also disrupt the dominance traditional TV has had for years in capturing ad dollars. The problem of being able to have a conversation with others about a show you’re watching has existed for some time, and users have mostly reacted to the problem by hosting informal conversations via Facebook threads and Twitter hashtags. Companies like Twitter are recognizing the problem and finding ways to make the television experience interactive. That doesn’t mean that flat screens are going away; instead, they will only become interconnected to the web and its many content offerings.
Read more at Mashable
1. Leaks and Journalism: A New Kind of Media Entity
Even if WikiLeaks itself gets shut down, we’re going to see the rise of “leakification” in journalism, and more importantly we’ll see a number of new media entities, not just mirror sites, that will model themselves to serve whistle blowers — WikiLeaks copycats of sorts. Toward the end of this year, we already saw Openleaks, Brusselsleaks, and Tradeleaks.
2. More Media Mergers and Acquisitions
At the tail end of 2010, we saw the acquisition of TechCrunch by AOL and the Newsweek merger with The Daily Beast. In some ways, these moves have been a validation in the value of new media companies and blogs that have built an audience and a business.
3. Tablet-Only and Mobile-First News Companies
In 2010, as news consumption began to shift to mobile devices, we saw news organizations take mobile seriously. Aside from launching mobile apps across various mobile platforms, perhaps the most notable example is News Corp’s plan to launch The Daily, an iPad-only news organization that is set to launch early 2011.
4. Location-Based News Consumption
In 2011, with a continued shift toward mobile news consumption, we’re going to see news organizations implement location-based news features into their mobile apps. And of course if they do not, a startup will enter the market to create a solution to this problem or the likes of Foursquare or another company will begin to pull in geo-tagged content associated with locations as users check in.
5. Social vs. Search
Instead of focusing on search engine optimization (SEO), in 2011 we’ll see social media optimization become a priority at many news organizations, as they continue to see social close the gap on referrals to their sites. Ken Doctor, author of Newsonomics and news industry analyst at Outsell, recently pointed out that social networks have become the fastest growing source of traffic referrals for many news sites.
6. The Death of the ‘Foreign Correspondent’
What we’ve known as the role of the foreign correspondent will largely cease to exist in 2011.
7. The Syndication Standard and the Ultimate Curators
Syndication models will be disrupted in 2011. As Clay Shirky recently predicted, more news outlets will get out of the business of re-running the same story on their site that appeared elsewhere. Though this is generally true, the approach to syndication will vary based on the outlet. The reality is that the content market has become highly fragmented, and if content is king, then niche is certainly queen.
8. Social Storytelling Becomes Reality
What if Facebook had a news landing page of the trending news content that users are discussing? Or if Twitter filtered its content to bring you the most relevant and curated tweets around news events?
9. News Organizations Get Smarter With Social Media
In 2011, we’re going to see more news organizations decentralize their social media strategy from one person to multiple editors and journalists, which will create an integrated and more streamlined approach. It won’t just be one editor updating or managing a news organization’s process, but instead news organizations will work toward a model in which each journalist serves as his or her own community manager.
10. The Rise of Interactive TV
In 2011, the accessibility to Internet TV will transform television as we know it in not only the way content is presented, but it will also disrupt the dominance traditional TV has had for years in capturing ad dollars. The problem of being able to have a conversation with others about a show you’re watching has existed for some time, and users have mostly reacted to the problem by hosting informal conversations via Facebook threads and Twitter hashtags. Companies like Twitter are recognizing the problem and finding ways to make the television experience interactive. That doesn’t mean that flat screens are going away; instead, they will only become interconnected to the web and its many content offerings.
Read more at Mashable
Saturday, December 18
The Mission of Journalism
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
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
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
Saturday, December 11
Metering the News
The big trend in the media (in 2011) will be the return of the paywall, as an increasing number of websites ask users to pay. The most prominent example will be the New York Times, which will switch on a new paywall in January or February, but by April several dozen other American newspapers will have followed suit, says Ken Doctor, a media-industry analyst and the author of “Newsonomics”.
This is, in part, a response to the iPad. Publishers are keen to exploit readers’ apparent willingness to pay for content on mobile devices (they pay for music, games and other apps, after all). But it is difficult to justify charging for content on a tablet computer if you are also giving it away on the web.
A deeper reason for the sudden appearance of paywalls in 2011 is that publishers are at last admitting that web-based advertising revenue will not cover their costs, and so they will have to start charging readers.
At one extreme are very strict paywalls like that of the London Times: only paying subscribers are allowed to see articles, which are even hidden from internet search engines. At the other extreme are newspapers that give everything away and allow anyone to read anything, in order to attract as many readers (and hence advertisers) as possible. There is lots of middle ground. The favoured model is now a “metered” paywall that lets users read a limited number of articles without paying, but asks for payment if they go beyond that number. The advantage of this approach, which was pioneered by the Financial Times and is being adopted by The Economist, is that publishers can “turn the dial” to adjust how many free articles readers are allowed to see, depending on the market conditions.
That does not mean that paywalls will save newspapers, however. A study of British newspapers by Enders Analysis, a consultancy, found that online subscribers produce less than one-third as much revenue as print subscribers.
Read more at The Economist
Curl up with a Good Screen
If 2010 was the year e-readers and tablet computers entered the mainstream, 2011 will be when the electronic reading vessel truly disrupts its content. On multipurpose mobile devices, from smart-phones to the iPad and its emerging competitors, the book will cease to be a book. It will be an “app”.
E-readers and computing tablets will continue their impressive momentum. The number of Americans owning a dedicated reading device trebled in 2010 to 11m, and will pass 15m in 2011, according to Forrester Research. The iPad took off even faster than the iPhone did a few years back. In 2010 Apple sold about 15m of its sexy touch-screen devices, prompting real competition: e-readers suddenly became affordable. Amazon slashed the price of its Kindle. Barnes & Noble and Sony followed suit.
This price war will continue in 2011.
The year will probably see the launch of Google Editions, the third big e-book retailer after Amazon and Apple.
Yet the printed book will never entirely die, as devotees of vinyl and film have shown. Nor should it: human knowledge is too precious to consign to the ether alone.
Read more at The Economist
E-readers and computing tablets will continue their impressive momentum. The number of Americans owning a dedicated reading device trebled in 2010 to 11m, and will pass 15m in 2011, according to Forrester Research. The iPad took off even faster than the iPhone did a few years back. In 2010 Apple sold about 15m of its sexy touch-screen devices, prompting real competition: e-readers suddenly became affordable. Amazon slashed the price of its Kindle. Barnes & Noble and Sony followed suit.
This price war will continue in 2011.
The year will probably see the launch of Google Editions, the third big e-book retailer after Amazon and Apple.
Yet the printed book will never entirely die, as devotees of vinyl and film have shown. Nor should it: human knowledge is too precious to consign to the ether alone.
Read more at The Economist
Friday, December 10
Survey of iPad Use for News
The Reynolds Journalism Institute (RJI) recently completed the first phase of a multi-year research project to understand how Apple iPad users consume news content.
Based on the responses gathered from more than 1,600 iPad users, here is what RJI have learned:
• Keeping up with news and current events is their most popular main use
- Using the iPad to follow breaking news reports and current events is the most popular use for the device, with 84.4% of respondents saying this is one of their main uses. Next according to popularity: leisure reading of books, newspapers and magazines (81.5%); browsing the Web (80.8%); and e-mail (75.8%).
- More than three quarters (78.6%) of the users spent at least 30 minutes during a typical day consuming news on their iPad. Respondents spent a similar amount of time with other media at a much lower rate: television (52.5%), personal computers (50.7%), printed Sunday newspapers (30.7%), printed weekday newspapers (18.8%).
- Nearly half (48.9%) of the respondents said they spent an hour or more during a typical day consuming news on their iPad.
• iPad news consumers prefer newspaper apps to newspaper websites; less likely to use print
• Low prices and ease of use are key factors in users' decisions to purchase newspaper subscriptions on the iPad
Read the full report here.
Based on the responses gathered from more than 1,600 iPad users, here is what RJI have learned:
• Keeping up with news and current events is their most popular main use
- Using the iPad to follow breaking news reports and current events is the most popular use for the device, with 84.4% of respondents saying this is one of their main uses. Next according to popularity: leisure reading of books, newspapers and magazines (81.5%); browsing the Web (80.8%); and e-mail (75.8%).
- More than three quarters (78.6%) of the users spent at least 30 minutes during a typical day consuming news on their iPad. Respondents spent a similar amount of time with other media at a much lower rate: television (52.5%), personal computers (50.7%), printed Sunday newspapers (30.7%), printed weekday newspapers (18.8%).
- Nearly half (48.9%) of the respondents said they spent an hour or more during a typical day consuming news on their iPad.
• iPad news consumers prefer newspaper apps to newspaper websites; less likely to use print
• Low prices and ease of use are key factors in users' decisions to purchase newspaper subscriptions on the iPad
Read the full report here.
Thursday, December 9
The Power of Television
The robustness of the ardor for television ads is startling some forecasters, who had believed that the intensifying demand for online advertising would cut into sales for TV as it has for, say, newspapers. That does not seem to be the case, even as they point to a sharp climb in spending for Internet ads as another reason the recovery will proceed — and even gain momentum — into next year.
“The success story, perhaps surprisingly, has been television,” said Steve King, chief executive at the ZenithOptimedia media division of the Publicis Groupe. TV is, by his estimates, still gaining share of the overall advertising market, he added, to 40.7 percent in 2010, from 37 percent in 2005.
Brian Wieser, global director for forecasting at Magna Global, part of the Mediabrands division of the Interpublic Group of Companies... said he foresaw no dire effects on traditional television from the growth of what is known as over-the-top TV, which is delivery of programming through the Internet by means like the new Google TV, developed by Google, Intel, Logitech and Sony.
There could be 20 million to 25 million people watching TV that way by 2020, he added. That would be a fraction of those viewers still watching TV through cable systems, satellite or even over the air.
“Despite all the other viewing options, most people still like watching TV at home on a TV set,” said Steve Sternberg, the longtime television research analyst who writes a blog, The Sternberg Report.
Read more at the New York Times
“The success story, perhaps surprisingly, has been television,” said Steve King, chief executive at the ZenithOptimedia media division of the Publicis Groupe. TV is, by his estimates, still gaining share of the overall advertising market, he added, to 40.7 percent in 2010, from 37 percent in 2005.
Brian Wieser, global director for forecasting at Magna Global, part of the Mediabrands division of the Interpublic Group of Companies... said he foresaw no dire effects on traditional television from the growth of what is known as over-the-top TV, which is delivery of programming through the Internet by means like the new Google TV, developed by Google, Intel, Logitech and Sony.
There could be 20 million to 25 million people watching TV that way by 2020, he added. That would be a fraction of those viewers still watching TV through cable systems, satellite or even over the air.
“Despite all the other viewing options, most people still like watching TV at home on a TV set,” said Steve Sternberg, the longtime television research analyst who writes a blog, The Sternberg Report.
Read more at the New York Times
Wednesday, December 8
The Pivotal Moment
Investors should back people rather than ideas. What’s new is that the cost of starting certain kinds of businesses (especially web-based ones) has fallen, says Bill Sahlman of Harvard Business School. There has been a “remarkable increase in the degree of entrepreneurial experimentation,” he observes. It is easier to launch and test an idea, and to pivot to another if it flops.
Mr Patricof says that today’s entrepreneurs are more mature. Many have been through the start-up process before and are warier of burning up all their cash than they were in the 1990s. Hence their greater propensity to pirouette.
Fail to twirl and your start-up may become one of the “living dead”, warns Eric Ries, a serial entrepreneur and blogger. He writes that pivoting is particularly important if you are what he calls a “lean start-up”. Yet you can have too much of a good thing, he cautions. An entrepreneur can overdo it and become a “compulsive jumper, never picking a single direction long enough to find out if there’s anything there.”
Read more at The Economist
Mr Patricof says that today’s entrepreneurs are more mature. Many have been through the start-up process before and are warier of burning up all their cash than they were in the 1990s. Hence their greater propensity to pirouette.
Fail to twirl and your start-up may become one of the “living dead”, warns Eric Ries, a serial entrepreneur and blogger. He writes that pivoting is particularly important if you are what he calls a “lean start-up”. Yet you can have too much of a good thing, he cautions. An entrepreneur can overdo it and become a “compulsive jumper, never picking a single direction long enough to find out if there’s anything there.”
Read more at The Economist
Tuesday, December 7
Google Launches Online Bookstore
Google’s long awaited e-book-only bookstore, Google eBooks, puts the company in competition with Amazon, Apple and Borders for the burgeoning electronic-book market. The move, limited at the start to U.S. customers only, also marks the first real retail venture for the search and online-advertising behemoth, if you don’t count the Android app market. The company claims that it will have more books in its catalog than any other online bookstore — more than 3 million titles, but only about 200,000 of those are books licensed from publishers. About 2.8 million of the books are books no longer under copyright in the United States that Google has scanned from university libraries as part of its controversial Google Books project. Started in 2004, Google Books has scanned millions of books, mostly without permission from copyright holders, making them searchable online.
Google is seeking to differentiate itself from Amazon and its popular Kindle reader by selling books that can be read on a wide range of devices, from iPhones, iPads and Android-based devices, along with computers running any browser that can use JavaScript. Books can also be read on Barnes and Noble’s Nook and Sony’s E Reader, but not on Amazon’s Kindle — because of compatibility issues with the Adobe copyright management DRM attached to the e-books, Google said.
All of the largest publishers, except for Random House, are opting for a model where the publishers set the price and Google and other retailers are simply acting as their agents. In this model, publishers and Google/retailers roughly split the price.
Read more at Wired
Google is seeking to differentiate itself from Amazon and its popular Kindle reader by selling books that can be read on a wide range of devices, from iPhones, iPads and Android-based devices, along with computers running any browser that can use JavaScript. Books can also be read on Barnes and Noble’s Nook and Sony’s E Reader, but not on Amazon’s Kindle — because of compatibility issues with the Adobe copyright management DRM attached to the e-books, Google said.
All of the largest publishers, except for Random House, are opting for a model where the publishers set the price and Google and other retailers are simply acting as their agents. In this model, publishers and Google/retailers roughly split the price.
Read more at Wired
Saturday, December 4
Viacom Appeals YouTube Ruling
Viacom appealed Friday its unsuccessful $1 billion copyright lawsuit against Google’s YouTube in a case testing the depths of copyright-infringement protection under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. (If the June ruling) survives, is a boon for internet freedom — and a decision that would make it more difficult for rights holders to protect their works. (The judge) ruled that YouTube, which Google purchased in 2006 for $1.8 billion, had no way of knowing whether a video was licensed by the owner, was a “fair use” of the material “or even whether its copyright owner or licensee objects to its posting.” The DMCA’s “safe harbor” privilege comes with another price. The law demands intermediaries such as YouTube to take down content in response to a notice from rights holders, without evaluating the claim for reasonableness or accuracy, or considering the fair use rights of users.
Read more at Wired
Read more at Wired
Friday, December 3
Newspapers' Ad Revs Dip
While other media appear to be embarking on a tentative recovery, the third quarter of 2010 brought no respite for newspapers, which saw total advertising revenues slip 5.4% to $6.1 billion compared to the same period last year. This was due entirely to a 7.1% drop in print advertising revenue, to $5.4 billion. The print decline was only partially offset by a 10.7% increase in digital ad revenue, to $690 million.
Read more at Media Post
Read more at Media Post
Thursday, December 2
Scientific Journalism
The New Yorker has a profile of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. In the article, Assange endorsed the idea of what he calls as “scientific journalism” as the new way of doing journalistic work. He’s asserting that like any scientific study, anyone who makes a claim about something needs to publish the dataset that he or she used in arriving at the said finding.
Read more at Technorati
Read more at Technorati
Charity to give away 1,000,000 books
A UK-based charity plans to give away a million books - 40,000 copies each of twenty-five selected titles - on March 5 next year. If you live in the UK and Ireland you can sign up as a book-giver - 20,000 will be selected and each will receive a box of books to hand out."
Read more here.
Read more here.
Wednesday, December 1
U.S. Mobile Ad Revenues
BIA/Kelsey is releasing a new report that shows that U.S. mobile advertising revenues will grow from $491 million in 2009 to $2.9 billion in 2014. During the forecast period, BIA/Kelsey expects U.S. mobile search ad revenues to grow from $59 million to $1.6 billion, U.S. mobile display ad revenues to grow from $206 million to $803 million, and U.S. mobile SMS ad revenues to grow from $226 million to $562 million.
In terms of the local breakdown, BIA/Kelsey expects U.S. mobile local advertising revenues to grow from $213 million in 2009 to $2.03 billion in 2014. This represents 44 percent of total U.S. mobile ad revenues in 2009, growing to 69 percent in 2014. BIA/Kelsey defines mobile local advertising as ads that are targeted based on a user’s location.
Read more at Tech Crunch.
In terms of the local breakdown, BIA/Kelsey expects U.S. mobile local advertising revenues to grow from $213 million in 2009 to $2.03 billion in 2014. This represents 44 percent of total U.S. mobile ad revenues in 2009, growing to 69 percent in 2014. BIA/Kelsey defines mobile local advertising as ads that are targeted based on a user’s location.
Read more at Tech Crunch.
Google to Launch E-Book Venture
Google Inc. is in the final stages of launching its long-awaited e-book retailing venture, Google Editions. Google Editions hopes to upend the existing e-book market by offering an open, "read anywhere" model that is different from many competitors. Users will be able to buy books directly from Google or from multiple online retailers—including independent bookstores—and add them to an online library tied to a Google account. They will be able to access their Google accounts on most devices with a Web browser, including personal computers, smartphones and tablets.
That's a different approach from Amazon.com Inc., which is estimated to have as much as 65% of the market. Users of its proprietary Kindle device can purchase books only from an Amazon store. Digital book sales are expected to more than triple to $966 million this year, according to Forrester Research, from $301 million in 2009.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal.
That's a different approach from Amazon.com Inc., which is estimated to have as much as 65% of the market. Users of its proprietary Kindle device can purchase books only from an Amazon store. Digital book sales are expected to more than triple to $966 million this year, according to Forrester Research, from $301 million in 2009.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal.
Saturday, November 27
The Web Rewires Brains
The Internet is an interruption system. It seizes our attention only to scramble it. There’s the problem of hypertext and the many different kinds of media coming at us simultaneously. Every time we shift our attention, the brain has to reorient itself, further taxing our mental resources. Many studies have shown that switching between just two tasks can add substantially to our cognitive load, impeding our thinking and increasing the likelihood that we’ll overlook or misinterpret important information. On the Internet, where we generally juggle several tasks, the switching costs pile ever higher. We willingly accept the loss of concentration and focus, the fragmentation of our attention, and the thinning of our thoughts in return for the wealth of compelling, or at least diverting, information we receive.
In a Science article published in early 2009, prominent developmental psychologist Patricia Greenfield reviewed more than 40 studies of the effects of various types of media on intelligence and learning ability. She concluded that “every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others.” Our growing use of the Net and other screen-based technologies, she wrote, has led to the “widespread and sophisticated development of visual-spatial skills.” But those gains go hand in hand with a weakening of our capacity for the kind of “deep processing” that underpins “mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection.”
The ability to scan and browse is as important as the ability to read deeply and think attentively. The problem is that skimming is becoming our dominant mode of thought. Once a means to an end, a way to identify information for further study, it’s becoming an end in itself—our preferred method of both learning and analysis. Dazzled by the Net’s treasures, we are blind to the damage we may be doing to our intellectual lives and even our culture.
We are evolving from cultivators of personal knowledge into hunters and gatherers in the electronic data forest.
From Nicholas Carr's The Shallows. Read more at Wired
In a Science article published in early 2009, prominent developmental psychologist Patricia Greenfield reviewed more than 40 studies of the effects of various types of media on intelligence and learning ability. She concluded that “every medium develops some cognitive skills at the expense of others.” Our growing use of the Net and other screen-based technologies, she wrote, has led to the “widespread and sophisticated development of visual-spatial skills.” But those gains go hand in hand with a weakening of our capacity for the kind of “deep processing” that underpins “mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection.”
The ability to scan and browse is as important as the ability to read deeply and think attentively. The problem is that skimming is becoming our dominant mode of thought. Once a means to an end, a way to identify information for further study, it’s becoming an end in itself—our preferred method of both learning and analysis. Dazzled by the Net’s treasures, we are blind to the damage we may be doing to our intellectual lives and even our culture.
We are evolving from cultivators of personal knowledge into hunters and gatherers in the electronic data forest.
From Nicholas Carr's The Shallows. Read more at Wired
Friday, November 26
The Web Shatters Focus
What kind of brain is the Web giving us? Dozens of studies by psychologists, neurobiologists, and educators point to the same conclusion: When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and superficial learning. Even as the Internet grants us easy access to vast amounts of information, it is turning us into shallower thinkers, literally changing the structure of our brain.
A 2007 scholarly review of hypertext experiments concluded that jumping between digital documents impedes understanding. And if links are bad for concentration and comprehension, it shouldn’t be surprising that more recent research suggests that links surrounded by images, videos, and advertisements could be even worse.
When facts and experiences enter our long-term memory, we are able to weave them into the complex ideas that give richness to our thought. But the passage from working memory to long-term memory also forms a bottleneck in our brain. Whereas long-term memory has an almost unlimited capacity, working memory can hold only a relatively small amount of information at a time. And that short-term storage is fragile: A break in our attention can sweep its contents from our mind.
Imagine filling a bathtub with a thimble; that’s the challenge involved in moving information from working memory into long-term memory. On the Net, we face many information faucets, all going full blast. Our little thimble overflows as we rush from tap to tap. We transfer only a small jumble of drops from different faucets, not a continuous, coherent stream. When the load exceeds our mind’s ability to process and store it, we’re unable to retain the information or to draw connections with other memories.
From Nicholas Carr's The Shallows. Read more at Wired
A 2007 scholarly review of hypertext experiments concluded that jumping between digital documents impedes understanding. And if links are bad for concentration and comprehension, it shouldn’t be surprising that more recent research suggests that links surrounded by images, videos, and advertisements could be even worse.
When facts and experiences enter our long-term memory, we are able to weave them into the complex ideas that give richness to our thought. But the passage from working memory to long-term memory also forms a bottleneck in our brain. Whereas long-term memory has an almost unlimited capacity, working memory can hold only a relatively small amount of information at a time. And that short-term storage is fragile: A break in our attention can sweep its contents from our mind.
Imagine filling a bathtub with a thimble; that’s the challenge involved in moving information from working memory into long-term memory. On the Net, we face many information faucets, all going full blast. Our little thimble overflows as we rush from tap to tap. We transfer only a small jumble of drops from different faucets, not a continuous, coherent stream. When the load exceeds our mind’s ability to process and store it, we’re unable to retain the information or to draw connections with other memories.
From Nicholas Carr's The Shallows. Read more at Wired
Affluent Viewers Love TV
Affluent adults are watching the same amount of TV as they did a year ago, according to a new report. Research shows that individuals in homes with incomes of $100,000-plus watch an average of 17.6 hours a week this year, tied with 2009. However, Internet usage has shown a 12% bump, rising from an average of 22.6 hours a week in 2009 to 25.3 this year, according to the annual Mendelsohn Affluent Survey.
The research also found evidence that TV advertising reaches more adults than other media. Of a projected group of 44.1 million affluent Americans, 38.6 million saw an ad on TV in a six-month period. Magazines were second at 35.5 million. Web sites were fifth at 33.4 million (following direct mail and newspapers).
Read more at Media Post
The research also found evidence that TV advertising reaches more adults than other media. Of a projected group of 44.1 million affluent Americans, 38.6 million saw an ad on TV in a six-month period. Magazines were second at 35.5 million. Web sites were fifth at 33.4 million (following direct mail and newspapers).
Read more at Media Post
Thursday, November 25
Spammers
Spammers are moving onto social-networking sites such as Facebook because they find e-mail increasingly unrewarding. Online-security firms stop more than 98% from reaching its target.
Typical junk mail comes from freelancers who are paid to direct traffic to websites that sell fake pills and counterfeit brands. But fraud and forgery are illegal. Instead of tricking consumers into a purchase, they are stealing their money directly. Links used to direct the gullible to a site selling counterfeits. Now they install “Trojan” software that ransacks hard drives for bank details and the like.
Nor is Facebook as safe as Mr Zuckerberg would wish. As an experiment, BitDefender, an online-security firm, set up fake profiles on the social network and asked strangers to enter into a digital friendship. They were able to create as many as 100 new friends a day. Offering a profile picture, particularly of a pretty woman, increased their odds. When the firm’s researchers expanded their requests to strangers who shared even one mutual friend, almost half accepted. Worse, a quarter of BitDefender’s new friends clicked on links posted by the firm, even when the destination was obscured.
Read more at The Economist
Typical junk mail comes from freelancers who are paid to direct traffic to websites that sell fake pills and counterfeit brands. But fraud and forgery are illegal. Instead of tricking consumers into a purchase, they are stealing their money directly. Links used to direct the gullible to a site selling counterfeits. Now they install “Trojan” software that ransacks hard drives for bank details and the like.
Nor is Facebook as safe as Mr Zuckerberg would wish. As an experiment, BitDefender, an online-security firm, set up fake profiles on the social network and asked strangers to enter into a digital friendship. They were able to create as many as 100 new friends a day. Offering a profile picture, particularly of a pretty woman, increased their odds. When the firm’s researchers expanded their requests to strangers who shared even one mutual friend, almost half accepted. Worse, a quarter of BitDefender’s new friends clicked on links posted by the firm, even when the destination was obscured.
Read more at The Economist
Monday, November 22
Dotconomy
PayPal is one of a growing band of online companies dipping into the data they gather in an effort to divine trends in the American economy. Last month Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, revealed that the search-engine giant had developed a “Google Price Index”, based on web-shopping data it holds—though it has yet to decide whether to publish it. While Google flirts with inflation, Intuit monitors employment. The firm, which offers online payroll, tax and other services to small businesses, produces a monthly small-business employment index based on aggregated data from 59,000 of its customers.
Tayloe Stansbury, Intuit’s chief technology officer, says that most of the firm’s data mining is geared to helping its customers. But some economic policymakers are paying attention to web firms’ statistics, for a couple of reasons.
The first is the speed with which the data are generated and crunched. Because web businesses gather data rapidly, their indicators can sometimes identify trends before official statistics. Take the case of Monster Worldwide, an online job service that publishes an index tracking jobs posted on its own and other sites. This fell sharply in 2007 before official numbers showed employment in America weakening
A second reason that web firms’ indicators are gaining popularity is the detailed data that underpin them.
Some economists caution that web firms’ data have big handicaps. Many of the indices have only a short history, which means they are of little value to policymakers interested in long-term trends. And they often measure only online transactions, which limits their appeal.
Read more at The Economist.
Tayloe Stansbury, Intuit’s chief technology officer, says that most of the firm’s data mining is geared to helping its customers. But some economic policymakers are paying attention to web firms’ statistics, for a couple of reasons.
The first is the speed with which the data are generated and crunched. Because web businesses gather data rapidly, their indicators can sometimes identify trends before official statistics. Take the case of Monster Worldwide, an online job service that publishes an index tracking jobs posted on its own and other sites. This fell sharply in 2007 before official numbers showed employment in America weakening
A second reason that web firms’ indicators are gaining popularity is the detailed data that underpin them.
Some economists caution that web firms’ data have big handicaps. Many of the indices have only a short history, which means they are of little value to policymakers interested in long-term trends. And they often measure only online transactions, which limits their appeal.
Read more at The Economist.
Ad Revenue Report
Online advertising revenue increased 17 percent in the 3rd Quarter of 2010 when compared to the same period in 2009. Internet ad revenue set a record in the process hitting $6.4 billion, according to the The Interactive Advertising Bureau.
Read more here.
Read more here.
Sunday, November 21
66 Mexican journalists killed
In the last five years, 66 journalists have been killed and 12 journalists have disappeared in Mexico, according to a report by the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). There has been a conviction in only 10% of the cases.
Saturday, November 20
Habits of Online Newspaper Readers
Less than one percent of all online news views are made on tablet devices. The overwhelming majority of views, 97 percent, still come from desktop computers. Mobile readership came in at a whopping 2 percent. Mobile views peak during the morning commute hours, while iPad readers prefer to view in the evening. And desktop views? Strongest during the middle of the day.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal.
Saturday, November 13
Your own Private Matrix
"Mirror Worlds" is only one of David Gelernter’s big ideas. Another is “lifestreams”—in essence, vast electronic diaries. “Every document you create and every document other people send you is stored in your lifestream,” he wrote in the mid-1990s together with Eric Freeman, who produced a doctoral thesis on the topic. Putting electronic documents in chronological order, they said, would make it easier for people to manage all their digital output and experiences. The latest trend is “life-tracking”. Practitioners keep meticulous digital records of things they do. The first self-trackers were mostly über-geeks fascinated by numbers. But the more recent converts simply want to learn more about themselves, says Gary Wolf, a technology writer and co-founder of a blog called “The Quantified Self”. They want to use technology to help them identify factors that make them depressed, keep them from sleeping or affect their cognitive performance. One self-tracker learned, for instance, that eating a lot of butter allowed him to solve arithmetic problems faster.
Read more at The Economist.
Read more at The Economist.
A Sea of Sensors
RFID tags, which have been used to identify everything from cattle to tombstones, will not be the only type of sensor crowding the planet. Anything and anyone—machines, devices, everyday things and particularly humans—can become a sensor, gathering and transmitting information about the real world.
The concept of the “internet of things” dates back to the late 1980s, when researchers at Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC) in Silicon Valley imagined a future in which the virtual and the real world would be connected. In the following years much of the academic work concentrated on bringing this about with RFID tags, which are reliable, inexpensive and do not require a power supply. When exposed to a radio signal, they use its energy to send back the information they contain, mostly a long number identifying an object.
Now it is “active” tags (which have their own power source) and, even more, wireless sensors that are attracting most of the interest. As with all things electronic, these are becoming ever smaller and more versatile.
Engineers working on sensors think this will eventually lead to “smart dust”—sensors as small as dust particles that can be dispersed on a battlefield, say, to spy on the enemy’s movements. Such devices are still far off, but at Hewlett-Packard (HP) in Silicon Valley a taste—or more precisely, a feel—of things to come is on offer even now. To demonstrate the firm’s new accelerometer, a device the size of a cigarette box that measures the acceleration of an object, Peter Hartwell, a researcher, puts it on his chest, and a graph of his heartbeat appears on a screen beside him. “This sensor”, he proudly explains, “is one thousand times more sensitive than those in your smartphone.”
Read more at The Economist.
The concept of the “internet of things” dates back to the late 1980s, when researchers at Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC) in Silicon Valley imagined a future in which the virtual and the real world would be connected. In the following years much of the academic work concentrated on bringing this about with RFID tags, which are reliable, inexpensive and do not require a power supply. When exposed to a radio signal, they use its energy to send back the information they contain, mostly a long number identifying an object.
Now it is “active” tags (which have their own power source) and, even more, wireless sensors that are attracting most of the interest. As with all things electronic, these are becoming ever smaller and more versatile.
Engineers working on sensors think this will eventually lead to “smart dust”—sensors as small as dust particles that can be dispersed on a battlefield, say, to spy on the enemy’s movements. Such devices are still far off, but at Hewlett-Packard (HP) in Silicon Valley a taste—or more precisely, a feel—of things to come is on offer even now. To demonstrate the firm’s new accelerometer, a device the size of a cigarette box that measures the acceleration of an object, Peter Hartwell, a researcher, puts it on his chest, and a graph of his heartbeat appears on a screen beside him. “This sensor”, he proudly explains, “is one thousand times more sensitive than those in your smartphone.”
Read more at The Economist.
Radio Stabilized, Newspapers Slammed In 3Q
A quick glance over third-quarter results from big publishers and radio groups suggests their fortunes are diverging, following a long period of tandem decline. In short, radio is perking up as the economy enters a slow, tentative recovery -- but newspapers are continuing to suffer losses. Most big radio groups reported single-digit growth in revenues in the third quarter compared to last year -- modest, but noteworthy on the heels of two years of straight declines. Conversely, big newspaper publishers continued to struggle, with single-digit declines across the board.
Read More at Media Post.
Read More at Media Post.
Thursday, November 11
The Real and the Digital Worlds are Converging
WHAT if there were two worlds, the real one and its digital reflection? The real one is strewn with sensors, picking up everything from movement to smell. The digital one, an edifice built of software, takes in all that information and automatically acts on it. If a door opens in the real world, so does its virtual equivalent. If the temperature in the room with the open door falls below a certain level, the digital world automatically turns on the heat.
This was the vision that David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale University, put forward in his book “Mirror Worlds” in the early 1990s. “You will look into a computer screen and see reality,” he predicted. “Some part of your world—the town you live in, the company you work for, your school system, the city hospital—will hang there in a sharp colour image, abstract but recognisable, moving subtly in a thousand places.”
Yet it is the smartphone and its “apps” (small downloadable applications that run on these devices) that is speeding up the convergence of the physical and the digital worlds. Smartphones are packed with sensors, measuring everything from the user’s location to the ambient light. Much of that information is then pumped back into the network. Apps, for their part, are miniature versions of smart systems that allow users to do a great variety of things, from tracking their friends to controlling appliances in their homes.
This was the vision that David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale University, put forward in his book “Mirror Worlds” in the early 1990s. “You will look into a computer screen and see reality,” he predicted. “Some part of your world—the town you live in, the company you work for, your school system, the city hospital—will hang there in a sharp colour image, abstract but recognisable, moving subtly in a thousand places.”
Yet it is the smartphone and its “apps” (small downloadable applications that run on these devices) that is speeding up the convergence of the physical and the digital worlds. Smartphones are packed with sensors, measuring everything from the user’s location to the ambient light. Much of that information is then pumped back into the network. Apps, for their part, are miniature versions of smart systems that allow users to do a great variety of things, from tracking their friends to controlling appliances in their homes.
Smartphones are also where the virtual and the real meet most directly and merge into something with yet another fancy name: “augmented reality”. Download an app called “Layar” onto your smartphone, turn on its video camera, point at a street, and the software will overlay the picture on the screen with all kinds of digital information, such as the names of the businesses on the street or if a house is for sale.
Bestseller Lists for E-Books
The New York Times says it will begin publishing bestseller lists for e-book fiction and nonfiction in early 2011. The addition of two new lists for e-books points to the growing importance of the medium to the industry — and underlines the fact that what may be selling best in hardback or paperback may not be what’s selling best in electronic format. U.S. consumers are projected to spend $1 billion in e-books this year, according to a recent report from Forrester, who also expects that sales will surpass $3 billion by 2015.
Read more at Mashable.
Read more at Mashable.
Still in Standard Def
Even though 56% of U.S. households have high-def, more than 80% of television viewing is still done in standard definition, according to a report this week by Nielsen. Even on HD sets, though, about 20% of programs are viewed through non-HD feeds.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal.
Read more at the Wall Street Journal.
Thursday, November 4
The 'Aspirational' Consumer: R.I.P.
The spending habits of the utmost tier of earners remains robust, but everyone below has cut back and plans to stay there. “If you look at the 10-15% [sales volume] declines for upscale retailers and brands, it was [due to] people spending beyond their means and not being able to sustain it,” said AARC president Ron Kurtz. Even within the sphere most would consider well-off ($250,000 average annual household earnings), 41 percent reported they’re making a conscious effort to reduce expenditures for the next 12 months.
Isolated data? Hardly. Consumer Edge Research recently found that skipping top-shelf brands in favor of lower-end ones is most common in households with incomes of $100,000 or higher. A study conducted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers/Kantar Retail earlier this year revealed that 93 percent of shoppers say they’ve changed their shopping behavior—with 17 percent opting for cheaper brands. “Although we’re starting to see signs of shoppers getting tired of trading down, they remain cognizant of today’s economic realities,” said a Kantar official in a statement. These findings are in line with last year's McKinsey study, which revealed 41 percent of consumers think that premium brands are “not worth the money.”
So much for life’s little indulgences.
Read more at Brand Week.
Isolated data? Hardly. Consumer Edge Research recently found that skipping top-shelf brands in favor of lower-end ones is most common in households with incomes of $100,000 or higher. A study conducted by PriceWaterhouseCoopers/Kantar Retail earlier this year revealed that 93 percent of shoppers say they’ve changed their shopping behavior—with 17 percent opting for cheaper brands. “Although we’re starting to see signs of shoppers getting tired of trading down, they remain cognizant of today’s economic realities,” said a Kantar official in a statement. These findings are in line with last year's McKinsey study, which revealed 41 percent of consumers think that premium brands are “not worth the money.”
So much for life’s little indulgences.
Read more at Brand Week.
Monday, November 1
Born digital
IN THE digital realm, things seem always to happen the wrong way round. Whereas Google has hurried to scan books into its digital catalogue, a group of national libraries has begun saving what the online giant leaves behind. For although search engines such as Google index the web, they do not archive it. Many websites just disappear when their owner runs out of money or interest.
In 1996 Brewster Kahle, a computer scientist and internet entrepreneur, founded the Internet Archive, a non-profit organisation dedicated to preserving websites. He also began gently harassing national libraries to worry about preserving the web.
Another issue is ensuring that the data is stored in a format that makes it available in centuries to come. Ancient manuscripts are still readable. But much digital media from the past is readable only on a handful of fragile and antique machines, if at all. Audio and video programmes based on proprietary formats such as Windows Media Player are another challenge. What happens if Microsoft is bankrupt and forgotten in 2210?
Read more at The Economist.
In 1996 Brewster Kahle, a computer scientist and internet entrepreneur, founded the Internet Archive, a non-profit organisation dedicated to preserving websites. He also began gently harassing national libraries to worry about preserving the web.
Another issue is ensuring that the data is stored in a format that makes it available in centuries to come. Ancient manuscripts are still readable. But much digital media from the past is readable only on a handful of fragile and antique machines, if at all. Audio and video programmes based on proprietary formats such as Windows Media Player are another challenge. What happens if Microsoft is bankrupt and forgotten in 2210?
Read more at The Economist.
A Social Music Chart
Entrepreneur Eric Garland thinks he has a better music chart. His secret? Tweets, status updates, and web chatter. BigChampagne, based in Beverly Hills, tracks sales, downloads, and listening activity on just about every music-distribution platform, from iTunes to FM radio to MySpace. (And, yes, it still tracks illegal file sharing too.). BigChampagne then analyzes and sells the data to record labels, talent agents, and radio stations that are looking to find under-the-radar acts.
In late July, BigChampagne unveiled its latest creation, the Ultimate Chart, which supplements widely available data on sales on Amazon (AMZN) and iTunes with metrics that measure a song's buzz: YouTube (GOOG) and MySpace hits, Twitter and Facebook mentions, Clear Channel radio spins, and Rhapsody and Last.fm streams.
Read more here.
In late July, BigChampagne unveiled its latest creation, the Ultimate Chart, which supplements widely available data on sales on Amazon (AMZN) and iTunes with metrics that measure a song's buzz: YouTube (GOOG) and MySpace hits, Twitter and Facebook mentions, Clear Channel radio spins, and Rhapsody and Last.fm streams.
Read more here.
Monday, October 25
Newspaper Circulation Falls
Newspapers across the country broadly reported falling circulation from April through September, though the rate of decline has slowed. Figures released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations showed that overall weekday circulation at 635 newspapers declined 5 percent from circulation in the same six months last year. The decline last year was at more than twice that rate.
Read more at the New York Times.
Read more at the New York Times.
Wednesday, October 20
Local TV: Value Drops
Local TV station advertising revenue and overall profits may be skyrocketing upwards -- but station value is not rising for media investors. Looking at the six pure-play TV station groups, New York-based media investment company M.C. Alcamo & Co. says companies are trading at less than they did at the start of the year -- even though revenues and profits are higher. At the same time, these 15 media companies -- pure-play and integrated media companies -- have seen 12.1% more revenue in the second quarter of 2010 versus a comparable period in 2009. In addition, profitability among this media group has improved 5 percentage points to 39% from 35% a year ago.
Read more here.
Read more here.
Monday, October 18
Paper Credit Deteriorating
The credit outlook for the U.S. newspaper sector is getting worse, Moody's says, as it revised its outlook for the industry from stable to negative. According to Moody's, newspaper revenues are likely to drop 5%-6% this year, with a mid-single-digit drop next year, following a 22% decline in 2009.
Read more at Barron's.
Read more at Barron's.
The Top 25 U.S. Newspapers
If you ranked the top 25 U.S. newspapers by PageRank (by Google) instead of circulation, the list looks like this:
- 9/10 - The New York Times stands alone as far as Google concerned – it has the highest PageRank of the top 25 U.S. newspapers
- 8/10 – The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, NY Daily News, Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle and StarTribune have equal authority at 8/10
- 7/10 – The Dallas Morning News, The Chicago Sun-Times, Detroit Free Press, Houston Chronicle, The Arizona Republic, The Oregonian, The Star-Ledger, The San Diego Union-Tribune and Newsday are tied for third place with a PageRank of 7/10
Take popular blogs like The Huffington Post or TechCrunch for example. Both blogs have a Google PageRank of 8/10 – do those blogs have the same authority as The Wall Street Journal or USA Today? As far as Google is concerned they do.
Read more here.
Saturday, October 16
Texting "Gone Mad"
The average teenager sends over 3,000 texts per month. That's more than six texts per waking hour. According to a new study from Nielsen, our society has gone mad with texting, data usage and app downloads. Teens are sending 8 percent more texts than they were this time last year. Other age groups don't even come close, either; the average 18 to 24-year-old sends "only" 1,630 texts per month. The average only drops with other age groups. However, in every age bracket, the number of texts sent has increased when compared to last year. Texting is a more important means of communication than ever.
Read more here.
Read more here.
Thursday, October 14
Making Money in the Music Business
For the past ten years sales of recorded music have declined so steeply as to become a cautionary tale about the disruptive power of the internet. The rise of illegal file-sharing and the end of the digital “replacement cycle”, in which people bought CDs to replace tapes and records, caused spending to collapse. In Japan, the world’s biggest CD sales market, the number of discs sold fell by 6% in 2008 and 24% in 2009.
Yet the music business is surprisingly healthy, and becoming more so. The longest, loudest boom is in live music. Between 1999 and 2009 concert-ticket sales in America tripled in value, from $1.5 billion to $4.6 billion (see chart 1). It is not that more people are going to concerts. Rather, they are paying more to get in. Fans complain bitterly about the rising price of live music.
Music’s best business customer is television. “Watch an evening’s worth of TV and count how many times you hear music in the background,” says Jeremy Lascelles, chief executive of Chrysalis.
In a sense, the recorded-music market is not so much dying as greying. America’s bestselling album since 2000 is “1”, a collection of Beatles hits from the 1960s. Some music executives fret that the stadium-filling acts will not be replaced.
Read more in The Economist.
Yet the music business is surprisingly healthy, and becoming more so. The longest, loudest boom is in live music. Between 1999 and 2009 concert-ticket sales in America tripled in value, from $1.5 billion to $4.6 billion (see chart 1). It is not that more people are going to concerts. Rather, they are paying more to get in. Fans complain bitterly about the rising price of live music.
Music’s best business customer is television. “Watch an evening’s worth of TV and count how many times you hear music in the background,” says Jeremy Lascelles, chief executive of Chrysalis.
In a sense, the recorded-music market is not so much dying as greying. America’s bestselling album since 2000 is “1”, a collection of Beatles hits from the 1960s. Some music executives fret that the stadium-filling acts will not be replaced.
Read more in The Economist.
Digital Forensics
How do we check the accuracy of news images, particularly in moments of breaking-news urgency? Though we’re seeing a blossoming of fact-checking in text-based journalism, we have yet to see an equivalent movement in image-based news reporting — mostly, of course, because we lack good tools for determining whether images are authentic or manipulated, whether they depict what they claim to or something else entirely.
Enter Hany Farid. A computer science professor at Dartmouth, Farid is a pioneer in the field of digital forensics, figuring out how to analyze images to determine their authenticity. (Think CSI: Photojournalism.) Now, photo-tampering is becoming so prevalent, Farid notes, that mistrust of images is slowly becoming our default. “There’s almost a backlash,” he says, “and now there’s this over-skepticism of everything out there. It’s amazing.”
Read more here.
Enter Hany Farid. A computer science professor at Dartmouth, Farid is a pioneer in the field of digital forensics, figuring out how to analyze images to determine their authenticity. (Think CSI: Photojournalism.) Now, photo-tampering is becoming so prevalent, Farid notes, that mistrust of images is slowly becoming our default. “There’s almost a backlash,” he says, “and now there’s this over-skepticism of everything out there. It’s amazing.”
Read more here.
Tuesday, October 12
Facebook's 'Herding Instinct'
Research from Oxford University shows that consumers have a herding instinct to "follow the crowd" once a clear winner is established. However, this instinct appears to switch off almost entirely if the product fails to achieve a certain popularity threshold. The study concludes that while some books and films are highly advertised by their producers, that element is only a small fraction, leaving the great majority of books and films exposed to the forces of social influence.
The study concludes that social influence had a key role in whether apps became flops or hits.
They discovered that once an app had reached a rate of about 55 installations a day, its popularity then soared to reach stellar proportions.
Read more here.
The study concludes that social influence had a key role in whether apps became flops or hits.
They discovered that once an app had reached a rate of about 55 installations a day, its popularity then soared to reach stellar proportions.
Read more here.
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