Reporters were shocked, shocked to hear that a big PR agency, had tried to persuade newspaper writers and a blogger to scribble nasty things about Google’s record on privacy, while concealing that its growing rival, Facebook, was paying for this lobbying.
The incident shows how the upheaval in the news business is working for, and against, the PR firms. Newspapers and other old media are losing influence—and thus becoming less worth lobbying. But job cuts and online obligations mean journalists are also more desperate for copy, making them a softer touch. Research by Jamil Jonna of the University of Oregon (originally for a book, “The Death and Life of American Journalism”, but since updated) found that as newsrooms have been slimmed and PR agencies have grown fatter, for each American journalist there are now, on average, six flacks hassling him to run crummy stories
Read more at The Economist.
Saturday, May 21
Wednesday, May 18
The Rise of Infographics
Brands are also making serious investments in infographics and data visualization as a part of their marketing and communications strategy. At the nexus of journalism, analysis and design, infographics are undoubtedly relevant.
Shane Snow, Visual.ly: "Visualization is a great storytelling medium and is also strong in driving digital traffic. The wonderful thing is that there are a million ways to tell a story with visualizations."
Read more here
Shane Snow, Visual.ly: "Visualization is a great storytelling medium and is also strong in driving digital traffic. The wonderful thing is that there are a million ways to tell a story with visualizations."
Read more here
Tuesday, May 17
'Real world' apps get new meaning
That virtual yellow first-down line superimposed on an actual football field is one of the more visible examples of a technology that is still not well known. But augmented reality is quickly emerging from obscurity and could soon dramatically reshape how we shop, learn, play and discover what is around us.
In simple terms, augmented reality is a visual layer of information — tied to your location — that appears on top of whatever reality you're seeing.
Imagine:
•Pointing your phone at a famous landmark and almost instantly receiving relevant historic or current information about your surroundings.
•Fixing a paper jam in a copy machine by pointing a device at the copier and, directed by the virtual arrows that appear, pressing in sequence the right buttons and levers.
•Visualizing what you'll look like in a wedding dress without trying it on.
Read more at USA Today
In simple terms, augmented reality is a visual layer of information — tied to your location — that appears on top of whatever reality you're seeing.
Imagine:
•Pointing your phone at a famous landmark and almost instantly receiving relevant historic or current information about your surroundings.
•Fixing a paper jam in a copy machine by pointing a device at the copier and, directed by the virtual arrows that appear, pressing in sequence the right buttons and levers.
•Visualizing what you'll look like in a wedding dress without trying it on.
Read more at USA Today
How Drudge Has Stayed on Top
The Drudge Report is now more powerful in driving news than the half-billion folks on Facebook. With no video, no search optimization, no slide shows, and a design that is right out of mid-’90s manual on HTML, The Drudge Report provides 7 percent of the inbound referrals to the top news sites in the country. With stable traffic of about 12 million to 14 million unique visitors every month no matter what kind of news is breaking and in the last 14 years, there have been no big redesigns, no big rollout of new features and no staffing up to provide original content. The initial site, designed to load quickly in the age of dial-up modems, remains relatively untouched.
“The genius of Drudge is the simplicity of the layout,” said Matt Labash, a writer for The Weekly Standard. “Everyone else who tries to knock him off complicates that. There’s no tabs. There’s no jumps. There’s hardly any clutter.."Andrew Breitbart, the founder of several conservative Web sites said “He does not rig search optimization, he does not care about the next big Web innovation, he just has the best nose for news there is."
Read more at the New York Times
“The genius of Drudge is the simplicity of the layout,” said Matt Labash, a writer for The Weekly Standard. “Everyone else who tries to knock him off complicates that. There’s no tabs. There’s no jumps. There’s hardly any clutter.."Andrew Breitbart, the founder of several conservative Web sites said “He does not rig search optimization, he does not care about the next big Web innovation, he just has the best nose for news there is."
Read more at the New York Times
TiVo's Slo-Mo Trip Toward Profitability
Despite its strong brand recognition, TiVo has struggled to turn a profit. The deficit was nothing new: In 10 of the past 11 years, the Alviso (Calif.)-based company has racked up losses. TiVo's customer base has dwindled, from a high of 4.4 million users in 2007 to just over 2 million in January 2011. Part of the problem is that while lots of people say they TiVo their favorite TV shows, in reality, many use the cheaper digital video recorders (DVR) provided by their cable or satellite operator. "
Read more at Business Week
Read more at Business Week
TV: Is it still ‘a vast wasteland’?
Fifty years ago this week, Newton Minow delivered one of the “most electrifying speeches ever given by a bureaucrat,” said Aaron Barnhart in The Kansas City Star. The newly named head of the Federal Communications Commission boldly told a convention of the National Association of Broadcasters that the television shows they’d produced were “vast wasteland”. The medium has certainly evolved since 1961, but is it any better?
Yes, it is, said Newton Minow in the Chicago Tribune. There’s still plenty of junk on TV, but the medium is now “far vaster than we could have imagined in 1961,” and much of what’s now available has “far exceeded my most ambitious dreams.”
Read more at The Week
Yes, it is, said Newton Minow in the Chicago Tribune. There’s still plenty of junk on TV, but the medium is now “far vaster than we could have imagined in 1961,” and much of what’s now available has “far exceeded my most ambitious dreams.”
Read more at The Week
Friday, May 13
Mad Men are watching you
Real-time bidding allows marketers to buy known audiences. The winner serves the advertisement, often customising it—so you may see more ads for convertible cars on a sunny day. The whole process generally takes some 150 milliseconds, or less than half the blink of an eye.
Real-time bidding makes it easy to aim ads at susceptible eyeballs. Firms such as John Lewis (a British department store), Zappos (an online shoe-seller) and Lenovo (a computer-maker) know that you have visited their websites because they dropped digital markers onto your computer. They then outbid others to reach you again. This is called “retargeting”.
Read more at The Economist
Real-time bidding makes it easy to aim ads at susceptible eyeballs. Firms such as John Lewis (a British department store), Zappos (an online shoe-seller) and Lenovo (a computer-maker) know that you have visited their websites because they dropped digital markers onto your computer. They then outbid others to reach you again. This is called “retargeting”.
Read more at The Economist
5 Major Life Lessons Journalism Taught Me
1. Prepare for a first date like you prepare for a big interview.
Dress nicely, but not nicer than they usually do. Begin by asking a question you know they’d love to answer, whether it’s important to you or not. Don’t be first to fill an awkward silence. Do your research in advance, but never let it show. Put your cell phone on vibrate and don’t look at it until you’re in the bathroom. If they insist on splitting the bill, insist on paying the tip – and let them see you do so generously. Always end with, “If I have any more questions, can I call you?”
Read the rest here.
Dress nicely, but not nicer than they usually do. Begin by asking a question you know they’d love to answer, whether it’s important to you or not. Don’t be first to fill an awkward silence. Do your research in advance, but never let it show. Put your cell phone on vibrate and don’t look at it until you’re in the bathroom. If they insist on splitting the bill, insist on paying the tip – and let them see you do so generously. Always end with, “If I have any more questions, can I call you?”
Read the rest here.
Wednesday, May 11
What the Microsoft-Skype Deal Means
In a record acquisition for the company, Microsoft announced it’s buying Skype for $8.5 billion. Explains the release: Skype will support Microsoft devices like Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone and a wide array of Windows devices. There’s every reason to believe that Skype’s relationship with Facebook will expand.
For news organizations that increasingly use Skype for live interviews, the acquisition could be good news. Skype is still reeling a bit from its December outage, and Microsoft could beef up Skype’s dependability. For TV, that’s critical.
Read more here
For news organizations that increasingly use Skype for live interviews, the acquisition could be good news. Skype is still reeling a bit from its December outage, and Microsoft could beef up Skype’s dependability. For TV, that’s critical.
Read more here
Tuesday, May 10
Facebook now ‘critical’ to online news traffic, says Pew study
In the most recent sign that Facebook is encroaching on Google's heels, the 2011 study from Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism shows that the social network is becoming an important traffic mover in the world of online news.
Google may still hold the top spot as the primary traffic driver to news websites, but according to a new study from Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, social networking giant Facebook is emerging as a “critical player” in the Internet mechanisms that push readers to news stories.
“Google and Facebook are increasingly set up as competitors (for) sorting through the material on the Web,” said Pew in the report. “If searching for news was the most important development of the last decade, sharing news may be among the most important of the next.”
While this may sound impressive, Facebook currently remains well behind the top three traffic drivers, which include Google, the Drudge Report and Yahoo. Despite positive numbers from Facebook’s corner, the study shows that Twitter is a terrible traffic driver: “Twitter appears at this point to play a relatively small role in sharing of links to news sources,
Read more here
Google may still hold the top spot as the primary traffic driver to news websites, but according to a new study from Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism, social networking giant Facebook is emerging as a “critical player” in the Internet mechanisms that push readers to news stories.
“Google and Facebook are increasingly set up as competitors (for) sorting through the material on the Web,” said Pew in the report. “If searching for news was the most important development of the last decade, sharing news may be among the most important of the next.”
While this may sound impressive, Facebook currently remains well behind the top three traffic drivers, which include Google, the Drudge Report and Yahoo. Despite positive numbers from Facebook’s corner, the study shows that Twitter is a terrible traffic driver: “Twitter appears at this point to play a relatively small role in sharing of links to news sources,
Read more here
For Journalists, a Call to Rethink Their Online Models
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY has surveyed the state of digital journalism, and it has concluded that journalists must rethink their relationships — and their audiences’ relationships — with advertisers. That does not mean yielding editorial control to sponsors, but it might mean coming up with alternatives to impression-based pricing, creating higher-value content for the Web by tapping into page view data, and helping to ensure that Web ads have value on their own.
Read more at the New York Times
Read more at the New York Times
Sunday, May 8
Random acts of Journalism
There are countless people out there who use social media as part of their daily lives, and every so often some of them find themselves in the right place at the right time - or the wrong place at the wrong time, depending on the situation. Given that they're already using social media to document their lives and the world around them, it's natural for them to capture a news event they're witnessing firsthand.
People find themselves caught in the middle of a newsworthy situation, and they try to capture it. While they're conducting random acts of journalism, we should try to guide them, as best we can, to be the best journalists they can be. Even if it's fleeting.
Read more here
People find themselves caught in the middle of a newsworthy situation, and they try to capture it. While they're conducting random acts of journalism, we should try to guide them, as best we can, to be the best journalists they can be. Even if it's fleeting.
Read more here
Friday, May 6
Online Reps in the Dirt
Forrester, a research outfit, reckons that the global market for cloud services could grow from $41 billion last year to $241 billion by 2020. One reason for this is that the savings that can be won by shifting computing to the cloud remain compelling; another is that Amazon-style snafus have been rare.
Read more at The Economist
Read more at The Economist
Break-ins and Breakdowns
Sony admitted this week that hackers had stolen personal information, possibly including credit-card details, of many of the 77m-plus users of its online-gaming and entertainment networks. Amazon, an American online retailer and provider of “cloud computing” services, has suffered a lengthy breakdown at one of the giant server farms whose storage and processing facilities it rents to other companies.
The two lapses, though unconnected and different in nature, have raised the question of whether customers can really trust the basic idea behind the cloud—that you can buy computing services from the internet, just like gas or water from a utility.
Read more at The Economist
The two lapses, though unconnected and different in nature, have raised the question of whether customers can really trust the basic idea behind the cloud—that you can buy computing services from the internet, just like gas or water from a utility.
Read more at The Economist
Thursday, May 5
Turning to Social Networks for News
Just as CNN once challenged newspapers and evening newscasts with a constant stream of images from the Persian Gulf war, Twitter and Facebook have become early warning systems for breaking news — albeit not always reliable ones.
Read more at the New York Times
Read more at the New York Times
Tuesday, May 3
Newspaper Circs Slip
Daily circulation at most American newspapers declined again between the six-month period ending March 2010 and the six-month period ending March 2011, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. A MediaPost analysis of 80 of the largest newspapers in the U.S. showed total daily circulation declining 2.6% from 19 million in 2010 to 18.5 million in 2011.
The number of newspapers posting gains in total circulation -- even including digital editions and branded editions under new ABC rules -- remained small, and the overall picture remained one of decline. The new ABC figures seem unlikely to do much for print ad revenues, which have declined precipitously over the last couple of years. According to the Newspaper Association of America, total print ad revenues have fallen 52% from $47.8 billion in 2005 to $22.8 billion in 2010.
Read more here
The number of newspapers posting gains in total circulation -- even including digital editions and branded editions under new ABC rules -- remained small, and the overall picture remained one of decline. The new ABC figures seem unlikely to do much for print ad revenues, which have declined precipitously over the last couple of years. According to the Newspaper Association of America, total print ad revenues have fallen 52% from $47.8 billion in 2005 to $22.8 billion in 2010.
Read more here
Monday, May 2
Billboard Boom
MagnaGlobal, a media researcher, predicts that worldwide spending on out-of-home advertising will expand by 8.3% in 2011 to about $26.4 billion, faster growth than that seen for other non-internet forms of advertising (see chart). Spending on digital billboards and posters is expected to double in the next five years, to $5.2 billion.
Then there is “gladvertising” and “sadvertising”, a rather sinister-sounding idea in which billboards with embedded cameras, linked to face-tracking software, detect the mood of each consumer who passes by, and change the advertising on display to suit it.
Read more at The Economist
Then there is “gladvertising” and “sadvertising”, a rather sinister-sounding idea in which billboards with embedded cameras, linked to face-tracking software, detect the mood of each consumer who passes by, and change the advertising on display to suit it.
Read more at The Economist
Sunday, May 1
Trouble @Twitter
Just two years ago Twitter was the hottest thing on the web. But in the past year U.S. traffic at Twitter.com, the site users visit to read and broadcast 140-character messages, has leveled off. Nearly half the people who have Twitter accounts are no longer active on the network, according to an ExactTarget report from January 2011.
Just how popular is Twitter? Tracking its growth is complicated in part because many people tweet via dashboards such as TweetDeck (making it hard for Twitter to aggregate the mass viewership that many advertisers covet). The company says it has more than 200 million registered accounts (Facebook has 600 million subscribers), but users are allowed multiple accounts. The company also trumpets that the service had 155 million tweets daily by the end of the first quarter, a jump of 41% over the prior quarter, but many tweets -- news headlines, for example -- are often churned out by computers, not humans visiting Twitter.com. One key measurement of Twitter's popularity, Twitter.com's traffic, indicates a disturbing trend: ComScore shows that growth of U.S. visitors to the site has leveled off more than a year after its massive spike upward in 2009.
Read more at Fortune Magazine.
Just how popular is Twitter? Tracking its growth is complicated in part because many people tweet via dashboards such as TweetDeck (making it hard for Twitter to aggregate the mass viewership that many advertisers covet). The company says it has more than 200 million registered accounts (Facebook has 600 million subscribers), but users are allowed multiple accounts. The company also trumpets that the service had 155 million tweets daily by the end of the first quarter, a jump of 41% over the prior quarter, but many tweets -- news headlines, for example -- are often churned out by computers, not humans visiting Twitter.com. One key measurement of Twitter's popularity, Twitter.com's traffic, indicates a disturbing trend: ComScore shows that growth of U.S. visitors to the site has leveled off more than a year after its massive spike upward in 2009.
Read more at Fortune Magazine.
Saturday, April 30
Google's Video Chat Service
Google has launched its own video chat service for Android smartphones to compete with the Facetime application on the iPhone. And unlike the Apple software, the video chat update to Google Talk works over 3G as well as WiFi networks. It uses the front-mounted cameras on high-end Android handsets.
Read more here
Read more here
Smartphone User Study
This video presents key findings from "The Mobile Movement: Understanding Smartphone Consumers," a study from Google and conducted by Ipsos OTX, an independent market research firm.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)