Report recommending ‘Google Tax’ seems rather confused

March 15, 2010 By

I’ve had to find time to try and make sense of the argument presented by The Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society, but going by an article on Paid Content, it’s going to be a fruitless task.

It seems that ‘Making Good Society’ will warn against recycled news and that the Government has to guard against media being owned by the few, with levies on Google to fund new media.

And evidence of that?

It says four publishers control 70 percent of the local and regional press, three companies – BBC, ITN and BSkyB – produce national television news and just four companies have nearly 80 percent of the commercial radio market. Apparently 100+ local and regional newspapers vanished last year:

“The advent of free newspapers, the emergence of 24-hour television news and the popularisation of online and mobile platforms have all contributed to a far more volatile and unstable environment for news organisations.”

So the arguments for taxing digital news aggregation sites are that print,TV and radio are owned by a tiny amount of companies, and local newspapers need propping up despite the fact people are looking elsewhere?

*confused*

If people are increasingly looking online for their news, then where’s the stimulus for more online news products from a wider range of people? Where’s the suggestion to open up media production, which is far more possible online than ever before? I could start a TV station today on a video streaming site, a radio station by streaming over IP, or any number of text publications, but the biggest challenge for most of these is the cost.

Solving the problem of local newspapers vanishing:

Here’s the idea I’ve been thinking about to solve the problem of local newspapers dying off and leaving a gap in useful local news and information.

Fund an online resource for local news and info – if you’re finding money to do it, then use it to either pay someone at the hub of a local community, or fund ways for them to be able to effectively monetise what they do. Encourage it by people who already exist in the community e.g. librarians, schoolteachers etc who have access to IT equipment, and potentailly news gathering volunteers.

And then allow anyone who doesn’t have internet access to request print copies in person, by text or phone. Forget the cost of printing newspapers and instead use a flyer as a starting point and build from there.

That way you can attempt to kickstart local news sites across the country with a tiny amount of resource, with existing equipment, and with the ability to also reach those who require print for the time being, until eventually everyone ends up online. Plus the information will be more relevant and interesting, and less commercially orientated to please advertisers.

And it’ll hopefully inspire a new generation to try to serve communities by providing information in an engaging way, rather than luring them into a profession which has less and less opportunities as time goes by – after they’ve invested time and money to get into it.

Personally, I’d quite like to know more about what’s going on in the local area, but I’m barely sat still long enough to read a paper, let alone pay for that content on a daily/weekly basis for the percentage which is of interest to me.

But give me an online and smartphone resource I could use to find out the things I really want to know about e.g. local gigs, football games, motorsport, road closures, council tax rises, but leave the rest, and I’d pay a small amount for that so I could check up on it at work or on the train.

Link it into booking tickets, contacting the local council, or watching highlights of the football with pre-roll advertising, and it’d have the chance to make even more.

That’s the future of local services.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

What’s in store for microblogging in 2010?

December 31, 2009 By

A guest post by Lauren Fisher, who specialises in online PR and social media at Simply Zesty – and can be found on Twitter at @laurenfisher.
As we look forward to a brand new year, I’m sure the burning question on everyone’s lips is – what’s going to happen to microblogging in 2010? In a year that saw Ashton Kutcher reach 1 million followers on Twitter and MSN launch their own microblogging service (and MSN China clone Plurk – Dan), the next year certainly has a lot to live up to. Here, I offer a few of my own predictions for microblogging in 2010, with Dan’s thoughts below.

Increased use in organisations

I’m talking here about internal use of microblogging, as a way for colleagues to collaborate and communicate with each other. We’ve seen Google Wave emerge as a tool for professional, organisational use and I think this is the path that microblogging will take in 2010. I’ve already written on here about my thoughts on Yammer (which I still stand by) and I think we will see microblogging tools play a bigger role in internal corporate communications, as an easy and efficient way to communicate with each other. The benefits of realtime will be no more paramount than for businesses.

Dan: Totally agree, although I’m not sure I’d pick Yammer out as the key product in this area – the move is towards integrating microblogging as part of a collaborative and project management toolset – e.g. Salesforce Chatter. The novelty of an ‘internal Twitter’ is fine, but doesn’t convert those who don’t like Twitter, or those happy to DM via Twitter already. Integrated tools give reasons for people to get involved.

Twitter Declining

I won’t be the first, or last, person to say this but I think Twitter may have reached its height of popularity and I think numbers will start to dwindle, albeit slowly. The love affair with Twitter has been exciting, but it might just be over. The avalanche of spam accounts has a part to play here, but I think that when Twitter reaches its highest point of saturation, is conversely when you start to lose value in the site. It has become incredibly noisy and I am beginning to question the real use of it.

Dan: I agree to some extent. I think some of the expansion already has been down to a huge number of spam accounts, and it’s something Twitter has started to tackle, but will always be a huge problem. The lesson here is to learn from the most popular 3rd party apps – Tweetdeck and Seesmic for example, which allow far better filtering than Twitter itself. The noise levels don’t bother me too much because I’m fairly selective about who I follow (Hard to believe when I’m following almost 2k people!)

Microblogging as customer service

I think that more and more companies will embrace microblogging in 2010, beyond the extent we’re seeing now. Businesses will realise the potential of microblogging as a customer service platform though, rather than a place for sexy social media campaigns. I don’t think there will be many more hashtag competitions, we’ve had pretty much every variation of these! I hope that more companies will realise the value of microblogging to source and, most importantly, solve issues for customers. As consumers, we are expecting everything to be solved in real-time and this is what we’ll expect businesses to cater to. The power of crowdsourcing will also be recognised more and we’ll see more companies opening up product development to the masses.

Dan: Totally agree that almost every company should be using Twitter as an integral part of overall improvements to customer service. I expect to reach any tech company via Twitter, and those that do have an active role tend to respond quickly and get my repeat business!

No to video microblogging

It’s not an area that’s really taken off and I don’t think 2010 will be the year for video microblogging. Some sites have made a good attempt, such as Vidly, but once the initial shine wears off the uptake is slow. I simply don’t think that microblogging lends itself to video. A quick text update is one thing : shooting, uploading and tagging a short video is another. We’re still not as comfortable in front of the camera as we are in front of the keyboard and I don’t think this will change any time soon.

Dan: Damn it – this is an area that comes back to haunt me after I made a prediction on video at a conference that Seesmic’s original video blogging platform would take off in 2009. And I was wrong for exactly the reasons above. I’d say for the over 20s, audio blogging such as Audioboo is more accessible. However, I think there’s a huge group of teenagers who are very accustomed to broadcasting themselves on Justin.tv and Ustream. If someone taps into that market and can lure them away from sites which are heavily integrating with Facebook, Twitter etc, then we may see video microblogging take off in a couple of years. It’s also likely to be primarily mobile, and the odds are people will still video other people rather than themselves…

Location –based microblogging

If Twitter is to continue growing in 2010, I think the answer could be in location-based services. As mobile internet usage rapidly increases, we’re all going to be using location services more. If we can make real connections on Twitter with those that are physically close to us, as a more integrated part of the whole microblogging experience, this could prove incredibly popular. Integrating tweets at real-world events such as concerts and sport events will also become more popular, bringing people physically together.

Dan: Totally. I’m surprised there hasn’t been more integration between location, microblogging and special offers, but that’s definitely going to arrive this year – look at mobile social location games like Foursquare, or Google stepping up their location-based efforts. And events are a huge influence on bringing people together on Twitter – the FA Cup, the Superbowl, Eurovision etc as examples…

Integration with sites

As more people will be moving away from Twitter itself, I think microblogging will play a bigger part in existing sites. The new redesign of LinkedIn sees the now familiar stream of status updates with more prominence and I think this is probably the way many sites will go, including email services, encouraging even further interaction between people through short updates. As we become increasingly productive online in 2010, we’ll expect the microblogging functionality to feature more heavily in sites we’re already visiting, than having to go to a separate site.

Dan: Twitter, Facebook and Google are the three services that you should expect to seemlessly be integrated into almost every site you visit in the next 6 months. Each one is becoming very close to the single unified ID many people have talked about…

Microblogging in 2010 – what do you think?

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

A look at the future, or just some concept hype…

September 9, 2009 By

Quite intrigued by the new video of Nokia Mixed Reality:

I’ve been following Augmented Reality pretty closely, and how it links with wearable computing, and particularly smartphone usage – hence inventing the term ‘Moborg‘. The idea being that ‘wearable computing’ in the past always required wearing half a laptop strapped to your arm, and that we’re now at the point where a device in my pocket gives me the same benefits.

Nokia’s video could show AR starting to move into a more useful and integrated future – but there’s a long way to go yet, and as excited as I am by the possibilities, I’m also aware that unless there are real practical advantages of an Augmented Reality interface over something more simple and 2-dimensional, then the current hype will soon fade.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Some reactions to Digital Britain…

June 17, 2009 By

I haven’t been able to fully digest the Digital Britain report to be able to dissect it and add anything to the commentary already online, so I thought I’d share the thoughts of those people who I value enough to have in my RSS feed every day:

Digital Britain Scorecard: So how did Lord Carter do? – Paid Content.

What does #digitalbritain mean for journalism – Adam Westbrook.

Digital Britain calls for pirate-free universal broadband – Ars Technica.

Digital Britain: 2015 – First thoughts on radio – Adam Bowie.

(Disclosure – Adam Bowie is a colleague of mine at Absolute Radio, although the views expressed on either of our blogs are our own, and do not necessarily represent the views of our employer. )

I’d also recommend the always erudite and interesting Bill Thompson, – Digital Britain engaging with the internet – but his blog appears to be down at the moment. Luckily he’s also available on the BBC site.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , ,

The messy future for magazines

June 3, 2009 By

Two stories on the Mediaweek site today perfectly illustrate the complexity and confusion in the publishing world.

At 7.30am it was suggested that Bauer Media (Disclosure – I worked for Bauer Media/Emap until earlier this year) would be reviving The Face, with an all-digital proposition one of the possibilities. While I’m not alone in wondering why The Face would be picked, considering the recent closure of Arena, any re-launch is a rare occurrence. And particularly a digital one. Bauer Media, by the way, has officially denied any such plans.

Then at 4.10pm it was revealed that John Menzies Digital has folded. Which means the end of magazinesondemand.co.uk and white label versions for WHSmith and Asda. The service had allowed readers to download over 100 magazines in digital editions. Paid Content has some more context around the decision, which closes the business after just 14 months.

So we’ve gone from a possible digital relaunch of an iconic title to the loss of over 100 digital editions in the space of a day.

What this hopefully illustrates better than anything is that the future of publishing or broadcasting any content is full of uncertainty at the moment. And there is no ‘right answer’ to how best to transform for the future.

Actually that’s a lie.

The right answer is to try various ideas, keep optimising them, and count a reasonable time span in years rather than months.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Are print magazines a safer bet than newspapers?

May 5, 2009 By

I’ve probably spent as much time thinking about the future of print magazines in the couple of weeks since I left the magazine industry as I did when I was in it!

The reason is that newspaper consultant/critic Jeff Jarvis recently asked ‘Are magazines doomed?‘ in an article inspired by the closure of Portfolio magazine just as publisher Conde Nast launched a UK version of Wired.

The comments on his article had an interesting split between those for and against print as a medium generally, as well as a few questions around the revenue streams employed in magazine publishing.

My hypothesis is that print magazines will prove more resilient than their newspaper counterparts, but eventually they’ll share the same fate due to a twin pincer movement.

Their resilience is in part due to the difference in content, and the difference in format. The majority of magazines are providing something in addition/as an alternative to the breaking news that the internet disrupts so effectively. Their strength is not only in providing analysis, insight and features, but also in conveying this information with fantastic photography and design. And by doing so, they can provide a far more engaged audience interested in a specific topic.

Here come the pincers…

The first claw closing on the magazine industry is that the online world is evolving far more rapidly, both in terms of community, as Jeff points to, but also in terms of more content-driven websites and blogs. As the market for blogs fighting to break news in niche topics has become increasingly saturated, and coincidentally many more journalists and freelancers are looking outside of print following recession-instigated redundancies, so the levels of insight and expertise available online will increase.

It’s easy to forget in the tech/online bubble that the ‘mainstream’ mass readerships are still located mainly in print, even as they start to move away in many cases. And as much as the online world can criticise traditional display advertising for irrelevancy, digital monetisation still needs to evolve in effectiveness around content.

But the people best placed to effectively make a decent wage online are those experienced journalists and writers who are able to produce specialist books and in-depth articles – those who are also most valuable to print editorial teams. As they increasingly look at digital opportunities, that’s where the biggest content threat will come.

The other pincer?

The other defence of magazines is due to the format – the incredible photography and design which can inspire as it’s displayed on your coffee table.

The problem is that the quality of a format is not a guarantee of it’s survival. While those magazines favoured for their design qualities will doubtless be the most resilient for the future, the fact is that the utlity of digital formats for accessing and sharing information will overcome the quality of the pile of magazines left gathering dust in a box under the bed.

And that’s assuming that technology stays roughly equivalent to what is available right now.

Even as I was about to write this post, a post by Om Malik appeared in my RSS feed – Vogue on Your eReader? New E-paper Tech Will Make It Happen. It happens that a group of researchers at the University of Cincinnatti in Ohio have created a new technology which allows them to recreate the colour and brightness of print. The link has a full explanation, but not only is it much closer to the beauty of print, it also is far more energy efficient than the current Kindle-type displays.

So what’s the answer then?

There are two very likely scenarios for print magazines in the next decade or less. One is that very small run, niche print magazines might survive with subscriptions, display advertising and additional revenue streams due to cult levels of devotion.

The second is that magazines will increasingly follow the ‘digital only’ route which newspapers are being forced into, and we’ll see some find ways to monetise more effectively than display advertising. The others will become marginalised or disappear due to the increased expertise of the new competitors they’ll suddenly discover that have been on the web for years already…

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Why I wish I’d invented Twitter…

April 6, 2009 By

Like most people with a career/interest in the online world, I’ve spent a fair amount of time coming up with ideas for internet startups and businesses. Some are quite fanciful, but others have a reasonable business case behind them. And sometimes, some were implemented by other people because I didn’t move fast enough or didn’t have enough passion.

But just about the only thing I wish I’d invented was Twitter, and it’s nothing to do with the money.

Instead, my wish is because Twitter is becoming successful due to a convergence of various elements which combined into a perfect storm. And on the timeline of digital communication, from IRC and newsgroups, through forums and silo’d and semi silo’d social networks, Twitter is the beginning of the next stage of an evolution which is perhaps 20% of the way to it’s ultimate evolution.

Twitter’s perfect storm:

  • The ability to initiate conversations and self-form communities of purpose (Thanks Dave) on the fly.
  • The integration of fixed internet and mobile.
  • The simplified nature of the core service – 140 characters, @ replies and # hashtags. That’s it…except…
  • The external ecosystem and open API which has produced an almost infinite list of tools and services -meaning there’s almost a suitable tool for every individual user, and if not, wait another minute and there will be!
  • The growing understanding of the utility of providing customer service quickly and efficiently – leading brands towards the idea of VRM.
  • It’s asynchronous, with the ability to be synchronous.
  • It’s ‘Many-to-Many’ communication.

Those are just my initial thoughts – I’m sure there’s at least a couple of things I’ve missed. Do add more in the comments.

20%? Really?

There’s a tendency to see the existing state of things as continuing forever – but nowhere is that further from the truth than in the digital (Fixed internet and mobile) world.  For example, from Friendster (2002) , to Myspace (2003), to Facebook (2004), to Twitter (2006), to Friendfeed (2007). (Dates from Wikipedia).

There are still large numbers of people who don’t have access to the internet throughout the world (whether via PC or Mobile). There are large numbers who don’t see the value and haven’t joined a social network. And there are countless companies and businesses who aren’t even close to understanding how to use new channels effectively, and the effect it will have on their business strategy and practices. And advertisers (and therefore lots of the money in content), are way behind.

But there’s a growing number of people who are familiar with the principles of the Cluetrain, even if they’ve never read it. They’re picking it up by living as part of it, and as my friend Tim recently commented on one of my blog posts,

I can’t wait to see the next generation do something with the mature version of the tech having grown up with it being nothing to be afraid of…

But while we’re waiting, the older generations are coming to Facebook and Twitter – and whether or not you’d pick Friendster, Myspace, Facebook or something else as the definition of early Web 2.0 and the social networked world, I’d guarantee Twitter would be the main name quoted for the next version. And there’s nine more before we even get to Web 3.0!

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Age is no barrier to success…

April 2, 2009 By

One of the blogs I subscribe to, The Blog Herald, recently carried a fairly standard story about an company acquisition. In this case, it caught my eye, because it’s Teens in Tech acquiring The Youth Bloggers Network.

The CEO of Teens in Tech is 16-year-old Daniel Brusilovsky, while 15-year-old Patrick DeVivo runs the Youth Bloggers Network. And they’re offering ad revenue split between publishers and host, custom domains, pro accounts, increased storage space etc.

Image by daedrius (CC Licence)

Image by daedrius (CC Licence)

It suddenly reminded of a quote (Thanks to @andjdavies, @neilperkin and @Rtyrie for reminded me of the source where Google failed).

It’s from the recently published and much discussed ‘Newspapers and thinking the unthinkable‘ by Mr Clay Shirky.

One of the people I was hanging around with online back then was Gordy Thompson, who managed internet services at the New York Times. I remember Thompson saying something to the effect of “When a 14 year old kid can blow up your business in his spare time, not because he hates you but because he loves you, then you got a problem.”

The point isn’t that 14, 15 and 16 year olds are doing these things, which would suggest it’s solely the preserve of the young – the point is that there is no reason why the very young or old can’t become CEO of their own business. I talked with someone recently whose salesforce is way above the age you’d associate with internet businesses, but who is incredibly effective at what he does. It’s about the attitude, rather than skills, and the reason it’s more prevalent amongst the young is due to the access to technology, and changes in culture, which are more familiar, and not challenged by legacy practices.

Which means you’re not just going to face young rivals, but old rivals, middle-aged rivals, experienced rivals, inexperienced rivals, and your existing competitors.

And, as Mark would say, expert predictions aren’t very reliable, so the only real defence is to have a clear vision and aim on how you’re going to best use new and existing technologies and techniques, and start making yourself different right now.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A good plan these days is hard to find…

November 12, 2008 By

Apologies for the title, which references Feargal Sharkey’s 80′s pop hit – I couldn’t face linking to it, so I went with the most famous track from his days with The Undertones.

Much better than reading his thoughts on stopping music piracy reported by the BBC, where his thoughts as Chief Executive of umbrella organisation Music UK made me wonder if he’d had a Teenage Kick to the head at some point.

“Who would have ever predicted five years ago that there would have been such a thing as iTunes, which now has an 80% global share of all downloads,”

Well, since MP3s became widely available in the early-to-mid 1990s, I’d have said it was pretty obvious it would become a dominant force in changing music distribution. And having witnessed how record companies responded (e.g. Jammie Thomas), I’d have also put my life savings on a tech company becoming the dominant solution.

“The music industry is often having to wait and see what works,”

No it isn’t. The music industry is choosing to wait and see what works because it’s scared of innovating and changing in the face of losing the reason for existing – physical distribution. Radiohead weren’t waiting to see what works, and neither were Nine Inch Nails.

“At some point, our song writers and musicians have to be treated with enough respect that they can at least carry on with some basic quality of life that will allow them to carry on creating and performing year after year.”

I’d suggest reading Kevin Kelly’s excellent post on how artists can exist with financial success in The Long Tail – 1000 True Fans. I’d also ask when respect started directly relating to being paid a living wage? And why my respect for a musician should be risked by a record company getting my Internet Service Provider to cut me off from what I consider a basic living requirement in the modern age?

Just like a Good Heart is Hard to Find, so is respect, because it is something which is earned – not an entitlement by releasing a record. If an artist earns my respect for their talent, then I’m happy to pay money directly to them – by going to their gigs, buying their T-shirts, buying their cds and constantly mentioning them. Like this chap for example.

And for some further reading, here’s my previous posts on the music industry: Behind the Music, More fuel for the record company bonfire, and Record companies are really screwed.

If the record industry wants to survive in one form or another, there are plenty of people who could lead it forward. Lawrence Lessig, Chris Anderson, or even someone with some professional musical experience as well as the vision needed, Jonathan MacDonald. Christ, offer me enough money, unlimited downloads and some gig tickets and I’ll come and sort it out for you. It’s pretty simple.

  1. The current model will not be saved. Use the remaining profits to find the new model.
  2. The size and power of record companies will never be the same. You screwed up by waiting this long. Get over it. I lost sympathy for you as a child when I read about how Stax was bludgeoned out of existence in the 1970s. Record companies will be much smaller, with fewer employees, and they’ll need to work harder. Like everyone else.
  3. Innovate like crazy. Use the money you still have to throw 1000 quick and easy ideas out there. Give music away. Create better opportunities around live events and merchandise. Use ways to reach the truly passionate fans.
  4. Embrace people that are pirating and sharing your music. They’re doing the same job John Peel did when he played an E.P made by The Undertones just as they were about to split up, and made them famous. If I found someone who was sharing music from artists with 1000s of people worldwide, I’d make him Head of Distribution!
  5. Start hooking up with the people doing cool stuff without you – and hope you can bring something to the party to let you join. SliceThePie, Amie Street, Sellaband, Sonoma Wireworks, Blip FM, TheNextBigSound.

If I can find these sites as a music fan with a tenuous relationship to the music industry, what on earth are the people in your offices doing with their time?

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

A useful new site, and a future prediction…

October 24, 2008 By

If you’re reading this elsewhere, it’s from www.thewayoftheweb.net by Dan Thornton…

Had a really good day in London, and met some cool new people, both from within Bauer Media and externally. Hopefully I’ll have plenty of reasons to write about them all shortly!

I spotted a number of sites mentioning Backtype as I was catching up on my RSS feeds on the train home. It’s a fairly elegant way of keeping track of the comments you leave on other websites and blogs – something I tried doing via Delicious, but always failed to keep track of!

If you’re interested, you can keep tabs on me at Backtype.com/DanThornton. The way it tracks comments is by tracking the url you leave – which covers most blogs and similar sites. I doubt there are any Dan Thornton/BadgerGravling impersonators out there, but they’ll appear if they’re dropping my urls! I’ve looked at alternatives like Disqus, and coComment, but never quite saw enough value to invest the time and effort needed. Backtype is far quicker and simpler, and may well encourage me to re-investigate some of the alternatives, depending on what happens – although Friendfeed etc also give a home to comments and conversation about blog spots.

Now the predicition. I’ve been prompted to pick some of the things I think will emerge next on the web (and I’m always happy to also spout my ideas unprompted!). I’ve often made the obvious observations around mobile and smartphones, and the fact that Twitter and microblogging are being adopted by brands, enterprise, celebrities and the mainstream. But the third prediction is one that surprised me a little, the first time it launched out of my mouth!

Twitter has a fair way to go to become really mainstream, but the next site/application to follow it, in my opinion, will be Seesmic. Most people in the tech bubble will have heard of it and web celeb founder Loic le Meur. But, like many emerging sites and applications, it’s taken a little time for the value of the service to become apparent.

For the unitiated, it’s a tool for video conversations by individuals, enabling responses to be threaded into coherence. Which means it overcomes the downside of streaming your life via webcam 24/7 – the dull bits. It’s already popular with some people withing social media – like top journalism lecturer/social media/multimedia person Paul Bradshaw – but now it’s also being used by mainstream media. The BBC has now joined the Washington Post in using the service, as written about by Loic today, and not only have they outlined how it will be used in their first video, but they’re already gaining responses to their first conversation about the financial crisis.

Now listen up, journalist people. Not only can you get a response from the more engaged members of society without having to do ‘voxpops‘ in the local town centre in the pouring rain – but now they’ll even video themselves! See the benefit now?

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
«Older Posts