Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

Read on. Is really insightful. Stowe adds to this with some thoughtful commentary on the rise of social brands:

The rise of social brands — through social media — is driven by our need to push aside the control of large, impersonal organizations, and participate in the essence of invitational brands: to define ourselves and find meaning through our involvement in the implicit communities of use surrounding products and services.

This is not just another way of looking at self-identification by class, or economic bracket, or being in the in crowd. It is a direct expression of an emergent, bottom-up exploration of our relationships to each other and our purpose in the world, where the goods and services we acquire and apply become a medium, in effect, where we interact with others.

Stowe also points to a terrific read from John Winsor.

We are in the twilight of a society based on data. In the coming years, brands and companies will not thrive on the basis of their data, but on the strength and meaning of their stories, creating products and services that evoke emotion. Products will become less important than the stories they convey and the way those stories are interpreted. It is a return of the ancient form of narrative. Companies need to have stories to tell – stories that inspire action. And companies must themselves embody those stories with congruency and authenticity.

Great interview with David Akin over at Pressthink.

Okay. It’s the Internet that’s changing journalism. If that’s the case, why blog?

David Akin: The blog is an increasingly important tool for newsgathering and for maintaining a connection with the community or ecosystem of those that you report on. That last part was the bit that surprised me as I started blogging. It has made my print reporting interactive.

I write; I publish. And that used to be the end of it. Now, I write, I publish and a community of people who have special knowledge or who are deeply interested in the topic amplify, correct, modify, or extend the reportage. For a beat reporter, this is fabulous, because I now have more knowledge about my beat.

I haven’t seen this work for my television reporting and I think there are a couple of reasons. First, blogs, like newspapers, are a logocentric medium and TV is not. Second, you can’t easily link to TV pieces or “quote” TV pieces or respond in the same way as the original piece, that is, with video.

Chris has an interesting piece on recommendations:

“In a sense, you can think of all your filters as being part of orthogonal trust networks, often with the only common member being yourself.  They rarely, if ever, overlap. Thus any service that tries to condense all of your different planes of influence into a single dimension is going to fail, at least as far as useful recommendations go. That isn’t to say that such services shouldn’t offer playlist sharing and Amazon wishlists, only that I’m likely to find better advice elsewhere.”

His point is that recommendations from within your existing networks aren’t necessarily the best, or, for the newest, bestest, coolest products. He recalls Bill Joy’s quote:

“”No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else.”

The same might be said of recommendations. No matter who you are,  someone you don’t know has found the coolest stuff.””

I tend to agree that what lives in the recommendation engines is becoming less and less valuable as a recommendation. They seem, more than often, to be engineered from within a review or fan base. As communicators we are going to have to increasingly look outside the established networks for the orthogonal recommenders. I’ve been speaking of this for awhile now as the difference between right-field (known to you) recommenders vs. left-field (surprising) recommenders. Smart buyers will move to the left field while triangulating off the right, and, ignoring the pay-to-play engines.

Christian Science Monitor on blogging and the Apple thing. Do we have First Amendment Rights?

Ultimately, the issue comes down to whether bloggers act like traditional journalists, says University of Iowa law professor and First Amendment specialist Randall Bezanson. Simply expressing opinions to a tiny audience doesn’t count, he says. If so, “then I’m a journalist when I write a letter to my mother reporting on what I’m doing. I don’t think the [constitutional] free-press clause was intended to extend its protections to letters to mothers from sons.”

Probably not. But what if Mom fact-checks and posts the letter on her blog for thousands of people to read? Is she a journalist then? Courts may make the final call.

Christian Science Monitor, Feb 2, 2005

FT futureizes on search and its application in managing our daily lives…

In the future… finding information would not involve going to a separate place – a search engine – to ask a question. Instead, the answer would present itself wherever you happened to be, and in the most appropriate form. “Search will become more and more important and less and less visible,” says [Craig] Silverstein at Google. “It will be ubiquitous and invisible.” At that stage, depending on your point of view, Google and its rivals would either be one of the most powerful forces shaping everyday life or just another invisible cog in the great Information Age machine that is being created out of the internet.

You know you’ve arrived when… You’ve got a Wikipedia entry… And the Long Tail has definitely arrived as a concept. Here’s the definition from Chris’ About page:

“The Long Tail is the yellow part of the sales chart at left, which shows a standard demand curve that could apply to any industry, from entertainment to services. The vertical axis is sales, the horizontal is products. The red part of the curve is the “hits”, which have dominated our commercial decisions to date. The yellow part is the non-hits, or niches, which I argue in the article will prove equally important in the future now that technology has provided efficient ways to give consumers access to them.

The two big points of the Long Tail theory are these: 1) The yellow part potentially extends forever to the right; 2) The area under that line–the market it represents–may become as big as the hits at the left.”

Shhhhh… Don’t tell anyone… Apple Computer is lowering the price of its iPod only in Korea according to Seoul’s JoongAng Daily… Which kind of supports my thesis that we’ve yet to really see the impact of innovation in the MP3 player space. Apple has established incredible first mover advantage and built an even more incredible ecosystem. But will that hold off Asian and US innovators? It’s not till you start looking at the new generation of players that the iTunes paradox becomes apparent – on the one hand you get mountains of choice and on the other, less choice of players.

According to the Opinion Journal:

Local representatives even asked the media to “keep quiet” about the price cuts, saying that headquarters feared opposition from other Asian countries.

So remember, if you’re in the media, don’t tell anyone about this!

Speaking of PR… here’s a terrific little essay on Bullshit.

Tech Policy Blog launches… care of the 463.

Marketplace on PR Goes Blogging…

Blogs aren’t just for individuals anymore. The web log, or blog, is being seen by many in the corporate world as a good internet marketing tool. Public relations experts, CEOs and customers are starting to realize the benefits of web diaries.

In the “ask a silly question, get a silly answer category” is this headline from AdAge:-

. IS A SUPER BOWL AD WORTH

$80,000 A SECOND?

Well… HELL NO! They go on to flag a new survey which suggests it is…

Super Bowl ad rates have notched their annual mind-numbing record — and it turns out that marketers paying $2.4 million to Fox for 30 seconds of fame may be getting a great deal.

An online survey last year of 500 consumers by InsightExpress found that while 54% of Americans planned to watch the game, 50% were watching specifically for the commercials and 58% said they pay closer attention to ads during the Super Bowl than those they see every day.

“That people are actively engaged in seeing the ads also helps the ROI,” Mr. Hess said. “It’s well known in experimental psychology that if you discuss something after seeing it … it helps reinforce the memory.” AdAge, Feb 1, 2005

Um, yeah…. Get some PR going folks. Same eZine also carried this headline…

SONY PAYS $25,000 A

MONTH FOR GAWKER BLOG

First, that seems bloody cheap – sorry, really great value – and sets the bar pretty low for Blog sponsorship. Second, what an incredibly smart thing to do. Gizmodo is quickly becoming one of the key sources for all things geeky. What a great place to reach the early adopter audience. Apparently the ads don’t stop there. Sony will be advertising on the new LifeHacker site. Denton also launched Gridskipper today.

Sony’s ads on LifeHacker and Gizmodo will include standard-size leaderboards, medium rectangles and skyscrapers. LifeHacker’s editorial scope comprises software downloads, spam filters, spyware and e-mail applications among other topics. “If you have a buddy who tells you everything that’s cool online, LifeHacker would be that buddy,” Mr. Denton said. Gina Trapani will edit the site. She is a blogger known for Scribbling.net, a personal journal that also discusses technology.

Gridskipper is a bit of a yawn… at least for me. Too much like Wallpaper/Surface. I much prefer – so far – the Flavorpill eZines which are content rich.

BTW – AdAge has the stupidest, most annoying subscription scheme I’ve ever encountered. Get over it gang and open up that site… Dan said it well:

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