Media Web 2.0

Some of the London Social Media crew debouched (debauched?) to Cannes and wangled a bunch of interviews with famous real Celebs (as opposed to A List bloggers) - but the interesting thing was that the questions were "user generated".

Here's UK journo Jemima Kiss for example:

Now whether this sort of broadcast based approach will work in a video conversational tool is unclear - UK blogger and musician Steve Lawson makes some interesting points here:



Now here's the $bn question for Seesmic - would you prefer to watch Steve or read his thoughts in his blog , and read the comments rather than listen to all the videos, in 1/10th the time?

Ars Tech was bought today by Wired (aka Conde Nast ) for $25m, which follows closely on the heels of the CNet /CBS acquisition.

As one wag suggested on Twitter, Wired likes quality tech journalism so much they went out and bought some

Big picture - its rollup time in the tech blogosphere, as we noted before there are too many blogs trying to do the same thing, so a shakeout was inevitable.
What is more interesting is that but a few short weeks ago all the talk was of raising funding, and Mr Arrington bemoaned this as he wished to do a roll-up apparently but the spate of takeovers implies trade sale is the preferred route (lower price, more synergies).

The race, as they say, is on.

One wonders where TechCrunch will be when the dust settles, having been the original ones to float rollup as an idea - I wonder if the New York Times will buy them . In fact their strategy of distribution via MSM is an interesting use of the old partnership "3rd way" play rather than rollup.

Bass guitar virtuoso Steve Lawson has written two very useful posts (Part 1 here and Part 2 here) on the evolution of music and the internet, and his thoughts on the evolution of social media. (Steve's style is varied but I really like his ambient music, and his technical skill is such that it really rewards having a good sound system - he makes bass guitars do things they really shouldn't - here he is on that other very useful social media music tool, YouTube:)



Its quite useful looking at Steve's chronicling of the way use of the internet developed - firstly, the beginning:

I’ve been interacting, networking and building knowledge about what I do as a musician on the web since the late 90s via email discussion lists (I joined The Bottom Line in early ‘98, I think), forums (been on talkbass since early 2000, IM and music chatrooms. But two things have changed drastically since then - firstly an understanding, both academically and amongst users, of ’social networking’ as an enterprise in its own right, and secondly the range of tools and web resources to make it happen.

On what makes various sites more or less useful:

....when I finally realised that MySpace worked best as an interactive media, not a broadcast one, I was left with a completely unmanageable, uncategorisable list of people I knew very little about, with no way of grouping them geographically, or by their level of interest (I couldn’t tell who’d added me and who I’d added). So my Myspace page, en masse, is still a pool of hideously underused potential, thanks to the completely rubbish way the site itself makes data available.

The other social network I joined before Myspace was Last.fm - a much more focussed site, infinitely better designed, MUCH harder to spam, and built to slowly proliferate music that is considered ‘good’ by the regular users. Thanks to me getting in early on last.fm, my music is heavily tagged and associated with some fairly well-listened artists, so my music crops up on a relatively high number of people’s personal radio stations there.

Thoughts on the economics and use of social media on the internet for musicians:

For musicians, the onset of the ‘Social Media Age’ has meant an end to the tyranny of broadcast media, to our potential career and audience being in the hands of record execs, radio and TV programmers and big concert agents. We can build relationships with our audience, talk to them, ask for their help spreading the word about music they love, and also help out the musicians we love....

....The simple fact is that I’ve sold WAY more CDs to the coupla hundred people who’ve seen me play in, say, Petersfield in Hampshire, than I have to the hundreds of thousands who’ve heard me on The Late Junction on Radio 3 - a show that’s been playing my music pretty regularly over the last however many years...

...So as social media evolved, my play-approach helped me - along with a whole load of other musicians disillusioned with ‘the mainstream’ - fairly unconsciously develop a way of engaging with my audience via conversation, interaction and availability, rather than broadcast, spam and rock-star seclusion.

It also set me thinking about other forms of social media for music discovery - Everyone knows of FOAF systems like Last.fm, or music genetics site Pandora, but discovering Steve's stuff was different - I met Steve via London's Tuttle Club, which is one of the London social media networks bridging a lot of different communities who otherwise wouldn't really know each other. I listened to his stuff, now I'm a fan - but I would never have found his music otherwise.

There 's also nothing like a bit of notoriety even in the social media age - I'm South African but live in the UK, but I'm interested in the music scene back in SA and keep tabs on it - and the hoo-ha was palpable among SA music discussion internet groups (that one can be on from the UK) when SA cult band Fokofpolisiekar was the first Afrikaans language band to be played on a mainstream english speaking rock station. That they are talented helps, that they are awesome live is useful, that they sang about teen angst in small town rural SA is always good - but calling yourself "F*ck Off Police Car" (that's the translation) certainly added to the attraction - the Sex Pistol ploy (Fans call 'em FPK or Die Bende (the band/gang) )

So, without ado, from Steve's ethereal playing we go straight on to high energy, head bashing, guitar thrashing, police car Pr0wning punk

An afternoon cup of coffee, a quick scan of Techmeme, and the spluttering sound of coffee in cup as yet another rebottling of old wine into Bottles 2.0 appears - Wired this time on Broadband 2.0:

two of the largest ISPs in the United States are hoping to kick off yet another broadband renaissance, this time with home connections that promise to reach 50-100 Mbps, enabling a slew of high-definition content, better-quality video-sharing sites and even 3-D video. Call it Broadband 2.0.

Experts say this increased bandwidth -- when it becomes widely available -- will have a profound effect on everything from our social interactions on the web to the way we consume media.

No Sh*t, Sherlock, I hear you say - now who would have guessed that?

OK, what this is really all about is that US Telcos (and, one presumes, European ones) are now starting to look at upgrading their broadband pipes to get to the 50 - 100 Mb/sec mark that those backward Far Easterners have taken for granted for years. It would surely be inconceivable to look at what they are doing Back East, and think about what therefore may be applicable here?

Clearly not, or not in the the Wired article anyway - not once is Korea or Japan mentioned! No, in this newest of New New things - Broadband 2.0 to wit - quote of the day goes to Ribbit:

"Basically, people are going to do a lot of the things they normally do today, but in a better, more satisfying, way," says Crick Waters, co-founder of Ribbit, a Silicon Valley company that sells an internet-based telephony platform.....

...... "Believe me, the minute someone puts the pipes out there, people will find a way to use them," Waters says.

Heck, one day they may even work out how to pay for them !!

Fake Steve Jobs is an inspiration to any Corporate Drone who wants to avoid a life of quiet desperation:

He explained that as he saw traditional media organizations getting their lunch eaten by bloggers, he wanted somehow to join the new generation of media players.

So he said that he asked Forbes.com, the Web venue of his employer, Forbes magazine, if he could start a blog. They said no, he reported.

Instead, he began his own blog, and began--with impersonating Steve Jobs as if he was really saying what he felt instead of being little more than a PR voice like many corporate bloggers--being Fake Steve Jobs.

And did so well his own company wanted to hire him before they found out he already worked for them - he should have kept shtum and taken the 2 salaries

Best thing I've seen come out of the Web 2.0 Expo so far.

.....by none other than David Byrne, a real Talking Head, over here.

(We have analysis of our own, but this is the level of authority that really goes down well - hence the link love )

Thanks to Confused of Calcutta for the link - interesting article too.

Steve Rubel wrote a post last Sunday about 3 professions that may disappear.....well, the warning shots are being fired on another one - A List Tech Blogger;

There have been rumblings on this from last week, with Mr Arrington of TechCrunch bemoaning the fact that other Tech Blogs are looking for funding (rather than letting him roll them up, it would seem). And this week came a post on ridiculous valuations - which, I note, none of them moved to question, some even letting it pass unchallenged

However, last night paidContent threw the gauntlet down bigtime, showing a switch to a "pro" organisation structure. This isn't prosumer blogging or citizen journalism no more, this is the starter gun for a straight race for market leadership of a media game.

And the issue at the core is simple - the only reason there are c 10 or so "A List, cover most everything in tech" blogs is because by and large they are using offset economics, ie they are publishing at under a sustainable economic cost. However, that means there is just a glut of people covering the same small set of stories to the same small, geeky audience - i.e. there is oversupply, and that means consolidation - there are very few commodity industries where more than 3 majors can make a living. So one thing is for sure, in a few years there will be far less of them.

And they won't be "bloggers" anymore either - one of the noticeable features of the big blogs is that they look less and less like blogs, and more like broadcast media they grew up to be an alternative to - the whole collaboration thing is winding down - linking is now strategic, there is less negative analysis, more PR stuff is going through to pimp up da volume, more journo staffers rather than tech idealists, etc etc

So not only will there be less, but those remaining won't look like the A list bloggers of yore anyway.

The issue they will face, though, is if they look like big media, talk like big media etc etc - will they be able to keep their audiences longer term?

One of the interesting lessons I took away from "Flat Earth News", Nick Davis' analysis of the failure of mainstream media over the last 20 years or so, is that its not a "single transaction" game - ie winning the battle of getting mo' content out there fastest, day after day, actually slowly leads to a drop in usage over time - you just can't fool all the people all the time with subpar content, and thats what you get with volume and low cost.

In fact, that's what gave blogging its "in" originally over Olde Media - it was seen as more authentic, because by and large it was written by enthusiasts with expertise and a genuine desire to tell it as it is - and talk to their audiences.

And those sorts of people are still out there, so the issue the New New Media may find, as they start to look more like Old New Media, is in this long tailed, low transaction cost world (Also, the arrival of aggregators of all sorts means that that "B, C and D list" blogs are increasingly easy to find and package), all that happens is that the fickle readership just follows the (socially mediated) crowd to the next tranche of genuine voices...

Update - as well as their comments below, Mike Butcher and Adam Tinworth pinged me on two other points:

- Mike thinks that the professional blogs are 'freer' as they end up hiring ad sales people so they don't have to run editorial and ads

- Adam thinks that my assumption that the tech market is near-saturated is wrong.

I'm not sure I'm disagreeing with Mike so much, more that I'm saying the blog media will have to differentiate themselves from the existing web 1.0 tech comment sites...and that sort of leads into Adam's points - ie is there a market that the existing tech websites don't occupy, and what will the A-List blogs have to do to differentiate themselves from the incumbents. Mike also brought up the intersting thought of Co-Opetition, which may occur (sparks thoughts of a post on Free-conomics) - though my bet would be on consolidation via acquistion after a shakeout, as that is a more common pattern.

Update 2 - an article in the NYT which is not saying things a million miles away from this post, albeit with a more tactical rather than strategic angle. Two quotes:

Mr. Arrington suggests he may well try to play the John D. Rockefeller of the blogging world (without the thugs and arsonists, presumably). “A lot of things will happen this year,” he said declining to offer more detail.

I think that's pretty much what my post is saying...and this from paidContent:

“Our focus is not page views,” Mr. Ali said. “Our focus has been laserlike on the C-level executives in the industry. That’s why we get triple-digit CPMs. That’s nearly unheard of in the industry.”

Now is that $100 CPM or $1.00 CPM

Watching the to-do on two blogs I follow (Techcrunch and A VC) on the concept of Journobloggers (those creatures who are journos who blog as their main raison d'etre) made me realise that the media is becoming ever more nuanced.

In essence the discussion goes as follows. Fred Wilson (A VC) noted that:

When I started blogging four and a half years ago, there was a clear delineation between bloggers and journalists. But that's all changed and now we have this new category, the journablogger.

The journablogger has his or her own blog or works in a blog network like paid content, techcrunch, gigaom, alley insider, read write web, mashable, venturebeat, etc, etc. Just look at the top of techmeme's leader board and you'll see them right next to the traditional journalists like New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNET, etc.

These journabloggers got their start as bloggers who operated outside of the traditional world of journalism where doing your homework and getting the story straight are requirements for the job. That was good. It allowed them to be quick, get the story out, and fill the blog with opinion.

Problem was, he fingered two TechCrunch journo-bloggers for a bit of sloppiness, and this drew the TC F(ire)

So what this really comes down to is this. Wilson didn’t like the coverage. But instead of simply disagreeing with and rebutting the points made in the posts, he went after the reputation of the writers themselves. That would be inappropriate even if he was right. But the fact that he was both conflicted and wrong makes it inexcusable.

Wilson failed to uphold the very standards of integrity that he demands from others. He failed to contact Erick or Matt before writing, and didn’t seem to have the facts to back up his argument. In a twitter exchange between us on this issue, he defended his sloppiness on the fact that he’s a blogger, saying “if you are a blogger you can say what you think, once you become a journalist, you have a different standard.”

Now, frankly, I’m confused. Bloggers can say what they think, but journalists can’t? I think what he’s trying to say is that Erick and Matt are no longer bloggers and now need to hold themselves to a higher standard - one that Wilson explicitly doesn’t hold himself to. That sounds like hypocrisy 101 to me.

Also, in a comment to his original post, he says “Erick didn’t get it wrong…but i think he missed the opportunity to get it right.”

Now, Fred later recalled the term "Journobloggers", but whether its called a spadeblogger or a journoshovel, there is a key New Media point being made here, ie there is a totally new continuum of journalism emerging, and where once the Olde Media "journalist" was on the wavefront of fast, topical news you now have the "perpetual beta" of the Blogworld usurping that role - and also injecting a lot of the Op-Ed into the vacuum where more serious (ie time lagged) journalists fail to tread their wares.

Is some of this instant op-ed scurrilous and inaccurate - absolutely! Will there be spats between the various blogs and bloggers - totally! It is (as others have noted before) merely the re-emergence of broadsides etc, those scurrilous, inflamatory "micro-media" of days gone by. And just as some of those metamorphosed into "proper" media, so it will happen again. And again.

At real issue here, in 2008, is attention - and money. The "Journoblogs" are now sucking quite a bit of attention from the "Trad" Cottage Blogger industry (as the increasing wails of Olde A Listers will testify), and increasingly sucking money away from the MSM. As they are (New)MSM in all but name, one could argue that this is merely the process of re-setting expectations of what these mid-stream media companies will be doing to differentiate themselves from Cottage Bloggers (because they are companies now in all but name, not individual bloggers) - riding the perpetual blogging beta or inclining to the older codes of journalism.

Endgame - there will be a form of on line, rapid turnaround media company - call it Journoblogging or Midstream Media or Online OpEd or whatever, which is not as fact-checked as MSM but is far quicker to the fore, is updated by commentators as well as writers, and where it is more important to watch the "conversation" than any one organ.

In that way its maybe less efficient - ie takes more reading time - but it is more immediate, and we - the newsvores - will learn to parse it along with the the existing dailies, weeklies, journals etc as we go about gathering the information we like, when we want it etc.

Two interesting posts on how the media is shifting:

(i) Globalisation - report from Comscore showing that UK media (Print and TV) is going global in its digital form. The tables are very interesting



In summary:

The Daily Mail had the highest proportion of international visitors, with 69 percent of its 7.6 million visitors originating from outside the U.K. The BBC attracted 59 percent of its audience internationally, while the Telegraph (57 percent) and the Guardian Media Group (56 percent) also drew more than half their respective audiences from outside the U.K. Only two of the ten sites studied, British Sky Broadcasting (BSkyB) and ITV Sites, had less than a quarter of their traffic originate internationally.

And teh guardian is doing video and audio, the BBC has acres of screenprint - in 5 years will there really be such a thing as National Print or TV or Radio Media anymore?

(ii) Multi-mediating - great post here from James Cherkoff the many modes of TV today (tip of hat to Monkchips). Quoth I:

Let's look at a few scenarios to see how 'TV' is shifting:

In my home we have a Freeview box with a 160GB hardrive, a small DVD library and a subscription to ilovefilm. So almost all my viewing is time-shifted.

On the way to Thinkbox meeting I saw three twenty-something lads on a train watching football on a PSP. So their viewing was location-shifted.

I have a friend who has no TV but buys a lot of DVDs and watches them on his laptop. So his viewing is device-shifted.

Another buddy has BitTorrent continually 'dripping' into the servers that sit in his flat which are then saved as a 'best of' library on Mac Minis which he loans out to friends. Which is law-shifting.

A relative of mine has a 7ft Hi-Def plasma screen in a dedicated room where the only viewing is film and football. Which is wallet-shifting.

When it comes to live programming like football, the pub is often the venue for my circle. Call it venue-shifting.

Plenty of people are choosing to take their TV in sociable snack-size packages such as Room Mates on MySpace TV and Kate Modern on Bebo. A sort of format-shifting.

Others have forsaken TV and replaced it with submersive gaming such as World of Warcraft or consoles. Which is reality-shifting.

Then there are consoles which increasingly are equipped to handle films and programming or which have in fact just morphed into TV-like screens. So, the software is shifting.

And then there's Slingbox which allows those on the road to call up content from the hardrive in their home and watch it on a laptop. Which can be time-zone shifting.

And then 4oD, the million strong BBCi Player and ITV.com - all possibly due to be wrapped up into the new Kangaroo platform. Channel-shifting?

As he says...which of these is TV, and which is not?

Report on Ars Technica picking up on a report from the British Library, on the Google Generation - the kids born post 1993. Its a very good report in my opinion, it tallies strongly with my experience (I have Google Generation kids):

For instance, are teens better with technology than older adults? Perhaps, but they also "tend to use much simpler applications and fewer facilities than many imagine."

I can identify with this - my teenage son was with me while I was using Thunderbird (offline email client) the other day, and was astounded at its power compared to the online services (IM, Social Nets etc) that they use. Or,

Another common trope is that respect for authority on the Web is dead (with Wikipedia usually cited as an example) and that there are no more "experts" on the Internet; it's all about peer knowledge. The report calls this a "myth" as well, saying that "research in the specific context of the information resources that children prefer and value in a secondary school setting shows that teachers, relatives, and textbooks are consistently valued above the Internet."
I'd go along with this as well - it's just that they will double check you against the internet so you better know your stuff

On social networking etc......

The numbers are those who say they are extremely likely or very likely to do so (general public responses in brackets).
•
self-publish creative work: 7% (6%)
•
share ideas with about library services: 10% (7%)
•
share your photos / videos: 7% (6%)
•
participate in online discussion groups: 6% (6%)
•
meet others with similar interests: 6% (7%)
•
describe your own personal collections: 9% (6%)
•
view others’ personal collections: 12% (6%)

Thus, most college students say they are not interested. Clearly it is very early days, but these survey findings do not provide much confidence that social software, yet, has much to contribute to the rebuilding of relationships with users in an increasingly dis-intermediated environment.

My observation - my "Google Generation use Social Networks that "do something" - the current buzzphrase is that they have a "social objective" - so World of Warcraft functions as social net, VoIP and game in one.

Some other thoughts from the report that are pertinent to some of the assertions of some of our Noo Media Gurus - some myths exploded:

They have shifted decisively to digital forms of communication: texting rather than talking

Our verdict: Open. it is very difficult to see messaging as a fundamental trend, its current popularity is certainly influenced by its relatively low cost compared with voice.

My observation - the minute the kids get near broadband, the texting disappears and IM, VoIP et al take over.

They multitask in all areas of their lives*

Our verdict: Open. There is no hard evidence. However, it is likely that being exposed to online media early in life may help to develop good parallel processing skills. The wider question is whether sequential processing abilities, necessary for ordinary reading [ and complex problem solving ], are being similarly developed.

I don't see continuous Continual Partial Attention - I see them use it as one mode of behaviour, typically in relaxation time. If anything I see more adults who are in this mode.