Before there was the Internet... There was ME.
The (sometimes) random musings of a man who has a (sometimes) faulty filter between his Ferrari brain and (sometimes) Trabant mouth.
A number of months ago, I met with fellow Newhouse / Syracuse alumnus Howard Polskin of the Magazine Publishers Association.We had gotten hooked up with each other via another fellow Newhouse alum Howard Sholkin a few weeks earlier, to talk shop and do a little bit of networking.We had a great conversation, talking about the media business in general, and the direction it’s going in.
During our chat, Howard mentioned that the MPA was in the process of planning for their third annual Digital Awards luncheon at the fifth “Magazines 24/7 Digital Conference” in March, and asked me if I’d be interested as acting as a judge for the competition.The MPA Digital Awards honor excellence and innovation of magazine brands on all digital platforms in 12 categories.
I told him that I’d be honored to be part of the distinguished group.
WEBSITES OF THE YEAR The “Website of the Year” category recognizes excellence and innovation in content, design, functionality and usability in four subcategories.
Website of the Year: News, Business & Finance:Wired.com Website of the Year: Entertainment & Sports: SI.com Website of the Year: Enthusiast: Architectural Record Website of the Year: Service & Lifestyle: Epicurious.com
Happy Friday... Some thoughts to take you into the weekend.You know, 'can't take the Assignment Editor out of the boy...' -- see if you can follow the random train of thought:
I’ve been told that there are strange things afoot in From the land of ET+12, (aka Asia).
Yesterday, I attended a panel with the Strategic Web Insights Group, hosted by Dan Mooney and Devin Brown.It was my second meeting, and I’ve met some very interesting people there before.Sat next to Marshall Sponder, who I’ve been running into for about the past six months here and there.Anyway, the discussion was about Presenting KPIs to Management, but I’ll get to that in a bit.
First, from the Foreign Desk... Facebook is still growing -- in Asia
From a couple guys by way of NBC Universal (Digital Research Director Blandon Casenave, and someone I didn’t know) , I learned that in Asia, the most popular online social community is Friendster, believe it or not.
A little background: according to Venturebeat, in the current international land-grab among leading social networks (N.B.: have you staked your claim on your @Handle yet on Twitter? Bought your name’s URL?), the almighty Facebook is overtaking MySpace (my old employer, NewsCorp) as the largest social network in the world.
That’s old news now to anyone in the know.Here’s the rub though: remember ol’ Friendster, which the grownups were digging Pre-FB, and then completely bailed on when FB came around?
Well, in Asia, Friendster continues to lead Facebook and everyone else by at least a two to one margin. Like increase its base nearly double from 23 million monthly active users in April of 2007, to 40 million users this past April 2008 (old numbers – anyone have any more current?), according to comScore.And it appears to trending still upwards On top of that, the Friendster people point out that comScore doesn’t account for users who access the site through internet cafes, which is a much larger user trend than in the US.And get this: comScore March ’08 data says that Friendster users spend an average of 229 minutes on the site per month, the highest of any social network.If anyone has any more recent data on this, to prove/disprove the trend, we can get all Mythbustery on it.If I have the time, I’ll dig a bit.
Google's New Online Ad Campaign for Chrome
Also, from that geographical area, apparently there’s a ‘battle for search engine supremacy” in Japan, between Yahoo and Google.On one of the fronts, Google is introducing its Chrome browser into the Land of the Rising Sun.From boingboing, this cleverly-crafted stop-motion video advertisement was put together by the Google Japan team.It shows the company’s strategic vision of using the Japanese cute factor (or kawaii, like “Hello Kitty”) to successfully enter their browser into a market currently dominated by Yahoo.Feels evocative of something you’d see on the newly-launched Electric Company, in its first iteration.
Iconic elements of New York City rendered in Lego. Brilliant. Utilizing everyone’s familiarity with Lego pieces, not only their strengths of being able to put them together, but the limitations that go along with their modular architecture.It’s Pop Art, using found objects and the viewers imagination to complete.
Over the years, I've been in an ongoing back-and-forth (conflict sounds too harsh) with clients who say they want to embrace "New" (hate that term) Media, but are very much stuck in an "Old Media" way of thinking. You know these clients -- the ones who hear some buzzword and immediately want to get their brand in on it -- whether or not it's possible/correct/etc. For example:
"Can you make me a Viral Video?" "We need a blog for all our press releases..." "Let's put our blog on Twitter and then it'll go viral, right?"
Blurgh.
Then there are the others (identities will be hidden to protect the naive), who can think of nothing more successful than getting their brand on a Network AM Show or The New York Times. Don't get me wrong-- there's definitely a ton of value in hits of those magnitude. But these are the same people who completely discount the value of online hits; as if, unless you can 'hold it in your hand', it didn't really exist.
So when I saw this video on Richard Laermer/Kevin Dugan's Bad Pitch Blog (both of whom I unfortunately missed meeting at their party last week), and I thought I'd pass it on.
I've heard the headline of his post ("It was just on the web site, not in print") from countless clients and colleagues and managers. I'm sure you probably have too.
Of course, nothing compares to actually holding a great hit or seeing it on TV. But isn't that really just an ego thing? Granted, my Mom and Dad are probably more impressed when I snag a placement on Good Morning America or the NYT, but which is actually serving the client better? A lot of clients feel just like Mom and Dad, unfortunately, because that's they way they were raised to consume media. They need to understand why an online placement is valuable to their brand, sometimes even more than a print placement (but ideally with both). The video above is a great way to show them the power of Digital.
What really got me, however, was a comment on the blog. To wit:
"I've gotta be honest - if you think a placement in Wired's blog is as good as a placement in the magazine then you're kidding yourself. I certainly see benefit in online placements - they do get (limited) readership, they have hyperlinks that can drive people directly to the product/service and they have SEO benefits.
But, pound for pound, print placement gets us more results than anything. Period."
SERIOUSLY? First of all, leaving "Anonymous" comments is kinda lame --own up to your views. I agree with Kevin's response... Making absolute statements about media relations is *very* short-sighted, and I think discounts the credibility of the comment itself.
As for the comment itself: This is the constant discussion with those aforementioned clients-- what's 'more results than anything' mean? Is it more eyeballs? Not necessarily. How many people actually read a magazine cover-to-cover? Are you absolutely sure that the person read your product's mention? With online, readers are more active -- they may have found your mention via search, or trackbacks to the piece.
In addition, the MSM picks up stories online, and goes online for research, so that placement lives on far longer than the newspaper that is now lining the litterbox, or the magazine that is left in the bathroom. As the video also says, bloggers may pick up the story as well -- and then the aforementioned MSM may take notice. It also has the opportunity to go GLOBAL, which is less likely for a US-based long-lead pub. I won't even go into the fact that the run-up time makes most info covered in mags very old by the time they're published. They're called "long-lead", right? That usually means a few months, at least.
So, once again, how do you quantify "more results than anything"? Are you talking 'impressions' that are an inflated number based upon circulation numbers? Can you directly correlate those numbers to sales figures? Probably not. Or is it just because the client likes a fancy masthead or pretty pictures in a magazine that his boss likes to read?
NYTimes.com said Friday it has launched a new platform that will bring more video to more sections of the site.Videos will be presented in hi-def and made available to the home page, articles, blogs, and the site's video library in an effort to make video a central part of The New York Times' (overall) strategy of moving more digital.
The Grey Lady’s site’s new vid platform will display videos in 16x9 widescreen (woot for letterbox!) format, and more robust search so users can more easily find the videos they’re looking for. More importantly (for survival, and social media geeks like myself), each video will now feature share tools (!), which will allow viewers to share the videos on sites like Digg, Facebook,Twitter, etc. This is another extension of the Times’ digital social media strategy like TimesPeople, which rolled out recently.
NYTimes.com already produces about a good deal of videos from journalists like David Pogue (Personal Tech) and Mark Bittman (Dining), which happen to be my favorite sections. With the announcement of the enhancement of its video offerings, it appears that video will become an integral part of its new strategy to keep current.I'm sure additional mainstream media outlets will be following suit.
Interestingly enough, the topic of online video has been popping up (not pop-ups – I hate those) all over the place lately.Ipsos Media released a study on Monday that found that the popularity of online video is moving beyond the early adopters/geeks and growing significantly among women and older consumers.As Anchorman Ron Burgundy once said, that’s kind of a big deal.The study found that about 54% of female Internet users ages 12+ have viewed streaming video online in the past 30 days, up from 45% a year ago -- nearly equal to the 58% of men who have streamed online video in the same time period.In the grown-up category, Ipsos reports that 60% of adults 35-54 have recently streamed online video, up from 49% in 2007.
In addition, I had lunch last week with Eric Wright (SVP, Marketing & Business Development) from DS Simon Productions, whose firm conducted a survey of some 200 “web influencers” about this very subject just recently. They're poised to make aggressive moves in this area, and I can see why.
According to the survey, a full 65% of online media sites now use video, and 77% of online media sites project the use of video to increase over the next year. I believe that this will be an ongoing trend, as broadband use becomes more prevalent, both nation- and worldwide.
About 45% of TV stations use outside video for their Web sites, while two-thirds of radio stations, newspapers, magazines and bloggers use outside video on their Web sites.Of course, the strongest interest in sourced video content comes from ‘web media’, which I imagine like a ‘hyper-local’ television affiliate, with limited resources to create their own video content.However, they all have broadband access, and can download from an FTP site (or otherwise).The advancing usage of digital editing works for both parties:online outlets can produce professional-quality video packages at their desktops, and traditional media has regular access to the technology to download video directly to edit bays -- this was a problem back when I was in the TV biz, actually.
Wanted to share with you an interesting use of social media by the mainstream media, if you haven't caught it yet…
So, with my current employment situation coupled with current events and my usual media appetite, I’ve been watching a lot of television and catching up on a lot of current events.Mostly news and informational stuff, like the news cablers, documentaries, the blogosphere, and reading the Economist again (really!).
Anyway, CNN’s Rick Sanchez has fascinated me for a long time.Some background: Sanchez used to work at WSVN (FOX, my old employer) and launched the "if-it-bleeds-it-leads" tabloid-TV style that spread over the affiliates of the FOX network and beyond.
So, I’ve been watching his 3-4pm newscast for most of the summer, and I’ve been noticing how he’s been sneaking in little bits of social media each week.Sanchez, a big Twitter fan, has been integrating Facebook, Twitter and SMS into his broadcasts in a fast-paced, FOX-like style.They’ve replaced the news ticker with SMS content, and Rick’s always checking his Twitter and Facebook pages for instant viewer feedback.The play-out should be interesting; particularly how FOX's NewsCorp responds since MySpace is a NewsCorp entity, but not in the right user demographic.As multiple news events have come to bear (market meltdown, presidential election, etc.), these tools’ usage have been become even more pronounced.
Now, he’s hosting a show that may be news television's first integrated social media broadcast. I've been watching it mature as CNN has rolled it out over the past few weeks – it has very interesting potential (and implications) for mainstream media as well as PR folks like myself.
And then I tipped Gawker off to it.They wrote about it, actually (how meta!). Perhaps CNN will pick up the story (or this one), like my Charmin project.
So what does this mean to marketers?
This is a great example of Digital media integrating with mainstream media (my original haunt), and my gut says the prognosis is good. The broadcast numbers have not been released yet, but Sanchez's Twitter account has exploded with followers. This program is a good demonstration of the utilization of the technology in a very early version. As the technologies mature, and usage goes widespread, MSM programming can take advantage of the interactive conversation for the benefit of digital marketers’ clients and their public relations initiatives.
As I've said many times before, Digital teams will also need to educate their colleagues on what this emerging media are and best practices to work with them, and embrace for themselves. Personnel that are able to do so across disciplines (Consumer, Healthcare, Corporate) will be invaluable to growing an overall firm's capabilities and insight. It's a technology I'm currently thinking about how to apply to future projects. Digital media, like the technology powering it, is constantly maturing, which will allow the drivers of Digital teams, to not only round out PR programs, but also to make PR firms more innovative and to grow the industry as a whole.
Here's another bit that'll "really bake your noodle", as the Oracle would say... How'd you find yourself reading this piece? Twitter? Facebook? :)
UPDATE: Steve Rubel (MicroPersuasion) has picked up on Sanchez too...
Just wanted to share this oldie but goodie with y'all...
He Also Eats More Than They Do
PR girl #1: I love your outfit today! PR girl #2: You know, I was walking down the street, and this homeless man in a box told me that "Purple is the color of royalty." PR girl #1: Don't joke about that. I could be joining him, if my apartment doesn't come through. PR girl #2: At least he lives in Manhattan.
My Mets will be having a runoff vote to determine their new eighth-inning sing-along song.
Traditionally, Shea (in its last season alive) plays Neil Diamond's "Sweet Caroline", and everyone rocks out a bit. In the latest misguided digital corporate campaign, the organization received five million votes at mets.com after inviting fans to choose from among 10 selections to potentially replace the song.
Fark.com readers bombarded the Mets website with votes for a write-in candidate: Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up."
The Royal Mail (UK) has launched a set of stamps marking the 100th birthday of the birth of James Bond creator/author Ian Fleming.
The series of six stamps show a selection of 007 novel covers, including Casino Royale, Dr No, Goldfinger(Goooooooldfingah!) and For Your Eyes Only. It’s on sale at UK Royal Post Offices and online (link below).
Almost makes you want to start sending stuff old skool stylee now.
I really dug the Muppet (U.S.) collection from a couple years back:
Scoble mentioned on his blog today a term that I've never heard before, but have referred to often in usually inelegant terms: Granual Privacy Controls.
Whereas I realize the story that the term came up in is what he's discussing (Google Reader privacy), I started thinking more about the big-picture implications of privacy in regards to the term.
I've started a somewhat successful Facebook community at my company. One of the strongest privacy features that Facebook offers in this case is its options concerning who can view what particular content on your profile. While some people (not including myself) like to post pics of themselves in bikinis or doing keg stands, they don't want their Managing Director to see them. Don't get me wrong -- I really support the posting of bikini and keg stand shots, and enjoy them immensely, so y'all keep posting them. But I digress...
ANYWAY, people really do like to keep tabs on what others are doing -- the Facebook Newsfeed is a good example. I can actually track friends' movements, moods, etc., and it's fun and engaging. That said, some folks don't want people to know, and Facebook gives them the option of doing as such. As people get more involved in online communities, social networking services that don’t have Granular Privacy Controls will increasingly piss off users and chase them away.
It makes you think a bit about where all your 'assumed privacy' falls. For instance, I tend to ignore Google ads and banner ads... It's just a thing of mine (which is baaad, because sometimes I'm involved in producing them). I'm a big fan of Gmail, and in general, I ignore the ads on the page which allow me to use Gmail for free. But do people realize that the (possibly very personal) email that was sent to me (and I replied to) has been scanned by a service that picks up keywords in the content and then provides marketing information to show me things that "I may be interested in", based on that (personal?) content? Most people don't think about that.
There's a lot of news in the spirit of Star Trek in my life this week. I recently received the Star Trek movie boxed set in the mail, which I had found on some closeout site for $30 and free shipping. How could I resist? I'll talk about my favorite, ST II: The Wrath of Khan some other time.
Anyway, this led to a number of conversations with people, about such topics as "It's the 21st Century, where's my flying car?!" and a great show on the History Channel called, "How William Shatner Changed the World".
So when I saw this piece on TechCrunch, I was sort of amazed by the possibilities. Apparently, Google Talk is adding a new translation bot for chat, which will provide translation from English to Chinese. The bot can be used as a direct look up tool, or in an actual group chat on-the-fly.
Can you imagine what a powerful tool this can be in the worlds of commerce and communications? It's a direct, real-time way of communicating with ANYONE, once the service can crunch the language. I'm no linguist, but I'd estimate that Chinese is much more difficult to translate than any of the Latin-based languages.
ird annual Digital Awards luncheon at the fifth “Magazines 24/7 Digital Conference” in March, and asked me if I’d be interested as acting as a judge for the competition. The MPA Digital Awards honor excellence and innovation of magazine brands on all digital platforms in 12 categories.
Conference was a big success, and the awards were announced a little over a week ago (yeah, I’m a bit behind – been busy), so I thought I’d share the news with you as well, if you hadn’t heard. Kate Maxwell, Senior Editor at Condé Nast Traveler, presented the awards to the winners at the Marriott Marquis New York on March 3rd. 
