Reflecting on an earlier post I made last week, I read an article in the business section of The Economist that provided more understanding of open-source networks. It points to how more nimble this makes social networking than actually going to a web site such as Facebook. This concept will come more to light as time goes on, and then those who wish to market something will have to re-evaluate once again.
The Economist says, "The opening of social networks may now accelerate thanks to that older next big thing, web-mail. As a technology, mail has come to seem rather old-fashioned. But Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and other firms are now discovering that they may already have the ideal infrastructure for social networking in the form of the address books, in-boxes and calendars of their users. "
To learn more about open source, go to the Open Source Initiative. Wikipedia defines open source as: "Open source is a set of principles and practices on how to write software, the most important of which is that the source code is openly available. The Open Source Definition, which was created by Bruce Perens for the Debian project and is currently maintained by the Open Source Initiative, adds additional meaning to the term: one should not only get the source code but also have the right to use it. If the latter is denied the license is categorized as a shared source license."
Sunday, March 30, 2008
Saturday, March 29, 2008
State of the News Media: 2008 Report Issued
Looking through news of the day, I saw that the Project for Excellence in Journalism has a report out on new media and some suprises. This is a must-read, and I am including language directly from the report here and links so that you can read the 30-page executive report and other materials.
According to the introduction to the report, "Critics have tended to see technology democratizing the media and traditional journalism in decline. Audiences, they say, are fragmenting across new information sources, breaking the grip of media elites. Some people even advocate the notion of “The Long Tail,” the idea that, with the Web’s infinite potential for depth, millions of niche markets could be bigger than the old mass market dominated by large companies and producers.
"The reality, increasingly, appears more complex. Looking closely, a clear case for democratization is harder to make. Even with so many new sources, more people now consume what old media newsrooms produce, particularly from print, than before. Online, for instance, the top 10 news Web sites, drawing mostly from old brands, are more of an oligarchy, commanding a larger share of audience, than in the legacy media. The verdict on citizen media for now suggests limitations. And research shows blogs and public affairs Web sites attract a smaller audience than expected and are produced by people with even more elite backgrounds than journalists."
The first item on the Trend summary says:
"News is shifting from being a product — today’s newspaper, Web site or newscast — to becoming a service — how can you help me, even empower me? There is no single or finished news product anymore. As news consumption becomes continual, more new effort is put into producing incremental updates, as brief as 40-character e-mails sent from reporters directly to consumers without editing. (The afternoon newspaper is also being reborn online.) Service also broadens the definition of what journalists must supply. Story telling and agenda setting — still important — are now insufficient. Journalism also must help citizens find what they are looking for, react to it, sort it, shape news coverage, and — probably most important and least developed — give them tools to make sense of and use the information for themselves.
"News people are uncertain how the core values of accuracy and verification will hold up. Some of the experiments, even the experimenters think, are questionable. And people are being stretched thinner, posing hard questions about how to manage time and where to concentrate. But the hope is that service, more than storytelling, could prove a key to unlocking new economics. A news organization and a news Web site are no longer final destinations. Now they must move toward also being stops along the way, gateways to other places, and a means to drill deeper, all ideas that connect to service rather than product."
The Project for Excellence in Journalism is a research organization that specializes in using empirical methods to evaluate and study the performance of the press. It is non partisan, non ideological and non political.
For a full report and executive summary.
According to the introduction to the report, "Critics have tended to see technology democratizing the media and traditional journalism in decline. Audiences, they say, are fragmenting across new information sources, breaking the grip of media elites. Some people even advocate the notion of “The Long Tail,” the idea that, with the Web’s infinite potential for depth, millions of niche markets could be bigger than the old mass market dominated by large companies and producers.
"The reality, increasingly, appears more complex. Looking closely, a clear case for democratization is harder to make. Even with so many new sources, more people now consume what old media newsrooms produce, particularly from print, than before. Online, for instance, the top 10 news Web sites, drawing mostly from old brands, are more of an oligarchy, commanding a larger share of audience, than in the legacy media. The verdict on citizen media for now suggests limitations. And research shows blogs and public affairs Web sites attract a smaller audience than expected and are produced by people with even more elite backgrounds than journalists."
The first item on the Trend summary says:
"News is shifting from being a product — today’s newspaper, Web site or newscast — to becoming a service — how can you help me, even empower me? There is no single or finished news product anymore. As news consumption becomes continual, more new effort is put into producing incremental updates, as brief as 40-character e-mails sent from reporters directly to consumers without editing. (The afternoon newspaper is also being reborn online.) Service also broadens the definition of what journalists must supply. Story telling and agenda setting — still important — are now insufficient. Journalism also must help citizens find what they are looking for, react to it, sort it, shape news coverage, and — probably most important and least developed — give them tools to make sense of and use the information for themselves.
"News people are uncertain how the core values of accuracy and verification will hold up. Some of the experiments, even the experimenters think, are questionable. And people are being stretched thinner, posing hard questions about how to manage time and where to concentrate. But the hope is that service, more than storytelling, could prove a key to unlocking new economics. A news organization and a news Web site are no longer final destinations. Now they must move toward also being stops along the way, gateways to other places, and a means to drill deeper, all ideas that connect to service rather than product."
The Project for Excellence in Journalism is a research organization that specializes in using empirical methods to evaluate and study the performance of the press. It is non partisan, non ideological and non political.
For a full report and executive summary.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Open ID and OpenSocial - What Does This Mean Now?
This is going to be important to business and communicators as we move forward in the bringing business to our companies.
The web site explains OpenID: it eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience. You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free.
For businesses, this means a lower cost of password and account management, while drawing new web traffic. OpenID lowers user frustration by letting users have control of their login.
For geeks, OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity.
OpenID takes advantage of already existing internet technology (URI, HTTP, SSL, Diffie-Hellman) and realizes that people are already creating identities for themselves whether it be at their blog, photostream, profile page, etc. With OpenID you can easily transform one of these existing URIs into an account which can be used at sites which support OpenID logins.
OpenID is still in the adoption phase and is becoming more and more popular, as large organizations like AOL, Microsoft, Sun, Novell, etc. begin to accept and provide OpenIDs. Today it is estimated that there are over 160-million OpenID enabled URIs with nearly ten-thousand sites supporting OpenID logins. OpenID has arisen from the open source community to solve the problems that could not be easily solved by other existing technologies. OpenID is a lightweight method of identifying individuals that uses the same technology framework that is used to identify websites. As such, OpenID is not owned by anyone, nor should it be. Today, anyone can choose to be an OpenID user or an OpenID Provider for free without having to register or be approved by any organization.
The OpenID Foundation was formed to assist the open source model by providing a legal entity to be the steward for the community by providing needed infrastructure and generally helping to promote and support expanded adoption of OpenID.
As innovation moves at warp speed, and you apply Moore's Law, you better have an Internet guru at your VP level soon. Also check out Google's new OpenSocial.
The web site explains OpenID: it eliminates the need for multiple usernames across different websites, simplifying your online experience. You get to choose the OpenID Provider that best meets your needs and most importantly that you trust. At the same time, your OpenID can stay with you, no matter which Provider you move to. And best of all, the OpenID technology is not proprietary and is completely free.
For businesses, this means a lower cost of password and account management, while drawing new web traffic. OpenID lowers user frustration by letting users have control of their login.
For geeks, OpenID is an open, decentralized, free framework for user-centric digital identity.
OpenID takes advantage of already existing internet technology (URI, HTTP, SSL, Diffie-Hellman) and realizes that people are already creating identities for themselves whether it be at their blog, photostream, profile page, etc. With OpenID you can easily transform one of these existing URIs into an account which can be used at sites which support OpenID logins.
OpenID is still in the adoption phase and is becoming more and more popular, as large organizations like AOL, Microsoft, Sun, Novell, etc. begin to accept and provide OpenIDs. Today it is estimated that there are over 160-million OpenID enabled URIs with nearly ten-thousand sites supporting OpenID logins. OpenID has arisen from the open source community to solve the problems that could not be easily solved by other existing technologies. OpenID is a lightweight method of identifying individuals that uses the same technology framework that is used to identify websites. As such, OpenID is not owned by anyone, nor should it be. Today, anyone can choose to be an OpenID user or an OpenID Provider for free without having to register or be approved by any organization.
The OpenID Foundation was formed to assist the open source model by providing a legal entity to be the steward for the community by providing needed infrastructure and generally helping to promote and support expanded adoption of OpenID.
As innovation moves at warp speed, and you apply Moore's Law, you better have an Internet guru at your VP level soon. Also check out Google's new OpenSocial.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Reaching targeted audiences: 55+
I have been talking about increased use of the Internet for finding information and doing business by the 55+ crowd for some time. Your company may be looking for ways to angle into an older audience online. This survey by Burst Media has some interesting findings.
Burst recently surveyed more than 13,000 web users 18 years and older about their views on the availability of age-focused online content, website design, and targeted online advertising.
It says that Internet users actively seek out content for their age group. However, online content providers are not meeting the needs of all age segments. The survey shows that a majority of Internet users 45 years and older believe online content is focused on younger age segments.
"Three out of five (59.6%) of respondents are visiting more websites in a typical week than they were one year ago. (Chart 2) An expanded catalogue of sites visited is not only a phenomenon of the young, but is found among all age segments. In fact, 62.8% of respondents 55 years and older say they are visiting more sites today in a typical week of web surfing than they were one year ago," according to the report.
One last note, and you can find the whole report at Burst, "The 55 years and older segment is integrating the Internet into their daily lives. In fact, for this segment the Internet is rapidly replacing other media as the primary source for news, entertainment, and information. As you develop a media plan to reach this important target, recognize the role the Internet has in their lives by leveraging the vast content of the Internet, and utilize creative that is age appropriate in both design and messaging. Remember the creative options utilized to reach one age segment might not resonate with another."
Burst recently surveyed more than 13,000 web users 18 years and older about their views on the availability of age-focused online content, website design, and targeted online advertising.
It says that Internet users actively seek out content for their age group. However, online content providers are not meeting the needs of all age segments. The survey shows that a majority of Internet users 45 years and older believe online content is focused on younger age segments.
"Three out of five (59.6%) of respondents are visiting more websites in a typical week than they were one year ago. (Chart 2) An expanded catalogue of sites visited is not only a phenomenon of the young, but is found among all age segments. In fact, 62.8% of respondents 55 years and older say they are visiting more sites today in a typical week of web surfing than they were one year ago," according to the report.
One last note, and you can find the whole report at Burst, "The 55 years and older segment is integrating the Internet into their daily lives. In fact, for this segment the Internet is rapidly replacing other media as the primary source for news, entertainment, and information. As you develop a media plan to reach this important target, recognize the role the Internet has in their lives by leveraging the vast content of the Internet, and utilize creative that is age appropriate in both design and messaging. Remember the creative options utilized to reach one age segment might not resonate with another."
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Reputations in the New Social Order
This may not make any sense to you as the reader since you did not attend sxsw, but the account of the Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, interview at sxsw made news - via Twitter live during the interview and then later on Media Post's Social Media Insider. This is an example of how things can change instantly for a person or an organization via social media technology:
"I'm no more sure of what the Sarah Lacy/Twitter debacle means than I am about the Eliot Spitzer tweets, but let me take a crack at it. To recap, Sarah Lacy writes the ValleyGirl column for BusinessWeek, and was asked by the organizers of SXSW Interactive (an offshoot of the music festival in Austin), to interview Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Sunday as part of the conference. My personal complaint is that somehow the interview ended up being as much about her, her book, her previous encounters with Zuckerberg, as it does being about him or Facebook.
The crowd agreed, but here's where the Zuckerberg/Lacy interview differs from the usual lousy conference Q&A. Those in attendance began to criticize her, in real-time, on Twitter, blogs and in the real world, bringing a brand new meaning to the term "mobisode," which used to mean a small, portable episode of a TV show.
Now, I'd argue that an experience like Lacy's fits the term better (although here the first syllable in "mobisode" should be pronounced as in the word "mob," not "mobile.") At one point, when Zuckerberg offered that maybe Lacy should ask questions, the crowd cheered for 30 seconds that seemed like five minutes, and somehow, between the Twitter postings, the news stories, the posting of the interview on YouTube, and so on, Sarah Lacy found herself in the middle of a Web 2.0 perfect storm -- which has continued to feed on social media's power. Now that's a mobisode! Though what I've seen of the interview certainly shouts "debacle," in another era it would've been quickly recounted and dismissed. Sarah Lacy may have committed many an interviewing faux pas on Sunday, but is this to be the punishment we can expect in the future for a particularly bad day at the office?"
Find more in the column at Media Post!
Also, a You Tube account.
"I'm no more sure of what the Sarah Lacy/Twitter debacle means than I am about the Eliot Spitzer tweets, but let me take a crack at it. To recap, Sarah Lacy writes the ValleyGirl column for BusinessWeek, and was asked by the organizers of SXSW Interactive (an offshoot of the music festival in Austin), to interview Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Sunday as part of the conference. My personal complaint is that somehow the interview ended up being as much about her, her book, her previous encounters with Zuckerberg, as it does being about him or Facebook.
The crowd agreed, but here's where the Zuckerberg/Lacy interview differs from the usual lousy conference Q&A. Those in attendance began to criticize her, in real-time, on Twitter, blogs and in the real world, bringing a brand new meaning to the term "mobisode," which used to mean a small, portable episode of a TV show.
Now, I'd argue that an experience like Lacy's fits the term better (although here the first syllable in "mobisode" should be pronounced as in the word "mob," not "mobile.") At one point, when Zuckerberg offered that maybe Lacy should ask questions, the crowd cheered for 30 seconds that seemed like five minutes, and somehow, between the Twitter postings, the news stories, the posting of the interview on YouTube, and so on, Sarah Lacy found herself in the middle of a Web 2.0 perfect storm -- which has continued to feed on social media's power. Now that's a mobisode! Though what I've seen of the interview certainly shouts "debacle," in another era it would've been quickly recounted and dismissed. Sarah Lacy may have committed many an interviewing faux pas on Sunday, but is this to be the punishment we can expect in the future for a particularly bad day at the office?"
Find more in the column at Media Post!
Also, a You Tube account.
sxsw Interactive Web - What the Experts Say
Social media, relationships, authenticity, new generation experiences, measuring knowledge, the language of "we", neighborhoods of people and ideas are all buzzwords in the communications realm and will revolutionize our practice dramatically in the next few years.
I attended the sxsw Interactive Web conference in Austin this week and learned a lot from the experts. Of course, listening to a live conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, allowed a glimpse into a major social phenomenon.
A speaker I really learned from was Shiv Singh, at a sponsored session by Avenue A | Razorfish. Here are a few words, but you can read more about him and the sxsw conference at my discovery and innovation blog WendSight.
If you think social media is all about clever corporate marketing on Facebook or quirky videos on YouTube, you're missing an opportunity to change your company's entire culture and operations, says Shiv. In fact, social media can affect how companies innovate, test ideas, recruit talent, measure performance and interact with all their stakeholders.
Shiv explains how the enterprise can use social media to improve business practices. He talks about the rise of social media has created a new form of marketing altogether, referred to as social influence marketing.
Social influence marketing is about employing social media as part of the entire lifecycle of a marketing campaign, even beyond a campaign.
Key points: people join networks if they have friends there; behavior is influenced by others; growth occurs in the centrality; people will disseminate information from social networks; trust is essential for information sharing; and user based evaluations are important to collaboration.
I attended the sxsw Interactive Web conference in Austin this week and learned a lot from the experts. Of course, listening to a live conversation with Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, allowed a glimpse into a major social phenomenon.
A speaker I really learned from was Shiv Singh, at a sponsored session by Avenue A | Razorfish. Here are a few words, but you can read more about him and the sxsw conference at my discovery and innovation blog WendSight.
If you think social media is all about clever corporate marketing on Facebook or quirky videos on YouTube, you're missing an opportunity to change your company's entire culture and operations, says Shiv. In fact, social media can affect how companies innovate, test ideas, recruit talent, measure performance and interact with all their stakeholders.
Shiv explains how the enterprise can use social media to improve business practices. He talks about the rise of social media has created a new form of marketing altogether, referred to as social influence marketing.
Social influence marketing is about employing social media as part of the entire lifecycle of a marketing campaign, even beyond a campaign.
Key points: people join networks if they have friends there; behavior is influenced by others; growth occurs in the centrality; people will disseminate information from social networks; trust is essential for information sharing; and user based evaluations are important to collaboration.
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