Forrester hits the mark on social computing
The folks at Forrester Research have released a new report that’s worth the price ($299). Called Social Computing, How Networks Erode Institutional Power, And What to Do About It, it is a deep, insightful, and, I believe, accurate vision of where we’re all headed in a disintermediated and people-empowered business culture. Forrester was kind enough to let me read the report, so you might think this endorsement is tainted. That would be your loss, because this report is so true to my vision of the future, that I could’ve participated in writing it.
The headline is the shifting of power in our culture from institutions to communities, something the company calls “Social Computing.” Three cultural trends are combining to influence the whole — an aging, more socially motivated population, the internalization of technology among youth, and a society that’s defined globally.
“Today’s more socially connected buyers,” the report says, “are already showing signs that they are: less brand-loyal…less trusting…and more independent…” This is shifting innovation from the top to the bottom, which is a clarion call for businesses to look at things differently.
As institutions lose the power to shape information, markets, and behavior, that responsibility will fall to communities. But fastchanging technologies and volatile social forces will make the creation of new social control mechanisms a challenge. As individual self-interest collides with community-owned assets, a “pollution of the commons” (of the sort we’ve seen with spam e-mail) will threaten the progress of Social Computing.
This report puts into plain language a lot of the things I associate with applied postmodernism. The new mantra is “I experience, therefore I understand.” Forrester may have taken a different path, but we’ve both ended up in the same place.
Again, this report is worth the money to media companies that so desperately need the foundational understanding it provides.
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Something’s different about “The Sopranos”
What is it?
Product placement ads. You think Porsche didn’t pay for that attention about its new Cayenne, including Carmela’s, “…like the pepper” comment?
The camera also panned a box of Nesquik on the kitchen counter. Was that an ad?
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The quotable Rupert Murdoch
From his latest speech in London:
- A new generation of media consumers has risen demanding content delivered when they want it, how they want it, and very much as they want it.
- Power is moving away from the old elite in our industry - the editors, the chief executives and, let’s face it, the proprietors.
- It is difficult, indeed dangerous, to underestimate the huge changes this revolution will bring or the power of developing technologies to build and destroy - not just companies but whole countries.
- Never has the flow of information and ideas, of hard news and reasoned comment, been more important. The force of our democratic beliefs is a key weapon in the war against religious fanaticism and the terrorism it breeds.
- I believe we are at the dawn of a golden age of information - an empire of new knowledge.
Thanks, Jeff.
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State of Journalism report is a dud
The Project for Excellence in Journalism’s latest “State of the News Media” report is heavy on self-pity and light on understanding the forces driving the decline and fall of professional journalism. This is to be expected, I guess, but it’s a bit like wasting time staring at a wound instead of moving to fix the thing.
This is the third year for this study, and there are some good tidbits of information. However, the overall theme is defensive and whiny and doesn’t do the industry any good.
The problem here is that professional journalism itself is the problem, not the forces buffeting it from every side. In this sense, the report is the useless attempt of a physician trying to “heal thyself.” The study’s central theme is that the real threat to professional journalism is that the industry has been turned over to the bean counters and that heroic attempts to protect an increasingly threatened public from the dark side of government (the Holy Grail of the Woodward and Bernstein crowd) come from only a handful of idealists within. With that perspective, the study lists six major “findings.”
- The new paradox of journalism is more outlets covering fewer stories. This is the finding getting most of the early coverage today, and why not? The authors note, “we tend to see more accounts of the same handful of stories each day. And when big stories break, they are often covered in a similar fashion…” This, the study notes, makes it easy for authorities to corral reporters away from the news, and the writers conclude that this is a bad thing for journalism.
- The species of newspaper that may be most threatened is the big-city metro paper that came to dominate in the latter part of the 20th century. The study concludes that this isn’t good for journalism either, because these are the types of papers that spend the resources necessary to “act as watchdogs over state, regional and urban institutions, to identify trends, and to define the larger community public square.”
- At many old-media companies, though not all, the decades-long battle at the top between idealists and accountants is now over. The idealists have lost, according to the study, and by that they mean those working on behalf of the public trust or “public interest.” This is deemed bad for journalism, and contributes to the above. The report quotes Polk Laffoon IV, the corporate spokesman of Knight Ridder. “I wish there were an identifiable and strong correlation between quality journalism…and newspaper sales,” he said. “It isn’t…that simple.”
- That said, traditional media do appear to be moving toward technological innovation — finally. The study concludes that this is because most of media companies’ revenue growth is coming from online, so the accountants are finally moving to the web, which prompts the authors to ask two questions. “One is whether younger audiences care anything about these traditional news brands. Another is, even if these legacy media do finally try to move online seriously, can they change their culture, or will they succumb to the natural tendency to favor their traditional platforms?”
- The new challengers to the old media, the aggregators, are also playing with limited time. Here the report openly states that companies like Google and Yahoo! are taking money from the news organizations they aggregate and suggests that demanding payment for such is something to watch in 2006. As these companies take readers away from news organizations, they also speed the downfall of those (legitimate?) organizations whose content they aggregate.
- The central economic question in journalism continues to be how long it will take online journalism to become a major economic engine, and if it will ever be as big as print or television. The study notes that even with astronomical 33% annual growth, online revenues won’t match offline revenues for media companies until 2017. “Realistically,” the report concludes, “even with the lower delivery costs online, it will be years before the Internet rivals old media economics, if it ever does.”
Professional journalism — as this report (and the institution itself) defines it — is sinking slowly into the sea of irrelevance, having been blasted by the torpedoes of a culture that wishes to move forward. It’s biggest enemy is itself, and history will one day view its destruction is the inevitable result of an interested public that has weighed the institution on the scale of public contribution and found it wanting. It never asks itself if IT is a problem, and it always assumes that its roots and motives are pure and beyond reproach. This is its Achilles’ Heel.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism would do us all a favor by stepping outside the trees in crafting this annual report. Otherwise, that which deserves defending will be lost amidst the indefensible.
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NBC’s flawed unbundled strategy
As it did with “Lazy Sunday,” NBC demanded that youTube.com pull a Natalie Portman rap skit from its site this week. The network is offering these items via its own Website, thank you very much, and doesn’t need or want anybody else to do it for them. They’ve created the same viral “sharing” tools as youTube, so in their minds, nobody should complain.
Or not.
Here are what I view as remarkable quotes from an NBC executive involved in this, as presented in today’s Media Daily News.
Stephen Andrade, NBC’s vice president of interactive development, said that NBC supports video sharing and hopes to facilitate it, but wants the chain to start at NBC.com.“We were concerned about building their corporation instead of ours, since it’s our video,” he said. “We would like to make it as easy for people to share as we can, so we’re trying to provide as many tools as we can to do that.”
The new video-sharing functionality is only one aspect of NBC’s strategy to turn NBC.com into a thriving site with features such as message boards, blogs, and video sharing that create a community–a sort of MySpace around the NBC brand.
…”We have a lot of good, interesting content on NBC.com,” Andrade said. “And people don’t know it exists. They think we’re just this old media brand.”
First of all, media companies don’t determine who or what’s cool in the 2.0 space (in truth, media companies don’t determine anything in this world), because everything about it is self-selecting by users. NBC thinks its material is so compelling that it can force users to its Website, but that is a dangerously foolish assumption. The eyeballs at youTube are, in many ways, determining what other eyeballs will see, and NBC is competing for those eyeballs using a narrow, Media 1.0 formula.
Secondly, and this is critically important to understand, go back and read what the article says about the NBC brand. They’re trying to build a sort of MySpace around the NBC brand, but they acknowledge that “people” think they’re “just this old media brand.” Well, yeah. And why is that? Because the network IS an old media brand. Just because you drag it to the internet and wave a flag saying “we’re different” doesn’t make it so in the minds of those “people.” When will media companies realize that there’s negative baggage in trying to move their brand to the web?
Finally, by adopting this strategy, the network is shutting their minds to profitability in the Media 2.0 space. If you’re going to force everybody to do things your way, you’ll never be open to doing things anybody else’s way. This stifles creativity at a time when creativity is what this particular network needs more than ever.
Let me repeat what I said when NBC pulled “Lazy Sunday” from youTube. The right response is to provide a high quality version with short marketing attached for playback anywhere. If you want to build your own unbundled playback system, that’s fine. In fact, I recommend it. If you want to build your own community, that’s fine too. The strategic flaw, however, is trying to attach your brand to it. MySpace, after all, isn’t “Fox’s MySpace,” now is it?
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The movie industry’s continued self-destruction
At a couple of points during the Academy Awards, people stood before the microphone and dissed the world of unbundled film viewing. “Go to the theater,” was the refrain, “to enjoy films the way they were intended to be viewed.” This laughable plea, of course, was self-serving and came from people with the bankrolls to support the financial drain of theater attendance. It takes a stunning degree of ignorance to make such statements, because these stars and executives are far, far out of touch with the people their films are meant to entertain.
Not only is it too expensive, but then there’s that whole pre-film experience that theater owners (the infrastructure) impose on their captive audiences. Now comes news this week that a 15-second pre-film ad by Phillips (see it here) was rejected by Screenvision (the folks who “present” all those ads) for Boston and Minneapolis. Phillips was buying four minutes of time during which to run the simple 15-second ad. It was a brilliant move for a company that makes home theater equipment and also would’ve been a reprieve for theater-goers. The rejection of the ad is an amazing illustration of how lost the movie industry really is as it fights disruptive influences from without.
Wake up, Hollywood. In order to get out of a hole you’ve dug for yourself, the first thing you have to do is stop digging. Frankly, I don’t think there’s a chance of that happening.
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A PR side note
To help you fully understand the Edelman/Wal-Mart matter, consider briefly that the same dynamics undercutting the mainstream “professional” press are eating away at professional public relations. That’s because they are two sides of the same coin.
Both “professions” were birthed in the Creel Committee of Woodrow Wilson’s time. Those familiar with my writings already know this, so bear with a little repetition.
Walter Lippmann is the father of professional journalism but was actually a social engineer. Here’s a little list of his thoughts:
- The false ideal of democracy can only lead to disillusionment.
- The (ignorant) public must be put in its place.
- An educated elite shall lead.
- A new art in democracy is here called the manufacture of consent.
- The public is irrational and herdlike.
- “…it is now possible to control…the masses according to our will without their knowing it.”
- “Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.”
Another committee member was Edward Bernays, the father of professional public relations. Here’s his social engineering mind:
Now ask yourself why a discontented public is reacting badly to both professions. The apple never falls very far from the tree. Nuff said.
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Wal-Mart’s PR practice smart but still PR
The blogosphere has been rumbling this week about a New York Times article Tuesday outlining public relations practices by Wal-Mart in engaging bloggers to help their image. The Times report was typically anti-blogosphere and painted the practices by Wal-Mart and their PR firm, Edelman, as suspect and manipulative.
What is different about Wal-Mart’s approach to blogging is that rather than promoting a product — something it does quite well, given its $300 billion in annual sales — it is trying to improve its battered image.Wal-Mart, long criticized for low wages and its health benefits, began working with bloggers in late 2005 “as part of our overall effort to tell our story,” said Mona Williams, a company spokeswoman.
Well, the blogosphere is only as transparent as the rest of society. Do things bubble up in the b’sphere that might normally not see light? You bet. Is the blogosphere helping to make marketing and society overall more transparent and accountable? Yes, that’s a good thing. However, our little corner of the Internet is not as transparent as everyone might hope. Lots of information needs to stay close to the vest, like it or not. Perhaps this will change one day.
There are two important points to consider in this event. One, Edelman is simply doing what public relations companies have always done — whatever they can to tilt coverage of their clients in a favorable direction. You can argue the ethical merits of that all you want, but eventually you’ll be talking about public relations as a whole, not just Edelman or this particular form of flackery. For a newspaper to go after them in this way, therefore, is a little silly and falls under the category of “so what?” How many newspapers have published verbatim press releases and how many TV stations have run Video News Releases without identifying them as such? Plenty, so in this regard, the story is nothing more than another opportunity by the Times to take a self-serving shot at blogging by warning people that it’s a real wild west out here.
The other point, however, is that the concept of manipulating coverage is really a problem in the new media world, because it will always eventually backfire. In this sense, I agree completely with Umair Haque, who’s written that Edelman is guilty of bad strategy.
Note to Rubel and Edelman: if you guys want to leverage the edge, you have to learn from your mistakes - not just shrug them off. The question, despite what smart guys like Jarvis are saying, isn’t really an ethical one; that’s your mistake. It’s a strategic one. You’re much better off being transparent not so much because it’s “right” (though it is) but because that’s how self-selection happens at the edge. Without transparency, you guys will be the Yahoo of marketing 2.0 - trying, but never really learning.
- Individuals now determine their own influences.
- Attraction is the defining dynamic of influence.
- Share everything.
- Play fair.
- Don’t hit people.
- Put things back where you found them.
- Clean up your own mess.
- Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
- Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
- Wash your hands before you eat.
- Flush.
- And more.
So the bottom line problem with the Edelman strategy is that it’s simply a Media 1.0 practice in a Media 2.0 world. Rather than spending time and Wal-Mart’s money working to influence bloggers from the outside, a better use of resources would be working transparency into all of Wal-Mart’s dealings with the press. That’s because “the press” increasingly is the people Wal-Mart serves day in and day out, and it’s smart business to dialog with your customers. If Wal-Mart wants a seat at the discussion table, it — and others like it — must be prepared to play by the rules we all learned in kindergarten:
(Disclosure: I had dinner with some Edelman execs Monday night. The steak was okay.)
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Customer service really matters
A young man at the Nashville airport saved my butt yesterday, and I want to take a couple of minutes to let the world know. As you know, I’m on the road through tomorrow visiting clients and making presentations. I had a very important meeting at 6pm in New York yesterday, and my American Airlines reservation was to get me there at 4pm. The inbound flight to Nashville was delayed by almost two hours, and the airline wasn’t able to help me get there in time.
So I hiked to the next concourse where I met Brian from Delta Airlines at gate B-10. Their flight to Kennedy was set to leave in about five minutes, so he called American to get the ticket “moved” to Delta. They wouldn’t do it. “It’s not that they can’t,” he said. “They just won’t.”
To make a long story short, Brian made several calls and I got on the Delta flight just as they were shutting the door. It was the only way I could possibly have made the meeting last night in New York, and his service is exactly the kind that will succeed in a world where customers are increasingly able to call the shots. American Airlines failed in their agreement to get me to the Big Apple in time, and that should’ve triggered a desire to please me. That it did not is the kind of thing companies big and small need to address in the new world. Because I can tell you this: I won’t be flying American in the future.
So now I’m in LaGuardia waiting a flight to Chicago and another meeting. I love LaGuardia. They have a display case by the ticket counter that shows items you’re not supposed to take on an airplane. I smile every time I see the chain saw. Who knew?
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The status quo fights back
I’ve been meaning to get my 2-cents in on what’s happening in Washington and with the telcos that own the pipes that we use for the internet. So significant are these events, that we all simply MUST let our representatives know how we feel, unless we want to lose the freedom we’ve grown to enjoy online. Frankly, the horse is so far out of the barn, it’s hard to believe it could ever be put back, but the ability of Washington to do things contrary to the wishes of the people is something that should never be underestimated.
There are two things happening. One is net neutrality, an issue that the telcos don’t want, because they want to be able to offer tiered pricing, which will benefit only those who have the ability to pay — the deep pockets of the few. We must keep this from happening, but there is considerable lobbying pressure on Congress to make the change.
There are two things worth noting here. One, we already pay for the internet. The web happened via telephone lines that we were already paying for too. The telcos feel they’ve lost out in this, so they want to put toll gates on lines for which we already pay. That means the best broadband will go to the few, and we can’t let that happen.
Secondly, what we need to be encouraging Congress to do is just the opposite, and that is to open the internet to symmetrical service. Right now, it’s asymmetrical — you get much more download bandwidth than upload, and this stifles entrepreneurship and innovation, and keeps a lid on the development of the personal media revolution. Asymmetrical service is what the status quo wants, because that, too, benefits the deep pockets of the few.
The other issue is the merging of the telcos. Didn’t we go through this once when the government broke up AT&T? Why are we (our government) letting the monopoly reassemble? Dan Gilmor has a great post on the pending $65 billion deal with the “new” AT&T and Bellsouth.
If this deal goes through — and given the Bush administration’s (and Congress’) willful blindness to the implications of a telecom world dominated by only a few, and soon only a couple, of predatory giants — Verizon will surely buy Qwest. Why wouldn’t they?We’re moving into troublesome times, where rapacious mega-companies, steeped in monopolistic traditions, assert utter control over our communications. If you think they won’t use their market power to stifle innovation they don’t control (or from which they get a cut of any action) you don’t study history.
What can average folks do? Complain to Congress, of course. Sadly, this has less and less effect in a political system that is increasingly of, by and for the wealthy and powerful.
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New Metrics and Principles
Here is the latest essay in the on-going series, TV News in a Postmodern World. This one goes out on a Sunday, because I’ll be on the road through Wednesday of this week, and I wanted to get it to you.
We’re in the midst of massive, confusing and frightening changes in the communications’ world, and they’re challenging our ability to see downstream more than a month (it seems). As personal technology continues to disrupt mass technology industries, we need a new set of value propositions upon which to hang our hats. This is true not only of media companies themselves, but also of advertisers and the whole advertising business. I believe such a change can be managed, but not until we arrive at agreement on what really has value. This essay attempts to look at that.
With every month that goes by, the failure of mass marketing becomes clearer. Perhaps it’s because the blue smoke and mirrors that we’ve hidden behind all these years is being blown away by fresh air rising from — of all places — the bottom. We’ll never arrive at the new unless we can find the courage to shed the old, and I hope this essay helps in that area too.
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Online shoppers don’t begin locally
That’s the finding of a recent report by Outsell and reported in today’s Online Media Daily. This is despite the fact that most local newspaper and television Websites generally contain a plethora of (often useless) shopping and classifieds information.
“Consumers perceive that these sites don’t offer them enough useful buying information–and that’s perilous in a paid search world in which proximity to buying information makes ad placement more valuable,” warns the report.…”Local publishers have had a tough time assembling the technology to match the easy usability that sites such as eBay and Craigslist have set as the Web standard,” the report states.
The bigger issue is this. People go to the big portals, because local entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have failed at building them for local markets. Attempts to do so have come from companies wishing to own every market, instead of just their own. This opens the door to significant possibilities for local media companies, but it generally doesn’t happen, because the media companies then try and drag their brands into the proposition. Besides, they’re too busy making big bucks selling traditional ads. One day, it will blow up in their faces.
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Reuters advice for media companies
Rafat and Staci from Paid Content are in London for the OPA Global Forum, and today’s issue is filled with good stuff. At the top are these gems from Reuters CEO Tom Glocer:
The nub of the issue: what is the role of the media firms in the second decade of this century? Our roles are:– Seeder of clouds: we help them seed our content into their creations. People will join your community and join your tent.
– Provider of tools: We need to produce open standards and interoperability…we need to make our content at the crossroads of their consumption.
– Filter and editor: We need to have the skill to spot the gold…we need to help them get mass appeal.Adopt these three roles or risk becoming less relevant to these audiences…that, ironically, also includes the traditional online publishers now.
Brands: Brands really matter: Too much choices means not choosing at all…brands serve a filtering function. Choice means letting professionals do it, and sometimes the wisdom of crowds help us do it.
If you lose the trust of your audience…you lose the audience. Protectionism doesn’t work, but neither does surrender. Understand it, encourage it and if we do the right things, we might just make it to Web 3.0.
I’m also playing with some interesting thoughts about brands that I want to share, and I’m not so certain that I totally agree with Mr. Glocer on this one.
I’ll have a lot more on these topics in the weeks to come.
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An open letter to broadcast labor unions
Dear union leader/member,
Like the employers from whom your workers draw their paychecks, the relationship between you and the rest of the world needs to change, or you’re going to end up a net liability to the industry. You’ll do this by accelerating the already light speed shifts that are undercutting the core competencies that have enabled you and your employer to maintain a relationship in the first place.
I know you have the best interests of yourselves, your families and your other members at heart. My father worked the furniture factories in Grand Rapids, so I’m in sync with you. Any employer — broadcast or otherwise — who says that his first loyalty is to his employees is, well, just not to be completely believed. But if you wish to have a seat at tomorrow’s table, you’re going to have to open your minds to a different way of viewing the problem of self-interested broadcasters.
The disruptive innovations threatening all of broadcasting stem from, as Glenn Reynolds puts it in his book “An Army of Davids,” the triumph of personal technology over mass technology. You cannot overlook this, as you view the future well-being of your organizations and your members. Nobody’s making this up. The threat is real.
First of all, specialization is history. A part of this business disruption is that we’re returning to an age when higher value is given to those who can do more — the versatile generalists. Think about it for a minute. Our need for specialization has diminished as technology has given us tools like calculators and the internet, so credentialed specialists have a harder time validating their place in the culture based solely on credentials. This impacts professionals more than the trades, but the impact is also being felt there, as people increasingly take on projects themselves. Your position in the culture is based on specialization, so you’re fighting a shift that’s bigger than you may realize.
Secondly, by clinging to your model, you’re actually preventing you and your members from arming themselves against the business disruption, and nowhere is this truer than in the industry of broadcasting. For less than a thousand dollars, a single person can now become an entire production company or TV station. Granted, this person won’t be able to compete with your “quality,” but that’s a dangerous fall-back position. Why? Because the eyeballs you’re competing with don’t care as much about that quality as you do. Moreover, the technology keeps getting better, smaller and cheaper, and eventually even the quality argument won’t stand up.
Thirdly, while the network big boys and large market people you work with are pulling their videos — the ones your specialists helped create — from sites like youTube.com, other people’s contributions continue to capture the eyeballs there that once (or increasingly never) viewed only your work.
Consider the case of David Lehre, the 21-year old amateur film-maker from Washington, Michigan. His parody of the MySpace.com Website has been viewed by more than 6-million people on various sites like youTube, and he’s now been recruited for MTVU. He started making movies in 10th grade when he and his friends couldn’t get parts in the high school drama department’s presentation of “Little Women.” Here’s what he told the Los Angeles Times:
“I thought, ‘Let’s make a movie.’ They’re like, ‘Do you know how to make a movie?’ I was like, ‘I don’t know. I’ll figure it out,’” Lehre said. “I was sick of other people deciding if I could entertain or not. I thought, if they won’t give me a chance, then I’ll make my own movie.”
Frankly, if you want to really help your members, you’ll consider some radical ideas.
- Merge with other unions that represent broadcast workers, so that you give your members freedom to become more versatile. Versatility may seem like insanity to you, but your involvement in this will guarantee that such versatility isn’t used to reduce the labor force (as it might be if it was mandated through the negotiating process). The notion that versatility automatically leads to loss of jobs is an illusion.
- Insist in contract negotiations that employers provide mid-career training in new technologies that will enhance, not hinder, the future for your members.
- Be proactive about all of this. Fear is a corroding influence that is hurting your members and their families in the face of disruptive innovations. Be a light to them, not one who continues to force your fellows deeper into the closet of a closed mind.
- Consider how the triumph of personal technology can benefit you or your members beyond their traditional paycheck. By exposing yourself to these tools, you might actually birth new ventures and find a new place for yourself and your members. One thing’s for sure; that’ll never happen, if you fight it.
Organized labor has always been there to give a voice to the little guy in the top-down, modernist paradigm. That technology is now giving them voices in other ways doesn’t mean that there’s not a need for you and your efforts. Frankly, you’re likely to find that the need is even greater, because versatile generalists certainly are ripe for exploitation by profit-minded individuals and companies. You’ll miss that opportunity, however, by hiding from reality (the disruption) and insisting that you can co-exist in the change without changing yourselves.
Sincerely,
Terry Heaton
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