“Findings from the Gartner survey suggest that newspapers are not providing brand stewards with the necessary tools they need to optimize their role as influencers. This starts with a failure to optimize the search experiences at their Web sites and then carries on to a lack of integration between content and social media functionality. Key findings from the survey include: - Approximately 49 percent of respondents use general search engines (such as Google and Yahoo) once a week or more to find content, but only 20 percent use search tools built into a newspaper or magazine site. - Only 24 percent of those surveyed share good content “finds” with friends or others via personal communications — such as e-mail and instant messaging (IM), and a mere 7 percent said they usually or often share content via embedding into social network sites. - Although many newspapers list their staffers who are on Twitter, an influential microblogging social network, few offer Twitter users the ability to “tweet” stories from their Web sites. - When asked what they do when they find interesting content online, more than half of respondents (52 percent) said that they usually read it immediately. Only 9 percent said that they bookmark it to read later. “Although it’s easy to criticize the newspaper companies for falling behind the digital curve and not thinking innovatively about their future, some of the industry’s current failures fall under the category of looking past the basics,” Mr. Weiner said. “One of those basics is turning those who are fans of your product or service into your best and lowest-cost marketing channel. Even simple social media tools not only allow sharing and recommendations, but also provide a level of identity and reputation management to give others a snapshot of a content curator’s credentials.” Mr. Weiner said that while the newspapers have incorporated social media content, they just haven’t taken the step of integrating social media tools into their content management “ecosystem” to provide pervasive deployment of important social features. The task at hand is now to prioritize the integration of social media into a current or future content management system.”
—Gartner Says Newspaper Publishers Are Not Doing Enough to Take Advantage of the Social Power of Their Readers
March 2009
43 posts
“Access-everywhere worlds available to people with simple systems on small screens and via social networks is where you’ll hit your Really Big Audiences.”
—Wonderland
“An integrated Facebook currency could simplify the process of payment down to a single click which is proven to increase sales in apps like the iTunes store. Users would only have to give payment information once to Facebook instead of entering it every time a purchase was desired (which Jambool’s Social Gold has already used to increase sales for clients). Facebook’s currency system would also give apps and the Facebook Gifts system the ability to price individual transactions much lower than they are currently, possibly as low as $0.25 each. Facebook appears to be looking at a system where currency would be purchased in large increments of $10 to $20 dollars at a time and then spent in smaller amounts later. It is unknown whether Facebook would want to take an Apple-style cut of each individual transaction on their platform if they dealt with a virtual currency.”
—Virtual Goods News: Virtual Currency System In Development At Facebook
“Joining at least six other states, a state court judge in Nashville has ruled that anonymous bloggers are entitled to legal protections before being unmasked. The judge ruled that people who seek to learn the identities of anonymous authors must first make a showing that they would be able to prove a libel case. With the ruling, the judge joined courts in Arizona, California, Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Texas and the District of Columbia, which have held that plaintiffs in a lawsuit can’t simply demand to know a blogger’s identity without first establishing that they stand a chance of prevailing in a libel lawsuit.”
—MediaPost Publications Tennessee Ruling Protects Anonymity Of Bloggers 03/18/2009
“A coalition of advocacy groups and news organizations is asking an Illinois appellate court to safeguard Web users’ right to comment anonymously. “Should the courts deprive Internet speakers of their anonymity without appropriate safeguards, the uninhibited and robust exchange of ideas that has sprung up on news Web sites will be chilled,” the groups argue in a friend-of-the-court brief. Organizations signing on to the brief include the Citizen Media Law Project, Gannett Co., Hearst Corporation, Illinois Press Association, Online News Association, Online Publishers Association, Public Citizen, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, and Tribune Company.”
—MediaPost Publications Anonymous Commenting Under Scrutiny By Illinois Court 03/26/2009
“While expressing enthusiasm for spreading content across as many digital platforms as possible, mobile division executives from major media brands including NBC Universal, Disney and MTV Networks also left little question that they want to get paid through upfront fees as well as advertising revenue against mobile programming. “NBCU is a place where we make money from distribution partners and advertisers,” said Chip Canter, vice president, wireless platform development at NBC Universal Digital Distribution. “What we’re trying to do is drive dual-revenue stream models: fees for distribution and supplement that with advertising.” NBC, for example, has a deal with mobile broadcast service MediaFLO USA, to distribute “The Office” and other network shows through the subscription-based mobile video services of Verizon Wireless and AT&T.”
—MediaPost Publications Panel: Mobile TV Execs Embrace Hybrid Revenue Model 03/20/2009
“Today MindArk PE AB, operators of the Entropia Universe virtual worlds, announced that the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority had granted MindArk’s subsidiary Mind Bank AB a license to conduct legal banking activities. This allows MindArk to operate Mind Bank AB as a fully functioning bank within the Entropia Universe, providing real world banking functions to all virtual worlds running on the Entropia Universe platform. Mind Bank AB will be the first bank that fully incorporates real money transactions with activities within a virtual world.”
—Virtual Worlds News: MindArk Brings Real Banking Into Entropia Universe
email response from whitehouse.gov
I sent a question to whitehouse.gov in January via the contact form and asked if the “THE BLOG” was going to allow comments.
This is the email response I received today.
Dear …..:
Thank you for taking the time to share your views.
Americans across the country are eager for
information about the state of the economy, national
security, and a host of other issues. President Obama is
committed to making his Administration the most open and
transparent in history, and the Internet will play a major
role in delivering on that promise.
We hope that you will join us at
www.WhiteHouse.gov to learn more about President
Obama’s views on a range of topics, as well as his efforts
to provide a window for all Americans into their
government. Your voice is shaping our country’s future,
and we encourage you to join us online, share your
thoughts, and build a community of connected citizens that
will help address the pressing issues of our time.
Sincerely,
F. Michael Kelleher
Special Assistant to the President and
Director of Presidential Correspondence
I guess that means no.
“The data also showed that Twitter has more in common with social networks than search engines. “It appears that Twitter is being used as a social network and means of distributing content,” wrote Heather Hopkins, a senior online analyst at Hitwise, on the company blog. “This is by no means the only way it is being used — just one standout trend. Twitter.com’s clickstream profile is much closer to a social network than to search engines or email services.”
—MediaPost Publications Twitter Driving Traffic To Social, Entertainment Sites 03/13/2009
“It is no coincidence that “transparency” is a catch phrase in government and business these days. It is a natural byproduct of this emerging social nervous system. The social nervous system engenders a healthier balance of power in society and helps to connect our individual actions into a larger context in a clear way. Another outcome of the social nervous system is that we see the shift away from privacy as an inalienable right to an individual responsibility. In a social nervous system there will be increasing pressure to be connected 24/7 to the hive mind that is Facebook, Twitter and so on. Those who do not connect, share and collaborate will have a hard time in business and in social life. Older generations expect that digital natives will one day wish to erase all their indiscreet photos online. But I don’t believe this nonstop exposure will go away as the digital natives mature. Our lives are increasingly being logged on the Internet. It is part of the trade. Given the complexity and precarious position of the modern world, getting people to genuinely reach out and touch their neighbors is a good thing but it will come at the price of reshaping our identities as part of a larger, interconnected whole.”
—The Rise Of The Social Nervous System - Forbes.com
“
When 8-year-old Wild Freeborn became a Girl Scout earlier this year, she had a simple goal: sell 12,000 boxes of the organization’s addictive cookies. She wanted to earn enough money to send her entire troop (all new scouts) to summer camp in Brevard, N.C. After going door to door in her neighborhood, visiting stores in downtown Asheville, N.C., and consulting her parents about her precocious business plan, she asked her tech-minded dad, Bryan Freeborn, “Can’t we use what you do at work?” referencing his job as the chief operating officer of TopFloorStudio, a Web design and development firm.
In late January, they posted a YouTube video, starring Freeborn in Girl Scout gear, touting her straightforward sales pitch. “Buy cookies! And they’re yummy!” Soon after, they set up an online order system that was limited to customers within their local area (so Freeborn could personally deliver them). While her online sales strategy took hold, she continued peddling cookies the traditional way—going door to door and working booths at the local grocery store. Within two weeks, more than 700 orders for Thin Mints, Caramel DeLites and Peanut Butter Patties reached the Freeborns solely through the online form.
Considering that the national Girl Scout Cookie Program bills itself as the largest program to teach entrepreneurship to young girls, this e-commerce strategy seems especially savvy. But some families in the community felt threatened by the Freeborn’s unconventional efforts, likely because various prizes (including camp vouchers, stuffed animals and apparel) are given out by local councils to girls who sell a certain amount of boxes. “If you have an individual girl that creates a Web presence, she can suck the opportunity from other girls,” says Matthew Markie, a parent who remains involved in Girl Scouts even though his three daughters are well into their 20s. Markie, and other disapproving parents, brought the Freeborn’s site to the attention of local Girl Scout officials who told the Freeborns to take down their YouTube video and reminded the family of the organization’s longstanding prohibition of online sales. According to the FAQ on the national organization’s Web site, “The safety of our girls is always our chief concern. Girl Scout Cookie activities are designed to be face-to-face learning experiences for the girls.”
” —Why Do Girl Scouts Ban Online Cookie Sales? | Newsweek Technology | Newsweek.com
Um … I may never buy another box of GS cookies.
(via WakingDreams)
“
For young Japanese, and especially for girls, cell phones—sophisticated, cheap, and, for the past decade, capable of connecting to the Internet—have filled the gap.
A government survey conducted last year concluded that eighty-two per cent of those between the ages of ten and twenty-nine use cell phones, and it is hard to overstate the utter absorption of the populace in the intimate portable worlds that these phones represent. A generation is growing up using their phones to shop, surf, play video games, and watch live TV, on Web sites specially designed for the mobile phone.
“It used to be you would get on the train with junior-high-school girls and it would be noisy as hell with all their chatting,” Yumiko Sugiura, a journalist who writes about Japanese youth culture, told me. “Now it’s very quiet—just the little tapping of thumbs.”
(With the new iPhone and the advent of short-text delivery services like Twitter, American cellular habits are becoming increasingly Japanese; there are at least two U.S. sites, Quillpill and Textnovel, both in the beta stage, that offer templates for writing and reading fiction on cell phones.)
” —Letter from Japan: I ♥ Novels: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
“Perhaps we need a different metaphor to describe viewer engagement with narrative complexity. We might think of such programs as drillable rather than spreadable. They encourage a mode of forensic fandom that encourages viewers to dig deeper, probing beneath the surface to understand the complexity of a story and its telling. Such programs create magnets for engagement, drawing viewers into the storyworlds and urging them to drill down to discover more.”
—To Spread or To Drill? « Just TV
“Maggiano’s Little Italy on March 10, 2009 said: These are some very interesting thoughts. You have many valid points, and some very helpful “watch outs” in terms of the proper use of the medium. Follower count definitely does not equal loyalty or brand affinity. At the same time, we know that there are many Maggiano’s-lovers out there, and this contest proved to be an effective way of building awareness of our Twitter presence. Engaging with our guests and potential guests is exactly what makes us excited about this platform. We’re definitely going to make a strong effort in the weeks and months ahead to provide our “followers” with relevant content, and engage with them conversationally. We will likely still run the occasional contest or special promotion, as it is one way that we can give back to our guests. And I think most of our guests would tell you it can be pretty fun! Again, thank you for the analysis and helpful thoughts.”
—Comment by Magiano’s in reply to Follow Me for A Prize « Weiward Girl
