Media Week

Jeff Jarvis, the celebrated media blogger, has posted up a speech he gave as part of the Guardian lecture series on the future of journalism. It's an interesting read. But I recommend you dig around. There is a write up of the session, with journalists talking about how the web is changing how they work and at the end of Jeff's presentations there are some other useful slide shows to keep you up-to-speed with some of the latest thinking....

http://www.buzzmachine.com/2008/06/26/od-on-me/

 www.itsopen.co.uk

A new social network called Finerday (www.finerday.com) is launching soon which enables older people to stay in contact with their families. It offers messaging services, photos, sending gifts and the emphasis is on making sure it is very easy to use.

This suggests that social networks are going to develop further in distinctive niches. It also destroys the myth that social media is just for young people - a view peddled often by middle aged communications professionals who don't understand the web and would rather support the status quo.

Finerday has a lot of potential if it successfully brings into one place useful applications for elderly people and their extended families to keep in touch and share information with one another.

There's been a lot of talk lately about the size of respective social media networks (something I have commented on) and it's an interesting sport to keep an eye on the figures. But small deep niches in social networks could become very influential. A lot of ad agencies still have a mass media mentality. It does a lot of traffic therefore we have to take it seriously and so on. However niche social networks should make advertising/PR easier to target as it becomes clearer who they are aimed at and who is using them.

With social networks sprouting up all the time, it is worth remembering that this reflects a more important trend which is that the audience on the web is starting to own the web. Increasingly people want social tools (photo sharing etc) to share information, news etc with their friends without referring to any organisations. It's a point which I like to emphasise when I'm invited to give social media briefings to organisations.

www.itsopen.co.uk

In the UK Nielsen Online data for April shows that MySpace's unique user numbers were down by a third on the year before. Bebo, bought by Time Warner in March, has largely plateaued in the UK since last summer. Some critics are saying that high growth in visitors to social networking sites is far from assured.  That's true but who can deny a fundamental shift that has taken place in online consumer behaviour. The culture of participation is firmly entrenched and people are sharing information with each other without referring to traditional organisations like companies. What's worse for advertisers is the vast number of pages on social media networks and the trouble involved in targetting them at specific users. Advertising though misses the point of the culture of social media networks which are about conversations. For companies to participate they need different strategies. Adverts are about shouting for attention. A good offline example of social media can be seen at 20/20 cricket matches. You've got companies that advertise on the boundaries. Who bothers to read them and then you've got the smart advertisers who supply spectators with cards signallying fours and sixes or who provide cardboard holders for pints with witty cricket messages on such as 'well held' etc. The advertisers going beyond the obvious boundary ads are integrating themselves into the culture of cricket and the conversations and the messages go further. They are penetrating the social side of the game.

www.itsopen.co.uk

Primark has stopped buying from three suppliers it found to be using child labour to embroider clothes it had sold in its stores. It was tipped off about child labour being used for its garments by BBC TV's Panorama programme.

What's interesting about this episode is how complaints about Primark's practices have been building on Facebook. Take a look at the link below:

http://www.facebook.com/s.php?q=Primark+child+labour&init=q

What this underlines is that people are going to use social media tools to talk about issues without referring to companies themselves. More Facebook and social media network-driven consumer campaigns are bound to happen, as people use these tools to organise themselves. Like they did with HSBC on Facebook.

Was Primark monitoring social media networks? Probably not. It was probably another one of these major companies who don't let their communications people look on the web and instead have a firewall blocking them!  Does Primark have a social media strategy? Probably not. Like a lot of companies it probably relies upon the traditional broadcast method, sending out press releases which are not relevant. The risk for companies like Primark is that they fail to see how consumers are talking about their brands on social media networks which can, as they have been discovered, be quite different to the committee-approved press releases and messages they pump out from their offices.

 www.itsopen.co.uk

Interesting piece in the Observer over the weekend by Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. Jimmy says: 'Imagine what happens when the next billion people come online, as will happen in the next five or10 years. They will have blogs, MySpaces and Second Lives online. They will edit Wikipedia. How will we manage all these competing accounts of the world? How will we meaningfully describe reality?'

He points out that traditional media organisations are going to be stretched to cover everything that is going on. 'Old media reflect certain biases that are inherent in a top-down system. Even the BBC, one of the biggest news-gathering organisations in the world, has to choose which topics to cover and which to omit. It can only barely scratch the surface of what can be recorded.The internet however is wide open..From Bangkok to Bogota people can exchange ideas and share experiences....'

Managing brand messages and organising advertising in this context is going to be a monumental challenge.

 www.itsopen.co.uk

 Twitter is building a reputation for being a breaking news site. Just after Tiger Woods sunk a 12-foot putt to force a play of with underdog Rocco Mediate, updates on Tiger were streaming in. Although Summize isn't new as a search engine for tracking Twitter, it is becoming clear that Twitter is a place where news is breaking first and is definitely something for news organisations to keep  watching.

There's a lot of buzz monitoring companies around offering you the promise of which sites/forums/blogs etc are the most influential and which ones you should be keeping an eye on. All good stuff. There is so much being said, who do you know who to pay attention to? I am staggered to meet some companies where there is clearly a huge gulf between the messages they are putting out and the conversations going on around their brands. You might think you know what you stand for but what are customers actually saying about you? The real danger for companies who have no social media strategy in place is there could be a disconnect between the official brand image and the real brand as it is being discussed online. It is crucial for any company to start listening to online conversations about their brands and relevant issues in their markets and they should start quickly. People no longer need to refer to companies for information. They can just organise themselves and they are doing. I can see consumers increasingly ganging up on companies online to make their points and to organise movements and force changes in policy. By listening to conversations online you put yourself in the position to join those conversations.

One further word on influential buzz monitoring etc, I think it is important to bear in mind that the web is a very dynamic place. What's influential today, won't be tomorrow. So you need to keep your eye on trends, growing topics as well. It's a useful early warning system.

 www.itsopen.co.uk

There's an interesting piece about Digg in today's Guardian - see the technology section. Kevin Rose, founder of Digg, is talking about the appeal of the social media site which lets users vote on what should be newsworthy. Digg now gets 26 million unique visitors a month. Rose says, 'People want to have a voice and a say in what is news. We've levelled the playing field by accepting all other forms of content,whether it's sources from CNN, the Guardian....it's about seeing what the masses want to surface,which articles they are finding the most interesting...'

Rose says he wants Digg to become the standard for other web sites. That's a fascinating thought. Let your site visitors tell you what they do or don't like about your web site in public. Will they be bothered to tell you? That will be  a real test of whether or not your content is as interesting as you think it is.

Digg is a great example of social media in action. News and what counts as news is now far more democratic. Anyone can publish and decide what should be the news,you no  longer have to be a media magnate like Murdoch. As the influence of social media sites like Digg grows, there is going to be pressure on companies to create content which is genuinely interesting. Otherwise it will never get recommended by people who use tools like Digg. So you are standing there with a press release in your hand ready to put it online. The management team might have approved it. But will people digg it? And how will you decide whether or not your content will be dugg?!

www.itsopen.co.uk

Some interesting research has been carried out by Forrester looking into how online consumers around the world use forums, reviews and ratings. Increasingly ratings and reviews are being seen as a good way to boost the credibility of a site and its offerings. The research shows that 20% of online consumers in the UK read ratings and reviews which is a high number. It underlines how consumers want to have the ability to make comments and recommendations themselves without the interference of large organisations.

http://blogs.forrester.com/charleneli/2008/06/data-chart-of-1.html