Monday Musings: The Gutenberg Effect

Morning All. Welcome to your Monday. Here are some digital nuggets to sink your little nashers into for the week of March 8th.

Kicking off with a video spotlight: How The Interenet is Changing Advertising.

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This cracking little “epipheo” presents captures very succinctley something which as been nagging at my brain for a while. Something I like to call “The Gutenberg Effect“. For me the technological shifts that have truely rocked the world have always brought about a new way of thinking and with that new way, an outburst of creativity has spread like wildfire.

Looking back to creation of the printing press, what Gutenberg achieved was not only a technological shift, but a cultural one that allowed people for the first time to hold the printed word in their hands and read it for themselves. A technology that was a key driver in the cultural shift that ultimately ended up becoming The Reformation.

We have seen this process repeat throughout recent history with the creation of commercial radio springing up from the creativity of HAM radio set users in the early 20th century, and then far more recently in the boom of satellite television. Each has created a shift in the way we communicate with one another. Each has demanded something new of the sender and recipient of communication. With print it was undivided attention. With radio it became a background medium, with TV a shared collective experience.

The internet in general, but increasingly the social web provides a different form of communication. A new kind of shared experience, that is not media specific, time specific or geography specific. An experience that is neither broadcast nor narrowcast. Yet is still a shared experience, but that experience is fundamentally different, as for the first time the way in which that experience is consumed lies in the hands of the recipient, NOT the sender.

This means big things for the advertising and marketing industries. It means a change of mindset, a different thinking is required, as we can no longer control or stipulate that a communication has to be consumer OUR way. But be open to the fact that our communication will be consumed, when, where and how the recipient wants. The sooner that marketers get that this shared experience is a movable typing twittering tubing experience, not a media experience, the better.

More on that in the coming weeks…

in other news…

A fantastic dissection of HootSuite for the unitiated from my chum Gemma Went

10 Great Newbie Twitter Mistakes Made By Businesses from Mike Johansson on Social Media Today

And a great presentation from Coca-Cola on Social Media care of Robin Grant @ wearesocial

The paid content debate: Freemium Contiues

Guardian iPhone App

This morning sees the launch of the new iPhone version of a national newspaper, in the form of The Guardian iPhone App. This like many others on the market (New York Times for e.g.) offers readers the opportunity to browse, swipe, tap and toggle their way through the papers content in a finger friendly iPhone version. However this is one fundamental difference here, the price tag. £2.39 to be precise. As Tech Editor @charlesarthur mentioned this morning, about the same price as a Tall Starbucks Latte, but representing a very clear stance on behalf of The Guardian in their approach to online content.

The Guardian famously was one of the first nationals to attempt a paid content model back in the early part of the decade for their web portal, which was later abandoned after little take up of the service, so it will be interesting to see how readers react to the penny-gap challenge now placed before them.

Img Scrolling Mode

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Favorite content and sections

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Stream or Download Guardian Podcasts

Stream or Download Guardian Podcasts

The app in itself, built by Salford based mobile marketing agency 2ergo (Client), takes the platform a few steps further than previous apps of this kind, particularly in the form of downloadable content, podcast streaming and tag browsing, through a very neat hover window style, much akin to the quickly spreading raft of Adobe Air applications such as TweetDeck or Spotify.

The ability to favorite both sections, as well as individual pieces of content also adds a nice touch to the browsing experience, and instant access to Galleries, making full use of the Photo Browser iPhone API, makes scrolling through pictures a very pleasurable experience.

All in all a well thought out and executed app, with content from a reputable source, who seem to have spent the proper amount of time that is needed to create the user experience that readers have come to expect of big budget applications, however it remains to be seen whether the price tag will be a stumbling block.

For those users who do not wish to part with the modest sum of a couple of quid, the mobile web portal of the paper continues to provide adequate access to content, but for the superior experience, the app seems the way to go, further solidifying the viability of the “freemium” model that seems to be sweeping the online content world. (More on Freemium here: http://wp.me/pl46h-31)

Personally,  in favour of being able to finish reading Charlie Brooker before being plunged into the dark-3G-deadzone of South Clapham, I’ll skip the extra latte.

2ergo PLC are a Client of Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, London, for whom I work, however all opinions of this or any other 2ergo App are my own and do not represent the opinions or views of  2ergo PLC, Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide or The Ogilvy Group.

Countdown to 140Conf London

So just under a week away from 140 Character Conference London. Which I am thoroughly looking forward to.

Joining me on the brand panel at around 12PMish will be Rachel Fellows, Corp. Comms director at Kelloggs – you can find her on twitter @KelloggsUK. I also have the privaledge of welcoming Mike Matherson (@mikemath), CEO of Cake Group to the stage and Mauricio Samayoa from wearesocial to join the panel aswell.

For those of you who haven’t yet signed up to come along you can get a 50% discount with my “friend of speaker” code, click here to use it.

Thank you to all of you who contributed your suggestions, in particular @jangles and @brynmorgan.

As a result check out:

@nectar

@jamesoncultfilm

@magnersuk

@innocentdrinks

@britishairways

@virgintrains

@guitarherouk

@doritosuk

and

@waterstones – all as a good starting point!

If you have any questions for the panel don’t forget to DM me or submit a comment here!

And finally for those who missed it check out http://london.140conf.com/schedule for the full line up!

 

Google’s Social Circle & The Trust Network

Social search… interesting development. Or is it.  Google have been including social web results in search results for a number of months now. Google’s next development seems (as explained in the above slightly creepy and uber conservative video – count the amount of mentions of security related words) is to use the content from the social sites that you have added to your Google profile into your main web search results.

This creates some level of helpfulness in cross referencing friends, comments and answers to questions across social platforms.  Meaning that if I look up details about where to go on honeymoon I will get trip advisor, expedia and the gang, but also results from my friend Tim’s blog about where he went on holiday last week – a result that would never usually hit page 1 of a search result list. All of this is nice enough and interesting in a slightly geeky, if you’re into that stuff, kind of way.

However what is interesting is the greater trend that has prompted this technology from Google – personal networks of trust. We have known for a long time now that word-of-mouth from friends and contacts is the most trusted source of information to us. The entire public relations industry thrives on this single fact, we trust those who we know more than those who we don’t. Therefore it is logical that when I want honeymoon ideas, or where to rent a Tux for my wedding (which is in June by the way – presents welcome, gift list link to come!) I can use Social Search to check what my contacts and friends across my social circles (the Google terminology for our networks of trust) think about the topics I am searching for.

Of course this has significant ramifications for brands who interact in the social web. The default of most web users when looking for information is to jump into the lap of Google, whether looking for a good deal on a TV or life insurance, and according to HitWise “The proportion of traffic that online retailers receive from social networking websites – such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and YouTube – increased from 5.2% in March 2008 to 7.1% in March 2009.”

Brands who don’t currently interact in the social web, or have poor SEO of the content that they currently produce are going to come a-cropper if Social Search moves towards a default. Clearly, if we begin to see the opinions of our contacts displayed right alongside carefully SEO’d content and Paid Search, competition for our attention heightens, and our default will be to go with what we trust – our contacts.

A quest for a more integrated approach…

View this document on Scribd

For those of you who came along to the @lonpr event last week at the Ogilvy PR offices – here is the deck that myself and Rachel Clarke presented on social media monitoring and measurement as well as a little about ourselves.

I will be posting up some more detail on these measurement slides in coming weeks so stay tuned for that!

Gladwell .v. Anderson – A Battle for Free-dom

Free: Chris Anderson

Some of you may be aware of that little publicised facts that newspaper readership is on the decline, people are sharing music without paying for it and the movie industry is being crippled by illegal downloads…

Chris Anderson, Editor in Chief at Wired UK’s new book Free: The Future of A Radical Price looks at the idea of how consumers are expecting more and more of their content for free, and with advertising spend on the way down the road to ruin, the future is uncertain for much of our mainstream media.

Some of you may be more familiar with the works of Malcolm Gladwell, the author of The Tipping Point  and Blink, he’s recently entered the ring with his own opinions, and the digital battle for the answer is well and truly on.

This is an issue that will inevitably effect us all, but will put PR in an exclusively pertinent place for our clients if the model of free content that Anderson is pushing comes out on top – the idea that we earn media placement rather than buy it has never been so well positioned in this new (to use Anderson’s words) freeconomy.

Take a look at Antonia Senior’s piece in The Times for some more info… http://bit.ly/4Oq2H

Let the battle commence!

Tourism Australia: Can Social Media Attract Visitors? – Thomas Crampton

A little video treat from my colleague over in the Asia-Pacific team at ogilvy – Mr Thomas Crampton (www.thomascrampton.com).Australia has really ramped up a gear when it comes to online promotion – as Nick Baker explains here. Utilising Twitter, Facebook, even an all star cast movie (aka – Australia).

They have also taken a rather alternative approac when it comes to blogger relations, by invinviting out the blogger “The Sartorialist” out to Australia rather than a journalist or travel-related blogger. An interesting change of direction, which is kicking up a big hoohah in bloggersphere and traditional media alike.

We have been working with the Brazilian tourism board in the UK to think about how they could best approach social media, and through conversation mapping we have spotted some real potential in this.

The question is what kind of role does the tourism board play in these situations – with a clear promotions remit how trustworthy is their “editorial” content going to appear to potential customers/visitors?

A fine line to tread…

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My Media Diet: Inhalation…

"Maybe I Inhale More Media Than I Realise..."

It has come to my attention that I am literally inhaling media. I know I work in PR, and am a “Generation X”er and all that Jazz. But doing this little log over the past 24 hours is quite startling when you look at it all laid out like this. The little subconscious checks of twitter, the musing of blog posts yet to be written, it wouldn’t suprise me if I start unwillingly speaking in 140 character sentences!

So much of this media has just become 2nd nature, a part of the stream of our consiousness, and so little of it we actually question. Monday Morning. Office. Sit Down. Boot Up. Log On. Tweet. Eat. Tweet Again. Blog. Read. Digest (Digitally & Physically). Google. Email. Tweet Yet Again. Tag It. Digg It. Cast it. Download. Power Down. Go Home.

You get the picture…

So back to where we started – I decided to conduct little survey of my media diet. Consumption. Call it what you will. Let me take you back via the medium of blog (and some wavy scoobie doo effects) to Monday morning…

6:50 AM –  *Beep Beep Beep… THWACK!* Alarm clock knocked lazy from bedside table, rolling over, pushing girlfriend aside reaching for iPhone. Missing iPhone. Rolling back over. Snooze Button. 20 Minutes of Chris Moyles drowning out my dreams and bringing me (not so gently) into the new working week.

7:00 AM – I take a second attempt at reaching for iPhone. More successful this time. Read/Delete Spam.

7:50 AM – On tube now, dive head long into the wonderous hub of investigative journalism that is The Metro… lose interest around page 13…

7:59 AM – Once again distracted by Twitter on iPhone… *silent wish that people would not keep writing “Good morning everyone!” tweets… the old adage rings true, if you haven’t got something nice to say…

8:00 AM – 8:35 AM … Listen to Podcast.

Monday: Friday Night Comedy – Radio 4 (Listen)

Tuesday: Relevant Magazine (Listen)

Wednesday: This American Life (Listen)

Thursday: NPR – Poetry Magazine (Listen)

Friday: Genius Playlist on iPhone… (Info Here)

8:37AM – 9:02Am – As i’m plunged into the darkness of the Jubilee line* (See More…)  and am severed from my 3G connection to the world I revert to a analogue approach in the form of Blue Like Jazz – Donald Miller’s fantastic mini essay series on non religious spirituality… (He blogs here). Until I succomb to the inevitable release of a Amazon Kindle 2 UK Version, paper reigns supreme for sub-terrainian entertainment.

9:10AM – 9:45AM – Arrive at work, bum on seat, Latte in hand, croissant in front of keyboard and all is well. Boot up, Log In, wait for work Email server to get it’s act together, then begin to breathe in 1’s and 0’s in the form of Twitter, Facebook, Hotmail, Google Reader, Delicious Tags, Radian6 (our social media monitoring tool here at Ogilvy) and news source of choice (for usability not politics) Guardian Online…

11:00 AM 11AM jumps out from behind a bush at me, startling me somewhat about it’s urgency in getting through the day. It’s about this time (usually musing over a latte) that the latest round robin email from the London Ogilvy Interactive group catches my attention – usually in the form of a YouTube distraction or some other digital delight. Sip. Click. Sit. Click. Back to work. Wait. This is work.

11:10 AM Check back into the twittersphere… Not much happening. Does FollowFriday do anyone else’s nut in or is it just me! (As an aside it is important to bring to light the troublesome issue that the MacBook – wonderful that it is – doesn’t feature a hash key on the keyboard! Grrrr…)

12:50 PM As hunger strikes (cue the Shreddies soundtrack) heading for lunch deleteding more (and more) spam from personal email on iPhone – ooo. My next LoveFilm is on it’s way… Michael Macintyre! 

13:45 PM – Stomach full, email inbox equally bloated. Quick twitter update before some serious digital digestion takes place, predominantly in the form of some Radian6 fishing and the odd blog inspiration from Google Reader.

2:00-5:45PM –As the sound of the neuvo-classical Flight of The Concordes hit thuds in my head, this point in the afternoon is officially “business time” – (for those of you unaquainted a little help from YouTube can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGOohBytKTU)  The result of which means, that aside from the spiradic twittering and lingering tap of the iPhone, very little goes on here other that – as would be expected – work.

6:00 – 7:00PM – Pretty much a repeat of 7:45 AM – 9:15AM but in reverse order. After a fairly media heavy day I tend to tail off by the time I get home. Suprisingly I still remember how to speak to people face to face! (Those who know me well will know this has never truely been a problem however…)

So there we have it, that pretty much wraps up the day. And sadly (possibly not the case for you routine junkies out there) – most days it’s the same story. Living a truely digitally native life, as one of the first generations to have never known what it is to not have a PC in the house is quite a priveledge I suppose. However this does provoke an almost subconscious dialogue within me, that is constantly thinking of the angle, the wall post, the tweet, a constant desire to replicate my offline life digitally. So how do you describe that? Inhalation. Breathe In.

Monday Mocha Musing – Edition 2: Guest Post: Facebook’s fresh privacy fracas: By Lewis Webb (Shiny Red)

Good afternoon all. This week’s Monday Mocha Musing comes from friend and fellow social media expert Lewis Webb (@lewiswebb) from Shiny Red “ joint venture between The Red Consultancy and the founders of UK blog network Shiny Media.” Lewis has been working in Social Media since 2002 and has worked across a wide range of tech clients to more consumer brands.

Lewis’ post this week looks at the new content regulations of Facebook, and how it may effect your digital freedom, and copywrite protection.

And now… on with the post…

 

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, worldwide license to use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, scan, reformat, modify, edit, adapt, create derivative works and distribute, any user content you post on or in connection with the Facebook Service.

That’s paraphrased directly from Facebook’s new terms and conditions, which – as you can imagine – has caused not a small amount of discussion in the world of social media. From expelled students and  Royal breakups to its over-intrusive Beacon platform, Facebook has been courting controversy rather more than it might like to admit over the last 12 months. On top of this, the social network has yet to answer questions around data portability in a convincing way. While reception to its interoperability platform “Connect” was positive, their spokesperson at Le Web in Paris was rightly called out by Michael Arrington for paying little more than lip service to the idea of open standards in social media. At its core, Facebook remains a walled garden and that’s unlikely to change any time soon.

These new T&Cs don’t help its cause one bit, but while those “in the know” will tut and shake their heads in despair, it’s unlikely that the average Facebook user will notice any difference at first – so why should they care? Well why not compare this attitude with Flickr’s “if it’s not public, it’s all yours” content policy – which, incidentally, terminates should you remove it from the site unlike the new FB small-print. It seems that in the world of social media there’s an ideological debate going on where companies on the statist Left want to control and take ownership of content, while the open-source Right takes a more libertarian approach to it all. Of course there’s a balance to be struck, but this recent development only strengthens the argument of those who shy away from social media for fear details about their lives being controlled by or falling into the wrong hands. But perhaps the social network should be more concerned about the “what-if” factor… as an established consumer brand around the world, if FB trips itself up through misuse of the new “agreement” any time soon, you can expect the backlash to go beyond the online media set to its core audience of (so-far) contented everyday users.

Thanks to Lewis for this, you can also find it on the Shiny Red Blog, and Lewis’ own musings at Social ProBiotic

Next Week – Nick Fell, Ogilvy One (@nickfell) will give us his musing. Check it out here, next monday.

Monday Mocha Musings: Edition 1 – The Art of Acknowledging a Subscriber

Welcome to Monday Mocha Musings:

Welcome to the first in our ongoing series of Monday Mocha Musings. Each monday afternoon we will endeavour to bring you a little tit-bit to chew over on the way home, or for the rest of the week from a guest writer.

This week we kick off with a ditte on the dangers of auto-tweeting, tweetbacks and auto-following on twitter, friendfeed and beyond, from Nurhafihz (@hafihz). A true marketing professional and a forward thinker in many realms on digital PR. Check him out here – http://www.hafihz.com/ or tweet him up.

Now… On with the post!

 

MMM Edition 1 – The Art of Acknowledging a Subscriber

By NurHafihz

This is what happens when cheap tactics, a lack of proper fundamentals in marketing education and having read a “marketing tip” all mash up:

Personalization becomes Frankensteinish.

I’m talking about replies to subscription, submission, followups. Take for example the Twitter subscription. If you’re like me, and your twitter community is quite a size, you might have noticed this strange phenomenon when you’ve subscribe to some people. You know something is going on when 9 out 10 that you have subscribed reply to you with this template:

Auto-Follow - Killing The fUN?

Hello there! Thank you for subscribing! I appreciate your time. Why not follow me at….

What the? I have followed you. Don’t push your luck by asking me to follow your site too. And you might have been remarkable if only you thanked me in that manner. If you used a standard algorithmic auto-reply, shame on you. If that was really you typing, here’s my alternative template for you:

Good <insert time of day he subscribed> , thanks for your support <insert twitter’s name>. I noticed you’re an expert in <insert twitter’s pitch>. What do you think of <insert question> ?

The Meaning: Personalization is a shorter door to bulding trust than frequency in communication. Don’t misuse it.

Thanks to NurHafihz for this week’s Monday Mocha Musing: This post can be found also at @hafihz‘s website – http://www.hafihz.com/school-of-marketing/the-art-of-acknowledging-a-subscriber/

Get Involved:

Would you like to write a Monday Mocha Musing for us? Let @jamespoulter know! or see the About page for more details.

Next Week – @lewiswebb guest writes a MMM – Check It Out Next Monday