Recently in Future of media Category

One of the most important applications of influence is in launching start-ups. This is often a make or break situation – you have a great opportunity to get attention (and on the back of that revenue) when you launch a new company. If it doesn’t work and you don’t get much attention at that point, it doesn’t mean you never get another chance, but it’s going to be a lot harder when you’re yesterday’s news.

The New York Times has a long feature today about PR in Silicon Valley, which has brought an extended response from Michael Arrington of TechCrunch, bringing into focus the question of who the REAL influencers are when it comes to getting word out on start-ups.

The New York Times piece, describing the formation of the PR strategy for word-focused start-up Wordnik, says:

Citizen journalist site Allvoices.com has just moved out of beta. CNet provides a story of the site, its founder Amra Tareen, and Allvoices' features including a map of the world showing where the latest stories are emerging. A Reuters story, Allvoices happy to pay popular posters, focuses on how the site pays contributors and its 'crediibility' algorithm.

Contributors are free to post almost anything and their credibility is rated by readers and an in-house algorithm which measures postings against traditional media and other sources.

But throwing the site open to the public has its pitfalls.

One recent post with a high credibility rating said the Ark of The Covenant was about to be unveiled. Other stories cite no sources at all.

Mr Sundelof said he had not looked at the Ark posting, but the in-house computer evaluation depended on feedback from many users and there had not been enough feedback on that piece.

Allvoices did not practice gatekeeping.

"We haven't worked out how to deal with these kinds of situations," he said. "Basically, we can only determine credibility based on the input we have."

In a world awash with information, having credibility or reputation ratings for information sources is becoming increasingly important. While most people have focused on the media channel as the brand, this is going to shift to the individual journalist. You may trust the New York Times, but after you've read it for a while, you'll place more credibility on what some journalists for the paper write than you do for others.

Allvoices is one of the early players in this space. There will be many more.

How reputation measures will evolve, particularly those for content, will be one of the important themes at Future of Influence Summit 2009.

Associated Press has just released a story titled Is Twitter the news outlet for the 21st century? which examines the role of Twitter in the news cycle.

It examines the role Twitter played in the news of Michael Jackson's death, in the Iranian election, and in the Mumbai terrorist attacks, and goes on to quote tweeters such as Ashton Kutcher and Lance Armstrong, and commentators including TechCrunch and Andrew Keen to explore how Twitter is changing the news landscape. It also draws on my comments from an extended interview:

"Twitter absolutely changes the media landscape," said Ross Dawson, author and communications strategy analyst. "I like to refer to Marshall McLuhan's description of media as `an extension of our senses.' Now, Twitter is extending our senses to tens of millions of people who are often right on the scene where things are happening."

My views are expressed in more detail in a recent post How Twitter impacts media and journalism: Five Fundamental Factors, which reviews in particular the role of Twitter in breaking news.

I've had a few other thoughts on the topic recently so will post more on this later.

That’s influence for you. After The Insight Exchange’s event Twitter’s Impact on Media & Journalism last week, the biggest front page article in The Australian’s media section today, titled Journos mastering the Twitterverse, opening with:

IT'S Tuesday and I'm at a forum on the topic "Twitter's Impact on Media and Journalism", busily taking down the speeches in shorthand. As I do, the business-suited woman sitting on my left is tweeting about me on her laptop.

"This is interesting," she types. "I'm at #timj talk about Twitter and media/journalism. I'm tweeting and the journalist next to me has paper/pen :-)"

Paper and pen? Got me! I do use them. However, I also use Twitter, which is how I caught up with her comment once I was back in the office.

It’s a long article, accompanied by three other articles on Twitter in media. The thrust of the article is about how journalists are using Twitter. It mentions Dave Earley’s list of Australian journalists and news media people with Twitter accounts, and Anthony Dever’s list of Australian media organizations on Twitter.

Presumably from these lists they have compiled a list of prominent Australian journalists on Twitter:

Today I was at Twitter's Impact on Media & Journalism run by The Insight Exchange. It was as usual a fantastic event with great insights – I will be digesting and musing on the conversations and ideas for a while, and will incorporate these into future frameworks.

Below are quick on-the-fly notes from the event. Check out the Twitter stream #timj for the rich conversations from the event. For my own thoughts on the topic read my post from last week on How Twitter impact media and journalism: Five Fundamental Factors.

Here are my notes from each of the presenters – taken on the fly but hopefully a reasonable representation of what they said. Some of the presentations will be put on online in audio and hopefully transcription so will post links when they’re available.

Mark Pesce (@mpesce)
He begins by quoting Bob Woodward:
"Social media? It's noise. Twitter? Facebook? It's all a diversion. Good reporting is always going to be about hard work; about waking up every morning with the thought: What are the bastards hiding today?"

One of the most interesting issues regarding Twitter is its impact on the media and journalism. The Insight Exchange is running a lunch event Twitter’s Impact on Media & Journalism in Sydney on 23 June which promises to be extremely interesting, with insights from among others Mark Pesce, Renai Lemay, Paul Colgan and Corrie McLeod (click on the names to see pre-event interviews of the speakers by Beth Etling) as well as in-depth discussion by all participants.

Below are some of my thoughts on the topic. As an introduction, in the ABC TV segment below Mark Scott, Managing Director of ABC and myself are interviewed about the role of Twitter in media. Mark emphasizes that people want a trusted source for their news, whereas I point to the value of Twitter in breaking news. At the time I wrote more about these different viewpoints on Twitter and media, noting that Scott's stance "just takes us back to the traditional view that news is only news once a journalist has reported it."

I see Five Fundamental Factors on how Twitter impacts media and journalism:

1. Twitter’s role in breaking news

The US Interactive Advertising Bureau has just released 2009 Q1 figures, showing US$5.5 billion for a 5% fall from first quarter of last year.

This has to be put in the context of overall advertising revenue. The Newspaper Association of America recently announced that first quarter newspaper ad revenues were down over 28% over last year, while Barclays Capital early estimated that total US advertising revenues would fall 13% this year.

Techcrunch has updated its analysis of the valuation of the major social networks globally, based on new usage and advertising spending figures.

As last year when I did the same analysis, the most interesting part of this for me is the relative advertising spending per internet user across countries, and the very strong differences in what are sometimes quite similar economies.

The relative ranking has changed little from last year, though the absolute figures have fallen significantly. Internet advertising spending has essentially been flat over the last year or so, while there has been a solid increase in the number of users.

Last night we had a conversation with Juliette Powell in Sydney. A small group of local digerati gathered for an informal conversation on social networks, taking advantage of Juliette being in Australia for the first time as she tours the world promoting her new book 33 Million People in the Room.

Below are the unedited notes I took during the conversation, reflecting what was said by the participants. It was a fascinating discussion, with just a few fragments captured here.

Notes from Conversation with Juliette Powell

After her book came out Juliette got invitations from around the world, including from X Media Lab for a keynote and mentorship program in New Zealand. There were limited opportunities to connect with her peer mentors in the busy schedule, so the only way to connect was online – the brief initial contact will be followed up on social networks.

@webtechman just posted this:

For connoisseurs of geek porn who haven't seen it before, click on the image below for my full Twitter background, comprised of four of our more well-known frameworks, or go to the full pdfs of the frameworks here: Web 2.0 Framework, Extinction Timeline, Trend Blend 2007, and Future of Media Strategic Framework. I've been intending to do a compilation of some of our frameworks - will post that soon.

The Power of Influence lunch was run earlier today. This was in fact the inaugural event of The Insight Exchange. The quality of the event and the feedback augur well for The Insight Exchange future's, and particularly for the value it will create for participants. It was a highly interactive event, with deep content and great discussion.

Below are the notes I took during the event.

I initially presented the Influence Landscape framework we launched yesterday, after which the three panelists spoke and the event then progressed to a highly interactive discussion among all participants, from which I have taken a few notes as well.

BRIAN GIESEN - OGILVY PR
75% of people don't believe that companies tell the truth in advertising.
In the US 81% look to word of mouth (WOM) for decisions.
Trust in media Editorial is 56%.

I wrote the article below for Tech Marketing magazine. It is intended as a quick guide for marketers who are looking to engage with social media.

It is now impossible to ignore the power and reach of social media. Yet the rules of engagement are very different to traditional marketing and PR. Here are a few guidelines to how to tap the power of social media without stumbling into the many pitfalls:

1. Participate and play

The only way to understand social media is to participate. Don’t just open Facebook and Twitter accounts. You need to play extensively with a wide variety of tools and discover how they are being used. If you think you don’t have time, think how much time you’ll have if you cannot work effectively in a world increasingly driven by social media.

After my TV interview about Twitter the other day, I’ve just been interviewed by ABC Radio about the Nielsen research just out that shows that Twitter’s second-month retention rates for new users are 40%, compared to retention rates of 50-60% for Facebook and MySpace when they were at a similar stage in their growth.

I was asked some interesting questions in the interview, so to paraphrase them and quickly respond:

Is this a concern for Twitter’s executives?
Absolutely. It’s one thing to get massive numbers of new users. It’s another thing to retain them. Unless Twitter can change this, it will never conquer the world as some suggest it might.

ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) TV had a very nice segment on Twitter yesterday, as below.

As befits the august institution, the segment was more thoughtful than some other recent media coverage.

It begins with how politicians are using Twitter, including Barack Obama, Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull, and South Australian state premier Mike Rann, who announced his new cabinet on Twitter, and talks about how he embraces it as a way of communicating with his electorate.

The segment then looks at how Twitter is becoming a media channel, including providing breaking coverage of events such as the Mumbai terrorist attacks and Australian bushfires, and quotes me saying that many news events are covered first and sometimes better on Twitter than on mainstream media.

On the segment ABC Managing Director Mark Scott says that most Twitter sources cannot be trusted, so people will look to credible sources such as the ABC, possibly delivered over the ABC's own Twitter channel.

This approach just takes us back to the traditional view that news is only news once a journalist has reported it. In part of my interview that wasn't used in the segment I noted that people are increasingly looking for primary sources for news. They are not interested in waiting until the broadcast journalists get to the scene, and they feel capable of assessing the validity of these unauthorized sources themselves.

The segment wraps up mentioning Twitter's search for a business model.

My readers will have seen a massive focus on Enterprise 2.0 in this blog for the last few months, as I have been preparing, promoting and running the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum in Sydney and Enterprise 2.0 Executive Briefing in Melbourne, and writing and publishing Implementing Enterprise 2.0, which is rapidly becoming the reference in the field. Moving forward I will continue to be deeply involved in Enterprise 2.0 through my client work, and will also be releasing a lot more content from the report.

However I am now in the process of shifting gears. Last year I realized that a large proportion of my interests could be encapsulated in two key themes:
The future of the enterprise
The future of influence

The first examines how organizations will evolve and what they must do to be successful in an intensely complex and competitive world. The second looks at how messages disseminate when traditional media is being trumped by social media. Together they bring together the inside and the outside, the twin domains in which open communication is transforming business and society.

Having focused deeply for a while on the future of the enterprise, for the next period my attention will shift significantly to the future of influence.

I have studied and worked on influence networks for much of the last decade. Among other activities, I wrote about influence networks in Chapter 6 of Living Networks and published what was then the first detailed study of influence networks in B2B marketing: How Technology Purchasing Decisions are Really Made. However so far I haven’t written up most of my ongoing research and work in the space.