Yet another milestone in my digital life has been reached! I just got my first spam via sms. It read like this, including the quotation markes(!):
“I am Michael Pritchett.I have a business proposal of mutual benefit for both of us.If you are in interested,please reach me at: mmpritchett at yahoo.com”
And it was sent from +79180415830 which I haven’t quite worked out where it belongs yet. Ah, it’s like the day I got my first fake invoice 🙂
Olle, Swedens number one magazine and media blogger, wrote an interesting post about media trends for 2008. I’ve translated the quote below:
This creates challenges for all [media] brands:
* the traditional brands have to create new brands that are similar to the personal brands: they should converse, be credible, clear and be available on several platforms.
* the personal brands have to either position themselves as anti-establishment (probably won’t work for all of them) or look towards the establishments credibility and guarantees of quality.
I agree. This might be the year when the establishment catches up, purely through acquisition and superior resources.
The key here is talent. Talent will always prevail, but it can grow stronger and reach further in the right surroundings. Gawker Media built their successful blogs through strong editorial voices. I wonder though – do the media companies of today attract this type of talent? And even after acquisition – can it provide the right environment to make them stay?
I’m not convinced. My gut feeling is that there is a pool of people that the media companies desperately want, but these people aren’t even considering them as a potential employer. They are multi talented and could probably work pretty much anywhere, successfully. So where do they go instead? I think they’ll increasingly choose brands that represent the right values and have a competitive programme for personal development. Companies that actively recruit and scout out talent, using these types of incentives as bait. Very few (Swedish) media players are active here.
Much needs to done. But if times get rough in 2008, the difference between talent and hype will become clearer than ever. Whoever has the talent will make it. The rest… well, best of luck.
tags technorati : hr recruiting media 2008 talent
tags bloggar.se: hr, rekrytering, media, talang, 2008
An interesting post from the newly launched blog The Next Web:
A Moseycode holds much more information than any other mobile barcode. When photographing a Moseycode, your mobile telephone will reveal information like 3D pictures, locations and even allows you to add your own media to the repository/portal you’ve found. The content of the code isn’t static. The Moseycode barcoding system is specifically developed for Android.
A lot of my work consists of working with media companies, as most of you know. I’ve worked at a few myself, and met even more through our consultancy. I feel like I have a fairly accurate picture of how the Swedish industry thinks and works. It’s not that big, after all.
Lately I have had several meetings that all have led me to the same conclusion. The level of technical knowledge – from the ground floor to the management – is pitifully low. Still. Even after the embarrassment regarding classifieds. No, if nothing is done about this fairly soon I think we are headed for yet another sticky situation.
Consider how many players that are entering the field and have advertising as their primary business plan. They are not from the media, they’re from all other fields – including tech. Innovation in idea and execution will be crucial in acquiring and retaining new visitors to these sites. When McKinsey and guys like that list their CSF/KSF for why these new sites are so successful, the technology will be behind several of them. Just look at YouTube for instance.
Media companies will have to compete with tech-driven companies for the advertising bucks. And the latter have their main advantage in having superior knowledge in an area which is absolutely crucial for business. Worrying, to say the least.
If I was a media exec, I would make sure that I had staff that understood what tech was working, and why. Then I would demand regular reports to the board on the latest in technical innovation. Scouts that knew what companies were getting VC funding. Suggesting companies for me to invest in myself. Enabling my brands to host new offspring from these technologies – leveraging both brand power and superior execution.
In August I quoted Jonathan Schwartz and it seems fitting that I should do it again:
Media company CEO’s without a CTO on their staff should prepare to be acquired or broken up – they are fighting the future rather than monetizing it.
tags technorati : tech cto media jonathanschwartz internetstrategy
tags bloggar.se: tech, media, cto, jonathan schwartz, internetstrategi
I’m at Disruptive Media in Stockholm, and just held a presentation about internet currency. The (Swedish) slides are below:
Read Martin´s thoughts on music and the internet. Well worth it.
The first thing labels will have to do is skip the record prefix in their name and start calling themselves music labels. To be able to take the important full scale step from the physical world to the internet labels have to break a huge psychological barrier. The barrier of doing things in the way they’ve always been done.
I believe that the future of the internet as a distribution channel is all about filters. Here the music label has a big role to play: Creating artistic contexts for musicians to work in and consumers to find new things in. That is – labels will have to start focus on their core business again. They have to take a dozen steps back and set a side anything that haven’t to do with finding musicians they believe can influence people to the bone. This is something labels have been really good at in the past and is the reason why they once were created.
The following post is written in a series for the Swedish online paper Aftonbladet.se about the future of media and journalism. The posts in English will continue as usual after this.
Jag har blivit ombedd att vara del av Aftonbladets bloggpanel som den här veckan handlar om framtidens nyheter och mediekonsumtion. Det är ett kul ämne, och ett som jag bloggar om väldigt ofta. Men för att få någon slags form på det tänkte jag inrikta mig på tre förändringar som jag tror kommer att ske och påverka mycket – och många.
1. Internet finns överallt, och i allt
Häromdagen blev jag intervjuad i egenskap av att vara en digital native. En av frågorna var hur det min syn på internet skiljer sig från de som är äldre. Jag svarade att internet är integrerat i nästan alla delar av mitt liv, och att det inte är någonting som jag sätter mig ner för att använda. Så kommer det att fortsätta att vara. Det kommer finnas tillgång till internet överallt (via Wimax, Wifi och HSDPA) av den enkla anledningen att livet inte kommer att fungera tillfredsställande om det inte finns. Internet blir bäraren av alla de medierna som vi konsumerar.
Vidare, kommer internet att driva mer än bara datorn/mobilen/mediespelaren. Redan idag finns ett paraply vars handtag lyser med samma intensitet som sannolikheten för regn. Fotoramar som visar bilder från RSS-flöden. Således kommer vi att konsumera media oftare, på fler sätt och i betydligt mer avgränsade förpackningar. Lokala regnrapporter till paraplyskaftet, till exempel.
2. Internet blir intelligent, och förstår dig (äntligen!)
I en värld av överflöd söker man efter genvägar till det som är mest väsentligt – för en själv, i den specifika situationen. Detta behov förklarar sökmotorernas framgång. Men än så länge är de ett ganska trubbigt instrument där man inte tittar på mycket mer än de faktiska bokstäverna. Och med bokstäver blir det, som bekant, ofta fel.
Inom ett par år, kommer det man kallar den semantiska webben att ha en betydligt bättre förståelse för vad det man letar efter. Utan att bli för teknisk kan man säga att det adderas ett lager av intelligens som underlättar sökningarna. Om Fredrik Reinfeldts årslön är offentlig, och likaså hans äktenskap med Filippa Reinfeldt, kommer en sökning att förstå vilka ekonomiska tillgångar Filippa minst borde ha – utan att den uppgiften egentligen står någonstans. Rätt tillämpat kommer detta att förändra mediekonsumtionen radikalt. Det kommer att gå att hitta information och nyheter på premisser som man inte trodde var möjliga.
I somras var jag i Palo Alto, mitt i Silicon Valley, och lyssnade på hur de som jobbar med den semantiska webben beskrev dagsläget. Som jag förstod det fanns det inte ett enda medieföretag som deltog i deras diskussioner. Det är oroväckande – om de traditionella medierna vill hålla sig relevanta.
3. Journalisten gör urvalet, inte materialet
Redan innan vi hamnar i scenariot i punkt två kommer vi ha ett stort skifte i journalistens, och journalistikens roll. Jag tror att journalistens uppgift allt mer kommer att likna en konstkurators jobb. Man går inte (nödvändigtvis) till ett galleri för att man känner till konstnären som ställer ut – utan för att man litar på galleristens omdöme och smak. På samma sätt tror jag att man kommer leta efter medievarumärken som kan guida en rätt i de frågorna man är intresserad av. Men det behöver inte vara de själva som skriver texterna – precis som att galleristen inte behöver måla tavlorna. Det är urvalet – kuratorskapet – som är det intressanta. Läsaren blir ledd till den informationen som man vill ha, och det spelar mindre roll om det är en blogg, en wikisida eller ett inslag i webb-tv.
I samband med detta tror jag att personfokuset kommer att öka. Redan idag är det starkt i vissa kretsar. Vad säger Per T Ohlsson om Israel-Palestina-konflikten? Vilken kashmirtröja tycker Ebba von Sydow är mest prisvärd?
Samma typ av fråga kan ställas angående nyheter, och på ett hyperlokalt plan: vilka bloggare tycker Martin Hallgren är mest intressanta angående friskoleutvecklingen i Lomma? Man litar på att Sydsvenskan hittar rätt röster i debatten. Man litar på att Martin Hallgren gör ett urval som passar en själv.
* * *
Ovanstående tre trender tror jag kommer bli tongivande i medias förändring de närmaste åren. Några mer precisa tidsangivelser är för svåra att uttala sig om av flera skäl. Dels för att det har visat sig att förutsägelser av den typen nästan alltid är fel, men också för att en trends genombrott är en definitionsfråga och svår att avgöra. Att de kommer bli viktiga inslag däremot – det är jag övertygad om. Är du av annan åsikt vill jag jättegärna höra dina tankar bland kommentarerna.
Och till sist – för dig som inte brukar läsa den här bloggen – jag heter Björn Jeffery och är VD och internetstrateg på den strategiska webbyrån Good Old.
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At the end of last week we released the second part of our web project for the news magazine Fokus. It’s a wiki with the 100 most powerful people in Sweden, to begin with. Also, we built in Twingly functionality which aggregates what bloggers say about each person.
Working with a small, but strong, brand like Fokus requires careful planning. Below I’ll share some thoughts on how we reasoned in choosing these specific projects.
1. First things first: get up to speed. Before we could do anything interesting or exotic we had to make sure that Fokus regular website was okay. Our hypotheses was that a lot of bloggers read the magazine and would have blogged about the articles – if only they weere published online. We found several examples that supported this idea.
We went through the magazine to find the most blog worthy and reoccurring features. We made sure that these articles were easy to link to, and easy to find each week.
WordPress was used to make a very non-blog looking site that focused on the main story of each printed issue. The editorial staff adds a few extra features to the main story every week; sound clips from an interview, more pictures or a movie for instance.
To enhance the weekly magazine feel, we made a parallel navigation structure that made it easy to find specific articles in each issue. This, along with some WordPress plugin goodies such as Lightbox and a few others made the site simple, easy to use and SEO-friendly. So far so good.
2. Making it interesting. The next step was the launch of the wiki that I mentioned earlier. Fokus expressed a wish to engage political bloggers in some way – an idea that we fully supported. Our suggestion was a wiki with politically and socially interesting people. This, with some sort of tracking functionality, would create reference points around which discussions in the blogosphere could circle. It also creates a natural meeting ground between the people writing the blogs, and the people being written about.
We figured that the only thing we could guarantee that everyone in the wiki would be interested in was – well – themsselves. Everyone has ego-googled one time or another. This is a way of simplifying ego-searching in the Swedish blogosphere, if you will. As a launch, and an editorial start to the wiki, it was decided that Fokus should rank the 100 most powerful people in Sweden.
We could not use Swedish Wikipedia as they wouldn’t have allowed anyone to add themselves the way Fokus have intended. Also, the tracking would have been difficult to implement. The financial aspect of being able to sell advertising was of course a part of this decision as well. We looked at developing our own ping-service but took the decision that a modification of Twingly´s widget was the best way to go. Primelabs were very helpful and positive in developing this. As far as we know, the combination of these two services is unique – but please correct me if I’m wrong here.
3. Results. It’s far too early to tell what the results are going to be, but the initial response we got from bloggers and MSM has been overwhelmingly positive so far. I took some screenshots from the night of the launch that you can look at here if you like:
Bear in mind that the projects were adjusted to fit both the budget, and the amount of hours that could be used for updating the site each week. A lot of things could have been done differently, if the conditions were different. This is always the case, but I thought that it deserved being pointed out specifically to avoid a discussion about the wrong things.
I’ve done two public presentations this last week, and even if there’s not a lot of text in them I thought you might be interested.
tags technorati : nmd07 newmediadays mediaevolution presentation
tags bloggar.se: nmd07, new media days, media evolution, presentation
I’m in the audience of Media Evolution at the moment, and I’ll be holding a short keynote later on. If you’re here – please come up and say hello to me or my colleagues. This is what we look like. There’s a video of me here as well – and if you’re wondering: yes, the last part was intended as a joke. It didn’t really seem to get through well enough 😉
The same things goes for tomorrow, when I’m in Hellerup for New Media Days.
Don’t be shy!
