There are a few treasured writers who manage to make me laugh out loud again and again when I read their words. One was Molly Ivins, who I just learned, died of breast cancer last week. There’s a tribute page with some of her writing here. Sadly, we won’t be blessed with any more of her acerbicly funny words, but we can treasure the ones she left behind.
I’ll be keynoting the journalism track at the New Communications Forum in Las Vegas March 7-9. The topic is a favorite of mine: How Web 2.0 is revolutionizing mainstream media. I’ll look at the profound impact of blogs on newsgathering and in particular how “blog swarms” can turn one person’s experience into a global news phenomenon almost overnight.
There’s lot of other good stuff to check out, too: 28 interactive sessions in four conference tracks focusing on corporate communications, PR, marketing and advertising, new media and journalism. It’s also just a good thing to support the Society for New Communications Research, a non-profit that’s doing important primary research in new media.
Go to the conference website to register and use discount code 612SHN to catch a $200 break on the registration fee.
InformationWeek’s Charles Babcock, who’s hands-down the best IT reporter in the industry press, has an outstanding cover package on open source this week. He writes about something that open-source aficianados don’t like to discuss: the fact that the majority of open-source projects go nowhere, whether because of lack of user interest, developer distraction or competition from more successful alternatives.
This is a big issue for IT organizations, of course. Bet a big project on the wrong horse and you can end up wasting a ton of time and money. There are winners and losers in the commercial software world, of course, but that business has the benefit of an active media and analyst community that keeps tabs on the players. There is no such monitor in open source, although Babcock notes some fledgling projects such as FLOSSmole that are trying to provide that service. Basically, everyone’s on his or her own and you take your best guess at whether the software you’re adopting will be around in five years.
The piece opens with a great anecdote about an open-source project that foundered because of a legal dispute involving the company that was trying to commercialize it. Babcock goes on to relay a lot of solid advice on how to avoid mistakes. This is an innovative take on an important market issue that I haven’t seen covered before.
Sally Falkow has an enlightening post on the nature of social media traffic. A lot of people come quickly and then leave. There’s no commitment or stickiness. She cites Scott Karp comparing Digg traffic to a “pack of wild dogs.”
Rupert Murdoch on the new world:
“It’s so pluralistic. We all have less power, much less.”
“Government now has to be much more open” because of the Web.
On what media should do: “We just have to let this go. We can’t reverse it.”
He advised media organizations to look at social media as an opportunity, though he wasn’t specific about how to do that. I don’t think many media organizations will ever see this as an opportunity.
This is an interesting article because of the blunt language it attributes to Murdoch: media power is sliding away and it isn’t coming back. Get used to it.
I’ve always been a big believer in digital democracy, but companies like Diebold make me wonder if we’re really grown up enough to handle it.
Princeton professor and info security legend Edward Felton has been a thorn in Diebold’s side. Last fall, he and two graduate students demonstrated how they could easily introduce vote-altering viruses into Diebold’s electronic voting machine. Diebold responded by adding a hinged, locked door over the memory card reader. Diebold was so proud of the solution that it boasted about it on its website.
In a wonderful post from last week, Felton’s graduate assistant, Alex Haldeman, describes how he was able to deduce from photos on Diebold’s site the type of key and ridge configuration needed to unlock the door. He made three keys to look like the ones in the Diebold photograph and, amazingly, two of them worked. So Diebold’s clever solution was undone by its own promotion. All Diebold machines use the same lock, by the way. It’s one used in hotel mini-bars and apparently pretty easy to pick.
Dave Morgan of Tacoda has a thoughtful opinion piece in Media Post today about the failure of online advertising to live up to its potential to target viewers’ interests. He points to a compelling statistic from a 2005 Roper Public Affairs study: “only 21% of people said that advertising adds to their enjoyment of the Internet, versus 47% for magazines and 47% for newspapers. “
Wow, that’s backwards, isn’t it? In theory, online advertising should be more useful and enjoyable because it’s more relevant. But as Morgan points out, advertisers are still stuck on banners and buttons and leaderboards. Most efforts to make ads more effective have so far just made them more intrusive. Does anyone else get offended when they go to a website and an audio ad starts playing? Nevertheless, the online ad market continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Imagine what would happen if advertisers got it right?
Personally, I’ve had fun recently looking at the ads that show up in my Gmail box. I find Google’s choice of what ads to show me based upon the content of e-mails is entertaining and often funny.
The L.A. Times, in what is perhaps a precursor to the problems brewing at other newspapers, has announced a strategy to revamp its editorial profile to lead with online reporting. When you look at the numbers, though, you have to wonder if it’s too little, too late:
MediaPost quoting Editor James O’Shea: “‘In 2004, automotive print advertising at the Los Angeles Times totaled $102 million. And what will it be this year? $55 million.’ While the company made up some of the difference in Web ads, O’Shea said the paper was losing more in print ads than it was recouping online.”
Omigod! The paper lost 46% of its automotive advertising in a single year? How can you change your business model fast enough to make up for that??
No matter how the social media market develops, you can be sure there’ll be a robust business for outdoor advertising. Just try this on your blog!
Hats off to Bill Marriott who, at 75, is diving into the blogosphere. He ‘ll dictate his entries to a secretary, who’ll type them into the blog authoring system. Hey, it’s a start! Why don’t more CEOs do this?
https://www.blogs.marriott.com