Network World has an interesting story this week about the profusion of security surveys and all the confusion it’s creating in the market. The premise is that security companies use research to sell products and services and the corresponding flood of data actually obfuscates rather than clarifies what’s going on in the market.

It’s a clever idea and well done piece, though I think NWW stopped short of doing what could have been a more interesting investigation. Someone should go to these security companies and ask them to give up the full results of their research and then analyze what didn’t get published. Factoids from vendor market research can be like movie review excerpts trumpeted in advertising: the full story is far less interesting or could even be contradictory to the snippet of data that the public sees. Even if the results of such an investigation weren’t blockbuster news, it would be interesting to see what gets left on the cutting room floor and which vendors choose not to cooperate. Maybe someone will do that story.

Encyclopedia Britannica posted a rebuttal to the journal Nature’s investigation that found that Wikipedia.org was only slightly less accurate than the venerable Britannica. “We discovered in Nature’s work a pattern of sloppiness, indifference to basic scholarly standards, and flagrant errors so numerous they completely invalidated the results,” the 20-page white paper says. But say what you really think, Britannica!

Actually, the rebuttal is pretty damning. If Nature cut even half of the corners that the document cites, then it did a shoddy reporting job, certainly not something you’d expect from such a respected journal. However, Nature isn’t taking this lying down. It posted a 27-page addendum to the article showing in detail what were the errors in both reference sources. While a lot of the errors are so small as to seem inconsequential, the sheer number of mistakes is surprising. The addendum also doesn’t address Britannica’s charges that some of the source materials Nature used came not from the encyclopedia but from related reference works that are less detailed or aimed at younger audiences.

If I were Britannica, I guess I wouldn’t take this lying down, either. When you charge people $70 to use your reference work and someone else is giving away for free, you don’t want to acknowledge the competitor’s quality. That’s about the only card Britannica has to play.

EMarketer says Podcast ad market to climb to $300 million by 2010
BtoB Magazine quotes EMarketer as saying that podcasts will grow to $300 million by 2010, about a four-fold increase. The report also predicted that the U.S. podcast audience would reach 50 million by 2010—up from 5 million in 2005. A 10-fold increase in audience combined with a quadrupling of revenue doesn’t quite jive to me, but it’s impressive growth nonetheless. And I thought no one could figure out how to monetize this stuff!

Actually, a lot of people are figuring it out and they’re getting funded. Among the players are Podshow, SNP Communications, Fruitcast, and Podtrac.

Cory Treffiletti, SVP at Carat Fusion was recently quoted in Online Spin talking about the bright side (for marketers) of media fragmentation: “Some consumers want their programming when they want it, while others are willing to take it when they can get it. The simple truth is that technology, though it segments the audience and fragments when the audience will view content, has the potential to increase the overall audience for that content.” In other words, the audience is still massive, it’s just more dispersed.

Ferris’s daily analysis is impressive

Ferris Research is distributing notes and commentary by its analysts to journalists on a daily basis, sometimes more often. I don’t know of any other IT analyst firm that does this. It must take a lot of time and effort, I told founder David Ferris in an e-mail. He replied :”So far, it’s bringing us extra clients. Last week Citigroup became a customer as a result, and we’re getting very valuable survey data. I believe that the service makes sense for us. The biggest question we are grappling with is how to clearly deliver value, while maintaining a clear distinction from our premium news service.”

That’s always a dilemma in content marketing: how much do you give away? I know of no simple answers but the rule of thumb is to give till it hurts. When you begin to see a measurable effect on your business, then you’ve gone too far. But chances are you haven’t. I think most information companies don’t give away enough information and should push the envelope a little more. By the way, you can sign up for the Ferris newsletter here.

Silobreaker’s got a new perspective
Silobreaker has an interesting tool for visualizing information relationships into the US market. It’s one of several new companies exploring alternatives to linear search results as a way to find information. Search is a great way to find but not such a great way to browse and discover. There are several companies and academic research projects tackling this same problem. Answers.com has a good article about the subject with numerous examples.

Tower gets into podcasting
From the March 7 Sacramento Bee: “Seeking a meatier role in the accelerating online music world, Tower Records next week will launch a podcast Web service designed to promote independent music and drive more business to the store’s Web site. The pioneering West Sacramento-based record retailer will debut the podcast site, called Towerpod.com, at the annual South By Southwest Music Festival in Austin next week, a company executive said Tuesday. People who go to the Towerpod Web site will be able to download 30-minute podcasts of independent music assembled by Tower’s staff.

Wikis are getting hot
Wetpaint got a lot of media coverage early this month with the announcement of some vertical wikis and tools to manage them. The company’s site doesn’t provide much detail but Robin Good has an excellent writeup on what’s different about this product. Basically, it looks like a wiki with fancy management tools, which means it’s a content management system. Or is it? What’s the dividing line? The company has raised venture money, in any case, and that’s significant.

Actually, if you want to try a real wiki for free, head on over to Wikispaces. You can sign up, launch and be using a wiki for your bowling league while you read the history of bowling shoes or church picnic or whatever in a matter of minutes.

The Project for Excellence in Journalism found that news coverage on TV, in newspapers and online is becoming shallower and more repetititive. On one day, Google News listed 14,000 stories on only 24 subjects.

This is not a big surprise, but it’s troubling nonetheless. The gradual decline of mainstream media as a business has led to cutbacks in reporting staffs and less original news. The other day, one of the Boston TV stations led the 6 p.m. news with the story of a moose in the front seat of a car. It was an interesting subject, I must admit, but last I checked, Iraq was on the brink of civil war. I think the station mentioned that after the weather.

There is a blogosphere crowd that delights in the decline of mainstream media but I think they’re foolish and short-sighted. There is nothing good about having fewer reporters on the streets. Bloggers do an excellent job of interpreting and analyzing the news, but they aren’t going to sniff out a story and spend months cranking through documents and interviewing sources the way a good reporter does. For that, you need professional journalists and organizations that support them.

Unfortunately, outside of a few elite publications, those organizations are becoming fewer and fewer. Most news departments are so budget-poor these days that they can’t afford to pay really experienced reporters. So the core of their news staff consists of recent college grads supporting a small number of “name” journalists. Professional journalists increasingly have to make their living working for corporate marketing departments.

I’d like to think the rise of social media will change all this but I see no reason why it will. If anything, words are becoming a commodity and that means that people who create words for a living will have to seek work elsewhere. The risk of the blogosphere is that it becomes a forum for a million Rush Limbaughs: people who spew and vent but don’t really contribute anything useful. Maybe someone will figure out a business model for reinventing news journalism out of a community of bloggers. I hope so.

Digital ID World’s Eric Norlin nicely sums up the changes that community media is driving in Syndicator Blog: Riding the Syndicate Wave. “The hierarchy of sacred media contacts is crumbling. Word of mouth, bloggers, buzz and small communities of extremely influential (and vocal) people rule the day.” Amen.

Personally, I believe this is an opportunity to big media. Those who have passed the denial stage will realize that blogs offer cheap content and the possibility of identifying new influencers who can grace their pages with compelling commentary. Blogs aren’t a replacement for mainstream meda; they’re a complement to it. Why aren’t more newspapers following Businessweek‘s lead and really embracing this channel?

GM is asking consumers to create ads for the Chevy Tahoe. I think you’ll see a lot more of this in the future. Broadcast advertising is dying a slow death, the victim of TiVo and viewers who are distracted by other options. Advertisers have to get creative. The much-reviled product placements will surely be a popular option but I find this concept more interesting. Take advantage of the fact that people have good quality, cheap multimedia production equipment and encourage them to create their own ads. Oh, and cut your costs by, like, 90%.

Podshow has been an innovator in this area. There will be a lot of debate about disclosure, of course, but I think ultimately this trend will be huge. Advertisers really have no choice.

I think in the history of the Internet or mainstream media or whatever history book you want to write, this story will go down as a milestone. For many years, newspapers have devoted pages and pages of daily editorial space to stock tables, usually with very little advertising to offset the cost. It was only a matter of time before the Old Gray Lady, as the Times is affectionately called, gave in an moved online. I’m sure there were no tears shed at the paper. With the Times taking the lead, expect stock tables to disappear entirely from newspapers. They’ll become but a shadowy memory to us old folks!

N.Y. Times to Scrap Weekday Stock Tables – Yahoo! News

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about the amazing story of an autistic high school senior who was allowed to play in his basketball team’s last game and scored 20 points in less than four minutes. Well, it seems that others noticed as well :–)

I just became aware of an innovative blogging application from Fidelity Assets. A frequently updated, multi-user blog offers pointers to information about real estate trends like some port moody condos for sale and new luxury homes that are under construction right now. Many homes these days are being helped by the florida construction management agency. Fidelity Assets just put out a press release inviting realtors to post the syndicated blog content on their websites at no charge. It’s a nice way to get some free branding for basically next to no cost. It looks like all the Fidelity bloggers are doing is finding interesting articles online and pointing readers to them.

My attitude toward the flap about Wal-Mart enlisting bloggers to argue its case about its employee benefits policies was nicely summed up by Jeff Jarvis and others. Why is this a story? What did these bloggers do that most local newspapers and TV stations don’t do every day? Is it news to anyone that PR agencies influence the stories that are reported in the media? Is it news that reporters sometimes take shortcuts?

I’ve been in the computer trade press for more than 23 years and have seen some pretty ugly things. I’ve seen press releases reprinted verbatim with reporter bylines on them. I’ve seen reporters write single-source stories and pretend that they had done significantly more research than what was presented in the story. I’ve seen quotes invented or lifted out of press releases and submitted as original. I’ve personally had my work plagiarized by one of the biggest news services in the world. I’ve seen businesses and organizations present reporters with expensive trips and gifts, which the reporters accepted without question and didn’t disclose in their reporting. On the advice of my editor, I once accepted one of those trips myself.

These things probably don’t go on at the New York Times (though who knows what Jayson Blair was doing?) but they have gone on for years at small-market and vertical publications. That’s not an excuse, but it is context. The media takes shortcuts and works hand-in-glove with PR organizations at every level. Even the biggest and most influential publications communicate with publicists. Professional reporters at big media operations are very clear on the rules. People at mid- and small-market publications often don’t understand the nuances. Take a look at your local newspaper. Do you suppose the people who produce it are seasoned journalists with clear ethical standards? Most likely they aren’t, but that doesn’t diminish the value of the information they provide you if you understand where they’re coming from.

Most bloggers aren’t professional journalists and don’t adhere to the codes that journalists hold true. Nevertheless, I think the blogosphere is remarkably transparent and honest. The values that serious bloggers embrace are just as virtuous as those accepted by major media organizations. The fact that some bloggers don’t understand or adhere to the rules may make them amateurs, but it doesn’t make this a scandal. Or even a story.