Future of Media Summit Blog

Recently the Future of Journalism conference was held in Sydney, run by the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance, the body that represents workers in media and entertainment, including journalists. One of the broadcast media channels which covered the event called me last week to get some ideas for their interviews with the keynote speakers at the conference.

Their first question to me was about the impact of search engines on journalism. While our conversation went off in quite different directions regarding the future of journalism, I think it's a very interesting issue to address. There are seven important issues for how search engines impact journalism:

Traffic from search engines provides a significant proportion of online media income. In some cases up to one third of traffic to online news sites comes from search engines. With the primary revenue from most online news coming from advertising, search engine optimization is not an optional activity for news sites and editors.

Headline writing is becoming a completely new art (and now science). As many have written on headline writing for search engines before, including the New York Times and an article I wrote on newspapers, search optimization, and old-school editors, publishing online requires a very different approach to headlines. The cute wordplays that have characterized newspaper headlines through the last century (Headless Body In Topless Bar; Ice Cream Man Has Assets Frozen; Two Convicts Evade Noose, Jury Hung etc. etc.) don't tend to bring search traffic. Morever, visitors will usually find the content was not what they were looking for, and will leave in seconds.

Today I spoke at the <a href="http://publicaffairs.alliance.org.au">Walkley Public Affairs conference</a>, organized by the <a href="http://alliance.org.au/">MEAA</a>, the peak body representing workers in the Australian media industry. I spoke on the Enterprise 2.0 panel, running through many of the issues I've raised on the <a href="http://www.futureexploration.net/e2ef/blog/">Enterprise 2.0 Forum blog</a>.

Here are a few summarized comments and reflections on what I heard while I was at the event from late morning to the end of the first day.

As I walked in, Sam Mostyn of IAG was saying, reflecting on what she'd seen at the insurer, that 'what builds loyalty and commitment is trust'. That is a fundamentally important point. Corporate loyalty is evanescent today, particularly with younger workers. The only potential source of loyalty is trusting your employees. Not trusting them automatically results in zero loyalty. This is deeply relevant to the issue of <a href="http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2007/10/implementing_we.html">blocking or allowing social networks in the enterprise</a>.

On the next panel, <a href="http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/">Mark Pesce</a> commented that social networks in Australia are extremely shallow. Outrageous news travels very fast. At the <a href="http://www.thefutureofjournalism.org.au/">Future of Journalism conference</a> comments that <a href="http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/greenslade/">Roy Greenslade</a> made about Andrew Jaspan, editor of The Age, were immediately heard. Messages propagate ubiquitously, in this case enabled by journalists in the audience live-blogging the event. Those who were interested in what Greenslade said heard about it almost instantaneously. Mark describes Twitter as his twenty-first century brain trust, extending his capabilities by giving him access to many with complementary knowledge. He describes this as 'hyperempowerment'.

For the last ten years I have believed that <a href="http://futureexploration.org/mt-search.cgi?search=collaborative+filtering&IncludeBlogs=9">collaborative filtering</a> will be one of the most fundamental platforms for business and society. In a world of massively increasing information overload, the only way we will cope is to collaborate to filter what will be most relevant to us. Early this decade I was finding myself very surprised by how slow progress had been over the last five years, despite some interesting research and initiatives. However the last five years on the Internet could almost be characterized as the rise of collaborative filtering. Our <a href="http://rossdawsonblog.com/weblog/archives/2007/05/launching_the_w.html">Web 2.0 Framework</a> is in a sense a description of how we collectively filter information. Almost all the significant developments on the web I would interpret as related to this evolution of collaborative filtering.

An article out a few days ago in the New York Times titled <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/27/us/politics/27voters.html">Finding Political News Online, The Young Pass It On </a>described how young people share political news they are interested in by email and on social networks. In the same way, many young people primarily read articles that has found them in this way. In short:

<blockquote>“..they rely on friends and online connections for news to come to them. In essence, they are replacing the professional filter — reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com — with a social one.”
</blockquote>

BRW magazine’s annual Digital Generation Flagship Edition came out today. It’s an excellent report and review of the digital space in Australia. Foad Fadaghi, the technology editor of BRW, has come to the media business from the research industry, having held senior analyst and director positions at Frost & Sullivan, Jupiter Research and IDC. This way of looking at the world results in the BRW Digital issue showing how journalism at its best is becoming a lot more like analysis, creating real value-add and insights that can’t be found elsewhere.

Data in the report (with a few snippets available here) includes market shares in online publishing (Google #1 at A$389 million with 89% growth), relative online ad revenues (e.g. NineMSN earns $99 million), surveys of corporate activities in online advertising (e.g. 37% of companies measure their online advertising ROI), shares of online social networking advertising (MySpace wins at 75%), and far more, complemented by a neat visual map segmenting the players in the Australian digital media market.

The report’s article on Web 2.0 draws extensively on an interview with me, with quotes from me as below. The article goes on to cover in more depth some of the players in the space.

The costs involved in web 2.0 development are so low it has spawned a large number of small one and two-person companies that can be profitable with a small user base, Future Exploration Network chairman Ross Dawson says. This means web 2.0 development is unnoticed by venture capital and other investors.

Reuters has just reported that the European Union’s advisory body on data protection intends to scrutinize targeted online advertising and its implications for privacy in 2008. The Facebook Beacon debacle this week has brought to public attention the ramifications of targeted advertising for privacy, and the EU is already taking this to heart.

The EU’s machinations are among the most powerful forces shaping global business, and in particular the online world. To take just a couple of examples, Microsoft has come afoul of the EU on monopoly abuse, and Google’s mooted acquisition of Double Click is being delayed until April while the EU extends its probe. On a far broader canvas, extremely strict EU data protection laws shape how online business is conducted all over the planet.

There is no question that targeted advertising is one of the most fundamental forces shaping the entire media landscape. The greatest power of digital media (which is evolving to eventually cover almost all media, including many forms of TV, much outdoor advertising, and will also encompass newspapers come the advent of e-paper) is that it allows advertising messages to be targeted to the individual. This is not just about showing advertisements to those who will find them relevant, but also about customizing advertising content so that it is more likely to influence the individual viewer.

The December/ January issue of Marketing magazine includes predictions for 2008 from an array of industry commentators, including myself.

One of the quotes they took from me was:

Social media shows no sign of slowing down any time soon, with more advertisers looking likely to jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon in 2008. According to Dawson, a new trend could see a proliferation of smaller, more targeted social networking sites. “The social network landscape will be highly dynamic, and new specialist social networks are likely to do well,” he says. “Open, independent platforms for storing social network information will become a real force in how people use social networks.”

Dawson also forecasts a challenge for Second Life. “ A major competitor for Second Life will emerge, taking advantage of its technical problems.” He also suggest virtual worlds will be used more frequently in work settings.

Some of the other predictions for 2008 I made include:

“Inevitably the marketing industry will consolidate. In just the same way as happened in the accounting industry several years ago, consolidators will actively acquire smaller operators in an attempt to build large businesses. A few will succeed at this, and more will fail.”

Several media executives have asked me about the convergence of the Internet and TV over the last couple of months. I now have a nice reference point for them about the short-term obstacles and possible solutions, courtesy of Nick Wingfield in an article in the Wall Street Journal titled The Internet. The TV. They have even created a brief video – as below – to provide a quick overview of the topic.

Nick frames the issue as a series of problems with potential solutions:

THE PROBLEM: Too Many Boxes
THE SOLUTION: Blend Boxes

Reuters has just reported that the European Union’s advisory body on data protection intends to scrutinize targeted online advertising and its implications for privacy in 2008. The Facebook Beacon debacle this week has brought to public attention the ramifications of targeted advertising for privacy, and the EU is already taking this to heart.

The EU’s machinations are among the most powerful forces shaping global business, and in particular the online world. To take just a couple of examples, Microsoft has come afoul of the EU on monopoly abuse, and Google’s mooted acquisition of Double Click is being delayed until April while the EU extends its probe. On a far broader canvas, extremely strict EU data protection laws shape how online business is conducted all over the planet.

There is no question that targeted advertising is one of the most fundamental forces shaping the entire media landscape. The greatest power of digital media (which is evolving to eventually cover almost all media, including many forms of TV, much outdoor advertising, and will also encompass newspapers come the advent of e-paper) is that it allows advertising messages to be targeted to the individual. This is not just about showing advertisements to those who will find them relevant, but also about customizing advertising content so that it is more likely to influence the individual viewer.

An interesting article on Techcrunch says Digg refugees may be heading to Mixx. Mixx is one of literally hundreds of community-based collaborative filtering tools that is competing with Digg, yet it is getting significant traction.

It is particularly instructive to read what some of the “Digg refugees” are saying:

“I have already had quite a lot of success with getting my submissions voted on, this may be partly due to the fact that many of my digg friends have joined the site.” Dave Eaves

“Mixx has a much more positive audience than Digg. It always amazes me that even the most popular and highest quality articles can get so many negative and unnecessarily degrading comments on Digg. So far the users of Mixx have proven to be quite a bit more pleasant, something that I know will be welcomed by most users.” Vandelay Design

The context here is that while Digg gets millions of readers, the way stories get voted to the top is based on relatively small communities. As discussed in an article I wrote on the structure of social opinion, 30 people out of a million-odd are responsible for the original submission of 30% of the articles that hit the front page of Digg. The reason for their success is that their friends follow what each other Digg and vote on these stories, at which point the general mass of readers pick up on it. Someone who is prominent in the community is highly regarded, and can be an overt as well as a covert influencer. The community starts to become highly social, with personalities, exchanges, likes and dislikes.

I've been a good friend and frequent collaborator with Business Development Institute since just after if was formed back in 2001. Since then it has become one of the best-established as well as one of the most innovative and interesting events and business development companies in the US. While their base is predominantly in New York city, they are rapidly expanding into other markets.

While I have been organizing the Future of Media Summit for the last couple of years, Business Development Institute have organized a series of related events in this space, including Web Video Leadership Forum, PR Leadership Forum, Communications 2.0 - Future of PR, New Frontiers in Online Advertising, and Blogging goes Mainstream (which I spoke at).

They are now pulling together all these themes into a major one-day event called Convergence 2007: The Future of Advertising, Communications, & Media, in New York on December 3. The event is highly focused on case studies, with senior executives speaking from organizations such as McDonalds, Toyota, Casio, and Audi, and themes for the day including web video, ROI, and industry careers. The entire event will be webcast for free. I think this is something which should become standard in the industry, making the cost of attendance less for the pure content, and more for the connections and immersion.

Future Exploration Network is an event partner, which is unusual for us, but it shows we think it's going to be a great event. Hope you can make it!