Tag: Jeff Jarvis

  • Brand Privacy

    The implications of Facebook’s recent moves are still gobbling up most of the virtual column space available. From discussions happening in my own set of connections, it does seem to have gotten a larger crowd (than the usual suspects) interested.

    Jeff Jarvis’ post raises quite a few good points – the different levels of ‘public’, sharing vs publishing, to name a couple. The issue here is that Facebook is controlling where information we share on the network goes, we seem to have no choice in the matter. Mark Zuckerberg is unfortunately seen as pushing us to be public to ‘Everyone’ (a superb visual representation). But that’s where (and this is just an opinion) we might have reached anyway, given a little time. In any case, there are enough tools which allow me to create a network of my own and share it, without involving Facebook. My blogs worked that way, until I connected them with FB. Yes, it could cost me some reach, but there are ways to compensate that too, though yes, Facebook is really big.

    Like I tweeted sometime back, I think we just want the networks to be more ‘open’, so that we can decide who we can be ‘closed’ to. Right now, we don’t get to decide that much, and while I’m not defending FB here, this is something Google has been guilty of for a longer time. But that’s a different topic.

    I was, as usual, intrigued by how this affects brands online. Like I’ve said before, I wonder if there is a kind of hypocrisy involved when we desire privacy for ourselves, but expect brands to be more open on the social web, because it is of use to us as consumers. Many facets of this, so perhaps another post. But all this hullabaloo about privacy means that consumers will be more careful about their interaction with brands, and which ones they want to be associated with, at least online. So now, brands will require to do more to gain their trust and/or provide enough value to convince consumers, who might be otherwise reluctant to associate with a brand . Or will the casual ‘like’ become a commodity? From their own perspective, brands will now have to get used to more attention as the dynamics of Pages/Groups etc change.

    Meanwhile, on another front, another trend that has been creeping up on us is the segregation of crowds on the web. Like this article notes, the web allows us tools to create a ‘people like me’ bubble around us. This is linked to the kind of ‘privacy’ we are talking about – select groups with whom we can share specific things in specific contexts? It remains to be seen how many bubbles overlap and in what way. This trend, I believe will not die out soon, and the ‘groups’ will become even more careful about who is let in. How does a brand balance itself among different groups of people who now agglomerate themselves and are choosy about who they associate with online? Is this an opportunity to finally manifest the idea of being different things to different people, according to their finely split needs?

    until next time, its ‘like’ complicated 🙂

    Bonus Read: How Facebook’s Community Pages and Privacy changes impact Brands by Jeremiah Owyang

  • The new media owners

    A few days back, I read a very interesting piece by Jeff Jarvis on ‘The Great Restructuring’, in which he talked about fundamental changes happening in the economy and society. He also talked of an economy (at least in part) built on the abundance of knowledge, which then led to the subject of replanting business models.

    It took me back to a discussion I once had with a friend on the role of newspapers, and the new forms of media. The role of newspapers, and ‘tangible media’ in general was a hot topic of discussion then. Steve Rubel had the “The End of Tangible Media is Clearly in Sight” post which put 2014 as the year of demise (in the US), and got quite a few responses, including some folk who disagreed with it, and some who agreed a bit but disagreed mostly. There wasn’t much of disagreement on the subject of newspapers, and it was generally agreed that Digital was indeed a great disrupter. Newspapers have  been accused of trying to replant their offline model on their web. Perhaps rightly so, since it clearly doesn’t seem to be working.

    In that conversation, we’d used ‘new media’ a little differently from the platform based (internet and mobile) approach. We discussed three forms of ‘new media’ –

    • some entities about whom the media writes about – people and  organisations . The net population already shares a lot of the content they produce on the web platform – via blogs, social networks, platforms like YouTube, Flickr etc, and lots of organisations are using the web as a broadcast medium – Marketing as media
    • social networks and other services which consolidate a lot of the content generated above in one location, and web only news sites (anything from Rediff to Instablogs and niche news sites)
    • some entities who’re already in the communication/network business – these could be companies like Nokia (handset manufacturers who are an access point to the web), telecom operators like Vodafone (who also act as an access point), or even companies like Cisco, who I think will go further than just provide media solutions

    While there’ve been a few setbacks – Nokia shutting down Mosh, its content sharing service as a result of dubious content posted, Vodafone playing bully to opt-in-SMS service MyToday and various lawsuits against Google (YouTube) on copyrighted content, I’m hoping these are nothing more than teething problems of a radical overhaul.

    Depending on various factors, like socio economic conditions, technology penetration, to name a few, ‘The  Great Restructuring’ would happen differently in different places. Like other restructurings before, some parts of the population would remain unaffected.

    Meanwhile, as mentioned in the post, it indeed is a time of opportunity, and definitely for newspapers too, at least in this part of the world. It only depends on how much they’re willing to shed their old ways of doing business (especially when it isn’t making the revenue it used to be) and how willing they are to listen to the collective consciousness. Even with the ‘new media’ and the proliferation of content producers, newspapers could still find ways of delivering value. (excellent debate happening here)

    Earlier, everyone read a newspaper and therefore it was the place for a product to be seen by its potential consumers. Since the first part changed, the second has too. If increasing media fragmentation is the future, then what newspapers could be doing wrong is seeing their product/s as the only media/destination. Instead, they should perhaps (at least) listen to the Chaos Scenario,  explore a few options, utilise their resources to be preferred content choices in as many fragments as possible, irrespective of the platform, and fight battles in each fragment separately. This would also mean that basis the dynamics of each fragment, different revenue models might evolve for each fragment.

    until next time, for now its Calvinball rules 🙂

    PS. Must Read – IBM’s study – Beyond Advertising