Tag: Media

  • People, Organisations, Media

    Shashi Tharoor. Sachin Tendulkar. The connection is not just the initials, but also VISA. Get it? 😀 So, anyway, Tharoor’s tweets (again) created a minor ‘controversy’ and I observed a few interesting tangential stories.

    Tharoor’s boss commented that such issues ” should be sorted out within the four walls of the two ministries”. So there was a good debate online and offline on how, as an elected representative, his responsibility was to the public, and whether the government, like many private organisations, might have some sort of non-disclosure norms. Tharoor, while having to go by official policy, had a view on his own and was expressing it. It reminded me of communication policies in organisation and a post recently on gaping void titled “If your boss tells you ‘our brand must speak with one voice’, quit.” The point to note is that SM Krishna is not a stranger to Twitter, but his usage of it was as a platform during the elections. A bit like an organisation using social media as a broadcast platform with least strategic intent. Tharoor, on the other hand, uses it in a completely different manner, and uses it well, IMO.

    I doubt that this is the last ‘Twitroversy’ that Tharoor will find himself in, because I sense his larger agenda in this – forcing transparency on a system which clearly lacks it. (Generalising) In some ways, the similarity (of the government’s functioning) with organisations is quite evident. So, you could say that Tharoor is a pioneer in India’s version of government 2.0. But the internet with rife with stories, usually with bad endings, of employees talking about their employer. Facebook and Twitter have contributed largely to  this too. No, that’s not a warning of any sorts, I think this trend will only increase, and the endings will have to change. Employees would have contractual obligations, but as organisations move towards social business design, the nature of these also would have to change. In India, where the net is yet to achieve (mass) maturity, a member of the government working towards transparency in what can be called ‘THE system’ is bound to have an effect on culture. The other effect of transparency I am looking forward to is accountability. As Seth Godin says ‘Put a name to it’. I think accountability will have a huge role to play in Social Business Design, and the faster organisations adopt it, as opposed to seeing employees as army ants following a diktat, the better it will be for all concerned.

    I also saw a debate on Times Now, which, to me,  exposed the difference in the way bureaucrats and even old journalists see Twitter, as opposed to the users of the service, in this case represented ably by Prem Panicker. Someone commented on Twitter that the media creates these controversies around Tharoor because he has moved a layer between the government and public. I’d agree to a certain extent, because though India’s internet penetration is still in single digits, even media houses realise its the future. The media, print or television has seen itself as the ‘middle man’ and services like Twitter are just ripping away that fabric. Meanwhile, Vir Sanghvi (on Twitter) commented that “If Shashi Tharoor said same things to journos he would be hailed as frank. When he tweets he is called irresponsible” To me, this is another manifestation of the same sentiment.

    Ironically, Tharoor, a few minutes before the controversy started had tweeted about the future of journalism – about the influence of stringers and bloggers, but the need for educated and knowledgeable editors as well. I read recently about the rise of TMZ, and the new form of reportage. The way I see it, along with transparency and accountability, there will be a variable trust factor in the reader’s mind for every source. The source might be an individual, a group, an organisation, a company, the trust factor and context will dictate the relationship. Even as individuals like Tharoor become ‘media’ in themselves thanks to (in this case) Twitter, newspapers and organisations will have to work out very quickly on how to adapt to this change in status quo.

    until next time, mediators 🙂

    PS. Shorter posts and an announcement – next week 🙂

    PPS: True to style, Jyoti Basu virtually ‘died’ yesterday, on Twitter.

  • When the mass gets social…

    While there have been many negative reactions to the way the media handled the recent Mumbai events, I came across a few interesting ones that were a direct attack on the brands involved.

    One is a Facebook group demanding that Barkha Dutt be taken off air. At the time of writing this, I can see 1666 members in the group, and some pretty angry outbursts on the Wall. The photos are quite expressive too. The others were this post, and this, which talk about the Lead India campaign by TOI, and ask very pointed questions on where the winner is, and about collective responsibilities. Since news is a daily commodity, and has a way of affecting the audience more than say, the toothpaste used everyday, the media’s relationship with the audience is at a different level altogether, and that’s a double edged sword, as the examples above show.

    It set me thinking on the evolution of media brands, and also a service like Twitter. Mass media and social media have (among other things) one point in common – they’ve both been built on a certain amount of trust. I read a newspaper/watch a channel because I trust them to verify the content they give me, provide analysis and take outs and give me enough objective information to form a perspective. They’re filters. A service like twitter works on trust, among peers, and can be a wonderful filter, but only on very few occasions does it provide original content. Though the trust factor weighs heavily in favour of twitter, the difference in scale (of content) makes a comparison quite premature. But meanwhile, social media, by its very nature, is more or less transparent. Vested interests will come out sooner or later, the system has a way of bringing it out. Somewhere down the line, mass media has failed on this count.

    In an era where news has become a commodity, media brands have had to differentiate themselves somehow to remain relevant. One way to achieve this is through packaging, which, these days mostly amounts to sensationalism. Another way is through specific properties that people identify with. In some cases, this would be the same as packaging, and in others, it would mean creating something new – like a campaign. However efforts on both counts have perhaps resulted in the erosion of trust, and a negativity towards the excesses of coverage. And that’s where an instant journalism friendly tool like Twitter stepped in, whenever the situation was conducive. And this is not going to go away.

    So what I’m wondering is whether the first brands to feel the effects of a connected social world (in India) would be media brands, as opposed to say a toothpaste or a cola brand, or even a service like banking/telecom, simply because while other product categories can use social media as a tool,  media brands instinctively start looking at the twitter brand of reporting, as competition. I’d say that twitter has always been giving news to me, at the thin end of the long tail. This time, the information was such that  it interested the massive head of the long tail, and the aggregation was something no single channel could possibly do. The interesting part of the MSM vs Twitter journalism debate is that while all those who use Twitter can comment on MSM and its excesses, there are very few in MSM who can and do speak of the pros and cons of Twitter. 🙂

    To me, mass media has to handle itself on two levels. One, at a product level, it means that mass media have to get back to the basics -making sure that it provides the reading/viewing audience all the facts required to make an informed opinion, and then going a step further than the regular ‘SMS your views’ concept, and making sure that they take a stance that’s in alignment with the audience’s views. On a brand and communication level, they’ll have to walk the talk, roll out campaigns that don’t just pay lip service to issues that the audience cares about. Social media could help on both counts. But MSM has to do this now, when its brand equity and reach is far far more than social media. I can see some action already – Eyes and Ears, and A Billion Hands.

    until next time,  reporting vs journalism

  • Hail Whale

    …and as the world watched with bated breath, Twitter said ‘no deal‘ to Facebook. The primary reasons cited were the worth of Facebook stock (which was a key component in the payment) and the fact that Twitter wanted a shot at building revenues. Now that the deal is off, Mashable has a take on who Facebook should actually be looking to acquire. Among the lot, my picks would be Imeem and Jaxtr.

    Technically, Facebook also has a status updating mechanism built into its new design, but despite its massive popularity as a social network it hasn’t come close to the popularity that Twitter has managed to gain – a whopping 343% YOY as on Sep 2008. More than a billion tweets have been tweeted so far. The fun part is that both these popular entities have been struggling for revenues. So, what makes Twitter so popular? I think the one key factor is the simplicity. Although we’ve gone beyond the ‘what are you doing’ part, whatever has to be done has to be still within 140 characters. But there’s no limit to the number of characters you can find there. 😉 One more factor is the amazing army of twitter based apps that seem to increase in leaps and bounds daily. While Facebook has apps that are (in general) what could be termed as frivolous, the majority of Twitter apps (there are exceptions)  either enhance the service or utilise the service to provide a new dimension altogether.

    I saw a couple of interesting posts on how Twitter could develop further. The first, an article on Business Week, took examples of other microblogging services, and the second, on TechCrunchIT, wtites about how Twitter can become the single post office of the variety of services that we use on the net – the aggregator + conversation model that seems to be working well for Friendfeed.

    Meanwhile, after some consideration on the deal, I think I might have liked to see my facebook updates automatically sent to twitter, and the comments on them shown on FB too. I’d have liked to see the follow function used on Facebook, so that I can have some level of filtration before being friends. In fact Twitter already does that for me already, a kind of filtration, a sort of checking the person out for shared interests, wavelength etc before adding on FB. After all, Twitter is ‘permission based stalking‘, and fast paced tweet streaming of many to many. Facebook would complement that perfectly by being there for one to one interactions.

    Twitter is a trust economy, where one person judges another’s credibility and expertise over a period of time through his tweets. And this one to one relationship then replicates itself over and over. The wisdom of crowds makes it easy for a bluff to be called. This is the basis of twitter’s community. Yesterday’s Twitterstream of Mumbai’s events made me realise a few things. Rather, it reaffirmed a couple of notions, and made me question my faith on twitterati, much to my grief. It reaffirmed that while Twitter is great for breaking news, it is extremely difficult to filter out the ‘noise’ and get ready information. It reaffirmed that traditional media, especially television channels, have a powerful tool in twitter, but they need to step out of broadcasting and develop a unique mechanism for twitterverse. Lastly it reaffirmed that inspite of the fail wails when the fail whale appears,  Twitter is loved and respected as a news source enormously. The uncomfortable part, I realised that a ‘dark side’ beckons even on twitter, tweople are people after all (duh), and are not incorruptible when it comes to using a situation (however tragic it might be) to divert some attention to themselves.

    until next time, any system that humans create is fallible ?

    PS. a round of applause for @vinu & @dina some priceless work on a dark, crazy night…and day!!

    PPS. A few interesting Twitter based services I’ve come across recently. In addition to this amazing laundry list, there’s TweetBeep, TweetScribe ( mechanisms similar to Google Alerts), Tweader (that threads Twitter conversations), TwitteRel, JustTweetIt (find users with similar interests), Twitrratr (a grading system that helps the + and – tweets on a person, topic etc, though the system is very simplistic), TwitWall (to share videos, mp3, photos etc), Splitweet (handle multiple twitter accounts and brand monitorizing) Tweeple Twak (in addition to the Qwitter and CityTweets type of data, it tells you how your followers have expanded over time and geography). In fact, as this post shows, you can pretty much link everything using Twitter. In fact, Twitter could even become your virtual personal assistant. 🙂

  • News..yes. Papers?

    Rupert Murdoch recently stated that the doomsayers predicting the end of the newspaper industry are off the mark. According to him, online readers also need news form a source that they can trust, and that’s what newspapers have always been doing. He agreed though, that newspapers would have to change from the ‘one size fits all’ approach to cater to readers’ demands. He mentioned his plans for WSJ, to offer three tiers of online content: free news, a subscriber-level service, and a third “premium service” of reader-customizable “high-end financial news and analysis.”

    The newspaper, or a very close electronic cousin, will always be around. It may not be thrown on your front doorstep the way it is today.

    On the whole, I tend to agree with him. However, I also feel that newspapers would be missing the point,  if they see this as just a change of platform. Its a mindset change, not just in terms of news delivery, but also in the way they approach business. After all, even the biggest names, like NYT , Gannett (publisher of USA Today) , are not in the pink of financial health.

    Before we get to that, a few varied ‘heritage media’ (print) trends. On one hand, we have publications like Christian Science Monitor and PC Magazine and many others switching to a primarily online only presence. On the other hand, the NYT opened up a couple of APIs, releases an AIR based news reader, the Guardian buys PaidContent, and offers full text RSS feeds, the Financial Times’ new site design resembles a blog, and some magazines are even rolling out Instant Messaging functionality. Over to India, Live Mint and Business Standard have recently launched podcasting (via WATBlog), India Today added Cosmopolitan to their existing list of digital properties and Business Standard has launched a branded Instant Messenger – BS Buddy (via Medianama). In essence, newspapers and magazines seem to be looking a bit more seriously at making the transformation from real to virtual.

    So this is a good question to ask – what’s the next step for news? To start with, they could take a good look at this list of 10 things that every Newspaper/Magazine site must do. This itself would be completely against a few things that they’d consider sacred – most notably, link sharing and responding to comments. Broadly, I’d imagine it to be a two pronged approach

    • figure out how to deliver their content on digital platforms, and that might even lead to changes in the kind of content they gather, and the way they gather it.
    • figure out a business model that can leverage the content they have – subscription/ advertising/ both.

    First the content aspect. A lot of publications have been experimenting with citizen journalism. They’d do well to check out tools like CoverItLive. Instead of randomly adding a ‘blog’ section to the website, make it work. Get enthusiastic journalists to blog. Get regular bloggers to do guest columns on specific topics of their interest. Promote them and the content they add to the site. This would help them being aggregators who also serve niche interest communities. What is equally important is to bring about a systemic approach to making journalists regard their story as just a start, and getting them to take ownership of making it a conversation. There are advantages in it for them – new story ideas as well as a better understanding of their readers. Yes, Twitter can help in the conversations too. These changes in news gathering techniques might very well change the quantity and quality of newsroom staff. This makes a great case study.

    The business aspect. I read a a very insightful article on how the entry of print publications into the digital medium will change the balance of power and wealth in the link economy. This process has already started. But before that, I think they have to see themselves as news sources, rather than just the newspaper on the web. This would influence how and where they position their ads, and would help them deliver better value to advertisers, as well as readers. While on this subject, I think online ad networks that include newspapers (with various editions and publications) along with independent blog/ blog networks that complement/add on to their content, might make sense. I remember NYT making a sort of conglomerate in association with 3 other newspapers, sometime back. There are other business models too. For example, there are community funded reporting services like Spot.us. (via RWW) Do check out this link for a very radical approach.

    Though readership of dailies (with very few exceptions) continue to drop, I don’t think newspapers are in their death throes in India. But should they wait for that? A good brand takes some time to build. There’s a reason why more people in India visit Rediff and Yahoo and even the web 18 properties than Indiatimes/ Times of India group properties. I’m hoping to see something like Instablogs join the big league soon. Brand loyalty in the real world need not translate into brand loyalty in the virtual world, especially when you’re dealing with a (by now) commodity called news. And as newspapers would know from their real experiences, once readers are used to a certain way of consuming content, it’s difficult for a competitor to sneak in. It would pay well to learn from mistakes – of those aborad who might have waited too long to transform. After all, what doesn’t kill you doesn’t necessarily have to make you stronger. And I’m not sure if newspapers would like to be part of the thin end of the long tail of news consumption, with pure play web entities occupying the head.

    until next time, save paper, save the environment 🙂

  • Twitt…er, pay?

    Would you pay for Twitter?’, a very good question, asked by Walt Ribeiro, at his blog. It made me think, and I came to the conclusion that I’d pay (though it all depends on the price). Apparently, I’m in a majority. There’s possibly no ‘pain’ that Twitter is addressing in my case, unless I count the need for every human being to communicate. But I can do that on Facebook, and if its streaming conversation I want, there’s friendfeed, or Kwippy. But yes, twitter has a charm of its own, especially when you start with so many interesting people who share different interests of yours.

    The revenue model for Twitter is something that has caught the imagination of a whole load of people, since everyone, I think, is keen to prevent an ad based model. (yes, including me). The Twitter CEO also agrees. And in a lesser way, there have been discussions on the revenue models of Facebook and Friendfeed as well. A good read on this here. Meanwhile, I read an excellent article, which had a P&G digital guru stating that marketers don’t belong to Facebook. In his own words,

    “What in heaven’s name made you think you could monetize the real estate in which somebody is breaking up with their girlfriend?”…. … We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.”

    A superb perspective, I thought. He goes on to wonder who said this (user generated media in general) was media, since all consumers were doing were trying to talk to each other. Its a wonderful line of thought, and when I think about it, I’d have to agree with him. But it makes me wonder about the nice folk who built Twitter and Facebook and Friendfeed. While they are nice people, I doubt if they had such massive charity in mind. They build the infrastructure, they bear the costs, I’m happy using it…for free. I go into a coffee shop, and pay money for the coffee, that’s the basic service, I never wonder if they work on a freemium model. I watch a movie in a theatre, pay money for it, and only grumble when they show ads. I suffer both kinds of monetisation, and still go back. But when the Fail whale happens, i rant, and threaten not to go back. Thankfully, I do go back.  I wonder if there’s something wrong with this scenario.

    So, monetising FB, Friendfeed, Twitter – why is it such a difficult thing? Is it because there’s no tangible value in them? But there must be, considering that millions use them everyday. In fact, I read a post yesterday that shows an example of tangible value created by Twitter. But then, the moment there’s a payment mechanism or an ad model discussed, there’s usually a user revolt. I still remember the extreme reactions to magpie.

    A very long time back, someone thought of leveraging the audience that uses content, that became the fundamental way of running media businesses. Newspaper, television, radio businessses have not been built on content, they have been built on monetising the audience that uses the content. Then, a long time back, the web came into being, and someone started a price war that started at zero. So we had free content, free mail, free IM and we were generally happy. Over a period of time, some learnt to monetise, and Google learnt it so well (hell, without content!!), that it built a Google economy, which I agree, might be an inevitable future. But while the ‘customers get everything for free and advertisers pay for Ad Sense’ model is great for Google, I wonder if it’s fair to demand the same of other services that subsidise our conversations with each other.

    Every UGC driven medium – Flickr, You Tube, Twitter, Facebook etc needs to find its own way of leveraging the audience. Template solutions might be a thing of the past.  Like I replied  to a comment on an earlier post of mine, I know quite a few twitter clients, while i know only one for FB. Facebook ‘s services compels users to visit the site, Twitter’s simplicity doesn’t. Every service is different. Ads are obviously not the greatest of solutions though both Facebook, and You Tube are increasingly going along that path. (Here’s an excellent read on Facebook monetisation) Twitter should find its own way of leveraging the audience its gaining daily. I personally thought the research based model that has been started by SocialToo is worth a shot, as one source of revenue. LinkedIn is already doing it. I also saw Twitpay today, and think there’s potential in it.

    Meanwhile, I feel quite like a hypocrite when i consider services like Twitter Image, which is based on Twitter and charges $100 for a customised Twitter background, while Twitter doesn’t have a business model as far as we can see. I desperately want Twitter to crack their model soon, after all with 2500 plus tweets, there’s a lot of me in Twitter. If Twitter dies, a part of me dies too.

    until next time, a sharing caring world, reluctant to share costs?