Quite a useful article over at Mashable on the 'economics of new media' where Mark Hopkins aggregates some critiques of online advertising and then promptly debunks the generalisations made in those critiques. I tend to agree with Hopkins; 'old media' style advertising does, in fact, work rather well online. That is, it does attract a high level of interactivity with site content, and it does in fact extend the amount of time people stay on sites. Now whether that really counts as 'working' is probably debatable; there's no correllation between exposure to advertising and actual purchasing habits, but there again there has never been much of a correlation between measurable audience size, eyeballs and intention to purchase, and actual buyer behaviour anyway, so that doesn't really count. What does count is that a fragmented series of content channels in modern media mean that the number of eyeballs accessing content is more distributed, but the costs of creating that media are about the same as they always were... and if rich media, 'old media-style' advertising is what pays for the production costs of a content channel, then I for one, won't shy away from that as a funding mechanism.
May 2008 Archives
Have had a divine few days in Wales, climbing Cadair Idris and exploring the Dysynni Valley at the southern end of Snowdonia. Pics are up (perversely in reverse order) on Flickr, and (in the right order) on Facebook. Magnificent territory and I highly recommend the Minffordd Hotel.
(And Susan Cooper fans, yes this is the heart of The Grey King territory!)
No-one used my Skribit suggestion box for blog topics, so I've removed it and replaced it with my Twitter update. So there.
It seems I am not the sole voice talking about the costs of Web 2.0, but I'm still not getting the idea across to my fellow Web 2.0 advocates - because let there be no doubt about it, I am an advocate. I just think that some of the comments out there talking about how to mobilise social media for personal, community and business benefits - all for free - are not just misleading, they are wildly inaccurate.
My fellow IT Strategic Partner, Pete Laurie, sent me a link to Clay Shirky's latest post on Web 2.0 being the product of a cognitive surplus, and the identification of the internet and other social media as a more productive use of our time than sitting in front of sitcoms on television. This is a cost for media, but it's not the cost I'm referring to. Besides anything else, I see the transfer of time people spend from passive to active media as being somewhat led by mainstream media; since the introduction of more channels and greater choice, there has been a growing activity on the behalf of the viewer, and with Teletext - remember that? - and interactive news services and so on, there has been a growing expectation among viewers for interactive content. The cost involved with time investment and intellectual investment in Web 2.0 is in terms of organisations having a growing expectation that their staff can use their 'free time' to research and participate in social media, related to their daily work, thus spreading the length of the working day beyond the standard eight hours, to more like 12-15 hours a day. It may start innocently enough, with people pursuing their interests. But work is an interest, and inevitably, businesses will start to use these technologies to gain competitive advantage. And the more people use social media for their competitive positioning in employment, the more that people will have to do this to remain competitive. It starts to become infrastructural as well as intellectual, with entire communities built around a professional interest.
Now - contrary to some opinions - I am not suggesting this is necessarily a bad thing. I just recognise it as a cost, and believe those of us who are calculating the benefits of these technologies should take it in to consideration when building social networks. Because when you see it as a cost and evaluate it as such, you can also evaluate the accrued benefits to the firm. So when you begin to talk about monetising social media, you should not simply be looking at the standard business models of subscription services, sponsorship/advertising and net sales. You should also be looking at improved business knowledge, reduced costs in software, increased brand awareness and improved customer relations.
The truth of the matter is that until the WWW came along, the two most powerful means of organisations accessing business services were Word of Mouth, and the yellow pages. And frankly, that provided a very skewed and rather absurd view of the competitors in the market. The service providers were in a position of power over the businesses that needed those services, and could charge much higher rates, because there was less understanding of competion. Now with almost instant access to companies and sophisticated job-allocation services online, businesses have a much better idea of what is out there and are in a stronger position to bargain on the costs of professional services. So that's a clear cost reduction. Then there's the time for services to be carried out. With an expectation of immediate responses, any company who fails to respond in a timely and accommodating manner will lose business to their competitors. You snooze, you lose. There's another cost reduction for businesses. I could go on, but the point is that Web 2.0 costs - in terms of building, maintaining and continually improving social media - are real, and the benefits are also real.
We just need to be clear that we're not saying these technologies are free, when in fact they are quite easily measured.
Some of my contacts have been asking me about open source and freeware alternatives to mainstream creative editing suites. Frankly, unless you are doing extremely high level rendering for highly commercialised projects, there's very little need to purchase mainstream software anymore - the open source community has provided! I've included some links below for anyone interested.
Video:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_editing_software#Closed-source_freeware
Images:
http://www.picnik.com/
https://www.photoshop.com/express/landing.html
Drawing:
http://www.inkscape.org/
http://www.freebyte.com/graphicprograms/
Sound:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
And when it comes down to it, OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org/) for documents, presentations and spreadsheets and Google Groups/Google docs for collaborative document management is sufficient for pretty much anyone outside a large-scale commercial enterprise. So there's really no excuse for wasting your money on software these days!
(Oh and anyone who has any other suggetions, please feel free to add in comments below!)
It's been a while since I've blogged because, frankly, I've been too busy with projects, but on the request of the folk behind the Social Media Influence Conference, I'm happy to promote the event, not only because I'm speaking there, but because as the event used to be Blogging4Business, and as I'm an advocate of social media both professionally and for the purposes of research, it seems only right to promote!
The event is to be held on 4 June at the Cavendish Conference Centre in Fitrovia/Noho in London, beginning at 9am. The event is focusing on the application of social media in business contexts and is specifically targeted at problem solvers, entrepreneurs and decision makers who should be using social media for the benefit of their organisation - both in terms of internal communication and the supply chain, and in terms of customer-facing activities.
I approve of these kinds of events: there needs to be more practical advice out there about how social media can be used to help influence communities of users. There's a lot of stuff out there about how marvellous social media is, and what tools exist, and not a lot about how it may be deployed strategically. Unfortunately the whole notion of 'strategy' seems to be have been lost in the technology revolution. (I have even known technology exceutives who don't know what the difference is between a strategic plan and a business plan!) But events like these can assist in renewing interest and focus on thinking strategically. I'm looking forward to my session and hope anyone interested (and based in the UK!) will consider registering.
