Moving On

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Liam

If a blog without comments is a website is an event without tweets a non-event?

I have struggled to get twitter for a while, mainly it has been somewhat distracting and in substantive but looking at election 2008 I think I finally get it. If this type of application gets widespread support events, conferences and presentations will never be the same again. It has to be a pollster’s delight, well assuming you are not skewing the tweets.

Loads of applications for this type of approach out there that can have serious business impacts and challenge traditional and evolutionary newsgathering techniques. Put it together with in quotes and we have something new and exciting converging here.

CDN's opening up.

So, Amazon has announced their intention to offer a transparently priced content delivery network for clients. A number of commercial services are already being offered though amazons simple storage service, but this will offer a potential for Amazon own brand services, and further monetization of a lot of new services that are putting infrastructure on the s3 model . Looks like a good move that brings competition to the market, a facility for live streaming would also help but there no mention of it in the release.

European professional publishers should outperform the wider media sector

Lehman Brothers said European professional publishers should outperform the wider media sector, should economic outlook continue to deteriorate principally because of its lack of exposure to the consumer marketplace and the cost benefits enjoyed by professional publish in off shoring.

This seems borne out by good results posted recently by Wiley where its STM division where profits were up by 15%. The report raised some concerns about the ability of the education market to support the same revenue growth and margin potential seen elsewhere in the professional publishing sector.

Overall the European Media sector received a neutral rating.

chrome dont need no polish!

Lots of activity on the Google chrome front this morning. It looks like a big play for the desktop and perhaps more tellingly the mobile market. One thing that may be confusing is that I think firefox had a component called chrome?

Comreg or Ofcom

Following yesterdays Comreg decision in Ireland in the UK Ofcom has published an initial consultation document assessing how the mobile sector delivers on the needs of UK citizens and consumers and posing questions about the future of competition and regulatory policy.

Performance Enhancement & web 2.0

Performance support is something that has been on my mind lately. A number of clients I work with would like to achieve a “do more with same staff” culture given changes in budgets and economic conditions.

This lead to discussions about how systems can do more to support performance and exist to coach staff on areas that may be beyond their original areas of expertise. It’s the type of thing that is beyond the scope of formal LMS applications or the simplistic approach of a FAQ or WIKI.

We think a combination of twitters, tweets, blogs and blended learning tools would do the trick. Twitter to find an expert, tweet to answer the question, rapid blended learning tools to reinforce the experience learning or follow up. The results are then managed and used as part of the organizations corporate knowledge or formalized into ongoing training.

Anybody out there doing anything similar?

Digital media suspect to downturn too!

Strategy analytics have a good comparision of digital revenue growth which compares Q2-08 and Q2-07, showing google growth at 3.5% against a general slowing trend of 0.5% growth overall.

Apple repeated the trend of this time last year at -7% for the quarter but they were still +9% for 2007. AOL and Yahoo are still in the doldrums and Microsoft looks a little softer, so more acquisitions look in the pipeline!

See the press release at www.strategyanalytics.com/

Gartner: Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2008

Technologies and trends at or approaching the Hype Cycle peak include green IT, cloud computing and social networking platforms. Corporate use of virtual worlds and Web 2.0 are slipping into the Trough of Disillusionment, while SOA begins its ascent of the Slope of Enlightenment.

Discuss:

http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=159496&ref=g_SiteLink

IS KM Dead?

I tend to find myself in violent agreement with many of the views expressed in this interview

via engagedlearning.net

Cuil is not cool.

I have been fascinated by the publicity that Cuil has managed to generate in its brief lifetime. It’s been a rough ride though with many of the reviews tending towards the negative. Though the strategy may have been to launch it and fix it as we go (the search for George W. Bush now works) the poor performance in the initial period will do long term damage to its reputation.

From a communications standpoint better management would have mitigated this damage, a public beta rather than a full on launch and a confident assertion that we are here to compete with Google may well have been a better strategy.

The site claimed 50 million searches in its first 24 hours. This goes to show that there is an appetite out there for an alternative to Google, Yahoo, Ask etc. This must be a positive for cuil, its management and its investors.

The question now is has the initial reaction done too much damage?

Authenticity has a Value.

The announcement that Getty and Yahoo have agreed that high-quality images posted on Flicker service could be cherry-picked by Getty editors searching for interesting photographs and the contributors paid for them is interesting.

It indicates that online authentic has a value. Though some bloggers have already picked up book deals of journalistic type engagements commercializing the authentic in this way broadens the scope to the wider web 2 community working in much more than just text or commentary.

The rules of marketing, communication, and commissioning are changing and social media has a big role to play here. It also further blurs a distinction between professional and non-professional personas on the web and contributes to the dilemma how to manage of two face profiles.

Itunes, apple and the road ahead.

Apple has just passed the 5 billion-download mark. Who wouldn’t be happy? However, what is more interesting in these numbers is that growth is stagnating at 2 billion downloads per annum. Perhaps a bigger iphone more storage and cheaper access may provide part of an integrated strategy to refresh growth it’s hard to say. Apple does hardware like no other and no doubt, itunes has helped shift some stylish tin but it may be time to find a new trick.

Perhaps the battle will be joined with blackberry, but then apple doesn’t have a great record in levering out installed dominant suppliers and not much history in enterprise support. The G word keeps resonating, and with stories of android running late and potentially missing the holiday 08 market, you have to wonder.

Towards web 3.0?

From the reports of the Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 the debate may essentially boil down to the question of if ISP’s or infrastructure providers can charge content providers to deliver their content as well as charging users to receive it.

Yet current concerns of the required rate of bandwidth to service future needs especially the growth of video, appears to make little account of the ability of the industry to innovate or to add capacity at utility cost to meet demand.

Companies like AT&T need to keep data flowing over the network but signalling that the internet may be at full capacity by 2010 seems an odd way to do it, unless another major industry is planning on receiving or requesting a major government investment/bailout. Government investment normally comes at regulatory costs that is often difficult to bear and that could stymie innovation that is not what s required for the future.

See http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6237715.html

Search moves forward

It feels like the search business is starting to pick up. A couple of innovations I have seen recently excited me

Sophia Search the finally appears to blend the concepts of discovery and linguistics to create a very powerful enterprise search solution.

SearchMe provides an interesting visual approach to search has just entered private beta.

My old colleague Phil Bradley just penned a good case for taking a break from Google and using Exalead instead.

Given the growth in the market for search and the slow rate of change in the core Google offering, I am surprised not to see more innovation in this space, but it certainly feels like it is picking up in 08.

Google Very Exposed to US Recession

From the Silicon Alley insider, comes a well argued case for the exposure of Google to a US “recession”. It correlates with the Google efforts to block the Microsoft Yahoo merger and a reported, not seasonally adjusted, decline in the rate of growth of Facebook and other social networking sites in the first months of 08. The time is coming for some of Google’s applications groups to start generating real cash for the parent firm.

$44.6 Million.....Yahoo...

You have a lot of cash stock is cheap oh and your under pressure on a couple of fronts from Google, sounds like time to on the acquisition trail. Yahoo was cheap, but the premium offered by Microsoft indicates how important it is for Msft to get in the advertising game.

Scuttle had it last week that Yahoo were hot on the trail of Maven who provide video hosting and distribution services for Gannett, Hearst, Fox News, Sony BMG, the Financial Times, Univision, TV Guide among others. This could begin to put it up to Google, should the Yahoo board accept the offer assuming the two organizations could get it together in time.

However you cannot rule out a couple of Google acquisitions in the next couple of weeks, especially when they report difficulties in “monetizing their advertising model on social networks” the need for high value clicks is an imperative based on the model they have built.

What is a subscription worth

News from Davos that the WSJ intends to increase the price of its online subscription and add extra content perhaps there is life in the model yet.

It is interesting in two respects. First what additional content can the Murdoch Empire bring to the service to justify a price increase. Second does Murdoch’s view of the advertising world diverge from that of Google that online advertising will remain strong in a down turning market and he wants to hedge his bets?

Is HMV an anomaly?

HMV recently announced that it had a great holiday season with year on year sales up in the region of 14.1% with strong performance across all digital media. Interesting that Waterstones performed less well with a year on year of 4.0%.

HMV has been active in developing its digital focus over the past year and this seems reflected in these results. Games and Movie DVDs were cited in the interview of the CEO on the Today programme.

This comes in the week where both Amazon and Apple place emphasis on developing a focus on distributing movies representing a challenge to this form of resurgence in times ahead. The fact that the games industry has managed to maintain a Platform based distribution model has provided some security for this form of channel, but one wonders for how long will this last?

Library of congress goes for value added via Flicker

An exciting new collaboration has been announced between the Library of Congress and Flicker, which essentially sees the library piloting open availability to some 1500 of its most popular prints, photographs and visual material (where no known copyright restrictions exist) available via flicker. One of the main objectives is to utilize the power of the flicker community to “tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flicker photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves.”

According to the Library, “many photos are missing key caption information such as where the photo was taken and who is pictured. If such information is collected via Flicker members, it can potentially enhance the quality of the bibliographic records for the images.”

This strikes me a good trade off flicker users add 20 million tags on a daily basis, so the library and the future will benefit by the augmentation of its collection and flicker gets to add new communities and interests to its portfolio. It will be an interesting value added experiment to watch.

Manufacturing content on a cloud!

My old colleague Bill de hOra takes a great look at some of the issues around the announcement of Knol and the distinction between indexing and originating content. I wonder if some of the motivation derives from the cloud concept. Own the author, own the platform, own the searcher, own the advertiser seems like a powerful motivation to open a content factory, and if you happen to have access to loads of digitized content so much the better, optimized knowledge clusters anyone?

New Business Models for New (and Gently Used) Content

This SSP Fall Educational Seminars looks like a very interesting panel with a good range of participants dealing with the “long tail" and new business models, check it out if your in the DC area, Nov 14th.

Publisher to provide Social Spaces for Researchers

I see Information Today is reporting that Elsevier are about to provide social spaces for researchers, “harnessing web 2.0 approaches for serious research applications”. Elsevier appear to be in an innovative mood at the moment following the recent launch of www.OncologySTAT.com. Of course the risk associated with pioneering here is a real one and we should expect a number of major entrants in this space in late 2008, but the PR initiative is with them for now.

Pay me what its worth--- again and again

In the same way that the launch of the www.OncologySTAT.com, service looked at anew way to reach audiences and cross sell content, the initiative being taken by Radiohead has sparked a lot of interest. One of the most interesting aspects is that the pre sales of the £40 CD set due out in January is rumoured to be going very well, with a bit of repurposing they will have increased their potential yield on the product, created a hype wave and garnered a lot of free publicity.

Clever Boys.

Why its maps of course

I remember talking with Bela Hatvany back in 1994 about the future of the digital publishing industry. I was planning to leave the company at the time and being the type of person that I am I asked him for his digital tip for the future. “I think that if I was starting out now “he said, “I would do something with maps. Now like all youth I didn’t listen, busy as I was with about a dozen different things, moving country, having children etc. Yet again he was right see Nokia buys Navteq

What’s the Future of…

The Freakonomics blog recently ran an interesting debate on the future of the music industry. The consensus seems to be that the “industry” is resisting rather than embracing the long tail, and that independent artists are exploiting it to good effect.

Proposed solutions have ranged form advertising supported services, to subscriptions, to low cost highly efficient transactional services (my favourite) as the means of perpetuating the biz. Well worth a read for all of us in the emedia world.

Advertising Supported professional reference makes a serious debut

Its not surprising that the first major foray in advertising supported professional information portals comes from inside the medical world. www.OncologySTAT.com, aimed squarely at the oncologist blends professional content from the Elsevier stable, which they intend to support with paid for advertising from the pharmaceutical industry.

It’s a brave move from Elsevier given its large stable of professional content and existing paid for relationships with many of the audience they may be targeting with the product.

Now if it works for Elsevier Health Sciences, there is a large group of other professionals out there already familiar with the (Reed) Elsevier brand that can be targeted on the same way, it depends on the results.

One to watch.

Content err Customer is king

Read a good piece in the NY Times this week about the campaign to bring back Wispa a chocolate bar depreciated by Cadburys 4 years ago. What with Cadburys recent PR problems I wonder if it is quite the community campaign it appears at face value, but it appears to have generated a tipping point, and provides some positive outcomes for Cadburys.

The convergence of media here is interesting, integrated social networking, blogging, and physical advocacy appears to have done the trick. I suspect it won’t be too long until publisher’s start to experience this phenomenon too. And what with publishers now joining the movement to sell directly online perhaps there are niche markets to be exploited here.

Its certainly one worth watching to see if the market responds to the re introduction of the brand and if consumers and demand can sustain it.

What happens when the internet Crashes and all data is lost

Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash

The CD is 25

The CD has just turned 25. Its contribution to the audio world is well known, the logical predecessor of the mp3world, and to a large extent the first digital data exchange mechanism. You can even argue that it led to the easy disassembly of the album, in favour of the audio track.

The CD also led to the disassembly of data. Early players like SilverPlatter rapidly adopted the search and distribution capacity of the CD to change the market and model for information access. Using CD fixed price subscription models began to replace the pay as you use and connect fee models that were prevalent in the old online world.

This began to place electronic information resources on end user, researcher and student desktops for the very first time and through the evolution of networks, through to DVD provided a pre-internet explosion in access to information.

So let’s hear it for the humble CD.

J2ee V ruby on rails

From time to time I get involved in technical things, and while I don't pretend to really understand it all having just finished working with some folks on a proposal with buckets of enterprise class J2ee this advert hit home. Enjoy

An Open Library

The objectives of the open library group are laudable but it’s got a heck of a job on its hands to achieve its goals. It seems that three players are already in the space, Amazon where you go to find a book or an out of print book, major libraries that have built up specific catalogues over time, the ubiquitous Google and fledglings like Wikia.

Yet there is something about the approach that just feels right. It’s backing from the internet archive and the “success” of WikipediA point to a potentially successful model, which involves engagement with the community of users, in a manner that could benefit Amazon, Libraries, Google and publishers.

It will be interesting to see what happens once catalogues meet users, in an interactive manner; it’s a way overdue happening.

I for one would like to see it work

Harry Potter and the Booksellers of Doom

What is the ideal commercial publication? To my mind its a predictable, popular, and profitable publication, updated on a regular basis, which will appeal to a broad market group and will have multimedia cross over . The best consumer example of this has been the Harry Potter brand, broad appeal, regular update cycle, cross media reach, non saturated market.

Yet when we go out to buy this in the next couple of weeks, we will probably add it to the shopping at Tesco or Asda. Is there something wrong in the value proposition here?

The big retailers exploit Mr Potter to sell groceries, not books, or other media ,well possibly top 10 music and Harry Potter videos. Books stores are now forced to follow suit and sell well below margin. What should have been a bumper summer is now caught up chasing what often may prove to be elusive cross sales.

It seems like a missed opportunity, to put something back in the channel. After all its probably not going to dent units irrespective of who distributes the content after all its already freely available on the internet for those who must have it.

But it could have made a long term difference to broad based distribution and even picked up one or two cross sales for other publishers.Without doubt cash is king, but a this short-termism will not necessarily serve the publishing industry well into the future.

Whither Audiobooks

The findings published in the Bookseller, about the state of the audiobook market is interesting and timely.

With MP3, iPhone and the podcast markets buoyant, publishers have been slow to adopt and benefit from the audiobook format. Its time to move on, accessible and reasonably priced audio in usable formats are required if publishers are to make anything of this format.

It’s a fantastic cross sell opportunity, which I suspect will in no way detract from the purchase of the written word. Perhaps virgin will make a new market with its erotica products on download, but there has to be a bigger market than that brigade. Additionally, the download from digital radio has to be a route worth exploring, given the possibility of segmenting and serving market niches.

The market is ready for some innovation in this regard, and it will be interesting to see how publishers will respond

Old is the new - well new

With the news coming out of the Tools of Change Conference and Geldolf chasing Midwives, Vets, and the likes to provide new access to old content communities, it is apparent that Old is the New New.

The companies that focus on content development and delivery and I include Google in that category remain the companies for the future. Given the spate of public and not so public M&A
activity private equity seems to have realised this too.

Interesting times ahead!

Whats this all about

I have been experimenting with Google reader and its share items capability, which is good.

So I am going to try to bring together some of the more interesting things I read on a day to day basis here, most of which are related to the publishing industry and the information world.