Tag Archives: #Content in Context

Facebook becomes “The Daily Like”?

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Facebook has recently announced some changes to its core News Feed application. In short, Facebook subscribers will be able to apply a limited range of filters to their News Feed, by content type and source.

According to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg: “What we’re trying to do is give everyone in the world the best personalised newspaper we can.”

That’s a big call.

First, this “newspaper content” will be sourced from your friends’ activity, (or their shared photos), a music feed (largely based on what your friends are listening to), or a feed of content from any page you like, or from any person that you follow.

Second, the updated News Feed design will promote the greater use of images, which will be given more screen space.

And thirdly, the goal is to grow revenue from sponsored posts and targeted advertisements, based on your personal “likes”, and other built-in Facebook algorithms like EdgeRank.

For me, whether published in print or on-line, the core prerequisites of a newspaper are:

  • A stated editorial policy, and preferably an independent editorial board 
  • Independent, objective and unbiased fact-based reporting (including fact-checking)
  • Robust journalistic standards
  • Strong editorial quality
  • Clear separation of content type (news, opinion, advertorial, advertising, sponsorship)
  • Adherence to a credible code of practice, especially on media ethics
  • Full declarations of interest by journalists, reporters and opinion writers*

Most newspapers are subject to media regulations or licensing systems around proprietorial “fitness”, ownership control, cross-media assets and censorship. Newspapers are also subject to general laws regarding libel, blasphemy, privacy, incitement, discrimination and copyright.

There are already a number of regulatory reviews of ownership, standards and ethics by mainstream news media in the wake of alleged phone hacking and other malpractices. There is also debate as to whether on-line platforms that carry “news” should be subject to more stringent media regulation.

Apart from some issues with censorship and legal requests to remove offensive material (which apply to all content providers), I don’t see Facebook operating under a formal newspaper regime.

While Facebook may aspire to become “The Daily Like”, I don’t believe it wants to be treated (or taken seriously) as a regular “newspaper”. Otherwise, it would likely have to register as a newspaper in every jurisdiction where its content is accessed,  disseminated or uploaded. Perhaps what Facebook really means is that it wants to dominate on-line advertising (using your own content as the bait) while continuing to claim the platform is “free” to end users.

*Declaration of interest: the author is not now on Facebook (reluctantly).

Broadcastr signs off: 9 Challenges for Social Media

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Social Media platforms – there seems to be one born every minute. By the time you finish reading this article, another 5 will have been launched somewhere in the world. And probably 5 more will have been shut down.

A recent casualty of what I call the “50 Shades of Social Media” syndrome is Broadcastr, a user-contributed audio content platform for location-based story telling.

In their farewell note to the Broadcastr user community, co-founders Andy Hunter and Scott Lindenbaum stated:

“While we’d love to keep Broadcastr alive, technology requires money, active development, and maintenance. We’re a small team, and, sadly, don’t have the resources to continue development.”

Broadcastr has inevitably lost out to category-killer SoundCloud, an earlier site that dominates Social Media audio content (and is also the likely cause for the wavering fortunes of MySpace). In recent months, iTunes has withdrawn its Ping social networking application for music fans; Webdoc has rebranded itself as Urturn (possibly due to confusion surrounding its name) and Yahoo! has just announced it is withdrawing a number of Social Media products – not forgetting that Yahoo! dumped Buzz, a social news site that was hard to distinguish from Digg. There are even some mutterings that Google+ does not yet justify the hype as a serious Social Media platform to take on Facebook or Twitter.

Even if you are first to market with a new Social Media platform, most sites are just a different (not necessarily better) mousetrap – same bait to tempt you in, same tools to capture your attention. The sheer volume of sites means that they are hard to differentiate from one another – hence the “50 Shades of Social Media” syndrome. Each Social Media site is trying to become THE destination for its target audience, but as The Cure once sang, “In the caves, all cats are grey.” Despite their differences, all Social Media platforms end up looking pretty much the same.

In light of the heated competition for market traction, here are 9 challenges to success in Social Media:

1 There are essentially only 5 types of Social Media platform:

2 There are only a limited number of activities you can do within these sites, such as “like”, “follow”, “share”, “post”, “publish”, “comment”, “recommend” and “tag”.

3 Increasingly, single-purpose or single-interest Social Media sites are attempting to cross over into adjacent domains, in an attempt to build scale and stickiness, and to improve the user experience.

4 This diversification means Social Media lose focus, dilute their original offering, and potentially alienate users.

5 Every Social Media platform starts out claiming to be different and offering something unique – but both the content and the business models are relatively easy to replicate, which is why we see multiple variations of the same concept or minor iterations with each new site.

6 As we engage with multiple Social Media platforms, we need our own personal media monitoring and management systems just to keep tabs on everything, especially when sites start to overlap as they encompass richer media formats and enhanced content functionality.

7 Meanwhile, the increasing inter-connectivity between different sites means that as individual users we can multi-channel as if we are our own mini cable networks.

8 But as with cable TV, multi-channelling leads to audience fragmentation and narrowcasting (which in turn has an impact on advertising revenue).

9 The Social Media industry will be subject to further mergers and acquisitions like Facebook’s purchase of Instagram, and consolidation will inevitably result in an oligarchy of dominant players, as happens with all media.

Why Francis Bacon would never be on Facebook

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“Champagne for my real friends, real pain for my sham friends” is a dictum widely attributed to the  20th century artist Francis Bacon, although its origins have been traced to the  late 1800’s. Whatever its provenance, Bacon is known to have used the phrase frequently in the company of friends and hangers-on in the pubs and clubs of London’s Soho district. It was a sort of rallying cry when he was buying drinks for his companions – some of whom were close friends, others were mere acquaintances, associates, groupies and antagonists.

Bacon died in 1992, but even if he was alive today, I doubt he would have used Facebook. Not because he was out of touch with popular culture (the collection of source material from his studio attests to his artistic interest in photography, sport, film, magazines, advertising etc.). No, his antipathy to Facebook and other social media would be based on the inability to distinguish between “real” and  “sham” friends. Facebook may allow users to categorize “friends” as Close Friends, Family, Acquaintances, but this is mostly about levels of sharing and frequency of updates; it does not really allow for more subtle categorisation reflecting the different types and varied nature of relationships we have with our professional and personal contacts; nor does it allow us to distinguish between sub-categories (e.g., “friends I’m willing to have dinner with”, “cinema friends”, “family we visit for the holidays”, “Friday night drinks colleagues”, “clients to invite to the cricket” etc.)

The Internet in general (and social media in particular) is a great leveller, but has the capacity to reduce all our real-world relationships to a homogenous mass of digital contacts. 

Would you take career advice from a sushi chef?

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The cohorts of Baby Boomers who entered the workforce during the latter stages of the Industrial Age represent the last generation who contemplated lifelong employment in the same career, if not in the same organization or even in the same job. Here in the Information Age, with increasing numbers of employees engaged in knowledge work, the notion of a single career for life, let alone a single job for life, is pure fantasy.

In the Information Age, our willingness to embrace career change is as important as our ability to develop and maintain our core technical skills. For example, while we may think it is necessary to become experts in the latest technology, it’s equally important to understand how and why that technology is being deployed in particular situations – this is where the real learning occurs, as both the content and the context for that technical application will inevitably change.

The Agrarian Age helped define the concept of life-long occupations – in agriculture, the military, government service, science and medicine, the trades and professions, and even among unskilled labourers.  Think of the workers who toiled their whole lives on building the great mediaeval cathedrals, never to see the final results of their labour as those major construction projects took several generations to complete.

The Industrial Age ushered in occupations that relied on workers acquiring and applying technical, practical and manual skills that in essence changed very little during their lifetime, particularly on manufacturing production lines. This era also saw the development of the formal workplace and business establishments, in contrast to the largely home-based work patterns of before.

The Information Age continues to see rapid changes in workplace structures, employment patterns and career development. This change demands that knowledge workers constantly improve their skills – keeping up to date with new technology, engaging in the latest management theory, embracing new business models. This continuous learning process is not best served by staying in the same role, the same environment or the same mindset for lengthy periods. Personal change is a surer way of keeping in touch with universal changes.

So for latter-day job seekers who are looking for insights into their own career choices and options, why would they take career advice from someone who has been doing the exact same thing for 50 years or more?  I was reminded of this when a recent edition of my high school alumni newsletter reported that a long-serving member of staff had retired after more than 40 years in the job. During my own time at the school, this particular teacher was also the careers adviser, and without meaning to disrespect his teaching abilities, why would anyone take careers advice from someone who had stayed in the same job his whole career?

And yet, who could fail to appreciate the explicit career advice in the critically acclaimed documentary, “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” (made by David Gelb in 2011)?

Jiro Ono has been making sushi for over 70 years, but continues to hone his skills as a sushi shokunin, always seeking perfection, constantly finding new and better ways to create his dishes. As a master sushi chef, Jiro makes sure he knows his suppliers and is familiar with their produce. As a leader he is quick to acknowledge that the food he serves to his customers is the result of much hard work and detailed preparation by his team of chefs. As a teacher, his Michelin 3-Star restaurant also offers lengthy (and highly valued) apprenticeships to aspiring itamae who are willing to dedicate themselves to pursuing their craft.

Even though the daily process of producing the highest quality sushi seems repetitive and even tedious, it is the willingness to face each day as both a new challenge and a fresh opportunity to improve one’s skills that gives Jiro his core purpose and sense of career satisfaction.

From personal experience, my own career development continues to be about defining my core values and improving my skills, understanding how to apply them in new situations, and how to enhance them by learning from colleagues, mentors, clients, suppliers and competitors, or from on-the-job and formal training.  Like Jiro the sushi shinkonin, I try and make this a daily process, by reflecting on how something can be done better or by understanding how new information can be incorporated into existing solutions.

Many of us working in the Information Age will recognize that we don’t pursue a single, linear career path, but engage in a series of both distinct and overlapping career sequences, connected by a common thread of transferable skills and inter-disciplinary learning applied to new roles, new projects or to new client engagements. Our challenge is to ensure we maintain purpose, relevance and a sense of direction as we navigate our “transactional” careers.

Footnote: The soundtrack for “Jiro Dreams of Sushi” features several compositions by Philip Glass, which seems totally appropriate, on several levels:  Glass, like fellow minimalist John Cage, is attracted to various aspects of Japanese culture; and as a minimalist, Glass’s music is often criticised for being repetitive, even boring – but attentive listening reveals that the repetitions subtly shift, revealing minuscule changes in pattern, rhythm and texture – much like every piece of sushi tastes subtly different.