Tag Archives: #LinkedIn

Social Media – finding its own level?

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Social media is accessible to all...

Social Media is accessible to all…

Recently I’ve come to see that as a communication tool Social Media is just like any other resource or commodity – it’s not an end in itself, it’s what you can do with it that makes it valuable.

If I had to make a comparison, I would say that Social Media is most like water – not just because we seem to be swimming (if not drowning) in the stuff; but because like water, it will find its own level. And as Myer CEO Bernie Brookes found out this week, something that sustains us can also be unleashed against us.

As content pours into our Social Media aquifers, it will naturally flow, collect and disperse. The rivers of content being uploaded daily* suggest that unlike other resources, Social Media will not run out any time soon:

  • Twitter: 400 million Tweets posted per day
  • Instagram: 40 million photos uploaded per day
  • YouTube: 72 hours of videos posted every minute
  • Facebook: 2.5 billion content items shared per day
  • LinkedIn: 175,000 new profiles created every day
  • SoundCloud: 10 hours of audio uploaded every minute

These reservoirs of digital content that we are creating could be put to good use (like dams that provide hydro-electricity). Viewed from this perspective, Social Media can be seen as a potential source of energy. Rather like waterwheels that harness the power of rivers, Social Media can be used to drive a range of applications; but left to its own devices, and with nowhere else to go, all this content will simply collect in stagnant pools – sometimes you need to use part of that energy to keep the water flowing downstream.

In just the past week I’ve been exposed to three more Social Media platforms, each of which is at advanced beta stage: @IFTTT – a tool to re-publish selected updates to multiple platforms via a series of automated decision trees; @Poptip – a tool for conducting polls via Twitter; and a personalized viral marketing tool which I probably cannot mention by name because I had to sign an NDA in order to participate in the pre-launch.

Each of these new platforms is trying to harness the potential of Social Media and keep the communication flowing (the waterwheel analogy). Similar to other Social Media platforms, these tools also act like aqueducts carrying water to where it’s needed. It’s as if we are using the content to feed a Social Media irrigation system – the results of which allow us to harvest followers, “likes” and customers.

The question is, who will we look to for inspiration when we come to write Social Media’s epitaph – will it be Smith, Bell, Coleridge or Goethe?** Will we end up drowning in the stuff (but no-one will notice until it’s too late)? Will we wish we had used it more sparingly? Will we be faced with an abundance that we cannot actually make use of? Or will it be a case of “be careful what you wish for”? (Clearly, King Canute is of no assistance, as it’s far too late to turn back the tide….)

* Note: Statistics gathered from a casual internet search of company websites, press releases and industry commentaries. No claims as to accuracy, currency or verification.

** Literary references: Stevie Smith – “Not Waving but Drowning”; William Bell – “You Don’t Miss Your Water (Till Your Well Runs Dry)”; Samuel Taylor Coleridge – “Water, water, everywhere, nor any drop to drink”; Johann Wolfgang von Goethe – “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”

“I blogged the news today, oh boy…”

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In the week when eyewitness photos posted on social media helped to break the story of an Indonesian aeroplane that landed in the sea off Bali, we cannot ignore the potency of Netizen journalism  to create the news (even if we have concerns about accuracy and quality). And in the same week when “The Voice” returns to our TV screens for a 3-month season, we cannot ignore the potency of audience voting via SMS and social media to create new pop stars (even if we have concerns about accuracy and quality….).

As The Beatles might have sung, “I blogged the news today, oh boy…”

News and music are now confirmed as the key social network content for attracting audiences, if recent market activity is any indication of where the competition for eyeballs and eardrums is being played out.

  • Google’s decision to close down its popular Reader service simply drove customers into the arms of the competition. Unless Google rethinks the service closure, or has another product in development for Google+, Readers will be switching to alternative solutions. The community backlash has been significant, which suggests the audience for news aggregation is large, passionate and willing to be loyal to services that meet their needs. (For reviews on a range of Reader substitutes, see the links below.)*
  • Just a few days ago, LinkedIn announced it has acquired Pulse, a news-aggregation app, as part of a strategy to enhance its news content and build on LinkedIn Today’s curated news feed. Pulse is promoting itself heavily as a Reader replacement, so I am curious as to when LinkedIn settled the purchase price for Pulse – was it before or after Google’s March 13 announcement about the closure of Reader?
  • At the same time, Twitter has followed up its recent announcement to introduce better contextualization for trending news stories with the curious (but not surprising) decision to acquire We Are Hunted, a service that helps users discover new music, based on internet-sourced analysis of what other people are listening to. Expect to see millions of Justin Bieber fans tweeting his #music as a way to influence what Twitter pushes to its audience… and then wait for the feedback
  • Meanwhile, the other Justin has been working on the relaunch of Myspace as a “free” streaming music library (because no-one actually buys this stuff anymore, do they….?) Based on personal attempts to explore the new Myspace and upload my own music to this platform, it would be fair to say this relaunch is an “extended beta” version
  • Oh, and in case you missed the story, Yahoo! bought Summly, another news aggregation app, developed by someone younger than Justin Bieber…

* Here is a non-exhaustive and random selection of blogs offering reviews of Reader substitutes:

Life Hacker: Five Best Google Reader Alternatives

Extreme Tech: Google Reader Replacements

Edudemic: Google Reader Alternatives

Digital Trends: Best Google Reader Alternatives

CNET TV: Alternatives to Google Reader

 

Social Networks – All the News You Can Eat

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The New York Times‘ motto, “All the News That’s Fit to Print” was modified to “All the News That’s Fit to Click” when the newspaper went on-line. But based on the heated competition for on-line readership, as we move from dedicated news platforms to internet  megastores, and as news content pricing and business models are savaged by social media, the rallying cry is more like “All the News You Can Eat”.

It’s clear that social network sites are stepping up their efforts to attract more readers for on-line news content, if recent events are anything to go by:

1. Google rethinks its strategy for the Reader application, which will no doubt resurface in a new form within Google+.

2. Facebook announces changes to its news feed as it aims to create a highly personalized newspaper experience.

3. Twitter plans to introduce better contextual analysis around trending stories.

4. Yahoo! makes a splash with its purchase of Summly – a news aggregation app which has now been shut down prior to integration within the Yahoo! platform.

5. Even LinkedIn has been getting in on the act with its LinkedIn Today content aggregation tool.

Defining what constitutes news is no longer determined by the traditional business models for print and broadcast media. “Old-school” factual reporting (the “who, what, where, when and how”) combined with informed opinion and analysis (the “why”) is now something of a dying format. In its voracious appetite for content, social media is willing to slap the label “news” on anything that moves. So, one person’s news is another person’s gossip, trivia, PR, party political spin, advertorial or propaganda. All very post-modern and structuralist – the news is whatever you make it.

In response, established newspaper media are building pay walls around their on-line product, to offset the decline in print sales and classified advertising, even though most social media sites are offering “news” for free. This point is significant, because not only does this make it harder for newspapers to charge for content, the proliferation of free metro newspapers in many cities means that paying for a newspaper is something of an anathema to most people. Why on earth would they pay for on-line news content?

While it is understandable that newspapers want to charge for their content, they would be seriously misguided if they continue to see the content alone as the product. Of course, a reliable news service is expensive to produce, but the cost to the consumer should also be about quality, access and convenience. What we are paying for is the newspaper’s role as author, editor, curator, archivist, publisher, aggregator and distributor. In some cases, newspapers are recognized as a document of record – but we are probably some way off granting social media sites the same status.

What are the likely outcomes from this competition for news readership?

Initially, the traditional news media will continue to suffer declining print circulation, and will be challenged to make pay walls work. Stronger news brands with even deeper pockets will probably survive, but  they will need to think about upgrading their content syndication business models to remain relevant within an on-line and social media environment. There will be more apps and tools for personalized news aggregation, but only if these platforms can access or license enough content to be viable, and only if they can monetize the offering to be financially sustainable.

The great irony is that few of us want to rely on a single news source, but we want the convenience of getting all our news in one place.

My guess is that the we’ll see social media sites emerge as “news supermarkets”. They will source content from various suppliers, with whom they will engage in trading terms akin to practices commonly seen in the grocery industry: charging for shelf space and product placement, seeking bulk discounts, and adopting strict supply chain agreements. There will even be “own brand” and “house brand” content, plus a range of specialist and localized products to cater for individual tastes.

Alternatively, “news department stores” might emerge, hosted by a few of the major news brands, where they provide a marketplace for third-party content they have carefully selected and curated, along with a core range of content produced by their talented pool of in-house writers and journalists. Or, like IKEA and some up-scale department stores, the products will be store-branded, but designed by and commissioned from their business partners.

In both cases, these news department stores and news supermarkets could be the anchor tenants in large online news malls, where specialist and independent content providers (including bloggers) can set up shop to attract passing readers.

On a final note, the recent media legislation in the United Kingdom, and the attempted media reforms in Australia, have renewed debate around news regulation: who is to be regulated, what is to be regulated (especially on-line), and by whom will they be regulated? While much of this debate is concerned with news media standards and supervision, as well as issues of ownership and control, there is also a need to consider the impact that internet technology and on-line business models are having on the development, dissemination and consumption of news.

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.