The BBC is criticised by the Commons spending watchdog over a digital media scheme which was meant to save £17.9m, but ended up costing an estimated £38.2m.
More here:
MPs criticise BBC over IT project
Just when you, perhaps thought you’d seen and heard it all you come across a YouTube video like this one created by a friend of mine. A very funny approach to an incredibly serious topic. Enjoy the video, and please post your comments below. Also, please feel free to embed this video at your own website to spread (no pun intended) this important video message.
The content previously published here has been withdrawn. We apologise for any inconvenience.
The content previously published here has been withdrawn. We apologise for any inconvenience.
More and more, the dichotomy between mainstream media and digital media is a false one.
Read the rest here:
The Media Equation: A Vanishing Journalistic Divide
It is perhaps inevitable given the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter that the number of places blocking access to them is also growing. Burma, China, Iran, Harrisburg in Pennsylvania, the roll-call goes on and on.
Harrisburg in Pennsylvania? Can that be true? Can a town better known for its steel industry and agriculture than for internet censorship really have joined the list? For the past week the private Harrisburg University has instigated what it calls a “blackout” of all social networking sites. It has removed from its central server the channels that pipe social media, cutting off access to Twitter and Facebook, instant messaging services and video chat through Skype.
To be fair to the university, its action cannot be equated to those of the Burmese military junta or the ayatollahs of Iran. This is, after all, a modern science and technology college, opened to students five years ago, that offers specialist courses in use of the internet.
Rather, the idea was to undertake an experiment to find out what impact social media and multitasking were having on college life, its students and faculty alike. It was dreamed up by the university’s provost, Eric Darr, who became intrigued when he observed his 16-year-old daughter at home one night. “She had Facebook open on her laptop, was listening to music on iTunes, had apps open on her iPhone and three different conversations going on instant messaging – all simultaneously,” he said. “It struck me how overpowering all this was, not in a negative way, and it made me wonder what would happen if all that wasn’t there.”
On Monday morning the university closed channels to the social networking sites so no access could be gained via the university’s central wireless system. The reaction of the 800 or so students ranged from curious to puzzled to outraged.
Darr was in the room when one student moaned that without Facebook on his laptop in class he didn’t know what to do. Darr said: “I was standing right there, and said to him there’s always the novel idea of paying attention to your professor.” Alexis Rivera, an 18-year-old student of internet security, said she had been surprised by the effect of being deprived of her beloved instant messaging and Facebook. “It’s a lot better,” she said. “I can pay attention much better now.”
As it is a laptop university, students have computers open at most lectures. In an average class, Rivera would have AOL, Yahoo, MSN and Skype instant messaging running, with up to seven chats going at the same time. “Normally I’d be chatting to other people in the class about how boring it was,” she said. This week, without the distractions, she has found herself taking more notes and following the tutor with greater understanding. She has been doing more homework, as in the past she often missed assignments because she was so busy messaging she didn’t hear them. And she’s also become more outgoing. “I’m a lot more social,” she said. “I talk to a lot more people, face to face, rather than sitting there typing away.”
Others have been less enthusiastic. Several of the college’s computer geeks have rerouted internet access through Canada or Norway or used proxy websites to break through the firewall. Some students have nipped to the nearby Hilton hotel to use its wireless access.
Giovanni Acosta, 21, knows how to overcome the blackout but decided against it, as he wanted to see the outcome of the experiment. At first he said he was twitchy. “I had to log on to Facebook even though I knew it was blocked, and I did that every 10 minutes or so, again and again,” he said. “But now the itch has gone. I’ve learnt how much I was being distracted.”
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Sad news for those of us with fond memories of long minutes lost in the more arcane histories of English words: the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which a team of 80 lexicographers has been working on since 1989, will probably never be printed. “The print dictionary market is just disappearing,” Oxford University Press CEO Nigel Portwood told a Sunday newspaper. It will still be available online – in fact, in December, the web version is being relaunched, including for the first time the historical thesaurus of the OED, which contains almost every word in English from Old English to the present. The problem is that it is a tad pricey: £7 plus VAT for a week’s access; £205 plus VAT for a year. Luckily, there are alternatives:
This paper’s preferred arbiter, in its print version, the pocket version is available free online – though, it must be said, boasting some rather confusing orthography. The second entry for the word “help”, for example, reads “2. to contribute to, to help Latin America’s economies” – some italics, or brackets, or bold letters would help. You can buy a 1,888-page hard copy for £70, or download it for a mere £9.99.
The Chambers 21st Century Dictionary, with its 75,000 words and phrases and 110,000 definitions, is free online. This is much more presentable, with quite satisfying lists of definitions, and examples of the word in context. A little bit of etymology, too. Chambers is not, however, accepting new subscribers to the full shebang – 170,000 words and phrases and 270,000 definitions. The 1,871-page print version sells for £40.
The definitions are short and to the point, with no information about sources or background (though there are sample phrases, and a direct link to a thesaurus). It also lets you submit words of your own, and gives you the option of British or American English. Macmillan’s particular wheeze, useful to learners of English, is to highlight the 7,500 core, high-frequency words in the English language: three-star words are the most frequent; one-star words less so. It’s free online, but you’ll pay £24 for a hard copy.
A real discovery, this online site trawls 18,967,499 words in 1,060 different dictionaries – all the major English ones, but also dictionaries for specific subjects (business, art, medicine) or languages. You can customise your search – only in slang, for example; compare entries in different dictionaries; do a wildcard search (asterisks, hashtags or @ symbols account for the characters you can’t remember), or a reverse search (type in “being tried twice for the same crime”, for “double jeopardy”, for example). It doesn’t, however, link to a Scrabble dictionary, which some might feel is an important omission.
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Churnalism travels fast, especially in silly season. Stories about a supposed new tax on bloggers in Philadelphia have bounced round the US media, with buzzphrase “Philly blog tax” appearing everywhere from CNN to New York Magazine. “Philly wants to tax bloggers”, said Gawker. “How does a financially strapped city [...] make a little cash? Tax the bloggers,” said the New York Daily News. “Freedom of speech under attack as Philadelphia becomes First City To Impose A Tax On blogging” reads one local blog headline.
But there is no blog tax. Philadelphia levies a licence fee on small businesses, which is no more a tax on bloggers than the UK’s VAT is a tax on chocolate buttons.
The rumour started when the Philadelphia City Paper ran an article last week headlined “Pay up”, which detailed how blogger Marilyn Bess received a letter demanding 0 for a “business privilege licence”. “I’ve been very interested to see how many writers addressed this topic and used my name without talking to me,” Bess told MediaGuardian. “One of my favourite articles in this mess said: ‘She probably assumed she was getting a summons or jury duty’. I thought no such thing.”
The City Paper story appears to accuse the city of singling out bloggers – if you only read the strapline, that is. “Got a blog that makes no money? The city wants 0, thank you very much.” The body copy explains the rather more mundane truth, but why let the facts get in the way of a good sell? The US media certainly hasn’t.
Staff at Philadelphia’s department of revenue seemed surprised when MediaGuardian got in touch to ask if it had decided any such thing (it hasn’t). “There has been quite a bit of sensationalism and misunderstanding,” a spokesperson said. “Philadelphia does not have a licence or tax just for bloggers [but] does require anyone doing business and generating revenue for profit to register and get a business licence with the City of Philadelphia.” This costs a year, or a lifetime fee of 0, and is only for those making money. “A blog or website that doesn’t generate revenue would not be considered a business.”
The problem is “people not taking five seconds to realise it’s not a blog tax, it’s a tax on all the commerce in the city,” says Sean Blanda, co-founder of tech news site Technically Philly and an ex-employee of the City Paper. “But people thought it was an affront to free speech. It says nothing about free speech.” As Blanda wrote on his blog : “There is no ‘blog tax’ in Philadelphia. None.”
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Advertising revenue at Facebook is expected to pass the £1bn mark next year for the first time, as rival MySpace is expected to see ad revenues shrink 14%, according to a new report.
Facebook, which has more than 500 million global users, leaving one-time social networking darling MySpace in the shade, is expected to bring in .285bn (£824m) in ad revenue this year.
About 65% of ad revenue is derived from the US market, according to a report from research firm eMarketer. This compares with MySpace, which is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, which is estimated to be on target to make 7m this year.
Next year Facebook is forecast to hit .76bn (£1.13bn), with a slightly lower 60% coming from the US market, which means Mark Zuckerberg’s brainchild will have seen ad revenues grow by 165% between 2009 and 2011.
MySpace on the other hand is expected to see ad revenues fall 14% between 2010 and 2011 to 7m.
“Brand advertisers are making Facebook a core buy,” said Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst at eMarketer. “Ad spending is building quickly and the mass audience is one that marketers cannot ignore any longer.”
Zuckerberg told the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in June that “it is almost a guarantee” that Facebook will eventually top 1 billion users, with significant room for further growth in countries including Russia, Japan and China.
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Google and Verizon have put forward a joint policy framework aimed at allaying fears the two companies could bring an end to the internet principle of net neutrality.
In a joint op-ed in the Washington Post today, the Google chief executive, Eric Schmidt, and his Verizon counterpart, Ivan Seidenberg, outlined their “commitment to an open internet”, saying “blocking and degrading internet traffic is antithetical to the principles of openness and consumers’ expectations”.
Long-running talks between the US media and telecoms regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and a host of big internet companies – including Google and US telecoms operator Verizon – broke down last week amid reports of the two companies trying to forge a deal in private, something they both denied.
But the two companies have been discussing the concept of net neutrality – an internet tenet stating that all content should be delivered at the same speed on a level playing field – for some time.
In a post on the Google Public Policy blog late yesterday, Alan Davidson, the search giant’s director of public policy, and Tom Tauke, Verizon’s executive vice president of public affairs, outline the future for net neutrality in the US.
Here’s some initial reaction from around the web:
“One cynical way of reading this is to think of Google and Verizon as two syndicates carving out a piece of the action: Google gets a commitment to net neutrality over the standard, wired internet that people access via computers at home or at work, while Verizon gets far weaker regulation on wireless networks accessed via smartphones.
“Why does Google feel it needs to work with Verizon on this? Verizon in the US is in a uniquely powerful position of straddling both wired and wireless access, since it operates one of the two major wireless networks (AT&T running the other), while also being a major wired ISP competing with the likes of cable provider Comcast.
“[...] Needless to say, the lack of regulation applying to wireless access and the possibility of future ‘designated services’ doesn’t please anyone outside the telecoms industry, or indeed at the FCC.”
“But here’s the rub: You should not trust Verizon or other carriers, or Google for that matter, to follow through in ways that are truly in the interest of the kind of open networks the nation needs. Throughout the conference call, we kept hearing references to the ‘public internet’ – an expression that leads inescapably to something else.
“If Schmidt was telling the truth when he said Google’s overwhelming focus will remain on the public internet, such as his promise that YouTube will remain there, that’s great. I have no reason to disbelieve him, and Google’s track record to date is strong on this issue. But plans change, managements change, and corporate goals change.”
“If open networks are good, why should wireless be different? They don’t make the case in these documents for why the ‘unique technical and operational characteristics’ should change the fundamental underlying principle of the network. That’s not to say there isn’t a good argument, but it’s certainly not in either the blog post or the policy document.
“More troubling is that the language of the wireline net neutrality is squirrely. The companies suggest that they would be maintaining ‘net neutrality’ on wireline services, but they’d allow ‘additional or differentiated services’ over their networks.
“[...] Again, this is just a policy paper, but this seems like a slippery definition of what is and is not internet traffic. Why not carry these ‘additional services’ over the internet, where they would be subject to the net neutrality rules that these companies claim to think is a good idea?”
“The good news is nothing about this compromise has any teeth without the FCC deciding to made it part of its official rules on network neutrality. However, given the FCC’s precarious position as a broadband regulator and a lack of support from Congress on this issue the temptation to accept this compromise as good for everyone may force a version of network neutrality that leaves mobile, one of the fastest areas of innovation on the web, out of the new rules. It also enables an alternative version of the public internet that could lead to the creation of a first-class and a second-class system of packet delivery.”
“I’m concerned [that] if the FCC uses this as a template, we will create a backwater on the traditional internet and allow for a lot of top-down control in the very areas where use seems to be moving.”
“Overall, there’s a lot that’s bad about this proposal, and it shouldn’t form the basis of legislation in Congress or of rules by the FCC.
“The biggest problem with the framework is that, while purporting to support ‘the open internet’, it draws illogical distinctions on the basis of what technology you use to access the internet, and between ‘the public internet’ (Verizon’s mantra on the press call) and ‘additional online services’.
“If the Verizon/Google proposal is adopted, the window of openness that allowed companies like [Schmidt's] to thrive and grow will be closed. The internet could be frozen in 2010, with companies like his on top.”
“The idea that Google and Verizon think nobody will notice they’ve proposed a network neutrality solution that excludes wireless while nuzzling their multi-billion-dollar Android partnership seems almost obnoxiously cocky. Arrogance is par for the course for Verizon, but assuming your audience is comprised of complete morons seems like new territory for Google.
“It seems like common sense that telecom regulators, not the sector’s wealthiest players, should be dictating the beat of this particular policy drum. The fact that this isn’t the case speaks to the FCC’s murky leadership over the past year. The framework used to create any internet policy rules shouldn’t be a game of policy make believe focused on protecting the revenues of the wealthiest constituents – it should be the brain trust of a broad collective, including consumers, smaller carriers, and truly independent experts.”
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Coca-Cola is considering cutting ties with the agency that created a Facebook campaign that parents accused of targeting children by using references to a notorious pornographic movie.
The soft-drinks giant, which has come in for heavy criticism after running a racy Facebook campaign for the Dr Pepper brand, has told the agency that it must stop all advertising work on Coca-Cola brands until a decision is reached on whether to terminate the relationship.
“We have stopped all our ongoing work with [digital agency] Lean Mean Fighting Machine and are currently reviewing our relationship with the agency,” said a spokeswoman for Coca-Cola GB.
The company was forced to pull a Facebook campaign for its Dr Pepper brand, in which users allowed their Facebook status box to be taken over by the company. Users could choose from three levels of “embarrassingness”, and the contract with Facebook stipulated that all content had to be moderated by Coke before going live.
However, the promotion backfired when a Mumsnet user saw her 14-year-old daughter’s Facebook page – or rather the Dr Pepper campaign she had joined – had been updated with a message that made direct reference to a hardcore pornographic film.
Coca-Cola apologised and announced an investigation into its promotion procedures.
It said the offending line had been approved by them, without them realising its true meaning.
Other examples of embarrassing statuses used as part of the promotion included: “Lost my special blankie. How will I go sleepies?”, “What’s wrong with peeing in the shower?” and “Never heard of it described as cute before.”
Coca-Cola is now reviewing its relationship with the agency behind the campaign, Lean Mean Fighting Machine. The move could result in the agency losing one of advertising’s juiciest accounts – a bitter blow, especially as it had just won the digital ad account for Coca-Cola’s Coke Zero brand.
Dr Pepper is no stranger to flirting with social media controversy in its marketing activity, which uses the strapline “What’s the worst that can happen?”. For April Fool’s Day the brand launched a push on Chatroulette featuring a cheerleader.
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Rupert Murdoch is planning to test his belief in the transformative power of the iPad to bring news to the younger generation by launching a new digital newspaper for America.
The new operation, disclosed by the Los Angeles Times, will be geared specifically to younger readers and to digital outlets such as the iPad and mobile phones. It will pool the huge editorial muscle of Murdoch’s combined holdings within News Corporation, which include the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and the financial wire service Dow Jones, as well as his newspapers in the UK and Australia.
But according to the LA Times, it will publish customised content that will be tailored both to the digital medium and the tastes of the target readership. Stories will be short and snappy, the Times’s source said.
As a generalist news outlet, the operation, which has yet to find a name, would take on such rivals as USA Today, the newspaper circulated in hotels and airports across the US, and Murdoch’s favourite enemy, the New York Times.
The creation of a custom-built digital product helps make sense of Murdoch’s strategy as he struggles to drag his enormous newspaper empire into the digital world. It will sit alongside his radical attempt to build a paywall around his newspapers including the Times and Sunday Times in the UK.
Murdoch sees the iPad as a potential lifesaver in terms of its reach among the young and its ability to attract subscriptions. The Wall Street Journal already charges a week for delivery through the iPad.
Earlier this month, Murdoch said of the iPad: “It’s a real game-changer in the presentation of news,” adding “We’ll have young people reading newspapers.”
Eric Alterman, the Nation magazine’s media columnist, said the idea of pooling resources across News Corporation and recalibrating them for the iPad was for Murdoch a “no-brainer”. “This makes perfect sense. He’s got all this content that’s of interest to people from different localities across America. It will be like a global New York Post without any of the legacy costs.”
But Murdoch biographer and co-founder of the website Newser, Michael Wolff, was less confident that the new venture would work. “Murdoch is a man who has tried over and over again over almost 40 years to create a successful, financially viable newspaper in the US, and he’s failed every time,” he said.
The LA Times source said that the new operation would be based within the New York Post, though it would have its own newsroom and own staff of reporters and editors. It would fall under the control of the Post managing editor, Jesse Angelo.
No launch date has been set, though it is understood Murdoch is keen to have the project up and running by the end of this year.
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Foursquare addicts will know how desirable that mayor badge is (congratulations Josh, Guardian mayor as of yesterday morning) and so it follows that Foursquare has launched a store selling real badges, stickers and Foursquare T-shirts.
It’s a big win for Foursquare, which gets a new if modest revenue stream on the side (five badges for , 10 stickers for or for a T-shirt) and valuable advertising among the geek fraternity.
Foursquare founder Dennis Crowley got Foursquare cookies from his mum for his birthday in June – but those aren’t for sale through the Foursquare store just yet. Photo by dpstyles on Flickr. Some rights reserved.
For players, it’s taking the status game into the real world, and everyone likes a good badge. Though you could argue they are more prestigious when ‘earned’ by visiting tech conferences. Cafepress gave brands (or anyone, in fact) the ability to sell their own branded stuff years ago, so there’s nothing new in that. But Foursquare is right on the meme.
In 10 years, these might be geek collectors’ items on eBay. Or we will long since have forgotten about Foursquare, which was taken over by Facebook/Yahoo/Google and then evaporated. But there’s a nice idea for a little startup earner all the same.
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Here is the spot where the video for Jay-Z and Alicia Keys spoof Newport State of Mind once lived.
In place of the video, all we have is “This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by EMI Music Publishing Ltd”. The pink strip indicating a takedown notice is increasingly becoming the “blue plaque” of the internet.
For the uninitiated, Newport State of Mind has been a viral video smash, celebrating all the finest parts of Wales from the A4042 to throwing up chips and curry in the back of a taxi. Its success has attracted coverage from the BBC and ITV to the Guardian and the Telegraph.
OK, it’s a rip-off of the Jay-Z and Alicia Keys song. But it has a significant amount of original work, video, rewritten lyrics and a good concept. Isn’t that fair use?
It is still alive elsewhere on the internet, not least in Goldie Lookin’ Chain‘s own parody, You’re Not From Newport (see above).
But whichever way you look at it, Newport State of Mind was far more entertaining than Alicia Keys. Perhaps that’s what really stung.
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Though they are often cast as distinct business models, advertising and paid content are not necessarily mutually exclusive – or are they?
Observations from Times Newspapers’ digital properties point to two different answers…
In one, The Times is now selling full-page display campaigns in to its iPad app, for which readers pay £9.99 per month. Campaigns spotted by paidContent:UK are for IBM and Lloyds TSB, occupying four pages each in Monday’s third edition. Each includes a video overlay containing the companies’ existing TV ads.
The Financial Times had made its iPad edition free for two initial months thanks to a big headline sponsorship from watchmaker Hublot, but The Times is using iPad to combine both payments and ads, as newspapers do.
Photo by mac morrison on Flickr. Some rights reserved.
Times Newspapers had gone in to its new paid website strategy saying it would continue running ads on the Times and Sunday Times websites despite introducing reader charging. Indeed, its commercial team has promised advertisers “large impactful formats”…
But, in fact, what’s happened is the number of ads has reduced dramatically from when Times Online was freely available. Apart from spots for Virgin Media (NSDQ: VMED) in Sport and Tavarnello wine in Style, display slots in key website sections are so far mostly occupied by promotions for Times services themselves.
In their place, one thing that is clicking increasingly is a new spin on an old kind of sponsorship – paid editorial…
The Times and Sunday Times sites are running a series of sponsored features and site-lets for Accenture, Courvoisier, Alfa Romeo, Chevrolet and ICIS, each apparently the online extension of a recent paid supplement…
But (and this is interesting) these advertorials are not behind the paywall. The Chevrolet campaign, for an outdoorsy new 4×4, even exists on an external domain name from the main Times site altogether, CoolGlamping.co.uk. Meanwhile, the Accenture campaign is actually for a Business news section called Need To Know, which, despite being presented in navigation as content, is also outside the wall.
One theory about The Times’ recent strategic shift is that the whittling down of its audience to a handful of paying customers would default advertisers’ addressable market to a self-selected group of wealthier readers, with a higher inclination to buy stuff. A contrary theory had been that, actually, advertisers just want scale and would hate losing mass appeal…
Whatever; why would advertisers want to restrict viewing of their ads only to paying readers?
The reduction of conventional web display ads from the Times Online days may suggest advertiser concern at the smaller audience – but it may also be possible for The Times to make some of it up with big-hitting sponsorships from premium brands, and by jumping aboard the nascent iPad advertising rush.
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Coca-Cola considers dropping agency behind Facebook ‘porn’ campaign
Saturday, August 14th, 2010Times puts some ads outside the wall and on iPad as web display reduces
Tuesday, August 10th, 2010
This article titled “US college blocks Facebook and Twitter in social experiment” was written by Ed Pilkington in Harrisburg, for The Guardian on Friday 17th September 2010 16.50 UTC