The Australian Press Council has looked at the future of newspapers.

Traditionalists believe that the Internet is no more likely to bring down newspapers than the advent of TV half a century ago. The special attributes of newspapers, their immediacy, involvement, credibility, creativity, consistency and flexibility of use will continue to ensure their longevity.

Traditionalists are, however, being stalked by doubters, including most recently The Economist (August 2006) which is following the line that extinction of all or some of the papers in the UK is only a matter of time. It claims '…that newspapers are on the way out and that it is only a matter of time before there are closures with half the world's newspapers likely to close in the foreseeable future because 'business of selling words to readers and selling readers to advertisers, which has sustained their role in society, is falling apart.'

It is important for us to follow what is happening.

I do not believe in the demise of newspapers. I think they will take their place as an alternative channel and that publishers will learn that news (views and opinion) can be transported through many platforms and across many channels and, with content optimised for the platform and channel, they will do really rather well.

PR in the meantime will have to help provide optimised content which will mean the death of the press release as we know it today. It is also why we need XPRL

Workers go online at work - shock horror!

In just one month, more than one in three (40 per cent) Scots will make an online purchase while at work and many more will book holidays, do their banking and send e-mails to friends and relatives says the Scotsman.

Do they also do work on computers at home (like read their emails?).

But this is an opportunity.

If they need to, want to, enjoy - harness it.

You can't stop it - well you can but then you get second rate employees such as people who don't mind being disconnected from the world.

Law reins in wild webbers

Sydney Morning Herald has a headline that applies to you!

BLOGGERS beware: thoughtless musings in cyberspace can have costly consequences.

That's one lesson that might be gleaned from a Florida jury's decision last week to order a Louisiana woman to pay $US11.3 million ($15.2 million) in compensation, after she used an internet forum to accuse another woman of being a con artist and a fraud. The damages award is believed to be the largest relating to amateur postings on the internet.

Internal PR - just the job?

Trevor Cook found this:

Recent research has surfaced that quantifies the difference employee engagement can make to the bottom line. ISR, a Chicago-based HR research and consulting firm, conducted a study of over 664,000 employees from 71 companies around the world. Most dramatic among its findings was the almost 52 percent difference in one-year performance improvement in operating income between companies with highly engaged employees as compared to those companies with low engagement scores. High engagement companies improved 19.2 percent while low engagement companies declined 32.7 percent in operating income over the study period. The data covers financial performance through 2005 (www.isrinsight.com)

Charles Leadbeater on mass creativity: We Think, the book

Think this and wonder:


Wikipedia continues to draw more traffic than much more established media brands, employing hundreds more people. Open source programmes such as Linux insistently chip away at corporate providers of proprietary software. Immersive multi user computer games, such as Second Life, which depend on high levels of user participation and creativity are booming. Craigslist a self help approach to searching for jobs and other useful stuff is eating into the ad revenues of newspapers. Youth magazines such as Smash Hit have been overwhelmed by the rise of social networking sites such as MySpace and Bebo. What is going on? We-Think: the power of mass creativity is about what the rise of the likes of Wikipedia and Youtube, Linux and Craigslist means for the way we organise ourselves, not just in digital businesses but in schools and hospitals, cities and mainstream corporations. My argument is that these new forms of mass, creative collaboration announce the arrival of a society in which participation will be the key organising idea rather than consumption and work.

PushMe - PullU the difference between then and now

Sam Rose posted this paper this week at the The Aspen Institute.

It struck me for this summary:

We are living in an epochal period of transition bridging two very different types of economies and cultures. We are transitioning from a "push" economy: that tries to anticipate consumer demand, and then creates a standardized product, and "pushes the product into the market and culture, using standardized distribution channels and marketing. We are transitioning to a "pull" economy: open and flexible production platforms that use network technologies to coordinate many different entities from disparate regions.. "Pull" economies produce customized products and services that serve localized needs (demand-driven), usually in a rapid manner.

Public Relations practice stands between external forces and internal forces in a process of bringing thier values into sync. Hey! This is the Relationship Value Model all over again.

What do practitioners want to learn

This week Philippe Borremans has posted about research by Chloe Kane who did a survey of 105 senior communications practitioners in the UK - the majority working in-house - asking them about their training needs.

He says he "Was not amazed at all to see that 58 of them put "new media skills" on top of the list.

"Planning communications programs" came in second.

When asked about what practice of communications they wanted to learn more about in the next year, 52 of them responded "Corporate PR", second most popular was "Internal Communications." Talking about areas in communications that will feel/are feeling the effect of new media... they are right on.

Optimise content is key to its use and value

Confused of Calcutter (JP Rangaswami), of which much in the past and much in the future, commented:

I must have missed it the first time around, and only saw it via Boing Boing (thanks, Cory!).

Reuters reported last Friday that “Book sales get a lift from Google scan plan“.

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I read the story. Read it for yourself.

Someone’s finally figured out that letting people ‘taste” books actually helps sell books. Even obscure ones. Especially obscure ones.

I guess the penny had to drop sometime. As Doc is wont to say, they will make money because of the excerpts rather than with the excerpts.

He mentions Doc Searle of the ref="http://www.cluetrain.com/">Cluetrain Manifestoa> fame (among other things). Cluetrain was online long before it became a best selling book (made out of trees).

These are different media. Why do people find it hard to understand that we like to use different media at different times. I do not want to 'read a newspaper' online. I read newspapers that are printed on paper. I get news online - that is different.

If I want to watch a movie I go to a cinema. If I want to watch a video, I put it in my TV, if I want to watch an online movie, I use my computer. These are different activities. There is different emotional and experience attached to each.

I really do not want to watch a film on my cell phone - thank you very much.

Optimise the content for the media - this is not hard to understand.

All the nuts talked about 'protecting film copyright online' just shows how paranoid the film distributors are. If they stopped listening to lawyers for just a day, they would find out exactly how GOOD it is to have OPTIMISED content online - and they would make money from it.

It is also how to find out about convergent values in relationships.

Stewardship

Much has been written about trust, about equity and about innovation. Stewardship rarely gets a look in.

Hmmm...

Advertising numbers will do for advertising

Investor Business Daily is watching the old advertisers try to put their imprint on New Media.

ComScore Media Metrix says Google's share was 44%. Nielsen/NetRatings pegs it at 50%. Hitwise gives it 60%.

With 6.5 billion total U.S. searches in August, that's a difference of 1 billion Google searches between the lowest and highest share ratings.

Which is most accurate? No one can say for sure.

"This is why we are screaming bloody murder for all of these sites to be audited and certified," said Greg Stuart, chief executive of the Interactive Advertising Bureau.

Every major Web site publisher and rating agency is under the gun to be audited and certified by an independent firm as it increasingly becomes more important for advertisers and others to know just how many people are visiting a site, viewing a page and clicking on an ad.

To hammer home that importance, eight big advertisers signed a document in August saying the fees they pay for Web ads will be calculated based only on audited, certified numbers, starting in mid-2007.

As usual they are bleating for all the wrong reasons.

The Internet, as an advertising medium, has joined the big leagues alongside TV, print and radio. In the first six months of this year, advertisers spent $7.9 billion on U.S. Web ads, up 37% from the year-earlier period, says the IAB. Uncertainty about how many people are viewing a Web site, page or ad worries advertisers.

Of course its does. They want eyeballs because they think eyeballs on pages makes people see the adverts. How good is this as a metric?

When people can choose not to see advertising, they choose not to. So much for advertising.

People do participate in advertising if its is good enough but as participants.

In the UK, there is a huge issue for the publishers over what to measure and how.

To placate BMW, Colgate-Palmolive, Ford, Hewlett-Packard, ING, Kimberly-Clark, PepsiCo and Visa someone will come up with a number (almost any number will do -for all the good it will be). It will be useless. It will confirm doubts about marketing as a profession.

All it will tell these enormous online advertisers is how to generate more distrust, distaste, hell, frustration and distance between their brands and their consumers.

This is an issue for PR. It will be the Public Relations professionals that will have to pick up the pieces.

convergence of social networking and e-commerce

ClickZ has an interesting report.

Market research firm Compete has released a report on the convergence of social networking and e-commerce, and in the process has tried to coin a new buzzword: “social commerce,” or s-commerce for short.

The report, “s-commerce: beyond MySpace and YouTube,” finds consumer visits to social networking sites have increased 109 percent since January 2004, and page views per visitor have grown by 414 percent in the same time period. "Social networkers” spend less time viewing traditional media and have more discretionary income and agreater penchant for online shopping than non-social networking site users.

Marketers having the most success with s-commerce are using a combination of branded micro-sites, customer reviews, forums, peer-to-peer transactions, product blogs and user-generated content projects, according to Compete.

Marketers may be involved but this space is the domain of PR but because launching a branded social network means competing for a dwindling slice of end users' attention, there is a need for the conversation to be lively and engaged.

Its about building relationships stupid.

Bubble and Squeek - Web 2.0 is finite

PC Advisor is whistling in the dark to keep its spirits up. There is a bubble 2.0 and it will burst.

The article says:

One of the reasons why the first dotcom bubble popped was that many of the companies behind the unwarranted enthusiasm for e-everything assumed that people were eager to spend money on the internet, and that minor niggles such as web security wouldn't affect user confidence. But not enough 'normal' people were relying on the internet on a daily basis in 2000. And in the years that followed the daily security threats and arrival of hi-tech crime as a viable business ensured that few were prepared to reveal their credit card details to the wider web.

Six years later, however, things have changed: Google, a search-engine company in 2000, has become as advertising firm; eBay, an auction site for geeks back then, is a viable business allowing anyone with a net connection at home to set up shop; and traditional old media firms like News Corp are terrified that their readers and advertisers will abandon the printed page and are snapping up web firms left, right and centre. The web is a viable business, and so many of those predictions about Bubble 2.0 are completely unfounded.

The real problem is that web 2.0 is massively predicated on the advertising model.

Ads ain't everything.

Emerging from this will be a state of relationship development that invites people to become consumers. Advertising is too clumsy, it irritates, it gets in the way, it can be ignored and any economy that falters by just a tiny bit will bring the whole edifice tumbling.

Emerging from the fall will be a different and more competent paradigm which is beginning to emerge. It is a paradigm that sees people who are involved in social media as the nexus of relationships with shared values. The conversation with these people will change organisations and the way they can contribute at many levels.

Pop! to the advertising model.

PR's can do software too

One of the things that stops PR from being ultra powerful is that it has a big problem with software. Its geek stuff. Its too complicated for the PR brain. So the geeks are making it simple.

Coghead just launched a service that lets anyone create a Web-based business applicationfrom expense management to project management.

So far so good, but what has that got to do with PR.
Here is a simple idea. What about running PR programmes with project management software. Real deadlines with goals and deadlines for creation, approvals and distribution.

It saves time effort and reduces cost.

Ah! Now there is a good idea.

Ultra Mobile

Business2Day has an interesting piece about a small New York City startup called Transmedia it is getting ready to launch Glide 2.0, the second version of its Webtop software.

It is also partnering with Intel to include the Glide service with all upcoming ultramobile PCs (new devices bigger than a Treo but smaller than a laptop, with only a touchscreen). While Google just yesterday merged its Web docs and spreadsheets, Transmedia is much further along in developing a full-fledged Webtop that combines a Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation software, calendar, contacts, bookmarks, e-mail, and photo editor. It also lets you upload and share all your digital music, photos, and video. "All the apps are integrated. Each app is one click from the next," says Transmedia CEO Donald Leka. And, oh yeah, any file, document, photo, or video on Glide can be accessed from many mobile phones (because everything is transcoded into flash). It can also sync all of your files between Glide, your desktop PC, your laptop, and your mobile devices.

These developments are new platforms and offer new channels for communication.

Detaching the Internet from the ubiquitous PC is very important. It adds a lot to the reach and versatility of the net. It is also a big challenge. There will be few places that are private and secure as mobile takes hold (see this post to know what this means).

Who own your copyright?

The intellectual property question of ownership of material submitted to social media sites is heating up as corporate acquisition talks for YouTube and other startups catch fire, says BL Ochman.

She has some very interesting points such as: "Interestingly, you don't own the rights to material you submit to video contests, or to YouTube, but you do own the rights to coding you do at Second Life."

She adds: As Mark Cuban ever so succinctly puts it: "The copyright shit is going to hit the lawsuit fan."

The market for real goods created from the digital objects coded in virtual reality could be enormous in a virtual world like Second Life, where the creators own the rights to the objects that they make, Michael Buckbee told Wired

Robin Good says of participatory sites like YouTube, MySpace: "While paying lip service to the democratic, free sharing of information, then, services like YouTube reserve the right to co-opt, edit, repackage and sell on the citizen produced media that they distribute."

As always, there is more good stuff on her post.

Mean time Shaun Woodward suggests new technology is the key to beating movie piracy, the UK film minister has told industry executives reports the BBC.

Making films available on demand as soon as they are released at cinemas could help stop fans watching illegal copies, Shaun Woodward said.

"The real answer is in the technology," he told the BBC News website, citing the success of legal music downloads.

There is another issue and that is the differences that will emerge between interpretations of copyright between countries and cultures. At present the big moves are in the USA next I guess will be Europe but when these things get to the authorities in the Middle East and China, there is a whole different culture and a few billion people who are not going to sign up to copyright as we know it.

People are shy online

Jakob Nielsen's latest Alertbox discusses participation inequality in online communities, where 1% of users account for almost all the action. Blogs have the worst participation inequality, says Nielsen. "The problem is that the overall system is not representative of Web users."

BL Ochman has her own views....

I agree there is inertia and the details of the research is here.

It take courage to change other peoples ideas and work. We are at the very beginning of this liberalisation of interactions.

Interactivity has been suppressed by so many dominant coalitions on so many occasions that people have reservations.

There are plenty who would control the message, the conversation, the population.

Are they really right, is social media self governing?

No it is not. There are rules. Some have legal sanction like copyright. Some are held in trust because people understand and sign up to the values (or their perceived values) of their organisation.

But given the freedom to be transparent, the interactions offer huge benefits to the individual and organisations so encouragement has a major upside.

PR has to manage the board when it comes to social media

Greenfield Says:

When it comes to employee blogging, how much freedom should employees have? Does management really need to know who is blogging, when they are blogging and what they are saying about the company?

In the old days, all corporate communications channels went through the PR department. PR had the messages. PR directed the messengers. Everything was centralized, formalized and contained.

How different is today's world of employee blogging. I don’t have time to monitor what everyone is saying. Employees must find their own individual voice. I may not always be wild about what they might say, but I am confident that the process and the wider community will keep individuals in check. Outrageous statements by renegade employees lose credibility. And personal expression does not mean carte blanche to say anything. Employees are still employees beholden to company policies and codes of conduct.

So as we send our employees out into the blogosphere, we need to set the boundaries for engagement and determine our level of comfort for transparency and candor. Should employees who talk about your company go through formal training? Should they use the same templates? Should their comments be approved beforehand? Should we dictate what they say?

He is, of course wrong. 'In the old days' employees went down to the pub and had a good bitch just after work. Now they do it online. Now managers have to take note and a good job too.

The idea that PR 'controlled the message is also false. We used to offer messages but our publics offered their own interpretation (gosh! Sentient journalists... wow!).

If an organisation is well managed and employees know what its values are, then there is little to fear but if not the PR Director needs to get hold of the Board by the scruff of their combined necks and give them a good shake.

Why? Because, you can't stop the conversation.

Spreading the word

The government of Libya is reported to have agreed to provide its 1.2 million school children with a cheap durable laptop computer by June 2008.

The laptops offer internet access and are powered by a wind-up crank. They cost $100 and manufacturing begins next year, says One Laptop per Child, reports the BBC.

The non-profit association's chairman, Nicholas Negroponte, said the deal was reached on Tuesday in Libya.

This is not the same as being online but goes a long way towards it.

Break up the Internet - threat or promise?

Nitin Desai, chair of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF), set up by the UN, warned that concerns over the net's future could lead to separation, reports the BBC.

"People are concerned about whether the system we have now will also work five years from now," he said.

Mr Desai was speaking at a conference in London to discuss the net.

The conference was organised by Nominet, the UK body in charge of domain names ending .uk, ahead of the first-ever Internet Governance Forum, a global gathering of stakeholders in Athens later this month.

The internet was increasingly being shaped by companies and organisations at the "edges" and not by government, public sector bodies and regulators, he said.

This was concerning some countries who wanted more involvement in the development of the net.

"These are the reasons these entities - government and private sector - feel they need to be reassured that the system they are relying on is secure, safe and reliable - that they cannot be suddenly thrown out of that system by some attack," said Mr Desai.

He said the Chinese government was concerned that users still had to type webpage addresses using Latin characters even when the pages were in Chinese.

Carphone Warehouse buys AOL UK

Carphone Warehouse is to buy the UK's third-largest internet provider, AOL UK reports the BBC.

BBC business editor Robert Peston said Carphone Warehouse, owner of the TalkTalk broadband and phone offering, was paying £370m for the operation.

AOL UK has 2.1 million customers across the country - 600,000 on dial-up and 1.5 million with broadband connections.

Carphone Warehouse, which runs the UK's largest chain of mobile phone stores, first moved into broadband in April.