tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-58087458081081292662024-03-13T14:10:27.120-07:00RobinJazzRobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.comBlogger35125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-67726166159250628822012-11-29T07:43:00.001-08:002012-11-29T07:49:11.174-08:00The new face of academic writing?<div>
The Paper Sprint. Locked in a room with Dr Williams. Two laptops, Google Docs with the article, simultaneous editing. Four hours to finish the article.<br />
Will it work?<br />
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<img src="http://lh5.ggpht.com/-r6oMsfcIwYo/ULeCoLkNnKI/AAAAAAAAAaA/dzo4hx5uDyQ/1354202645063.jpg" /></div>
RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0Bedford, Bedford52.13597 -0.4666546tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-57996638251439194862012-03-02T14:37:00.008-08:002012-11-29T07:47:01.836-08:00Selling your house with social media<span style="font-family: inherit;">.</span><br />
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/robin_croft/5898310265/" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;" title="Gatepost by robin.croft, on Flickr"><img alt="Gatepost" height="320" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5277/5898310265_68ac277d82.jpg" width="240" /></a><span style="font-family: inherit;">I have been watching a TV series called </span><a href="http://www.channel4.com/programmes/phil-spencer-secret-agent" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">Phil Spencer, Secret Agent</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">. This is a property programme and each week during the series Phil tries to help a family sell their house. In </span><a href="http://www.channel4.com/programmes/phil-spencer-secret-agent/4od#3259853" style="font-family: inherit;" target="_blank">the programme I saw today</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> he was in Harrogate, where </span><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 14px;">he met Andrew and Jenna whose pleasant semi-detached house in a desirable area was not attracting the interest it should have.</span><br />
<br />
So far so good: the premise of the programme is pretty much the same as the<a href="http://www.youtube.com/abcdef" target="_blank"> long running TV series</a> <a href="http://www.housedoctor.co.uk/">House Doctor</a> which was first screened in 1998. Like Ann Maurice, Phil tells the vendors bluntly how their property looks from a buyer's perspective, and then they get to work to transform it.<br />
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Why?<br />
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This process goes well, except that Phil believes the property is over-priced. However, not only do Andrew and Jenna ignore this advice, they go on to sack their estate agent and appoint a PR company to sell the house instead. The promise is that <a href="http://www.twitter.com/" target="_blank">Twitter </a>and <a href="http://www.facebook.com/" target="_blank">Facebook </a>will deliver where conventional marketing failed. <br />
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Phil is not convinced and by the end of the programme has only found one potential buyer to view the property - someone who had been identified earlier when the house was with an agent. I would like to know what the end result was: according to the <a href="http://movewithusuk.wordpress.com/2012/02/07/" target="_blank">Move With Us</a> blog the social media route didn't do the business and the couple put the house back on the market with an estate agent.<br />
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Cutting out the agent is a process known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disintermediation" target="_blank">disintermediation</a>. The principle is that electronic media can fill all the roles traditionally serviced by an agent: an example might be buying airline tickets or motor insurance direct from the service provider. Andrew and Jenna were persuaded that social media could do the job better than the agent, but it turned out not to be the case. Why?<br />
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I wondered the same thing last summer when I was about to put my house on the market. I figured out that as I understand <i>online </i>and am considered to be a social media expert, I could find all the prospective buyers I needed, and then use technology to get them hooked. In doing so I would save several thousand pounds in agents fees. <br />
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In the end, though, I went through a traditional estate agent. There were a lot of reasons for this: one was that I found that in Britain at least buyers prefer to deal with a third party, rather than negotiate directly with a seller. I also felt that a prospective buyer would have more respect for key details such as price when it had been set by an agent. But most importantly I found that 21st century real estate in the UK is dominated by two online platforms, <a href="http://www.rightmove.co.uk/" target="_blank">RightMove</a> and <a href="http://www.primelocation.com/" target="_blank">PrimeLocation</a>. Both of these provide a superb range of services to buyers and have transformed the property market. Almost every property on the market in the UK is listed with these companies, but both will only take bookings from registered estate agents.<br />
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You can try and use Facebook and Twitter to create a buzz around your home, but if it isn't on RightMove or PrimeLocation it just isn't visible.<br />
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<a href="http://uk.finaperf.com/images/logos/240x180/rightmove.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://uk.finaperf.com/images/logos/240x180/rightmove.jpeg" /></a></div>
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My estate agents agreed to use my photographs of the house: I spent a huge amount of time getting the angles, layouts, lighting and colour just right in each of them, and I made 40-50 examples available for their brochure and for uploading to Rightmove. Those that they didn't use I <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/robin_croft/sets/72157627091800092/" target="_blank">uploaded to Flickr</a> and tried to tag them carefully to improve their visibility. From time to time I linked <a href="https://twitter.com/#!/robinjazz" target="_blank">my Twitter feed </a>to the pictures (I have more than 500 'followers' on the site). Similarly, I would comment about the house and the pictures on FaceBook - but only occasionally as social media users don't like being sold to.<br />
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The Flickr photos tried to make the place look nice, and to sell the lifestyle a buyer could enjoy. This helped to back up what the agents and Rightmove were doing, but <a href="http://www.flickr.com/" target="_blank">Flickr</a>, <a href="http://www.twitter.com/" target="_blank">Twitter </a>and <a href="http://www%2Cfacebook.com/" target="_blank">Facebook </a>didn't sell the house. The metrics provided by Flickr showed no more than half a dozen hits each week for each picture: our pages on Rightmove were getting hundreds of hits in the same time.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/robin_croft/5890878001/" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Wayside House, around 1935 by robin.croft, on Flickr"><img alt="Wayside House, around 1935" height="211" src="http://farm6.staticflickr.com/5279/5890878001_af85b2c1fe.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wayside House in about 1930: selling the history</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Social media are about telling stories. I tried to tell the story of the house - its history and its location. But there is only so much you can say, and in the end the people most interested in the place came because of its size, position, value-for-money and other practical factors. The agents did a superb job and found buyers for us after just four months (in a depressed market). But all of the interest came via RightMove.<br />
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RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-82370180618980881312011-05-03T14:57:00.000-07:002011-05-09T16:12:40.010-07:00Music piracy and the investment drought<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://library.thinkquest.org/03oct/00494/Drought/images/Drought%202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://library.thinkquest.org/03oct/00494/Drought/images/Drought%202.jpg" width="268" /></a></div>For several years now Britain's music industry has been obsessed with the problem of illegal downloading. Last December the BPI, the trade body representing all the major record labels as well as many independents, produced an authoritative <a href="http://www.bpi.co.uk/press-area/news-amp3b-press-release/article/new-bpi-report-shows-illegal-downloading-remains-serious-threat-to-britains-digital-music-future.aspx">report</a>, 'Digital Music Nation 2010'. Based on research by two respected market research companies, the report painted a picture of a burgeoning new, vibrant digital music sector in the UK. But the real story - made clear in BPI press releases - was about music piracy. In fact, variants on the word 'illegal' appear in the report more than 70 times.<br />
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We have looked at the arguments about illegal downloading in <a href="http://robinjazz.blogspot.com/2011/04/piracy-is-destroying-musicians-jobs.html">earlier posts</a>, noting that the industry can't always be trusted with the facts. But while one of the arguments was about <a href="http://robinjazz.blogspot.com/2011/04/piracy-is-destroying-musicians-jobs.html">piracy destroying jobs</a>, the BPI also stressed the impact on investment. Looking at the word count again, variants on the word invest, investment, investor, etc. crop up 30 times in this report. The BPI identifies two main problems: firstly that outside investors will take their cash to sectors where this kind of theft is not endemic; and secondly that record companies themselves will be unable to continue to invest in supporting new musical talent.<br />
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This latter point was made by Andrew Lloyd Webber who told a House of Lords debate that music piracy in Britain was undermining the industry to such an extent that in ten years it would be unlikely that a band such as the Beatles would emerge (reported in the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/5095254/Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-internet-piracy-will-stop-emergence-of-bands-like-The-Beatles.html?utm_source=tmg&utm_medium=top5&utm_campaign=tickets"><i>Daily Telegraph</i></a>). More recently the<i> Daily Mail'</i>s Business Editor described how before rampant piracy there was "cash to invest in new performers and to keep the creative juices flowing by paying good royalties to established singers, orchestras and musicians". Now, though, illegal downloading "has made it all but impossible to sustain heavy investment in new artists."<br />
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As has been noted <a href="http://robinjazz.blogspot.com/2011/04/emi-is-being-throttled-by-music-pirates.html">earlier</a>, EMI's new focus on business and profits when private equity group Terra Firma acquired the firm in 2007, was followed quickly by the departure of Radiohead, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney, Queen and Pink Floyd.<br />
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But what does "heavy investment in new artists" consist of?<br />
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When a record label 'discovers' a new act they will attempt to 'sign' them. Typically this involves offering a sum of money in exchange for the band signing a contract. What many bands don't realize is that this cash is an advance on future album, touring and single sales. The record label's costs in putting the band in the studio, in recording, editing, pressing, distributing, marketing... the list goes on... invariably go against the band's account on the debit side. Now they owe the record label for the original advance, plus a whole raft of costs (perhaps even the "<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/2789765/Radiohead-attack-EMI-over-album-release.html">flowers and fruit</a>" lavished by EMI's management?) associated with getting them airplay.<br />
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The record label will argue - with some justification - that their investment is in the production values added to the recordings, in the marketing expertise that will get the new band airplay, in the strategic insights which will identify market segments that the band would never have been aware of. With luck sales will flood in and in time royalties will have finally overtaken costs, and the band will finally really start earning.<br />
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More likely, though, it will be time to make the second album - more costs, more expenses. It was no surprise that many of EMI's major acts walked - these lucky individuals were in credit and could afford to take their business elsewhere. The majority of musical acts have no choice: they are heavily in debt to their record company and are committed to putting out a new album every two years or so.<br />
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What other industry has this approach to 'investment' in new business assets? Almost all of the risk is borne by the artists, not the record label. It is like supermarket giant Tesco telling a farmer that he must bear the cost of supplying produce, packaging it, distributing it, paying all of Tesco's overheads - and that in time the farmer <i>might </i>start to get some revenue of his own. The only equivalent I can think of is the book publishing sector.<br />
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Both music and publishing seem to have a business model where elements of commercial risk are skewed towards the artist rather than the company. In the cases of both music and publishing there are now digital alternatives: artists no longer need the sort of support mechanisms that were offered in the 20th century.<br />
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A few musicians such as Paul McCartney and Radiohead have been able to break out of this cycle of debt as their products have had international success. Most, though, have little choice. In genres such as folk and jazz, musicians remain in debt to their record labels all their working lives.RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-34570914659743242862011-04-30T15:55:00.000-07:002011-05-02T14:13:04.837-07:00EMI is being throttled by music pirates!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://culturewav.es/system/images/517303/original/emi_0115.jpg?1282327502" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="208" src="http://culturewav.es/system/images/517303/original/emi_0115.jpg?1282327502" width="320" /></a></div>EMI was founded 80 years ago and has grown into one of the 'big four' of the recorded music industry (with Universal, Sony and Warner). Now, though, it is in the hands of its bankers (Citigroup) and a buyer is sought. What went wrong? <br />
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Earlier this month Britain's <i><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375093/Google-threatens-destroy-pop-sensation-Adele-Britains-film-music-industries.html">Daily Mail</a> </i>had no doubt. A picture slogan spells it out: "the future of recording giant EMI is being undermined by Google" (<i>the Mail</i>'s argument is that because music pirates show up in Google searches, then Google is complicit in music piracy). In an extraordinary outburst <i>the Mail </i>rants that "digital piracy ... has made it all but impossible to sustain heavy investment in new artists".<br />
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Similar points were made in the <i><a href="http://www.nme.com/blog/index.php?blog=146&title=emi_s_plight_proves_it_downloading_has_m&more=1&c=1&tb=1&pb=1">NME</a></i> recently, under the headline "EMI's Plight Proves It - Downloading Has Murdered the Music Business", and the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/mobile/business/8597576.stm">BBC</a> identified downloading as one of a range of problems undermining the company. The <i>Daily Mail</i> agrees about other factors - it also blames "the aftermath of the financial crisis", ignoring the fact that the reason Citigroup has acquired EMI is that the previous owners (private equity investorsTerra Firma) had been unable to keep up the payments. When Terra Firma bought EMI in August 2007 the financial crisis had yet to hit the headlines, and EMI was in desperate financial straights anyway.<br />
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Back then, Terrra Firma's Guy Hands identified a host of problems at EMI, but illegal downloading didn't appear to be one of them. An article in <a href="http://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/entertainment/articles/2011-02/02/gq-music-emi-music-records-debt-piracy/lily-allen">GQ</a> reported how an audit found that London staff had spend £700,000 on taxis in a year, and that some executive salaries were as much as double the market rate. The Guardian <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jan/12/robbiewilliams.emi">reported </a>that expenses were running at the rate of £100 million, including what Hands euphemistically referred to as "flowers and fruit".<br />
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The new owners were realistic enough to recognise that the music business was changing: to survive and prosper (like many of the newer independent labels) it would need to bring its costs base down in proportion to the size of the business. The new CEO Guy Hands believed that he could add value to EMI by working its assets harder. But as <a href="http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/culture/neilmccormick/100051133/will-emi-correct-their-mistakes-and-remain-a-major-record-company/">Neil McCormick</a> in the <i>Daily Telegraph</i> pointed out, these assets were the musicians, and they didn't take kindly to being treated as balance sheet items. "Radiohead, The Rolling Stones and ex-Beatle Sir Paul McCartney were amongst the most high profile of EMI’s artists to take themselves elsewhere in a huff." Later they were joined by Queen and Pink Floyd (<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/media/7712605/Guy-Hands-wins-backing-for-105m-EMI-cash.html">who had a separate legal dispute over royalties</a>). Veteran EMI insider and producer George Martin voice their frustration "I understood Paul McCartney's frustration when he quit EMI... The old production teams had broken up; recordings seemed to be manipulated by a faceless committee. One-on-one contact no longer seemed to be applied."<br />
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Even Hands' allies saw the difficulties (without highlighting music piracy among these): the new chairman of EMI's holding company, former Director-General of the BBC Lord Birt told the House of Lords that EMI "has been slower than most to reinvent itself and to take advantage of new opportunities for discovering talent and better serving businesses and consumers" (<i><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/music-news/5095254/Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-internet-piracy-will-stop-emergence-of-bands-like-The-Beatles.html?utm_source=tmg&utm_medium=top5&utm_campaign=tickets">Daily Telegraph</a></i>)<br />
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EMI is a long-established company in a market that has been subject to disruptive changes. It has failed to adapt to the digital era, and in recent times has been focused on business to the detriment of its artists and audiences. The <i>Daily Mail</i> is wide of the mark talking about piracy making it impossible to sustain heavy investment in artists: EMI wasn't even able to hold on to the major artists it had. Music piracy has clearly affected EMI, but as I noted in <a href="http://robinjazz.blogspot.com/2011/04/music-piracy-who-do-we-trust.html">an earlier posting</a>, illegal copying of music has been endemic since the 1970s - EMI's heydey. </div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">Besides, there is some evidence that persistent illegal downloaders are also often the biggest purchasers of recorded music. How do we know this? It's all in the <i><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1224460/Illegal-downloaders-spend-MORE-music-obey-law.html">Daily Mail</a></i>. I wish they would make their minds up.</div><div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;"><br />
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</div>RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-26081390290983350422011-04-28T08:46:00.000-07:002011-04-29T03:13:22.865-07:00Piracy is destroying musicians' jobs!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs47/i/2009/185/9/6/GGG_Out_of_Work_Musician_by_Mad_Hatter_LCarol.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://fc05.deviantart.net/fs47/i/2009/185/9/6/GGG_Out_of_Work_Musician_by_Mad_Hatter_LCarol.jpg" width="245" /></a></div>In <a href="http://robinjazz.blogspot.com/2011/04/music-piracy-who-do-we-trust.html">a recent posting</a> on the topic of music filesharing I blithely avoided the ethics of illegal downloading by saying "It's complicated". I went on to show how many people distrust the music business when it bangs on about its lost revenues: not only has it been doing this for more than 30 years, its figures are often questionable and there is certainly some contradictory evidence.<br />
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Another strong argument it has been using in recent years is that piracy is destroying jobs in the music industry. Under the headline "1.2 billion songs downloaded illegally", Britain's <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/12-billion-songs-downloaded-illegally-2161907.html">Independent</a> newspaper reported "The creative industries employ two million people in the UK... Urgent action is needed to protect those jobs and allow Britain to achieve its potential in the global digital market." This is quoted directly from <a href="http://www.bpi.co.uk/press-area/news-amp3b-press-release/article/new-bpi-report-shows-illegal-downloading-remains-serious-threat-to-britains-digital-music-future.aspx">a report produced by the BPI</a>, the trade body that represents Britain's record labels. It is a credit to the BPI's public relations team that the same quote found its way into many other national and regional newspapers in Britain, and was cited in numerous other blogs and online news pages. <br />
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Making the connection between illegal downloading and the threat to two million jobs is a clever piece of reporting, as most readers leave with the impression that if piracy is allowed to continue there are going to be vast numbers of people thrown out of work. That is why "urgent action" is needed now.<br />
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There is nothing much wrong with the data, and the figure of 2 million jobs makes for good headlines. Indeed, urgent action was being called for in December 2010 because although the UK's <a href="http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2010/24/contents">Digital Economy Act</a> had come into force just a few months earlier, it was looking increasingly clear that the legislation was being <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2010/nov/11/digital-economy-act-bt-talktalk">implemented too slowly</a> for the industry's liking. Earlier this year it became clear - following <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/20/filesharing-bt-talktalk-digital-economy-act">legal challenges</a> by some internet service providers (ISPs) - that the law might not be enforceable.<br />
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The Digital Economy Act was one of the last pieces of legislation put through by Britain's Labour government, which rushed the law through parliament just before losing office in May 2010. The Act put the onus on ISPs to warn users who had been identified by the music industry as illegal downloaders, and to terminate their internet service after three 'offences'. It was widely <a href="http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/the_web/article3353387.ece">referred to in the press</a> as the "three-strikes rule", which is similar to <a href="http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4165519.ece">legislation operating in France</a>.<br />
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The BPI had lobbied vigourously for the Digital Economy Act as a way of combating internet piracy, but by the end of 2010 it looked as if its efforts might have been in vain. Not only was implementation being slowed, but one of first decisions made the new Conservative-Liberal coalition government in Britain was to abolish the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property Policy (<a href="http://www.ipo.gov.uk/pro-ipresearch.htm?sabip=/">SABIP</a>), the body which had been instrumental in setting up the Digital Economy Act in the first place.<br />
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In order to regain the PR initiative the BPI commissioned <a href="http://www.bpi.co.uk/press-area/news-amp3b-press-release/article/new-bpi-report-shows-illegal-downloading-remains-serious-threat-to-britains-digital-music-future.aspx">new research</a> showing that illegal downloading was still endemic in Britain, and played the jobs card. This was another shrewd lobbying tactic: Britain's new government was struggling with a economy in recession and unemployment rising to levels not seen for more than a decade.<br />
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There was nothing dishonest about the BPI research: it had been produced by respected market research companies Harris Interactive and UKOM/Nielsen. And the figure of 2 million employed came from <a href="http://www.culture.gov.uk/publications/7634.aspx">the government's own figures</a>. What is questionable is suggesting that illegal downloading is putting 2 million jobs at risk. The two million figure relates to the creative industries as a whole, and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport which came up with the number was at pains to admit that these are "experimental statistics" and a "first attempt" to measure the sector.<br />
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Looking more closely at the data we find that the music industry element is subsumed under the heading 'Music & Visual and Performing Arts': the largest employer is 'Software and Electronic Publishing' with more than twice the number represented by Music. Looking more closely at the DCMS classifications, the Music category included anyone employed in the performing arts, supporting the performing arts and working in casting. There are additional categories counted here including operating arts facilities, "artistic creation" and employment agencies in the arts.<br />
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So just how many of the reported 306,000 people in the "Music & Visual and Performing Arts" sector are connected to the music business? Once we strip out all backstage staff at theatres and arts complexes? When we take out the entire acting profession? In truth nobody knows. But we can get an indication, perhaps, from applications for courses in higher education in Britain: according to <a href="http://www.ucas.ac.uk/about_us/stat_services/stats_online/data_tables/subject/2010">UCAS figures</a> for 2010, more than twice the number of young people applied for courses in drama and dance (64,000) than chose music (28,000).<br />
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This sort of ratio might mean that less than 100,000 people are employed in the music 'business'. But you are going to get better headlines quoting 2 million jobs under threat from illegal downloading. This is an example of the practice regularly highlighted by author and columnist <a href="http://www.badscience.net/">Ben Goldacre</a>, called 'cherry picking' statistics to suit your argument. <br />
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In any case, it is practically impossible to measure the number of people employed in the music business. Hardly any musicians make a living from their art (in the sense that it is their only or main source of income). Mostly musicians supplement meagre earnings from gigs, merchandise and recordings with more regular, paying jobs in areas such as teaching and the service sector.<br />
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It is not so much these jobs that are 'under threat' from music piracy, but instead those in the record labels represented by the BPI. But technology is changing the whole creative landscape, and there is <a href="http://robinjazz.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-is-music-business-for.html">a strong argument</a> that musicians don't really need the traditional record labels any more.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Illustration (used with permission) from Deviant Art's ~<a class="u" href="http://mad-hatter-lcarol.deviantart.com/">Mad-Hatter-LCarol</a></span></div>RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-43655088019757743522011-04-24T14:00:00.000-07:002011-04-24T14:12:21.763-07:00Storytelling and St George<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01155/portal-graphics-20_1155362a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01155/portal-graphics-20_1155362a.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Yesterday was the birthday of William Shakespeare. The day is also celebrated in England as St George's Day - St George has been England's patron since 1422. Here in the words of Shakespeare, is King Henry V urging his troops into battle with the French: here<br />
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<i> I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, <br />
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot: <br />
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge .<br />
Cry God for Harry, England and St George!</i><br />
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(Henry V, Act 3 Scene 1)<br />
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Shakespeare was a master story-teller, of course, but the legend of St George is nothing more than that - legend. How is it that a mythical figure from the distant past in the middle east could come to stand for Englishness, the national 'brand'? The answer to this question is more complex than you would think, and is given <a href="http://www.scribd.com/doc/53695446/St-George-Social-Brand">here</a> in a paper I will be presenting next month at the CHARM conference in New York City.<br />
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What has all this to do with social media and other aspects of technology that are normally covered in the blog? Curiously, quite a lot. St George vanquished more deserving English saints to become national patron by having a more interesting story (good and evil, maidens and dragons, that sort of thing). In just the same way marketing people are discovering that in order to succeed in social media you need to be telling a persuasive story.<br />
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A good narrative will not only engage with your audience, but they will share it with their friends and family. A good story gets people's attention, and is infinitely adaptable. Successive generations of rulers in England managed the St George narrative to emphasize different aspects at distinct periods of history. For example in the period of imperial expansion in the 19th century, it was St George the conquering soldier-hero. After the first world war people wondered what 9 million men had died for: St George the soldier-martyr was then immortalized in memorials all over England.<br />
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Word-of-mouth marketing has been practiced as long a people have been able to use speech to communicate, and word-of-mouth relies on persuasive and memorable stories. Social media marketing relies, not on the slick production values of 20th century advertising, but on simple, credible, powerful stories that people will listen to and spread. It is these stories that people will share on Facebook and will re-tweet on Twitter. St George has long been a 'social brand', standing for a certain set of values and behavioural norms. Now consumer brands are having to rediscover the art of storytelling.RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-32079465364748946412011-04-22T15:31:00.000-07:002011-04-22T15:31:22.086-07:00George Gershwin: living with disruption<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/content/images/2005/09/29/george_gershwin_150x180.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.bbc.co.uk/devon/content/images/2005/09/29/george_gershwin_150x180.jpg" width="266" /></a></div>It is common for people to think that technology is moving so fast that we are in danger of being passed by. In yesterday's post I reported how Feargal Sharkey had talked of the effect of 3-4 disruptive technologies happening during his musical career. These included music going digital, the advent of the CD and download technologies like iTunes.<br />
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This feeling is nothing new, and for two hundred years or more people have felt the same way. You might be tempted to think that this would not apply to the music business, but it is as true for music as for any other aspect of life. A good way of illustrating this is to look at the life of George Gershwin.<br />
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Gershwin was born into a Russian Jewish immigrant family in New York in 1898. There were no obvious musical influences in the family, but George seemed to show an aptitude for the piano at an early age. He went on to become a prolific composer of songs, musicals and orchestral works, and was probably the first composer in history to get rich from music.<br />
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George Gershwin quit school at the age of 15 to join the music business. At that time the money was in sheet music, and George was employed as a music 'plugger' (a kind of salesman) in Tin Pan Alley. His job was to promote songs owned by publisher Remicks to would-be buyers from Broadway and music halls. A catchy number associated with a hit show would sell hundreds of thousands of copies of the sheet music.<br />
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At the same time Gershwin was starting to produce recordings of Remick's numbers, and some of his own compositions, on a new development for the music business, the automatic piano. These devices were the forerunners of programmable computers - virtuoso pianists would themselves create original 'recordings' on paper rolls which in turn would be fed into the ultimate in-home entertainment system.<br />
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George Gerswhin's big break came with one of his own numbers, writing the music in 1920 for Swanee which was a huge hit for singer Al Jolson and librettist Irving Berlin. Recorded? Yes. Jolson's success with with an emerging technology, the phonograph. This went on to change everything - effectively wiping out most of the sheet music business.<br />
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George Gershwin, though, was hot property in the older musical economy, and went on to write hundreds of individual songs, mostly in Broadway shows and other musical offerings. Some of these shows went on to become massive hits (and, like Oh Kay, are still performed today), others died quietly. Gershwin's greatest songs have been recorded by countless musicians.<br />
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Gershwin was one of the first musicians to realize the promotional potential of radio, the hottest medium of the early 1920s. At the beginning of 1922 there were just 28 radio stations in the US: by the end of the year there were 570. The new 'broadcasters' were struggling to fill the schedules, and here the music industry was able to help out and music 'pluggers' like the young Gershwin were sent out to plug the gaps. <br />
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If this technological explosion sounds familiar, then listen to this complaint from the time when networked radio was becoming a reality: "Anyone who thinks he can carry a tune... nowadays takes a 'shot' at music making" (Gershwin himself in 1926, when his burgeoning career as a national broadcaster, with a syndicated coast-to-coast radio show and a massive audience to match.<br />
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Gerswhin, of course, turned his hand to orchestral works (the most famous being Rhapsody in Blue) and opera (he wrote the music to the perennial Porgy and Bess). The next technology he embraced was the movies, moving to Hollywood in 1934 and writing the score for two Goldwyn blockbusters, including Shall We Dance which featured Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.<br />
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George Gershwin died tragically early, on July 11 1935. During his short career the music business he earned a living from evolved from making its money from sheet music and piano rolls, the stage and then into radio, gramophone and the movies. Gershwin was just 39, and in his short life had ridden the wave of a succession disruptive technologies. Feargal Sharkey is 52.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><object width="320" height="266" class="BLOGGER-youtube-video" classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" data-thumbnail-src="http://3.gvt0.com/vi/8QxWxsK8_3s/0.jpg"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/8QxWxsK8_3s&fs=1&source=uds" /><param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" /><embed width="320" height="266" src="http://www.youtube.com/v/8QxWxsK8_3s&fs=1&source=uds" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed></object></div>RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-5255074109220458392011-04-21T13:55:00.000-07:002011-04-21T14:44:31.085-07:00What is the music business for?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://tech100-2009.t3.com/filestorage/images/full/82-feargal-sharkey-VJeYC9Z0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://tech100-2009.t3.com/filestorage/images/full/82-feargal-sharkey-VJeYC9Z0.jpg" /></a></div>Just recently I was at the Guardian's <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/changingmediasummit">Changing Media Summit</a>, listening to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feargal_Sharkey">Feargal Sharkey</a> talking about the music business. Sharkey made his name as the lead vocalist of the 70s punk band <i>The Undertones</i>. He noted how he had lived through 3-4 disruptive technologies (the move from vinyl to CD, the growth of the digital, the evolution of downloadable music, etc.), and is known as the man who crossed over from music to management (he now heads up UK Music, an umbrella body representing the interests of musicians, writers and other creatives in the music business). Sharkey made the point that, regardless of the disruption, irrespective of the doom-mongering of the record labels, young people would continue to write, record and perform new and original music. It really wasn't about the money.<br />
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The Undertones were signed to Sire Records, a label that was bought by Warner in the 1980s, and which in turn is in difficulties and is up for sale. The question is, what does a record label <i>do</i>? What is it <i>for</i>? A useful term to consider at this point in 21st century is <i>disintermediation</i>. This is a word that is used by experts commenting on what has happened to retailing in the internet era: airlines, car insurance, investments and many other sectors have <i>disintermediated</i>, that is to say, agencies and brokerages have ceased to become useful when consumers can buy directly from the provider online.<br />
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Originally a travel agent or insurance broker on the high street would have the subject knowledge to match our needs and wants with what was available on the market. The intermediary would complete the paperwork, issue documentation, take payment and generally complete the transaction. Now all of this is done online, direct between consumer and provider.<br />
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In the music business, from the middle part of the 20th century, record labels set up to exploit the new technological phenomenon that was the grammophone (EMI started business in 1931, for example). As intermediaries, record labels provided the recording and production facilities for musical acts, financed the pressing and distribution of costly vinyl recordings, and managed the entire promotional effort of the acts they signed.<br />
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This particular branch of the creative industries did particularly well in the post-war years, riding the wave of pop music, rock, punk and later genres. It was particularly good in developing relationships with the mass media, and as both sectors started to be undermined by the growth of the world wide web in the 1990s the mainstream media have been happy to champion the business in the face of what they see as unprecedented levels of piracy of the industry's intellectual property (see for example <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375093/Google-threatens-destroy-pop-sensation-Adele-Britains-film-music-industries.html">a recent example</a> from Britain's Daily Mail). <br />
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But what we are witnessing is another example of <i>disintermediation</i>. Recording studio time is no longer the preserve of the few: a band can book a fully-fledged digital studio from around £150 per day ($250), and is able to have a say in how the final tracks sound. It is no longer necessary to get together complete albums of music (10-15 tracks) and have these pressed and distributed: instead a band can issue individual tracks as they are made, and 'monetize' these right away on iTunes or Amazon. A band can build its own following on MySpace and Facebook, linking to gigs, social interaction and merchandising - all functions originally handled by the record label. The band and its fans can build its brand through co-opting fans in social media to spread the 'authentic' message.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.indiatalkies.com/images/arctic-monkeys21958s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://www.indiatalkies.com/images/arctic-monkeys21958s.jpg" width="315" /></a></div>Now the band can design and produce its own CDs and EPs for less than 75p each ($1.65) and distribute these via gigs and mail order. Amazon and other online retailers will also distribute these. Tour venues are bookable online. Bands can handle their own publicity - often much better than a record label. The <a href="http://arcticmonkeys.com/">Arctic Monkeys</a> are a good example of a band whose debut album became the fastest selling album in British music history on the back of the band's own web-based promotional activity. The Arctics were famous for their early hostility towards the music industry establishment.<br />
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What does a record label do nowadays? They used to secure airtime on popular radio stations, but now these have fragmented into hyper-local media and online channels, and the mass audiences have gone. Bands, if they put their minds to it, can handle the whole disintermediated package. Both Warner Music and EMI are <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2011/apr/18/music-industry-shake-up?">up for sale</a>: but while the music industry bleats about technology and the insidious effect of online piracy, they need instead to ask themselves the fundamental question, 'What are we <i>for</i>?'RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-31912342945825468012011-04-20T14:23:00.000-07:002011-04-20T14:23:59.544-07:00Apps are making shopping easy... or is life complicated enough already?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://cdn.pocket-lint.com/images/xFbT/apps-tesco-barcode-grocery-app-0.jpg?20101028-212505" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://cdn.pocket-lint.com/images/xFbT/apps-tesco-barcode-grocery-app-0.jpg?20101028-212505" width="200" /></a></div>British supermarket giant Tesco announced its year-end results yesterday: in the figures was the information that its growth in online sales was 15%. Encouraging except that online sales across the UK in 2010 rose 18%, according to researchers <a href="http://www.imrg.org/ImrgWebsite/User/Pages/Press%20Releases-IMRG.aspx?pageID=86&parentPageID=85&isHomePage=false&isDetailData=true&itemID=4456&specificPageType=5&pageTemplate=7">IMRG</a>. Tesco says that online sales grew "strongly", pointing to a 30% increase in non-food items from Tesco Direct - implying that supermarket sales grew by rather less than 15%.<br />
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Tesco, though, drew attention to its innovative new<a href="http://www.tesco.com/apps/iPhone/"> iPhone app</a>, which it says now accounts for 12% of online sales. This seems to be a smart idea - wherever you are, when you spot something that takes your fancy, just scan the barcode and Tesco will put it in your shopping basket for next time.<br />
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By chance, on the same day Tesco's arch rival <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2011/04/20/wal-marts-kosmix-deal-may-inspire-other-retailers/">Walmart announced</a> that it was buying the social networking platform Kosmix. Why? Because, they say, you can't ignore social trends and this one is huge. It's not clear exactly what Kosmix is offering Walmart, but it is something to do with the immediacy of mobile-based connections to real-time purchasing decisions. It's all part of Walmart's multi-channel strategy, apparently. Walmart - it has to be remembered - owns Asda, a UK supermarket chasing Tesco for the number one spot in FMCG retailing. <br />
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The sort of technology involved in Tesco's iPhone app is not new. Barcode scanning using the iPhone is helping shoppers to make their purchasing decisions. <a href="http://www.foodwiz.co/">The Foodwiz app</a> allows people with allergies quickly to check items in Asda and Tesco if they are celiacs or have other intolerances. The company's software gives users rapid feedback about the suitability of branded foods and own label alike. It hopes to have the programme rolled out to other supermarkets soon.<br />
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The <a href="http://www.barcoo.com/en/">same technology is offered by Barcoo</a> to allow ethical shoppers to make quicker decisions. This examines the environmental, ethical and CSR credentials of the brand owner (ie companies like Nestle and Procter & Gamble) and gives the user a quick response as to whether this is an ethical company.<br />
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Whatever way you look at it, smartphone ownership is exploding (something <a href="http://robinjazz.blogspot.com/2011/04/smartphones-market-growth.html">I blogged about</a> a few days ago), just as social media continue to extend their influence. It seems clear that the ultimate target market (young, educated, affluent, connected) are in both spaces. And so are Asda and Tesco.RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-19522081488437121012011-04-19T14:10:00.000-07:002011-04-20T01:20:36.420-07:00Music piracy: who do we trust?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.badscience.net/wp-content/uploads/image71.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.badscience.net/wp-content/uploads/image71.png" /></a></div>A few days ago <a href="http://robinjazz.blogspot.com/2011/04/google-and-arts-patron-or-thief.html">I noted</a> how the problems of the music industry were "complicated". Above all, the sector's contention that illegal downloading of music was killing music needed to be looked at in more detail.<br />
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The problem is actually more one of who to believe. There are three powerful arguments why we would be right to be sceptical about the music industry's complaints: firstly that they have been making the same claims for 30 years or more; secondly because generally their figures don't add up; and finally because there is a lot of contrary evidence.<br />
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Young people have been illegally sharing music since the growth of the mass market cassette recorder in the 1970s. It was easy and everyone was doing it. The C90 cassette was ideal as it would fit one album on each side. No wonder C90s outsold all other formats by a big margin. Charlie Brooker <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/08/charlie-brooker-spotify-compilation-tapes-relationships">describes how</a> making your own compilation tapes could form part of your courtship ritual at the time. By the 1980s the music industry was sufficiently worried to launch a high profile campaign "Home taping is killing music", using the same sorts of figures of lost revenues and jobs that it is deploying now, and reminding us that the process was illegal.<br />
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Closer to our own time and government and the music industry continues to produce '<a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1189509/Illegal-file-sharing-downloads-cost-thousands-British-jobs-year.html">research</a>' to show how 4.73 billion items worth £12 billion were being illegally downloaded in Britain in 2009. However, the figures don't stand up to scrutiny, as Ben Goldacre <a href="http://www.badscience.net/2009/06/home-taping-didnt-kill-music/">made clear</a> in a thorough demolition of the report. It was not just that there was mis-reporting of the facts (it was actually 473 million items), but also the way in which pieces of data were extrapolated to make alarming headlines about job and revenue losses. <br />
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More to the point is the fact that research is often contradictory. <a href="http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/online-music-pirates-buy-the-most-music-593366">A Norwegian study</a>, for example, found that illegal downloaders were ten times more likely to buy music than those who didn't. It seems that the worst 'offenders' are young music lovers, who in turn are the biggest buyers of music.<br />
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In the 1970s and 1980s we used to share music (illegally) on cassette. But if it was any good you would buy the album and then re-recorded the tape. The stuff you kept on cassette was music you liked but wouldn't pay money for. Sharing of this kind was the original social networking, with music bringing people together and helping to encourage a booming music industry.<br />
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So, album sales are down and the music business is still preaching doom. Yes, there is illegal downloading, but this has been going on for years. The industry still hasn't made the case that piracy is causing its problems. There are a lot of contributory factors. EMI and Warner, two of the big top four in the industry worldwide are <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2011/apr/18/music-industry-shake-up?INTCMP=SRCH">up for sale</a>: has piracy done for them? It's complicated.RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-18933062869581695152011-04-18T08:30:00.000-07:002011-04-18T08:30:44.572-07:00Stealing from the virtual Mafia<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://pakistancriminalrecords.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/2-Clipart-Illustration-Of-An-Evil-Caucasian-Boy-Hacking-Into-A-Computer-And-Causing-Trouble.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://pakistancriminalrecords.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/2-Clipart-Illustration-Of-An-Evil-Caucasian-Boy-Hacking-Into-A-Computer-And-Causing-Trouble.jpg" width="288" /></a></div>Ashley Mitchell, a hacker from Paignton in Devon was given <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/18/hacker-jailed-gaming-chips-scam">2 years in jail last month</a> after being convicted of stealing virtual gaming chips. Mitchell, aged 29, stole the chips by hacking into the mainframe of <a href="http://www.zynga.com/">Zynga</a>, the highly successful games developer, responsible for popular Facebook games Mafia Wars, Cityville and Farmville.<br />
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Zynga has only been trading since 2007 yet had sales of $850m last year, and 72 million users. Mitchell had stolen the identities of staff members at Zynga in order to access the digital chips used in virtual poker. There is a market online in these tokens, and Mitchell pocketed around £50,000 ($80,000) before being found out. What is not made clear in the reporting was that the black market value of stolen digital currency like this is very low: Mitchell's $80,000 income was from selling tokens with a face value of $4 million. <br />
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Zynga claimed the losses were greater as <a href="http://www.metro.co.uk/tech/854534-british-hacker-stole-12million-from-farmville-makers">Mitchell had stolen far more than he had been able to sell</a>. and their lawyers called for a stiff sentence. Mitchell didn't help himself by breaching the terms of a<a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-devon-12791483">n earlier suspended sentence</a>, imposed for hacking in 2008. Behind the headlines, though, he is unlikely to be languishing in jail. Skills such as these will have been noticed by both the government and private online security companies. It is said to be common for this type of 'black hat' operator (a rogue hacker who is in it for profit) to be recruited into a new 'white hat' role, working to make the internet a safer place. White hats conduct penetration testing for clients and help identify security weaknesses - something that Ashley Mitchell has shown himself expert at.<br />
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Mitchell's hacking identity was hidden at first as he accessed Zynga's network by using two unsecured wireless networks belonging to his neighbours. Police origially showed up at his street in Paignton and took away computer equipment belonging to people in houses nearby. Eventually the trail led to Mitchell, as he had rashly used his own Facebook profile in one of his hacks.RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-90733060321330268962011-04-17T13:34:00.000-07:002011-04-17T13:34:30.166-07:00Facebook's strategy<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://bikyamasr.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Safaricom-Kenya1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://bikyamasr.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Safaricom-Kenya1.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>At the Guardian's recent <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/changingmediasummit">Changing Media Summit</a> in London, Mattias Miksche, CEO if the amazingly successful <a href="http://www.stardoll.com/en/">Stardoll Media</a> told delegates: "You have to have a Facebook strategy, because Facebook is eating the internet." But does anyone know what Facebook's strategy is?<br />
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My guess is that Facebook is banking on mobile. It's not just about the exponential growth in smartphones which I talked about in <a href="http://robinjazz.blogspot.com/2011/04/smartphones-market-growth.html">an earlier blog</a>. It's not just that sales of tablet devices like the iPad have hit sales of PCs (<a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/c9691fdc-6624-11e0-9d40-00144feab49a.html?ftcamp=rss">according to the Financial Times</a>, shipments in quarter 1 2011 were down, despite healthy demand in emerging markets).<br />
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Two good indicators of Facebook's thinking are, firstly, a recent announcement regarding their moves in location-based social networking (<a href="http://robinjazz.blogspot.com/2011/04/facebook-and-location-marketing.html">another earlier blog</a>) and secondly their <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/21/facebook-buys-snaptu?INTCMP=SRCH">acquistion of Snaptu</a>, an Israeli company which makes applications allowing platforms like Facebook to run on the simpler 'feature phones' which came before the debut of iPhone and its smartphone competitors. <br />
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Facebook's unprecedented subscriber growth in 2010-2011 means that to a large degree it has now reached much of the young, affluent, educated, web-connected audience that there is in the developed world. In developing economies, though, there is considerably more internet activity via mobile phones than through fixed lines. India, for example, has 50 million broadband connections but 950 million mobile phones. <br />
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Perhaps more significantly are the developments happening in mobile banking in parts of Africa (see <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-11793290">here</a> for a special BBC report on the great strides being made in this field in Kenya). If money is being moved around then Facebook and other internet companies want to know, but few people in developing countries like Kenya can afford iPhones. <br />
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Accessing the web on feature phones is not easy, but Facebook would like to be our home page on this sort of device. When social media becomes as central to your lives <a href="http://www.hitwise.com/uk/press-centre/press-releases/top-10-awards-pr/">as it already is</a> in Britain and America, why not trust Facebook with 'search' also? Currently it doesn't offer a Google-type search function, but this is where the real money is being made.<br />
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My predictions are that in the next 12 months Facebook will continue to push into developing markets in Turkey, Africa, the Middle East and the Indian subcontinent, particularly in countries where there is a growing middle class and a young, educated population. I think that they will partner with Microsoft to offer Bing search via Facebook, and that they will start rolling out 'Facebook Lite' to mobile phone users around the world not lucky enough to own an iPhone.RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-73928077579882346712011-04-16T09:55:00.000-07:002011-04-16T14:02:18.897-07:00Google and the arts: patron or thief?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Nswag,_agnolo_bronzino,_duca_cosimo_I_in_armi,_1540_circa.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Nswag,_agnolo_bronzino,_duca_cosimo_I_in_armi,_1540_circa.JPG" width="153" /></a></div>A few days ago Britain's <i>Daily Mail</i> <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1375093/Google-threatens-destroy-pop-sensation-Adele-Britains-film-music-industries.html">published</a> a sensational, centre-page spread under the headline "<span style="font-size: small;">Google threatens to destroy not only pop sensation Adele, but Britain's film and music industries. So why is No.10 in thrall to this parasitic monster?"</span><br />
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<span style="font-size: small;">A couple of days later <i>The G</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>uardian</i> <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/14/youtube-nextup-scheme-uk-digital-talent">replied</a> with </span>"</span><span style="font-size: small;">YouTube NextUp scheme to back UK digital talent". This is a story about how Google is investing </span>€500,000 (£441,000) in nurturing young artists. <span style="font-size: small;">So, who is telling the truth? Is Google a latter-day Medici family, offering patronage for art and then showcasing it on Youtube? Or is it "</span>a giant vacuum cleaner parasitically sucking up content from media companies, publishers, film makers and musicians without paying anything back into the creative process?"<br />
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First of all, it has to said that the Mail's Business Editor seems to have a problem with the whole 'internet thing', a point made repeatedly by online contributors in the paper's comment section. According to this argument, the music industry's current problems began with the growth of the web in the 1990s, and all of its woes (falling album sales, digital piracy, high street shops closing) stem from that era. Therefore it follows that the internet caused the problems. Google is the voice of the internet, so it stands to reason that Google is to blame.<br />
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Let's stick to music for now and try and establish the facts. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/jan/05/album-sales-plummet-sixth-year-running?INTCMP=SRCH">It's complicated</a>. Last year in Britain CD sales fell 12%, the 6th year in a row. But that is largely a structural thing: music is now much more likely to be consumed in a digital form on a portable device: singles (as downloads at least) sold nearly 6% more, with 5.2 million tracks downloaded in the last week of 2010 alone. People are still buying music, but often don't want the whole album. In any case, digital versions of complete albums are doing well, up more than 30%. The problem is that, overall, the rise in digital sales is offset by the decline in physical products. To make things worse, record labels make far smaller margins on downloads than they used to on CDs sold in the shops.<br />
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The big winners in all this are the dowload stores, particularly Apple and Amazon. the iTunes store had sold more than 10 billion songs this time last year, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/feb/16/google-music-itunes-competitor-android?">according to the Guardian</a>, with Amazon catching up quickly. Now Google is set to enter the download market - no doubt recognizing the revenue possibilities of the seamless link from Apple's iPhones, iPads and iPods into the digital store (smartphones powered by Google's Android operating system are out-selling iPhones by a factor of 3-to-1).<br />
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<div style="background-color: transparent; border: medium none; color: black; overflow: hidden; text-align: left; text-decoration: none;">The music industry says that piracy (illegal downloading) is the problem. <i>The Daily Mail</i> seems to believe that because pirate sites show up in online searches, Google is somehow complicit in the destruction of the creative industries. Although this clearly misses the point, what about YouTube, bought by Google in 2006? There is almost nothing downloadable from YouTube into the sort of format you would want to listen to music on: much of what there is has been put there by musicians and record labels in order to publicise their work. There is a good example below from an up-and-coming Welsh band I have been following. In this case Google is providing free publicity as well as paying a share of the advertising revenue to the production company which made the film.<br />
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Google wants a share of Apple's download business, and Amazon's. It wants to make YouTube a more broadly-based entertainment channel with live sports, entertainment and music. It does not engage in piracy or condone it. The fact that it is willing to provide funds for young artists to develop their talent should be encouraged.<br />
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Digital piracy is a serious problem, and as we have noted, a complicated one. There are no easy answers, but I will attempt to identify some of the questions in a later post.<br />
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</div><span style="font-size: small;"> </span>RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-22721974425031059922011-04-15T03:03:00.000-07:002011-04-15T10:05:26.788-07:00Social overtakes Search?<a href="http://www.searchengineoptimizationcompany.ca/img/Search-Engine-Marketing.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://www.searchengineoptimizationcompany.ca/img/Search-Engine-Marketing.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 231px; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; width: 209px;" /></a><br />
Confirmation last month that social networking is growing in popularity in the UK, <a href="http://blogs.ft.com/fttechhub/2011/03/brits-spend-more-time-on-social-media-than-anything-else-online/">with the announcement </a>that Britons spend more time on social media sites than on search. According to a study produced by online market analysts Experian Hitwise (summary available <a href="http://www.hitwise.com/uk/press-centre/press-releases/top-10-awards-pr/">here</a>), traffic to Facebook, Twitter and Youtube was up 17% on the year. But Google still outranks Facebook in the number of individual site visits.<br />
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Another very interesting fact from the <a href="http://blogs.ft.com/fttechhub/2011/03/brits-spend-more-time-on-social-media-than-anything-else-online/">Financial Times report</a> was that only 16% of social networking visits then went on to 'transactional sites' such as retailers, compared to around 33% from Google and other search engines. Interesting because transactions are where the real money is. Facebook traffic tends to go to other social media links, but the <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/14905e2c-7c8c-11df-8b74-00144feabdc0.html">FT reported last year</a> that FB is more interested in brand building advertising revenues than quick hit purchases.<br />
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Meanwhile <a href="http://is.gd/itcneO">a BBC news report</a> (which also draws on the same Experian study) says that social networking in the UK now accounts for 12.5% of all internet traffic. Another curious fact from <a href="http://www.hitwise.com/uk/press-centre/press-releases/top-10-awards-pr/">Experian Hitwise</a> is that Facebook and YouTube are the most popular brands searched for on Google in the UK.RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-13003264668069662952011-04-14T00:56:00.000-07:002011-04-15T05:57:10.544-07:00Myspace is on the up again!According to <a href="http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/12/exclusive-the-bleak-financial-numbers-from-the-myspace-sale-pitch-book/">reports out this week</a>, things are looking up for struggling social media platform, Myspace. News Corporation, which owns the company, predicts that next year Myspace will be making profits of around $15m. How, when revenues are falling? Because costs are falling much more steeply, so the net result is positive.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.ydrmusic.com/img/logo-myspace.gif"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 101px; height: 107px;" src="http://www.ydrmusic.com/img/logo-myspace.gif" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />But, as journalists and analysts point out, this is speculative and forward-looking. News Corporation has chosen not to look at the historical information. Back in February, the Financial Times was <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3238857a-2f11-11e0-88ec-00144feabdc0.html">reporting</a> how Myspace had put a $275m hole in News Corps's profits. Before that (January) the <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0473c3ae-1cef-11e0-8c86-00144feab49a.html">story</a> was about massive layoffs at Myspace, which had lost 10 million users in just a month (<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/myspace/8404510/MySpace-loses-10-million-users-in-a-month.html">according</a> to the Daily Telegraph).<br /><br />If News Corporation is to be believed, though, revenues will start rising, despite this apparent hemorrhaging of customers. Maybe the optimism is fueled by <a href="http://mashable.com/2011/04/13/internet-ad-revenues/">another report</a>, that online advertising revenue is increasing again after a slight hiatus during the recession?<br /><br />The most likely reason for the upbeat tone at News Corporation is that it is widely known that Myspace is up for sale, and needs to have its prospects talked up. Online music site Vevo has been <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2011/apr/13/myspace-news-corp">talked about</a> as a prospective buyer. But News Corp has few options: having paid $580m for Myspace in 2005 the company can sell at a massive loss (which is <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/jun/17/aol-bebo-criterion-capital-partners">what happened</a> with AOL's disastrous purchase of Bebo) or it can just close Myspace down.<br /><br />This gloomy scenario is very much at odds with what is happening elsewhere in the social media scene, with huge (and unrealistic) valuations being put on Facebook and Twitter (neither of which are for sale), and growing excitement about possible flotations of other platforms.<br /><br />The core demographic for brand owners - young, educated, affluent, global, connected - has migrated from Myspace to Facebook. This company not only can demonstrate exponential growth in user numbers, but it seems to have plans which involve continuing growth in users and better monetization of the existing customer base.RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-11801050220791623252011-04-10T09:15:00.001-07:002011-04-15T06:29:35.623-07:00Facebook and location marketing<p>Facebook Deals launched in November 2010, with little fuss or publicity. In fact most FB users probably don't know it exists. It allows users to check into selected locations to take advantage of special offers, deals, etc. The service, it was <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2011/apr/07/facebook-deals-groupon">announced last week</a>, will now be extended to daily deals with specific offers for particular days in particular places. The trials are likely to be in a few US cities intially. What FB seems to be offering is a direct rival to Groupon.</p>Groupon launches in 2008 and is <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2010/nov/29/google-groupon">reported </a>to be earning $US 760 m, mostly <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://nerdbusiness.com/articles/1012/nerd-year-groupon/img/groupon-logo.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 134px; height: 134px;" src="http://nerdbusiness.com/articles/1012/nerd-year-groupon/img/groupon-logo.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>from the fees it charges participating retailers and venues. It trades all over the world and is said to have 30 million signed-up users. There was speculation last year that Google had bought the company for $2.5bn, though the rumours were unfounded. With <a href="http://www.groupon.co.uk/">Groupon </a>users sign up to received offers based around their local city: each day they are offered money-saving products and services from providers locally: typically cosmetics and personal care (Body Shop has been involved across the UK), restaurants and hotels and similar services. There are currently nearly 50 cities in the UK linked up in this way.<p><br /></p><p>This type of location-based social media marketing (also known as geo-location marketing) is one of the hottest topics in e-Business right now.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://www.talkandroid.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/foursquare-logo-.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 170px; height: 85px;" src="http://www.talkandroid.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/foursquare-logo-.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a>Another hot property is FourSquare which is a location-based service with 7 million users allowing users to check into places for offers and 'points'. As you can see, this is what Facebook started offering with Facebook Deals. Orange is now also getting in on the act, but with a difference. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2011/apr/05/tv-check-social-app?INTCMP=SRCH">Their service </a>allows users to check into TV programmes they are watching - with the idea being that lucky users will get their 15 seconds of fame on TV.</p><p>All of this seems to be part of Facebook's strategy of focusing more on mobile users and less on PC-based traffic. With their <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/mar/21/facebook-buys-snaptu?INTCMP=SRCH">recent acquistion </a>of Snaptu they are investing in technology to enable feature phone users to have a positive FB experience, as well as <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/nov/03/facebook-deals-mobile?INTCMP=SRCH">reportedly </a>developing FB branded mobile phones themselves.</p>RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-82913110215615825712011-04-10T09:13:00.000-07:002011-04-15T06:19:44.754-07:00Smartphones market growth<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://gadgetophilia.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/android-phone.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 268px; height: 257px;" src="http://gadgetophilia.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/android-phone.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br /><p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/mobile-phones/8436166/Booming-smartphone-sales-to-hit-1bn.html">Reports in the media</a> this week that sales of smartphones are likely to reach 500m this year, a 58% growth on 2010. Gartner's well respected study says that sales will reach 1 billion a year by 2015, driven by falling prices. The largest operating system is Android, with the prediction that they will have 50% of the market by end of 2012. Nokia's Symbian is currently second and may grow as this is replaced by the tie-up with Microsoft. <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/07/google-android-smartphone-market">Apple has between 17% and 19% of the market</a>, which still accounts for somewhere between 1.5 million and 2 million iPhones being sold every week.</p><p>The biggest surprise has been the success of Taiwanese handset maker HTC which is now coming within striking distance of iPhone and Blackberry, <a href="http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2011/04/07/htc-bigger-than-nokia-for-now/">according to the FT</a> this week. HTC is now bigger than Nokia in the smartphone market.</p>RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-44267434968946850432011-04-10T09:12:00.000-07:002011-04-15T06:15:38.467-07:00Students hooked on social media<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/116/259502894_f3e435ebd8.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 275px; height: 183px;" src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/116/259502894_f3e435ebd8.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><p><a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/8436831/Student-addiction-to-technology-similar-to-drug-cravings-study-finds.html">According to a study </a>widely publicised around the world, students are addicted to social media and suffer emotional and physical distress when deprived of their 'drug'. <a href="http://www.newsdesk.umd.edu/sociss/release.cfm?ArticleID=2144">The study</a> looked at students across 12 universities in 10 countries, including the US, China and the UK. When taken away from social media and gadgets for 24 hours words such as fretful, confused, anxious, irritable, insecure, nervous, restless, crazy, addicted, panicked, jealous, angry, lonely, dependent, depressed, jittery and paranoid were used to describe the feelings. Students described the need to be digitally connected, even with people who were physically close by.</p> <p>Of course this is in a long line of FaceBook and internet media scare stories: here are some earlier headlines from the Daily Telegraph:"Facebook generation suffer information withdrawal syndrome" (<span>02 Jan 2011);</span> 'Internet is a threat to our brain' (<span>15 Sep 2010);</span> Computers could be fuelling obesity crisis, says Baroness Susan Greenfield<span> (13 May 2009);</span> Schools 'should be the cure to children's Facebook addiction'<span> (16 Oct 2010</span>); Students brains 'rewired' by web (<span>11 Feb 2010);</span> Rehab clinic for child web addicts<span> (18 Mar 2010).</span></p> <span>While we're on the subject, a study released last week from Oxford University showed that children who play computer games rather than reading achieve significantly less in life: fewer go to university or get top jobs, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/apr/07/computer-gamers-university-research">the study says</a>. This particular study is based on over 30 years of tracking studies and finds that reading (books) seems to be the key to intellectual and social development.</span>RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-57021573359610438732011-04-10T09:10:00.000-07:002011-04-15T09:03:25.049-07:00Adaptive advertising<a href="http://www.badscience.net/wp-content/uploads/20060727-minority_report_gestural_ui.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" src="http://www.badscience.net/wp-content/uploads/20060727-minority_report_gestural_ui.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: right; height: 177px; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; width: 312px;" /></a><span style="color: #663300; font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: black;">Marketing people get excited about the 2002 film Minority Report. In the film advertising media interact with individuals, which they identify via iris recognition to deliver highly targeted advertising. There are clips of this from the film </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBaiKsYUdvg" style="color: black;">here </a><span style="color: black;">and </span><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITjsb22-EwQ" style="color: black;">here</a><span style="color: black;">. <span style="color: black;"> </span></span></span><br />
<div style="color: black;"><span style="color: black; font-size: 100%;"><span style="color: black;"><span style="color: black;">Recently </span></span><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12582477" style="color: black;">there have been reports </a><span style="color: black;">that, based on trials in the US, this form of targeted advertising could be a reality within 12 months. A new report by the Centre for Future Studies calls the new ads 'Gladverts' and predicts that advertising technology will pick up on and adapt to our moods through emotion recognition software (ERS).</span></span><span style="font-size: 100%;"> </span></div><div style="color: black;"><span style="font-size: 100%;">However, this is not a new story, as <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_nacxK2U1M&NR=1">this clip from a newsreport </a>over a year ago shows. The NEC technology reported here limits itself to simple demographics: gender and age. ERS is altogether more experimental. The new Centre for Future Studies report was commissioned by 3MGTG, a digital advertising agency.</span></div>RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-15289170761956190062010-05-14T00:41:00.000-07:002010-05-14T00:45:17.342-07:00What happened to the student vote?In the early stages of the Election campaign there was a considerable focus on student voters. With echoes of Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign, political parties scrambled to mobilize the vote, focusing initially on encouraging young people to register to vote. As in the US, the main impetus for this drive was online, in particular through social networks. During the four weeks of the campaign many commentators saw the surge in support for the Liberal Democrats as being driven by young voters, desperate for change from the old two-party system. Social media were the key to influencing this group, and each party set up FaceBook groups, Twitter accounts and posted promotional material onto Youtube.<br /><br />In Wales there were something like 150,000 registered students who, if all eligible to vote, would have formed around 7% of the total electorate, concentrated in several key marginal constituencies. Their influence could be decisive, except of course there were nowhere near that number of eligible student voters: a very large number would have been overseas students, and another significant proportion would not have registered to vote in their student accommodation, despite the social media campaigns.<br /><br />Indeed, looking at Wales as a whole, in those seats where there were universities, voter turnout was lower than average, increasing around 1% compared to a national increase of 2%. Once again, Labour and the Conservatives seemed to achieve identical shares of the vote in university towns and cities as they did in Wales as a whole. Votes for the Liberal Democrats were just 1% higher than the national average, and those for Plaid Cymru about 1% lower. These figures are hardly evidence of any massive surge of student voters to the polls.<br /><br />Looking at individual constituencies can be instructive.<br /><br />In <span style="font-weight: bold;">Cardiff Central</span> there would potentially be as many as 40,000 students eligible to vote, from Cardiff University and UWIC. This bloc would dominate the constituency, but of course was never so significant for reasons explained above, and because many students would have been living in outlying places. Cardiff Central superficially seemed to bear out the Liberal Democrat illusory surge as it was retained by the party's MP. In practice, though, the voter turnout did not change, and the Liberal lost over 8% of their 2005 vote, most of it to the Conservatives who increased their vote by over 12%.<br /><br />In <span style="font-weight: bold;">Swansea West</span> there was another potential political upset with the Liberal Democrats threatening the sitting Labour MP. This was a comparatively marginal seat and one where the Liberals put a good deal of resource into developing the student vote through social media. Between them Swansea University and Swansea Metropolitan University could claim to have 24,000 students on campus, but in practice voter turnout increased only very slightly and below the average for Wales as a whole. In practice the Labour vote did crumble, but not enough to unseat the MP: but the Conservatives benefited from this as much as the Liberal Democrats, both of whom added around 4% to their vote.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Pontypridd </span>saw a surge in support for the Liberal Democrats, which might in part have been attributable to the use of social media amongst the 21,000 students at the University of Glamorgan. The same caveats about overseas students and voter registration have to be noted, though, particularly as a proportion of the campus has relocated to central Cardiff. Indeed, there was no rush of new voters in Pontypridd – voter turnout actually declined in 2010, compared to a national increase of 2% or so. And while the Liberals increased their votes by 11% here, the Conservatives rose by 4%, and the main story was the relative collapse of the Labour vote.<br /><br /><br />The <span style="font-weight: bold;">Arfon </span>constituency was one where there was a genuine change of representation, as the seat was taken from Labour by Plaid Cymru. Were the 16,600 students in Bangor University responsible for this change? It is possible, as there was an above-average increase in voter turnout of 5%. But unusually this surge appeared to favour Plaid, as the Liberals lost 2% of their vote compared to a national increase of the same order. Labour also lost votes, but not as badly as elsewhere in Wales, and the Conservative vote stayed unchanged. Arfon, therefore, seemed to buck all of the national trends, electing a new Plaid Cymru MP when in the rest of the the country it lost votes.<br /><br />Did the 12,000 students at <span style="font-weight: bold;">Aberystwyth </span>help to boost the sitting Liberal Democrat's vote by nearly 14%, way above the national average? It is possible, but it is important to note that voter turnout actually fell, by over 3%, one of the larger drops in Wales. So no apparent surge of new voters. The Conservatives lost votes: although the drop was small, it has to be set against a national increase of nearly 5%. And although Labour dropped votes too, they did less badly in Ceredigion than elsewhere in Wales. It is possible, therefore, that the student vote did help the Liberals in Ceredigion, but given the overall decline in voting this conclusion is far from certain.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Carmarthen East</span> too might have benefited from the 12,000 students at Lampeter and Trinity, but here again the picture was mixed. All of the main parties did slightly better than average here, except for Plaid Cymru which lost over 10% of its vote (but retained the seat). There was a similarly mixed picture in <span style="font-weight: bold;">Newport West</span> where the local university's 9,000 students might conceivably have influenced the vote: here though, Labour and Plaid did better than their showing elsewhere in Wales, while the Conservatives and Liberals did worse, this on an above average increase in turnout. <span style="font-weight: bold;"> Wrexham</span>'s votes rose in line with the national picture: Glyn Dŵr University's 8,000 students did not appear to have influenced the result, where the Conservatives and Plaid Cymru were the main beneficiaries, while the Liberal Democrats rose in line with the increase in Wales as a whole and Labour underperformed, losing 9% of its votes, but retaining the seat.<br /><br />In summary, therefore, no apparent surge of new student voters were in evidence in Wales. The impressive rises in the Liberal Democrats' votes in Ceredigion and Pontypridd may have had nothing to do with the student population as in these places voter turnout actually decreased. And the one place with the most significant student population, Cardiff Central, actually saw the Liberal Democrat vote drop sharply, with the Conservatives appearing to benefit the most. This was not what we had been led to believe would happen with the much vaunted Liberal surge.<br /><br />In practice all of the main parties were using social media, but as we have noted in an earlier blog, the traffic was by no means one way. 'National Not Voting Conservative Day' on Facebook got support from 178,000 people, but was rejected by over 210,000 with a further 250,000 uncommitted. The official Conservative Party group on Facebook had 100,000 supporters on election day, more than the Liberal Democrats and almost twice the number that Labour had gathered. The Conservatives learned from the European Elections when we saw how they were able to co-opt the status updates of their supporters. They uploaded two dozen well-produced videos to WebCameron on YouTube: although much derided, some of these were viewed 180,000 times in a matter of days (for example 'This is a historic election', although viewing figures for some others were in the tens of thousands. We found that in Wales the Liberal Democrats seemed to focus on the use of emails (something that missed the mark with student voters) while younger Plaid Cymru candidates experimented with video blogs and used the multimedia capabilities of their smartphones effectively.<br /><br />What seemed to have happened was that there was a general sense by the parties that they had to ride the new media wave in the way that Barack Obama had done (although many post 2008 studies have shown that the so-called voter surge there seems to have been over-hyped). But what politicians in the UK failed to do was to translate enthusiasm into action on the ground. US Democrats used social media to encourage voters to register by telling them where and when. They used the same channels in a major way to raise funds to support the campaign, something British parties steered away from. Most importantly the US Democrats linked virtual supporters to real campaigning events and local activists, channelling the latent interest into old-fashioned canvassing and providing the real evidence on the ground of what was suggesting itself online and in opinion polls. In the end the social media campaign kept itself to the virtual world: as our figures suggest, there was no surge in student voting in Wales. In the end the parties that brought in the vote had canvassers on the ground, and local party machines to get out the leaflets and put up the posters. In the end it was good old-fashioned politics which won.<br /><br /><br /><br />13 May 2010<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">The study was carried out in Wales by Robin Croft (Principal Lecturer, University of Glamorgan Business School), and in Yorkshire by Dianne Dean (Lecturer, University of Hull Business School). The findings of this study and the research completed in the 2009 European Elections are due to be presented at a conference of the Political Marketing Association in Thessaloniki, Greece, in September. </span></span>RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-20852983742130831282010-05-13T02:00:00.000-07:002010-05-13T02:06:51.273-07:00Partisan chants in a virtual world<script type="text/javascript"><br /><br /> var _gaq = _gaq || [];<br /> _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-16267917-4']);<br /> _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);<br /><br /> (function() {<br /> var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;<br /> ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';<br /> var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);<br /> })();<br /><br /></script>So far in these blogs we have considered social media in the context of a channel of communication. In traditional thinking the politicians and their parties would use Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other platforms to send their messages out to an audience. This would passively receive the message as any other medium, broadcast or print. In this digital election, though, all of that changed: social media became the aggregators of information, and the data itself part of the social glue that formed and bound communities of knowledge.<br /><br />What this meant in practical terms was that items from the political news became the things by which we came to understand our own views and to articulate them to others in our social network. In this arrangement, audiences themselves became broadcasters, and increasingly the traditional broadcasters turned to social media to learn what was being said. The BBC in particular had recourse to Twitter in each of the high profile Leaders' Debates, identifying the key 'trending topics' as a way of gauging the extent to which the ideas on the TV had migrated to the screens of PC, laptop and mobile phone.<br /><br />What hundreds of thousands of us seemed to be doing during the UK General Election was unconsciously replicating what teenagers have been doing since the advent of instant messaging services such as MSN and Yahoo! Messenger: we were consuming broadcast media while at the same time engaging in web-enabled social media. So through Facebook, YouTube, Myspace and Twitter we publicly laughed, cheered, yawned cried, booed and scowled ourselves into an understanding of what we were witnessing. The election was social learning in action. But while teenagers had been watching old episodes of Friends or repeats of Scrubs, their older siblings and parents were hooked into live news, party election broadcasts and political debates.<br /><br />In this 2010 election the print media, for the first time, became largely marginalised in the process of opinion forming due to the advent of social media. While in 2005 we might have had to wait until the next morning to read how we should be evaluating the previous evening's news, in 2010 we had our social network on hand with their verdict. There were around 26 million UK voters active on Facebook, commenting, sharing links, supporting causes and generally airing their views. It might be thought that this process was a progressive one, but in fact it was mixed: a movement on Facebook called 'National Not Voting Conservative Day' was supported by around 178,000 people, but rejected by over 210,000 with a further 250,000 uncommitted. Social media provided voters with a range of tools with which to express their views and beliefs, but it is simply not true to say that these exclusively favoured Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the minor parties. Indeed the official Conservative Party group on Facebook had 100,000 supporters on election day, more than the Liberal Democrats and almost twice the number that Labour had gathered.<br /><br />Once again it would be tempting to say that broadcast journalism had filled the gap left by print medium, and it is commonplace to hear it said that the Leaders' Debates were the 'game changer' in 2010. Once again, though, social media played a huge part in this, with many more voters consuming the debates vicariously through social networks and deciding on the basis of pictures, comments and movie clips who had won the argument. In our study we found the parliamentary candidates engrossed by the debates with some adding their views on Twitter every few minutes. Attempts by the old media to call the debates for one candidate or the other were invariably met with derision online, particularly if the verdict failed to correspond to the new 'world view' articulated by one's social network.<br /><br />Broadcast media in 2010 continued to provide the headlines and narrative content on which social networks thrived. Key topics of conversation included incidents when candidates were found to be seriously off-message, for example in describing immigrants or homosexuals. But the process went further, and continued to disrupt existing journalist-audience relationships: in some cases audiences themselves judged what should and should not be reported, and insisted that the broadcast media complied. A telling example of this was the demand that they report on the views of Philippa Stroud, a Conservative candidate in Sutton, who allegedly held some unusual views on homosexuality: for almost two days as the campaign came to a climax the term #PhilippaStroud was the leading 'trending topic' on Twitter in the UK (ie the most talked about theme on the platform at the time). This fact in itself forced its way into the broadcast media and the story did find its way onto the BBC (Stroud, described as a Conservative high-flyer failed to capture the seat from the Liberal Democrats).<br /><br />This incident serves to highlight another important aspect of the campaign and the role of broadcast media in it. News stories, rumour and gossip were surfacing continually during the campaign and in the aftermath, far more than journalists were able to get into their short TV or radio bulletins. Most of the better-known political correspondents and journalists supplemented their public offerings with extensive behind-the-scenes commentary on blogs, live online news feeds and Twitter posts. Channel 4 Neews's Jon Snow and the BBC's Nick Robinson had around 12,000 people following them on Twitter, while Laura Kuenssberg of the BBC had managed to gather 20,000. This gave audiences, candidates, party workers and others privileged access to information that never made it to the airwaves, or knowledge to share in advance to it being broadcast. This has been particularly the case during the post-election days when speculation surrounded the coalition talks taking place between Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour. Here it was not just that the print media was sidelined by events, but broadcast itself was being undermined by social media.<br /><br />The final part of this new picture emerges from the other novel aspect of social media, the ability of audiences to talk back. We have alluded to the way in which aspects of the campaign ignored by the media were forced to their attention, as well as the way that audiences co-created new media phenomena such as the catchphrase “I agree with Nick”. In the immediate aftermath of the election, when there was a hiatus of several days as coalition deals were talked about, social media were mobilised by ordinary voters, party workers and politicians of all shades to encourage the negotiators to adopt particular courses of action. Once again the evidence of this could be seen in the trending topics on Twitter, where #dontdoitnick was aired constantly over several days.<br /><br />The chorus continued after the deals were done, with audiences using the same channels that politicians had used to talk to them, to talk back. We noted several parliamentary candidates from our study being far more vocal on Twitter after the election than when the campaign was running. In one case a Liberal Democrat had a running argument about principles and betrayal with a former Green candidate, the row stretching over nearly two days. In this period social media were once again deployed with Labour, Plaid Cymru and the Green Party all targeting disaffected Liberal Democrats via social media. No doubt other parties were similarly targeting disaffected Conservatives. Ironically, the loud dissenting voices in the Liberal and Conservative ranks were probably of great value to the party negotiators, each one able to show evidence to the other party the extent to which their tentative agreements were straining the loyalty of their party members.<br /><br />Overall the larger picture of the new media environment in the 2010 election is confused. There was a blurring of boundaries between the web, broadcast and print media, with each platform involved in producing output for the other. Similarly, it was not always clear in social media who was the audience and who was the communicator. The dynamics of social communication meant that audiences became aggregators – usually uncritical echo chambers for messages and narratives that chimed with their world view. In an important sense we all became journalists or broadcasters, with social media empowering us to get our views across to a wider audience. As audiences we expected to be consulted, and broadcasters often obliged, faithfully reporting the reaction of what they called 'The Blogosphere'.<br /><br />It has already been mentioned that the Leaders' Debates were said to be the 'game-changer' in 2010: this may be true in more ways than one. What we observed happening was that audiences were consuming the debates and their aftermath in a teenager fashion, establishing their viewpoints before, during and after by reference to their peer groups and other opinion leaders online. This process continued right up to and past polling day. As the results started to come in on the night of June 6th, large numbers of us stayed connected synchronously via FaceBook chat, IM and Twitter, digesting the implications of the unfolding drama into the early hours, by reference to others. In an important way what the Leaders' Debates did was to provide material, not to persuade us one way or another, but to take away and discuss in our small online huddles.<br /><br />In a similar way, our earlier blogs about the extent to which Twitter delivered the vote can be said to have missed the point. What Twitter and other social media provided us with was a collection of ideas to kick around: but while the candidates may have thought that these messages were persuasive, in practice audiences took the ideas, talked about them and ultimately accepted or rejected them. In practice we believe that social media were generally effective in helping uncommitted voters to find a party or candidate to support. What was often lacking was a persuasive call to action: the virtual world delivered a virtual supporter that in many cases never made it to the polling station.<br /><br />Finally, it is worth being clear that we are not suggesting that Twitter and other social media are now somehow a substitute for serious journalism. Twitter may have become part of the news, but there was little argument, reasoning and debate in evidence during and after the General Election (there is a limit to what can be argued in 140 characters anyway). Instead it often became an aggregator or echo chamber for the same partisan chants, forcing itself onto our attention through sheer volume or persistence. Ordinary voters, having been handed a microphone, were reluctant to return it after they had had their say. The short messages we received helped to reinforce our views, while the process of re-broadcasting them had an evangelising effect on many.<br /><br />It is ironic that when the internet gives us almost instant access to information resources with which to check our facts, the immediacy of social media often means that we suspend our critical faculties and join in the chanting with the rest of our virtual tribe. An example of this was a posting from The Centre for Women & Democracy when the new regime was starting to allocate seats in government 12 May. The message gave comparative figures of the extent to which women were represented in cabinet in the EU “Spain 53% Germany 37% France 33% Neth 33% Italy 27% Greece 26% Belg 23% Ptgl 13% UK so far 0%”. This statement may have been true when it was posted early in the morning, but in the space of a few hours it had been rebroadcast uncritically at least 600 times, probably many times that number where Twitter users removed the @CWD attribution. Indeed it was still circulating widely, unamended, as an admittedly small number of women were appointed to the British cabinet, and and even the following day. Chanting is no substitute for journalism, and providing audiences with access to the real information does not alter the facts that many of us prefer to rely on our friends and relations.<br /><br /><br />13 May 2010<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >The study was carried out in Wales by Robin Croft (Principal Lecturer, University of Glamorgan Business School), and in Yorkshire by Dianne Dean (Lecturer, University of Hull Business School). The findings of this study and the research completed in the 2009 European Elections are due to be presented at a conference of the Political Marketing Association in Thessaloniki, Greece, in September. </span>RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-86627308307344038952010-05-12T07:56:00.000-07:002010-05-12T08:02:57.894-07:00What Makes for Good Twitter Traffic?<script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />try {<br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-16267917-3");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br />} catch(err) {}</script><br />We studied all of the Twitter traffic from parliamentary candidates in Wales in the 2010 General Election. We also looked at the metrics associated with their Twitter accounts (how many people they followed, how many people were following them) and roughly scored their performance to identify the people who were making most effective use of the medium. It was interesting to find that the qualitative analysis (our subjective analysis) corresponded reasonably well with the crude quantitative scoring.<br /><br />Of the candidates in Wales, perhaps only a dozen seemed to really understand the medium. Of these René Kinzett (Swansea West) was the most engaged, but there were also strong performances from Heledd Fychan (Montgomery), Matt Smith (Blaenau Gwent) and John Dixon (Cardiff North). As we noted in an earlier blog, successful Twittering did not always translate into an increased share of the vote – something which affected Dixon as well as Caryl Wyn Jones in Vale of Clwyd and Chris Bryant in Rhondda. However, Merthyr's Amy Kitcher performed extremely well in the votes and ran an exemplary Twitter campaign. But as one candidate reminded us, “Twitter was fun: the real campaign was elsewhere”.<br /><br />So what made for a successful Twitter campaign? The critical success factors, we argue, can be summed up under the acronym SPREAD. This stands for 1) storytelling; 2) personality; 3) rich content; 4) excitement; 5) added value; 6) dialogue.<br /><br />Twitter is a social medium, and as with all forms of interpersonal communication <span style="font-weight: bold;">storytelling</span> plays a central role. Celebrities such as Stephen Fry have shown how the public will take to an extended narrative, even when the content at times appears mundane. Similarly, Sarah Brown, wife of the outgoing Prime Minster, had over a million people following her on Twitter (which is roughly five times the number of registered Labour Party members at the time of the election). Welsh candidates went out campaigning, of course, and they got stuck in traffic jams, bought fish and chips, took their dogs to the vet, missed Doctor Who on TV having forgotten to set the video recorder, had to explain to their grandmothers what a videoblog was – in short, lived ordinary lives. Successful Tweeters told the story of the campaign on a daily basis and highlighted the many episodes that touched them, made them laugh, angered them. They watched the Leaders' Debates on TV and shared their opinions. Their narratives, like soap operas, were both mundane and compelling. It made them human.<br /><br />Related to this is the aspect of <span style="font-weight: bold;">personality</span>, as conveyed by social media. The conversations and dialogues enabled followers to get a sense of the politicians as people. The younger Plaid Cymru candidates were often forthright in their views: one said how she would not trust a Tory as far as she could throw one, and others were similarly (and ironically) disrespectful of their opponents. This aspect led to party embarrassment outside Wales where during the campaign both Labour and Conservative parties were forced to suspend candidates after they posted off-message comments on their Twitter pages.<br /><br />Effective management of Twitter included the use of <span style="font-weight: bold;">rich content</span>, something which younger candidates with smartphones took to well. The most obvious example was the use of photographs taken during campaigning and uploaded contemporaneously. These pictures were not just used gratuitously, though: the more effective ones told a story or entertained their audience. One Plaid Cymru candidate uploaded a picture of what she described as Lib Dem sheep, due to the large yellow markings on their backs. The same person posted a closeup of her face to highlight her crooked fringe – with a wry comment that this might be what a balanced parliament looks like. Candidates used video blogs, podcasts and other multimedia devices effectively, as well as more mundanely using Twitter to link to relevant websites and news reports.<br /><br />Twitter also allowed candidates to communicate the <span style="font-weight: bold;">excitement </span>and energy of the campaign by drawing attention to their busy schedules. Typically they were campaigning 10 to 12 hours a day, 6 days a week – or at least Twitter enabled them to give that impression. Live Tweets during key points in the campaign such as the Leaders' Debates and during controversies such as Brown's bigotgate embarrassment added to the sense that history was being made and that the candidates were sharing this with their audience.<br /><br />As with storytelling, Twitter was used well by some candidates to <span style="font-weight: bold;">add value</span> to the campaign. There were three ways they did this, as follows: 1) by the immediacy of the way they reported the events (and here mobile devices such as the Blackberry and iPhone came into their own), with the Twitter feed acting something like rolling news; 2) providing advanced notice of future events (meetings, hustings, debates, etc.); 3) supplying privileged insights into the campaign based on inside sources (something existing MPs were unashamed about, particularly those that had access to government ministers).<br /><br />Finally, and perhaps most importantly of all, Twitter enabled <span style="font-weight: bold;">dialogue </span>to take place. The most successful Tweeters engaged in debate, answered questions, posed questions of their own. Most candidates, though, were woeful in this respect. Their Twitter traffic, to the casual reader, would have showed their interest as being one way – talking TO an audience in the way a politician in the previous generation would have done with a microphone and loudspeaker. We randomly questioned candidates during the campaign, or commented on aspects of it: hardly any took the trouble to reply. Similarly, we 'followed' every candidate in Wales that was on Twitter: of these just 2-3 were interested enough to 'follow' us back. Social media is about conversations rather than dialogues: many candidates were skilled talkers but had not grasped the idea that Twitter enabled them to connect with voters, journalists, party activists, political opponents and other key stakeholders.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">Comment on methods</span><br /><br />In order crudely to quantify successful and unsuccessful Twitter activity we took three key measures during the General Election campaign: firstly the number of followers each candidate had; secondly the number of people following them; and thirdly the number of postings or Tweets made by the candidate. We assigned a numerical value to each criterion, ranging from 10 for the most active, 1 for the least active and zero if there was no activity at all. So for example someone with the most Tweets posted would score 10 on that scale, but might only score 2 if their audience was demonstrably small. We therefore had three measures as follows: 'Listeners' had high scores for the amount they posted and scored well if they were following a larger than average number of other Twitter users; 'Talkers' by contrast used the medium a good deal, and had comparatively large audiences; finally 'Engagers' had high scores for listening and for talking combined.<br /><br />It can be seen that a candidate could achieve a score of 100 for talking, 100 for listening and therefore a maximum 200 overall for 'engagement' (which combined both scores). In our study two candiates, René Kinzett and Heledd Fechan scored maximum points. In practice we found that most heavy 'talkers' also tended to score strongly on 'listening'. There were a few exceptions, though, but the methodology enabled us to exclude candidates such as Lembitt Opik in Montgomery who seemed to give up on Twitter during the campaign despite having a very large 'following'. It also meant that candidates who were extremely vocal on Twitter but who had only a small audience were similarly downgraded in our scores.<br /><br />Interestingly, the crude data scoring produced a ranking which broadly corresponded with the subjective (qualitative) analysis of the content of the campaign: the same candidates emerged from this as effective communicators as were highlighted by the scoring system.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">Evolving Twitter protocols: the future</span><br /><br />Already the exponential growth in iPhone and smartphone ownership is starting to change social media. For Twitter the mobile device is ideal, enabling users to post rich content in real time, to engage in dialogues (albeit in 140 characters) and to tell stories without having to be tied to a fixed broadband. Users are already doing this, and increasingly social media conversations here and on Facebook are being mediated through multimedia content.<br /><br />It was encouraging that we came across no real evidence of party interference in their candidates' Tweets (although some were rather predictably partisan). One widely recognized requirement for social media is that messages should not attempt to sell or persuade, at least not overtly; social media instead needs to engage through the authenticity and spontaneity of the message.<br /><br /><br />12 May 2010<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >The study was carried out in Wales by Robin Croft (Principal Lecturer, University of Glamorgan Business School), and in Yorkshire by Dianne Dean (Lecturer, University of Hull Business School). The findings of this study and the research completed in the 2009 European Elections are due to be presented at a conference of the Political Marketing Association in Thessaloniki, Greece, in September. </span>RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-89385254622304606272010-05-11T04:56:00.001-07:002010-05-12T09:31:07.586-07:00Twitter: the real campaign was elsewhere<script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />try {<br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-16267917-2");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br />} catch(err) {}</script> What impact did Twitter have on the election in Wales? Overall, probably very little: less than a quarter of the candidates were registered on Twitter, and many of these were either casual users or failed to <span style="font-style: italic;">Tweet </span>at all. However, for individuals the picture is more encouraging: active <span style="font-style: italic;">Tweeters </span>performed significantly better than non-users or casual users. And when we look at each party's overall performance, active Twitter users tended to outperform their party colleagues (although there are individual exceptions, of course).<br /><br />It would be tempting to look at the crude voting data and decide that Twitter had delivered the vote. In Wales Twitter users were well represented in the results: of the 10 candidates who showed the largest increase in the share of their vote, 5 were Twitter users, more than double what we would expect to see. 13 successfully elected MPs were on Twitter, while Lembit Opik lost his Montgomery seat, having not used his Twitter account at all during the campaign. This analysis would be misleading, though. In the case of Opik, he lost to a well organized Conservative campaign that did not use Twitter either. Eight of the newly elected MPs on Twitter actually performed worse than average for Wales. Furthermore, of the ten candidates who lost the largest share of votes in Wales, 5 were Twitter users. <br /><br />What we can see is that more engaged Twitter users were significantly better represented in the voting figures than casual users: 14 active Tweeters performed better than average, compared to 8 who performed worse in terms of increasing their vote. However, this overall analysis is skewed by the much wider picture of what was happening to the parties on a national and regional scale. Instead, it may be more helpful to examine the possible impact of Twitter within each party, thereby enabling us to allow for any 'bounce' caused by events such as the Leaders' Debates and the progress of the campaign as a whole.<br /><br />As we noted in an earlier blog, the <span style="font-weight: bold;">Conservatives </span>seemed lukewarm about Twitter, with less than a quarter of their candidates signing up for it. Prior to the formal Election campaign starting, there were indications from Conservative headquarters that the messages going out on Twitter would be tightly controlled, but we saw no real evidence of this. Most of the traffic seemed to be fairly spontaneous and authentic. Rene Kinzett (Swansea West) posted more messages than any other candidate during the campaign, a mixture of views, links, news and debate, and was without a doubt the most active candidate from any party using the medium. As a result he was able to build up an audience of over 800 by voting day, more than any other candidate apart from sitting MPs. In Delyn the Conservative candidate Antoinette Sandbach engaged well with the constituency, as did David Jones who was defending Clwyd West for the party.<br /><br />In Wales, though, the Conservatives performed less well than nationally, increasing their share of the vote by just two percentage points, against a national rise of 3.8%. Their candidates' more successful Tweeters all performed above average except Matt Wright in the Vale of Clwyd, whose vote only rose by 3.5%. Their star performers on election night (Glyn Davies who took Montgomery from the Liberals and Karen Robson who came close in Cardiff Central) did not use Twitter. Neither did Simon Hart who won Carmarthen West from Labour. Anthony Ridge-Newman, though, increased his vote in Ynys Mon with an active Twitter campaign as part of his election armoury.<br /><br />The <span style="font-weight: bold;">Green Party</span>'s national vote held constant, something reflected in Wales where there was no noticeable change. The party fielded 13 candidates, of whom only 3 used Twitter. Their most competent user was Sam Coates in Cardiff Central who performed above average. The two other users were less engaged than other candidates in Wales using the medium, and also performed worse than the Welsh average for the party, actually losing votes.<br /><br />Just one third of <span style="font-weight: bold;">Labour</span>'s candidates in the election were signed up to Twitter. The most active users were three sitting Members, Chris Bryant (Rhondda), Julie Morgan (Cardiff North) and Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West). Only Bryant made it into the overall Wales top ten, though, with a mixture of news, view, pictures and chat. However, Bryant lost nearly 13% of his vote which was one of the worst showings across Wales as a whole. Five other Labour MP were represented on Twitter, but their efforts and those of other party candidates were less noteworthy. Several candidates failed to use their Twitter accounts at all, including Merthyr MP Dai Havard, who performed even worse than Bryant, as did token Twitter user Owen Smith in Pontypridd.<br /><br />Nationally Labour lost 6.2% of its votes, although in Wales the position was slightly better with a decline of 5.8%. One of the party's most active Tweeters (Julie Morgan in Cardiff) lost her seat to the Conservatives, but actually did less badly in share of the vote terms than most of her colleagues. The same is true of Kevin Brennan (who kept his seat in Cardiff West). Indeed, Nick Smith (Blaeneau Gwent), Madelaine Moon (Bridgend) and Richard Boudier (Ynys Mon) who were all active Tweeters (albeit is a modest way), bucked the national trend and increased their share of the vote (in Smith's case by over 20%). And only 2 of the 20 under-performing Labour candidates used Twitter, and one of these in a minor way. Following the election, Labour had 26 MPs in Wales, but only 8 of these were using Twitter actively.<br /><br />The Welsh <span style="font-weight: bold;">Liberal Democrats</span> also had a comparatively strong presence in Twitter with a third of their candidates registered to use it. Three of these featured in our top ten for Wales, including Matt Smith (Blaenau Gwent), John Dixon (Cardiff North) and Amy Kitcher (Merthyr). Once again, though, there were variations: 3 of the Liberals' nominal Tweeters didn't use the medium at all during the campaign – including, surprisingly, MP Lembit Opik who had the advantage of a very large audience already built up. Once again, the Liberal Democrats used Twitter to build an element of urgency and excitement into their campaigns, highlighting local issues and events that were happening on the ground.<br /><br />It could be said that Twitter for the Liberals was a case of missed opportunities: MP Opik lost his seat, while Jenny Willott in Cardiff Central (not a Twitter user) lost nearly 9% of her votes – these two MPs representing the worst performing Liberal candidates in Wales in 2010. Twitter is by no means all the answer, though: only 3 of the top performing Liberal candidate were active users, while John Dixon's skill with Twitter in Cardiff North merely resulted in a below-par result, a minor drop in his vote. Nationally the Liberal Democrats increased their share by 1%: in Wales, though, they did better, achieving a rise of double that figure.<br /><br />Of the parties, the most active was <span style="font-weight: bold;">Plaid Cymru</span>, where over half of the candidates were using Twitter. Of these we assessed four to be in the top ten users in Wales during the campaign. These were Heledd Fychan (Montgomery), Caryl Wyn Jones (Vale of Clwyd), Ian Johnson (Vale of Glamorgan) and Myfanwy Davies (Llanelli). However, the picture is confusing as Wyn Jones under-performed the party as a whole when it came to getting the vote. The same was true of another active Twitter user, Jonathan Edwards in Carmarthen East, who dropped 11% against a 1% drop for the party as a whole. Similarly, the large number of Plaid users can be misleading: four of their candidates had Twitter accounts but didn't use them at all during the campaign, and a similar number were only occasional users. Fychan and Jones were both very effective communicators, using a mixture of comment, pictures, videos and cross links to other web pages: but while the former added votes to her tally in Montgomery, the latter lost support (in both cases, it has to be said, in the 1-2% range. The active Plaid users engaged with their audience, answering questions and taking part in debate.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Independent </span>candidates in Wales increased their share of the vote by 2%. Only two candidates used the medium: George Burke in Cardiff South was highly engaged, but performed less well than the average for Independents in Wales; Dave Rees in Islwyn, by contrast, spent very little time on Twitter, but increased his share of the vote by over 4%. Similarly, <span style="font-weight: bold;">UKIP </span>which contested all Welsh seats increased its share of the vote above the UK national average, when there was virtually no usage of Twitter. Likewise, the <span style="font-weight: bold;">Christian Party</span> which fielded 8 candidates in Wales performed exactly in line with other party showings in the UK as a whole – holding their vote. No candidates from the Christians used Twitter in Wales.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Conclusions</span><br /><br />Active Twitter users in Wales tended to perform better in terms of the final vote than non-users or light users. This is not to say that the rises were due exclusively to Twitter – as one candidate told us “Twitter was fun: the real campaign was elsewhere”. Voting was affected by macro issues from the national campaign such as the Leaders' Debates, the so-called bigotgate, controversies over off-message comments by various candidates, etc. But in many of these cases Twitter contributed as commentators and ordinary voters took to the medium to air their views. This is still very much the case during the current negotiations about forming a government. In other words Twitter's influence on a range of audiences was probably greater than the crude voting figures give credit for.<br /><br />Far from being condemned as ineffective and faddish, these results suggest that Twitter is a medium whose potential has yet to be realized. Many candidates (particularly the younger ones) were starting to experiment with ways to use Twitter through their iPhone, getting across with images and text the immediacy of the campaign on the ground. This was something that was not in evidence at all a year ago during the elections to the European Parliament. The seemingly unstoppable rise in the sales of smartphones is already changing the dynamics of communication with social media conversations increasingly moving from fixed machines and laptops to mobile devices. At the same time, social media conversations are evolving from text-based posts to multimedia offerings – almost all of this driven by iPhone ownership. Twitter is already benefiting from this trend, and politicians will need to respond in terms of their ability to react and in choosing the narratives they need to develop.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">11 May 2010</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >The study was carried out in Wales by Robin Croft (Principal Lecturer, University of Glamorgan Business School), and in Yorkshire by Dianne Dean (Senior Lecturer, University of Hull Business School). The findings of this study and the research completed in the European Elections are due to be presented at a conference of the Political Marketing Association in Thessaloniki, Greece, in September. </span>RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-9246389377357606012010-05-06T12:17:00.000-07:002010-05-11T06:13:31.832-07:00Twittering the General Election in Wales 2010<span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">Introduction</span><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");<br />document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));<br /></script><br /><script type="text/javascript"><br />try {<br />var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-16267917-1");<br />pageTracker._trackPageview();<br />} catch(err) {}</script><br />Twitter has started coming into its own during 2010, and last month announced that it had passed the total of one hundred million users worldwide. In the run-up to the General Election there were indications from most of the main parties that social media were going to feature strongly in the campaign.<br /><br />In the event, much has been made of the medium. Candidates have been sacked for making inappropriate postings, and the BBC in particular focused on Twitter when gauging audience reaction to the live Leaders' Debates. Given the interactive nature of the medium, too, it is no surprise to see it being used by the public to highlight issues that were felt to deserve mainstream attention, such as the views of Conservative candidate Philippa Stroud.<br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">The study</span><br /><br />We studied the use of Twitter by candidates in the elections a year ago for the European parliament; across Wales we found that the takeup this medium was limited to just a few candidates, who in turn did little to engage with their audiences. This year the medium has been used extensively, by all of the main parties. More importantly it has often been used effectively – to talk and to listen.<br /><br />There were around 270 candidates standing for election across 40 constituencies in Wales. Of these, over 60 had Twitter feeds. The activity varied enormously: some candidates never used their accounts, while others (such as Rene Kinzett in Swansea and Heledd Fychan in Montgomery) were using the channel several times a day. The active users engaged in Q&A with voters, talked about their families, commented on the news and the TV debates, and generally added a new dimension to the campaign. Typically the active 'Tweeters' had several hundred people following them on Twitter.<br /><br />Our evaluation of the candidates' use of Twitter went beyond what they were saying and how many people were receiving the messages: we also took into account how many people the candidates were 'following' at the same time – people and organizations whose views the candidates were interested in.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-family: arial;">The Parties</span><br /><br />Of the parties, the most active is Plaid Cymru, where over half of the candidates were using Twitter. Of these we assessed four to be in the top ten users in Wales during the campaign. These were Heledd Fychan (Montgomery), Caryl Wyn Jones (Vale of Clwyd), Ian Johnson (Vale of Glamorgan) and Myfanwy Davies (Llanelli). The large number of Plaid users can be misleading, though: four of their candidates had Twitter accounts but didn't use them at all during the campaign, and a similar number were only occasional users. Fychan and Jones were both very effective communicators, using a mixture of comment, pictures, videos and cross links to other web pages. The active Plaid users engaged with their audience, answering questions and taking part in debate.<br /><br />The Welsh Liberal Democrats also had a comparatively strong presence in Twitter with a third of their candidates registered to use it. Three of these featured in our top ten for Wales, including Matt Smith (Blaenau Gwent), John Dixon (Cardiff North) and Amy Kitcher (Merthyr). Once again, though, there were variations: 3 of their nominal Twitterers didn't use the medium at all during the campaign – including, surprisingly, MP Lembit Opik who had the advantage of a very large audience already built up. Once again, the Liberal Democrats used Twitter to build an element of urgency and excitement into their campaigns, highlighting local issues and events that were happening on the ground.<br /><br />Just one third of Labour's candidates in the election were signed up to Twitter. The most active users were three sitting Members, Chris Bryant (Rhondda), Julie Morgan (Cardiff North) and Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West). Only Bryant made it into the overall Wales top ten, though, with a mixture of news, view, pictures and chat. Five other Labour MP were represented on Twitter, but their efforts and those of other Labour candidates were less noteworthy than what was achieved by Bryant. Several candidates failed to use their Twitter accounts at all, including Merthyr MP Dai Havard.<br /><br />The Conservatives had a total Twitter star on their books in Wales. Rene Kinzett (Swansea West) posted more messages than any other candidate during the campaign, a mixture of views, links, news and debate. As a result he was able to build up an audience of over 800 by voting day, more than any other candidate apart from sitting MPs. Overall, though, the Conservatives seemed lukewarm about Twitter, with less than a quarter of their candidates signing up for it. Prior to the formal Election campaign starting, there were indications from Conservative headquarters that the messages going out on Twitter would be tightly controlled, but we saw no real evidence of this. Most of the traffic seemed to be fairly spontaneous and authentic. In Delyn the Conservative candidate Antoinette Sandbach engaged well with the constituency, as did David Jones who was defending Clwyd West for the party.<br /><br />The UK Independence Party fielded candidates in all of the Welsh constituencies, but only one popped up on Twitter, and then only briefly. The British National Party was contesting half of the seats, but none of their candidates appeared to be online in this way. The Greens did have a presence, with three candidates Twittering, as were three independents. Of these, George Burke (Cardiff South & Penarth) seemed to have found his voice.<br /><br />Across Wales the picture was quite varied. In Wrexham all of the candidates bar one seemed to be using Twitter. This was uncommon, though. There were eight constituencies where there was no Twittering at all, including Torfaen where nine candidates were standing.<br /><br /><span style="font-family: arial; font-weight: bold;">The future for Twitter</span><br /><br />For those candidates who were successful, what does the future hold? As we have seen, many outgoing MPs have been using Twitter for some time to maintain contact with the voters. In Wales several Assembly members are active in the medium, particularly Bethan Jenkins (Plaid Cymru), Peter Black (Liberal Democrat) and Jonathan Morgan (Conservative). These AMs are able to get across to the voters of Wales just how busy and varied their lives can be. For our future representatives, Twitter represents a new way to engage with democracy – for the whole of the parliament, not just for a few weeks of campaigning.<br /><br /><span style="font-family: times new roman; font-style: italic;">The study has been carried out in Wales by Robin Croft (Principal Lecturer, University of Glamorgan Business School), and in Yorkshire by Dianne Dean (Senior Lecturer, University of Hull Business School). The findings of this study and the research completed in the European Elections are due to be presented at a conference of the Political Marketing Association in Thessaloniki, Greece, in September.</span>RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5808745808108129266.post-56372086136357735432009-06-16T10:05:00.000-07:002009-06-16T10:21:23.532-07:00VoIP (Skype to you and me)<span style="font-weight: bold;">What is it?</span><br /><br />Voice over Internet Protocol systems such as Skype use networks such as the internet to channel digital communication - usually voice calls and video conferences. The key features are that the calls are free when connected to a peer (another subscriber), and tend to be very clear in terms of auditory quality.<br /><br />Skype was originally developed by Estonian programmers who had been involved with the file-sharing group Kazaa, and grew into a Swedish-based company. In 2005 it was acquired by eBay for $2.6 billion. eBay encourages customers to include Skype contact details in their auction listings. More and more retail and service companies are listing Skype details on their webpages to encourage dialogue with customers.<br /><br />Several instant messaging (IM) systems also offer VoIP, in particular <a href="http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/">Yahoo Messenger</a> and MSN (now known as <a href="http://download.live.com/messenger">Windows Live</a>). Yahoo adds value to IM through VoIP as well as services such as Yahoo Radio. Microsoft's proposition includes integrating messaging and VoIP with their gaming system XBox.RobinJazzhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13245526277526200933noreply@blogger.com0