Saturday, February 17, 2007
ORJ.org response to "can grassroots media be commercial?"
I've jumped into the fray of a discussion on Annenberg's Online Journalism Review. It's a rough cut, but coalesces some of the ideas floating around my head lately.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Community Next Reactions
As I type this, my wife and I are still in San Francisco. We’ve had about enough of parking on hills in the rain and are heading down the coast back to flat Long Beach, where the parking spaces stretch far as the eye can see and rain sends people scattering in terror.
Here I’m going to extrapolate a few commonalities from yesterday’s Community Next conference. The presentations fell under a few general categories:
The monetization discussions were helpful on a practical level. In contrast, the product demos were probably the least memorable because they were so similar, and all seemed to work off the MySpace idea but with a niche community. The exceptions to this rule were device-based software/sites such as Jingl and Loopt. Generally I found the more freeform discussions the most interesting because they offered a greater variety of perspectives and ideas. The ones I tuned in for centered around one or more topics:
The 4-person panel in the first half was excellent, even under time constraints; Hiten Shah, Matt Roche, Mike Jones, and Joe Hurd responded to audience questions with concise and resourceful suggestions. Hurd in particular had helpful comments about the use of advertisements to monetize (there’s that word again) online video.
The presenters leading off from lunch were in my opinion the strongest: Jake McKee (Big in Japan), Heather Luttrell (Indieclick), and Fred Stutzman (UNC/Unit Structures). McKee is best known for his work at Lego, but these days consults at Big in Japan. Luttrell brought her experience in a successful online advertising company, Indieclick. Her powerpoint was compelling, as were honest answer to questions such as (paraphrased) “how many monthly hits do you need to have a service such as Indieclick consider me as a client?” (answer: in the ballpark of 2 million) Improved transparency among professionals is ultimately not desirable under most circumstances, but it’s what people flock to conferences for to get that edge.
Stutzman is a Ph.D student at UNC who has contributed heavily to the (surprisingly scant) quantitative research on social networking online. Although he focuses on Facebook many of his ideas, such as “social objects,” can be extrapolated to other online communities. He was also one of the only people to question how many more golden eggs the online community goose can lay – the elephant in the corner of this whole discussion. After all, how many more niche audience websites can the world support?
Here I’m going to extrapolate a few commonalities from yesterday’s Community Next conference. The presentations fell under a few general categories:
- Simple, practical suggestions for increasing monetization
- Product demos & histories
- More freeform discussions of online communities
The monetization discussions were helpful on a practical level. In contrast, the product demos were probably the least memorable because they were so similar, and all seemed to work off the MySpace idea but with a niche community. The exceptions to this rule were device-based software/sites such as Jingl and Loopt. Generally I found the more freeform discussions the most interesting because they offered a greater variety of perspectives and ideas. The ones I tuned in for centered around one or more topics:
- Increasing user experience
- Authenticity
- Involvement
- Niche audiences
- Monetization (this must have been a buzz word because it is shorter and sounds better than “make your online business profitable”)
- Device-based development (cell phones, PDAs, etc.)
- Branding and other marketing concerns
The 4-person panel in the first half was excellent, even under time constraints; Hiten Shah, Matt Roche, Mike Jones, and Joe Hurd responded to audience questions with concise and resourceful suggestions. Hurd in particular had helpful comments about the use of advertisements to monetize (there’s that word again) online video.
The presenters leading off from lunch were in my opinion the strongest: Jake McKee (Big in Japan), Heather Luttrell (Indieclick), and Fred Stutzman (UNC/Unit Structures). McKee is best known for his work at Lego, but these days consults at Big in Japan. Luttrell brought her experience in a successful online advertising company, Indieclick. Her powerpoint was compelling, as were honest answer to questions such as (paraphrased) “how many monthly hits do you need to have a service such as Indieclick consider me as a client?” (answer: in the ballpark of 2 million) Improved transparency among professionals is ultimately not desirable under most circumstances, but it’s what people flock to conferences for to get that edge.
Stutzman is a Ph.D student at UNC who has contributed heavily to the (surprisingly scant) quantitative research on social networking online. Although he focuses on Facebook many of his ideas, such as “social objects,” can be extrapolated to other online communities. He was also one of the only people to question how many more golden eggs the online community goose can lay – the elephant in the corner of this whole discussion. After all, how many more niche audience websites can the world support?
Labels: online networking social communitynext
Saturday, February 03, 2007
When viral campaigns attack: lite brite Boston bomb scare
When viral campaigns attack: lite brite Boston bomb scare
If only youtube had a time machine...
Whether you happen to think it’s funny, tragic, or happy-sad (respect to Tim Buckley), what happened Monday in Boston will set a precedent for viral campaigns. Advertising is highly saturation. In place like New York City almost all public wall space is taken up by stickers, flyers, and graffiti. You could easily make the case made that this is a ridiculous over-reaction to a harmless prank. Still, advertisers in America get off pretty light, and one of the minimum responsibilities they have is not to incite panic where foreseeable. It’s a little ironic that over-zealous media pounced on a careless advertising campaign. Certainly there’s enough neglect to go around.
What they did wasn’t art. It was an accidental result of an advertising campaign. Incidentally, this may be what saves them from legal prosecution. However, as my wife put it, in retrospect they should have put their own art up instead of a cartoon character, because at least then their creation would have been instantly world-famous.
To my mind this event really highlights the symbolic nature of the media. One person’s filth is another’s beauty, and one person’s blinking toy is another’s potential bomb. You had to recognize this single image and know what it meant, because there was no explanation provided on the light boxes. In this case I’d argue the context was most important. Attaching pretty much anything box-like to the bottom of a bridge is probably a bad idea, and it’s best not to rely on our police force to be hip ‘nuff to the Internets to recognize a character that doesn’t come on until midnight on cable. If you didn’t make the connection between the cartoon network and the character on the devices, you certainly couldn’t find information on it quickly and easily. What would you google for, “robot giving the finger?”
As a teenager, I grew up going to the MIT flea market, buying odd electronics to solder together with big blobs of solder. If I were lucky, and didn’t zap the components by not wearing ESD protection, I might end up with a theremin. So I’m sympathetic, these guys seem to be a similar breed of tinkerer. Peter Berdovsky (“Zebbler”), one of the arrested, was a student at the Mass Art SIM program. (my wife knew him briefly when she was getting her MFA) Both him and his buddy took great joy in taking the piss on the news, as a daft attempt at turning the situation around to make it into some kind of promotional tool. Kind of funny, but again, kind of sad.
If only youtube had a time machine...
Whether you happen to think it’s funny, tragic, or happy-sad (respect to Tim Buckley), what happened Monday in Boston will set a precedent for viral campaigns. Advertising is highly saturation. In place like New York City almost all public wall space is taken up by stickers, flyers, and graffiti. You could easily make the case made that this is a ridiculous over-reaction to a harmless prank. Still, advertisers in America get off pretty light, and one of the minimum responsibilities they have is not to incite panic where foreseeable. It’s a little ironic that over-zealous media pounced on a careless advertising campaign. Certainly there’s enough neglect to go around.
What they did wasn’t art. It was an accidental result of an advertising campaign. Incidentally, this may be what saves them from legal prosecution. However, as my wife put it, in retrospect they should have put their own art up instead of a cartoon character, because at least then their creation would have been instantly world-famous.
To my mind this event really highlights the symbolic nature of the media. One person’s filth is another’s beauty, and one person’s blinking toy is another’s potential bomb. You had to recognize this single image and know what it meant, because there was no explanation provided on the light boxes. In this case I’d argue the context was most important. Attaching pretty much anything box-like to the bottom of a bridge is probably a bad idea, and it’s best not to rely on our police force to be hip ‘nuff to the Internets to recognize a character that doesn’t come on until midnight on cable. If you didn’t make the connection between the cartoon network and the character on the devices, you certainly couldn’t find information on it quickly and easily. What would you google for, “robot giving the finger?”
As a teenager, I grew up going to the MIT flea market, buying odd electronics to solder together with big blobs of solder. If I were lucky, and didn’t zap the components by not wearing ESD protection, I might end up with a theremin. So I’m sympathetic, these guys seem to be a similar breed of tinkerer. Peter Berdovsky (“Zebbler”), one of the arrested, was a student at the Mass Art SIM program. (my wife knew him briefly when she was getting her MFA) Both him and his buddy took great joy in taking the piss on the news, as a daft attempt at turning the situation around to make it into some kind of promotional tool. Kind of funny, but again, kind of sad.
