Should publishers care about social media?

Posted on by John Helmer
99.5% of social media experts are clowns, according to Gary Vaynerchuk (a bit of a social media expert himself) interviewed on TechCrunch. As someone who lives in Brighton, with its thriving new media community and unfortunate penchant for trendophilia, I have to confess that his statement has a ring of truth about it. I have seen their collapsing cars, their oversized shoes, and on more than one occasion have had water squirted at my specs by their trick buttonhole flowers. In other words: I’ve attended a lot of social media presentations. As soon as the Powerpoint arrives at its final slide, you ask yourself: ‘Well it sounded great, but what did he actually say?’. As a topic, social media has become yawn-inducing. It’s high on the hype curve and trending downwards as typically most of what you hear is hot air. So, should publishers waste any time at all even thinking about social media? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. Continue reading →

The hidden algorithms that control your view of the web

Posted on by John Helmer
A great TED talk by Eli Pariser about the dangers of living in a ‘filter bubble’. We found this via Scholarly Kitchen. Pariser has written a book about how filters applied to internet searches by Facebook, Google et al are moving us towards a situation where our view of the web tends to reflect what we already know and like, rather than what is really out there. Since search is a fundamental technology in digital publishing this is something all publishers need to be aware of. Continue reading →

Time to get paranoid about Android?

Posted on by John Helmer
Android logo Followers of this blog will have read quite a bit about Apple products for which we make no apologies. After all, Apple has been making most of the running in developing both the smartphone and the tablet computer as serious platforms for publisher content. Up to now, that is. Recent reports show Apple is facing some stiff competition from Google’s operating system, Android. In the smartphone category, Android has been ‘surging’ since last year according to Wired. Last October, Neilsen reported that Android was the most popular operating system among people who had bought a smartphone in the previous six months, with Blackberry RIM and Apple iOS tied for second place. When it comes to tablets, Wired has quoted a Wall Street analyst as saying: “Long term, we believe Android could surpass the iPad in tablet market share”. Now Android looks to be winning the content battle as well. Distimo’s report said that Google’s Android Market eclipsed Apple’s App Store for iPhone in terms of free applications. At current rates of growth, Google Android Market looks likely to beat Apple into second place for overall number of apps available later this year. Those who dislike Apple’s ‘closed’ model and the tight control the company exerts may well be cheering at this news. Android is open source after all: isn’t it? Well, up to a point. Some think that Android is becoming less and less open source, and for publishers this might not be bad news. Continue reading →

The IPL and the end of the web as we know it

Posted on by Rob Yates
IPL cricketerWatching the Indian Premier League cricket the other evening (and loving how they have branded the language: a 6 is not a 6 any more but a ‘DLF maximum’ and a half-century a ‘Citibank moment of success’) I was struck, in the numerous ad breaks, by the stream of brands that drive consumers straight to Facebook, dispensing (in their advertising) with their standard URLs. Coke, Lucozade and Dulux all employ the Facebook.com/brand URL; and the Army simply suggest that one Googles ‘Army Jobs’. Though we can’t quite yet tell who will be the victor in the so-called platform wars, we know that someone will, and we can probably predict a date when the idea of a ‘corporate url’ will become anachronistic. I am not surprised by this trend. In the 15 years I spent working with consumer brands online, the mantra (from New York to London to Mumbai to Beijing) was always ‘experience’: define moments when the consumer is open to brand communications and then create experiences that meaningfully intersect those moments with the brand. Continue reading →

With one bound, the publisher was free: social media to the rescue?

Posted on by John Helmer
Satirical cartoon about Google, Apple, Twitter, Facebook leaders A major irritant for publishers in recent times has been the emergence of new gatekeepers in their supply chain, principally Google, Amazon and Apple. Now help in derailing these tech behemoths seems at hand, albeit help from an unlikely quarter. Many forward thinkers in publishing see social media (e.g. Facebook, Twitter) as a way of bypassing the Glamazons of this world – offering an opportunity for publishers to forge a more direct relationship with the customer. However, are publishers really ready to embrace this challenge? Do they possess the requisite skills, knowledge and abilities to grasp the opportunity offered by social networks such as Facebook? Continue reading →