Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Category: media

  • Spotting a security charlatan

    Spotting a security charlatan

    Google’s Open Source Programs Manager, Chris DiBona recently pointed out how IT security industry charlatans keep making false claims to push the sales of their software products and consulting services.

    “If you read an analyst report about ‘viruses’ infecting ios, android or rim,” says Chris,  “you now know that analyst firm is not honest and is staffed with charlatans. There is probably an exception, but extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence.”

    Sadly, the computer press tends to accept these extraordinary claims at face value and allows the charlatans to repeat their snake oil pitches without subjecting them to critical analysis.

    Fortunately for those who care about the security of their home and business IT systems, there are ways to spot the charlatans and their dodgy wares.

    The Big Target theory

    When you read a claim that the Windows malware epidemic of the early 2000s was due to Microsoft being a big target as opposed to the tiny market shares of Apple and Linux, you can be sure they are the words of someone who is at best clueless selling a dubious product.

    This theory is nonsense, as I’ve explained previously, and anyone who genuinely believes this has no experience in dealing with the poorly secured operating systems that were Window98, Me and the early versions of XP.

    If you are confronted by somebody making this claim ask them why, now smartphones are outselling desktop computers, where is the widespread malware promised for mobile systems? It doesn’t exist for exactly the reasons Chris gives in his Google+ post.

    Real Soon Now

    The other key indicator is the “real soon now” claims – that a virus is about to burst onto the scene that will rub the smile off the face of smug Mac and Linux users.

    Invariably the hysterical headlines are backed up with claims, almost always taken from a vendor’s press release, that a security company’s researchers have identified a threat that is about exploit wilfully clueless users.

    Daring Fireball’s John Gruber has done an excellent job of dismantling this rubbish in his classic post “Wolf”.

    His post was provoked by the ‘news’ that a wave of Apple malware was on its way. That was six months ago and we’re waiting. John tracked similar stories back to 2004, none of which came to fruition.

    The modern snake oil men have an advantage in that tech journalists are desperate for page views and in many media organisations they no longer have the resources to critically analyse PR claims.

    Sadly there are real security issues that home and business users need to be aware of. Of course, much of the solution for this doesn’t sell dubious antivirus or expensive consulting services.

    In some respects, the proliferation of these stories is a reflection of the decline of the mainstream media business model.

    As more ‘news’ stories become lightly rewritten PR spin, the less readers take those outlets seriously and once trusted journals of record become little better than online gossip rags.

    Important issues, like information security, deserve more than repeating the lies of those who profit from fear, uncertainty and doubt.

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  • Facebook timelines and the long tail

    Facebook timelines and the long tail

    The Financial Times’ Tech Hub blog reports how Facebook’s Timeline function is driving views to old newspaper articles to unexpected stories.

    On one level, this is a vindication of Wired Magazine editor Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory of the value of older inventory; that older assets and data become more valuable in an age of unlimited choice.

    The question remains though just have valuable old news really is, does the digital equivalent of fish and chip wrapping really have any intrinsic value.

    It will probably turn out that information consumers will pay for unique, timely content while leaving the lolcats and funny videos to ad supported content farms.

    The long tail model is the digital equivalent of the Fast Moving Consumer Goods business model, just as a big supermarket only makes pennies from each can of baked beans or milk they sell, they make big profits due to the volume they move.

    As business writer Seth Godin has put it, the long tail is good for organisations that own big warehouses, and newspapers have the news equivalent of that.

    For small businesses, the long tail is not where we need to be, our economics mean margin, not volume.

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  • Reinventing webinars

    Reinventing webinars

    I’m currently preparing a Smart Company webinar on local search for business. Like most other presenters I prepare for a webinar by putting together a presentation on Keynote or Powerpoint and talk over it while the audience watch and listen over the web.

    That’s pretty typical of most webinars, but I can’t help but think we’re doing this the wrong way by falling into the trap of appliying old techniques to new technologies.

    In most industries we fall for this problem; when the motor car came along, our forefathers applied the ways of horse and carts to the new technology, going as far as calling them “horseless carriages”.

    The movie industry is probably the best example of this. When movies first appeared, producers and writers applied theatrical techniques and it took a decade or so for them to figure out how to work best with the new media, then they had to relearn for talkies, followed by the arrival of TV and now the industry is adapting to Internet streaming.

    In many ways we’re still in the “silent movie” phase of online presentations; we’re learning through trial and error what techniques work while inventing new tricks that take advantage of a personal screen.

    So that gives rise to the question, how do we adapt our presentations that are designed for being presented to a room full of people to a more intimate online medium?

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  • Magazines 2020

    Magazines 2020

    As hundreds queued around the world for the latest Apple iPad an Australian media tycoon told a business breakfast that newspapers were a sunset industry. Where does this leave magazines and other print media?

    The last decade for magazines has been tough, as readers drifted to largely free websites with the advertisers following. The challenge for publishers is how do they follow their markets onto the web while still making money.

    Magazines aren’t unique in this challenge – the media industries, like many others, have been affected by the rise of the web. Magazines themselves sit somewhere between the recording and newspaper industries with news stand sales and subscriptions being a bigger proportion of incom while not having the same newspaper classified income which has collapsed so dramatically in recent years.

    The Shift Online

    We’ve seen a massive shift to the web over the last decade and that movement is only accelerating as advertisers start to follow consumers and the public embraces social media and online gaming.

    PriceWaterhouseCooper’s Entertainment and Media Outlook forecasts the magazine industry to lose 1% of advertising market share – from 5 to 4% of the overall spend – over the 2010 to 14 period with all the losses going online.

    While the magazine industry looks at losing 20% of its advertising revenue to the Internet, figures are similar for newspapers, radio and free to air television with online advertising moving from 18% to 26% of the market. The advertisers are, quite rightly, following the customers.

    Following readers online is the great challenge for the magazine industry, the question is how do they do it and continue to be profitable.

    The Internet Challenge

    The greatest problem on the Internet is making money, businesses have trained web surfers to expect online products – particularly news and entertainment – for free. Even physical goods have become increasingly commoditised as deal of the day and group buying sites have used “cheap” as the main hook for buyers.

    Today’s reader and consumer expects goods they find online to be cheap and any content they discover to be free.

    That isn’t fatal for a business as the broadcast television industry has shown us you can provide free content paid for by advertisers and make a good living while there’s no shortage of merchants who’ve built empires on the fast moving consumer good model of “stack ’em high, sell ’em cheap”.

    Part of the online magazine industry’s response to the challenge of adapting to these models has been to use free labour. The rise of the Digital Sharecroppers, where writers provide content for free, has been the result.

    People have been prepared to provide content for free for all manner of reasons. The problem for publishers, and readers, is quality writing is not sustainable under this model and we’re beginning to see the end result where writers are forced to drive buses and the free content is being increasingly sourced from PR agencies, their tame blogger bunny friends or from content farms more concerned about gaming Google through SEO keywords.

    Free content also reduces the barriers to entry, which are already extremely low in online given a geek with a WordPress site or YouTube account can have a site up and running in a couple of hours for less than a hundred dollars. If content is low quality, there’s little reason for readers to have any loyalty or to stick to any one site.

    There is the other type of free content though, User Generated Content (UCG) consisting of the comments, forum posts and free articles submitted by readers. Many of these followers are fans and this is perhaps where salvation for the magazine industry lies.

    What formats can we expect

    The old magazine format isn’t going to go away, it’s just going to decline as part of the overall distribution. We’re going to see more short and long format online content complimenting the magazines along with a lot of user content in the comments and forums sections.

    We’ll also see more cross platform selling like we currently see with magazines like Better Homes and Gardens though with a much bigger online and interactive component than the present TV-magazine tie ups.

    Content though will be more important than format. The SEO driven plays and content farms are a transition effect and as both search engines and readers become more savvy,  the influence of sites like eHow and The Huffington Post drop away.

    Probably the biggest sleeper though are the electronic readers such as the iPad and Kindle, it is just possible these devices might resurrect the fortunes of the publishing industry in a similar way to the Compact Disk did for the music industry in the 1990s. Certainly Rupert Murdoch is hoping this.

    How will magazines engage with consumers in 2020?

    Successful magazines are going to find the niches where readers and advertisers will pay to be engaged and identified with key groups, demographics and markets. Adding value to readers is going to be the key to revenue on an Internet that is full of noise of movement but with increasingly fewer nuggets of wisdom.

    It’s those nuggets of wisdom, useful analysis and unique worthy content that will be what time poor and somewhat information addled consumers are going to be looking for.

    They are also going to be looking for a platform to get their views heard. So it’s going to be critical that magazines make that platform available through comments, forums, reader blogs and giving loyal and knowledgeable readers the opportunity to write for the publication.

    Engagement is going to mean allowing site visitors some ownership of the content. The more you can build conversations and contributions around content, the more likely it is that readers will come back and the more likely they are to pay for add ons and read advertisements.

    Where will the revenue come from?

    The great challenge in the Internet era is making money online. We’ve trained the market to expect news and information to be free and that genie is now out of the bottle, and despite the paywalls we try to put up, we’re going to struggle to convince readers of our value.

    As writers, journalists, editors and publishers, we’re going to have to demonstrate our worth to the people who are prepared to pay for content. Right now there aren’t many of who will pay for relevance and quality, but things may be changing as readers realise much of what they currently find on content farms is unsatisfactory.

    Subscriptions and advertising are still going to be critical while events, merchandise and other revenue streams are going to be useful revenue centres but it’s hard to see how they will contribute to the bottom line any more than they currently do. It’s also important to remember that successful staging events is an expensive task involving skills many publishers simply don’t have.

    Hyperlocal is a fascinating area for magazines. While much of the focus has been on adopting local search to the newspaper industry it could be that specialist magazines can deliver effective localised products through directories and mobile phone applications.

    For instance let’s say we have an offal magazine for those who like to offal. A Brisbane businessman visiting Adelaide feels like a plate devilled kidneys for dinner. It could be that Offal Eaters Monthly magazine has a paid app or a subscriber site that allows him to find what he wants in a strange city.

    What is the role of the publisher/editor?

    More than ever the publisher and editor are going to have to know their market intimately. At a time when audiences are going to be widely fragmented it’s going to be essential to understand what the readers want.

    User generated content provides an opportunity for publishers and their editors to understand the market and monitoring what is being said by the target audience is going to be a key role of the modern editor.

    Moderating and controlling what’s being said on the platform will also be a key role for an editor. We all know the Internet is God’s gift to opinionated idiots and the risks of defamation, piracy and other brand damaging activity on websites are very real. The editor’s job will increasingly be to filter out the lunatics while encouraging interesting discussion.

    Most people though don’t want to create content, beyond having a quick comment on a post or sometimes joining a discussion. Another important role of the editor is to balance the higher quality, paid content with user generated material to ensure the publication’s site doesn’t dissolve into just another web forum.

    Publishers too are going to be challenged by this and their task is to find the deep niches where these models can succeed then convince advertisers and subscribers that their sites are worth signing up to.

    Given the ease of launching new sites, the key to success is being the trusted leader in your segment. If your content can be easily replicated or bought from another source then the survival odds are firmly against you.

    The next nine years

    We should also keep in mind change isn’t new, broadcast television gave a death sentence to news magazines like Life or the Bulletin a generation ago, and these publications only survived because of indulgent owners.  The magazine industry met those challenges, evolved and survived albeit with great change and a few casualties.

    The same is happening now, the industry is evolving and adapting to the new mediums and the changed behaviour of advertisers and readers. It’s not pretty or easy but the rewards are going to be there for those who figure it out.

    Had we been around when Gutenberg invented the printing press we would have wondered what will happen to all the monks who up until then had spent their lives manually copying religious texts and important documents. Change came to the monks, but not in the ways they expected.

    The web only recently turned 20 and in 2020 it will still be less than thirty years since its invention.  All of us will still be learning, making mistakes and discovering where the opportunities are.

    It’s a time of challenge and the rewards for those who get it right are great. The key for magazines, like all of us, lies in understanding our markets and audiences.

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  • Tipping points

    Tipping points

    We often assume change is immediate – for instance, the moment the motor car was invented, all the horse cart makers went out of business – what usually happens though is the two technologies or industries sit side by side for some time and the old industry may even continue to prosper for sometime and the new methods struggle.

    Eventually though the newer technology takes over and the older one falls away quickly, leaving slow to change incumbents with an irrelevant business model.

    Illustrating this, two fascinating posts by Michael DeGusta on his blog The Understatement tracks two major trends in the US newspaper and record industries, noting how the sectors are now at 1960 and below 1973 levels respectively.

    The record industry

    Michael’s tracking of per capita recording sales is striking both for how technology, trends and musical tastes have shaped the record industry along with the predicament it now finds itself in.

    The 1970s show how the recording industry adapted, we see sales start the decade in decline until a sharp uptick in vinyl sales happens in the late 1970s, probably driven by the heavily hyped “rock opera” and concept albums foisted on us by the likes of Pink Floyd and the Electric Light Orchestra.

    It’s interesting that during this period cassette sales largely flat lined, as digital revenues have today. As a child of that late 1970s era, we used cassette recorders – mine won in competition at a jeans shop in outer suburban Melbourne – to tape stuff off the radio and jerryrig with record players so we could create mashups of Alice Cooper and Skyhooks.

    Cassette revenues eventually grew, but the the Compact Disk quickly took the growth off the cassette tape and drove the record industry to new highs, probably as people replaced their vinyl collections with CDs that weren’t easily copied through the 1980s and much of the 90s.

    The peak of CD sales was hit in the late 1990s, which is almost certainly due to the arrival of personal computers equipped with recordable CD units. All of a sudden, we could go back to copying the music we’d already bought.

    To make things worse, the rise of the World Wide Web meant we suddenly didn’t have to go through the gatekeepers – the record stores, radio stations and magazines – to find the music we wanted.

    For a while the record industry fought back, even seeing a minor resurgence in 1999 and 2000, but then the rot sets in. The tipping point was clearly in 2001 and can probably be traced to the online streaming services, including YouTube, and the rapidly maturing peer-to-peer services.

    The only solace the record industry in its current form can hope for is to see a surge in digital sales like they saw with cassettes in the mid-1980s. It’s difficult to see how that can happen unless they can quickly strike some very favourable deals with Apple and other online distributors.

    Newspaper advertising

    Print media’s performance over the last fifty years has been one of success until 5 years ago. Despite most of us turning from newspapers to broadcast television for our news through the 1960s and 70s, revenues stood up.

    From the 1980’s there was a slow decline and in a few years early in the new millennium it even looked like the Internet wasn’t affecting revenues and the new streams from online advertising were actually increasing overall income.

    Then in 2005, the tipping point was reached as classified advertisers, particularly employment and real estate, fled to online competitors with the display buyers not far behind.

    For newspaper publishers, that their online revenues have barely grown in the last five years most be the most worrying aspect of the collapse in their income. Their online strategies simply aren’t working.

    What this means for other industries

    This “tipping point” pattern is typical when we see technological shifts. For various reasons – customer inertia, government regulations, uneven distribution of the new tools – a game changing technology usually takes time to be adopted and usually goes through a process best described by the Gartner Hype Cycle.

    New technologies and ideas rarely change industries or societies overnight, but once a technology reaches maturity and mass acceptance, the barrier eventually gives gives and people quickly move across to the new way of doing things.

    We see this in the record industry – particularly in the switch to cassettes, CDs and then collapse as the net takes over – then again in the newspaper industry.

    These two industries though are just examples, the same process is happening to many others. One good example is the phone directory business where the tipping point is happening right now as consumers and businesses move online and away from printed directories.

    That many businesses still haven’t figured out this change in consumer behaviour indicates they too are being blind sided by tipping points that could leave their ventures stranded by history.

    All of us have to understand how these changes will affect our livelihoods and trades. Are you looking at how your business is affected by the rise of the net and the end of the cheap credit?

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