Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: new media

  • What happens when others control your traffic?

    What happens when others control your traffic?

    Quartz magazine is held up as one of the most innovative news websites and one of the models for the future of online publishing however its president Jay Lauf suggested at the Digital Media Strategies conference in London yesterday that web users are increasingly shifting towards social sites to find their content.

    This isn’t new, most sites have been dependent upon referrals from the popular social media services and companies like Buzzfeed have built their entire strategies upon traffic from Facebook.

    Lauf suggests that sites like Quartz and Buzzfeed are increasingly losing control of their own audiences which raises risks for publishers and readers as they become dependent upon the social media gatekeepers.

    Quartz’s traffic from LinkedIn is a good example of how a gatekeeper can control traffic with referrals falling away as the social site pivots into a publishing platform of its own.

    It could turn out that control of traffic backfires however as people find those services deliver less value or relevant information.

    Ultimately it may be the gatekeepers who suffer from restricting traffic as readers decide they aren’t getting the news they want.

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  • The tension between creative and business

    The tension between creative and business

    One of the ongoing tensions in the new media landscape is that between the demands of advertisers and content creators.

    This isn’t a new thing as a 1959 interview between Mike Wallace and TV pioneer Rod Stering shows.

    Sterling describes how pressures from networks and advertisers created often weird compromises along with a fair degree of self censorship among TV writers and producers.

    Little that Sterling describes would surprise today’s online journalists, bloggers and social media influencers who find themselves subject to identical pressures today.

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  • Navigating a world of silos

    Navigating a world of silos

    Having seen Robert Scoble interview dozens of startups and founders, it was fascinating to get him on the other side of the camera for a Decoding the New Economy interview.

    One of areas I was keen to explore with Scoble was his experience of moving from his blogging platform to Facebook and particularly the risk of being locked in a silo, something previously discussed with Doc Searls.

    “I’d rather all my content wasn’t in Facebook,” Scoble observes, “but those days are over.”

    Unlike Searls, Scoble sees the social media networks — particularly Facebook — as being a useful distribution tool while accepting their limitations; “I find I get a lot more engagement and distribution on Facebook.”

    “Unlike a lot of other journalists I don’t have to make my money out of advertising so I don’t care about taking my eyeballs off the blog and onto Facebook.”

    “It does limit my storytelling ability because you can only use one video and I can’t do a lot of typographic stuff,” says Scoble, “people are seeing these on mobile phones anyway so they don’t want to see all of this stuff anyway.”

    The mobile aspect is key to the business world going forward, we stopped midway through the interview to buy an iPhone 6 which went on pre-order right in the middle of the discussion.

    For the mobile world Scoble sees the rise of various ecosystems like Google’s and Apple’s forcing people to make choices about which camp they are going to join.

    Like many in the tech industry, Scoble is very cautious about looking too far ahead; “none of the people, even the investors, are looking more than five years ahead.”

    The key though is miniaturization as devices get smaller and more portable, the potential for technology becomes greater.

    Whether that potential is limited by the desire of vendors to lock users into silos remains to be seen.

     

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  • Reinventing online publishing

    Reinventing online publishing

    Is the Daily Mail the future of online publishing? In USA Today Michael Wolff posits that the British media outfit might be the first newspaper company to navigate the transition from print to digital.

    Certainly the 180 million unique visitors a month make it the English language’s most popular news site which, despite the unease and criticisms about its brand of journalism, shows the model might be working.

    Wolff puts the success down to the digital arm being autonomous to the print operations, making the point its hard to simultaneously defend the old, but still profitable, print mastheads while growing the digital platforms.

    It would be sad if it were a crusty incumbent that becomes the David Sarnoff of the digital era rather than some smart and hungry kids from a barrio or ghetto,  but there’s no reason why one of the established newspaper groups couldn’t be the people who reinvent the media for modern times.

    There’s plenty of competition though from groups like Vice, Buzzfeed and dozen of others. Despite the Daily Mail’s successes, there’s still no shortage of opportunity

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  • Social media’s dark side

    Social media’s dark side

    I was asked by ABC Radio Newcastle today to talk about the dark uses of social media – spreading propaganda.

    This is an topic that’s come to the fore with the troubles in the Gaza Strip and the downing of MH17; all sides are using traditional propaganda techniques with a thick overlay of new media.

    A key part of the social media aspects of the modern propaganda methods is those who want to spread their message only need to confirm the prejudices of their loyal followers.

    In turn the loyal foot soldiers will then spread the word through their Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr feeds; a modern Goebbels doesn’t have to control the media, they just need enough useful idiots.

    It’s also worth noting the new media tools complement the old broadcast and publishing methods with the most effective modern propaganda – and marketing – campaigns cleverly using the strengths of each medium to create an amplifying effect.

    Propaganda is nothing new, many of the Ancient Greeks’ stories were written to discredit their enemies, and every technological advance has seen new ways for people to spread misinformation.

    In that respect it shouldn’t be surprising that we should take with everything we read on, or off, line.

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