Been a quieter day today, but here’s some of the stories and tweets which have caught my eye. Including a very dramatic video, a timely and insightful post about disruption in the newsroom and Google launching a new news app.
Following the announcement that YouTube had funded some high quality fashion shows from Hearst, this second announcement really confirms the shift from YouTube being the place for swinging cats to being a place we’ll consume much more long-form media.
It’s a good move from the two not-for-profit news organisations as YouTube will most likely pass on a very high monetisation rate for the type of content they will be producing – as it’s rare to find this kind of content on YouTube. Most importantly it’s a whole new network of distribution for hopefully some high quality and in-depth reporting which deserves a big audience. Let’s hope YouTube surface and share it accordingly. Read the rest of this entry »
Another busy media day, dominated by yet another social media story as Spotify launched their play button and media organisations clamoured over themselves to understand what it all means.
The Swedish music service pulled another rabbit out of the bag as it announced its ‘play’ button which would allow anyone to embed music on their website. However, read between the lines and there’s a catch – you have to be logged into Spotify for the song to play and you must sign up for an account.
So rather than revolutionise the way music is consumed online it’s more about boosting their number of subscribers, as this post from Emma Barnett on Telegraph Tech points out they don’t have the user base you might think they have – only 10 million, which compared to Instagram (I feel like starting the description of Instagram as ‘one billion dollar’ Instagram) has 30 million. It’s definitely a good thing to be able to embed Spotify, but I’m not sure whether it’ll stop people embedding YouTube clips or SoundCloud – particularly for a lot of blogs dealing with new music then Spotify doesn’t tend to have the smaller more cutting edge acts they are writing about.
How can mainstream media make use of Spotify? Well apart from embedding it, which will add an extra layer to say music reviews or think pieces, but it won’t benefit them much. Read the rest of this entry »
Took a few days off over the Easter holiday weekend, so back on it today. Here’s some of the links which have been catching my eye today as the world goes crazy over Instagram, YouTube goes after the fashion market, old-school journalists get a letter from a digital guru and MySociety launch their journo hack day.
A lot of chatter about Instagram, the hipster photo service, being bought by Facebook for $1 billion dollars (it’s got a slight Dr Evil from Austin Powers ring to it doesn’t it?). Instagram is a rather cool app and web service which allows you to add effects to your photos after you’ve taken them, and then share them around an ever-growing network. People who are on Instagram, love it. So I was looking for a bit of analysis behind the ONE BILLION DOLLARS headline and found this insightful blog from Pete Warden who is behind Jetpac (a website and app for sharing travel photos).
He hits the nail on the head when you look at the numbers, Facebook is essentially a photo-sharing website – with 10 billion photos added a month. Yep read that figure back again. I know from looking at interaction reports that photos shared via our brand pages on Trinity Mirror (who I work for) get much larger interaction rates, and this backs up my personal experience. If I post a photo of me with a beer looking like an idiot, I’ll get far more comments than the usual status update (unless it’s a life-changing status update e.g. I’m just getting married…)
Warden outlines some great reasons why Facebook is on the money to time their purchase, because although Instagram hasn’t ever made a penny that’s not the point. Facebook is buying functionality and a community. Of course there will be a backlash, but Zuckerberg has shown rather than sit around and wonder what might have been he’d rather live in the now. Read the rest of this entry »
Here goes my daily round-up of interesting links I’ve seen around the web today, a mix of politics, super advanced glasses and some cool awards for hyperlocal folk.
Les Reid, of Coventry Telegraph fame, gives a great overview of the issues facing cities which will soon be electing mayors. The battle to be Mayor in Birmingham will be very interesting, and Reid interviews figures including Lord Adonis and Greg Clark about the impact a Mayor can have on a city.
Whether their claims of a directly-elected figurehead having the influence, power and clout to achieve strong decentralisation from Whitehall remains to be seen. I think there is truth in the Boris principle, he certainly acts as a focal point and rather amusing cheerleader for London. But whether he makes any meaningful economic impact for the capital is unclear.
Personally I think elected mayors are a good step. Too often council leaders are voted in to pacify factions within political parties, and not judged by the skills for doing the job but by how they will perform for their party – not by how they will perform for the electorate, and those are two very different masters. Read the rest of this entry »
I find myself reading loads of stuff via Twitter, blogs and more but despite trying numerous bookmarking services I figured I should start sharing them – and a few thoughts – in a regular fashion.
So I introduce, the brief, a mix of media news, hyperlocal news and other journalism news condensed into a handy guide of what I’ve been spotting that day.
This piece on the Telegraph technology section from Julia Green focuses on whether the new social media darling, Pinterest, will actually generate some serious dollars.
If you’ve missed it, Pinterest is like browsing through one of those really fancy fashion/style magazines with loads of stuff you can’t afford plastered all over it. Green is right when he says they’ve got the ‘pinning’ bit sorted out, so you can make something look beautiful very quickly – and people like doing that. But whether it’s because he’s involved in some other tech start-ups which are a little similar, but not as slick, he doesn’t think it will pull in the revenue needed. Read the rest of this entry »
A projection of YouTube videos playing on the Guggenheim's exterior during the Art After Dark event. Image credit to Katie Killary.
Last month I read a very interesting in-depth look at the developments going on at YouTube and how they are changing their offering in the online video market.
The New Yorker article highlights how despite being branded as funny cat videos and grainy CCTV the video beast is evolving itself into something different.
Offering start-up funding for well produced and quality video channels, the announcement that it wants to be the place for watching music videos online and wanting to show more and more long-form video – it’s clear there is a revolution underway. Read the rest of this entry »
Everyone is always on the lookout for the next big thing on the web but over Christmas I reflected on one social network which is standing the test of time, Flickr.
The photo sharing site was launched in 2004 and Yahoo! soon snapped it up in 2005. It allows anyone to upload their photos, add detailed information and share them with the world. In the last 7 years it has grown to claim more than 51 million registered users and in August last year it claimed it hosted more than 6 billion images.
The key thing for me is that Flickr has built a smaller, niche but very engaged network of photographers – accessible to professional, amateur and wannabe professionals.
For me, Flickr is a perfect fit with the growing area of hyperlocal news sites and existing local news sites and 2012 should be the year, eight years after it started, that we re-connect and re-consider how we work with it as journalists and media organisations.
Despite the shift to mobile, multimedia and even more impressive download speeds – it is still words and pictures which drive the web. Just look at the 2011 most shared stories, it is the picture which very much makes the story and I suspect increases the ‘WOW!’ factor and makes people want to share it with their friends.
Just thought I’d flag up this video from the Media Trust, which gives an overview of Blog Preston.
The site was started by myself in January 2009 as a place for news and information about Preston, after the Preston Citizen (weekly paper) withdrew from the city.
Joseph Stashko is co-editor of the site and gives an insight into what his role involves, how we live blogged the general election, cover stories and much more.
It’s worth a watch to help understand how a community news site goes about operating and how ‘hyperlocal’ is measured by us.
Earlier this year I was at a journalism conference in Perugia and on one of the panels was a chap from the Huffington Post. He described how during the 2008 Presidential campaign they’d had a massive scoop when one of their contributors caught a candidate gaffe on video, it was uploaded and within hours it was leading most international news sites and the talk of the day on Twitter, Facebook and more.
Our panel discussed the implications of this on the media, and I said we’re living in a golden age of social media stupidity. Why? Because at the moment you can find copious amounts of information on people, their activities, and much more – but you can also find it very quickly.
I was reminded of this by Alison Gow’s excellent post on How to (Not) kill Journalism and how the web represents such an opportunity, particularly being able to crowdsource direct with your followers. Read the rest of this entry »
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