Yearly Archives: 2007

Newsroom New Year’s resolutions for 2007

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A few nuggets from Lost Remote Managing Editor Steve Safran’s Newsroom New Year’s resolutions for 2007:

Start thinking of the web as more than our newscast online
Your website is a new channel, not just a new way of repurposing your news. If you were magically given a new TV channel, you wouldn’t populate it with your newscast over and over, would you? So why are you doing that online? … Think of the website as a new channel instead of a news site.

Integrate blogging into our newsroom
I know, change is painful. It’s additional work, yes. Not a ton, but some. Get over it. Workflows change.

Prepare my site for the 2008 elections
Now’s your chance. There will be a lot of money going into online advertising for the election. And you can get it. But only if you can make a compelling case that your site deserves it.

Never allow the words “added value” in my shop again
As long as you are training your advertisers that the web is added value, you are telling them it is NO value.

Existing newsies need to know the painful truth: we have to work on more platforms as part of our jobs now. If we don’t want to, that’s fine. Younger people who will work for less will be graduating this June. And next June. And the following June…

I started flogging this mule almost ten years ago. And I couldn’t fill a teacup with the progress I’ve made. But then, June is just around the corner.

Why social media is important to marketers

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I don’t know how old this info is (or how accurate) because I can’t find the original post, which is somewhere on the Church of the Customer Blog. Bart Cleveland includes these factoids in a recent post at Small Agency Diary (AdAge.com) to underscore why social media is important to marketers:

  • By March 2006, 84 million Americans had broadband at home, a 40% jump from 2005 figures
  • By March 2006, Pew estimated 48 million Americans were regular online content creators
  • By the end of 2005, 139 million people in the world had a DSL (broadband) connection
  • In 2005, $6.7 billion worth of digital cameras were sold in the U.S.
  • About 41% of all cell phone owners use them as content tools
  • By the end of 2005, just over 1 billion people were online — that’s 1/6th of the world
  • Asia represents the world’s most populous online segment
  • By July 2006, 50 million blogs had been created and their number was doubling every 6 months
  • About 7,200 new blogs are created every hour
  • By 2006, 10 million people were listening to podcasts in 2006; by 2010, it’s expected to be 50 million people
  • About 100 million videos are viewed every day on YouTube; about 65,000 videos uploaded every day
  • In 2006, MySpace had over 100 million registered members, most of them from the U.S.

Talent more important than size

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That is one of the lessons of Web 2.0, according to AdWeek’s Bob Greenberg:

“Long before they became global behemoths, the great (advertising) agencies of the past were small businesses built around people of uncanny creative ability. What’s amazing is that our competition in the future will come from exactly where we started: small teams of creative geniuses with ideas galore on how to capture the hearts and minds of consumers. Only now they probably don’t work in agencies. At the same time, they have a fully democratized means of content distribution that doesn’t rely on captive audiences. Lesson No. 2: Talent is more important than size.”

Rose Bowl announcer talking about bloggers?

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TV on in the background. Last couple of minutes of the Rose Bowl. I thought I heard the announcers say something about “the bloggers will be out” if Michigan loses. Did I hear that correctly?

I have no doubt there are a shit-load of fan blogs for every college and pro team, so I’m not sure why I would be surprised the subject would be mentioned in the broadcast. Can any of you sports fans enlighten me on this? Have bloggers become enough of a factor they get mentioned in such high-profile broadcasts?

Weblogs vs. the New York Times

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Which will be more authoritative in 2007, weblogs or the New York Times? The question (“The Long Bet”) was posed back in 2002 as part of something called The Long Now Foundation. Dave Winer’s explains:

“My bet with Martin Nisenholtz at the Times says that the tide has turned, and in five years, the publishing world will have changed so thoroughly that informed people will look to amateurs they trust for the information they want.”

Not sure who will win the wager but there’s little question the publishing world has changed and blog are having some impact.