Category Archives: Media & Culture

The best things in life (like Wikipedia) are not free

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I was searching Wikipedia for something last month and noticed a big  banner at the top of the page, asking for contributions to keep the site going. I didn’t give much but readily hit the PayPal button. Apparently a lot of folks did:

Huffington Post:

“Since November 5, the organization has raised $4.5 million, though the bulk of that came in late December when founder Jimmy Wales posted his annual appeal to the Wikipedia community. Add that to the $2 million in foundation grants and major gifts they’d received since July, and their entire $6 million annual operating budget has been met. The achievement would be remarkable in ordinary times, but it’s all the more impressive given the grim economic climate.”

Wikipedia Fundraising By The Numbers

136,000: number of donors
$35: average donation
16: number of currencies in which people donated
150: number of countries from which people donated
$6.5 million: total amount raised thus far
$3 million: amount raised in ten days in late December

I really like the idea of lots of people kicking in a few dollars to support something they believe is worthwhile.

Scott Adams: Cusp of fundamental change

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“I wonder what people mean when they say the economy will recover in 2010. The only way that can happen is if another irrational bubble forms thus creating an illusion of wealth similar to our previous illusions. If you take illusions out of the equation, there isn’t anything to get “back” to. The wealth was never there in the first place.”

“I said before that I think we’re on the cusp of a change as fundamental as the industrial revolution. But this time the change will be on the consumption side, not the production side. As a society we have dabbled with recycling and such, but it has always been fairly optional. There was no real penalty for waste.”

“The coming consumption revolution won’t be strictly for the benefit of the environment. It will be an economic necessity, driven largely by the huge numbers of retired poor. There simply won’t be enough stuff for everyone if waste is allowed.”

He goes on to share some thoughts on the Internet and home schooling. My nephews and niece were home schooled and they are very well educated and socially well adjusted. The post is worth a read.

It looks like TV to me

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From PoynterOnline’s  Al’s Morning Meeting (Al Tompkins):

“Monday morning, WTSP-TV anchor/reporter Janie Porter was on TV, reporting live from Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., on the run-up to this week’s national college football championship game. She didn’t have a big live truck accompanying her, or an engineer tuning in a shot or a photojournalist standing behind the camera and setting up lights.”

“Porter set up her own camera, opened her laptop, connected the camera to her computer, slipped a wireless connection card into her laptop, called up Skype and used her Blackberry to establish IFB (the device TV folks wear in their ears to hear the off-air signal). It all looked just great on air.”

So here’s my question: If a reporter didn’t know how to do what Janie did, why wouldn’t he or she make some effort to learn it? If you answered, “I’m not a TV reporter,” go to the back of the line.

More media predictions for 2009

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Lost Remote’s Cory Bergman calls Dianne Mermigas “one of the smartest, most pragmatic media columnists I’ve ever read. She never resorts to hyperbole.” He then points us to her predictions for 2009. A few of my favorites:

“Major advertisers such as automotives, financial services, retail and real estate will not return any time soon; they will be diminished and different when they rebound a year from now. That is a disaster for local media, which could easily see more than half their ad revenue base wiped out in 2009. For instance, automotives generally have comprised 40% of local TV income.

“Local is the new social. Some local TV broadcasters and newspapers will begin to monetize enough to stay in business. Some Internet players will begin to dabble more in this huge void. Relevant local information, social sharing, retail coupons, school and community data, sports scores, car pools, etc. remain a big missed opportunity.It will be delivered to Internet-connected mobile devices, including smartphones. A new player will emerge and do for local content and services online what Craigslist did for regionalized classified advertising.”

“Mobile connectivity will become the core platform. The road to universal WiFi and WiMax may be bumpy, but anywhere, anything interactivity on smartphones, video-friendly PDAs and other wireless mobile devices will be the global screen of choice. Primary drivers will include interactive communications, location-based services and e-transactions.”

I have no idea what 2009 will bring but I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more.

“a stats geek behind the scenes tweeting interesting stuff”

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I’ve been beating the Twitter drum ever since that digital light bulb came on for me. I did my best to offer some practical applications for our various businesses. But none were as spot-on as StatTweets. From the StatTweet website:

“Most sports-related media outlets that have a Twitter account simply blast everything through a single account. I don’t know about you, but I don’t find this very useful. I prefer Twitter updates targeted at just the teams I’m interested in. And I’m not talking about just a news feed. It needs to be as if each sports team had a twitter account and a stats geek behind the scenes tweeting interesting stuff.

That’s exactly what the StatTweets accounts are intended to do (but it is all automated). Not only can you follow just the teams you are interested in, but you can interact with each account to retrieve team and player stats dynamically.”

Old people sucking up bandwidth

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Chuck at AgWired points to some stats on net use by age demo (eMarketer):

“Although Internet penetration within the 40-and-over crowd is lower than among younger demographic groups, boomers and seniors outnumber younger adults in the general population—so that lower Internet penetration still translates into greater numbers of older Internet users, according to comScore Media Metrix.”

Terry Heaton: “The Age of Participation”

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I don’t know if I enjoy reading Terry Heaton because he’s smart or because I usually agree with him. In his latest essay he looks ahead to what he believes are the real challenges for media companies in 2009. It’s a very hope filled essay. Here are a couple of my favorite graphs:

“Whereas the Industrial Age forced the creation of powerful city states (the labor force had to be centrally located), the Information Age allows us to be where we want to be. Watch for movement to friendly, peaceful surroundings, where the locals have been smart enough to build hubs along the information superhighway. Contrarians will argue that people working from home will be isolated, but from what? What new businesses will spring up to cater to American workers in the future?

Whereas the Industrial Age brought us corporate marketing, the Age of Participation heralds the world of personal marketing and personal branding and a time of influence in expanding circles, rather than top-to-bottom. The time to gain traction in this world is today, for today’s action will determine your place in tomorrow’s culture.”

School closings via text message

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I did the sign-on shift for most of my time on the radio. And on days that it snowed (not that often in southeast Missouri), the phone would ring off the hook from parents (and students) asking about school closings. The superintendent would get out early to check the roads and then call the radio stations.

Even though we gave the closings every 5 minutes, the phone never stopped ringing. It was madness.

We got a little snow here in Jefferson City overnight and while Shawna was bringing me my oatmeal, she got a text message from the Jefferson City school system, alerting her there would be no school today.

The school uses texting to communicate a variety of things, even providing updates throughout the day.

I assume the local radio stations still get a call and many people rely heavily on the on-air reports. This is just one more instance of disintermediation. The people with the information (schools) communicating directly to the people who want/need the information (students/parents).

I’m guessing most folks don’t give their mobile numbers to just anybody. And how valuable is it to the schools to have the mobile number of every “customer?”

Do most radio stations have the mobile numbers of the listeners? I would hope so. And are they using those numbers to provide something as valuable as school closing information?

Twitter: 140 characters, 0 thought and effort

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TwitterlogoI haven’t said much about Twitter of late. In part because it’s just too exhausting trying to explain it. But I’m relying on it more and more. It’s the one social networking tool that seems to work for me.

smays.com (the blog) is where I think (a little) about what I want to say before I post it. http://twitter.com/smaysdotcom is where I poop out 140 characters without using any neurons whatsoever. It’s so easy, in fact, I’ve have twittered almost 2,000 times.

Increasingly, Twitter is how I keep up with many of my online pals. If you decide to give Twitter a try, let me know. But please don’t ask me to explain it or justify my interest in this tool. I wouldn’t know where to begin.

If you don’t have time or inclination to blog, you might consider giving Twitter a try. Do it for a week. If you’re a regular reader of smays.com, follow my Twitter feed for that week instead.