tail -f /dev/mind

Apr
19th

Sat

The Sun Chronicle's Social Network

While writing a paper for my sociology class on cybernetworks, I stumbled upon a social network created on Ning by The Sun Chronicle. I never assumed that a small regional newspaper would seek out social networking functionality, but I guess I was wrong. Still though, it makes perfect sense. Newspapers have readers and valuable content. By building a social network around their content, readers turn into users that interact with and spread the information. Instead of relying on some generic content management system, The Sun Chronicle’s innovative approach has allowed them to leverage their social capital and take advantage of their user base.

Hopefully we will see more regional newspaper moving in this direction.

Mar
1st

Sat

Facebook vs Regional Newspapers

I recently have been spending a significant amount of time analyzing the relationship between regional newspapers and local merchants. In particular, I have focused on college newspapers that serve the university population.

Regional newspapers build readership by providing their customers with reliable and timely information concerning the local community. Newspapers have enjoyed strong demand due to people’s natural interest in their surroundings. While the content newspapers offer is very relevant and high sought after, their business has been declining.

Times are tough for regional newspapers not because of their product, but because of their business model. Newspapers use to sell directly to their readers. To reduce the price of their product, advertising revenue increasingly subsidized the cost to readers. Today, many regional newspapers are free of charge to readers, but are entirely paid for by local merchants who advertise in the paper.

Facebook poses a huge threat to newspapers’ current business model. According to a recent survey conducted by We Media/Zogby, nearly half of all people in the United States rely on the Internet as their primary source of news and information, compared to 29% for television, 11% for radio, and a mere 10% for newspapers. What’s worst for newspapers is that the Internet is gaining more momentum as the source for information amongst the younger generation. It is these young people that make up Facebook’s user demographic.

Local merchants only care about expanding their customer base. They have traditionally used regional newspapers as their advertising medium, but only because newspapers have high readership and visibility. Local merchants need customers to grow their business, and need to advertise efficiently. The vendors that want to reach a younger audience no longer can do so effectively through regional newspaper advertising due to the declined visibility amongst the younger generation. As a result, local merchants will have to modify their advertising strategy, which will impact regional newspaper revenue.

Facebook offers a simple solution. Local merchants can use Facebook Pages to create a free dynamic Web presence within Facebook to reach the younger generation. Any business can easily leverage Facebook’s social capital for free with a Facebook Page. Instead of paying to have a presence in a regional newspaper that has declining visibility, Facebook Pages offers the ability to network with millions of potential customers at no charge.

Regional newspapers are in choppy water. The carpet is about to be pulled from under their feet. Local merchants have a declining incentive to continue advertising in their paper due to diminishing readership and high prices. On the other hand, Facebook is offering a large community of potential customers and the ability to create a free presence in a rapidly growing social network.

I have no doubt that regional newspapers will be fighting against Facebook in the coming years.

Dec
31st

Mon

Duke's Emergency Plan

In light of the tragic Virginia Tech incident, Duke has ramped up its emergency alerting system. By leveraging diverse channels of communication, the university hopes to notify the Duke community when disaster strikes. The old emergency plan relied on the Web, email, and the telephone network. In the 2008 release, Duke will introduce a siren system as well as text message alerts. Text messaging will free up channels due to its low bandwidth overhead, and will allow for more emergency cell phone activity. However, text messaging does not guarantee immediate delivery. To counter this problem, Duke’s siren/public addressing system will be very effective in notifying the immediate community of a disaster.

I was particularly interested in Duke’s emergency RSS feed. While I appreciate Duke’s desire to connect with the community on different levels, RSS is the wrong tool for the job. RSS feed viewers usually are updated once every 30 minutes, which could be worthless during an emergency.

Dec
8th

Sat

The photo above is an example of Facebook’s contextual advertising gone wrong. It seems like the ads in these photos violate their Content Code of Conduct. I guess advertisers don’t have to play by the rules. See what Facebook says for yourself below…

While we believe users should be able to express themselves and their point of view, certain kinds of speech simply do not belong in a community like Facebook. Therefore, you may not post or share Content that:

is obscene, pornographic or sexually explicit
depicts graphic or gratuitous violence
makes threats of any kind or that intimidates, harasses, or bullies anyone
is derogatory, demeaning, malicious, defamatory, abusive, offensive or hateful

If those advertisements aren’t sexually explicit, then it looks like what we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.

Nov
24th

Sat

Its the network stupid.

Both TechCrunch and ReadWriteWeb claim that old media corporations are suffering from a decline in revenue due to the transition by many small businesses from print to Internet advertising. As a result, several of these old media companies are approaching their 52-week low share price, which may prompt a change in business operations. Furthermore, IBM’s recent report on advertising notes that the rise in user-powered services allows for the creation of low-cost advertisements and will continue to become ever more popular amongst current old media customers. The consumers of information are resorting to the use of pop up blockers and DVRs to dodge ads that are not individually tailored to their likings. To counter these changes, advertising is bound to evolve to keep up with the market’s demand.

In order for old media companies to compete in this industry, they must leverage new technologies to satisfy their current customers (local merchants) as well as the consumers of the information they distribute. By providing their customers with a tool that allows them to produce their own advertising content, old media companies will be riding the user-generated content wave that is notorious for cutting down the transaction costs associated with standard business operations. In doing so, they will be simplifying the advertising process by giving more power to the customer and thus increasing their profit margins by reducing the time their sales force has to be actively processing ads. Instead of broadcasting an advertisement that can be easily ignored, such a tool would enable consumers to “follow” local merchants of their choice in a Twitter-like fashion. The customers would benefit from high rates of return on their investment, and consumers would have access to the content of their choice along with logical recommendations.

The social network old media companies have amassed over the years of being in business is what will continue to keep them afloat in this difficult time. Building such a network is tedious and therefore not a match for a fast paced technology company thats looking to make a quick buck. Still however, by harnessing the available technology to satisfy their customers, old media will succeed in a way never before imagined.

Nov
8th

Thu

Email vs RSS

There has been an ongoing debate within the blogosphere concerning whether RSS will become the successor to traditional email. Both technologies have had a substantial impact on the Internet, and there is no doubt that RSS will continue to become more visible. However, as a heavy user of both, I find it difficult to draw strong parallelisms between the two entities. Email is most often used as a point-to-point method of communication, where both the sender and the receiver have the capability to directly interact back and forth. On the other hand, RSS serves as a point-to-multipoint form of communication, where an author broadcasts a message to his or her followers. As a result, there is an active and a passive voice. The one who follows someone’s feed lacks the ability to directly respond, and thus the communication is severed.

I am very glad to see new mail clients that support both RSS feeds and traditional email in a single interface. By simultaneously embracing both technologies, users will become ever more connected.

Oct
30th

Tue

The Art of Communication

Over the years, I have incorporated various methods of communication into my lifestyle with the end goal of finding a single medium to effectively blazon my point of view on popular topics. Most recently, I stumbled upon Tumblr. Now I cannot make any promises, but given the fact that I (like all other human beings) have a vested interest in making my opinion heard, I may just become overtly reliant on blogging. Hopefully this blog will not remain in an inert state, and will gain momentum in the upcoming months.