The Long Tail

The Long Tail

Chris Anderson is touring the UK right now promoting his Long Tail book due for publication this month.

I’ve interviewed people who are tied up in the race to supply IPTV and related technologies to the unknowing public and to a man and woman they endorse the Long Tail thesis, that the future lies with millions of micro-niches.

Interesting then that Anderson is giving private briefings to the BBC and Reuters as well as Google. I’d have thought in the case of the BBC they could work it out – long term erosion of audience.

In fact just about every large content producer I talk to these days says the same thing. There’s a palpable sense of dismay around, as if these guys with audiences can do nothing to protect their legacy of monopoly and oligopoly.

The decent course of action for a public service broadcaster would be to begin taking the pile of cards down and leave the way open for new enterprises to grow. That is not going to happen. Big Media is like Big Tobacco, determined to keep growing whatever the cost.

But what are they going to grow? That is the bit they cannot yet answer. What’s actually happening is more edgy and contrived than a mere shift in economic forces.

Like alll theses Anderson’s is overplayed, at least in the minds of media moguls. Most media organisations are still highly profitable, one way or another. There may be high profile exceptions but what we are seeing is a significant downsiing among staff, putting people on the street (who can take up Long Tail opportunities), cutting frelance rates, and renegotiating the terms of trade.

There are few media organisations who really see a future where revenue will not cover cost. But there are many who are content to use the current Long Tail kerfuffle to rationliase a new round of lay-offs and renegotiations.

The question still remains though – for what? In mainstream business the strategic objective is always to be up there, to be in the top rank of companies in a sector, to have the best brand. Which traditional content producer has a really coherent plan for doing more, better?

Aesthetic IT

Because so many of us look at screens all day the aesthetics of information technology need a little more attention. I've been trying to convince people of that for a while.

Right now I'm trying to convince Microsoft. That logo, the font, that butterfly…. well people's expectations of how things should look and the aesthetic values they impart have changed and various aspects of IT coverage and symbolism are out of time, over-influenced by function and benefits.

So you might say how should IT products look and what values should they impart. That's a matter of imagination and of realising the changing role that information technology plays in our lives. Like, we don't call it IT anymore. We call if social software. Social software needs a different aesthetic, something imbued with the wider artistic values that our societies strive for.

IT companies however are resistant to that notion, seeing themselves largely as engineers rather than communicators. Again a strange phenomenon. People who create change in double quick time are reluctant to address the need for change in their own outlook and sensibility.  I'm waiting on Microsoft to come back to me but meanwhile am pursuing the same theme with the Wall St Journal and the Irish Times.

Newspaper Decline

This comes from a New York media investment firm and the negatives for newspapers are backed also by the World Editors Forum, a think tank for newspaper editors. First the banker.

The Microsoft Aesthetic

I wrote an article last week (it appeared in the Irish Times) on the rising aesthetic standard of everyday objects. I didn't simply want to say that the iPod is beautiful or that my Sony phone is  a cool anthracite.

I mean the aesthetic standard people are now setting is closer to glamour than mere luxury. What are screen communicators, whether web site developers, ad agencies, or TV producers going to do about it?

Now for A Sum Up

It's been a busy posting day in part so I pay my dues in the public dialogue. Gradually the content and services section of the site should build into a mini-EPG for those of you looking for new audio-visual content.

Still I'm mindful that how I came to this kind of subject was through the cultural impact of computing and new media services.

“Right now, we are exploring new structures of knowledge and power through our recreational life,” says M.I.T media specialist Henry Jenkins who works in the C3 (Convergence Culture Consortium), “which are helping us to acquire new skills in collaborative problem solving which are already spilling over into other important sectors.”

That to me is the crucial change we're collectively bringing about. Jenkins goes on to acknowledge, in an e-mail interview I did with him a couple of weeks back that what we know is now being conditioned by the dialogue.

That means traditional sources of authority are less compelling than they used to be; they are less powerful. Traditional sources of expertise are devalued.

On the other hand what we endure for that change is that what we know becomes less certain. The main error of mainstream media outlets like the BBC is they continue to talk with conviction, as if they have a special insight that the community does not have.

And it will reflect increasingly in our political choices. Already today we've seen that the blogging community (readers and writers) think differently about politicians than do the majority of the population. They get what politicians are at more easily. It's being reflect too in the way products are made with more companies engaging the public in product design or adapting their marketing in order to provide users with free services, like Nike's soccer tricks upload site.

The traditional business attitude was that free ended with the dot.com boom, but free continues to grow. See it here too. And for the political momentum behind free go here. Free has become the big success story, audience the new name for customer base, content the driver for brands.

These are the kind of change we're looking to record here.

That Red Flag and English Identity

People over in England are exercising their passion for self-reflection (or is it an indulgence?) over the flying of the St George flag during the world cup.

Framing the changing media debate, hallelujah

In the FT's magazine this weekend John Lloyd returned to his analysis of changing media. "Without conviction" should have been the title.

Global Warming and Blogs

There are features of the new media world that definitely tempt the unscrupulous.

Mash-Ups

I believe in them but over at the WSJ online this article presents the civilised case.

The EIT Idea, Read the Last Post

Craig Winneker over on techcentralstation , now called tcs daily, is pushing the idea of a European Institute of Technology to match M.I.T over in the USA. Enough acronyms for now.

Well, The Web From Your TV Screen is Revolutionary Too

So after venting a bit of spleen over the inbuilt bias of big media it’s back to looking at how convergence and new media are changing the ways we think and act.

Is This Participation?

Under the heading "Back for More" the BBC this morning invites you to nominate your own choice as history's indefatigable Comeback Kid. Yes it's a story about Peru's Alan Garcia but they managed to bring Churchill into the headline anyhow. Why is the story misjudged and wrong?

Breakfast at Bolton’s

Roger Bolton, so long out of the BBC that it's marginally unfair to refer to him as the corporation's lost talent, or nearly man, agonised this morning over the mentality of journalists who seize on poor political decision making like dogs high on aniseed.

Changing Media Changing Minds

I know from time to time I make assertions that seem a bit extreme but I think the way communications changes also changes the way people's minds work. Look at the social behaviour of bloggers… dialogue in screen print is so novel and it forces a degree of openness on people that's also new.

Here's an example. That is of me hedging my bets.

Yesterday I sat down with a leading multimedia company to discuss new media projects. At one point we got on to the new radicalised audience. We both agreed that some areas of news coverage are deeply affected by the pharmaceutical industry. If you look at AIDs' treatments, there's a valid argument that much could be done with high dose intravenous Vitamin C. In order for doctors around the world to realise that, there has to be a system of communications in place that will endorse the use of intravenous Vitamin C. There is and it's owned by the pharmaceuticals. They are the ones who can guarantee to get a treament proselitysed around the world in next to no time.

The unspoken part of that conversation is neither I nor the person I was meeting would want to make too much of that argument in a newspaper article – the pharmas are big job ad placers.

I say this because in an earlier post I'd discussed the FT's John Lloyd's contention that journalists somehow have a higher ethical standard than the average person. That argument is brewing also over here.  I think we use different words. Writing stories in a way that suits a PR company…. that's wrong. Not writing stories that undermine the economics of a newspaper – that's reality.

Will Internet TV/Ip TV work Without Affiliate Programmes?

One of the great unpublicised areas of the web is how well affiliate marketing (as well as viral marketing of course) has helped build online brands. EBay for example runs one of the biggest affiliate programes on the web (paying up to 70% of revenue in commissions). I was surprise to find out that there are companies earning in excess of $200,000 per month from well conceived affiliate programmes.

Now it’s the case, according to Jeremy Allaire, that around $150 billion a year is spent on audio-visual content but to get people to spend a portion of that online or through IP TV pay-per-view, is it possible without affiliate programmes on the scale of Amazon? And when IP TV professionals complain that, yes it wil be hard to find content, that’s also the case with the world’s great online book stores, so they’ve created lists and recommendations. Right now there’s precious little incentive for people to get involved in an IP TV equivalent.