BookyMedia

A few weeks ago my boss asked me to start sending out an email with links to the week’s biggest tech stories to encourage those who aren’t so geeky to keep up-to-date with industry news. Thought I may as well post in here too. It’s pretty mainstream tech stuff, but as a journalist I’ve got pretty handy at cutting and pasting so thought I may as well share here too…

Here’s the five tech stories no nerd should be without from the last week.

Sun launches multiplayer quizzes
So what? Well firstly, it’s making quizzes social (1pt in buzzword bingo) and secondly it’s another trial of paid-for-content. This is using micropayments, although that term traditionally meant fractions of a pound (0.14p) and this is actually small payments (15p).
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/oct/05/sun-web-multiplayer-quiz

Times launches Times +
So what? So this is Murdoch playing with subscription models and paywalls. This isn’t a world first and isn’t around content. It’s more like an members’ club where people can get exclusive deals and tickets. Leveraging Times’ reputation as a premium content provider it’s more wine deals and theatre tickets than gig tickets. And all for £50 a year.
http://www.timesplus.co.uk/

Amazon to launch Kindle in UK
So what? They’ve finally managed to sort out a way around Europe’s arcane copyright laws, so you’ll be able to buy digital books here and read them on the beach in Spain. Also touted as the 169th way to save newspapers this year. Number 170 is printing them on things people actually want, like sandwiches.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/07/amazon-ebooks

Foursquare hits the UK
So what? If you use Twitter and follow Americans you’ll have seen people declaring themselves as ‘Mayor of XXXXX’. The location-based, social, real-time app not only uses a huge four buzzwords when being described, but is actually quite addictive. Come and add me if you decide to play. I’m currently Mayor of Virgin Media – no joke.
http://foursquare.com/user/jamesseddon

Google defending book deal
So what? So Google has agreed a £125m deal with American publishers so it can digitise millions of out-of-print books and offer them for free online. More data = better targeted ads = more money for Google.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/oct/09/google-books-brin

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As one of the lucky few to work on the launch of thelondonpaper a few years ago I have to admit I’m gutted, and probably more shocked by today’s announcement of its closure than I should be.

I say more shocked, because like so many seemingly Black Swan events (low predictability, high impact) it turns out in reality to be nothing but a boring old White Swan that was obvious to all around, and not just in retrospect.

Even before News Corp announced record debts and a plan to paywall certain types of online content – a move that clearly put its free London paper at odds with the rest of the company’s portfolio – it was likely the paper wouldn’t last too long.

In fact, even before the paper was launched, the signs that Murdoch didn’t truly buy into his first newspaper launch were worringly evident. Apparently when the dummy copy was presented to Murdoch by the paper’s editor, his response was that you could charge 10p for it – an anecdote that was repeated with an ‘oh Dad, what are you like, you silly old codger?’ tone. So if he didn’t get ‘free’ then, it’s no surprise he dropped the paper when times were tough.

True, thelondonpaper was losing Murdoch millions, but if every unprofitable newspaper was shut down we wouldn’t be left with many papers. And, as one member of staff apparently asked NI exec Clive Milner whether they’d also be closing the Times – which has lost far more money than the freesheet – it clearly isn’t believed as the only reason internally (thanks to @natts who replaced me at tlp for the story).

According to one headline about the paper’s demise, Murdoch has ‘lost faith’ in free. I’d suggest they should have used the word patience instead of one indicating a belief he’d have to have held in order to have lost it. The only upside is that the paper had a lot of very talented staff, who will hopefully spread their experience across more titles.

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• Murdoch aims to tear up the online rule book (telegraph.co.uk)
• Rupert Murdoch to charge to view News Corp’s online news (telegraph.co.uk)
• You Will Soon Pay to Access All of Rupert Murdoch’s Online Rubbish (gawker.com)

We’ve all been getting our knickers in a knot about Murdoch’s moaning and subsequent surge to Planet Paywall, but we (myself included) have been forgetting one vital point: This is the man that put TV behind a paywall. And then he sold it to everyone.

Back in 1990 when BSkyB (the combination of the 1986-launched BSB and 1989-launched Sky) brought us a brave new world of broadcasting, critics claimed that it would never take off/would wreck our cultural compass.

Why would anyone pay for TV – especially the early offerings of satellite TV – when we had four perfectly good channels already? AND we’d already paid a licence fee to access those.

Secondly, TV was a slightly murky, slightly ‘common’ medium. Not unlike the charges levelled at NOTW and The Sun. People who liked that kind of stuff would never pay…

Fast forward to 2009. Despite an extra terrestrial channel and the invention of freeview, Sky TV is as ubiquitous in the homes of British people as big chavolines. And it’s not just us proles, it’s the full gambit from rich landowners down.

Sun readers are Sky TV subscribers. So is everyone else. We’re a nation willing to pay extra for exclusive content bundles – so long as it’s the right stuff in those bundles, at the right prices, with technologically useful, easy ways to access.

Murdoch didn’t buy up existing channels and sell them back to us, once he purchased BSB to fold in to his Sky venture, he collected unique content, the best of the best, and flashy hardware that people wanted. Sky TV was a status symbol for the masses AND a utility to the upper classes.

Free isn’t a status symbol. And you can argue that BSkyB rode the wave of the ‘Loadsa Money’ era. But we’re currently wading through a recession and Sky subscriptions are riding high.

So is Murdoch going to deliver the Sky Plus of online content retrieval and aggregation?

Is Murdoch going to bring us the 24, Lost and The Simpsons of online news and features?

Will News Corp. plunge funds into developing the Next Big Thing in broadband or ‘cloud’ technology, an equivalent advancement to HDTV?

Will The Sun (or its parent bundle) snag the rights to first-play online Premiership football highlights that Virgin Media currently owns?

Does the new walled garden planned by The Sunday Times have the online content equivalent of The Wire up its sleeve? Ready to prove that, far from erode critical and creative integrity, internet platforms could bring in a new dawn of clever content.

God, I really hope so. Because whatever you may think of the man and his empire, the media world would be far less interesting if Murdoch bricked himself and the ambitions of mass paid-for content into an embarrassing tomb.

Holly Seddon

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• HDTV helps boost BSkyB profits (telegraph.co.uk)
• Media doubts over Murdoch web charging (sluggerotoole.com)

Rupert Murdoch’s decision to erect a paywall around his online news sites isn’t about the death of free content, or a battle of business models: it’s about the death of compulsory innovation.

New media blogger Jeff Jarvis has long been the leading – or militant – anti-paywall advocate yet. But it’s more his ability to highlight how much better life can be if we drop our old school mentality that no longer fits the new world that makes his views important to me. The professor of journalism is to old media what Richard Dawkins is to old religion: living and very vocal proof that there is a better way of looking at things. Unfortunately for the two of them, it’s a new way that is obscured by panic, a fear of the unknown and inertia about having to start from the bottom after working your way to the top.

Rather than bother to read Darwin’s The Origin of the Species, religion has held steadfast in its beliefs, often going backwards to protect its moral – and financial – foothold around the world.

Likewise, news organisations like Murdoch’s News Corporation, have had a golden opportunity to re-evaluate their role in the world. Likewise, new ideas came along that shook their ivory tower at the foundations. Likewise, they had the reach, brains, power and finances needed to achieve revolution, and likewise they bottled it. Instead of rebuilding, adapting or moving in the face of destruction, they decided to fortify using the same building blocks as before.

You can argue that Murdoch et al hung on to the bitter end, losing billions of pounds and watching countless titles close, and you’d be partly right. I for one didn’t expect them to hold on for so long and to lose so much before buckling under pressure. But it’s important to recognise that this capitulation by mainstream media isn’t about a failure on new business models; it’s about a failure to find new business models. And that doesn’t particularly bode well for the future, where the chasm between what we want and what MSM is willing to offer, will only get bigger.

James Seddon

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• Would you pay for a park, museum – or even an online newspaper? (guardian.co.uk)
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Ahead of writing a blog post about ‘free’, Free, freemium etc, I wanted to know what you think. Vote below, and leave your comments about whether you think free, as most famously set out in Wired editor Chris Anderson’s book Free, is a viable and sustainable approach. Can free really work? And if so, how?

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• John has missed the essential point of Free (blogs.ft.com)

“For the British publishing industry, the computer revolution began in 1986, when we at News Corp. moved our operations out of Fleet Street to a new high-tech plant at Wapping in London’s Docklands.” – Rupert Murdoch, 1989

“Should we be allowing Google to steal all our copyrights?” – Rupert Murdoch, 2009

“I used to be with it. But then they changed what it was. Now what I’m with isn’t it, and what’s it seems scary and weird. It’ll happen to you.” – Abe Simpson

Unlike News International’s move to Wapping (a move to the Docklands which had been aped by every other national newspaper by 1988), the current major sea change in the media has been open and a long time coming.

In preparation for their move to Wapping, the huge publishing company had discreetly built and installed a new printing plant. In preparation for obliterating the newspaper industry as we know it, a bunch of geeks have been gradually developing apps, platforms and distribution models with absolutely no discretion.

“Wapping is a microcosm of the changes taking place in many other industries, as outmoded social institutions attempt to suppress new technology.”

I’m not going to attempt to debate the rights and wrongs of how things were done back in 1986, though it is clear that there were some terrible human experiences. I don’t know enough about the industrial action, I don’t remember it firsthand (I was six) and I’m a child of the 80s: Riots and strikes punctuate my TV memories but didn’t directly touch me, and I wasn’t raised under the expectation of a job for life or a union to represent me, and I like moving around. The old media, Fleet Street as was, is a dim and distant land.

And besides all of this, I’ve worked very happily at Wapping, I’ve worked as a staffer and freelancer for the Murdoch empire so I’d feel rather disingenuous throwing a historical hissyfit but I find the similarities and seemingly diminished sense of entrepreneurial zeal interesting.

When the proprietors were in control of the tough moves, the emerging technology that displaced jobs and tightened up the bottom line, when they were owning and steering the sea change, they saw the good, the positives for them. They no longer lead the charge.

The generation in charge isn’t even mine and yours, it’s the one snapping at our heels already – that’s the generation that will drive the final nail into the Way Things Were, with a new platform or format we can’t conceive yet.

Now if the big bosses hadn’t got their collective knickers in such a twist about the syntax of the debate (‘Google stole our stuff’) and joining forces to collectively tattle tell, they’d be able to see the benefits and opportunities of this current shift.

And that, I guess is the point, there IS a huge shift, the whole industry has been shaken and stirred and all the moaning and mothers’ meetings in the world won’t turn back time, stop the internet existing and put the blockers on progress. And nor should it.

“On the one hand, new technology opens up new possibilities, not only for business but for labor. Technological progress raises wages, and makes the workplace safer, cleaner, and more humane. On the other hand, the framework of social institutions… [latterly the old media framework - HS]… resists the change.”

I’m not going to list a finite list of opportunities for panicked media giants that will make gadgillions. If I could summon that at will, I’d be far richer than I am now. But I’m going to attempt to jot some ideas in follow up posts, and I’d love any comments on this.

Here is a quote that sums up the new world order, Google and entrepreneurs of all sizes have seized control through innovation and modernization; the newspapers, the old guard, in their panic are screaming for new forms of old regulation:

“The decision to rely on market forces is the essence of modernization. Yet technological change often provokes atavistic, authoritarian responses. The real danger of the present technological revolution is that we may be panicked by future shock into regressive schemes of regulation.”

This perfect quote, and the others threaded through this blog, are from Rupert Murdoch, speaking in 1989 at the Manhattan Institute’s third annual Walter B. Wriston Lecture in Public Policy.

I’ll finish with another quote from the same speech:

“Technological change and social institutions interact continually, and the technology does not necessarily win. Society can soar, or it can stall.”

The king is dead, long live the king.

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Bastardising the often mocked moral mantra of middle America to pose the question ‘What would Google Do?‘ was a masterstroke of simplicity by blogger and author Jeff Jarvis, but when it comes to news, features, galleries, videos, audio and any other editorial content there’s surely a better question to ask when considering how to improve your digital offering: What would Amazon Do?

Helping visitors find interesting content online should be no different to helping shoppers find attractive products on Amazon. Yet where media companies have clearly learned from Amazon and other e-tailers in the past – think Most Read, Most Watched, Most Commented widgets – old media’s digital offerings have fallen way behind in terms of innovation.

Launched in 1995, Amazon has not just revolutionised where we shop (web v high-street), but also how we’re sold what we want, and what we didn’t know we want. Newspapers have merely swapped paper for screens, sections for channels and page numbers for links. Nowhere yet has any media company realised we want to consume our news in a new way. And no, I don’t mean bloody video, another old-media hangover caused by number-loving advertisers who fear change because it’s hard to sell on something you don’t understand.

Whether it’s music, movies, websites or articles, people are now used to – and want – recommendations and the ability to use customer feedback to inform their choices.

Click through to a product page on Amazon and you won’t be left stranded there with no option but to go back to the previous page, buy the product, start to search for a new item or just go to a new site.

No, Amazon are cleverer than that, because of one simple understanding: why sell you one thing when they can sell you two, three, or more? Visit Amazon’s page for The Wire season one DVD boxset and you’re told…

• Which other items customers often buy with The Wire season one, plus the option to buy them all together
• What customers ultimately buy after visiting The Wire season one page
• How popular The Wire season one is in the meta and less specific categories (number one in all, obviously)
• What customers also bought when purchasing the boxset
• Customer suggestions from other categories
• The ability to search other products customers have given the same tags they’ve given The Wire, and
• How other customers rate the product.

Quite a comprehensive number of ways for Amazon to encourage you to buy many other related products.

Now compare those options to the ones available on a popular newspaper site and it’s staggering how little editorial producers seem to care about moving you around their site to other content. And, considering that an average of 60% of visitors to newspaper website come directly to article pages from referrals (generally from Google, not that you’d know it right now given the moaning coming from Murdoch et al) it’s essential that newspaper websites get their article pages right before their perfectly packaged homepages.

What if a newspaper site realised Amazon’s techniques can apply to them? What if content was treated like a product that was tagged? What if subject matter was treated like product lines? What if, when I read an article about the new Star Trek movie on a newspaper website it told me that other visitors had gone on to read a review of The Watchmen? I for one would like to know that. What then, if through the tagging system and a decent recommendation engine, a LoveFilm ad could suggest I rent a Star Trek movie, or even all of them together for a discounted price? Or Futurama because there was a Star Trek parody episode and Leonard Nimoy is a regular guest?

Sure, targetted ads aren’t anything new, yet the idea of targetted content based on user behaviour – which would genuinely be useful for visitors, not to mention improving the targetability of ads – is nowhere to be seen.

And how else can you drive readers down the long tail of content?

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