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)
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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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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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