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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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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“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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In June 2003, I launched a little music website. I had never launched a website before, had never really written or edited professionally and didn’t know html. So as you can imagine, there were some growing pains.

The first incarnation of Muso’s Guide was built (by someone else) in Microsoft Frontpage. There was no content management system, every article had to be hand-coded by copying and tinkering and linking up and oh my God, the faff.

I soon got quite handy at html (hand-coding page upon page, day upon day, will do that for you) and eventually found a student web developer to build a new-look site with a PHP content management system in exchange for beer money. It was like slipping into a hot bath. The new site was a million times better and did us proud for a couple of years.

The site is predominantly content-led. New music is reviewed by a team of volunteer writers, who are selected and nurtured and appreciated because they may be volunteering but they write better than many paid staffers I’ve worked with.

Many are, in fact, paid professionals during the day, looking to write unclipped by night, many more have since become paid professionals.

The premise was (and is) a guide to all things music, geographically (with city guides), chronologically (with classic albums and historical features) and critically (with new releases reviewed). We review singles too, actually we love singles, and this is now a rare thing.

We eventually relaunched in 2008 entirely using a Wordpress platform. Heaven.

I love our little site. I love all the writers. I love Catherine and Natalie who handle day-to-day editorial like a tighter and more-motivated unit than plenty of offline section editors… I love knowing that I made something from nothing. I love that it has helped launch the careers of some brilliant people. I love that it springboarded me onto a career and taught me lessons in things I didn’t know existed, that now occupy my mind every other second. I love that I found my husband through it (he was one of the earliest writers).

But if I launched in 2009, I would do everything differently. Muso’s Guide would not look or behave in the same way. At all.

Here’s what I’d do:

Open everything

The writers we have on Muso’s are brilliant. But on Musosguide3.0 everyone would – or rather could – be a writer. A smaller, exceptionally gifted, tier of users would be editors.

The writers whose work was most appreciated (through reader ratings and links) would be seen as power-contributors, whose future work was automatically weighted slightly higher, and given more time in key spots. I trust our audience to like good stuff. If they like it, it’s probably good. You’ll probably like it too.

I’d still have Catherine and Natalie using their human touch to flag up brilliant features and heart-soaring reviews, but I wouldn’t waste their time with uploading the copy and linking up the pictures.

On Muso’s Guide we make mistakes, because everyone makes mistakes. But on Musosguide3.0, far more people could correct mistakes, far quicker, using wiki technology.

Link out and share

Our current writers don’t just write for us, and that’s ace. They hone their skills elsewhere, online and off, they spread their name – which in turn helps promote us, via them. They pick up knowledge and are helped to refine their skills by more people. All our writers are encouraged to tell us if they have a website, which we will link to from their biogs that appear at the end of all their work.

That’s not enough.

On Musosguide3.0, every writer who contributes would have links to their other work from across the breadth of the web available to readers. Perhaps it would be in a sidebar of links “More from this writer”, perhaps through a profile page. It would probably be dynamic. But it would happen. It’s fair and it’s sensible and it shows faith in their work.

Just like today, the best writers would be able to receive pre-release material for review but also be free to add reviews of releases and pre-releases they’ve heard under their own steam.

Content is king – but not always your content

Fairly early on, I started to pull in content from other sites. This was a hamfisted affair, writing to the webmasters whose sites I liked, asking to use content in exchange for a linkbacks etc. RSS was yet to reach my Birmingham kitchen.

Now, on the newest incarnation, it’s easy to pull in RSS content from other sources, but it’s stuffed in the corner somewhat, it’s certainly not integrated seamlessly, enhancing our own content and building back story to everything we cover.

On Musosguide3.0, there would be no end to information and signposting. A city guide to the music scene in Copenhagen would include maps (from Google), video (from various sources via Apture), links to other city guides, galleries of real life images (from Flickr), real life clouds of discussion in real time (via Twitter) a list of great hotels (from TripAdvisor), a list of upcoming gigs (from all manner of gig guides and events planners) and links to artists pages for anyone local mentioned.

It would be an entry point that could take you absolutely anywhere in a chain of growing (snowballing) interest and learning.

I’d be more dynamic

Dynamic content and feeds scare writers and creative people. They think they’re being usurped by robots and spamsters. They’re not.

Why have three people on three different sites churning out the same stuff. Or – more likely – three thousand or three hundred thousand? That’s not artisan. That’s not keeping a tradition going. That’s just wasting everyone’s time.

Using dynamically clustered content, pulled in through feeds, for back story, breaking news and breadth, frees up writers to be creative, to produce unique, heartfelt content that isn’t churnalism but that has a wealth of information to link to as a backdrop. It frees writers to be writers.

I wouldn’t be scared to be commercially-minded

When I started Muso’s Guide, I pretended to be bigger and more professional than I was – which wasn’t hard as I was working from my kitchen, surrounded by the detritus of two small children. I thought and talked bigger and had a lot of people fooled until the site genuinely was bigger.

While the site was in its infancy, and I was finding my feet and scrabbling up the steep learning curve, quite a few people approached me about advertising on the site. I was too scared to get back to them. Terribly, I ignored their emails.

This was pre-Google Adsense. This was before we had a content management system that could handle ads. And instead of seeing it as an opportunity to develop commercially, to look at my options, to seek advice, I hid in my kitchen.

Now I would grab those opportunities with both hands. I would look to layer on commercial content that would genuinely enhance the site. I would look to use contextual ads strategically and use the money to continue to develop and improve the site.

I’d look to give Catherine and Natalie some of that money, and to at least put some behind the bar for the next Muso’s contributors’ meet-up. (There’s still room for real life in the Musosguide3.0 scenario).

Users are stakeholders

I’ve met people who have told me that loved the site. It’s really touching and very awkward, because it makes me shy. The first time I knew they loved the site was when they told me. That’s a wasted opportunity for them and me.

If someone loves something you create, they should be able to tell you, so you can thank them for their support. And they should be able to tell other people, so they can come and enjoy the creation too.

On Musosguide3.0, users will be visible. They’ll be visible en masse (in their ratings, their time spent on articles and movement around the site informing dynamically generated indexes of content), and they’ll be visible as individuals. They’ll have profiles, they’ll have personalised space and they’ll have the freedom to share: their playlists, their comments, their requests, their complaints even.

The new Musosguide won’t call itself an ‘online magazine’, because when you consider that phrase you realise just how wrong we all went a few years ago. The new Musosguide will be where you organise, display and develop your musical life online.

It will be the hub of your musical activity. It will be where you discover new music and share tips. It will be the platform for organising and buying tickets to gigs and festivals, where you can pull through your last.fm or blip playlists, and those of other people. It will be where you find out what people who liked your favourite band also liked, and what you may like too.

So, keen eyes will spot the future tense…

It should be great, it just depends if we dare build from the ground up all over again.

Holly Seddon