Modernize Newspapers

The News Comes to Us Now

If a newspaper makes a website and nobody sees it, does it exist?

 

It's hard to think up a piece of the journalism puzzle that isn't changing these days. Advertising revenue is shifting online, as are newspaper readers. Television viewers are no longer constrained by time - just as 24 hour news networks changed the 5:00 news, the internet has changed the 24 hour news networks.

 

The place where people go to get their news continues to evolve. What we used to read in a daily paper became what we saw on twice-daily TV news programs. Then we could turn on the TV at any time to get the news - the 24 networks basically repeat the same things every half hour or so. But why do that when the web is around - just fire up your browser and check out the news on the website with no waiting required.

 

Just when you thought the immediacy of news was tapped out, social media like Twitter and Facebook hit the scene. Consumers of news no longer need to go to a destination (TV, radio, newspaper, website) to keep current. The news comes to us now through our Twitter feed or facebook page with no effort requried.

 

Read that last sentence again - the news comes to us now.  The same could be said for advertising as well.

 

The problem that many news organizations are having is that they are not aggressive enough. Stop trying to get the people to come to you. You need to go to the people. Social media and web technologies allow you to do this. We are entering a hyper-competitive era in the news business, and it's not about to end any time soon. If you don't know the answer to the following questions, you need to find out fast:

• How many Facebook users are in your metropolitan area?
• How many people use Twitter in your city's downtown zip code?
• How many people receive Twitter messages from Barack Obama?
• How much does it cost for Barack Obama to send those messages?
• How much should an ad in a Twitter or Facebook stream cost?
• What is a Twitter account worth?

These questions are just a starting place. Look them over. Find the answers. You'll find they paint a picture of the future.

Twitter - jumping the shark?

One things stands out in my conversations with people about social media these days:  a lot of folks aren't using Twitter as much as they did say six months ago.

I hear a lot of reasons:

"It is too noisy"
"I hear from the same people over and over again"
"I just don't feel like saying anything"

The net of the feedback is that, as a mature platform, Twitter makes more sense for the "established" than for the "long tail".  If you have built a large audience, it's great.  But if you haven't, you'll spend a lot of time and possibly money making it happen.  And at the end of the day, you become just another loudspeaker alongside every other member of the "Twitterati".

Regular people don't just share thoughts in a 140 character canvas.  They share their personalities, their pictures, their opinions backed by links on the Internet, etc.  For most people, investing time in Facebook is a much richer experience with the added benefit of being a place where at least your friends will pay attention to you.

Twitter has to evolve into something more than a loudspeaker to survive.  If it doesn't, Twitter will be dominated by the same voices we've always heard (for the most part)... all with the same loudspeaker and the need to be heard. The fact is that everyone needs a voice and nobody likes being drowned out by the loud and obnoxious who feel the need their opinions and agenda with the world.  If Twitter just becomes another way to listen and not participate, you can count a lot of people out.

Facebook v. Twitter -- it's war

I don't think it's hyperbole when the folks at Techcrunch say that Facebook and Twitter are now at war.  I do think that the stage has been set for quite some time - each company has made sufficient progress that they have now collided.  There is no going back.

What can we take away from the latest news?

Twitter has experienced meteoric growth for two reasons IMO:

1. Simplicity -- everything about Twitter is easy, as you'd expect from an interface with 140 characters,
2. Brilliantly executed developer strategy -- the developer API is similarly simple; integration is easy.

Facebook is decidedly *not* simple, but I'm sure they are very, very jealous of all the third-party Twitter applications that have been created over the last few months.

As a third-party startup, I have to tell you that I think the value proposition for Facebook is very, very strong.  Who wouldn't want access to data on 200m+ users.  But I also suspect that the Open Stream API will not be truly open... i.e. developers won't have access to all data they want/need to build third party apps.  The big question is "will Facebook be able to offer enough data to be successful with this approach while keeping the truly valuable data for their own ad targeting purposes?"  If they get this right, they'll remain the dominant social OS powered by ridiculous revenue opportunities.

From my vantagepoint, it can still go either way.  Twitter's advantages in simplicity from both the User and Developer perspectives don't change in light of the recent Facebook announcement.  Similarly, Facebook's advantages in Installed Base & breadth of data collected won't change if Twitter adds 50m users.

Other random reactions:

• I'm glad the game for developers has moved to social platforms.  But all this news does is guarantees that developers will need to be capable in *both* Facebook and Twitter.
• Along those lines, I think Facebook and Twitter strategy just sortof became the same thing for many corporations eager to connect with consumers.  You can't do one without at least considering the other.
• I think this is ultimately a proxy war for Google v. Microsoft for what it's worth.  Maybe not today, but soon.
• Internet marketing is dying in lieu of social marketing.  I'll elaborate on this in a later blog post.
• Friendfeed and Yahoo! sure feel similar to me -- valuable properties/companies who do great things but are nonetheless stuck in "RC Cola land".  Friendfeed will need to change the game somehow, some way to get into the debate.

More pleasure reading:

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=17068

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/despite_new_openness_facebook_remains_fundamentall_1.php

http://www.briansolis.com/2009/04/social-os-battle-between-facebook-and.html

Twammed...

I was Twammed for the first time this afternoon.  That's right... I was Twitter-spammed.  The person who did it had the right intentions, I think.  But when I got a "helpful" suggestion for something I didn't ask for from someone who doesn't follow me and who I didn't know previously, I sure as heck didn't appreciate the suggestion.

I'm sure we're going to see more & more people using Twitter for marketing purposes... and with it will come more & more unsolicited nonsense like what I got this afternoon.

The big issue I see more broadly is the mismatched expectations different users have about the use of social media -- outreach, friending policies, what each network could/should be used for, etc.  None of us agree about how these should be used especially now while there isn't an Emily Post's guide to using social media.  Next week I'll convert a bunch of random thoughts into a semi-coherent post about this topic.  Developing societal norms will determine how we can use social media as marketers in the future.

Quick Hits - December 16, 2008 - The Twitter Edition

A few minutes between meetings and a lot on my mind... so here's another installment of Quick Hits.

• I don't get Tweetups.  Especially ones where the attendees have NOTHING in common except being in the same place.  I guess that makes me a Tweetup curmudgeon.  I'm ok with that.
• I'm starting to care about the munging of my personal and professional lives on Twitter.  Not sure how Twitter will evolve to assuage these concerns.  I'm sure I'm not the only one having them.
• Tip to those of you creating web services that integrate with Twitter... if you set up a Twitter convention to make your web service "viral", guess what?  It's searchable.  Not only that but search results can be monitored via RSS.  Methinks it is important to launch at the right time less you lose your momentum and are then screwed.  And there is no way to explain that away to prospective investors or business partners.
• I forgot the name of the service, but I ran across another one the other day that allows you to track your behavior on Twitter over time... it was complete with usage stats by hour, keyword, etc.  Scary.  Perhaps this is why I'm concerned about work & play being too "munged".
• There has been a lot of talk on the blogosphere over the last few weeks asking whether or not brands belong on Twitter.  I don't see what the big deal is.  Who or what people choose to follow is totally up to them.  If you want to hear drivel from a corporate PR department, feel free.  I don't see where Twitter is any different than any communication medium.
• Regardless of what you think of Twitter, it has brought about another round of democratization on the Web.  Think back to what sales/partner/business development was like for people ten years ago... tracking people down was really, really difficult.  I used to go to trade shows because that was pretty much the only way to reach an influential person that could help my startup.  Now if you can't reach the right person via the web, blogs, Twitter, etc. you seriously need help with either your product, your approach, or your company's value proposition.

Needless to say, I'm a big fan.  I can't help but think that one of the major players (Google, Microsoft, Facebook) will buy the company (i.e. user base + brand) soon.  They won't be able to resist.  One of many predictions for 2009 that I'll share with you in a week or two after I review my 2008 predictions.

What I loathe about Twitter

Since Seattle weather has reverted to the mean today (cool & raining), I thought I'd rant a bit about some things about Twitter that I hate.

I don't have a ton of followers or people following me.  It really doesn't bug me because most people I know don't really regard Twitter as an important tool yet.  I'm not sure they ever will.  Of all the Web 2.0 technologies I introduce to people not in the Web 2.0 community, I get the most blank stares about Twitter.  I get feedback along the lines of "why would I want to use that?"  So I guess it bugs me that Twitter is so hard for most normal people to understand... ergo they won't adopt it easily.

I generally have to add Twitter contacts on a one by one basis.  Either I'm looking for someone or they have found me.  I have found Twitter's import feature (scanning Gmail, Hotmail, etc.) to be incredibly buggy... moreso than the rest of Twitter.  In fact, I've never gotten it to work.  It goes something like this:

• We're importing your contacts.  It may take a little longer if you are popular.
• "Something is technically wrong"  Thanks for noticing—we're going to fix it up and have things back to normal soon.

That's quite a bureaucratic definition of "soon."  I feel like I've seen this movie before. ;-)  I just want them to get their shit together.

Now I have 300+ friends on LinkedIn... 95% of which I'd regard as people I know a lot about.  I'd keep up with them on Twitter.  The same goes for Facebook.  Yet I can't import contacts from LinkedIn or Facebook.  Now I don't know if that is even feasible per the TOS for Facebook and LinkedIn.  But it's really inconvenient that I can't see if my contacts on other social networks have Twitter accounts.

Finally, I tried following a few industry pundits on Twitter just to see what they were commenting on/reading/etc.  I followed Arrington, Tim O'Reilly, and Guy Kawasaki for a few weeks.  But the sheer volume of nonsense from them was overwhelming.  In the case of Arrington and Kawasaki, these guys don't share insights on Twitter as much as they continuously pimp their own companies in a neverending dirge of self-serving nonsense.  I don't blame them... if I had their level of celebrity in our industry, I would probably do the same.  But it isn't useful especially since I can't filter Tweets.  I'd probably have kept them if I could just file them away for review say once a week.  It was just too much noise though.  Props to Tim O'Reilly for keeping it real.

If you want to keep up with news stories on Twitter, I recommend you check out Jeremy Bencken's blog post on subscribing to the news alone... I found this contribution to be very, very useful.

You may have noticed that I don't regard advertising as a problem on Twitter... I really don't.  Just know that there are limits, and don't use Twitter for spam or broad announcements 20+ times per day.  It gets old.

Carry on.