A quick check of the ABCe’s site shows that the Telegraph seems to have joined the monthly reporting gang and has kindly delivered audited figures for both January and February, even though the Times won’t be reporting till next month. Here are January and February’s figures.
And based on this data…which title would you say is Britain’s number one quality newspaper website? Of course..
April 26 should be interesting..
Richard’s quick aside about offering the sort of analysis that can only be done on the web, has got me thinking.
He points to the pure genius of Gapminder which manages to tell you dozens of stories with graphics, data and animation in seconds, that would take thousands and thousands of words to tell otherwise.
The current frenzy with mash-ups has set everyone off mapping everything to everything. It’s almost always quite smart - but does it actually help? And does it tell a story any better?
Twittervision is rather like twitter itself, strangely compelling but not hugely useful. What’s interesting is the way that putting this on a map, rather than as a constant stream of text (even with a flag or location attached) gives a fantastic sense of scale. For some strange reason I’m much more interesting in watching this collection of random utterances from strangers popping up round the globe than getting text messages from people I actually know telling me they’re about to go on the tube/ feed the cat etc.
I am rather attracted to Platial and if I had the time, I would finish off my ‘There are places I remember map’ and turn it into a spectacular mapped autobiography, rather than a half-arse list of places I’ve lived. That said - I quite like this tale of a mis-spent youth - but I’m not sure a map is the best way to represent it.
I suppose it only works when the spatial difference between two points really matters. Or when you start to see clusters of similar activity. For example, although I doubt it’s comprehensive, this map of Web 2.0 HQs points to a very vibrant European scene.
And Adrian Holovaty’s Chicago crime is a case book example of how a map really can tell a story. One look at this and you know where not to walk after dark. The problem is you have to click pretty carefully to eventually find your story - it’s more a tool for a reporter, rather than a substitute for one.
Nature, has garnered lots of plaudits for it’s Avian Flu/ Google Earth mash up (.kml file here) because the very crux of that story was how it was spreading globally. It’s just a shame that they seem to have given up before it made it on to the UK.
But, Buzztracker - looks gorgeous, and is clearly a work of considerable genius, but is in fact pretty useless. Why? Well, actually - all it would really need to work well is a filter on the news. So, if for example ti was only headlines about global warming related incidents, then both the mapping and the interrelationships would be tremendously useful.
Similarly - Ben O’Neills mash up of Google maps and BBC news doesnt’ really do it for me. Yes, it’s very smart - but unless there is some grading of the different type of stories - the map is actually a pretty weak introductory tool.
In print - Campaign does this thing where they show a map of the world - with arrows coming off it and stories scattered around the map. I’ve always thought this to be quite a dumb tool - what matter is the relative priority of these stories - normally represented by headline weight etc - rather than their distribution.
However, using a map as a navigation tool for the most popular stories on the BBC news site as part of their live stats package is really rather neat, but it’s not strictly necessary. What makes it both necessary and illuminating is the mix of that and the display of volumes of usage by geographic region.
Elsewhere, I can’t help thinking that this BBC History Interactive map on the slave trade actually makes it harder to follow the story than easier. I suspect that’s because it’s actually telling a story where the defining characteristic is chronological - not geographical.
Anyway - that’s a long ramble. I suspect someone has written a dissertation or two on this, but here’s my concluding thought. Nothing original I suspect: A map works only if the location of events is the key story that you’re trying to get across - and it’s either going to be the similarity or dramatic difference in location of comparable events/ information.
Thanks to Martin for pointing to this piece about OhMyNews in the SF Chronicle. Sounds like they’ve got their work cut out trying to make sure that one of the poster boys for the UGC/ Cit-j movement doesn’t become one of its casualties.
After having turned a small profit for three years, OhmyNews slid into the red in 2006. It faces growing competition in South Korea, has failed to catch fire beyond its borders and, most important, has lost its luster as the must-read, latest new thing.
In an effort to get back on track, the privately owned company is planning an ambitious relaunch in late May — dubbed OhmyNews 2.0 — that seeks to double the number of citizen journalists in South Korea, to 100,000 over the next three years.
I visited there office as part of a group from WEF a few years ago. It was quite hard to square this rather shabby, downtown office with the idea of a revolution in media. But, revolution it was. And Mr Oh was more than impressive.
The OhMyNews model simply hasn’t been replicated anywhere else. In fact, no one else - as far as I know - has even tried this mix of a decent sized editorial team (65) and a mass of ‘citizen reporters’ (although the number of active is much lower than the headline figure they publish).
They tried it in Japan, but had to wind up the citizen element according to Wikipedia (apparently that’s what this tells us). OhMyInternational doesn’t seem to have set the world on fire. Ditto Wikinews (different, I know - but relevant). I think we all know the travails of Backfence, Bayosphere at a local level. This gives an outline of some fledgling efforts in Indonesia.
I know that NowPublic is now flying this flag - much more convincingly than most. And, should you ever meet him, founder Leonard Brody will put a compelling case for their success. Actually, I quite like for an occassional graze around interesting snippets. But for all it’s scale (78,000 members; 4,000 cities) it doesn’t seem to be capturing the imagination. I fear the contributors get more out of it than the readers.
In truth, I think a lot of their original success was a result of the broader media and political climate in South Korea - and they were seen as part of a wave of change [I declare a distinct lack of expertise here, but this gives a sense of the overall media climate]. Like all the best media (often more true with magazine launches), they captured a mood at a particular moment, and made it their own..it just so happened that the best way to capture it - by a million miles - was the net.
I think that’s the missing bit of magic that is blocking some of OhMy’s expansion plans, and so many other services trying to emulate them - the technology might be there, but too often the mood isn’t.
From this morning’s FT. BT Vision has only secured 5,000 subscribers to date. That said, their marketing hasn’t really kicked in, and won’t do so until the spring. Apparently, this is entirely in line with expectations (chinny reckon, as we used to say).
My hunch is that this service is going to suffer - mainly because I’m not sure where the gap in the market is between the ever evolving offers of Sky, Virgin and Freeview. Their target apparently is 3m subscribers by 2010. Only 2,995,000 to go.
The Electoral Commission released their annual audit of political engagement earlier this week. Some interesting snippets.
The power of petitions This might come as no surprise but ’signing a petition’ was the form of political engagement that most people either had done, or were willing to do. 47% of people said they had signed a petition in the last two or three years, vs the next form of activism - boycotting a certain product (20%). In fact petition signing also showed the biggest increase (8%) since 2003. Incidentally 45% said they hadn’t done any of the forms of political activism mentioned. To put this in context - only 55% said they would definitely vote if an immediate general election was called.
Issues not politics People were asked - how interested are you in a)Politics b)Local Issues c)National Issues d)International Issues. The highest vote in all cases was for ‘fairly interested’ - but the ‘very interesteds’ were all clustered around Local and National issues. 46% of people were either not very interested or not at all interested in politics.
Most people don’t talk about politics or political news Only 40% of people say they have ‘discussed politics or political news with someone else’ in the last two to three years. Something I find both incredible and depressing. This drops to 27% for 18-24 year olds.
18 - 24 year olds not bovvered In all the stats, this lot are generally not bothered. Least likely to vote. Least likely to talk about politics. Etc etc. Twas ever thus, I suspect.
TV and National newspapers most important Asked to name the two or three sources that people obtained most information about news and politics from, people responded
1. TV (inc satellite) - 76%
2. National newspapers - 56%
3. Radio - 34%
4. Local newspapers - 33%
5. The internet - 14%
The one difference here is that the internet is much higher among 18 - 24 year olds - but it still only gets 25% (it’s down to 5% for the 55s and over).
Now, if someone was really smart and wanted to increase the level of poltical engagement online..they should really launch an e-petitions system…shouldn’t they?
My buzzword of the month has been continuous partial attention which I think sums up the state of engagement we now have with many of our readers vs the old days of focused immersion (one of the HBR’s breakthrough ideas for 2007).
Anyway - imagine my surprise when reading the new Poynter Eyetrack survey. Not only do they find that people are actually reading a lot. Their key finding is that online readers read a greater per centage of a story than print readers (77% online vs 62% for broadsheets and 57% for tabloids), and nearly 2/3 of online readers read all of a story they selected.
They then split the readers into two types - methodical and scanners - and guess what..pretty similar results at article level.
There’s a write up here and you can get a .pdf of the launch presentation here.
Today the IAB released the final figures for digital advertising. This is now a £2bn market and digital’s total share of total (ie including classified) revenue was 12% in the final half of the year, 11.4% for the whole year.
The headline story is that digital has now overtaken national newspapers (shucks..I can remember when we were pretty chuffed to overtake outdoor!).
Although, before I start going nah nah at my print colleagues, the counter point to this is - err not in most national newspaper companies it hasn’t. The lion’s share of this revenue is still split between Google (which dominates the largest sector, Search), Yahoo, MSN and AOL (who dominate display). But, I’ll grumble about that another time.
The point is that digital takes a higher share of advertising in the UK than any other country. That 11.4% compares to a global average is 5.8%.
It’s funny because you still here grumbles from (some) clients about their agencies not ‘getting it’, likewise you hear grumbles the other way. Digital agencies and their traditional counterparts love to grumble about how the other one doesn’t get it. And media owners aren’t above the odd grumble about everyone and anything. Yet, somehow, in the midst of everyone grumbling and absolutely no-one getting it whatsoever, a bigger proportion of advertising budgets are being shoved onto the net than anywhere else.
How did that happen?
Is it Guy and Richard’s excellent work at the IAB? Well I think you have to give them some credit, but I think even they would take sole credit.
Is it simply an outbreak of neophilia on behalf of irrationally exuberant marketing execs? I suspect there’s a bit of that…but the degree of difference is quite significant.
In no particular order, some of my thoughts.
Broadcast market leaders had a bad year. It’s not enough for you to win - someone else has to fall. And broadcast didn’t have a great year - in particular the market leaders. CRR has hampered ITV and TV revenues have dropped by 4.7% . GCap hasn’t had a great year - with revenues down by 9% in the year to March. for March [thank you to my colleague Iain for pointing this out]
Google on the rampage: perhaps the result of a very strong, consolidated media buying sector that loves ROI and believes they have found a copper bottom way of measuring it through AdWords (a short term view, IMHO..but we’ll save that rant for another time) and, apparently, it’s becoming quite profitable for them (agencies) as well. Hence Google is now the UK’s second largest recipient of ad revnenue and has increased it’s share of the digital revenue to 43%. Not bad given they’re a ‘technology company not a media company’.
Broadband and wifi growth: 10m broadband households and growing. Fastest rate of growth of connections among the major economies according to the OECD. And unless they live in my village, you can bet that pretty much every media buyer, brand manager etc etc will now be connected, probably with Wi-fi and will see just how much media consumption of their children and partners changes once that happens.
A love of new ideas: Yes, there are some for whom ROI = some headlines in the trade press. But our agency sector loves doing new stuff. And new stuff = digital.
Good start ups: I think the ongoing strength and success of some of the original start ups such as iLevel and AKQA and their very creditable, calm leadership has prodded the rest of the agency world into action.
Thanks to Steve Rubel for pointing out the Ultimate Getting Things Done Index where I can now spend happy hours, errr not getting things done.
From e-Week Google watch: “Of all the masturbatory ego-fluffers on the Web, nothing chafes me worse than Twitter:.
Agency next: Twittering is for twits
Blogconsultancy: Brits are twitters
Hitwise stats: It’s teeny but growing
I tried it, didn’t like it. Which probably means it’s going to be enormous.
The BBC Trustees have shown their teeth, and the first casualty is their digital curriculum service, BBC Jam. A fair decision, methinks.
Am I biased? Yes, completely - we have a fantastic digital learning business, Learnthings. It is the result of spectacular creative effort and long term investment - and also a lot of agonising since day one about ‘what impact is the BBC going to have on this market?’.
I can only think how many others will have either walked away from this sector thinking likewise.
It’s always been an interesting area this one - at one level, yes you would imagine the BBC and online education might go together neatly. And Bitesize was pioneering in its time. But, there is a private sector out there. That sector is eager and willing to produce high quality digital educational content (as it has produced non-digital material in the past) - which schools are willing to pay for.
£150m of investment into a BBC service was going to distort a market, and certainly not make it. It will now be fascinating, to say the least, to see what happens.
Of course, there is always the chance that despite the considerable sums being spent on BBC Jam, it just wasn’t going to be that good….