SimonWaldman.net

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 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….

The FT carried a front page (of their companies section) story today about report from Cass Business School showing that movie studios would get a 16% increase in revenues if they did simultaneous DVD/ theater/ on-demand movie releases.

I know next to nothing about the movie industry (as an industry) but it obviously has echoes of so many of the debates that have gone on in the newspaper industry. It’s that old giving customers what they want vs protecting a tried-and-tested, keep-the-supply-chain-happy, (but rapidly arcane looking) model.

The idea has been fiercely resisted by cinema chains but a study of 1,800 consumers in three countries found that it could transform the economics of film studios and DVD retailers.

“We talked to some of the studios and I think something is going to change,” said Thorsten Hennig-Thurau, professor of marketing at Bauhaus University and Cass Business School, and the lead researcher on the study.

The research, to be published in the Journal of Marketing in October, found that the optimum choice for studios in the US market, producing a 16.2 per cent revenue lift, would be to release films simultaneously through cinemas, DVD rental chains and video-on-demand platforms.

Speaking purely as a punter - in particular as a punter with very young children - can I say a big ‘yes, please’ to this.

Basically the current system means that most of the marketing activity for new movies is completely wasted on me - all the effort that goes into the PR and above line advertising goes over my head because I have discounted myself from the cinema release market. I might watch Film 2007, but that’s only with the same vicarious thrill I still read the odd club listings page: it’s good to know there’s someone still ‘out there’, but it might as well be happening on another planet.

But simultaneous releases?…now we’re talking. I read the review on Friday..I make a special appointment to view on Friday/Saturday night..I download/ rent/ call up on VoD whatever, and then and fall asleep in the middle with a take away curry on my lap. What could be better.?

I can, and probably will write an essay on this another time, but it’s Rich’s little outburst is well worth a read

The problem is that the hopes that Dan Gillmor raised for the media industry in his book — which kicked off this whole business — have largely failed….like nearly every News 2.0 venture so far, Dan’s Bayosphere was a failure.

He has a lot of company. The dog’s breakfast of new media startups includes Gather, Backfence, Newstrust, Daylife, Bayosphere, TailRank, Associated Content, Pegasus News, Tinfinger, Findory, Inform, Newsvine, Memeorandum, NowPublic. The highest distinction on this list is to be one of the few still spoken of in the present tense (or present perfect — “They haven’t yet succeeded…”)

Well, possibly a bit down on Daylife (only just out of the blocks) and NowPublic after this news but who can argue with

Yes, there is a media revolution in the works. But it’s messy, it’s nasty videos on Youtube, not the neat & tidy civic Welcome Wagon of citizen journalism. You can’t quit your job as a journalist and replace your salary with adsense on your blog.

See, the future is always going to be more Bladerunner than The Jetsons - something I’ll return to later. [Thanks, Martin for the link]

…is launched today. It’s not just a clean lick of paint, but a fundamental change in the way that we deliver content. The result of spectacular efforts by a very gifted team…
You can find out more about some of the back end loveliness from Nik Silver’s blog.

Number 10 gets Eddie Izzard to go to Brussels with Tony Blair and then releases it as a podcast - (well an audio download).