Open The Dialogue

Staci Kramer over at paidContent pretty much sums it up:

On the internet, any media outlet can overcome its single-dimension status offline. Print outlets can excel in video, local TV stations can add text and stills, radio can get visual. When NPR.org relaunches overnight, it will add all kinds of features to enhance and extend its audio, including improved search, embedding and transcripts, and more multimedia. But at a time when others are pushing ahead with video, National Public Radio is standing still.

I’ve felt this way about NPR’s approach to video for quite some time.  In April of 2008, I heard a great new band on the now-defunct Bryant Park Project.  They were a new indie rock band called Smoosh.  A big fan of one of the songs they played, I promptly embedded the video into my personal blog after it was available online.  Fast forward to March of this year, when I felt like listening to the song again only to see that the video embed had been disabled.  Now, this isn’t uncommon.  Content providers do this all the time, in fact.  Pageviews are pageviews and revenue is revenue.  I don’t blame them.

However, to me, this is antithetical to NPR’s culture and without the focus on video within this new direction – probably a shot in the foot to a very influential media brand.  They’ve always been scrappy; embracing new technology to spread the word about their great content and programming.  New audiences are using new technologies – embracing that tech helps get content (and subsequently “culture”) in front of new people.  In this case, it worked exactly the way it should for me.  I don’t often listen to the radio, but I heard this segment and was able to share it with my friends.  Quickly and easily.  What’s not to love?

Ben McConnell says it straight:  Word of mouth is a byproduct of a remarkable culture.

Why, then, make the decision to cut-off an integral vehicle in spreading that culture and, consequently, lose out on word of mouth capital?  This is a big issue staring not just media outlets but brands as well, straight in the face.  Content can be expensive to produce but how do you create life-long loyal fans and generate tangible social captial without providing something valuable and interesting upfront?  Ultimately, it has to come from somehwere and you can’t (NPR included) lose sight of the big picture.

What’s more valuable?  Saving money now or building exemplary passion through culture-sharing?  Odds are, the choice to put yourself out there will translate better to an invigorated base of supporters whom can carry you though the rough patches for years to come.  Walking away from video’s “unproven” value when new, vibrant audiences are certainly reachable through it hopefully won’t prove to be a mistake for NPR in years to come.

On Monday, Mashable posted an interesting study done by sharing company, AddToAny.  AddToAny is in a unique position to exmaine at the resulting data gathered from people using its service while sharing things among their networks.  Some great insights came out of the study as well as some accompanying perspectives from around the web:

• Facebook leads the pack – this is in-line with the size and growth of Facebook.  It also signals a generational change of communication practices.  People are spending more time communicating on the web inside social networks more than e-mail, which is extremely important to note.

• Don’t ignore direct communication – while the news is about Facebook, e-mail still holds strong.  When developing content sharing strategies, never overlook the power of a direct and focused e-mail.  It’s valuable to think of the context surrounding people when they’re communicating – most people are at work in front of a computer throughout the day and priorities get shifted to Inboxes instead of News Feeds.

• What’s missing? – A few things.  Mashable doesn’t disclose the sample size and the report itself doesn’t take into account somet things that commentors point out:  huge properties like CNN and The NYT have native systems.

• Mike Hudack, CEO of blip.tv, starts a pretty healthy discussion on Tumblr about the merits of focusing your sharing options.  Instead of using a widget, what if you had highly customized Facebook-only or Twitter-only sharing options?

• Christine Beardsell counters:  how valuable in the sharing ecosystem is someone on Digg or Yahoo vs. Facebook?  Properly, she points out two huge strategic caveats – who is your audience and how are you measuring?

Meme Curve | Zachary M. Seward, The Nieman Journalism Lab

Last week, Zachary M. Seward at The Nieman Journalism Lab put together an interesting post about breaking news, the origins of memes and how the influence of news orginzations (blogs included) fit into the big picture of information dissemination on the web.  From the post:

Another way of looking at the data is that influential blogs hanging out on the far-left tail are more likely to report on iterative developments as they happen, while mainstream news outlets feel compelled to fit memes into a broader narrative. The study lists several phrases that were first “discovered” by blogs more than a week before peaking, like when Sarah Palin quoted Ronald Reagan at the end of a debate. That immediately raised flags among bloggers who identified the quote’s origins in a 1961 Reagan speech opposing Medicare, but it didn’t gain traction until more than a week later, when Medicare briefly became an issue in the 2008 campaign.

However you view the chart, it feels like each news organization has situated itself quite intentionally along the curve, staking out a role in the political news cycle. With the meme-tracking technique demonstrated in Kleinberg’s study, news outlets could themselves keep track of where they stand and adjust their reporting strategy if they prefer another spot on the cure. They might consider, for instance, whether they add anything at all to the political discourse by reporting on a meme so close to its peak.

This falls in line pretty succintly with the constant argument surrounding networks like Twitter vs. networks like CNN when it comes to “breaking news.”  Lots of critics cry that major news networks are far behind the “8 ball” when it comes to this capacity.  While that might be true when it comes to event-reporting, I’m often seeing too many people make blind arguments/sweeping generalizations about news outlets for other types of reporting.  It’s pretty tough for 140 characters to give you all the context you’ll ever need about current events and, according to Zach’s research, it looks like news organizations large and small are appropriately finding their place in line vs. constantly fueling an arms race that will likely never end.

• 9 Ways People Respond to Your Content Online:  the great article that goes with the image above.  Rajesh Setty maps out how people pereceive and value content online.

• Sometimes focusing deeper on your customer base is much better than widening product offerings.

• Mediaite launched to bruising traffic and much debate.  A fresh new look at the media industry as a whole.

• John Cass on measurement strategies and social media goals.  Some good discussion surrounding the disconnect between value on the web and direct business results.

• Facebook unlocks the live streaming application that was made famous during CNN’s inaguration web coverage.

• Don’t have a blog?  Some great ways to be active online that don’t require a long-form base.

• The recent Morgan Stanley study on teenage social media use generated lots of feedback.  Mashable points to the importance of anecdotal vs. factual evidence whenver doing these kinds of reports (which is embedded there to read as well).

• David Finch on what social media is not.  Most importantly?  It’s not a short-term fix, a solid business culture commitment is required.

• Micah Baldwin on the lie of community.  Technology and modern marketing has shifted our perceptions of what a community is in the digital world.  Good lessons on getting back to basics.

Time to turn all these open tabs in Google Chrome into fun links for you!  As always, we’re sharing these on Twitter and FriendFeed.

• Vanity metrics vs. Actionable metrics – Eric Ries talks about really making measurement work and solving problems, not just finding numbers that don’t mean a whole lot.  For example, you have 5 billion page views?  Great.  Why?  How?

• Human Motivation & Your Brand – I’m glad more people are looking at the psychology behind marketing.  It helps us do our jobs better and more effectively.  There are reasons behind why people share things on Facebook.  Match these needs up first with your objectives and then go from there.

• Want to slap a Creative Commons license on your Facebook content?  There’s an app for that.

• The GOOG is riding the Wave and re-thinking how we communicate on the web.  It makes sense, things like IM and e-mail are relatively archaic.  OR:  is this the “Google Operating System”?

• More legal fun.  Can you copyright a tweet?  Maybe.

• State of the Hispanic blogosphere report 2009.  Spain leads the pack.

• Be there before the sale.  Why are we still using the word “campaigns” if this world is supposed to be built on long-term, sustained relationships?

• Some Wikipedia-foo on interpersonal ties (via dave):

In mathematical sociology, interpersonal ties are defined as information-carrying connections between people. Interpersonal ties, generally, come in three varieties: strong, weak, or absent. Weak social ties, it is argued, are responsible for the majority of the embeddedness and structure of social networks in society as well as the transmission of information through these networks. Specifically, more novel information flows to individuals through weak rather than strong ties. Because our close friends tend to move in the same circles that we do, the information they receive overlaps considerably with what we already know. Acquaintances, by contrast, know people that we do not, and thus receive more novel information.

• The Grey Lady hired a “social media editor” to be a guiding light for their journalists on the web.  The cynics (myself included) were loud on this one.  Thankfully, David Kaplan took some time to give Jennifer Preston some solid advice.

• Facebook crosses 60mm monthly U.S. users but fewer people over 55 are using the site on a regular basis.

• GigaOm throws their hat into the premium content ring with GigaOm Pro:  ”created to address the gap that exists in real-time expert industry analysis on emerging technology markets.”  Seems moderately attractive for only $79.  See also ReadWriteWeb’s Guide to Community Management & TechCrunch’s trend reporting.