March 17, 2008
The Project for Excellence in Journalism released its encyclopedic omnibus study of news coverage across media in 2007. The study is a huge amalgam of information about the state of the news media and its future prospects, with 13 chapters covering everything from ethnic to online news. I continue to wade through the volumes of information offered by the PEJ report, but the exec summary helpfully offers these somewhat counter-intuitive trends:
- News is shifting from being a product — today’s newspaper, Web site or newscast — to becoming a service — how can you help me, even empower me?
- A news organization and a news Web site are no longer final destinations.
- The prospects for user-created content, once thought possibly central to the next era of journalism, for now appear more limited, even among “citizen” sites and blogs.
- Increasingly, the newsroom is perceived as the more innovative and experimental part of the news industry.
- The agenda of the American news media continues to narrow, not broaden.
- Madison Avenue, rather than pushing change, appears to be having trouble keeping up with it.
Based on these trends the builders of online news sites, be they ethnic centered blogs or major corporate affairs, can no longer build their model on the hope of simply informing users. Information is a commodity and the evolution of news must be away from generic information and towards a service which leverages information in some meaningful way. Creating a service, something that users care about , is not easy to do and is based on a skill set not native to newsrooms.
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aggregator, trend, TrendSpotting | Tagged: journalism, news, PEJ, Project for Excellence in Journalism, Trends | 
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Posted by changesgood
November 7, 2007
As someone who watches for trends in technology one of the many sites I frequent is Trendwatching.com. They offer a bevy of free research reports on global Trends with pithy insightful commentary and links. If your not getting their free reports or buying the paid stuff, then your missing out. Their most recent Trend Briefing is by far the best I’ve read so far. They pulled out all the stops for this, their 5th anniversary issue, covering 5 of the hottest trends that are happening right now.
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3 Comments | a-list, A-List Blogs, Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious, Conjecture, Fun with PR, Futurist, great ideas, Humor, Innovation, Market Research & Intelligence, parody, Research, Research Summary, social ideas, tech humor, TrendSpotting, Viral marketing | Tagged: eco-fatigue, environment, environmentalism, Generation Z, hot trends, marketing, pet passe, trend spotting, Trends | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
June 28, 2007
Ok, so research Tuesday became research Wednesday Thursday.
Males Love Video Long Time
It’s been a reading week for me. Lots of great stuff to mull over and help shape ones thinking about digital media. Lets start with a report by consultancy Frank N. Magid & Associates with the irresistibly tantalizing header “80% of 18 – 24 Males Watch Online Video“. Only 53% of their female counter-parts are watching an equal amount of video. The report goes on to claim that news clips are the most watched content type. Teenage cat fights, skating injuries and soft-core porn dont even chart according to the report thus greatly reducing its credibility. Via Digital Media Wire
Ladies Love Drunk Texting
Ever gotten a drunk text at 3am from a former girlfriend, proclaiming her undying love and mounting desire for you? Maybe this just happens to me… Well, thanks to a new survey put out by Samsung we now have some fun research on these women. Yup folks, the technocrats at Samsung have put out a pretty funny research report outlining some of the cell usage behaviors of single women. The title is a good indication of the rest of the report: “Single Mobile Females Find New BFF: Their Cell Phone“. It’s a funny fast read lite on details with blog worthy data pulls like 40% of women experience “text shame” the morning after texting while inebriated.
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Leave a Comment » | Conjecture, Gadgets, horrible headlines, Long Tail, Market Research & Intelligence, mobile, mobile phone, Online TV, Quantification, Research, Research Summary, SMF, social ideas, Tech Musings, Technology & Entertainment, trend, TrendSpotting, User Generated Content, video, Web Resources, Zune | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
June 5, 2007
Garry Trudeau became an RIAA shill…
The New York Times finds new ways to say the record labels are dead: With the hyperbolic headline “Plunge in CD Sales Shakes Up Big Labels” the NYT outlines the approved list symptoms contributing the labels demise but steadfastly avoids stating any causes.
The software police at the BSA put out a report claiming that “illegal downloading” by 8 – 18 year olds was down 24% over the past 3 years. File this report under official sounding pseudo-science and take it out whenever you need to fertilize your garden. Of the many explanations for the results reported in the survey, my favorite is that with all the lawsuits and media coverage 8-18 year olds have learned how to best respond to online surveys.
The good folks at Big in Japan have stepped in to help everyone who has fallen for Twitter, Jott, Jaiku and WordPress. They created a mashup called Egorcast that allows you to post to all four of these services at once. Much like Onlywire does for social bookmarking sites, Egorcast is one site to control all your random musings.
Leave a Comment » | round-up, social ideas, social media, Start-ups, Tech 2.0, trend, TrendSpotting, twitter, Web 2.0, Web Resources | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
May 11, 2007
Good news: Today Joost announced they raised $45 million bucks with power VC firm’s from around the globe and a YouTube hating media giant. The deal brings together Index Ventures of the EU, Sequoia Capital of Silicon Valley fame, and the Li Ka-shing foundation run by Hong Kong based billionaire, Li Ka-shing. The international focus of the money flowing into the coffers of Joost is telling as is the participation of the GooTube hating crew at Viacom. The real shocker isnt that Joost got a butt load of money, its that with all the MBA’s, consultants, researchers, futurist and pundits, that are employed by the media companies only Viacom was smart or savvy enough to get in on the deal.
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3 Comments | ABC, Broadband, Broadband-Wagon, CBS, CNN, Conjecture, deals, Digital downloading, Funding, futute tv, GooTube, hot betas, IPTV, joost, NBC, Online TV, social media, Technology & Entertainment, TrendSpotting, TV | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
April 12, 2007
I was playing with my 5 year-old niece the other day as she prepared for a busy day of frolicking and fun. As adults often do to kids I decided to give her one of those slightly condescending quizzes testing her basic knowledge of things like where she lived etc…
“Whats your mothers name?” I asked. She gave me a bored look and answered with her mothers full name, her fathers full name and threw in her full name for good measure. “Whats your phone number?” I continue, oblivious to her growing annoyance at being treated like a 4 year old. This one got her, she thinks for a bit and then mumbles “four… five… nine…” the right numbers were coming out but in the wrong order and she was getting frustrated. So rather then push it I changed the question and ask “Whats your address?” Her eyes beam, she knows this one and is gonna redeem herself, she blurts out with a knowing pride “shymonster@hidden.com” .
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1 Comment | Conjecture, Humor, trend, TrendSpotting | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
April 4, 2007
Here are some interesting stats put out last month by the good folks at the University of Oxford. The survey is based on 1,369 respondents who where interested in the University of Oxford’s online and distance learning courses, but got sucked into taking a survey instead. The results may skew a bit techy and there are some other minor issues with the survey but who cares, its great fodder for though and speculation. Its a very good report which confirms some stuff I believed (people love Wikipedia) and challenged others things (only a fraction of people contribute content). Check out the TALL blog for the full report and some commentary by the author of the survey.
Leave a Comment » | Market Research & Intelligence, Quantification, Research, social media, social networking, TrendSpotting, Web 2.0, Web Stats | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
March 28, 2007
So this week is turning out to be another pretty bad PR week for the old music biz but healthy signs for the evolution of the industry overall. From the NYT and USAT to lawmakers and academics everyone appears ready to call the traditional music business dead! Sure, folks on the net have been talking about the death of the traditional music industry for years but this week the New York Times finally decided to join the party.
NYT reporter Jeff Leeds wrote an article entitled, “The Album, a Commodity in Disfavor” this past Monday that basically highlights the death of the CD format. USA Today blogger Angela Gunn posted a pointer to a story about the RIAA’s attempt to drag a 10 year old girl into court. Meanwhile the Consumerist is running a story about the University of Nebraska’s efforts to bill the RIAA for every copyright complaint sent to the school. Basically the university says it cost them $11 bucks to process each letter and that since they arent agents of the RIAA they need to get paid for doing it. Unfortunately they didnt back up the bill with say a threat not to snitch on their students or spend tax-payers money doing the RIAA’s work for it. Another bit of news coming out of the UK in the form of a research paper written by Will Page of MCPS-PRS, the UK’s version of ASCAP. The paper entitled “Is the price of recorded music heading towards zero?” basically reinforces the notion that music is becoming little more the a commodity. The value in the music business in the future will be in the services that surround the music and the music itself not the format in which its delivered.
1 Comment | Music Musings, NYTimes, p2p, Research, Research Summary, RIAA, RIAA and Record Labels, social media, trend, TrendSpotting | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
March 16, 2007
While I was preparing another post I ran this chart in Alexa and was surprised to discover that Twitter is already par with Reddit in traffic and is clearly on track to overtake them. I compared it to Virb, Reddit, Vox and Multiply. Only Multiply had more traffic according to Alexa’s ranking. I never would have thought that a site where random folks post statements about what they are doing at any given moment would be more popular then a news site where you get actual information about whats going on in the world.
There is something in the addictive, low commitment, ad-free site that is catching on with folks. The question I usually get about Twitter is “whats the point?” And I generally give some glib answer about self-expression and users connecting with each other. The truth is I have no idea why Twitter has caught on. All I can tell you for sure is that its going to be bigger then Reddit by the end of the month and may surpass Multiply by the Summer.
There was a lot of talk about the folks at Obvious being crazy to give up Odeo for Twitter but as they said at the time it was the more interesting project. If your not Twittering yet check out the site and give it a try and see if you get addicted like so many others.
Leave a Comment » | odeo, reddit, social media, social networking, trend, TrendSpotting, twitter, User Generated Content, Web 2.0, web 3.0 | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
February 28, 2007
Our friends at Akihabar News ran a blurb on a very interesting product from the folks at Olympus. I have long since given up listening to radio, with its overly repetitiously play list, its canned DJ’s and its monotonous pop drone (can Mos Def get some airplay?). Anyway, while the radio isnt that interesting by itself, the idea of sticking a hard drive in the radio and and allowing it to record in the WMA format, which can easily be ripped to MP3, is interesting. Olympus may be doing this to Radio’s today, but watch for Apex to add harddrives to TV’s tomorrow. Read the hilarious BableFish translation here or the Japanese original here.
1 Comment | Gadgets, Tech Musings, Technology and Gadgets, trend, TrendSpotting, Web Resources | Permalink
Posted by changesgood
Change Is Good 