Pew Research and Democratized Social Media

This presentation shows and explains the dramatic shifts in the demographics of users of social media between 2005 and 2009. Moving away from a mostly male to majority female population, and rising as a percent of population all the time, this is another marker on the perpetual presence (whatever the app forms in which it comes) of social media.

Social Media for Local Business

Dave Peck at New Media Chatter, chips in with an advisory, 6 Ways Social Media Can Help A Local Business. The basics: a blog, a Facebook fan page, a Twitter account. But more importantly, taking on the role of “an expert” in your field. This concept and variations will stand as a fundamental precept for effective use of social media in local. My comment on Dave’s post:

“The secret for any local merchant is that they are already part of one or maybe many more social networks. In the old days, those were called “market segments;” but that phrase must be BANNED forevermore; it is far too static for the dynamism inherent in any social network that can now be animated by social media.”

Plus: if you attach your Twitter address to your napkins, brochures, shopping bags, store signs, ads on the sides of buses, you get more directly inside the flow of viral networking among people likely to have an interest in your stuff.

Local Social Vertical Model for News (PPT)

This deck summarizes thoughts about applying social media-enabled services in local markets in a way that can provide the revenue base to sustain journalism.    Not a panacea, but embodies the unique attributes of the medium, which in my view drives its potential.

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Ideas more than welcome.

Philanthropic Funding for Investigative Journalism

The Huffington Post has announced the formation of a $1.75 million fund to finance investigative reporting that will be conducted by its staff and freelancers.    The site described it:

“The Huffington Post said Sunday that it will bankroll a group of investigative journalists, directing them at first to look at stories about the nation’s economy.

“The popular Web site is collaborating with The Atlantic Philanthropies and other donors to launch the Huffington Post Investigative Fund with an initial budget of $1.75 million. That should be enough for 10 staff journalists who will primarily coordinate stories with freelancers, said Arianna Huffington, co-founder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post.

“Work that the journalists produce will be available for any publication or Web site to use at the same time it is posted on The Huffington Post, she said.

Arianna Huffington’s announcement is here.

Jeff Jarvis, blogger at buzzmachine.com, a seeker of innovation to sustain journalism and a contributor to HuffPost had this observation:

“This, I’ve long held, is where foundation and public support will enter into the new ecosystem of journalism: not by taking over newspapers but by funding investigations and other slices of a new journalistic pie.

“… Now to touch the third rail in the debate over the future of news: This is how paid content will work … by setting up systems to take advantage of the 1 percent rule online that decrees you need only a limited number of contributors (of money or effort) to support great things in a gift economy. See: Wikipedia and NPR.”

This may well be a decent bridge financing structure for sustaining the news.  It will prove more difficult in local markets.  It is a commitment of decent enough size and duration to evaluate and perhaps expand on, but the sustainability of the 1 percent solution is very questionable.

My questions on any of these alternative structures is how they will sustain or strengthen the protections that have been assured primarily by the existence and legal departments of the institutions producing the news.   What is the liability between Huffington, the funders of this venture and the reporters who will produce the news product?   Who asserts 1st amendment protection when one of these stories is challenged.   I rarely see any discussion of this topic, but it is central to securing the profession.

Alternative Health and The Net: Parallels in Growth

Now having plunged into complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) at the local level, I find interesting parallels between the state of CAM today and that of online services in the pre-Netscape days of the Internet in the early 1990’s. These comparisons feel a little sketchy, but the more I think about them, the more telling they appear. (CAM, also referred to as integrative medicine, includes therapies like Chinese and Indian (Ayurvedic) medicines, acupuncture reiki, reflexology, bio-feedback and others that are the focal point of our LifePages business.)

As the net has reshaped the assumptions central to the information and communications industries, this far more amorphous collection of healing therapies and modalities has the potential to have a similar effect on healthcare. In some places it already has.

Consider these similarities:

1. An experienced consumer base, hungry for “more and better” and willing to pay for it:

Blending Local Verticals

Peter Krasilovsky in his Local Onliner notes a fundamental shift in local focus within the Gannett newspaper chain, reported by Wired magazine:

“The original prototype, CincyMOMs, from The Cincinatti Enquirer, brought in $386,000 in its first six months and gets 40,000 page views a day. Half of the CincyMOMS advertisers are new to the paper….Wired also notes that Gannett’s 110 papers are being reorganized by interest group. Instead of being seen as single, top-down metro paper, The Enquirer is now envisioned as 270 niche publications, including its suburban papers, neighborhoods WebSites and regional magazines.

“Reorganized by interest group…270 niches”? I can only say: Bingo. Good for Gannett. Now lets see if the corresponding blended revenue streams can fund a robust news operation.

Peter’s complete article is here.

Local vertical health care

MetroHealth Media, Inc.

Current assignment involves carving out a piece of the local consumer health care market by converting a print directory called LifePages that serves the DC metro region.

LifePages serves a sub-set of the local consumer health care vertical: complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), holistic and natural health therapies and practices.  These are now more consistently referred to as integrative health and medicine, a serious component of the rapidly growing prevention and wellness sector, as people step aside from mainstream medicine to test supplements, massage, meditation and other therapies. Acupuncture is perhaps the best known “non-traditional” (unless you live in Asia) treatment to evolve into acceptance. Meditation, herbal remedies and “energy” work are on the same path.

Since the time and dollars spent in pursuit and practice are almost entirely local, it fits the local/vertical formula I’ve focused on the last couple of years.

Old News, Good Comment

I often find myself wondering if I really read what I just read in commentary on what’s to happen to the news industry, the media industry, the advertising industry. So I delight when finding something I agree with, even if it is six months since posting. In his review of Google’s flirtations with newspapers and the offline movement of digital advertising, Richard Waters of the Financial Times’ ft.com summed up the central task:

“…Assembling a large body of like-minded consumers will involve tapping into a variety of small-scale markets.”

This is particularly true in local markets. We all hop from our positions in one small-scale market to another at our own whim, entwined with a corresponding variety of like-minded folks. I don’t think it is any more difficult than that, is it?

For the full context, check out Waters’ ft.com story:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/4e057d1e-eac2-11da-9566-0000779e2340.html

Filed under: Advertising, News Industry

Local Social Verticals: A Personal Impetus

In 2002 my daughter Libby tore an ACL playing summer league basketball.  After wrestling the poor kid to the car and thence to the emergency room, I proceeded to research the injury, the local docs, the rehab, the prognosis. In this process I thought: “I’m not the only one doing this.” Parents have not had a resource that informs their experience hauling kids from games and parks to schools and fields and gyms. “We need one,” says I.  I assembled a proto site site with the able assistance of Jonathan Lundardi and Dave Leichtman.  It is on the list.

Before the Web: Collecting History Online

By 2002 people were already describing the “history of the Internet,” and leaving out the essential embers on which the Net rose so quickly. Having been part of the nascient online service industry that grew through the 1980’s, I chaffed at this, well, oversight.

We had by some miracle (did you ever use comm software at 300 baud and wake it up by typing: ATDT?) devised ways to get some 10 million paying subscribers online before Mosaic and Netscape appeared: a handy beta test population that essentially meant everything to the rapid adoption of the net.

I proposed a small project to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which at the time was interested in how the Internet might be used as a complement to collecting oral histories from the scientists and engineers that most of its programs supported. I had the good luck to partner with the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and to have access to the unique collection of online services industry materials and memorabilia and newsletters published in those years by my good friend Gary Arlen of Arlen Communications.

The web site was created, entreaties went out to old colleagues, and personal accounts soon started arriving to be organized by several categories. The problem with oral histories, which motivated the Sloan Foundation to try the net, is the excessive time it takes to record, transcribe and then make public such recollections; sometimes years.

In the brief project period (about five months), action at the web site showed that personal accounts could be collected and presented extremely quickly (each entry was reviewed). Many score of industry practitioners came to the site, many left commentary, and those that refrained said that the online history of the 80’s was indeed important to capture.

The process also showed that the open online capture and presentation of personal accounts we employed was not a replacement for oral histories, by any means, but could serve to expedite and to clarify any oral recordings. It was precisely what the Foundation was looking for.

The project also illustrated the important fact that many of us were still at work, creating businesses, e-commerce sites, Web ventures or “normal” employment of our own, and that it was perhaps a little too soon to stop in mid-sales-call to record the businesses of the 80’s.

(The project site is offline.)