social media

The Ever Changing Media Landscape: It Is What It Should Be…
150 150 eriks

It seems like noone really can grab (nor should they actually) if the future media is new, old or a hybrid. Is it really media anymore in the future? Personally I think the key here is to understand it is neither. It is ‘nothing’. It is changing. It is what it should be. In a phase of transition into something new. One key question is if we can keep the transition flowing yet preserve what is good and prevent the media model from stagnating as it did before and in many ways created the media crisis (or maybe better put a very present need of change) of today.

Where is the news media industry right now?

“I have been thinking that the newspapers have got it right! Only the popular topics gets all the hits… The rest get… well… just the spill overs.”

The quote is from a conversation about the news media industry with a friend. He is right in one way, but yet oh so wrong…

The news papers and media in the US today predominantly covers entertainment news, and very little international news. In Feburary 2007, the coverage was around 79% US news. The remaining 21% was dominated by coverage of the situation in Iraq. Here is the really scary part: “The combined coverage of Russia, China and India, for example, reached just 1%.” Just as an example, we all know about the BRIC countries and their influence over the world economy today and in the future. Does it really make sense to have such a infinitesimal coverage of these big commercial forces? Not to mention the non-existing coverage of the natural resource intense fourth BRIC country Brazil. Isn’t the in-depth understanding about the the situations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan just to mention a few, essential for the future? I won’t go in to a international policy discussion about reasons behind it here, even though it is an interesting angle and certainly could foster an engaging discussion.

The world becomes increasingly more flat. The borders – geographical, political, ethnical, cultural and religious – are eroding, constantly fading and soon I would claim they are almost non-existing other than on paper. We are living in a global society. A global community. We can try to escape it or accept it, but ultimately we will have to accept it. The issues we have to tackle are predominantly global, multifaceted unique, and very challenging. They have to be solved and understood by us all, together as one society. During this time of a complete transition of our world, the news media industry is decreasing their international reporting and media staff by to this date around 50%. This development is driven my ever decreasing margins of profit in the media industry. In my eyes, we are witnessing a very dangerous development from a societal growth perspective, not to mention from a democratic point-of-view as the need for real, diverse, news coverage is increasingly more important here.

I came to Stanford back in 2005 with the task to figure out ways to increase the news coverage in troubled areas, in particularly Iraq and the Middle East. It quickly became obvious that the web as a distribution channel was not the real issue. It was the lack of coverage of the news events taking place in the region. The lack of coverage of the human stories. The lack of perspectives coming from these regions. The lack of multiple media channels. The lack of alternative media. The few journalists present were getting killed, threaten or (in some way even worse as it silence the coverage) stopped from covering the events on-the-ground where and when they happen. The issue remains as urgent and present as always, as we saw similar issues in Gaza where the only media channel present inside Palestine were Al Jazeera. The danger then is the bias and single handed stories coming out of regions which desperately need objectivity and diversity. Continuing, today in the US we see an increasing number of unemployed, in many ways suffering core of journalist, photographers, video makers and other media workers. The industry is seriously wounded and in many ways in a paralyzing chock. The natural response of any organism, organization or company will in the state of being (seriously) wounded turn to survival mode and the quick fix or flee. It is about surviving for the moment. The logic leaves. Go for the easy win. In here lies the reasons for the media business trend, as well as we as consumers have very few other alternatives at the moment.

The reality however is that the web has forever changed the possible revenue models for news papers and the media business in general. The music industry got their share of of this transition a few years back, and is struggling to survive even though we are seeing some improvements there. The time has come for the news media business to realize that the era of the traditional media is gone, and that they have to take this challenge on head on. A lot of the revenue streams have for news companies throughout time come from either the classified and advertising (in the printed editions primarily) or for the big news agencies syndication of content. Look at Reuters for instance who earn their revenue from financial data, not their news arm, where you need accurate massaged data to make balanced and accurate decisions. Syndication is an ancient, today non-working and dysfunctional solution in its current form. The freedom of content – both on the publishing and consumption side – on the web these days make syndication models notoriously hard, or let us be honest impossible in the traditional sense. The news media industry is starting to realize this fact. There are some new models we can definitely look at, but in a different form.

Syndication models work well if you have access to purely unique content for which people are willing to pay for. These days you have to have the emotional and human touch to your content, as well as show a span of content around it. It needs to have that little extra. That spice that hooks you in. It has to be tangible, relatable, human and real.

Wait a minute! Can you not get this via a traditional media model?

Sure you can, but it will cost you way too much as content creation is incredibly expensive. It will cost you. It will cost you a lot. It will cost you too much. You will have large head counts, which lead to large expenses, and the margins for content are not there anymore as the key game on the content market has forever changed. Charging for content clearly does not work in the web era where everything should be “free” (or honestly seemingly free). Should it be free? That’s another question, but it is naive to think that will change. :-) The unconstrained, immediate distribution of content online have set a stage where you need small slim organizations, that let the content flow freely and undisturbed. The era of the “walled gardens” is forever over, even though the cellular networks in many ways are still stubbornly fighting this trend. Yet remarkably, even they has started to realize the absurdness of the fight, and probably already realize that it is lost already. The content model for the future has forever changed. We as a media consumption society shaped it – for the good and for the bad of it.

The option left is to adapt as in all paradigm shifts. We should just realize that we have entered a completely new era of media. A more exciting. A more dynamic. A more un-predictable. A more interactive. A more social. Yeah! Where do I buy the ticket to tag along on the ride? I want in on this ride!

How do you do this? You turn to multipurpose, flexible and moldable solutions. This is surely nothing new as all big changes throughout history have come from such solutions. You have the steam engine. Multipurpose. You have the PC. Multipurpose device. You have Microsoft Office (regardless what you think of Microsoft). A multipurpose package to solve most of your needs. On the web you have YouTube. A multipurpose video sharing site. You also have Flickr. A multipurpose photo site. The list goes on. Now in here the opportunity lies. The opportunity of changing the news business to something the world has never seen before. The opportunity is to create a multipurpose news media platform where anyone can publish, any one can share any piece of content and anyone can discuss it? The opportunity is the creation of a multipurpose news platform. To use some buzz words the ultimate topical mashup experience. Wouldn’t that be awesome and cool? It sure would be. (… and actually already is.

Citizen Media vs Traditional Media – Is It Really Opposite Solutions?

“Hey now, we cannot just put up citizen reports. That is just not possible! Let us have a separate page for the people who are interested in this in particular. Oh, and we need to control every entry too. Moderation is key!”

Hrmm…

The comment above is heard way too often in the traditional media news rooms around the world. I have personally heard this comment from so many global media companies. I believe it is a road blocking mentality to accomplish a real change of the media arena. It is prohibiting the media to move into the next obvious phase – the topical mashups of social and traditional media content. The resistance is both hard and extremely easy to understand the reasons. The main reason that explains it all is that it is stepping out of the comfort zone. It is about redefining the space. If you want to use some hotter business development terms, it is the blue ocean strategy. Define the new market. Innovate it. Create it. The ride of your life to be honest! Stepping out of the comfort zone is something most people dread, fear or are uncomfortable doing. It is broadening your views to something else. Something never seen. It is about taking the risk. Just taking a leap. I guess it is a survival instinct. Never divert from the known path. Boooring!

I got news for you, my friend.

The media arena is already redefined. Sorry guys and girls. The unedited, unmediated, unfiltered real community-based media is here. It has been redefined for ages. It is more a matter of having the guts to move into it. Realizing that the change is here. Traditional media will not. Many bloggers will not realize and have not realized this either – “It is my content. Me, me, me…” Sorry guys, but the community model is here to stay and it is pretty hard to fight this transition. Again remember that the music industry is still pursuing the war against file sharing. In the military you learn one thing: Adapt and move on. Evolution says the same thing: The species which adapt to the new environment will survive. It is the survival of the fittest. We live in a market economy where the consumer is getting more and more power so you better adapt as a business. In a highly competitive market as the media business you better be willing to innovate. YouTube did it for video. Flickr did it for pictures. Wikipedia did it for facts. The news business is up next, or already up.

Will you take the red or blue pill? I prefer the travel down the rabbit hole to Wonderland. That’s where the party is.

First, let us take a brief look at the coverage issues laid out initially about the skewed news coverage in the US. The main issue with the traditional media model is that is completely incapable of catching the long tail market of any component of the long tail. Again the cost is one of the main reasons, but also the traditional editor model will never be able handle the vast amount of content produced in the long tail. Today’s media market is all about content packaging as the entry barrier for content publishing and creation is in every mans hand. The explosion of cellphones and the incredible growth of the web has enabled anyone to become a reporter, an opinion maker or just enable anyone to share their voice. The birth of citizen reporting or as I see it sharing of their voices and opinions is made possible by the access of publishing technology for no cost especially since web space is incredible cheap these days. The long tail encompasses a lot of challenges such as How do you navigate through the vast amount of information? How do you explain and make the relation between the different content pieces obvious?

The future game of the media business is about content packaging, not creation and distribution. The creation is taken care of and should be community powered, yet supported by the traditional reporting style. The distribution is straightforward using the web, and with supporting paper editions and of course television (over time web-TV). The main disruptions here have been the open-source content management systems and blogging platforms. Putting up a website now is as simple as a few clicks. You are up and blogging in no-time and can start to share your opinions. There are an enormous amount of sites providing possibilities for social bookmarking, multimedia upload and integration with your own site which will help you in the promotional part. In all honesty I would have to admit that learning content promotion is the toughest part and the biggest challenge for any blogger, photographer, video maker or any other content creator. I will come back to that a bit later what supporting elements you will have to have.

Okay, it all sounds good. But how do you relate traditional media content and marry it with user generated content and other related content? How do we combine and package this content to make sense out of it and make it digestible for a normal content consumer?

You will need to combine technology guided by a community. In the user generated arena the stream of content is too big to handle in any scalable way by humans. This is certainly not a new problem for sure as in most industries the big expense is their employees. The media today is increasingly moving into a long-tail market to attract a bigger markets and also harness the user generated content, why the issue with the cost of the employees is increasingly more urgent to address in detail.

Let us step back for just a second and take a look at the content life cycle as it is important to understand the nature of the content you are trying to quality assure.

Content has a life cycle of it’s own and the value of content is pretty much built up by it’s freshness (how breaking is the content), how unique is it, and how emotional the content is. Breaking news content will always be in high demand. The life time and stickiness of the content improves with supporting relevant material such as context, facts and opinions, together with providing the audience with the capability of interacting with the content with ratings, comments and topical forums.

The media scene is continuously moving more towards the ultimate content mashup between traditional and user generated media on a topical basis. The articles are no longer essay like, but more a mosaic of different media types, angles, presentations and such. Essentially, you will have three main components to the presentation:

  • The Report – The report is the foundation of the media experience. Anyone can report from anywhere via cellphone or PC, sharing news, images, videos and opinions.
  • The Related Voices, Opinions and Facts – Around the report multiple perspectives are woven together that is have a collection of news stories, blog posts, images and videos via contributors and aggregation.
  • Discuss and Rate – For each of the presentations you will enable the community to emotionally connect with others around the world through discussion, rate the story and in the community spirit complete the human story.

The key here, and it cannot be over exaggerated, in all of these components is the freedom of contribution, interaction and discussion. It is an absolutely necessity to have this free. It is the freedom of speech on steroids but still fact checked. It has to be free and open. To all people. By any means. Everywhere. Essentially, all these components build the human story and the provided context, facts and opinions built up by other user contributions and aggregation grounds the discussion. Ironically all these characteristics of the content actually provides you with the necessary components of the quality assurance system. It is the ultimate long-tail system.

I usually describe the new content media arena with the analogy of imagining a party. Which party would you like to go to: the party with all the detailed instructions what to wear, what to do, what to not say, what to say. Or would you prefer the laid back come as you are party. I would choose the rock n’ roll party any day. Why? It is fun. It is free. But… Most importantly I can relate to it. I can relate to it. That is the key. Sure, you will need some logistics for the rock n’ roll party too, but the script is not already set. (I know a bit put over the top but you see what I mean.) The key is the creativity, the ability to play, the ability to experiment yet within a loosely defined playground defined by all it is participants as well as maintainers.

You have to be able to relate to the media you consume. It has to be human. You realize now that media is not about what you think others think. It is about bringing that human face to the story with all its warts, dirt and shit. But it is real. It is authentic. It is genuine. It is the real story. Not perfect, but relatable. Yiiiha!

Quality Assurance in The Long-Tail Content Market

The long tail content market, especially including the user generated content, has always been the subject of a broad and intense discussion about quality assurance, especially since most of the solutions proposed includes heavy emphasis on technology. Traditionally human editors have been used as the major and gate keeper part of the content quality assurance process. Again the use of hired human editors is not a scalable solution and never will be a soleable scalable solution. Will they have a role? Of course. Will they be the only editing instance? I doubt that. In addition the traditional editing model via human editors has also been proven to have some concerning issues especially for high profile news stories/events. The vast number of surfaced staged photographs published by for instance AP, Reuters and New York Times via their photographers during the conflict in Lebanon 2006, as well as the plagiarized and fabricated stories by the New York Times-journalist Jayson Blair have really seeded doubts that human editors/journalists are really the solely solution on the long term. This problem is also seen in the new social media sites and one of the more important examples are the issues with the super editors in Wikipedia.

Okay so most people usually shout out – What about Google then? Shouldn’t the incredible PageRank solve all this?

Nope. The concept of content ranking have always struggled between diversity and singularity. Usually the singular answer. This-is-how-things-are solutions have ruled the content ranking scene. Maybe the paradox is us as humans. Singularity is simple. It is transparent. Diversity is not. It creates this twilight zone reality where you do not really know what is the true or false. The easy, simple, neat answers disappear. PageRank… The amazing, mythical and brilliant algorithm that disrupted a whole business and market. It gives us what we need. Or does it? Really? PageRank works (simplified of course) very much like biological evolution. The strongest (or here most reputable) survives. The strongest win. They conquer the weakest. The alternative voices such as the extinction threatened species are not heard. They are lost in the noise. Is this right? Or is it “just” the natural choice? Hard question right. It ties into the news worthiness of a piece of content. PageRank type os ranking solutions are designed to give you one answer, but do not adequately rank in the long tail market where you would like to present clusters of information. At least not without modifications and conceptual changes to the overall nature.

Clearly we are looking at a solution that is simple in it’s core – technology heavy yet community and participation intense.

Now that is sweet.

The solution need to provide some quality assurance and build up a reputation for the contributors (yet work for unknown and alternative voices which are more likely to be part of news worthy events). Some of the main challenges faced (and at the same time model opportunities) are:

  • Digg voting type of solutions leads to group fractioning. Similar models here include Wikipedia where you give the power to a few selected users, why you still have an issue to get the less strong yet very valid voices heard. If you fraction the community you will balance on a thin line where you easily can create a complete distrust of the system which projects on the quality of the content on the long term.
  • PageRank type solutions lead to the survival of the strongest and/or reputable only. The hierarchy has been set which makes it very hard for new entrants in the space and for new, unknown voices to be heard. It is perfect for information seeking, but is dysfunctional for news and opinion.
  • Reputation of the single user is an interesting factor to build trust, but not solely sufficient. We have seen examples in the media industry before. For instance the tampered photos of the bombings of Beirut in Lebanon 2006 of a well-known Reuters photographer and the made up news stories by the New York Times journalist Jason Blair. The key aspect here is to give the benefit of doubt for reputable user yet not use it as a single measure of credibility, quality or trust.

It is obvious that the right, sustainable solution will be a combination of at least these three ranking attributes. Basically you turn your challenges into assets in the editing process, as well as use them as opportunities to address the business concerns. This combination will be much more scalable, much more robust, completely technology based and still addresses all the issues with the ranking of user generated content. This is especially true for the long tail market where the amount of content is just too big for humans too handle – both practical and consistently. Think of it as a simulation of the traditional newsroom process yet with less bias.

That is pretty cool, right?

The Media People

Community powered topical mashups of content sound very neat, simple and straightforward. Right? However I do believe these initiatives need support by professionals, but in a different shape than before. Remember that we are still at the initial stages of the transformation of the media industry. Let us first take a look at the necessary key skill sets of the participants of the new media arena:

  1. Consumers
    • Information snacking
    • Broad interests
    • Geographical breakdown
    • The question “why” is increasingly becoming more important
    • Engaged, and entertained
    • Relatable and tangible presentations necessary
  2. Creators
    • Multimedia more important
    • Text as a medium is dying, or at least becoming less important as the story telling media type.
    • In-the-field reporting increasingly important
    • Knowing and closely interacting with their readership very important
  3. Producers
    • Fast consumption calls for a fast medium of distribution
    • The globe as a market calls for a web solution
    • Diverse distribution mechanisms
    • Multiple reporting entries (cellphone, web, email)
    • Multiple media types (text, audio, pictures, video)

It still looks good right? Oops, one crucial and essential thing is missing here. How do you turn normal people into content creators? How do you teach them how to produce quality content without loosing the freedom and simplicity of their contributions? It is one of the more essential pieces here to really transform media. Around the world, every moment, news is constantly happening: a picture, a video, a short text message captured by someone. While this moment might seem insignificant and random, often these captured experiences, reflections, perspectives, observations are the first evidence of an event that has impact. This news event, put in context is part of constant stream of news generated by individuals and the communities they inhabit. It is a stream of perspectives and a conversation anyone can join – anyone who has the means to contribute and the basic knowledge of how and where to upload their information.

In addition an essential part of all media is to capture the offline world, and to make the offline world connected in some extent to the online world. It is not necessarily about moving the offline community online, but to bridge the gap. In the regions where there density of news events is high as well as the global importance of the news event is major, the affected population is not necessarily connected or lack the understanding how to contribute. Using ubiquitous, simple and cheap tools is a necessity, but I am not sure it is enough.

However…

There is as always a need to reflect where we are going and why. It is not about stopping the transition but to make sure it is going in the direction we would like it to go. For everyone in the media business the movie EPIC 2014 is a must. The key question from that movie is whether what we (believe) we want really is what we want. That is a hard one as no single person can answer it. Even more mindblowing. If it is not what we want, why do we want it? How can we shape a media where we get what we want, yet provide the diversity we seek but not seek? How do we shape it so that we see all issues yet do not feel like we get things stuffed down our throats? That is in my eyes one of the biggest challenges for the media industry as well as our society in the future.

Again. The time for media is amazingly exciting these days. The possibilities are endless. There are challenges to be faced, but at the same time a lot of opportunities. What is clear is that the global community model will dominate and that the path for the future will and should be guided as a global community,

Anyhow…

Welcome to the party! It’s just getting started…

  • eriks
  • 0

Why Twitter Really Is Not A Cellphone Powered News Site
150 150 eriks

I remember when I first heard about Twitter, which was early spring 2007. There was this enormous buzz about this new cool site where you could update your friends about what you were doing and when – all this via text messaging. At first I did not notice the site at all as text messaging is old news in Europe so it didn’t seem very new. At first it actually sounded a bit obnoxious and it really was at first. However it matured and here we are in 2009 with a highly popular site used for a lot of different purposes.

First of all and importantly, Twitter has never really positioned them as cellphone powered news. We every day hear about how Twitter is growing in popularity and I myself am a big tweeter so I am not out to bash Twitter. It is a really cool platform for quick little link exchanges, updates and discussions with your friends. Others have however claimed that Twitter is a news site.

Twitter is not a cellphone-powered news site. It is a tremendous source for what could become news, and a resource for journalists, but on it’s own, it is not.

There are two main issues with Twitter from a news perspective:

  • It is hard to find things on Twitter.
  • The tweets are not validated, or fact checked
  • It is very much a one-perspective story, and the short format is not favorable here.

Let us first take a look at the first point here. The intention of Twitter is not to make things searchable. It is a cellphone powered social network to stay in contact with your friends and others. There will be other applications as natural extensions but primarily Twitter was built for friendship discussions. As all platforms people play with them, but the fundamental architecture is built for interaction only with your friends.

But hey now, Erik! There are search engines that let you search Twitter. Sure, but they are not on Twitter. I get very little support to find other content that is outside my social sphere. It makes the discovery part of news consumption pretty much impossible. Your consumption will be as strong as your community.

I have to admit here that the news consumption is changing and the media arena is moving more towards gatekeepers who help us stay in touch with our news. Before the media newsroom was that, but now the consumption is relocated to the spheres around the information hubs in the social network. The social media reaches the journalistic arena. This is the right development and pretty sweet of course. You still need to assist the users with other tools to navigate through the content and find content. Nope, hashtags will not solve this. :-) They are bandages, not a solution.

The second and third issues are related. One of the main challenges with user-generated content is to validate and guide your consumers whether a specific piece of content is credible or not. The need cannot be underestimated and I have seen different approaches here, but clearly the content creator will not be able to solve this for you sufficiently. The content creator should be free to publish and we as a news industry should do assist in the guidance of the consumer of whether a particular piece of content is credible or not. The length of the message is not playing in favor here as 140 characters

Can Twitter overcome this? They might. They might not. Ultimately I do not think this is in their interests, as it would kill the fundamental idea of Twitter.

Ok. So what is the solution then?

The media scene is continuously moving more towards the ultimate content mashup on a topical basis. The articles are no longer essay like, but more a mosaic of different media types, angles, presentations and such. Essentially, you will have three main components to the presentation:

  • The Report – The report is the foundation of the media experience. Anyone can report from anywhere via cellphone or PC, sharing news, images, videos and opinions.
  • The Related Voices, Opinions and Facts – Around the report multiple perspectives are woven together that is have a collection: news stories, blog posts, images and videos via contributors and aggregation.
  • Discuss and Rate – For each of the presentations you will enable the community to emotionally connect with others around the world through discussion, rate the story and in the community spirit complete the human story.

Key in all of these components is the freedom of contribution, interaction and discussion. It is an absolutely necessity to have this free, and really a natural consequence of freedom of speech. It has to be free and open. To all people. By any means. Everywhere. Essentially, all these components build the human story and the provided context, facts and opinions built up by other user contributions and aggregation grounds the discussion. Ironically all these characteristics of the content actually provide you with the necessary components of the quality assurance system. It is the ultimate long-tail system.

First of all let us kill a myth. The long tail content market, especially including the user generated content, has always been the subject of a broad and intense discussion about quality assurance, especially since most of the solutions proposed includes heavy emphasis on technology. Traditionally human editors have been used as the major and gate keeper part of the content quality assurance process. The use of hired human editors is not a scalable solution and never will be a scalable solution. In addition the traditional editing model via human editors has also been proven to have some concerning issues especially for high profile news stories/events. The vast number of surfaced staged photographs published by for instance AP, Reuters and New York Times via their photographers during the conflict in Lebanon 2006, as well as the plagiarized and fabricated stories by the New York Times-journalist Jayson Blair have really seeded doubts that human editors/journalists are really the solely solution on the long term. This problem is also seen in the new social media sites and one of the more important examples are the issues with the super editors in Wikipedia.

The concept of content ranking – yes even PageRank – have always struggled between diversity and singularity. Usually they turn to the singular answer. This-is-how-things-are solutions have ruled the content ranking scene. Maybe the paradox is us as humans. Singularity is simple. It is transparent. Diversity is not. It creates this twilight zone reality where you do not really know what is the true or false. The easy, simple, neat answers disappear. PageRank… The amazing and brilliant algorithm that disrupted a whole business and market. It gives us what we need. Or does it? Really? PageRank works (simplified of course) very much like biological evolution. The strongest (or here most reputable) survives. The strongest win. They conquer the weakest. The alternative voices such as the extinction threatened species are not heard. They are lost in the noise. Is this right? Or is it “just” the natural choice? Hard question right. It ties into the news worthiness of a piece of content. PageRank type os ranking solutions are designed to give you one answer, but do not adequately rank in the long tail market where you would like to present clusters of information. At least not without modifications and conceptual changes to the overall nature.

Clearly we are looking at a solution that is simple in it’s core – technology heavy yet community and participation intense. It turns out that the main features of the solution should be:

  • The reputation of the contributor
  • The collective power of the aggregation around the user generated content
  • The community interaction with the content such as viewing, rating, commenting and other contributions

It is obvious that the right, sustainable solution will be a combination of these three ranking attributes. Basically you turn your challenges into assets in the editing process, as well as use them as opportunities to address the business concerns. This combination will be much more scalable, much more robust, completely technology based and still addresses all the issues with the ranking of user generated content. This is especially true for the long tail market where the amount of content is just too big for humans too handle – both practical and consistently. Think of it as a simulation of the traditional newsroom process yet with less bias. Isn’t that cool?

Why will this work? Easy. :-)

A contributor sends in a text message, which gets instantly published. Now by extracting keywords from the message related content online – news stories, blogs, images and videos – can be associated with the text message. As the context around the message builds up the community interaction with the content is constantly growing.

During the whole life cycle of the message we can define the credibility of the message at any given time and guide the user. The important conclusion here is that we are not reliant on a single point of failure here. If the contributor is unknown the other two components can take over. If we do not find any related content online we will be able to use the reputation and the community for validation. If the interaction from the community is small (which for the long tail it might be for some content) we will be able to use the reputation of the user and the related content to assess the credibility.

Oh wait a minute. That will help us tremendously to strengthen weak voices, detect breaking news and also complete and broaden the story telling of a particular piece. I am pretty stoked it already exists.

Always remember that the future media scene is like a dinner table conversation. It is free, open, interactive and human. I usually describe with thinking of a party. Which party would you like to go to: the party with all the detailed instructions what to wear, what to do, what to not say, what to say. Or would you prefer the laid back come as you are party. I would choose the rock n’ roll party any day. Why? It is fun. It is free. But… Most importantly I can relate to it. I can relate to it. That is the key. Sure, you will need some logistics for the rock n’ roll party too, but the script is not already set.

The proper cellphone powered news site should be free, open, interactive and human – yet credible. That is where I see Twitter fail (as a news site) and Allvoices succeed.

  • eriks
  • 0

A Shed of A Plant
150 150 eriks

I attended SXSW 2009 down in Austin, Texas a few days back. I was thinking back to see a theme between all the panels. Anticipation. Faith. The opportunity. Being lost. I think most people there realized the times are tough and that we are experiencing one of the biggest crossroads of our time. We have a set of, in many ways intimidating, challenges ahead of us. Challenges as diverse as environmental, political and recently a seriously wounded and rotten financial market. These challenges will force us to start questioning where we are, why we came here and more importantly how we will overcome these.

It is a responsibility as a citizen of this world.

The panels really breathed, and yet not at all breathed, this change. They all tried to address the challenges in their little niche area, but sadly enough nothing groundbreaking or innovative was really being put forward. I have to say I felt a bit disappointed. I caught myself fading out of the discussion when they did not really challenge previous conceptions and beliefs of the world (here mostly in the shape of the web and the media industry).

This is the time of change. That is a funny word. Change… We throw it around frequently. Do we really know what it means? What it really means to go through change?

What I do know it is intimidating to most people.

I guess this is something like growing up. Finding your identity. Meeting yourself. The world of today is in a serious identity crisis. We have lost our identity. Why? Who knows. But we have. We have to find it again. It will probably be a different identity than we knew. I think that would be awesome.

Personally this is a quest for me. I am a 33 years old guy born and raised in Sweden, a pretty calm, democratic neat wonderful little place in northern Europe. Some say it is even one of the few idylls on earth. Some say we have it too good there. Maybe we do. I have been informed about everything – wrongs, rights and everything else – ever since I made my stumbling steps in this world (and probably even before that). I have been taught since kindergarten how to behave towards my fellow human beings, what they expect from me, what is expected from me, and how to treat other people with respect regardless of skin, ethnicity, cultural background or religion. There is a big emphasis in Sweden on being able to have your own opinion and being able to express it. It is also a big emphasis on conformity – for the better, and for the worse.

Anyhow.

In addition the schools in Sweden, which are predominantly public, we are very keen on teaching in depth what has happened through history and how it has affected us without anything being censored. We also study a lot of the present issues around the world and the roots of the issues we see with the focus on looking on all sides.

Ever since I was around 12 years old I have had access to computers and played with them constantly. I wrote programs and then especially a text- based golf game. During my time in college, the IT-boom began and I got my own personal Internet connection and gained immediate access to information and could follow the growth of the Internet and the web from the “orchestra seats”. Astonished by the freedom online, I usually spent hours in front of the computer browsing the web for all sorts of information, and I quickly started to interact via various chat programs and instant messengers. I was amazed and intrigued by the technology.

I can, therefore, honestly say that I have been able to read whatever I want to, and have (at least the right to) my own opinion. Basically, I have spent 11 years of my time at a university level including PhD studies, a Stanford Fellowship and working as an associate director at Stanford with alliances between Stanford and Sweden, which has made me a full-feathered, full-blooded academic guy. I have become who I am because I’ve lived in a country where that is possible, and more importantly, because I know I have (or the very least should have) the right to do so.

Now consider some boy or girl in a developing country, emerging democracy, who might be living in state run by a dictator, corrupt regime or even just a troubled area. By troubled area I mainly refer to an occupied territory. What kinds of information will that boy or girl have access too? Who will provide this information? Will it be accurate? Will it be diverse? Will it be free and uncensored? What difference between that information and the information I can see, hear or read is there? Will they feel as entitled as I do to both access and to create that information? Who knows… What I know is that they should have the choice. At least in my opinion. That is their right. That really should be their right.

Unfortunately, alternative news sources in media are a rare occasion in the world. Too rare. However, via cellphones you will be able to share news, as the cellphones are ubiquitous, immediate and simple. By creating a tool for anyone in the entire world to share their stories at anytime from anywhere about anything you will start to bridge this media divide and create a more diverse media scene. We definitely need it.

It is something that is very important as everyone has the right to have an opinion and the right to express it. The freedom of expression. The freedom of speech. The freedom of the individual.

The freedom. The freedom.

This discussion might seem a bit far out, and a bit too philosophical, but a big issue for the areas I mentioned previously is that the sources of news coverage are very scarce and limited. There is a tremendous gap here between the media coverage, even though the media in the “developed” world has their deep issues in coverage as well. In a constrained landscape either by the number of news sources or narrow owner structure you will have an issue here. It becomes very easy to force an opinion on people, and not have an open discussion. Take for instance Iran, which spends billions of dollars on filtering the web for information that the regime does not feel should go online or opinions they have decided the people should not hear. If you are exposed to one news angle, that angle will become the truth even if it is far from the truth. It is the version you will hear. The only version. It is easier to believe something than not believe anything. You feel part of something, even though this something is artificial.

A few weeks back during the WeMedia conference, I recently spoke to a guy from Cuba when I was down in Miami drinking a Mojito. He told me that when his friends and family came to visit from Cuba, he was amazed how “inaccurate” their perception was. He has to spend time explaining that the stories about Cuba are biased to one viewpoint and “filtered” by more corporate interests. Or is it? I really do not know. Yet ironically who knows who and what is right here. He has his views. They have their views.

What is the truth? I don’t think anyone knows. I for one do not believe in the (expressed) absolute truth. The perceived truth will only be in the eyes of the beholder. Oh, there are so many analogies to quantum mechanics, but let us stay out of that one. Look up Schrödinger’s cat as an example.

Back to the conference, during which I was listening to a panel at SXSW with amongst other Clay Shirky and Deborah Schultz talking about the future publishing model. Once again the discussion between the panel and the audience ended up being polarized. “We should have free publishing. No. We should keep the old model. We need to safe the publishers.”

Hmm. I both understand and don’t understand why we find comfort in the extremes. The world, the media industry is not black and white. It is gray. It will be gray. Embrace it. Move on. Just accept it.

One of the comments from the audience on the publishing models were: “What purpose do you [publishers] serve in the future since you can’t be a filter anymore? That’s why you’re disappearing.”. I guess I see his point, but he is still wrong in my eyes. The “we-against-them” mentality will not work. It will never work. Maybe it is easier to think it would, but it is not. It is actually inhibiting to the process we need to carry out.

It was a bit symptomatic for the whole conference.

Ultimately I think and hope that we now start to think about the new identity of the media industry. How it will change and should change. Why it has to change. Find comfort in the change and see it as the shade of a plant.

I do believe SXSW is the right place for these paradigm shift thoughts and ideas. It would be embraced by the audience. The attitude of the conference participants were forward-thinking and open. They wanted to change. They wanted to innovate. They believed.

Let us find the shade of the plant that grows our future.

Ombra mai fù
di vegetabile,
cara ed amabile,
soave più.

Never has there been a shade
of a plant
more dear and lovely,
or more gentle.

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Location-based Mashups – Old News And A Bit Out-Dated?
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I would say so. I remember when I attended the first Where 2.0 conference in San Jose 2006. Location-based products and sites were just about to boom. The hype was really on. The conference was not the best ever, but became a milestone of a recognition of location-based mashups as something innovative and new. Since then it has been an explosion of services out there and several venture funded startups have come. The underlying tools such as GPS, Google Maps, Google Earth and Virtual Earth to mention some have been drastically improved, so have the concepts of mashing up. The amount of tutorials out there in location-based mashups is enormous. Just Google it and you will find page after page telling you how to do cool overlays in Google Maps in minutes or create and import pretty awesome KML file overlays in Google Earth.

However, we should now start to recognize this as a maturing concept and start to look for new angles in the coming and emerging new media arena. For instance I have looked at the Knight News Challenge. I find it a bit ironic they still have as a requirement that the project needs to benefit a specific geographical community. In my eyes that is not very innovative and a bit misplaced as a specific requirement. Preferred characteristic sure, but requirement no.

When the Knight News Challenge first started a few years back, the location-based mashups were new, exciting and interesting, but now in many ways pretty out-dated as an innovative aspect of a new media project. The media scene has moved on, and we should raise our vision. We will see more of content-based mashups where location will play a role, but will not be the sole differentiation. Of course there is room for more explorations in location-based services and mashups. However as a requirement in an (supposively) innovation stimulative news challenge, I would say it is narrowing the scope for possible projects down too much. For instance, if you would like to create a global borderless social network, based on interaction around news and opinions, it would not fit within the scope of the challenge as it doesn’t benefit a specific geographical community.

Does that really make any sense? I do not think so. Especially since the whole media industry is becoming more and more globalized. Is there room for local news and projects that aim to benefit specific geographical communities? Of course, but will they really benefit more of a niche geographical community? In a way probably. Taking out the constraint of a specific geographical community would enable the local issues are heard on a national, regional and even global level. Yet with the proper execution you can still benefit niche communities within the global one. Think of this as how much sense it would be to constrain YouTube to only one specific type of videos as for reach. Makes no sense there, so why would it make sense for geographical communities?

I would say we should have the guts and actually need to raise our eyes to see local issues in the context of other bigger issues. It is for sure an interesting balance not give the proper room for the local issues if you still consider the bigger picture. Yet that is the only way of really recognizing the local issue and give it the support it so often needs to have. In my eyes that is how you do create a substantial and sustainable change for people around the world who needs it. Especially in the media arena where the weak voices need to be amplified, not constrained.

Let the consumer be the judge whether an issue is “local” or not. They should be the true champions of that, not us creators of the projects or funders of the same. The important part here is really to realize that the more sustainable and incredibly successful projects around the world have been multipurposed ones, not the niched ones. It is about defining the right as vertical. A vertical that is as broad as possible.

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