Category Archives: Media ecology

Harry’s secret war

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Like many people, I’ve been irritated by the idiotic coverage of Prince Harry’s truncated wartime experiences. So I was looking forward to reading what my colleague Peter Preston would have to say on the matter. As ever, he’s spot on:

Whatever MPs planning more internet curbs may say (and the generals of Burma sing much the same shrill tune), there is no effective way of leaning on a few blokes in London to shut up in the national interest if zillions of websites are tuned in and wholly reactive. General Sir Richard Dannatt should know that as unflinchingly as any other officer commanding. Helmand isn’t the playing fields of Eton. Al-Qaeda has many formidable internet operators (and many potential press officers). Every home-grown terrorist trial ends in a pile of emails. Deploying Harry in supposed secret could never last. The fix was always going to come loose – and pose questions about what press and Palace should try to fix in a twenty-first century where freedom of information goes rather further than indignant prose and pix brokers would like.

In the new world of instant and multiple communication, reality is the true taskmaster. Is it sensible to encourage the prince to be a proper, deployable soldier? Answer yes and he (never mind the men around him) may or may not be at greater risk. Is he ready to accept that risk? Is the army (never mind cop-out commentaries about the men he serves with) prepared to put him in danger? Is Clarence House? If the answer to all those questions is ‘yes’, as it probably ought to be, then no deceptions or deals are necessary.

The new story-telling

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One of the most interesting developments in the last few years is the ease — and skill — with which some newspaper journalists have taken to multi-media work. (See Michael Rosenblum’s wonderful post about “waiting for the pencil”.) Sean Smith of the Guardian is a shining example, so it’s nice to see that the Royal Television Society has given him an award for his work in Iraq. Thoroughly deserved.

Thanks to Adrian Monck for spotting the award.

Laid off? Share the pain with Twitter. (And get job offers.)

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From the Los Angeles Times…

SAN FRANCISCO — When Ryan Kuder lost his job last week, everyone knew it. That’s because he chronicled the experience of his last hours at Yahoo Inc. through a stream of electronic dispatches laced with gallows humor.

Using Twitter, a service popular in Silicon Valley that allows users to broadcast short messages to an unlimited number of people, Kuder posted periodic updates of his final, caffeine-fueled day as a senior marketing manager at the Internet company, starting with his last commute to the Sunnyvale, Calif., headquarters and ending with margaritas at Chevy’s.

“Ironic that I just got my PC repaired yesterday. Won’t be needing that anymore.”

“This is a serious downer. Trying to drown it in free lattes. Which I will miss.”

“Dear BlackBerry, What great times we had. I’ll miss you. At least until tonight when I stop on my way home and buy an iPhone. Love, Me.”

The fame game

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Heather McCartney has released a YouTube video detailing how her live has been made a living hell by media intrusion. Mariella Frostrup is not very sympathetic.

Last weekend, while the rest of the film world was occupied at the Baftas ceremony and Heather Mills McCartney was doubtless debating which court costume would best suit her, I was visited at home by a friend who’s also one of this year’s Oscar nominees.

Despite the purported dangers of the paparazzi, she took the tube, without even a pair of Prada sunglasses for protection and, after lunch and a quick briefing on the joys of the Oyster card, returned by the same mode of transport to her West End hotel. Then again, you’re more likely to find a celebrity snapper on the tail of your limo than poised at the entrance to Covent Garden station. It’s proof for those who need convincing that if you don’t turn your life into a circus, you won’t draw a crowd.

Right on! (As we ageing hippies say.)

Hate mail hell of a gap-year blogger

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The Observer carries the kind of internet scare story that delights the heart of every Daily Mail reader. But with one curious omission. The gist of the story is this:

When Max Gogarty, a 19-year-old gap-year student, landed a coveted blogging spot on which to chronicle his two-month backpacking adventure around India and Thailand, he could have never predicted how his moment of triumph would backfire so spectacularly.

But within 24 hours of his first posting on the guardian.co.uk travel pages, the teenager was swamped by a tidal wave of internet hate mail as he became a victim of the phenomenon of ‘going viral’. As the north London teenager was touching down in Mumbai, hundreds of comments – many vitriolic – were appearing not only on his blog, but on scores of message boards and social networking forums, including Facebook and high-profile gossip sites such as Holy Moly.

The astonishing reaction was provoked when surfers spotted that he had the same surname as Paul Gogarty, a travel writer who occasionally contributes to the Guardian. Readers presumed he was a privileged public school boy whose father had secured him the blog spot and whose gap-year travels were being funded by the newspaper.

The resulting ‘cyber-bullying’ has now forced Max, an occasional scriptwriter for the E4 teenage drama series Skins, to ditch his weekly blog while he and his family cope with the consequences of global internet exposure.

What’s not mentioned is that the Guardian has a policy of allowing people to post comments anonymously, which IMHO is a good way of encouraging people to behave badly, because they don’t have to take responsibility for their views. I’ve always thought that was a bad decision. This story confirms that.

Social networking peaks

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From Creative Capital…

I just got a hold of the ComScore numbers for U.S. social networking sites, and it ain’t pretty folks. (See an abridged version of the chart below this post.) After peaking in October of 2007 with 71.9 million users, MySpace, the leading social network, has seen its audience fall back to around 68.9 million unique visitors. December saw no growth over November, though visitors were up 13% from last December.

More alarming are the engagement metrics. Since December 2006, when MySpace engagement peaked at about 234 minutes spent per visitor, time spent on the site has dropped consistently throughout the year. In December, time spent per visitor saw its biggest month-to-month drop, of about 8.5%, to 179 minutes per visitor per month, down from 196 minutes in November. That equates to a 24% year-over-year drop.

But the pain is not just a MySpace problem. It seems to be an industry-wide issue. The total audience of U.S. social networks seems to be stuck at a low-to-mid-single digit growth rate, while the engagment metrics are falling for just about everyone. Time spent on Bebo.com has been sliced in half over the last four months, while Friendster’s time spent has plummeted nearly 75% in the same time period. Overall, minutes spent per site fell 5% in December 2007 compared to the year-ago period….

More in that vein here.

The Davos gabfest

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It’s that time of year again — the world’s bosses have gathered in Davos to do some schmoozing and pretend they have social consciences. Bill Gates delivered his plea for a kinder, gentler capitalism*, for example, which is bit like hoping that wild boars will learn to respect suburban flower-beds.

Needless to say, the Google boys are there — and there’s a substantial YouTube presence as a result. See, for example, the Davos question where the fat cats post their answers to the question “What one thing do you think that countries, companies and individuals must do to make the world a better place in 2008?”.

*Footnote: latest kinder, gentler capitalist results. Microsoft sales up 30%, profits up 79%.

YouTube audience surges

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From the latest survey by the Pew Research Center

# 8% of internet users said they had ever visited a video-sharing site such as YouTube. A year ago, in December 2006, 33% of internet users said they had ever visited such sites. That represents growth of more than 45% year-to-year.
# 15% of respondents said they had used a video-sharing site “yesterday” — the day before they were contacted for our survey. A year ago, 8% had visited such a site “yesterday.” Thus, on an average day, the number of users of video sites nearly doubled from the end of 2006 to the end of 2007…

Downhill all the way

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Useful piece in the current issue of the Economist about the woes of the music industry. It opens with a salutary tale:

IN 2006 EMI, the world’s fourth-biggest recorded-music company, invited some teenagers into its headquarters in London to talk to its top managers about their listening habits. At the end of the session the EMI bosses thanked them for their comments and told them to help themselves to a big pile of CDs sitting on a table. But none of the teens took any of the CDs, even though they were free. “That was the moment we realised the game was completely up,” says a person who was there.

In public, of course, music executives continued to talk a good game: recovery was just around the corner, they argued, and digital downloads would rescue the music business. But the results from 2007 confirm what EMI’s focus group showed: that the record industry’s main product, the CD, which in 2006 accounted for over 80% of total global sales, is rapidly fading away. In America, according to Nielsen SoundScan, the volume of physical albums sold dropped by 19% in 2007 from the year before—faster than anyone had expected. For the first half of 2007, sales of music on CD and other physical formats fell by 6% in Britain, by 9% in Japan, France and Spain, by 12% in Italy, 14% in Australia and 21% in Canada. (Sales were flat in Germany.) Paid digital downloads grew rapidly, but did not begin to make up for the loss of revenue from CDs. More worryingly for the industry, the growth of digital downloads appears to be slowing…