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Media trends digest – November 2007

Internet access doubles 30 November
Internet access in Australia has nearly doubled since 2001, according to an analysis of census information released today by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS).
In 2001, just over a third (35%) of homes across Australia had internet access; in 2006, that had grown to nearly two-thirds (63%).
Nationally, two-thirds (66%) of homes in major cities have internet access, compared to under half (42%) for very remote Australia. Broadband is used by 46% of homes in major cities and 24% in very remote Australia.
The Australian Capital Territory had the highest connection rate, with three-quarters (75%) of all homes connected and over half (53%) of these on broadband connections.
Similar rates were seen in New South Wales (63% total and 42% broadband), Victoria (63% and 42%), Queensland (64% and 41%) and Western Australia (65% and 41%). The lowest connection rate was in Tasmania, where 55% were connected and 28% were broadband.
The report also found that income and education were key factors influencing people's internet access:
Households with an income of $2000 or more per week were three times more likely to have broadband compared to households on less than $600 per week;
Families with children under 15 or dependant students, were three to four times more likely to have internet access than other families;
People in low skill occupations are about a quarter less likely to have broadband;
People not in the labour force are 18% less likely to have broadband;
Unemployed people are 12% less likely to have broadband;
Indigenous households are about half as likely to have broadband compared to non-indigenous households.
ABS

Soft porn gets friends & fame
The Age: As far as unaccomplished celebrities go, Tila Tequila, the most popular person on MySpace, makes Paris Hilton look like a Nobel laureate.
Discovered in a US mall by a Playboy scout eight years ago, Tequila, whose real surname is Nguyen, sits among the new breed of do-it-yourself celebrities who shot to fame using little more than provocative photos and a flashy MySpace page.
She boasts around 2.4 million MySpace "friends" and claims she personally attends to 10,000-20,000 friend requests a day, in between posting blogs and making video diaries.
More

Bebo makes friends 26 November
Guardian: The UK's biggest social networking site yesterday announced partnerships with a string of broadcasters, including the BBC, Channel 4, Sky, ITN and CBS, in a move hailed as one of the most significant yet in marrying old and new media.
Traditional broadcasters hope that distributing and marketing their programmes to Bebo's 40 million users will help them reconnect with the so-called "lost TV generation" of 13 to 24-year-olds who make up the social networking site's core audience.
It will allow Bebo users to collect and curate clips from BBC programmes such as Doctor Who and EastEnders, behind-the-scenes MTV footage, ITN entertainment news and a host of other items within their own "Personal Video Profile", displaying them on their homepage and sharing them with friends.
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US broadband in slow lane
San Jose Mercury, via Benton: The United States invented the Internet. But it's falling behind in the global broadband race. In 2001, it was fourth in the number of broadband subscribers per capita. Now it's 15th. What's more, high-speed Internet service in countries like Japan, France and South Korea is many times faster than in the United States and noticeably cheaper. In Japan, the average connection speed is 93.7 megabits per second, or more than 10 times faster than the average speed in the United States, according to a recent study. Yet average monthly prices are lower: $34.21 compared with $53.06 here. Subscribers in Sweden pay an average of $34 a month and get speeds that are more than twice as fast. The widening broadband gap could have broad ramifications. Some say it threatens to turn the tide on Internet innovation in the United States, where a Net-savvy population traditionally has favored domestic entrepreneurs, who have come up with breakthrough companies such as Google, eBay and Facebook. Lower penetration also could slow job growth and business development.
More (via Silicon Valley.com)

Murdoch talks about political control of UK papers
Editor & Publisher, via Benton: News Corp Chairman Rupert Murdoch said he maintains editorial control over which political party his UK newspapers The Sun and News of the World support in UK general elections. But Murdoch said he takes a different approach with his other national newspapers in the UK: The Times and Sunday Times. While he often asks what these papers are doing, he said he never instructs them or interferes. Murdoch's comments came in an interview with the UK's House of Lords Communications Committee, which traveled to New York on 17 Sept as part of its inquiry into media ownership and the news. In addition to Murdoch, the committee met privately with officials from US papers such as The New York Times and TV stations such as Fox News, CNN, ABC, NBC and CBS. On Friday, the committee issued minutes of its discussions in New York.
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Murdoch moves closer to free WSJ.com free
Online Publishers Assn (USA): Slowly, but surely, News Corp honcho Rupert Murdoch is readying the world for a free Wall Street Journal site online. In public comments, he has hinted about lifting the pay wall, and his latest comments to shareholders in Australia were the strongest yet: “We are studying it and we expect to make [WSJ.com] free, and instead of having one million [subscribers], having at least 10 million to 15 million [readers] in every corner of the earth.” Current execs at Dow Jones, which won't be taken over by News Corp until later this year, were taken aback by Murdoch's sentiments.
“It is jumping the gun, people are jumping to conclusions here very quickly. We haven't even closed the deal yet,” Dow's Michael Rooney told E&P. “Mr Murdoch would like to have the largest, most robust site in business. Free is a way to look at that. But there is a lot of detail behind that. You have to work that out. You don't just flip the switch.”
Perhaps, but if Rupert wants to flip a switch, he usually gets his way. Observers quickly tried to decipher what a free WSJ.com would mean for Dow Jones. Not only would the company have to make up the US$50 million to $60 million in annual online subscriptions; it would also have to deal with a loss of income for archival services such as Factiva as well as possible erosion from print subscriptions.
“The exclusivity of Journal content provides value beyond the website,” Dow's Christine Mohan told Reuters. But an analyst calculation showed that Murdoch could make up subscription losses with a 130% increase in web traffic. Hollywood Reporter noted that NYTimes.com traffic was up 34% in the two months since the TimesSelect wall was torn down, and the Washington Post said Murdoch's move follows the opening of pay walls at the Economist, FT.com and failed subscription tries by LATimes.com, Salon and Slate.
More via Editor & Publisher

Facebook under fire for Social Ads
Online Publishers Assn (USA): Within days of announcing its new ”revolutionary” advertising scheme, Facebook was taking on scathing attacks from legal experts and advocacy groups that believe the social networking site is acting improperly.
With Social Ads, users who become ‘fans’ of brands have that fact broadcast to their friends, putting their names and profile photos next to ads from that product. Many states have laws against people's likenesses being used in ads without their permission, something to protect celebrities but unproven legally with everyday folks who are Facebook members.
One legal expert told News.com a California statute could provide $750 per violation of the law, which could add up in a class action suit. And then there's the question as to whether these types of referral ads will even work.
“I think people are sort of getting lost in the ethics and privacy of it,” social media consultant Deborah Schultz told News.com. “I question more its effe ctiveness.”
And Facebook is having to fight the privacy war on two fronts. Various users and the group MoveOn didn't like the new Beacon feature that broadcasts to your friends the purchases you make at various outside e-commerce sites. The problem is that the opt-out is difficult to find, and you have to opt out for each e-commerce site you visit.
Facebook said the information isn't shared publicly, only with a person's trusted network of friends, and that people can opt out. MoveOn's Adam Green disagreed, telling News.com: “Facebook users across the nation are outraged that the books, movies, and gifts they buy privately on other sites are being displayed publicly without permission -- and it's time for Facebook to reverse this massive privacy breach.” Facebook's own service is being used against it, as MoveOn's group on Facebook called “Facebook, Stop Invading My Privacy” quickly tallied 10,000 members by Nov 22.
More at Portfolio

Newspapers see steady gains in online ads
(USA) Once again, the big bright spot for newspaper companies is the continued steady growth of online advertising.
More (News.com)

Election video of the week 21 November
Start a political party and develop your very own scare campaign – that’s the advice from GetUp…
Link

Guidomedia pre-election notes (comment)
$60 million spent in direct campaign
Direct campaign ads by the major parties is estimated by ad industry stalwart Harold Mitchell to be in the region of $60 million. However this understates the real spend, which should include long-running trade union anti-workchoices campaigns, plus several federal government campaigns over the last year. The latter alone are estimated to be worth closer to $170 million.
An interesting side-effect, if the election proves to be conclusive, will be the potential sudden drop in ad revenue for mainstream media, which has been the beneficiary of the propaganda campaign.

Family PR and image
The Rudd-driven ‘working families’ campaign in fact has roots going back several years -- variants have been used by the Democrats in the USA and Tony Blair in the UK. The union movement locally has made this group the focus of its anti-workchoices campaign and we’ve seen the effects on government campaigning with an increasing emphasis on portrayals of politicians as part of a family.
Family First, though a minor party, is effectively leveraging  this sentiment and it can be argued is forcing the Coalition in particular to move closer to their political outlook.
A longer-term analysis of the PR campaigns on both sides of politics suggests a more sophisticated approach from the Opposition than from the Government.
The former has stayed on message more consistently, while presenting a relatively small target by minimising the differences between it and the incumbents. It has also found a more steadfast and longer-term ally in the union movement than the Government has with business groups.
Business groups have given verbal support to the Coalition, but have only backed that up  with token advertising of doubtful effectiveness.
In addition, of  the two major ad campaigns, the Opposition’s has presented as the more consistent and coherent. It has allowed the unions to use scare tactics, while it talks about more positive aspects --  an effective  two-pronged approach that provides the Opposition with a degree of separation from the ‘nasty’  side of the campaign.

Where are smart phones heading?
From PBS in the USA: Powerful cell phones with Web and multimedia capabilities - dubbed "smart phones" - are part of a new generation of mobile phones earning a loyal following. Spencer Michels reports on smart phones and how top industry contenders plan to offer the technology.
Report

Grim outlook for US media
Mediabiz via Benton: In the past few weeks, media investors have grown increasingly worried about the possibility of an economic slowdown hitting advertising spending in 2008. Next year, in theory, should be a banner year for media companies thanks to that magical “quadrennial” effect: advertising spending typically is boosted every four years by the Summer Olympics and a U.S. presidential election. But many economists — and even Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke — have said that the economy is likely to slow in the fourth quarter, and that the first half of 2008 could be sluggish due to the subprime mortgage meltdown and overall weakness in the housing market. Shares of media conglomerates CBS, Walt Disney, News Corp. and my parent company Time Warner have each tumbled about 5 percent so far this month. And Internet titans Google and Yahoo! have taken an even bigger hit. Google’s stock has tumbled 10 percent while Yahoo has experienced a 14 percent haircut. David Bank, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets, said that shares of pure-play radio and publishing stocks probably would fare worse than more diversified media companies, whose fortunes aren’t exclusively tied to advertising.
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Amazon re-kindles the electronic book 20 November
Online retailer Amazon.com is hoping to rekindle the electronic book market, and carve a place for itself in tech retailing, with a new reader called the Kindle.
The Seattle-based firm has been working on the device for three years and it claims some interesting features:

1. The screen is electronic paper, which means it is not back-lit and offers a high-res and high-contrast display;
2. It accesses new books, papers and magazines via a discreet mobile phone service, the price of which is included in the original device and the charges for new titles (no additional phone or ISP contracts);
3. Downloading a book is claimed to take a minute, regardless of where you are (presumably so long as you have network access) and you can, as with other electronic books, connect it to a PC;
4. You can subscribe to  newspapers, magazines and blogs via the device.

So far the company only offers a US-wide service and it’s yet to be announced whether the idea will be spread on an international scale.
Company founder Jeff Bezos said, "The question is, can you improve upon something as highly evolved and well-suited to its task as the book? And if so, how?
"The book lover in me often has asked the nerd in me: 'Is there a way to get the emotions and experiences I love from books, but combined with the possibilities of advanced technology?"'
"Our top design objective was for Kindle to disappear in your hands -- to get out of the way -- so you can enjoy your reading.
"We also wanted to go beyond the physical book. Kindle is wireless, so whether you're lying in bed or riding a train, you can think of a book, and have it in less than 60 seconds."
Weighing 280 grams, the device is priced at US$399. Books cost around $10 while newspapers and magazines cost anything from a few dollars to $15 per month. It has recently been made the subject of a major feature in Newsweek magazine.
Kindle product page; Newsweek feature

And...
Speaking of mobile devices and books, UK publisher Harper Collins has just opened a service which allows iPhone and iPod Touch users to browse extracts of new titles.
See this link; HC media release

Muslims demonised 18 November
The Guardian, UK: A "torrent" of negative stories has been revealed by a study of the portrayal of Muslims and Islam in the media, according to a report published yesterday.
Research into one week's news coverage showed that 91% of articles in national newspapers about Muslims were negative. The London mayor, Ken Livingstone, who commissioned the study, said the findings were a "damning indictment" of the media and urged editors and programme makers to review the way they portray Muslims.
"The overall picture presented by the media is that Islam is profoundly different from and a threat to the west," he said. "There is a scale of imbalance which no fair-minded person would think is right." Only 4% of the 352 articles studied were positive, he said.
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Al-Jazeera celebrates a year
Al-Jazeera’s English language channel has just celebrated a year in business, claiming a global ‘footprint’ of 100 million people. The channel says its next most important targets are greater market penetration in USA and India.
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Elephants drunk in Paris…or was that…?
NPR, US: Some elephants in India got drunk on a farmer's homemade beer, and then electrocuted themselves when they uprooted a utility pole. The Associated Press quoted a very concerned Paris Hilton saying, "We need to stop making alcohol available to them." When her publicist denied the quote, the news agency retracted the story.
NPR media page

Free TV online
The Guardian, UK: Youth social networking site Bebo will offer free content from major broadcasters - including the BBC - and record labels when it launches a series of media channels today.
Content will be free for Bebo's 40 million users to access, and content companies will receive 100% of revenues from in-video advertising - something that Bebo hopes will be a major incentive over similar offerings from rivals MySpace and Facebook.
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Measuring the cost/benefit raio of online writing
From Jakob Nielesen’s Alertbox: Information foraging shows how to calculate your content strategy's costs and benefits. A mixed diet that combines brief overviews and comprehensive coverage is often best.
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Plus…
I typically advocate "discount usability engineering" — that is, cheap and fast methods to immediately improve your user interface. But in some cases, it makes sense to invest more to get more.
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Picking key words for your website
From Melbourne IT: Define your industry niche or market segment more precisely. If you sell how-to books, for instance, “books” is simply too broad.  You are going to get lost amongst precisely 479 million search engine results concerning books.  Instead, you may want to try “Home Improvement How-tos,” or “Home Improvement Books” (just 59,300 rivals this time, and down drastically to 2,000 when limited to publishers or booksellers in the UK).  Obviously, Net-savvy searchers often have a specific item in mind and they want to be taken directly to it.
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An email too bizarre
Caroline Overington, a journalist working on The Australian, has been in hot water recently over some emails – one of which suggests to an independent candidate in the federal election should direct her preferences to the Liberal Party. Another seems to be flirting with someone the independent’s spouse. ABC’s Media Watch broke the story.
It said: An independent candidate in one of the most crucial, marginal seats to be decided at the election says a senior reporter from The Australian tried to persuade her to direct her preferences to the sitting Liberal member, Malcolm Turnbull. Caroline Overington of The Australian emailed the candidate saying that Malcolm Turnbull would be a loss to the parliament - denigrating the value of the ALP’s George Newhouse as a potential MP.
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Crikey also followed up the story, expressing outrage that Overington was not to be punished.
It said: The editor of The Australian, Chris Mitchell, has acknowledged that Caroline Overington was wrong to send the latest exchange of e-mails that have come to light, in which she suggests she might make a pass at Labor candidate for Wentworth, George Newhouse. But will Mitchell talk to her, or discipline her? No. Nor does he think the ultimate boss, Rupert Murdoch, was right to suggest that disciplinary action is in order.
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Miranda Devine in the SMH sees it as a storm in a teacup and argues: Perhaps four consecutive election victories by John Howard have killed the left's sense of humour. Or do Tim Palmer and Monica Attard have a problem with women?
The former executive producer and presenter of ABC TV's Media Watch, signed off the air this week, squandered the program's opportunities to do good through their spurious vendettas against female columnists whose politics they don't like - Caroline Overington, Janet Albrechtsen and me, just for instance.
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Chaser & Seven cross swords
The Australian: Seven’s Today Tonight devoted more than half of its show last night to attacking the ABC's comedy team The Chaser.
Host Anna Coren finished the segment by saying Seven was not trying to poach Today Tonight from the ABC. However, only this week a Seven producer was in contact with the crew about setting up a meeting.
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Note: This begs the question of whether media spends too much time examining media…
A Current Affair earlier this week ran a huge segment on Seven’s bingo program, which it claims is rigged.
The two stations expend a lot of resources trying to ‘nail’ each other, particularly through their current affairs (more accurately described as home shopping) shows.

Open courts for UK
The Australian: The judicial process in England and Wales is now open to a degree of public scrutiny that is unheard of in Australia.
The English media enjoys same-day access to most of the evidence, including video and audio recordings, that is presented to juries in criminal cases.
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Junk TV is child abuse -- actor
The Australian: Actor Noni Hazelhurst has launched a stinging attack on the lack of quality film and television productions in Australia.
She likened what she called a "cultural drought" to a form of child abuse.
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No news is good news
USA via Benton: In case there was any doubt that media conglomerates are thumbing their noses at the public interest, the television network CW recently rolled out a series of bubbly ads in Washington, DC trumpeting the fact that they offer _no news_ to local viewers. What the CW’s corporate owners at CBS and Time Warner forgot is that their stations were granted license to the public airwaves in exchange for broadcasting that serves the “public interest, convenience and necessity.” Usually that means news and information that helps viewers participate in civic events and engage with other important developments in their community. The CW continues to broadcast no news in certain markets without the slightest blink from the bureaucrats who are duty sworn to protect our airwaves from such abuse. It’s ironic that these ads ran at the same time the FCC held a hearing in the other Washington, during which residents of Seattle sent a resounding message to FCC Chair Kevin Martin: our democracy can't survive on a steady diet of junk media.
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Targeted ads on social networks cause debate
Online Publishers Asociation: The big social networking sites have boasted about soaring membership and traffic numbers, but will need more than simple banner ads to become booming businesses. Thus the splashy announcements from MySpace and Facebook about their moves into more targeted advertising based on profile information of users. MySpace announced an expansion of its HyperTargeting program to more categories, while also unveiling Self-Serve so small businesses and bands can buy their targeted ads easily. Facebook announced its Social Ads program that offers marketers the ability to target ads, while also allowing people to become “fans” of brands and include off-site purchases in their news feeds (a service called “Beacon” So if a Facebook user buys a book at Amazon, that purchase would be included in the news feed that their friends would see
The reaction to Facebook's announcement was mixed, as advertisers quickly jumped to set up special marketing pages and observers worried that users might flee the service over privacy and ad-inundation concerns. One problem is that these targeted ads are based on profile information that people regularly falsify -- including their age. Another is that users might also share their negative feelings about brands on Facebook. One law blogger questioned the legality of Facebook's system, and GigaOm's Om Malik called Beacon a possible “privacy hairball” because it doesn't give users enough control to opt out. Meanwhile, Google took its own shot at Facebook by announcing its OpenSocial platform for widgets that would run on MySpace, Bebo, Orkut and various other social networks -- except Facebook.
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Note: It raises the question of hwo truly owns social network site content. Facebook for example claims copyright over all material it hosts, while media companies argue the material is in the public domain.

US FTC examines privacy concerns for behavioral ads
Online Publishers Association: As the social networks unveiled their new targeted ad services, an FTC hearing on online privacy and advertising loomed in the background. FTC commissioner Jon Leibowitz was blunt in his criticism of complex privacy policies on most websites. “People should have dominion over their computers,” he said. “The current 'don't ask, don't tell' in online tracking and profiling has to end.”
Privacy groups complained about people being unaware of what marketers knew about them and how they tracked their web usage. Commissioners are hoping for more simple privacy policies and opt-in instead of opt-out tracking. Plus, consumer groups pushed for a “Do Not Track” database so people could opt out of all online tracking. IAB honcho Randall Rothenberg countered that regulation of ad targeting would stifle innovation in the industry, while other marketers thought the “Do Not Track” database was a solution in search of a problem.
But privacy concerns around online advertising and tracking users' movements online are not going away. ClickZ reported that various state attorneys general might take action to protect consumers. Plus, House Republicans have asked for a hearing into the Google-DoubleClick merger to explore possible privacy concerns of the combined online ad powerhouse. “The privacy implications of such a merger are enormous and without an in-depth examination, we and the American public will not fully understand what all those implications might be,” wrote the Republicans in a letter asking for a hearing. Google says that complaints about the merger are “unsupported by facts and the law” and says it is following accepted privacy standards. But those standards might well change if regulators and lawmakers continue to beat the drum for reform.
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Online ads to double by '11, but growth slows
Online Publishers Association: The annual advertising forecast from eMarketer contained news for optimists and pessimists. The optimists could celebrate that U.S. online advertising revenues will double by 2011, hitting $42 billion, and making up 13.3% of all media buys. Plus, out of the top 100 online advertisers, eMarketer found that 58% have lowered traditional ad buys while increasing online outlays. But pessimists could point out that eMarketer had to lower its forecast numbers due to fallout from the subprime mortgage meltdown. Plus, eMarketer does not expect to see 30%+ growth in any of the next few years, as was the case in 2004 through 2006, although 2008 will have a 28.5% increase. “To say growth is slowing down is to say it's not going to be over 30 percent in the U.S.,” eMarketer's David Hallerman told PaidContent. “In other words, online ad spend is still strong. However, for this year, we've shaved our [growth] estimates from 28.6 percent to 26.8 percent.”
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From Editor’s weblog
Newsroom design becomes crucial
As newsrooms worldwide, big and small alike, march towards integrating their print and online operations, newsroom design has become an increasingly significant consideration for editors. In three interviews for the Weblog, editors from the Daily Telegraph, RBS Group and De Volkskrant give their views on the importance of newsroom design, whether it’s more of a detail, a truly pragmatic facilitator of change, or a mirror of conceptual transformation.
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The rise of the online-only news’paper’
Last week, Finnish business daily Taloussanomat announced that it would no longer publish in print by the end of the year. In this interview with the Weblog, Mikael Pentikainen, chief executive for parent newspaper group Sanoma, affirmed that the group’s major print newspapers are here to stay, and that Taloussanomat’s fate may be linked to its specific market, but was aware of the growing possibility that print newspapers turn to online-only.
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Tabloids suffer
During the month of October the national tabloid newspaper market in London suffered with bad sales. The Daily Mirror dropped 3.74% from the month before and is close to dropping below the 1.5m circulation mark, according to ABC figures.
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Murdoch expects to make WSJ.com free
Rupert Murdoch has announced yet again that he plans to make the Wall Street Journal online free, once News Corp has finalized its takeover of Dow Jones. He announced that the move was “expected” in a meeting with shareholders in Australia. This just reiterates that the paid for model is on its way out.
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Yahoo settles Chinese journo suit
CNN via Benton: Yahoo on Tuesday settled a lawsuit with two Chinese journalists who were jailed after the company provided Chinese authorities with information about their online activities. The two journalists and a family member sued the company earlier this year after Yahoo HK, Yahoo's wholly owned subsidiary based in Hong Kong, gave Chinese authorities e-mails containing pro-democracy literature. The jailed journalists alleged in the lawsuit that jailers have tortured them and that Yahoo was responsible. Neither side disclosed terms other than to agree that Yahoo would pay the attorneys fees of the two journalists and the family member who sued.
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Pollies fail the social media test 4 November
(Opinion) There is growing argument that politicians in the current federal election are failing to grasp how to use social media such as MySpace, YouTube and the like – missing its true networking powers and using it instead as a cheap means of broadcast and/or something they feel they have to engage with.
Perhaps that’s not so outrageous in the case of YouTube, the motto of which is, “Broadcast yourself.” Nevertheless even it has an immediate response mechanism and develope threads of conversation via video.
Crikey commentator Stilgherrian recently asked, “The problem with the politicians’ use of social media? They completely miss the basic concept: it’s about conversation.
“They’re still locked into a centrally-planned one-way industrial age media model, talking at the public with a broadcast message. Political strategies are still crafted like the Soviet economy of 1948.”
That argument goes on to say that neither the John Howard or Kevin Rudd MySpace sites make proper use of the medium. However Senator Andrew Bartlett, of the Democrats, does seem to get it – which may have something to do with his years of experience as a blogger.
More significant is how effective individuals on the social networking sites have been acting as a spoiler and reality check on the far-better funded political campaigns.
It is not in any danger of challenging the sheer ‘muscle’ enjoyed by free to air TV, though you could argue its modest numbers are often balanced by far better cut-through for the message. (See our 30 October story.)
GA
Links
Howard MySpace (little info offered), Rudd MySpace (repeats ALP site), Bartlett MySpace (has personal information & tastes), Bartlett blog (regularly updated diary), Crikey

Another tech bubble?
Online Publishers Association: Facebook is worth $15 billion. MySpace is worth $6 billion. TechCrunch is worth $100 million. The numbers are astounding, even more so because they are coming out of analysts' mouths only seven years removed from the last dot-com bubble bursting so spectacularly.
The New York Times reports that Silicon Valley's math is getting fuzzy again, and Right Media's CTO says he giggled when his company sold to Yahoo for $850 million. “Internet start-ups are drawing investment based on their ability to build an audience, not bring in revenue,” the Times noted.
“The very alchemy that many say led to the inflation and bursting of the dot-com bubble.”
But Business Week's Robert Hof defends the high valuations and big buyout prices, saying they “serve a valid strategic purpose: Marketers and media companies alike fervently believe there are lucrative opportunities to get people engaged...in ways Madison Avenue could never dream of.”
Perhaps, but there are a couple fallacies with the new exuberance in web startups. One is that, just as in the '90s, there isn't enough online advertising to go around. Reuters noted that with all the major news sites, blogs, online video, and other social media sites, they can't possibly all support themselves with advertising.
“It's just not going to be possible,” said NBCU's Beth Comstock. “There are not going to be enough advertising dollars in the marketplace. No matter how clever we are, no matter what the format is.”
As for Facebook becoming the next Google by exploiting the “social graph”, the Economist begged to differ. “The future of social networking will not be one big social graph but instead myriad small communities on the Internet to replicate the millions that exist offline. No single company, therefore, can capture the social graph,” the Economist said. “Facebook, like many hot start-ups in Silicon Valley, has some fantastic features, but maybe not much more.”
NY Times; Economist; Online Publishers

But ad markets look good – Forrester
Online Publishers Association (USA): if you thought online advertising might be cooling in the near future, think again. Forrester predicts that US Net ads will grow from $18.4 billion this year to $61.3 billion by 2012, a compound annual growth rate of 27%. And particular segments of online advertising will boom even more in that time. Forrester says search advertising will triple in five years to hit $25 billion, while display ads will only double to $14 billion. Online video ads will blast off from $471 million this year to $7.1 billion by 2012, an annual growth rate of 72%. Plus, "emerging interactive channels" such as social media, mobile, games and widgets will grow at an annual rate of 59% to reach $10.6 billion by 2012. "As firms continue to make customer-centricity a higher priority, they will recognize that maintaining separate marketing teams to manage different sets of channels that all target the same customers makes no sense," said Forrester's Shar VanBoskirk. "Over the next five years, we see interactive technologies gradually infiltrating all media."
Forrester release

1 billion more mobile users
Telecomweb, via Benton: More than one billion new wireless subscribers will sign up during the next 36 months, creating "unprecedented changes" in the mobile market where there are now 2.8 billion subscribers globally, according to new predictions by Pyramid Research. The research house also predicts 87 percent of those billion new users are going to come from what it terms "emerging economies," with 71 percent coming from parts of the world with urbanization levels at less than 50 percent. The result, it says, is that by 2010, about 74 percent of all cellphone users globally will live in those emerging economies. India and China will be the largest markets in terms of growth - with India representing more new subscribers than China despite the difference in population. But 10 of the 30 fastest growing markets will be in Africa and the Middle East, and 8 are in emerging Asia.
Telecomweb

Right to publish or right to private grief?
From the MEAA: Last week the International Federation of Journalists agreed to sign a petition against a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights against the right to publish pictures and against the freedom to report information through news pictures. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg has now ruled that the right to show and publish the photograph of an attack, even when it is a political event, must receive prior authorisation from the relatives of the victim(s) to respect their "right to grief", for the picture could rekindle the grief of the family.
See Society of Editors (UK); MEAA

Who owns Facebook?
The ABC’s Media Watch recently covered an interesting tussle over copyright on the web. The case involved media lifting family pictures from the Facebook page of a deceased soldier, who was then in the news.
Media has argued that items like this on public pages at social networking sites are in the public domain, while the family may well claim it owns the pictures. Meanwhile Facebook says its standard user agreement says it in fact owns copyright to all the material it hosts.
See this link

Parents more watchful of kids’ media
CS Monitor, via Benton (USA): According to new census data released Wednesday, parents are reading more to their children and placing more restrictions on their television viewing than they did 10 years earlier. Nine percent more children are taking classes outside school, and 5 percent fewer 12- to 17-year-olds had to repeat a grade. "It appears parents are more involved with their kids than they were 10 years ago," says Jane Dye, a family demographer with the US Census Bureau who helped compile the data, which was based on the 2004 Survey of Income and Program Participation. The news may seem startling to those accustomed to headlines about kids glued to the TV, but experts say the Census data confirm a trend of more protective, involved parenting that has been going on for some time.
CS Monitor; US Census media release

Newspaper ads lack creativity
From the Sydney Morning Herald: There is widespread lament across the advertising industry that the standard of newspaper advertising has taken an irreversible dive. The annual Caxton newspaper advertising awards forum only entrenched the view.
Sydney Morning Herald story

Newspaper web users still rising
Editor & Publisher, via Benton (USA): More than 59.6 million people visited a newspaper Web site in July 2007 -- a 9% increase compared to the same period a year ago, according to new data released by the Newspaper Association of America. The organization said it was the second largest monthly audience since it began tracking online data -- from Nielsen Online (owned by E&P's parent company) -- in 2004. May 2007 claims the most newspaper monthly visitors at 60.3 million. Overall Web traffic for newspaper sites for the month of August then slowed slightly to 59.2 million people and in September tit dropped again to 58.1 million.
Editor & Publisher

Media consolidation unpopular in US
Reuters via Benton: More than half of Americans surveyed said it should be illegal for a company to own both a newspaper and a television station in the same market, a coalition of consumer and telecommunications advocacy groups said on Wednesday. The Media and Democracy Coalition released its survey the same day the Federal Communications Commission was due to hold a public meeting on media ownership. FCC Chairman Kevin Martin wants the agency to decide by December 18 on whether to ease limits on how many media outlets a company may own in one market. Longstanding FCC rules restrict cross-ownership and ban ownership of a newspaper and a TV or radio station in the same market without an FCC waiver. The survey found 57 percent of respondents favored laws against a company owning a paper and TV station in the same market. That level of support was roughly the same among the political liberals, moderates and conservatives surveyed. The survey also showed 70 percent of respondents described media consolidation as a problem.
Reuters

Getting a good domain name
From Melbourne IT: When registrations for .com domains began in 1985, a total of six names were registered that year and forty-four more the following year. Two decades later, there are now more .com domain names registered than there are words in the English language.
Back then, interest for domain names resided predominantly among large, global corporations that saw its potential, or universities that experimented with new Internet technologies.
The landscape has changed significantly. As at 24 October 2007, a staggering 74 million .com domain names were registered (or taken). Compare that to only 171 thousand words in the English language…
Full story

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