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media file 6.7.10 | An environmental movement for the mind

An environmental movement for the mind

On the Adbusters site, environmentalist Bill McKibben turns his attention to an ecological danger that threatens to overtake carbon dioxide pollution or toxic oil spills as the number one environmental problem we face. In fact, it is the source of these problems: the poisoning of our culture by hyper commercialism and the extreme self-absorption it breeds. While throughout the centuries our mental environment has been polluted by church, state, and other institutions, this century presents the first moment in which almost the entirety of our personal and collective experience is mediated for us via for-profit media enterprises. The global consumer monoculture that is arising from this new form of mental pollution is threatening to place basic collective values--such as concern for the impact of one’s actions upon others--on the endangered ideas list.

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports for business and non-profit executives, media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the emergence of social innovation as a driving force reshaping the process of creating value in global markets. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious.

more media file links for June 7, 2010:

How systems thinking can save your company

Corporate executives invariably give lip service to “systems thinking”--the management philosophy, originating in the early 20th century, that views the company as a complex social system and living community. But when push comes to shove, they fall back on even earlier thinking, from the 18th and 19th centuries--the company as a machine, which can be manipulated by optimizing discrete functions without awareness of how a change in one function might ripple through the whole. Such thinking locks in static solutions that can themselves become a source of destabilization, as the company confronts a complex and fast-changing business environment. Systems thinking, authentically applied, can invest a company with the insight to to adapt to unexpected developments, self-correct via trial-and-error learning and experimentation, and gain a detailed, intimate understanding of how the parts of the business fit together as a whole. Management guru Andrea Gabor writes for strategy+business.

The surprise leadership skill that CEOs value most

In a recent survey of 1500 CEOs conducted by the IBM Institute for Business Value, creativity was selected as the single most important leadership attribute required for the successful enterprise of the future--not operational effectiveness, discipline, or any other of the characteristics selected in previous studies. Why the surprising shift in attitude? Global complexity, the CEOs said, has changed everything. The interplay of global forces like climate change with international finance, political, and regulatory systems has added a new layer of complexity to such critical issues as supply chain management and even workforce competitiveness. To see this complexity as an opportunity and not a paralyzing threat, today’s new leaders need the capacity, which creativity supplies, to break with existing organizational attitudes and assumptions and instead embrace business models fueled by an ethic of continuous innovation. IBM’s Frank Kern writes for Bloomberg Businessweek.

Scale the impact, not the overhead

Social enterprises have historically focused their social-impact strategies on replication: extending their successful programs into new service areas in a linear fashion, thereby achieving increases in social impact that are tied directly to increases in available resources. Such approaches impose hard limitations on an organization’s ability to achieve its social impact potential, and in many cases simply prove unsustainable. There’s another way, writes Bridgespan Group managing partner Jeffrey Bradach for the Stanford Social Innovation Review. Social enterprises can look to the for-profit sector for scaling strategies that multiply social impact with minimal increases in resources and overhead. Among these strategies: extend program reach via digital networks; build networks of partner organizations; develop talent; and generate demand for new ideas via marketing.

B2B spending on social media set to explode

While business-to-business firms have been late to the party in social media marketing, that’s getting set to change, according to a new report by eMarketer. The reasons are straightforward: B2B marketing is typically much more information-intensive than consumer product marketing, and so therefore it lends itself perfectly to the long-form tools of social media: blogs, podcasts, webinars, online learning communities, etc. Spending is expected to quintuple in the next five years, according to Forrester Research numbers cited in the eMarketer report.

The new Yahoo starting to look like the new AOL

With its $100 million purchase of content aggregator Associated Content, Yahoo has taken a sharp turn in the direction of AOL, which recently underwent a wrenching transformation that turned it from an ailing Internet service provider into a leading digital content company. Similarly, with the Associated Content acquisition, Yahoo is staging itself to move from being an online portal primarily serving other people’s content to becoming the dominant producer of original content for the web. Already, Yahoo serves almost three times the page views of AOL, and 200 times the page views of The New York Times. Business Insider reports.

media file 7.6.09 | Rethinking global innovation

Rethinking global innovation

On the Harvard Business site, innovation specialist Scott Anthony argues that success in emerging markets doesn’t depend on coming up with dumbed-down versions of products and services that have made it in more developed markets. Instead, the challenge is to come up with complete products that fit the wallets of individuals in these new, exciting market spaces. “Companies need to create satisfying meals that customers in emerging markets consider delectable.” Case in point: India’s Tata Group, which has fundamentally reinvented the concept of the budget automobile.

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports for business and non-profit executives, media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the emergence of social innovation as a driving force reshaping the process of creating value in global markets. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious.

more media file links for July 6, 2009:

Want to be an innovator? Think outside your (cultural) box

According to this study produced by Singapore Management University, the road to breakthrough innovation lies in experiencing truly foreign ideas--stuff you just won’t run across at the Starbucks on Page Mill Road. At its root, creativity derives from the collision of seemingly irrelevant concepts with one’s accepted world view. Creativity flourishes in the presence of foreign, and even outlandish ideas. The more one experiences such encounters, the better one is able to integrate them into an entirely novel and productive world view. And from that new world view, innovation follows.

Want to get creative? Get lost

People who live abroad are more creative; and the more time they spend away from home, the more creative they become. That’s according to a study published on Knowledge@INSEAD. Tourism doesn’t count; personal transformation is an immersive process, spurred in particular by adaptation to foreign languages and cultures.

“Living brands” for real life

On Creativity Online, Pearlfisher creative director Sophie Maxwell discusses the emergence of “living brands” as a major corrective to the concept of “lifestyle branding,” which promotes a consumer aesthetic built around the idealized lifestyle of a celebrity designer or personality, such as Ralph Lauren or Martha Stewart. Living brands tap into the growing, global consumer impulse to integrate influences drawn from personal life experience into an aesthetic that reflects one’s individual values and priorities, versus a carefully cultivated image that exists only on the advertising page.

Think global, go local

Advertising Age reports on an emerging vision for the global advertising agency: Open one office in every major time zone, and service clients everywhere from there. This represents a major shift from the empire-building game plan of firms like Havas, which have been gobbling up small shops around the globe in an effort to build an always-on network. The thought leaders in this movement are tossing a few surprises into the mix, including picking out-of-the-way spots to set up shop. Think Belarus vs. Beijing.

ESPN bets that sports fanatics will pay for it

BusinessWeek reports on a bold gamble by sports powerhouse ESPN to bring all its online assets under the ESPN Insider paid site umbrella. Starting in June 2009, users will have to cough up $7 per month or $40 per year to access ESPN’s brand of extreme sports-fanatic content. Under its former, less restrictive rules, ESPN Insider already racked up 350,000 paying customers, say company representatives.

ASCAP to cell phone users: Pay me

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports that ASCAP, the music performance rights organization, has filed a brief in a lawsuit against AT&T arguing that consumers who play musical ringtones in public are violating the copyrights covering the songs on which the ringtones are based. According the brief, playing the ringtone in public constitutes a “public performance” of the work--a theory the EFF derides as legal nonsense. The post includes a link to the filed brief.

Life is brutish, nasty, and short (and it’s okay to admit it)

On the Harvard Business site, scholar Ruth McGrath explores the seemingly fruitless exercise of creating “sustainable competitive advantage.” The problem is that there is actually no such thing; In the current digital environment, sustainability is a mirage. Contemporary competition is a game of letting go and moving on... getting out of declining businesses and refocusing the organization on new opportunities as they emerge.

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< richmedium > | social innovation in the global marketplace explores the business, cultural, and technological forces that are reshaping the process of creating value in global markets, and giving rise to a new strategic framework for designing and scaling media and marketing organizations, nonprofits, and social enterprises.

media file 3.9.09 | The coming end of old media

The end of tangible media is clearly in sight

On his Micro Persuasions blog, marketing guru Steve Rubel predicts that by 2014, almost all forms of tangible media--including newspapers, magazines, books, DVDs, boxed software and video games--will either be in sharp decline or completely extinct. For proof, Rubel asks, “When was the last time you bought a CD? Exactly.” With green-aware millennials set to become the dominant demographic in the US by 2010, Rubel says that the US is fast becoming a society that consumes media entirely in digital format--and the global media market is only one or two steps behind.

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports for business and non-profit executives, media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious.

more media file links for March 9, 2009:

Old media isn’t completely deaf: The Guardian offers full-text RSS feeds

Mashable reports on The Guardian UK’s decision to make the full text of its articles available to users via RSS. While conventionally thought to be a bad business move that leaves advertising dollars on the table, with this gambit The Guardian is banking on the fact that the growing global audience of RSS users vastly prefers to get full vs. partial feeds in their browsers. “The Guardian instantly gains an advantage on every other newspaper in the world,” Mashable states.

Newspapers pursue a content sharing consortium

Editor & Publisher reports on discussions among Northeast-based metro and regional newspapers to share content with each other, sidestepping their contractual arrangements with the Associated Press. Beyond their frustration with the financial strictures imposed by the AP, publishers expressed that they were motivated by a desire to access higher quality content from non-competitive sources.

Blueprint for the Next Newsroom

On MediaShift Idea Lab, 2007 Knight News Challenge winner Chris O’Brien reports on the Next Newsroom project’s proposal to design and build the ideal newsroom of the future. The proposal calls for a fully integrated multimedia news environment built on the principles of community, innovation, collaboration, transparency, and embracing all platforms. The report includes a link to the proposal, which is available via a public wiki.

Nonprofit news web sites rise as successors to traditional newspapers

The New York Times reports on a new breed of online journalism sites that is striving to fill the void left by the decline of traditional print newspapers. Offering a brand of serious, original reporting by professional journalists, their news coverage and investigative reporting stand out in an online news landscape dominated by opinion, gossip, and citizen journalism posted by unpaid amateurs. And to make ends meet, financially they mimic public broadcasting, not newspapers. They are organized as nonprofit corporations supported by foundations, donors, and audience contributions.

Murdoch to “cynics”: Newspapers will survive

On the Editor & Publisher site, media magnate Rupert Murdoch slams doomsayers who are predicting that the Internet will kill off newspapers. These “misguided cynics” fail to grasp that the online world is potentially a huge new market of information-hungry consumers, The Wall Street Journal owner says. Among these misguided cynics: journalists “who are too busy writing their own obituary to be excited by the opportunity.” To capitalize on online opportunities, Murdoch said the WSJ was planning to offer three tiers of content online: free news; a subscriber-level service; and a third premium service of reader-customizable “high-end financial news and analysis.”

Africans and their mobiles, part 1: Numbers and usage patterns

In the first of a two-part series, ReadWriteWeb summarizes the key statistics that make Africa an intriguing forerunner of an emerging global, mobile, digital marketplace. Left behind in the broadband build-out that developing countries experienced in the last decade, Africa has jumped ahead to a high-speed mobile digital environment bereft of walled gardens, proprietary service packages, and contractual restrictions. One result: Africa is home to the largest mobile payment network in the world.

Africans and their mobiles, part 2: Using mobile phones for social good

In this second of a two-part series on mobile technology usage on the African continent, ReadWriteWeb reports on how financial scarcity has spawned a wave of digitally based social innovation. Because most mobile phone users on the continent choose fixed-cost, prepaid, month-to-month plans versus variable-cost, postpaid, long-term contracts, users pay close attention to minutes used. In response, mobile providers offer “Please Call Me” (PCM) service that permits mobile phone users to send free text messages to friends, inviting them to call back. In South Africa, 30 million PCM messages are sent every day, in a country with a total population of 47 million. Jumping on this trend, social service agencies are embracing PCM for health care, political mobilization, and other cause-related purposes.

media file 12.1.08 | Digital entrepreneurs should “work on stuff that matters”

Tech guru Tim O’Reilly to next generation: Get serious

The LA Times profiles digital pioneer Tim O’Reilly and his critique of the current crop of digital enterprises. Today’s digital entrepreneurs have cocooned in a “reality bubble” insulated from poverty, disease, global warming, and other problems that are gripping the planet, he argues. They should follow the model of some of the world’s most successful technology companies, including Google and Microsoft, which sprang from their founders’ efforts to “work on stuff that matters.”

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports that shed light on the intersection between open media and global tribes, two phenomena that together are giving birth to a new kind of business: "social enterprise 2.0."

Hosted on Delicious, this repository is meant to be a resource for media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious.

more media file links for December 1, 2008:

The bottom billion: A difficult market or a source of innovation?

On the Harvard Business site, Forrester VP Navi Radjou discusses how leading global firms--Microsoft, most notably among them--are treating the world’s most underdeveloped markets as breakthrough business opportunities rather than as occasions to demonstrate corporate social responsibility.

Media zone to open in Abu Dhabi

The Abu Dhabi newspaper The National reports that the government has launched a new media innovation zone in partnership with the BBC, CNN, Reuters, and a number of other leading global media brands. The zone is scheduled to launch in 2009.

National Geographic teams with Abu Dhabi to make movies

The Washington Post reports that the Abu Dhabi government has struck a $100 million deal with the National Geographic Society to create a revolving fund to develop and produce 10 to 15 films over a five-year period. According to Tim Kelly, president of the National Geographic’s global media division, the goal of the pact is to “put money on the screen,” funneling funds to filmmakers all over the world.

NBC relaunches local TV sites as web destinations

MediaPost reports on NBC’s plan to transform its local TV station web sites into broader online communities offering news, information, entertainment, and social media tools. Its new, “Locals Only” sites will feature content from print and online publications, bloggers, and NBC’s local TV stations. The initiative rolls out with revamped sites for Chicago, Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco.

Mainstream news outlets start linking to other sites

ONTD! The New York Times reports that mainstream media outlets have recently ramped up the number of links they post to content on other sites. They even have a new name for it: “link journalism.” The idea is to produce a new generation of online news media, supported by local, paid product/service directories.

Five web 2.0 businesses for a down economy

Mashable looks at a seriously disrupted, cash starved digital market and asks, “What new opportunities exist here”? Keywords: Coworking spaces, bootstrapping, collaborative tools, idea marketplaces, workforce marketplaces.

Open source is not a business model

ReadWriteWeb reports on a study by The 451 Group showing that most open source vendors make ends meet via proprietary software and services. In this study of 114 vendors, open source is more of a business tactic than a business model.

media file 10.22.08 | "Social innovation": doing business with the “bottom billion”

Social innovation: Creating products for those at the bottom of the pyramid

INSEAD Knowledge reprises its executive roundtable on the challenges global corporations face in designing and executing “social innovation” strategies--business initiatives targeting the four billion or so people living on less than one dollar per day in developing countries. More than price, executives reported that access to highly segmented, low income markets has proven to be the greatest barrier to product distribution and sales. Partnership with government agencies and nonprofit organizations is key to overcoming this problem, executives said. Another insight: Philanthropic models, in which products or services are donated to needy communities, turn out to be far less successful in delivering sustained social impact than market-based models, in which corporations set up locally run businesses.

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports that shed light on the intersection between open media and global tribes, two phenomena that together are giving birth to a new kind of business: "social enterprise 2.0."

Hosted on Delicious, this repository is meant to be a resource for media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global communications and business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious. We publish media file links as we discover them.

Please suggest links to include in the database, and please also send your comments on how to make this resource more useful for you.

more media file links for October 22, 2008:

Strong partnership key to success in social innovation

INSEAD Knowledge explores the reasons why global corporations find it so difficult to successfully execute “social innovation” strategies targeting the “bottom of the pyramid”: the four billion people living on less than one dollar per day. The primary reason: Global corporations have become “disembedded” from local economies, especially poor ones, and therefore they have insufficient knowledge of the specialized needs of these market segments. Another reason: Global corporations may harbor expectations about short-term profitability that run counter to the substantial time and effort required to launch and scale projects that deliver mutual benefit to both the corporation and the poor. Corporations can improve their chances through strong collaboration with governments, NGOs, and social entrepreneurs.

Social media in Africa, part I: The market

ReadWriteWeb posts the first in a three-part series on the growth of social media in Africa. The continent is the fastest growing mobile market in the world, with 280 million subscribers and a 30.4 percent penetration rate. The social media sector is currently dominated by independent and nonprofit media operations.

Social media in Africa, part II: Mobile innovations

ReadWriteWeb continues its three-part series on the growth of social media in Africa with a review of how the continent’s technical infrastructure is determining the shape of digital innovation. Due to a history of unstable governance and civil unrest in the 20th century, the continent largely bypassed the era of community infrastructure building that characterized most of Western society during that period. As a result, there is no entrenched land-based communications establishment; the vast majority of Africans tap into the global communications grid via mobile phone and satellite. This situation has spawned a rush to fill satellite demand, plus an explosion in innovative mobile applications such as micropayments, mobile news, and GPS-based theft-deterrent systems for automobiles.

Social media in Africa, part III: Democracy

ReadWriteWeb concludes its three-part series on the growth of social media in Africa with a brief survey of web and mobile applications that are undermining the grip of totalitarian regimes on the flow of information within their societies. The most exciting aspect of these innovative applications is their source: local social entrepreneurs, not foreign aid groups, governments, or corporations. For the continent, this explosion in indigenous social media offers the opportunity to start fresh: new ideas, and a billion people to use them.

Mobile subscribers increase worldwide

ClickZ summarizes a report by the International Telecommunications Union on the worldwide explosion in mobile communications technology usage. By the end of 2008, subscriptions to mobile service providers will top 4 billion, for a global market penetration rate of 61 percent. Subscriptions have been growing at an average of 24 percent annually since 2000.

Meredith expands reach of magazines overseas

The Des Moines Register reports on the expansion of Meredith Corporation’s magazine business into developing countries. Publisher of women’s titles such as Better Homes and Gardens, Parents, and Family Circle, Meredith licenses its content to over 25 partners in 40 countries, with most new deals closing in the developing world. According to the World Bank, more than 56 percent of the global middle class resides in developing countries; by 2030, that number will rise to 93 percent. Meredith officials believe they are properly positioned to help those upwardly mobile populations satisfy curiosity about Western life.

HipChicas.com targets tween latinas with eco-friendly virtual world

MediaPost profiles HipChicas.com, a virtual world targeting socially conscious pre-teen and teenage Hispanic-American girls. Says the site’s founder, Lazaro Fuentes: “It’s as if somewhere along the line, someone decided that being hip meant that girls had to dress or act inappropriately, or had to fit into a specific mold, and that their only interests are picking hair colors or shopping for clothes. They are far more than that. These are kids that want to save the world, be in a band, and start a blog all in one day.”

media file 10.6.08: Philips reinvents itself as a design-driven social enterprise

Philips: Philanthropy by design

Businessweek reports on Amsterdam-based Royal Philips Electronics’ efforts to transform itself from from a high-volume electronics maker into a design-led health, lifestyle, and technology company. Its core strategy: “social innovation”--developing culturally relevant solutions to critical social and environmental problems in emerging markets, in partnership with local nongovernmental organizations that can help facilitate their adoption. Among its first efforts in this space: A clean indoor wood-burning stove that reduces smoke inhalation and is easier to maintain than its traditional predecessor.

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports that shed light on the intersection between open media and global tribes, two phenomena that together are giving birth to a new kind of business: "social enterprise 2.0."

Hosted on Delicious, this repository is meant to be a resource for media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global communications and business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious. We publish media file links as we discover them.

Please suggest links to include in the database, and please also send your comments on how to make this resource more useful for you.

more media file links for October 6, 2008:

The real value of intangibles

On the strategy+business site, business guru Denise Caruso questions why the contemporary corporation’s greatest source of value--its intellectual property, software investments, staff and managerial expertise, market research, advertising, business processes, organizational structures, and the like--show up on its books, not as real assets, but as potential liabilities and risk factors. The solution to this problem, Caruso writes, is to revise FASB rules to reflect the fact that intangible assets now account for up to 90 percent of a 21st century corporation’s market worth.

The faith-based corporation

Google employees joke that the search giant is a “faith-based initiative,” but they mean it. Google is at the head of a trend called “organizational sacralization,” described in a new research paper on the topic reviewed on the Knowledge@W.P. Carey site. The term refers to the adoption of social-purpose business strategies that galvanize an organization’s stakeholders around the idea that the enterprise is working for a greater good. These strategies can confer significant competitive advantage, the paper asserts, but they also run the risk of serious backlash if stakeholders determine that the organization has committed “sacrilege” by violating its own espoused ideals.

Want to be the next Google? Create enduring values

VentureBeat columnist Bernard Moon compares Google’s founding principles to those of Sony, launched almost fifty years earlier. According to Moon, both companies grounded themselves in a set of core social values that, through strong leadership, translated into tangible behavior and results.

Seventh Generation launches open media marketing campaign

ClickZ reports that green home products marketer Seventh Generation has launched an open media marketing campaign designed to reach parents concerned about product safety and the environment. The campaign is built around a microsite that provides information about Seventh Generation product ingredients and offers users a downloadable desktop and mobile widget that they can employ while shopping to look up health and environmental impact information about ingredients found commonly on consumer product labels. Third parties can add content to the widget’s database.

Agenda for a green recovery

The Center for American Progress announces a report with the Political Economy Research Institute, an economic think tank, entitled “Green Recovery.” In it, the authors advocate a $100 billion, two-year investment program in green technologies, generating 2 million private-sector jobs.

Money to grow on

What is an “investment”? For private foundations and nonprofit social enterprises, that question can get tricky. On Stanford Social Innovation Review, Bridgespan Group partner William Foster says that the nonprofit sector could benefit by adopting the for-profit sector’s attitude toward outside money--whatever its source--viewing it as “growth capital” that strengthens the enterprise’s capacity to sustainably increase impact.

Understanding social entrepreneurs

On the Skoll Foundation’s Social Edge site, author Paul Light posts several excerpts from his new book, “The Search for Social Entrepreneurship,” and related research. Light asks: Do social entrepreneurs really think differently from other high achievers? Are their ideas always radical? Can they create opportunities for change where none exist? Do their organizations have to be new?

media file 9.2.08: Defining “social enterprise 2.0”

Enterprise 2.0: The Nature of the Firm

ReadWriteWeb says that the social web is destined to fundamentally restructure the way business is done--with consequences deep and wide for any for-profit or non-profit enterprise. A next generation of enterprises has emerged that is focusing on two main objectives: how to organize global scarcity into new, socially responsible markets; and how to organize business innovations into accessible solutions to today’s global social problems.

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports that shed light on the intersection between open media and global tribes, two phenomena that together are giving birth to a new kind of business: "social enterprise 2.0."

Hosted on Delicious, this repository is meant to be a resource for media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global communications and business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious. We publish media file links as we discover them.

Please suggest links to include in the database, and please also send your comments on how to make this resource more useful for you.

more media file links for September 2, 2008:

Building the Web 2.0 Enterprise: McKinsey Global Survey Results

The McKinsey Quarterly reports on its second annual executive survey on the use of web 2.0 technologies within the enterprise. While only 21 percent of executives polled were satisfied with their web 2.0 investments, respondents who did report high satisfaction stated that their organizations were leveraging these investments to change management practices, flatten organizational structures, involve customers in product development, and tap the external expertise of suppliers and partners.

Investor Advocates Creating Issue-Specific Networks

In a quest for greater effectiveness, the corporate social responsibility movement is starting to adopt the tools and strategies of the social web, says CSRwire. Investors, activists, trade associations, and NGOs are banding together into issue-specific social networks that share research, strategies, and best practices openly with each other and invite comment from all stakeholders. This “Open SRI” model is expected to lead to new online advocacy resources involving mashups of previously proprietary data sets.

Google ally T-Mobile looks poised to compete with Apple’s App Store

VentureBeat says that cellular phone carrier T-Mobile is adopting an open software model for its next generation mobile web phones. According to the post, this move will spur a new wave of VC investment in the mobile social web.

Cut your legal fees using Y Combinator’s funding documents

Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator has adopted an “open source” strategy of placing its library of standard deal documents into the public domain, writes VentureBeat. The firm believes that this step will increase the number of fundable startups overall, and will attract the best startups to itself.

Uh-oh, Where Did Those Newspaper Web Ads Go?

Although newspaper sites are expected to post double-digit advertising growth overall in 2008, some major publishers are experiencing online revenue declines for the first time, a worrying trend for an industry that is in transition from print from web. What separates winners from losers? According to Advertising Age, the strongest organizations are furthest along in an building online advertiser base independent from print, whereas the weakest organizations still rely heavily on upselling print customers to the web.

Yet Another Cool Digital Newspaper Product: The Wall Street Journal, For Free, On Your BlackBerry

Silicon Alley Insider enthuses over the new Wall Street Journal Mobile Reader for the BlackBerry device, suggesting that innovative applications like this, arriving even without a revenue model, represent the kind of thinking that could eventually put the newspaper industry back on track.

Social Networks Get Down to Business

Business-to-business ad spending on online social networks is starting to heat up, according to eMarketer. The market research firm announced a new report forecasting that b2b ad spending will rise from $15 million in 2007 to $210 million in 2012. According to the report, the audience for business social networks is exploding, including broad-based professional sites like LinkedIn, but also vertical sites geared toward IT professionals, lawyers, and other professional groups, as well as horizontal consumer sites like Facebook, which is experiencing big growth in usage by business executives.

What’s the Future of Brand Journalism? Collision Content

For companies focused on the social web, “brand journalism” (journalism-like content created by for-profit and non-profit enterprises) poses some special risks. Advertising Age offers a guide to risk mitigation in an environment where brand is decidedly not in control.

media file 8.18.08: Don’t blame Google—newspaper wounds are self-inflicted

The Newspaper Doomsayers Still Can Be Proved Wrong

Advertising Age’s Jonah Bloom questions the widespread assumption that the decline of US newspapers is an inevitable by-product of the rise of the Internet. More people are reading newspaper content than ever before; newspapers around the world are thriving; and online newspaper challengers like The Huffington Post and Politico are putting up big audience and revenue numbers. The core problem is that newspaper execs are still timid and unimaginative when it comes to digital transition, and as a result still have the bulk of their resources tied up in non-performing assets: staff and equipment that don’t directly contribute to creating great content, which is what it takes to be a hit on the Net.

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports that shed light on the intersection between open media and global tribes, two phenomena that together are giving birth to a new kind of business: "social enterprise 2.0."

Hosted on Delicious, this repository is meant to be a resource for media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global communications and business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on Delicious. We publish media file links as we discover them.

Please suggest links to include in the database, and please also send your comments on how to make this resource more useful for you.

more media file links for August 18, 2008:

Is Google a Media Company?

Hello? It took Wikipedia knockoff Knol to do it, but finally some of the media industry’s brightest minds are waking up to the fact that Google is a competitor, says The New York Times.

US Online Ad Revenue To Grow 20 Percent in 2008

MediaPost reports on a forecast from Bernstein Research predicting 2008 online advertising revenue growth of 20 percent in the US and 22 percent internationally. Despite US recession fears, the forecaster says that 2009 US online ad revenue will grow between 17 and 20 percent. Growth is being led by the financial services sector.

Facebook: No. 1 Globally

BusinessWeek examines the rise of the global social networking leader, Facebook. Nearly 63 percent of Facebook’s 132 million users reside outside of the US. The site has been translated into almost 90 languages.

Facebook Is Not Only The World’s Largest Social Network, It is Also The Fastest Growing

TechCrunch analyzes June 2008 comScore numbers showing that Facebook is now not only the largest global online social network, with 132 million unique users, but also the fastest growing, with 153 percent annual growth overall, and an astounding 1055 percent growth in Latin America. Growth is being driven by Facebook’s strategy of translating its global site into multiple languages.

For ad agencies, the Asian prize is India

The International Herald Tribune tags India as the place to be if you are into the media and entertainment businesses. According to PriceWaterhouseCoopers, growth in media spending, including advertising, is expected to reach 19 percent per year through 2012.

ReelChanges Aims to “Audience-Fund” Documentaries

On MediaShift Idea Lab, media strategist JD Lasica discusses the launch of ReelChanges, a nonprofit media venture created to fund independent documentary film productions through individual donations solicited via the organization’s web site.

The 3 Loops of Designing for Audience

On his dsp blog, entrepreneur and analyst Gregor Hochmuth explores the dynamic that is driving the stickiness of “lifestreaming” sites like Twitter and Friendfeed: their closed-loop design that creates a sense of being seen and heard--what Hochmuth calls “a sense of audience”--among those who post and consume content on these services.

Blogging Is Not A Crime

Or is it? Bloggers are getting tossed in the pokey at levels that are that are still the envy of more conventional evil doers. According to TechCrunch, 35 bloggers were confined in 2007, primarily in countries such as Egypt, China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran.

media file 7.29.08: NYT adopts open media strategy en route to global market

Leading in Turbulent Times

Advertising Age reports on how the New York Times web site is re-inventing itself as a web 2.0, open-media news environment, as part of a strategy to compete on a global scale with the Wall Street Journal and other leading news brands.

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media file is a repository of links to articles and research reports that shed light on the intersection between open media and global tribes, two phenomena that together are giving birth to a new kind of business: "social enterprise 2.0."

Hosted on del.icio.us, this repository is meant to be a resource for media professionals, marketers, and others interested in the impact of open media and social networks on global communications and business culture. You can search the media file database from this blog or directly on del.icio.us. We publish media file links as we discover them.

Please suggest links to include in the database, and please also send your comments on how to make this resource more useful for you.

more media file links for July 29, 2008:

Announcing the Open Web Foundation

The Open Web Foundation announces its launch as an independent non-profit dedicated to the development and protection of open, non-proprietary specifications for web technologies.

MySpace Aims to Win Developers' Hearts With OpenID and User Data Caching

ReadWriteWeb reports that social network MySpace has announced it will adopt the OpenID identity management platform, allowing sites that support the standard to tap users' MySpace profile data.

Women-focused media site Glam launches developer network

VentureBeat reports that Glam Media has launched a program to distribute open-source widgets that carry content and advertising from the Glam network.

Beyond the API: Why Companies Should Have a Presence on All Major Platforms

ReadWriteWeb discusses the trend among Internet firms to publish APIs that allow third-party developers to extend their services onto new platforms, and notes that this is no substitute for proprietary extensions that preserve a uniform brand experience.

The Changing Newsroom

The Project for Excellence in Journalism has issued a report on US newspapers. Despite the fact that more people than ever are reading content produced by newspapers, revenues are in a free fall, and professionals are unsure of what the future holds.

Why Newspapers Shouldn't Allow Comments

The blog Gawker says that online newspapers should face up to the fact that most user-generated content detracts from their core value. They should stick to what they do best--producing news for the blogosphere, among others, to consume.

Reforming a Mean World: Hero Reports

MediaShift Idea Lab profiles Hero Reports, a civic media project by an MIT Media Lab student that combines user-submitted reports of "everyday heroicism" with mapping tools that depict where in a city good acts are occurring.

Google Buys Russian Contextual Ad Firm From Rambler For $140 Million

paidContent reports that Google announced the purchase of Russian online advertising network Begun from parent company Rambler Media, owner of the Rambler.ru portal. Separately, they announced a search and ad deal between Google and the Rambler site.