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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.

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 10.21.08: Earth to newspapers--“Face reality”

Reconstructing the American metro newspaper

On the MediaPost Online Spin blog, Tacoda founder Dave Morgan offers a prescription to save the local metropolitan, “big city” newspaper. Top of the list: “Face reality.” The newspaper industry has been irrevocably disrupted by the Internet, and to survive, companies must respond by deconstructing their business models and reassembling them into new, disruptive forms. Above all, metropolitan newspapers have the opportunity to reemerge as marketing services firms targeting the local business community--a strategy that could return the revenue levels and profits that the sector has traditionally enjoyed.

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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 21, 2008:

Where attention flows, money follows

On The Technium blog, writer and analyst Kevin Kelly summarizes the principle that has made offering a free product or service such a winning formula for Google, MySpace, iTunes, and many others. In a global market where it has become easier than ever to invent and distribute things, people cannot keep up with all the potentially useful items that exist. Usefulness by itself has become the minimum standard. To last, things must be able to capture--and hold--our attention. And from this kind of persistent attention, sooner or later, money reliably flows.

The four kinds of free

On The Long Tail blog, Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson diagrams four kinds of free business models: (1) direct cross-subsidies, where lost revenue from a free product is made up through fees from a related product; (2) third-party subsidies of free products, like advertising and sponsorship; (3) “freemiums” (or “versioning”), where some users pay for a product while most obtain it for free; and (4) the “gift economy,” where free products are exchanged for non-monetary rewards.

Avoiding ruinous compromises

Twenty-five years after the launch of the GNU free operating system, Free Software Foundation founder Richard Stallman warns that while the free software movement must continue to make necessary compromises with the commercial software sector in order to advance the movement’s goals, it must also avoid “ruinous compromises”: ideas or actions that undermine the movement’s long-term goals by prioritizing “consumer values” such as price and convenience over “citizen values” of individual freedom and community cooperation. Such compromises create the illusion of accelerating the movement, while in reality they lead it down the wrong road.

File sharing doesn’t always violate copyright, US judge says

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reports on a peer-to-peer file sharing case before US District Court in Minnesota, in which the judge ordered a new trial after reversing himself on a key ruling. The judge had instructed the jury that it was a violation of copyright law to make a music file available to others in a public folder on the Internet, but later decided that the act of making the file publicly available was not illegal by itself. In addition, the judge called on Congress to significantly rein in the size of damages allowed for illegal file sharing.

RIAA v. The People: Five years later

In September 2003, the RIAA fired the opening shot in its “tough love” campaign to deter illegal music file sharing on P2P networks--first, by suing the networks themselves, and later by suing individual users. The result? After more than 30,000 lawsuits and threats of legal action, 95 percent of all music downloads still come from illegal sources. In a report released in September 2008 to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the RIAA’s campaign, the Electronic Frontier Foundation pronounces the music industry association’s “education by lawsuit” strategy a manifest failure, and recommends that it adopt a collective licensing regime such as that in force for the public performance of music works, in order to open a simple and straightforward pathway for music consumers to come into voluntary compliance with copyright law.

The expansion of ignorance

According to The Technium’s Kevin Kelly, information is growing at a rate ten times faster than any other manufactured product--66 percent annually, compared to a 7 percent average for commodities like concrete and paper. Yet the paradox of science is that every answer breeds at least two new questions. So while knowledge is expanding, the field of inquiry is growing even faster, and the gap between what is known and unknown is widening exponentially.

Semantic web companies are, or soon will be, making money

ReadWriteWeb recaps a report published in September 2008 by entrepreneur David Provost about the state of the semantic web industry. The report surveys 17 companies in the semantic web space and provides a basic taxonomy that illustrates the range of applications for which the technology--which promises to revolutionize the Internet by making the meaning of online content understandable by computers--is being put to use. The post includes a link to the full 38pp report.

CBS testing Social Viewing Room: Watch stuff with strangers and talk during the show

Techcrunch’s title for this post says it all: CBS Labs has rolled out a new experiment it calls Social Viewing Room, which allows users to watch a streaming HD TV show together and chat about it online. Blogger Michael Arrington is skeptical about the uses of this technology for anything except live broadcasts; but that niche includes some of the most popular program categories, including sports, news, and reality shows.

ProPublica: a failure of imagination

It’s not nice to criticize a media reform effort, especially one launched with a lot of money and ambition. Media reform needs both. But we need media reform to succeed, and we definitely don’t need self-inflicted wounds from counterproductive efforts. ProPublica is well funded and ambitious, but also, unfortunately, counterproductive—and likely to be irrelevant, too.

The wrong problem and the wrong solution

paidContent and many others reported on ProPublica’s formal launch last week. It was news at a lot of different levels. Whereas most media reform projects are renegade efforts that survive only hand to mouth, ProPublica is very well funded and supported—over $30 million for three years, primarily from the Sandler Foundation, whose president, Herb Sandler, is chair of the ProPublica board. Other board members include Alberto Ibargüen, former publisher of the Miami Herald and president and CEO of the Knight Foundation; and Rebecca Rimel, president and CEO of Pew Charitable Trusts. That’s a lot of firepower, and suggests that ProPublica won’t flame out as long as the board thinks it’s getting results.

ProPublica intends to attack a perceived growing lack of deep reporting on matters of serious public interest in mainstream media, by producing original investigative reporting projects whose results it will license to media outlets at no charge. Led by Paul Steiger, former managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, the organization plans to employ close to 30 reporters who will focus on what it calls “truly important stories, stories with ‘moral force.’”

ProPublica plans to concentrate on placing those stories on an exclusive basis with traditional print and broadcast outlets, thus redressing what it sees as an imbalance between the few media organizations—primarily traditional news outlets—who devote the resources necessary to produce original investigative news, and find themselves under financial pressure to curtail these investments, versus the many—meaning the search engines, news aggregators, and bloggers—who feed parasitically off those efforts, and as a result undermine the capacity of our society to engage in deep reflection on serious public matters.

So far, so good. What’s wrong with beating back the vandal horde that is ransacking the media institutions upon which societal progress depends, leaving only a rubble of infotainment, unfounded rumor, and superficial re-reporting in its wake?

No charitable case

The problem is that this perspective on the health of the commons hardly comports with the truth about mainstream corporate media’s role in promoting the public interest. With very few exceptions—and those, few and far between—the transformative reporting of the contemporary era has come, not from mainstream corporate newsrooms, but from independent magazines and newspapers that have broken the serious news stories and raised the key moral issues that have then been re-reported by the same mainstream news outlets that ProPublica seeks to protect.

These independent outlets—ranging from The Nation and Mother Jones on the left to the National Review and The Weekly Standard on the right, with special-interest titles like Ms., E/The Environmental Magazine, The Chicago Reporter, and a bewildering array of others feathered in between—represent the substrate on which the entire modern mainstream media infrastructure has depended. And their imminent demise—make no mistake about it—threatens the future of public discourse in a far more ominous way than any newsroom layoff or budget cut that ProPublica can cite in defense of its media reform theory.

In a recent remembrance of the late William F. Buckley Jr. published in the New York Times Book Review, The Nation magazine’s former publisher, Victor Navasky, recalls how his sometime nemesis and full-time colleague framed the case for their money losing enterprises: “You don’t expect the church to make a profit, do you?” That’s a trenchant statement in support of independent, public-interest media. What’s ProPublica’s case?

In producing news and investigative reports for syndication to mainstream media, ProPublica bumps up directly against the global investigative news establishment—amply represented by the Associated Press, Reuters, and others—whose business it is to distribute news on a non-exclusive basis to mainstream and independent outlets alike. These are joined in the media marketplace by the Guardian, the BBC, the CBC, CNN, Dow Jones, The Economist, etc.... respected national reporting organizations that have expanded their audiences to truly global dimensions. Add to this the domestic public radio and broadcasting networks that are also expanding rapidly in audience share and in public support—that is, money coming directly out of the pockets of listeners and viewers. It’s hard to see in this environment anything except a healthy, dynamic, and competitive space where ProPublica represents nothing but a superfluous entrant.

ProPublica does nothing to attack the greatest problem that impedes the flow of thoughtful civic discourse in the US—the lack of resources available for investigative reporting at the local level. Here, as with independent magazines and journals, a media reform effort designed to put flooring underneath this critical part of the information ecosystem would dwarf anything ProPublica could do with its 30 reporters and essentially redundant strategy.

The price of failure

Unfortunately, the biggest problem with ProPublica is not that it will be blowing Herb Sandler’s money at clip that will undoubtedly make Bill Buckley spin in his grave. It’s the opportunity cost—the chance that ProPublica, with its unprecedented resources, could have taken—but isn’t—to revolutionize the public media space for decades to come.

Serious traditional independent media is under enormous pressure to effect a transition to the new world of the social web. As we see with corporate media outlets, this is no easy task—the audience is moving faster than the revenues, and the gap between the two threatens even the strongest corporate outlets. Independent national and local media are experiencing this gap as a yawning crack opening up beneath them, threatening to devour them whole. These organizations simply don’t have the necessary R&D resources to devote to digital transition, much less the profit margins to survive lean times during the shift. They need the practical help that ProPublica could be offering them—but won’t.

Rather than 30 journalists, why not hire 30 database experts, researchers, and programmers to create the infrastructure that independent outlets could leverage in their transition to the social web? The role models for such a transition are being born daily, and with much smaller investments than ProPublica enjoys.

Check out what the relatively small Surdna Foundation is doing with exemplary public-interest digital media projects like NetSquared, funder of Maplight, an innovative social web application that connects the dots between legislators’ voting records and the contributions they receive from corporations. That’s public interest media at its best, and a project far more meaningful, in the long view of the information landscape of the future, than anything that will come out of ProPublica’s offices. The fact that media reform’s biggest dollars will be going to Hearst, Gannett, McClatchy, and the Tribune Company—and not to the Maplights of world—is the price that we will all end up paying for ProPublica’s abject failure of imagination.

media file 6.12.08: mobile music mashup uses Android and Google Maps

Tunewiki launches location-based music network for iPhone

VentureBeat reports on one of the first new products for the "mobile social web": a location-based music network for Apple's iPhone and Google's Android mobile platform. The network taps the Google Map API to find songs other users nearby are playing.

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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 daily 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 June 12, 2008:

Is Wikinomics only for rich countries?

First Monday author Morten Rask questions whether the benefits of collaborative content creation are reaching the developing world, or if the same macroeconomic factors that separate rich countries from poor ones are operative on the social web, too.

Paul Steiger’s ProPublica Opens For (Non-Profit) Business

paidContent reports on the launch of ProPublica, a non-profit, public interest journalism venture that will produce nonpartisan investigative reports for free distribution via mainstream news outlets.

Facebook to be Britain's most used website

The Telegraph reports that Facebook is poised to assume the top spot in web site usage in Britain, surpassing Windows Live, Google, and eBay.

Key differences between web 1.0 and web 2.0

Two AT&T Labs researchers offer a taxonomy to objectively describe the web 2.0 phenomenon, and compare the features of popular web 2.0 sites, in this article published on First Monday.

media file 6.10.08: iPhone platform may spur explosion in hyperlocal media

Will 3G iPhone Help Push Geo-Based News?

MediaShift Idea Lab explores the impact of Apple's new GPS-enabled iPhone on the development of location-based online services, mobile social networking, and hyperlocal media.

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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 daily 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 June 10, 2008:

Federated Media launches analytics tools, gets new partners

VentureBeat reports that blog ad network Federated Media is launching a new web analytics platform that will permit marketers to track ad performance and reader engagement across social media sites. The platform will be extensible via an API.

Content Owners Make a Hash of Online Distribution

With digital rights management and other attempts to curtail content sharing having proven a bust, commercial content publishers have yet to come to grips with the new realities of the open media marketplace, says Internet Evolution blogger Jon Emmons.

Disney.com to Launch Family-Oriented Platform

Mediaweek reports that Disney is planning to launch a family-friendly social network this summer that allows parents to create profiles for the entire family and meet other families in similar life circumstances.

Brit Media Mammoths Mull Merger

WARC reports that United Business Media and Informa--two of Britain's largest business media companies--are in merger talks. The combined company would be worth close to $6 billion, making it one of the largest business information providers worldwide.

media file 6.4.08: Google mashup points to new model for hyperlocal journalism

Google News Layered in Google Earth

MediaShift Idea Lab reports on Google's innovative mashup of Google News with Google Earth, calling it a "milestone" and a new model for hyperlocal journalism.

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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 daily 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 June 4, 2008:

Big Daily's 'Hyperlocal' Flop

The Wall Street Journal gleefully reports on the apparent failure of The Washington Post to capitalize on its strong local following with LoudounExtra.com, its first foray into "hyperlocal" journalism.

Paid-for online news is possible, says Google

Journalism.co.uk reports that Google UK's vice president told the World Editors Forum that paid news online is a credible concept, despite what his company has done to turn it into a free commodity. "We see ourselves as part of an ecosystem," he said.

Huffington Post Raising $10mm-ish, $80mm-ish Valuation

Silicon Alley Insider reports that The Huffington Post is raising a $10 million investment round on an $80 million valuation, having previously raised $5mm on a $35mm valuation. The politics site got more than 100 million page views in a recent month.

It Isn’t Magic: Putin Opponents Vanish From TV

The New York Times reports on Russian media's implementation of the so-called "stop list"--an informal roster of Kremlin critics who are barred from appearing on TV news and talk shows. Tactics include digitally airbrushing them out of programs.

Resisting the Open Access Movement

William Kelleher comments on Internet Evolution about professional trade publishers' apparently successful efforts to stifle federal legislation promoting free, open access to scientific articles.

European Online Ad Spend Gains on U.S.

ClickZ summarizes IAB Europe's latest AdEx study, which concludes that 2007 online ad spending on the continent grew 50 percent faster than in the US. At this pace, total online ad spend in Europe will eclipse the US by 2010.

Indian Adda: The Essence of Social Networking

Internet Evolution reports on the #1 application in India for social networks like Google's Orkut: "adda," or idle gossip--a mainstay of the Indian tradition, which puts a premium on community.

media file: may 18-25, 2008

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 daily as we discover them, and once per week in digest format.

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

media file links for the week of may 18-25, 2008:

The Importance Of A Competitive Search Market

Michael Arrington of TechCrunch warns that long-term domination of the search engine market by Google would likely put the health of the entire Internet ecosystem at risk.

Electronic Arts buys Hands-On Mobile Korea

VentureBeat reports that Electronic Arts has purchased mobile gaming company Hands-On Korea for an undisclosed sum, furthering its global push into the mobile gaming market.

Online video co. Brightcove expands into Japanese market

VentureBeat reports that the online video platform company Brightcove has launched a Japanese subsidiary.

What Does Popular Culture Have to Do With Civic Media?

Henry Jenkins, the author of Convergence Culture, reflects on the differences and similarities between ideologically motivated online communities and those brought together through a shared interest in some aspect of popular culture.

Greendex: Survey of Sustainable Consumption

National Geographic announces the results of its global tracking study of sustainable consumer behavior among 14,000 individuals in 14 countries in both the developing and developed worlds. US consumers ranked last in the study.

Consumers Want Brands To Solve Climate Crisis

LOHAS Weekly reports on a Havas Media study that shows consumers expect global brands to take responsibility for solving the climate crisis, and by a large margin would rather buy from companies that are taking credible action in this area.

Flock More Than Doubles Its Funding

TechCrunch reports that Flock, the so-called "social browser" based on the Mozilla open-source platform, has raised $15 million in venture funding, bringing its total institutional investment to about $28 million.

VC investment in China increases by 46 percent

VentureBeat analyzes a Dow Jones VentureSource report on the growth in VC investment in China in Q1 2008. Growth is being led by deals in the media and advertising space.

News unfiltered: YouTube embraces citizen journalism

Ars Technica reports that Google property YouTube has launched Citizen News, a channel devoted to video content from citizen journalists from around the world.

Statistics on Google's OpenSocial platform end users and Facebook users

Results of a recent Rapleaf study that shows that Facebook and other social networks are used disproportionately by women vs. men.

The Social Media Gender Gap

Rapleaf CEO Auren Hoffman analyzes the results of a study his firm conducted that shows that Facebook and other social networks are used disproportionately by women vs. men.

Current TV: Ad Revenue Drops At Al Gore's Network; Losses Widen En Route To IPO

PaidContent reports that Current TV suffered a decline in ad revenues in Q1 2008 over the prior-year quarter, and more than doubled its operating loss.

YouTube Launches Site for India

PC World reports on Google's launch of a localized version of YouTube in India.

Sulekha merges Facebook and Craigslist in India

VentureBeat reports on a social network that reaches 6 million people of Indian descent around the globe, making it India's largest social web play.

Facebook's New Friends Abroad

BusinessWeek reports on Facebook's international expansion. The social network is foregoing a conventional localization strategy in favor of an approach that globalizes the site in multiple languages.

When Tech Innovation Has a Social Mission

John Markoff of the NY Times covers the phenomenon that < rm > calls "social enterprise 2.0": a new kind of organization that merges the social purpose of a traditional non-profit with the business model of a for-profit web enterprise.

A digital dodge for piracy

Variety reports on a speech given by News Corporation president Peter Chernin. He emphasized that media companies should be spending their time developing new business models, rather than protecting the old.

Local News Site Outside.in Gets $3 Million, New CEO

Silicon Alley Insider reports that hyperlocal news site, aka "place-based blogging site," outside.in has raised a new venture round and is launching a new set of tools and features geared toward local bloggers and publishers.

Blogs: Raking In Ad Dollars. Sort Of, Maybe, We Think

Silicon Alley Insider analyzes a recent eMarketer forecast that blog advertising will grow by 30% next year to $531 million.

New News Corp ad network to court financial sites

Reuters reports that News Corporation plans to launch an international online advertising network serving about 30 online financial publishers.

Why old media is running scared of Google

CNET quotes Piper Jaffrey analyst Gene Munster saying that Google has forced traditional media companies to realize that they must act immediately or lose relevance on the Internet.

Why Facebook Is Even Bigger than You Think

Fast Company interviews Stanford professor BJ Fogg on his theory that Facebook is ushering in a new era of "mass interpersonal persuasion," which will rewrite the rules of marketing as we currently know them.

Google's Search Share Rises To 67.9% In April

InformationWeek reports that Google earned 67.9% of the US search engine market in April 2008--an increase over both the prior month and prior year--while competitors Yahoo and Microsoft experienced declines to 20.3% and 6.3%, respectively.

AOL seeks growth in shift from mass site to niches

The AP reports that AOL is shifting its programming strategy away from a few broad, mass-reach offerings to multiple niche content sites. So far, the strategy is paying off in growth in page views and unique visitors, but not in ad dollars.

Hit Pause On The Evil Button: Google Assists In Arrest Of Indian Man

TechCrunch reports that a 22-year-old Indian professional was arrested for making a post on Google-owned Orkut that allegedly disparaged politician Sonia Gandhi. Google assisted Indian authorities in tracing the post to him.