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media file 6.14.10 | The “Content Graph” and the future of media brands

The “Content Graph” and the future of media brands

On the Publishing 2.0 blog, Scott Karp introduces the concept of the Content Graph--like the Social Graph, a map of relationships that defines one’s “brand strength” relative to the other parties mapped on the graph. Just as on a Social Graph, one is measured by the number and quality of one’s friendships, on a Content Graph, a media brand is measured by the number and quality of its distribution relationships with other media brands on the graph. With Aol and Yahoo both jockeying for leadership in original content, the Content Graph could become an increasingly important metaphor for media brands looking for an opening in a newly promising digital content market. The big dollars in advertising, which are still locked up in traditional media, will start to flow to digital media brands that can demonstrate the distribution reach currently associated with search and social networks, combined with the strong brand equity that consumers still invest in traditional media.

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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 14, 2010:

How a digital-first strategy saved The Atlantic

The Folio site reports on 153-year-old The Atlantic magazine’s remarkable turnaround from a money-losing, declining traditional media enterprise to a growing, profitable digital brand. President Justin Smith cited five keys to its reinvention: creating a clear, compelling brand promise, which catalyzed organizational discipline around a set of specific goals; rallying around a digital-first product strategy, which unlocked resources that were otherwise tied up in the traditional business; launching a marketing services operation to drive digital revenues and differentiate the brand from low-margin ad networks; growing live events as a new profit center; and relentlessly focusing on hiring and retaining top talent. As a result of the overhaul, over $2 million in costs were driven out of the operation, while the organization is on track to sustainable profitability.

The ten keys to successful open innovation culture

The Innovation Tools blog summarizes the 10 essential elements of a successful open innovation culture, as described in a new book by Stefan Lindegaard, the leader of the LinkedIn Open Innovation Discussion Group. Among the key qualities cited: having people with the “soft skills” to effectively manage relationships with customers and partners; being willing to strike a balance between internal and external R&D; accepting the fact that open innovation creates intellectual property issues that the organization must work through internally before engaging with outside entities; and understanding that open innovation requires open communications with both staff and partners. The list grew out of a discussion among group members on the LinkedIn site.

The four types of organizational complexity

While corporate executives readily admit that complexity in the business environment makes it difficult to attain their strategic goals, they tend to think of the problem in terms of institutional complexity: the web of forces within the market that drive and disrupt business performance. Their employees, meanwhile, are likely to to think of the problem in terms of individual complexity: the internal norms and processes that make it hard for them to achieve their goals. McKinsey Quarterly examines the four types of organizational complexity: complexity intrinsic to the business or sector; complexity designed into one’s products or business model; complexity imposed by law, regulators, and NGOs; and unnecessary complexity that arises from misalignment between business goals and processes. Once they understand the kind of complexity they face, executives should eliminate any that doesn’t add value; and channel what’s left to staff with the professional skills to effectively manage it.

Closing the gap between vision and action in corporate sustainability

Has sustainability crossed the chasm from PR to strategy within US corporations? According to a recent Deloitte survey of 48 corporate executives, leaders are interested and involved in sustainability, and see a clear alignment with overall business strategy. But there remains a gap between their vision and the way that sustainability is enabled within their organizations. While many have broadly adopted the “triple bottom line” framework--pursuing performance in the economic, social, and environmental spheres--in practice, most are currently investing in environmental initiatives alone. For those companies taking an integrated approach to sustainability, four key success factors correlate to increased business value: aligning sustainability strategy with business strategy; integrating sustainability across the value chain; structuring non-traditional collaborations and extending existing collaborations; and establishing cross-disciplinary governance to drive performance.

What today’s CEOs can learn from history about socially responsible business

Although the concept of “triple bottom line” business is commonly considered an innovation of the 21st century, former AT&T CEO Leo Hindery, Jr. writes on Bloomberg Businessweek that its origins go back to the World War II era, when executives almost universally embraced the responsibility to balance the diverse interests of all stakeholders--shareholders, employees, partners, customers, and the nation as a whole. This model broke down in the 1980s, and in its place emerged the view that driving shareholder value was the only responsibility of the chief executive. As recent history amply demonstrates, it’s time for a corrective to this mistaken notion, but the business culture of the 1980s is now so fully entrenched in the boardroom that only government can provide the needed incentive for widespread behavioral change. A new tax and regulatory regime is needed to break the spell of “profits above all” and reintroduce the core concept of civic responsibility to the executive suite.

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 11.16.09 | Why all great digital firms will build or buy an ad network

Why all great digital firms will build or buy an ad network

On the Advertising Age site, ad network exec Todd Sacerdoti confidently forecasts the future for his profession. Just as all major digital firms have either built or bought some form of email, communications, or social networking technology to unify their customer base, so too will they build or buy an ad network to unify the commercial marketplace for these customers.

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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 November 16,2009:

Why “lean” is the future of innovation

Can innovation initiatives succeed in business environments that stress efficiency and effectiveness? Sure, write the editors of Knowledge@Wharton, because lean processes force innovators to size up opportunities quickly, and move on if there’s no clear path to success. Companies typically waste a lot of time and money on product development because standards and processes for accelerating the best ideas and killing marginal ones are often implicit or nonexistent. Lean innovation works because it subjects new ideas to feasibility and marketplace tests much earlier in the development cycle than is typical for more white-coat development efforts, with the result that the greenlighted innovation already has an existing following among staff and customers.

Why innovation efforts usually fail

On the Forbes site, growth strategist Peter Hartung explains why corporate innovation initiatives have such a dismal success rate. Easy, Hartung says: Innovation is an inherently inefficient, messy, and disruptive process; whereas most corporate innovation efforts strive for the efficient and effective use of capital to leverage and preserve existing revenue streams. Such wishful thinking leads to a predictable result: Not only does the innovation effort fail, but at the end of the process the organization often finds itself on a downward spiral, with no new growth opportunities in sight to offset declines in its core business.

Why innovation is the engine of green business

Innosight’s Strategy & Innovation site documents a discussion between Innosight partner Mark Johnson and sustainability consultants Andrew Shapiro and Lewis Perkins on how innovation is jump-starting and sustaining the green economy.

Will “augmented reality” change how we know our world?

On the Harvard Business site, management consultant John Sviokla argues that while “augmented reality”--the novel technique of layering digital content on top of ordinary reality--holds the potential to spark the next revolution in business creativity, further accelerating the digital transformation of traditional industries such as media, advertising, health care, and consumer services--it also has the power to ultimately reframe our relationship with such basic concepts as information, knowledge, learning, and memory.

media file 9.28.09 | Collaboration 2.0: A new paradigm for sustainability

Collaboration 2.0: A new paradigm for sustainability

On the Harvard Business site, global outsourcing executive Vineet Nayar says that smart companies everywhere are recognizing the need to reinvent and realign their relationships with stakeholders along democratic lines, creating in the process a new ethic of shared vision, risk, and reward that will render obsolete traditional attitudes about competition. Nayar labels this new paradigm “collaboration 2.0.”

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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 September 28, 2009:

Four rules for constructive competition

Observing the current political scramble to avoid real innovation in health care, Havas Media Lab’s Umair Haque offers four rules he thinks will increasingly define the competitive environment of the 21st century. These include: Innovation over protectionism; “thick value” over “thin value”; awesome products and services over clever business models; and ethics over expedience as the foundation for strategy. Haque writes in his Edge Economy blog on the Harvard Business site.

Introducing “web squared”

On the Forbes site, web 2.0 promoter Tim O’Reilly reaches into the future and names it “web squared”: a just-dawning era in which the building blocks of web 2.0--open platforms and social networks--are married to new technologies that provide a sense of place and belonging to users currently overwhelmed by the Internet’s undifferentiated abundance. Among these new advancements: GPS, which turns every smart phone into a place-based directory of friends and potential experiences; and the “smart grid,” which makes it possible to update one’s current and emerging interests in real time. The combination of these advancements, plus others, will geometrically increase the importance of digital technology in our daily pursuit of a fulfilling life.

Inside P&G’s new values-based strategy

On the Harvard Business site, professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter tears the wrapper off a new strategy that consumer giant Procter & Gamble has introduced to jump-start global growth. Taking a cue from the socially responsible business movement, P&G has adopted a “purpose-inspired growth strategy” with the goal of “touching and improving more consumers’ lives in more parts of the world... more completely.” As company insiders see it, the new strategy is not a departure from previous practice but an advancement of it, reflecting P&G’s 171-year effort to deliver superior customer value. What has changed? The company’s definition of “value.”

Change your mind, and the rest will follow

On Seth Godin’s blog, the marketing guru describes what comes first. Is it great execution, as so many business authorities have declaimed? No. It’s proper attitude, without which tactics and execution mean nothing. After attitude come approach, goals, and strategy. Then tactics and execution. Get the order of values right; you can make a lot of mistakes along the way and still come out smelling sweet. Start from the bottom of the hierarchy, and sooner or later your work will stink.

Emerging markets will surge post-crisis

Emerging markets will emerge from the global economic crisis in a position to put huge growth numbers on the board, according to a report by McKinsey Global Institute. While developed economies will still be recovering from the drop in global equities to almost 50 percent of their 2008 value, and the reduction in cross-border capital flows by almost 80 percent during the same period, emerging economies will have largely avoided the root causes of these problems, and as a result will be well positioned to gain share as markets rebound.

What both sides are missing in the pay wall debate

On MediaShift Idea Lab, Knight News Challenge winner Martin Moore pokes holes in the ideological barriers erected by both sides in the increasingly divisive “pay wall” debate. On one side, corporate media executives want to turn back the clock to a time when media profitability was driven by scarcity and control; on the other side, technologists, media activists, bloggers, and others seek to position information abundance as an emergent human right. Entrenched in their positions, neither side seems capable of recognizing the opportunities that exist to add value to both the customer experience and the public good by extending the findability and usefulness of content through enhanced metadata, mashups, and other readily deployable techniques.

More proof that the Long Tail exists... only in Chris Anderson’s mind

Knowledge@Wharton gives yet another drubbing to Wired editor Chris Anderson’s much trumpeted, but still completely unproven, Long Tail theory. For a $1 million prize offered by online movie distributor Netflix, Wharton researchers analyzed whether or not Netflix sales data--which Anderson used to justify the theory in his 2004 book--could actually support the claim that the virtually unlimited choice made possible via digital commerce would lead consumers to select niche products in greater numbers than they do in the offline world. Not true for Netflix, said the Wharton wonks. Instead, the Pareto Principle--aka, the 80/20 rule--applied with a vengeance to the Netflix data. The problem with Anderson’s theory, said the researchers, is that products get into the Long Tail for good reasons... nobody’s ever heard of them, and nobody cares. Recommendation engines can only reflect tastes, not fundamentally change them.

media file 10.15.08: Pixar’s secret to sustainable success

How Pixar fosters collective creativity

On the Harvard Business site, Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull describes the creative process the organization has used to produce its sustained track record of technological and artistic breakthroughs. Core to this process is the insight that sustainable innovation is not a product of individual genius, but instead an outgrowth of an organizational culture that supports great people and encourages them to support one another so the whole is far greater than the sum of the parts. Says Catmull, this kind of environment catalyzes a vibrant community where talented people are loyal to one another and their collective work, everyone feels that they are part of something extraordinary, and their passion and accomplishments make the community a magnet for other talented people.

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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 15, 2008:

Shaping strategy in a world of constant disruption

On the Harvard Business site, Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation executives John Hagel, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison discuss “shaping strategies”: broad-based initiatives that mobilize the global ecosystem of a market and transform it, via a positive, galvanizing message that promises benefits to all who participate. Today’s global digital infrastructure makes shaping strategies both more necessary and powerful than ever before, by constantly shifting the terms of competition and creating openings for innovators to disrupt markets through relatively small actions and investments that produce disproportionately large impact. Shaping strategies uniquely provide the incentives and capability for large-scale distributed innovation involving partners, competitors, suppliers, and customers.

Cognition announces “world’s largest semantic map”

ReadWriteWeb reports that natural language search firm Cognition Technologies has released what it claims to be the world’s largest semantic map of the English language. More than double the size of previous computational dictionaries, the technology could permit the development both of new semantic web applications for vertical markets and of broad-based semantic search engines to compete against Google in consumer search.

Is Facebook’s redesign killing Facebook apps?

Silicon Alley Reporter posts data from independent Facebook developers that suggests that the Q3 2008 Facebook redesign is driving a drop in usage of third-party plug-in applications.

Facebook redesign isn’t a disaster for every developer: Some are seeing traffic boom

Silicon Alley Reporter continues its analysis of the Q3 2008 Facebook redesign with news that some Facebook developers are experiencing significant post-redesign spikes in traffic. A unifying theme: Winning applications give users a reason to interact with them regularly.

Jimmy Wales: Make your brands authentic

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales confides to Adweek his secrets to the top-ranked site’s success, and the way those insights are being transferred to Wikia, Wales’ for-profit, ad-driven wiki and search project. At the top of his list: “People love building things with their friends and people they share an interest with.”

Innovations in storytelling: Using comics for journalism

On MediaShift Idea Lab, journalist Chris O’Brien explores the recent trend of using the comic book art form to convey news and business information. Examples include a project by USA Today and its Pop Candy blog; a story about the 2008 financial crisis published in Toronto’s The Globe and Mail newspaper; and Google’s introduction of its Chrome browser. These projects demonstrate that innovation in communications does not simply involve the embrace of digital tools, but must also include the embrace of new communications strategies and techniques.

2007 media revenues slow to lowest rate since 2001

Revenue growth among the top 100 media companies slowed to 4.6 percent in 2007, the lowest annual rate since 2001, reports Advertising Age. Total revenues among these firms reached over $299 billion. Digital media led all sectors with a 10.8 percent increase; newspapers turned in the worst performance, with a 6.8 percent decline. Cable and satellite providers earned 31.0 percent share of revenues, making this the largest sector measured. Cable networks came in second, with 13.4 percent share.

media file 9.15.08: Innovation under pressure

Three Steps to Innovating in Struggling Industries

In his Innovation Insights blog on the Harvard Business site, consultant Scott Anthony recommends three tactics that struggling and financially strapped newspaper organizations can adopt to regain their market footing through innovation: (1) lower the cost of innovation by using rapid prototyping and iterative development methodologies; (2) creatively tap outside resources to provide the intellectual capital needed to innovate, including striking deals with third-party content and service providers; and (3) ruthlessly prune your innovation portfolio, cutting stalled ideas quickly in order to invest in those that possess greater momentum.

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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 15, 2008:

Media Moguls Do the Splits

When new media brands like Google and Facebook are busy going global, what are traditional media brands like Time Warner, Liberty Media, IAC Interactive, and EW Scripps doing? Disintegrating. BusinessWeek reports on the trend among media giants to improve shareholder value by downsizing--spinning off low-growth, noncore businesses in order to purchase new high-growth, digital assets.

Lipstick on a Pig? AP Asks More Publishers To Re-Sell Its Content

paidContent reports on the Associated Press’ efforts to rehabilitate its widely mocked blogger license policy. In partnership with digital rights clearinghouse iCopyright, the news wire is offering its member organizations the ability to sell the rights to its content directly from their web sites, and also to offer the content for free for commercial re-use along with embedded advertising. The AP will split revenues evenly with participating members.

Politico.com To Newspapers: Let Us Be Your DC Bureau

Silicon Alley Insider forecasts the cause of the Associated Press’ future death: strangulation by targeted blog networks like that launched by Politico.com. The political junkie site has created a network of 30-odd news and analysis sites with which it will share both content and advertising. If replicated widely, this approach will make subscription content services such as the AP obsolete.

Politico.com Launches Ad, Content Network

Mediaweek reports that breakout political junkie site Politico.com has launched an online advertising and content distribution network of nearly 40 news and political analysis sites, extending its advertising reach beyond its 2.4 million users and creating a new channel for its DC-based content among traditional news organizations that are cutting back on their Beltway presence due to financial pressures.

Is Hollywood getting ready to wage a digital content war against Apple?

VentureBeat analyzes the recent announcement of the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, a consortium of content and technology providers that has been set up to promote an alternative digital rights management standard to compete with Apple’s.

Rip, mix, burn, ... sue ... repeat

The music industry’s methods to discourage illegal copying are widely considered draconian--but are they effective? According to researcher Peter Allen, deterrence-based strategies such as those practiced by the RIAA have been proven largely ineffective in producing widespread, long-term behavioral change in other contexts. More effective, writes Allen in an article for First Monday, are procedural approaches in which stakeholders agree that the authority in question has the moral right to press a claim; its motives are shown to be benevolent and trustworthy; and the process used to reach resolution is considered fair.

Could An Old Idea Save Online Radio And The Music Industry?

On Silicon Alley Insider, streaming media executive Doug Perlson advances a proposition that could save streaming-music sites like Pandora: paid inclusion, otherwise known as “payola” to the music industry. Despite its sleazy reputation and the legal ban on its practice in terrestrial radio since the 1950s, paid inclusion is legal for satellite and online radio, which are required to pay “performance royalties” from which terrestrial radio is exempt. Moreover, paid inclusion has proven ethically acceptable and effective in other venues on the Internet, most notably in search. Just as paid search has proven a boon to the e-commerce industry, paid song inclusion could prove a popular new channel for music discovery.

media file 9.10.08: The semantic web, for real

Introducing Ubiquity

On the Mozilla Labs blog, Head of User Experience Aza Raskin discusses Ubiquity, a natural-language interface for Mozilla browsers that gives users the ability to create their own mashups on the fly, tapping existing open APIs that developers currently employ to create site-hosted mashups. Raskin says that the experiment promises to usher in a new era of “user-centric” browsing, in which users tell the browser what tasks they want to accomplish, rather than what information on the web they want to find.

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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 10, 2008:

Six Degrees of Separation Is Now Three

TechCrunch reports on a study by French mobile firm O2 that updates the “six degrees of separation” meme. According to the study, the average person is now connected to others by three degrees of separation or less, via social networks of work, family, and friendship. When the “six degrees” concept was first promulgated in 1967, mobile phones, online social networks, and other fixtures of contemporary wired society had not yet been invented.

How the Music Business Spent the Summer Killing Itself

To read Advertising Age’s Simon Dumenco describe it, the music industry has formed yet another circular firing squad, placing streaming-music sites Muxtape and Pandora in the center. By securing rules forcing streaming-media sites to pay steep “performance royalties,” the music industry threatens to snuff out a venue that encourages users to sample a broad range of songs and artists, beyond the single-download mentality of iTunes or the narrow, hit-driven repertoire of most terrestrial radio (which is not saddled with performance royalties). The problem, Dumenco writes, is that music industry executives are delusional--clinging to a past that is gone and not likely to return, instead of exploring paths to future revenue.

Magazine Web Traffic Continues To Rise

Unique visitors to magazine web sites rose 8.5 percent in the second quarter of 2008 versus the same period in 2007, according to a report released by the Magazine Publishers Association and summarized on MediaPost. Based on site traffic data compiled by Nielsen Online on 314 consumer magazine brands, the report states that total magazine web site reach rose to 69.7 million people or 42.2 percent of the US Internet population, compared with 64.2 million people or 40.5 percent penetration in 2007. Average time per visitor rose 12 percent to roughly 29 minutes per month, said the report. This figure is meaningful because publishers typically report magazine usage figures in terms of minutes or hours spent reading per issue.

Participatory Philanthropy, Part I

In the first of a two-part post for MediaShift Idea Lab, Global Voices’ David Sasaki examines how so-called “crowdsourcing” strategies can give philanthropic organizations the ability to effectively vet a much broader range of charitable opportunities than is feasible through traditional project selection processes.

Participatory Philanthropy, Part II

In the second of a two-part post for MediaShift Idea Lab, Global Voices’ David Sasaki examines how so-called “crowdsourcing” strategies can give philanthropic organizations the ability to more effectively measure the social impact of their charitable activities than is possible through traditional project evaluation approaches. Crowdsourcing can supplement or potentially replace professional, consultant-driven evaluation methods with approaches that give the target beneficiary communities themselves the tools to judge the success of development and philanthropic projects.

CIA, FBI push ‘Facebook for spies’

CNN reports on A-Space, a Facebook-like, classified social network created for analysts within the 16 US intelligence agencies. The site was designed to ensure that crucial bits of intelligence data or analysis produced by individual analysts don’t get lost in the sea of information collected the various agencies. Analysts can highlight a specific piece of intelligence and share it with their “friends”--analysts working for the other agencies.

media file 9.9.08: Platforms are markets

What Apple Knows That Facebook Doesn’t

What does Apple know that Facebook doesn’t? That platforms are markets. In his Edge Economy blog on the Harvard Business site, strategist Umair Haque offers this insight: Whereas Facebook is treating its platform in the traditional way, as a mechanism to be manipulated and controlled, Apple is treating the iPhone platform in a next-gen way, as a market to be made. The result: Facebook is turning something good (the open web) into something evil (a closed system), along the way destroying the value of its platform. Meanwhile, Apple is turning something evil (the notoriously closed mobile industry) into something good (a radically open market), along the way altering the very nature of competition in the mobile space and driving up the value of its platform.

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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 9, 2008:

Designing the Future of Business

On BusinessWeek, design guru Marty Neumeier ponders the notion that design is fast replacing strategy as the key driver of business innovation and growth. In a social and economic environment characterized by relentless and disruptive change, design--with its inherent emphasis on creativity, improvisation, and innovation--confers the ability to explore and invent the widest possible range of solutions to the problems facing organizations, markets, and the world.

How to Win by Studying Culture

On the Harvard Business blog Real-World Innovation, Scott Berkun interviews anthropologist Grant McCracken about why marketers should add cultural studies to their professional toolkits. Culture supplies the infrastructure for thought and feeling in a group, including how consumers relate to a company and its products and services, and how companies relate to their market and stakeholders. Organizations that understand culture gain an extraordinary advantage, McCracken says.

Google Launches Cloud Operating System “Chrome” And Calls It A “Browser”

Silicon Alley Insider’s Henry Blodgett writes that Google’s strategy for its new Chrome web browser eerily resembles the game plan Microsoft used to gain dominance in the web browser and desktop application software markets: Tie its new “cloud”-based software lineup (such as Google Docs and Google Gears) to its search engine and browser, and leverage that tight linkage into top market share.

Google’s Strategy In Japan: Avoid Yahoo And Take Over The Mobile Web First

How is Google coping with Yahoo’s overwhelmingly dominant position in the Japanese search engine and portal market, one of the world’s most lucrative? According to TechCrunch, the company is effectively backburnering its desktop efforts in favor of pursuing a number one position in mobile search, via (1) strategic partnerships with Japan’s top mobile carriers, (2) promoting mobile Gmail to subvert Yahoo Mail’s grip on the email space, (3) amping up its Android open mobile software business development activity, and (4) pouring development dollars into turning Japan’s relatively closed mobile environment into a testbed for breakthrough mobile applications that could eventually go global.

Why Yahoo Japan Is Worth Nearly As Much As Yahoo

TechCrunch analyzes why Yahoo Japan’s market valuation is nearly as great as that of the parent US company, and asks if its strategy is an anomaly or a model for going global on the web. Key strategy elements: (1) partner with a local powerhouse; (2) get super-localized; and (3) extend your reach through your entire value chain, via mergers, acquisitions, and strategic partnerships.

A Muckraker’s Slaying Leaves Russian Province Fearing Crackdown

The Wall Street Journal reports on the death of Magomed Yevloyev, the publisher of an independent online news site in the Russian province of Ingushetia. The site accused provincial authorities with using hit squads to silence political opposition. Yevloyev was arrested at the Ingushetia aiport and shot in the head shortly thereafter. Authorities say the death was an accident.

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 8.13.08: Don’t calculate; innovate!

None of Your Business Model

On MediaShift Idea Lab, MIT Media Lab researcher Christopher Csikszentmihalyi posits that the current rush to find a business model to support professional journalism may be missing the point. The most disruptive trend in the recent history of information technology--the free software movement--succeeded largely in the absence of anything resembling a conventional business model. Instead, it began by reformulating the basic notion of how software development is done, and the business models that subsequently emerged inherited the transformative efficiencies that came with free software’s movement-based approach. Media could evolve in much the same way.

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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 13, 2008:

The innovation imperative

KMWorld interviews innovation guru John Kao on the moral imperative to introduce the concept of innovation to all aspects of the US economy. Why? A focus on innovation puts all stakeholders on an equal footing--and thereby advances a more just, equitable, competitive, and prosperous society.

Managing Corporate Social Networks

Here’s the news you don’t want to hear, courtesy of Harvard Business Review: When left unmanaged, corporate social networks inhibit innovation, rather than enable it. Company executives shouldn’t expect informal, interdivisional networks to spontaneously produce innovations; they must consciously manage the structure of these networks to promote innovation at all its various stages.

Japan’s super-advanced mobile web: Too unique to serve as a global blueprint?

Why has the mobile web taken off like wildfire in Japan, while in the US it’s still mostly found in Powerpoint presentations? Techcrunch identifies the key conditions that have resulted in 70 percent penetration in that market: Superior mobile web technology; great content; and a tech-savvy, demanding consumer base.

CondeNet Positions to Better Compete With Ad Networks

Feeling the hot breath of niche advertising networks like Glam Media close behind it, Conde Nast is unifying its CondeNet web holdings under a set of content-specific buys, according to Advertising Age.

Censorship: Yahoo, Microsoft, Google Agree on Code of Conduct

In the aftermath of civil liberties scandals that have tarnished their reputations in the global marketplace, ReadWriteWeb reports that the world’s three largest Internet content providers have agreed on a global code of conduct that focuses on three core components: adherence to the principles of freedom of expression and privacy; a set of common implementation guidelines; and a shared governance and accountability framework.

Green business: Scandinavia’s lateral thinkers

The Guardian dissects Sweden’s knockout success in creating a green economy with a double-digit growth rate. The keys: a consensus society that includes all stakeholders; and a commitment to profit.