Beyond Frequency

Act, React or Interact?

I had the great pleasure today to meet and have lunch with an amazingly talented group of people here in Philadelphia around the topic of ‘Missioneurship’.  While the details of the definition and community objectives will be worked out in time, the core value system is to combine the mission-oriented objectives of the ‘non-profit’ world with the business sustainability practices of the ‘for-profit’ world, especially for new ventures, groups, organizations and initiatives.

While this lunch was just the beginning, a core theme came out for me…action.  Around the table we all had varying degrees of experience with, or within, the non-profit or for-profit sectors.  But the common thread was that we all were people who wanted to drive forward, to act.

That led me to ponder the role of action and its counterparts, ‘reaction’ and ‘interaction’.  When is the right time for each and what are the benefits of each at those given times? 

I fully admit I do not have a clear answer, but I do believe the question is an important one for any person who must both work with and rely on people to move a program, initiative or organization forward.  For me, the question forms another cog in the thought process for my own activities.

Action

-          Pro: It is certainly good to move forward; to have an idea and put it into the ‘market’ for scrutiny, praise so that it can add to the positive forces of the world. 

-          Con: If the action is bourne out of a vacuum or without thought to its direct or indirect effects on others, it can be shortsighted and the immediate benefit may be outweighed by long-term costs.

Reaction

-          Pro:  Your actions are certainly in context, that is they are not bourne out of thin air and have a direct impact on something that is in the market or zeitgeist already.

-          Con:  You risk the loss of individuality essential to ensure the idea, the action, is one that is not simply a restatement of another’s thought but truly a new, complementary or revolutionary concept of your own.

Interaction

-          Pro:  By absorbing the thoughts, beliefs, ideas and counterpoints that exist, you certainly create a well-rounded process to move forward.

-          Con:  Sometimes too much thought can lead to inertia and nothing gets done…there is no ‘action’.

All three points of the world of ‘action’ have importance, I believe, in all decisions.  I guess it is a matter of what is the right mix for any given decision.

GCECS Follow Up And Social Network List

Innovation Philadelphia deserves a note of congratulations for a successful Global Creative Economy Convergence Summit event today at the Convention Center.  The session that I was fortunate enough to lead, "SaaS – It Takes A Village To Raise A Venture"  was filled with a great, inquisitive audience, which made or a dynamic, interactive workshop.

It was a pleasure.

In response to one of the questions from the audience to me about social networks that our platform supports, the links below give a few lists of them. Because we are able to integrate any social networks under a single sign on environment through a personal homepage and dashboard, any of those listed below can work.

As we discussed in the session, our goal is to give the most power and flexibility to our clients.  We provide the value-added tools like semantic search, business intelligence, widget builders and personal homepages to tie everything together, but the selection of the tools can be with you; just as you can choose the apps you want on the iPhone.

Please let me know if you have any questions or need additional information.  It is my pleasure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

http://traffikd.com/social-media-websites/

Futurity & The Growing Importance Of Niche

Last week the Mercury News reported that because of concern that journalismf's economic problems are reducing Americans' understanding of science, medicine and other research, 35 of the nation's top universities announced that they will supply their own news accounts of their discoveries directly to top news sites on the Internet.

The universities have formed their own non-profit wire service called Futurity to provide articles to popular Web sites such as Yahoo News and Google News, along with MySpace and Twitter.

The schools saw the reduction or elimination of science and technology staff at larger organizations like CNN, Mercury News, Boston Globe and others so they realized that the only group that would ensure their work reached the public was them.  With that in mind, I think their is another lesson here for both 'for-profit' and 'non-profit' media, information & content providers.

Not everyone cares about everything.

The power and necessity of targeted, niche delivery, or narrowcasting, is not a new one but it is quickly becoming the rule rather than the exception to viable media business models.  Futurity came into being because the broadcast based organizations could not find an audience of enough size to support the operations. 

That is not surprising.

In our 'pull-based' world, those who are interested in a topic can find it much more efficiently than a non-specialized source can provide it.  There is a reason that Triton bought Ando, that Search dominates advertising growth and that Price Waterhouse Cooper projects a 10% shift in spending from non-digital to digital media that can support "more targeted and tailored models that will differ widely within and across segments and geographies.

With the NAB conference in Philadelphia this week, I am excited to catch up with a lot of people and talk about the growth of niche.  We, as consumers, are very demanding and increasingly device and platform agnostic as long as we can get to the information or entertainment content that is most important to us.

Broadcasters have a tremendous opportunity to leverage a large audience and break it down by behavior, location and content and eliminate the barriers between platforms to please both the consumers and advertisers. 

The New York Times and the universities in Futurity have learned that lesson and are passing it on.  

Braveheart Inspiration - All Media Is Social Media...

It was with that in mind that I reflected on Brian Rich's piece in Forbes, "Traditional Media's Revenge". 

Mr. Rich believes that Web 2.0 companies are  "even weaker than traditional media", but I think he did not address the most important point.

All media is social and the next critical inflection point for media is not traditional companies adopting Web 2.0 concepts and methods or battling them for turf.  It is providing a means to eliminate the barriers between media platforms, which will let traditional media leverage their audience to unleash the social power it already holds.

Traditional media has always been social, just with a time lag. That is a point that is often lost in the ongoing and accelerating debate, discussion, merging of and between "traditional" media and "interactive" media (digital & mobile). 

Before Facebook, Twitter and blogs, the water cooler, telephone and lunch debates represented our social interactions around content.  The core differences between these tools and our Web 2.0 tools of today are 'time' and scale.  They have merely made our thoughts and opinions immediate and extended their reach.

As a consumer, I do not care about platforms; I care about my content, information and communication.  If there is a video, product or place that interests me, I should be able to acquire it as easily through SMS as my Bebo profile...and they should be connected. 

Difficult? - 'Yes'; Impossible? - 'Not at all'

As William Wallace may say to all media companies (my apologies to the purists for the quote paraphrase):

Why is that impossible?   You're so concerned with squabbling for the scraps from the table that you've missed your God given right to something better. There is a difference between us. You think the people online exist to provide you with position. I think your position exists to provide those people with FREEDOM. And I go to make sure that they have it.

The capabilities exist now to make these connections, we need only look at the picture through the eyes of the consumer.  We must.

Happy Time To Ponder

I just spent the last 2 weeks in Mexico to get married to an absolutely wonderful and magnificent woman.  During those 2 weeks I enjoyed time with my friends and family, did not work and had time to think and ponder the news of the day, both general and radio/media/tech industry-specific.

A strong part of our relationship is the fact that we constantly challenge each other, making sure that we are always moving forward in our personal and professional lives.  I am sure many relationships are the same.

It is with that constant search for growth and improvement in my mind that I gasped out loud at the announcement that Nielsen would be launching a once/year diary service for radio.  Now Nielsen is a pioneer in the world of audience measurement to be sure, but this service, in my opinion, is exactly the OPPOSITE of what the radio industry needs for 2 main reasons:

1. Lack of Timeliness - At Mediaguide we believe in immediate information for advertisers and have learned that the demand for fast information turnaround has increased, not decreased.  To serve both the brand and direct response advertisers well in this competitive advertising environment, we must all provide as close to real-time analytics as possible to give an accurate view of the world and, more importantly, an accurate measurement of the ROI.

2. Lack of Interactive Relevance - A snapshot of audience once per year, or even once per quarter for that matter, does not give the brand or content owner any insight into how their message moved the listener and consumer to action.  The primary objective of business intelligence in this new era of fragmented media must be the actions of the consumers.  To be blunt, there is limited value to the advertiser in knowing how many people MAY be listening; but there is tremendous value in knowing and measuring who RESPONDED.

The combination of traditional media to inform and digital/mobile applications to respond and measure should be the focus of all of us that touch the radio industry.  While Nielsen is a tremendous company I agree with Mark Ramsey and fail to see how this service moves the industry forward.