Beyond Frequency

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/

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.

Radio & The IPOD Nano Tightrope

In his blog today, Fred Jacobs talked about The Denuo Group and the observation its CEO Rishad Tobaccowala that:

"the challenge is that today's marketing (and in radio's case, our ongoing, fluid content) are in real time, largely because of interactive tools like Facebook and Twitter.  As he noted, "Only the schizophrenic will thrive: You must have two [business] models.  One is smaller and faster, and more risk-prone, and one regular model."

With the Apple inclusion of FM radio in the new Ipod Nano, the stations, groups, personalities and management should play close attention to those words.  While the NAB and RAB should be happy about the inclusion, they should also be vary wary and ensure there is a nimble, consumer-centric model to accompany their traditional broadcast mindset.  Both the consumers and advertisers will demand it.

Everyone should be wary that under the consumer scrutiny that comes with Ipod visibility, the fact that radio currently programs TO rather than WITH its audience will not hold up.  The NAB and RAB should be diligent in pushing their broadcaster members to embrace an open, social media philosophy both on the web and on mobile devices as a requirement, not an option of their future.

Just as Apple included radio pause and tagging features in the Ipod Nano to force FM radio forward, the industry participants must change their traditional mindset to truly take advantage of this new venue.  With a popular mobile device, the programmers should go beyond static tagging and embrace dynamic tagging that creates an ongoing relationship with those who interact beyond the broadcast.

Most importantly, traditional radio must abandoned the idea that they are solely in competition with each other because everything from the consumer's playlist to Pandora takes the eyes and ears from them and their advertisers.  In order to compete effectively, they must retain the excitement and engagement of the listeners...and passive, one-way communication just will not do the job by itself.

If the stations, groups and personalities continue to program in a one-way, broadcast-only fashion and do not take advantage of the mobile, interactive capabilities of this new device, they will suffer a very public failure and all of the backslapping to get this first win will be meaningless.

College Radio Still At The Forefront

While we here at Mediaguide and our close partners at CMJ have known this for quite a while as we see the best new music come across every day, it is nice to see the New York Times acknowledge the strength of college radio.

Media, especially music, discovery fragmentation is here to stay; no doubt about it.  To me, this NYT article is further affirmation that the combination of online and offline discovery of content and brands has become the norm, not the exception; especially amongst the sub-30 crowd.

While the business models still need to catch up to the consumer demands and, therefore, we are all experiencing some growing pains; the end result will be one of tremendous originality, creativity and innovation.  We just need to act smartly and conservatively to get there.

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.

Estimated Value Of P2P Shared Music $69 Billion

According to a recent report from MultiMedia Intelligence Research, the value of

unlicensed (in some cases known as pirated) music trafficked on P2P networks in 2007 was US$69 billion.  For those keeping score, that is nearly 3.5x the value of advertising spent on broadcast radio.

Now, I am an ardent believer in compensation for those who have the talent, drive and ability to create art, especially music where my passions lay.  That being said, with all of the efforts spent to stifle P2P, a new approach is necessary to transform some of that unofficial, estimated value into real value for the creators.

We have been experimenting with protection and marketing in the P2P space and it is an amazing group of networks and communities.  That $69 billion figure represents interaction and discovery that is not going away, but should be leveraged.  The key is to work within the system, use its strenghts and the voracious appetite of the consumers, not fight against it.

The combination of ad-supported, premium content, streams, podcasts and other vehicles can generate real $ value within the space if the content owners decide to use it.  It is "search on steroids" and we all know what that has done in the traditional Web.

As an advocate of radio, still the leader in music discovery and music-centric advertising I highly recommend that those in the industry look at this space and dip their toe in the water.  For targeted, trackable advertising and music research, the breadth of user input is unparalleled.

Connecting Radio Streams & Sales Through Blackberry

http://www.berryreporter.com/reviews/nobex-radio-companion-v20090-and-free-streaming-radio-review

Using Mediaguide real-time data, Nobex created Radio Companion, which was one of 3 applications to win an award at the recent Blackberry Developer's Conference.  We here at Mediaguide are extremely excited to see our data used to push radio forward into the world of interactivity.

The strength of this application is that we can give fans and listeners the ability to buy right from radio without needing anything more than a phone and email...no new equipment.  Nobex has created versions for Windows Mobile devices as well.

The streams are a new addition and we will be working to improve the experience and expand music discovery becasue radio remains the best place to learn about new music, regardless of how you hear it.