digital::thinking

Pay-TV loses subscribers for the first time ever, and Santa is about to deliver the really bad news.

• Apple TV
• Roku
• Orb
• WD TV
• Vulkano
• Logitech Revue (Google TV) 
• Sony TV (Google TV) 
• Boxee Box
• Xbox
• PS3
• Wii
• A menagerie of internet connected BluRay players
• A plethora of internet connected HD TVs

(download)

Click here to download:

Pay-TV_loses_subscribers_for_t.zip (534 KB)

Fox 4 Dallas does a brilliant job of using social media to report the news.

Hey all you old-timey traditional media stalwarts look how social
media can be used to powerfully deliver local news. BTW, I was Matt
Grubs 88th twitter follower!

The Times hits a 16-year low as it's paywall falls.

Although it didn't get the same level of coverage as the fall of the Berlin wall The Times paywall went down on September 10, 2010. Times columnist Caitlin Moran tweeted, "SCREAM! Apparently, the Times paywall has just fallen down! Quick! Read all my articles!"

On the same day it was announced that thetimes.co.uk paper counterpart had hit a 16-year low with a circulation of 494,205. The speculation was that Mr. Murdoch had brought the wall down because of these deteriorating circulation numbers and the exodus of online advertisers as reported by Ian Burrell at The Independent:

Faced with a collapse in traffic to thetimes.co.uk, some advertisers have simply abandoned the site. Rob Lynam, head of press trading at the media agency MEC, whose clients include Lloyds Banking Group, Orange, Morrisons and Chanel, says, "We are just not advertising on it. If there's no traffic on there, there's no point in advertising on there."

Unfortunately, this theory lasted about as long as the half-life of Seaborgium as the paywall sprang back to life minutes later. The News International corporate affairs department was later quoted as saying, "The registration page is down for routine maintenance" so it apparently just needed a quick dusting and polishing in the middle of the day.

The irony is that the paywall was supposed to encourage/force more people to subscribe to the physical paper and exactly the opposite thing appears to be happening. With a complete implosion in site traffic, few estimated online subscribers, advertisers rushing for the exits and the continued deterioration in physical circulation Rupert Murdoch still appears ready to keep his wall standing. Maybe my speculation three months ago that Murdoch wanted to cull the weakest of his herd first is coming to pass. The annual pre-tax losses at The Times and The Sunday Times of London hit £87.7m as of June 2009 and the paywall will end the costly life support going to a patient with no hope for survival. With the entire newspaper industry in full collapse and the paywall strategy a failure the 54 billion dollar question is what will Mr. Murdoch try next?

What Americans do online, um, where's the porn?

Paywalls do work, The Times loses almost 90% of online readers.

Two weeks ago I wrote about why Rupert Murdoch's new paywall at The Times and The Sunday Times of London would decrease readership by 95%. This week the Guardian is claiming it has dropped by about 90% (what's 5% between friends?). To get this estimate the Guardian had to use third party numbers as The Times parent company, News International, "suspended the public reporting of monthly ABCe website traffic for Times Online and the Sun" and that News International is "working with ABCe to help evolve metrics related to engagement as the business models evolve." Translation, "We don't want our advertisers to know that there's no one left to ignore their ads."

So, how will this effect the New York Times upcoming plan to erect their very own toll barrier? Well, if you imagine that The Times paywall is 30' feet high, covered with razor wire and has snipers in guard towers every 100', The NYT "wall" will be more like the average home in Canada. The front door is unlocked, you can come on in, grab a Molson and turn on the TV to watch hockey or curling. It's only after you've been there for a few days and the fridge is empty that the homeowner will politely ask for you to pay for some of the food
and to wash your sheets. The NYT calls this a "metered" paywall which really means no pay and no wall.

So what's the key insight from the newspaper industries final hail mary to save themselves? Call your broker and sell your remaining newspaper stock.

The great paywalls of News Corp.

After a decade of attempts to save the newspaper industry the final hail mary seems to be the online paywall. The crown for bloviating on the subject must be laid upon the pate of Emperor Rupert Murdoch who began his, "Web users will have to pay for what they watch and use” death march right after the $203-million loss at News Corp in the 4th quarter of 2009. The Times and The Sunday Times of London are the first News Corp victims to test the theory that people are willing to pay for news they can get other places for free AND be subjugated to the annoyance of advertising. Apparently, Murdoch decided to cull the weakest of his herd first as the annual pre-tax losses at these two papers grew to £87.7m as of June 2009, from £50.2m in the previous 12 months. Both papers went into full Kim Jong-il style security mode on July 2, 2010. As of this post (seven days later) the effect of the paywall on site traffic isn't known but a clear sign of the coming disaster can be seen in what happened exactly one month earlier.

On June 2, 2010 - in an attempt to soften the beachhead for the impending paywall - the Times began asking for registration to access the "free" content on the site. According to Experian Hitwise the traffic began to immediately drop, and the losses accelerated for the next three weeks. The net result was the loss of over half of the Times readers before the actual paywall took effect. What happened to the remaining traffic on July 2? My hypothesis is that it was the same jaw-dropping, burn out your retinas, super spectacular failure that the Long Island Daily, Newsday experienced when it went behind a paywall in October 2009. Using the results of the Harris Interactive poll regarding  web users willingness to pay for online news the Times should now have lost 95% of their readers.

In the end, the failure of paywalls is a distraction. It's just another experimental drug for a patient that died years ago. The reality is that all mass media/mass marketing business models - from magazines to broadcast TV - are no longer viable, and newspapers are just the first to go. Maybe it's time to stop trying to animate the dead. Maybe it's time to realize that a small group of "professionals" deciding what to filter, create, and disseminate to a massive (and mostly passive) audience was never an ideal system except for the media barons that amassed vast power and wealth from it. Society doesn't need newspapers, it just needs journalism and the same forces that have destroyed newspapers are expanding opportunities for journalists (especially the citizen variety) while democratizing the spread of information and knowledge. That the "people formerly known as the audience" are now creating, and sharing information is fantastic, but the coolest part is that we are also connecting and acting on this knowledge in ways never before possible.

I propose that News Corp redirect the funds being used to build paywalls and sponsor a global wake for the newspaper industry. An epic party with live bands, free yacht rides, and a massive firework display celebrating a much brighter post-newspaper future.

Maybe I was wrong about the end of newspapers, the Boston Globe is innovating brilliantly.

Boston Globe Tailors Print Edition For Three Remaining Subscribers

Why the end of advertising is fantastic news for society.

What happens when millions of us begin to shift our billions of passive TV watching hours to connecting and creating? Well, for one thing, the business model of Mass Media/Mass Marketing collapses. On the other side of the ledger you get the greatest living and evolving repository of human knowledge in history, LOLcats, and the likely transformation of society.

In Cognitive Surplus, Clay Shirky delivers a precise telling of our new opportunities for self-organization and the potential landscape of a post-advertising world.

P.S. Yes, I do think he looks like a bald Tom Hanks.

Want your stuff shared on Facebook? Write it for a 2nd grader and make it about sex.

It seems that the core principals behind advertising work in social media too. Dan Zarrella, the “Social Media Scientist,” is doing a series on Facebook data points. His conclusions (especially when artfully arranged into WWF tag team combos) are massively appealing. Be sure to try it on your next post and let me know how it works out.

Click here to download:

PastedGraphic-2.pdf (34 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

PastedGraphic-2.pdf (34 KB)

Click here to download:

PastedGraphic-1.pdf (27 KB)

(download)

Click here to download:

PastedGraphic-1.pdf (27 KB)

Breastfeeding infant spotted IM-ing. Is a human "cultural generation" now 5 years?

Generational culture gaps are created when people in a particular place and time share common experiences that define their perception of themselves, the world, and their purpose in it. This used to take about a quarter of a century. Enough time for a world war, free love, a pandemic, or pervasive recreational drug use to lay down some healthy roots. Technology and behavioral shifts are now occurring so rapidly that the experiences of a North American 15 year-old create a substantially different "worldview" from that of a 10 year-old. What could the impact of "micro-generations" mean to marketing, politics, and religion? For example, Millennials (18-29) whose experiences have been defined by information technology are the least religious generation on record with 26 percent claiming no religious affiliation at all (PewResearchCenter: Millennials a Portrait of Generation Next).

The effect technology has already had on culture is significant but what are the implications when we apply it directly to ourselves? These current differences are dampened by the fact that everyone is still "unmodified." What gaps will exist between "old style" humans and (to borrow the definition from wikipedia) posthumans, "whose basic capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no longer unambiguously human by our current standards." This chasm will be further amplified as different groups apply different sets of modifications creating not only cultural gaps but possibly species gaps. Ah, makes one almost pine for the good old days when we knew that more doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette and you could be pretty confident your neighbor wasn't a cyborg.