The brewing dispute between podcasting advocates and the UN’s WIPO has taken a contentious turn. At stake is a new treaty being hammered out (some say hastily) that seeks to grant more protections over a broadcaster’s programming. WIPO contends there’s “a growing signal piracy problem.” Could they be referring to podcasts? Podcasters wonder, if passed, will this mean they cannot take snippets of broadcasts to supplement their podcasts? And what about the original work of podcasters that is not licensed? Can big media companies take that and rebroadcast it without permission, or credit?
If this sounds complicated, that’s because it is. Click here for the latest story courtesy of Out-law.
June 21st, 2006
My most recent piece for the Times Online was a rare (for me) product review. Yesterday, I met with 3 Italia to check out their new mobile TV service, which incredibly means live broadcasts of all 64 World Cup matches here in Italy. I was plenty dubious going in. A TV in your hand? Right.
But the picture quality was great and all the warnings of patchy coverage proved to be not an issue. There are still coverage limitations, but it was a very impressive debut for DVB-H, an interesting mobile TV broadcast technology that is sure to be a big tech story in Europe in the coming year.
– Bernhard
June 21st, 2006
There’s a an old Italian saying that sums up the Roman attitude towards the transient nature of success. It’s:
“Morto un papa se ne fa un altro”
The translation?
Dead Pope. Just make another.
This cynical line was in my head this morning as I read the first bit of analysis on the sudden departure of Robert Scoble from Microsoft.
The rumours first surfaced this weekend. And confirmation came Sunday. As of this morning, 146 friends, well-wishers and sycophants have left comment on Scoble’s parting blog post.
I went to bed last night thinking about the impact this would have on corporate blogging, Microsoft and Scoble himself. At first I thought this would be a big blow for Microsoft and a great move for Scoble. But now I’m having second thoughts. Scoble is replaceable (Scoble himself says there are about 3,000 bloggers at Microsoft), and Scobleizer 2.0 may very well be an upgrade on the orginal model. Perhaps he or she will be a bit more knowledgable about software, have an interest in Internet security issues and have some real valuable insights about Microsoft’s/Google’s/Yahoo’s responsibility towards promoting platforms for free speech. Hell, anybody with a bit more nuanced, global perspective would be nice.
Scoble’s success was his disarming humility and forthrightness. It gave him access to the “inside” of Microsoft’s many product divisions, and, also, those of its rivals. He attracted such a loyal readership because of this access and his dedication to faithfully report what he saw. For this, I say Bravo! Not surprisingly, Scoble’s blog became the most relevant online diary of all. The A-list blogger. Capital A.
But, I am speaking in the past tense.
In football terms, Scoble is being transferred out of the Premier League. Relegated. Podtech.Net sounds interesting, but it’s not Microsoft. Be forewarned, Robert. The attention and readership will slip. People want Microsoft dirt. Not yet-another-podcasting-startup dirt.
And, I fully expect some able bloggers will emerge from the talented ranks of Microsoft to take his place as blogger-in-chief. Again, from Scoble’s own pages, we’ve learned of Microsoft that it is one of the more open and accomodating big companies to work for, leading me to think a replacement will emerge sooner than we think.
Still, best of luck, Robert and Podtech.Net. Hopefully, our paths cross again sometime soon. I will be following with some interest the progress of Podtech.Net. But, I will be dutybound to follow Microsoft.
– Bernhard
June 12th, 2006
Robert Scoble, the human face of Microsoft, is leaving, Reuters confirmed today. The Scobilizer is off to Silicon Valley podcasting startup, PodTech.net.
This is a big coups for PodTech, and a big blow for Microsoft. Scoble was perhaps the most vital non-executive Microsoft ever employed. He put a seemingly spin-free gloss on Microsoft, a company that is attacked daily by Mac users, Linux users and, sometimes, Windows users. Finding a replacement could be tough. According to Reuters, he’s riding his popularity as one of the world’s most widely read bloggers into a sizeable bump in pay (a salary north of $100k and a nice options package) and a significant role, scouting out content for the upstart.
Best of luck, Robert.
June 11th, 2006
It’s already fascinating to see the prominent role blogs and podcasts are having in World Cup media coverage.
A few weeks back, Bernhard predicted that social media would come into its own through the World Cup and yesterday I picked up on that theme in a short piece for Time.com.
- Matthew
June 9th, 2006
This week’s Content 2.0 conference, organized ably by NMK, was just the latest in a spring and summer series of packed events devoted to the growth of social media.
The sheer numbers of attendees at Content 2.0, Blogs and Social Media Forum and our Blogging4Business conference demonstrates the very high level of interest that blogs, podcasts et al are generating in Europe’s business community.
Yet despite the interest, social media is still very much in its infancy when compared to the US. The gulf of understanding and uptake was thrown into stark relief by Bradley Horowitz, Yahoo’s Vice President of Product Strategy, who flew in from California to deliver one of Content 2.0’s keynote speeches.
Horowitz used Flickr, one of Yahoo’s recent acquisitions to demonstrate the collaborative power of social networks and to explain how the company intends to leverage the comments and opinions of bloggers and other online communities into providing a stronger search service – “better search through people” as the company terms it.
After his speech, I had the chance to chat with Horowitz and have him explain in a little more depth the value of social networks. Horowitz is the first to admit that social search “is an emerging science” but he stresses what any company that is blogging already knows – when you can offer personal, transparent conversation about products and recommendations, you take a major step towards winning the trust of your customers.
Yahoo hopes to create its own trust network for search services based on the recommendations of its social network participants. Having real people recommend the best pizzaria in your neighborhood or provide a Flick photo of a great beauty spot or maybe even a bar, won’t just enrich the value of Yahoo’s search results, it will also add an all important local and regional strength – call it Glocalization, says Horowitz.
The problem of course with harnessing social networks is that you’ve got to keep the network together. Just as Friendster found itself losing friends, the current social network powerhouse, MySpace, may yet find its fickle teenage user-base shifting to another online community (check out the quick rise of Bebo).
Couldn’t Yahoo find itself at the mercy of these same community whims by staking so much of its development on social networks?
No way, assured Horowitz. “Yahoo is in a unique and defensible position. We’ve spent a decade creating a platform of trust services that add value to your life and a breadth of services no other company can match. We are weaving our social networks only through the strong architecture we have already built.”
It’s a bold strategy that will be interesting to follow. If nothing else, when a company like Yahoo stakes a good part of its growth on people power, there can be little doubt that social media has truly arrived.
June 9th, 2006
The problem with user-generated content, of course, is that most of it isn’t much good, says Jonathan Weber in his weekly Times Online column.
June 6th, 2006
A fascinating new corporate survey from messaging security specialists Proofpoint was just published regarding how companies are dealing with the increasing flow of employee communication via email, blogs and the Web. The press has played up the angle that 38 per cent of UK companies are hiring staff to read and analyse outbound emails and that 33 per cent of UK companies have fired staff in the past 12 months for breach of company email policy. The reason for monitoring seems justified: the leak of trade secrets and the flow of emails with embarassing and legally sensistive gossip continues unabated. But what I think is fascinating is the number of companies that are genuinely concerned about the financial, regulatory and legal risks posed by employ blog postings, given that so few companies have adopted a company blogging policy.
According to the survey, 2/3 or UK companies say it is “important” or “very important” to reduce the legal and financial risks associated with outbound HTML traffic (blogs or Web-based emails) in the next 12 months. And, scarier still, 13 per cent of UK’s listed companies have investigated the leak of proprietary information — specifically citing unannounced quarterly results — to a blog or message board posting.
– Bernhard
June 6th, 2006
What does it take to make a read-able blog? Here’s marketing whiz Seth Godin’s insights.
His list of 56 do’s and don’ts cover the obvious (Be topical… write posts that need to be read right now), the clever (Digest the good ideas of other people, all day, every day) and controversial (Write in English. Better, write in Chinese).
I would add a 57th:
don’t post if you’re not feeling particularly inspired. Get up in the middle of the night to post if you’re feeling particularly inspired. Your readers will notice.
– Bernhard
June 5th, 2006
An interesting story by Industry Week on a Makovsky + Co (New York PR outfit) report on corporate attitudes to blogging.
Makovsky interviewed 150 US executives by phone and, according to Industry Week:
Just 5% of executives said they were convinced “to a great extent” that corporate blogging is growing in credibility as a communications medium, while the percentage dropped to 3% of executives who were convinced “to a great extent” that corporate blogging is growing in credibility as a brand-building technique.
That seems pretty damning on the surface - after all, corporate America is supposed to be embracing blogging no?
But look at some of the other stats gathered in this report and a different picture emerges.
* Some 12% of senior executives said their companies have taken legal or other action in response to a blog.
* Twenty percent have a formal process in place for monitoring blogs written about the company.
* One in five (21%) read business-related blogs once a week or more often.
Perhaps the execs need to take a step back to evaluate just how social media is changing their world.
When 30 out of 150 companies already have formal blog monitoring in place then blogs are impacting corporate communication. When one in five of the execs read business-specific blogs then blogs are affecting their business communication.
But perhaps the most interesting stat is the one that shows just how out of touch many top execs may be when it comes to new forms of business communication.
Less than one-third (30%) reported having a thorough understanding of the term “Internet blog.” (A blog or weblog combines text, links and images to form a personal journal full of news and opinion.)
If two thirds of the recipients don’t even understand what a blog is, then a, they can’t really understand what its potential impact might be, and b, blog evangelists obviously doing a particularly good job illustrating to companies why an open form of online conversation can help their business.
- Matthew
June 2nd, 2006
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