These are my links for May 4th through May 9th:
- Interview With Will Page, Music Industry Economist – Great in-depth interview with a very clever man, Mr Wil Page, the Economist of the UK's Peforming Rights Society (music collection agency) on the importance of UK's successful digital sales industry, the weakness of the 'Long Tail Model' and why Spotify and Trent Reznor are worth investigating.
- Digital Strategy: How To Develop a Digital Strategy: Part 1 – Great article by Rich Nadworny on the processes (methodologies and thought processes) he uses as a digital strategist. These basically form into two phases: research and intelligence gathering, followed by setting goals and objectives. For my own work I use a variation of these tools – essentially focusing on people and the organisation, followed by intelligence gathering then goal setting/measuring. I'll be blogging more on my own methodologies soon, in meantime sign up to Rich's blog for Part 2.
- 7 things people get wrong about the Internet and TV – An interesting take on why the internet is not killing TV: far from it, video/web TV needs the maturity of the TV model to succeed. I also read a report this week that suggest that when people are surveyed about their media viewing habits they usually underestimate TV hours viewed, and over-estimate web video. All in all, David Lynch was wrong – TV isn't dead (yet).
- Digital Strategy: How To Develop a Digital Strategy: Part 1 – "Digital strategy, simply put, is a plan to use digital, two-way media to communicate with other people. The keys in that sentence are: plan, digital, two-way." Great article by Rich Nadworthy neatly summarising exactly what digital strategy is about: different areas of detailed research followed by setting goals and objectives.
- Strategy’s Golden Rule – The one golden rule of strategy: don't try and beat the competition incrementally, but find out what they do badly, then aim to be great at that. Using the example of Apple's bad customer service and others, this is a strong lessons in reinventing the rules of disruptive innovation.
These are my links for April 8th through April 11th:
- The Collapse of Complex Business Models – Author and academic, and writer of "Here Comes Everybody" Clay Shirky write a good piece on simplifying bureaucracies and business models, using the example of user generated video and 'In The Motherhood', a small hit online drama that failed as a conventional TV series.
- Forecast: TV, Internet Will Lead Advertising Back Up As Print Wanes – Predicted stats for advertising from 2008-2012 globally, showing that TV (after a fall) is set for growth to return to 2008 levels this year, and internet advertising will continue strong growth, whilst print, cinema and advertising are set for a slight decline in spend. Of digital, the strongest growth will be in paid search followed by display advertising.
- Digital Economy Bill: Quick Guide To All 45 Measures – Great summary of the Digital Economy Bill, due to be passed as law this Monday, showing all 45 measures, and which have been withdrawn. Interesting to see that Channel 4 now have a remit of distributing film and supporting 'innovative content' and children's programmes as part of their public service remit.
- What Social Media Will Look Like in 2012 – Insightful article by Freddie Laker on how social media will grow to become an intrinsic part of the digital experience by 2012, as the semantic web and user recommendation seemlessly interweaves with search, ecommerce and other web experiences. I like the idea of seeing aggregated realtime updates of users before you put in a phone call, and ratings as a core part of the e-commerce experience.
- Bebo’s friends desert it – Business Analysis & Features, Business – Yet another social networking giant looks set to bite the dust.. as MySpace hangs in there, Bebo looks set to have its doors shut by owners AOL. Failure to invest and understand the needs of its youth demographic, particularly in failing to support social gaming, have led to the downfall of the fun site. Big shame as Bebo were once investors of online TV programming such as Kate Modern, and this gap, coupled with Endemol's recent annoucement of scaling down their digital team due to limited online tv investment, heralds the death-too-soon of pureplay web television.
These are my links for December 21st through December 23rd:
- 500 Internal Server Error – 500 Internal Server Error
- Browser Size – A neat tool that lets you see how visitors view your website who are using different browser sizes and programes, which can show you where the majority of people will start to see content drop out from the right or drop down 'below the fold' of the web browser.
- The End Of Hand Crafted Content – Tech Crunch's excellent Michael Arrington on the worry for online publisher that re-writes and lack of attribution from online sources will lead to a wealth of 'fast food' content where journalism is pushing out the skill in the online – as well as print – space. "The disruptors are getting disrupted". A gripey moan? Well maybe, but I go with him that there's little income now in quality journalism as well all become sapped into the Google link well…
These are my links for November 23rd from 19:10 to 20:14:
- Entrepreneurs: Stop Innovating, Start Minnovating – Forget big scale change and disruptive innovation, start 'minnovating' small ordinary changes to make big business differences
- North West: Europe’s Second Largest Media Hub – Obviously a wishful thinking rather than reality title (and with an odd soft porn-esque cover), this brochure gives an overview in case studies and numbers of the North West creative sector, with an emphasis on the investment and all those opportunities that the funders keenly hope will come out of MediaCity:UK.
These are my links for November 2nd through November 3rd:
- Constant Transformation Is the New Normal – Piece by disruptive innovation expert Scott Anthony on how 'business as usual' ain't coming back: you need to be customer-focused, adaptable to change and have distinct, autonomous spaces for innovation.
- Lord Mandelson sets date for blocking filesharers’ internet connections – In full: the timetable and approach for UK government to impose the "three strikes and your offline" policy to tackle file-sharing; which, interestingly, WASN'T a recommendation of Lord Carter's Digital Britain report from this year.
- A fistful of (internet) dollars – The Guardian have produced this useful round up showing the size of the digital industries (music, TV, film, games, publishing) in 2000 compared to now, and how they are siddling with Lord Mandelson and the government on the issues around downloading and regulation.
- To Be a Better Leader, Give Up Authority – Prof Vlatka Hlupic believes that in complex trading environments in knowledge industries, the leader who delegates more control to their workers can see improved levels of innovation and results. Command and control models are broke.
- Expansive English Game Development Hub Discussed – The long-running 'games centre of excellence' proposal seems to be zoning in on becoming a reality, with a research, training and testing facility mooted to be established in MediaCity in Salford – which could put the noses out of joint in Liverpool, where most of the North West games industry are based.
