TheWayoftheWeb #8212; The digital convergence of media, entertainment, marketing and PR
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Is Amazon reading this blog?
September 29th, 2010 middot; View Comments
On Monday I wrote about the future of libraries, and how digital sharing and sampling are legally enabled either by open works (Public Domain or Creative Commons), or that retailers will have a vested interest in allowing sampling.
And on Tuesday, Amazon announced their ‘Kindle for the Web’, which allows eBook sampling and embedded excerpts on the web. You’ll be able to read the first chapter of books for free, and share via Facebook, Twitter and email. Plus there will be referral fees in the usual Amazon way if people buy books after seeing a preview on your site.
It makes total sense for Amazon to use the same model which has served them well to build the retail business – leverage a long tail of website publishers and social network users who can be rewarded in a small financial way if their recommendations result in sales.
I’m already looking forward to using it – not only will it enable me to share more of writing I recommend than fair use tends to allow, but imagine the boost to time spent on my site if you’re going through a whole chapter while you’re here! Now which tech books have the longest first chapter?
View CommentsTags: Digital Publishing
Is the eBook, the end of the library?
September 27th, 2010 middot; View Comments
My son loves books at the moment, and long may it continue. He #8217;s a toddler, and it’s been fantastic to watch him discover the experience of turning pages, seeing and recognising pictures, and hearing his mum and me reading aloud.
As a result, our house has started to resemble the children’s section of an Amazon warehouse, and every time his family get the chance, he’s getting more books added to the collection – but that isn’t enough, and as a result, we’re making regular trips to the local lending library for the first time since I was a teenager.
As an adult, I can still find the odd book to borrow, but considering I tend to read fairly niche subjects, it’s far easier for me to find books online, either free via Creative Commons or the Public Domain, or bought via a number of retailers.
I haven’t checked to find library borrowing and attendance rates in the UK, but it’s hard to see how borrowing physical copies of books will continue in the next few years, and the younger readers are increasingly being exposed to touch screen devices at the ages of 3 or 4 in some cases. And they quickly know how those devices work and how to find more entertainment.
The problem with printed copies?
The big challenge is that any freely available book has been licensed to allow sharing, thus spreading without the need for a central collection of physical copies. Physical copies are bought as memento and to thank the author, gifts, and possibly for re-reading away from the screen – in all three cases, those require a permanent purchase rather than a loan.
And although the DRM-restricted sold copies could be adapted to allow lending for a set period of time, that would tend to be operated by a retailer, and there’s still no reason for a library. And their token offering of a handful of DVDs and CDs in an attempt to modernise doesn’t offer much how in the download era, or even the Lovefilm and Netflix one.
So what the heck can libraries offer for those between the age of 4 and 50+?
Libraries – knowledge and community hub?
Traditionally a geographical community has a few hubs – the church and the pub being most noticeable in the UK (look at any old village and count which buildings were a place of religion or drinking, even if they’re now converted to homes!).
A library is a neutral place in terms of religion and alcohol, often with a fairly educated and knowledgeable staff. We need to make more use of these facilities for more activities alongside and in place of storing dead trees. In fact, the change should be pretty radical, if you follow the logic of serial business success Marc Andreessen, who advises newspapers to shut the presses now to focus on digital and make it successful, even if print is still 80% of the business. Because if it’s 80%, people are too focused on saving it!
So…
How many libraries are looking at being able to lend e-book readers and tablets, whether it’s a Kindle, iPad or something else? An electronic device, a lesson in how to access the ‘free’ content available and the chance to download some via library wifi would be a valuable service to those who are currently disenfranchised from knowledge and the familiarity with technology.
How many libraries are stepping up the amount of community gatherings they have, and aiming to target new niche groups? At the moment, only the very young or the very old are being catered for – where are the routes for me to connect physically or electronically?
What other services are in decline? I’ve written about how I could see libraries taking over from local newspapers in providing community news and events to the local area by running a non-profit website and printed newsletter with a mix of library staff as enablers and either paid or volunteer staff as creators.
And there’s one thing that librarians should know about:
Here’s a valuable niche service in an area of information abundance and overflow. Librarians have spent their time in learning and using a system of categorisation and filing. And from what I’ve seen, and my own slightly compulsive librarian tendencies suggest that it’s an enjoyable human pastime to create the illusion of order from chaos.
So why not put that to good use and have librarians specialise in becoming information taxonomy and category experts? Surely they could be the best people to aid me in sorting my Delicious bookmarks, my RSS categories and my email filters?
And at the same time, perhaps libraries could unite with an existing project like the Internet Archive to find a way to not only preserve, but categorise, the amazing amount of digital information in cyberspace.
After all, if you want a fairly secure and safe record of humanity, you need to be able to back up and access the web – and although it would take an investment in technology beyond the aging PCs in the corner of the library, the fact that you’d have numerous sites around the UK would prevent one problem wiping out the history of information since the later end of the 20th Century.
What other ways are there?
I realise that funding for servers, retraining for staff, and the switch from storing a few thousand dog-eared print books to becoming technology experts and advisers isn’t a simple change (or sadly, a likely one with the need for investment). But I think there’ are incredibly useful services which libraries provide beyond simple storage – enabling human curation and categorisation, and a community hub around providing shared knowledge and space. And I’m keen to see this continue…
So what ideas do you have for evolving libraries and their staff? Or do you disagree and think that libraries have served their purpose? Does Google do a good enough job of looking after information? And are there better places and ways to organise community within separate villages, cities and towns? Any librarians reading? (If you know any, send them the link!)
View CommentsTags: Digital Culture middot; community
Do we get more than we give from the web?
September 21st, 2010 middot; View Comments
It might sound like a philosophical question, but it’s something that new research by McKinsey for IAB Europe claims to have answered, claiming for 1 Euro spent on online advertising by companies, users get 3 Euros worth of services, with an estimated consumer service surplus about 100 billion Euros. (H/T PaidContent). You can download it yourself as a .pdf.
I’ve only had a quick glance through it and it seems pretty thorough, but as the always readable Rob Andrews points out, the estimated value is hypothetical as the ad-funded companies aren’t necessarily losing money. They reference services such as Wikis, but what I can’t find in there is a reference to the value provided to companies by the content uploaded by consumers in the form of comments, reviews, articles etc, or from inbound links from sites created by consumers ( for example).
As an example, I read PaidContent a reasonable amount, and I have no idea what their advertising rates are, but in theory I may be gaining more value from their content than they make from advertising. But, I occasionally comment, and that content also gets indexed by search engines. I’ve also linked to them on social networks, and that traffic is monetisable. And I’ve linked to them above with a link that will aid their search engine rankings for that article, which can carry a monetisable value, and definitely a recognisable benefit.
Of course, any effort to quantify all of this would be an epic undertaking which would still have areas people like me could pick at, but it worries me when I see claims that consumers are benefitting without also providing value back on top of ISP internet subscriptions. I’m also just checking to see if other revenue streams are included in the calculation, as ‘pure’ advertising would also discount affiliate links, event tickets etc.
I’m not suggesting that digital advertising provides too much revenue to content and service providers – my own little publishing empire is testament to that! But I also don’t see that situation changing, and in addition to looking at ways advertising may be more beneficial to the segment of consumers that are happy with the ad-funded model, we also need to be devoting serious time and research to other revenue streams and ways to fund quality content production.
View CommentsTags: Digital Publishing middot; advertising
Google rsquo;s Inside Adsense home for spam comments
September 19th, 2010 middot; View Comments
Comment spam is a constant pain and chore for anyone running a blog. The prospect of gaining links to their websites means that a mix of human and automated spam producers will keep submitting their comments packed with terrible content.
Spam filters (such as WordPress’s Akismet), Captchas and other tools can make life a lot easier. Or you can turn off comments either completely, or on posts older than a certain age, to keep everything to a manageable level.
But if you’re feeling bad, rest assured even the biggest company on the internet can make mistakes:
Yep, that’s the official Google Inside Adsense blog, packed full of useful information for publishers displaying the Adsense advertising platform. As an Adsense-powered publisher, I’m one of them.
It’s also a well-ranked and linked-to site, for obvious reasons. Which explains why any article in the archive is absolutely packed with spam comments. Just go back a few months (I started 12 months ago and went further back), and scroll through the 50+ comments on most posts. After the first few legitimate comments posted when the article went live, the rest will be spam comments posted far more recently, which means they’re obviously automatically published without any checks.
I checked out a couple of other official Google blogs (Did you know there’s a handy Google Blog Directory?), and most of the others are fine, having disabled comments after a set period of time.
Proof that even when you employ the likes of Matt Cutts, there can still be a slightly embarrassing oversight somewhere in the network!
View CommentsTags: Blogging middot; Digital Publishing
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