Puffbox

Sky News is cutting its Irish operations to the bone, from a total of 25 staff in Belfast and Dublin, to – er – five. The two Sky News Ireland bulletins, which were getting pretty dismal ratings, will cease at the end of November. Speaking as a Belfast native myself, I suppose this is the flipside of the ‘peace dividend’. A stable Northern Ireland just isn’t news any more.

Oh – and I note that the New Statesman is also reversing its digital ambitions. Not only is it dropping the paid-for subscription model from 17 November, but it’s introducing additional free web-only content.

We need some kind of secret password to share among the world’s technically literate. I’ve just spent 40 minutes trying to arrange an exchange on a faulty piece of hardware… of which 30 minutes were your basic ‘have you checked the plugs are all in tightly?’. Yes mate, I have.

I’m not ringing you up for a friendly chat; I’m only ringing you up because I have to. So when I said – in the first sentence after you answered the phone – that I needed to arrange an exchange, that was because I needed to arrange an exchange. A conclusion you eventually shared with me after 35 minutes, on an 0870 number too. (So not only is it wasted time for me, it’s profit for you, at my expense. Thanks.)

Very interesting to see this video posted on Youtube: it’s a one-minute statement from SNP leader Alex Salmond delivering a Halloween warning that ‘the ghost of Iraq is going to haunt Tony Blair’. Of course, Salmond isn’t the first politician we’ve seen on Youtube… but this is the first instance I’ve seen of (effectively) a ‘video news release’.

[youtube=http://youtube.com/w/?v=5vAdK7eYLBo]

It’s very much a ‘today’ video. It’ll be old news by tea time, in all likelihood. But the easy access to cheap technology – clip mic, camcorder, editing software, hosting provider – makes this sort of thing possible and practical. Another example of ‘guerilla media’ tactics from the Celtic parties, and one to be (broadly) welcomed.

Interesting to note that Ricky Gervais is back doing free podcasts via the Guardian website, promising three specials for Halloween, Thanksgiving (?) and Christmas, according to MediaGuardian. I just hope we get a bit more from Stephen Merchant this time round… for me, he was the star of Extras. Even the simplest reference to ‘Barry off Eastenders’ made me laugh every time.

And while we’re on the podcast theme… I notice there are new(ish) series by Jarvis Cocker (oh, so that’s what he’s up to these days) and Danny Kelly (sadly sans Baker) available through iTunes. I’m downloading them now, so I can’t vouch for their quality. Don’t blame me if they’re rubbish.

Discussing some potential new business this morning, it was noted that I’m lacking in direct experience of ‘intranet’ (as opposed to ‘internet’) management. But I really don’t think it’s a valid or fair distinction to draw these days – and the case for its separation grows ever weaker.

People use intranet sites in exactly the same conditions as they use the public web. Sat in the same seat, looking at the same screen, running the same browser. They are probably forced to look at the intranet homepage when they boot up; but I suspect they’re looking at Google or the BBC within a matter of seconds.

Their expectations of intranet transactions are shaped by their experience of Amazon, eBay, etc. Like it or not, intranet managers, you are on the same playing field.

But, I’d suggest, the playing field isn’t actually level – it slopes in the intranet’s favour. Intranet has an audience which is compelled to read the content, and use the facilities. In a ‘web 2.0’ world where projects succeed or fail on their ability to build communities, intranet managers have so much community they don’t know what to do with it.

Large corporations stand to be the great beneficiaries of the ‘participative web’. All that knowledge sloshing around, and finally something to do with it. Imagine the potential of a company image library that looked and worked like Flickr; or a social bookmarking library that mimics del.icio.us. And even better, an intranet homepage like the many ‘start page’ rivals – Netvibes, Protopage, Live.com, and all that. All the knowledge you need, being fed to you automatically via RSS feeds.

The tools are there; the community is there. All it needs is an intranet manager with enough imagination.

In the meantime, the (outside) web teams plough their own furrow 2.0… with blogs, podcasts and all that, aimed at better engaging with clients, partners and suppliers. Such channels are intended to extend the insider’s view to the outside world. All too often, they prove to be the best information source for others inside the organisation too. (Example: I learned more from Robert Scoble’s blog than I ever did from MSWeb, the intranet at Microsoft.)

The outside comes in, and the inside is heading out. The dividing line between internal and external just isn’t there any more; and if you insist on maintaining it, I think you’re mistaken.

Robert Scoble – who still matters, even though he’s left Microsoft – makes an interesting point about ‘engagement’. All the talk these days is about it. Yet there’s no easy way to measure it. He offers a few interesting numbers as a starting point, though:

When the Register links to us we get almost no traffic. But they claim to have millions of readers. Compare that to Digg. How many people hang out there every day? Maybe a million, but probably less. Yet if you get linked to from Digg you’ll see 30,000 to 60,000 people show up. And these people don’t just read. They get involved. Yesterday Buzz Bruggeman CEO of Active Words, was driving me around and told the story of when he was in USA Today. He got 32 downloads. When he got linked to by my blog? Got about 400.

It’s another nail in the coffin of straightforward hit counting. The e-commerce world had to realise this long ago, but it’s much easier for them – since ‘engagement’ in their world equals sales. All today’s coverage of Amazon’s results is about profits and profit margins. I don’t see anyone talking about the number of hits – and why should they? Assuming every website has a purpose, we need to remember that we should be measuring performance against that purpose… and nothing else.

Any initiative which attempts to break down the ‘us vs them’ mentality in any business, and particularly the public services, has to be a good thing. (Engagement, Cluetrain, etc etc.) So I was initially interested to read about ‘an original approach to shaping better public services’, put forward by the National Consumer Council and the union Unison.

It’s only when you read on that you discover that their idea of going ‘way beyond the usual consultation exercises, surveys and public meetings’ is to… um… organise a one-day workshop for 15 social housing tenants in Newcastle, and 10 local housing officers. I’m really not convinced that’s enough to constitute ‘tried and tested’. In fact, by their own admission, it was only the ‘beginning of a process’.

Thanks to egovmonitor for the link.

Tech Digest reckons Firefox v2 is out tomorrow (Tuesday)… but if you can’t wait until then, you might want to click here. 😉 Just don’t expect anything too earth-shattering in terms of new functionality. And beware: if you’re reliant on any particular Firefox extensions, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be compatible with the new version. Bloglines, I’m looking at you right now.

Linking back to the source material has to be a good thing. But I’m really quite surprised to see ‘News release (ford.com)’ appearing alongside the top story on the New York Times homepage. Good on them though… they make it clear that it’s an external link, so there’s no scope for confusion… as long as you realise that the large-print headline at the top is a link to the NYT’s own story. I’m not sure that’s made clear enough.