David Wilcox boasts about his (well-deserved) namecheck in a piece over at the Beeb about ‘politics in the networked age’. I’ve got some good news, in that I hear our Prime Minister In Waiting may be more open to the online world than some might previously have feared. He made some references to the internet and all that in a speech at Hay On Wye on Saturday, promoting his new book… but I still can’t find a transcript (and I’m not so desperate as to pay to download the audio). Anyone?
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Does Gordon Brown 'get' online after all?
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Sky News in Second Life: arriving late at the wrong party?
Sky News launches a remarkably good rendition of its Osterley newsroom inside Second Life tomorrow, during Adam Boulton’s Sunday programme. Writing on the Sky News editors’ blog, Simon Bucks says:
It’s a new and exciting way to communicate, and as many universities have discovered, it’s a useful vehicle for education. But most of all it’s fun. It allows you to do stuff you can’t do in real life. And from Sunday that will include coming inside our newsroom and studio, roaming around, and taking a look at what we do and how we do it.
Frankly, I never warmed to Second Life. Tried it a couple of times, seemed like a waste of time, never went back. Statistics I found back in January seemed to suggest I wasn’t alone. The latest, as reported by the Reuters Second Life correspondent, is that ‘growth in unique Second Life users has been steadily slowing since October 2006’. Data at Alexa and Blogpulse now seem to suggest it’s on a downward trend in terms of ‘buzz’.
I’m sure they’ll learn some interesting lessons from this exercise, but in terms of hard business value, I doubt it’ll actually deliver anything. A few months ago, it would at least have made a much bigger PR splash than it has – which would have been something. But is a Second Life presence going to made the brand – or indeed, Adam Boulton – relevant to the cool set? And will they even be watching at 11am on a Sunday morning?
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RSA conference on The Social Impact of the Web
Friday afternoon’s session at the RSA – looking at the ‘Social Impact of the Web’ – was more stimulating than I expected. There was very little mention of technology, and a lot about community and communities.
Andrew Chadwick from Royal Holloway offered three things we should celebrate about social media, which all seemed to be the same basic point about consumers becoming able to produce. He went on to offer three negatives.
I take his point about the ‘social narcissism’ that can develop. When I saw ‘the shift to video’ listed as one of his negatives, I expected this to be a point about the extra time and financial commitment needed to do video, putting it out of the reach of most potential contributors. But no – his point was about the continuation of soundbite culture. And I’m really not sure about his third point, regarding the ‘production/consumption divide’. Guess what – most people aren’t blogging. Would we ever expect them to? For me, the new tools provide a means for people with something to say, to say it. Those most likely to use the tools, I’d suggest, now have the tools.
Which leads neatly on to Tom Steinberg from MySociety. Several speakers would later pick up Tom’s points that ‘it’s the tools which are transformational’; they argued that it’s the people who are transformational. But I think Tom had it right. It does take both… but we already have the people. Yes, it takes a train driver to drive a train, but all those people stuck at Reading station are going nowhere unless there’s a train in the first place. (And yes, I had a tricky journey home.)
Cass Sunstein‘s closing session didn’t sound gripping – does the web need a constitution? Er, no it doesn’t, end of. But his talk was mainly about the problem of group polarisation – where basically, if you put a bunch of likeminded people in a group, they tend to make each other more extreme. I’ve since found a paper he wrote several years ago on this topic, but obviously, the social web gives it a whole new dimension.
His references to Chris Anderson’s Long Tail theory, and the need for ‘unexpected encounters with diversity’ struck a chord. We need public spaces, he said, where views can be expressed and exchanged – and you might come away thinking differently. It was suggested that the BBC might be that public space in the UK, but that previous attempts had fallen flat. I’m inclined to agree: there is a gap in the market for something like this. I guess Comment Is Free comes closest… but the Guardian brand means it’s off-limits to many. It sounds like Matthew Taylor has plans in this field for the RSA itself.
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French lead the way on 'web 2.0' participation
I’ve written a review for the BT Broadband blog of the recent DoubleClick Touchpoint survey (PDF) into the online habits of UK, French, German and American residents, concentrating mainly on the commercial data. It’s hardly a surprise that the web is our main source of information before making major purchases, but it’s good to have some hard numbers to back up the gut instinct.
There are a couple of extra points worth mentioning, in the context of stuff I bang on about here, which haven’t made the BT piece… the French are really slow to pick up on text messaging, far behind the Brits and Germans, and on a par with the Americans. But they’re much more open to watching online video, reading blogs and consuming RSS feeds. Still, nearly 30% of Brits read blogs often or sometimes, with more than 10% writing one too, and nearly a quarter participating in ‘social networking’. 18% of us are hip to the RSS thing, and 16% listen to podcasts.
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Video-led marketing and the demand for honesty
I’ve mentioned before that I’m a big fan of video interviews (preferably one-take, impromptu point-and-shoot affairs) as a marketing tool. Now I see 37signals, one of the heroes of web 2.0, are getting in on the act.
Why did we decide to do these videos? Benefits over features. Tours and screenshots do a great job of explaining what Basecamp does but we wanted to do a better job of showing how it makes people’s lives better. Video turned out to be a great way to do that. There’s nothing like seeing real people talking about how easy Basecamp is to use and how valuable it is to their businesses. These people talk about how they love Basecamp and we’re proud of that.
I’m a bit surprised to see them opt for professional production, though. It makes things look too slick, too well-prepared, too post-produced. In a world sick of spin, you inevitably wonder if they’re just showing the positive bits. Real-time, raw, unedited video requires either great acting talent, or honesty. And honesty is in high demand these days.
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BBC political editors blog frenzy
You’d be forgiven for missing it… but the BBC’s political editors in Scotland and Northern Ireland are now blogging. Mark Devenport is being particularly enthusiastic, averaging two or three items per day. In Wales, political editor Betsan Powys is continuing to post to her Election blog… presumably because it still hasn’t finished yet.
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Anyone going to the RSA on Friday?
I am going to be attending Friday’s conference at the RSA about society, internet and government after all. If any loyal readers are also going to be there, do say ‘hi’. There’s still time to register; it’s free, and it runs from 1pm to 5pm.
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Photosharing meets crimefighting
Worthy of note: the website, launched on Monday, for people to upload holiday snaps taken at the Ocean Club holiday resort, Praia da Luz which might yield clues as to the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.
They want anything in the two weeks before she went missing with ‘people in them who you don’t know as opposed to scenery shots or pictures of just your own family’. It’s a fairly basic file upload facility; pictures will be imported into the Childbase computer which (according to Sky’s Martin Brunt) will ‘scan the photos and recognise anyone who appears a number of times. It can also compare images with known sex offenders, both British and Portuguese.’
What has happened to that family is truly horrible – and gets worse as each day goes by. But I still have a very uncomfortable feeling about certain elements of the coverage.
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I don't get Facebook (yet)
I only joined Facebook a few days ago, and only then because I felt it was something I had to know about. So far, I’m disappointed. It doesn’t seem to be great at anything. The photo-sharing element is mediocre. The ‘notes’ feature falls well short of any serious blogging application. The calendar element is OK, I suppose. RSS support is patchy. Maybe it only shows its true worth when you throw your entire life at it, and force all your friends and family to do likewise. Seems to go against the grain of other 2.0 apps, which allow – and sometimes encourage – you to consume the data outside. Or perhaps I just need more mates. (Charlie Brooker’s take on Facebook is worth a read, incidentally.)
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iPods for civil servants: a great idea
I actually think it’s a very good thing for the Home Office to be giving out 20 video iPods for work purposes (as reported in The Times). It’s a perfectly valid method to distribute ‘e-learning’, via bitesize chunks of video content. I bet it’s more efficient than gathering senior staff into a conference suite somewhere, several times a year – and realistically, £9,000 is a blip in the overall budget.
Would critics prefer that staff brought their own iPods in from home, and charged them up with work-based content via the office network (and GSI)? Ask the IT managers if they’d be happy with the implications of doing so. In a lot of places, it’s a gross misconduct offence.
