“Corpsourcing” – an important part of journalistic crowdsourcing

Nov222012
Posted by dojan

When it comes to journalistic working methods, are you familiar with “corpsourcing”? It’s like (or a part of) crowdsourcing, but journalists are using the “corporate staff”, instead of just the “crowd”, in order to gather information and collaborate with the sources.

As you all know, in journalism, crowdsourcing use to be the collaboration between a journalist (media) and a bunch of people (a crowd) who’s involved and engaged in the same topics that the journalist is working on. Or as Jeff Howe defined the term in general in the article “the Rise of Crowdsourcing” for Wired Magazine, back in June 2006:

“Crowdsourcing is the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated employee and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call.”

But does crowdsourcing really work? Oh yes, if you’ve got the crowd’s attention and cooperativeness, it can help you in a way you couldn’t even dream of.

A popular example of crowdsourcing is how contestants were using the audience in order to answer correctly to questions, in that TV show “Who want’s to be a millionaire”. Co-founder of Rubber Republic, Chris Quigley, wrote about the phenomena in a blog post a couple of years ago. He got the inspiration from the book “The Smart Swarm: How to Work Efficiently, Communicate Effectively, and Make Better Decisions Using the Secrets of Flocks, Schools, and Colonies” by Peter Miller.

Chris says that “the book looks at how humans can learn from the collective intelligent behaviour of animals – in particular, how we can learn from animals (like bees and termites) swarm behaviour: i.e. how they manage to self-organise in such huge numbers”.

The bit Chris found particularly interesting was the discussion around harnessing the wisdom of the crowds; the fact that the crowd is more intelligent than the individual.

So when it comes to the show “Who wants to be a millionaire” it became quite obvious that you should use the audience in order to get the right answers. The audience was correct 91% of the time, unlike the experts who did it right only 65% of the time.

Another great example is the classic anecdote from the book “The wisdom of crowds” by James Surowiecki where “eight hundred people participated in a contest to estimate the weight of a slaughtered and dressed ox, at a country fair in Plymouth, 1906. And the mean of all eight hundred guesses, at 1197 pounds, was closer than any of the individual guesses (among them experts) to the true weight of 1198 pounds.

And if your convert this into journalism, check out this “advert for the Guardian’s open journalism, screened for the first time on 29 February 2012, imagines how we might cover the story of the three little pigs in print and online. Follow the story from the paper’s front page headline, through a social media discussion and finally to an unexpected conclusion”.

But “not all crowds (groups) are wise, like for an example mobs”. According to Surowiecki, four key criteria separate wise crowds from irrational ones:

  1. Diversity of opinion – Each person should have private information even if it’s just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts.
  2. Independence – People’s opinions aren’t determined by the opinions of those around them.
  3. Decentralization – People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge.
  4. Aggregation – Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision.

I doubt that the “corporate staff” meets all of these criteria, but it doesn’t really matters, as long as journalists don’t expect the truth and nothing but the truth from these people. But rather look at “the corporate staff” as a source who can shed some light over things they didn’t know and/or understood.

Mind you, I’m not talking about journalists ability to send requests to a group of PR-pros, like they can do on “Help a Reporter”, “Responce Source”, among others. With all respect for Peter Shankman’s and Daryl Willcox great services, but I’m talking about Surowiecki’s last mentioned criteria; the overall mechanism for “turning individual judgments into a collective decision”. I’m talking about all those mutual and collaborative processes beyond boundaries, between journalists and all kind of employees and corporate representatives from all kind of companies and organizations, resulting in reasonable basis for decisions, and further research.

I call it “corpsourcing” and – yes – that’s just an expression I recently came up with ;-) So don’t worry if you haven’t heard of it before, but do worry a little bit if you’re not being a part of that movement in the near future.

 

Posted in Books, Citizen journalism, Editorial staffs, journalistik, Media, Social network. Tagged with , , , , , , . Comments: Leave a comment

“Google rakes in more ad dollars than U.S print media”

Nov142012
Posted by dojan

This is not only the “Chart of the Day” it’s a “Chart of a traditional media in deep crisis”.

The Statista “Chart of the Day” currently focuses on two sectors: “Media and Technology”, updated daily and featuring the latest statistics from the media, internet, telecommunications and consumer electronics industries in United States. Felix Richter, at Statista, showed us a few days ago what he thought was the “chart of the day”, which shows Google’s advertising revenue since 2004 compared to print ad revenues of U.S. newspapers and magazines.

As you can see, over the past few years, online ads have quickly grown past newspaper and magazine advertising to become the second largest ad medium behind television.

google-s-ad-revenue-since-2004
You will find more statistics at Statista

Felix says:

“We have played with the numbers a little bit and found an interesting piece of information that nicely illustrates how ad markets have changed in the past decade: in the first six months of 2012, Google raked in $20.8 billion in ad revenue, while the whole U.S. print media (newspapers and magazines) generated $19.2 billion from print advertising. That is, Google, a company founded 14 years ago, makes more money from advertising than an industry that has been around for more than a hundred years. Given the fact that Google operates globally, the comparison is obviously unfair and shouldn’t be judged scientifically, but nonetheless it shows how big Google’s ad business really is and how small print advertising has become.”

Not long time ago I wrote the post “Newspaper industry back to where it was in 1950” in which I referred to Newspapers Association of Americas chart of the declining newspaper advertising revenue stream since 1950. Compared to the Google significantly increased revenue since they took off, it’s nothing but a huge paradigm shift. Exciting future ahead!

Google's quarterly revenue from 2008 to 2012
You will find more statistics at Statista

Thank you for the tips, Erik Hörnfeldt, member of “Journalistbubblan” at Facebook.

Posted in Ads, Adsense, AdWords, Global Economy, Google, Marketing, Media, Paper and magazines, söktjänster. Tagged with , , , , , , , , . Comments: 2 Comments

Why PR-pros should care about Google Author Rank

Nov032012
Posted by dojan

It’s not only about content anymore. It’s about authors as well. Which partly means it’s not just your content that will show up in the search results, but you as the author. And your ranking, will depend on who you are, and what you say.

I recently read a post by Denis Pinsky in Forbes who says “Why journalists should care about Google author rank…”. And that applies for PR pros as well. Because when it comes to PR, I use to say that content isn’t king – but you might be. Chris Brogan wrote a post in question years ago, in which he says: “Content is currency. You’re the king.” And that’s exactly what the Google team has known for years. And that’s the basis for Google Author Rank as well.

We are all aware of that the authors and their content creation lives in symbiosis. But still, I would like to make a point of that content is nothing but an extension of people themselves. I want to emphasize how important it is to be someone before one start express oneself. It’s like… “I hear what you’re saying, but who are you, really? Can I trust you?”

When you’re looking for information, you don’t just want information? You want information from authors you know and/or you can trust. You want them both. And that’s what Google Author Rank is about.

A lots of authors show up in the search results these days

Content vs author has been a hot topic for quite a while. As you know, Google’s “page rank” is an absolutely outstanding algorithm to provide you with relevant information that matters. The authors have been secondary – so far.

But a couple of years ago Google began to highlight content creators in search results. Why? Because they realized that the authorship is a great way to identify and highlight high-quality content. Plus, the web is centered around people. People discovering content on the web often want to learn more about its author, see other content by that author, and even interact with the author”.

Google says in a blog post:
“Many of you create great content on the web, and we work hard to make that content discoverable on Google. Today (6/28/11) we will start highlighting the people creating this content in Google.com search results.

Google started to support authorship markup for web search – “a way to connect authors with their content on the web.”

Google says: “We are experimenting with using this data to help people find content from great authors in our search results.”

Even the Google Panda algorithm takes into account who’s been the author; if an article is written by an expert or enthusiast who knows the topic well, or is it more shallow in nature?

This is of course among other things a result of an evolution of the social web. A web powered by social media features of all kind, where anyone can be some kind of an author.

But Google has never really succeeded to supply the market with such a features and services. Google buzz failed. Google Wave failed. But Google+ seems to be an successful exception. And with Google+, the Google social search became a reality as “Google Plus Your World” – content from people you know – remember?

The 10th of January this year Google wrote in its official blog:
“Google Search has always been about finding the best results for you. Sometimes that means results from the public web, but sometimes it means your personal content or things shared with you by people you care about. These wonderful people and this rich personal content is currently missing from your search experience. Search is still limited to a universe of web pages created publicly, mostly by people you’ve never met. Today we’re changing that by bringing your world, rich with people and information, into search.”

Google was trying to transform “Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships” and addes three new features:

  1. Personal Results, which enable you to find information just for you, such as Google+ photos and posts—both your own and those shared specifically with you, that only you will be able to see on your results page;
  2. Profiles in Search, both in autocomplete and results, which enable you to immediately find people you’re close to or might be interested in following; and,
  3. People and Pages, which help you find people profiles and Google+ pages related to a specific topic or area of interest, and enable you to follow them with just a few clicks. Because behind most every query is a community.

Now – Google has taken the search experience to the next level. And I’m not talking about Google Knowledge graph (which is an amazing part of the search by the way) but Google Author Rank.

Google Author rank “means your reputation as a content creator will directly influence your page rank within Google search results. Each content provider will have their work graded, and it’s these grades that Google will use as information about how useful one’s content is within the big Google engine”, explains Pinsky the Google efforts in Forbes, and continues:

“One of the primary issues with the inherent way that search engines currently operate is that they are heavily reliant on links. In theory this would show that the site is offering valued content that other people highly rate. The problem is that links can be manipulated via various linking schemes, so low-quality content can get high-ranked positions in results. Author Rank however gives Google another powerful variable in making sure that only the most respected and authoritarian content on any given subject rises to the top of Google. Author Rank will also work on individual topics, meaning an author may rank very low in certain topics, but very high in others.”

So if you’re a PR pro, you should consider Google’s over 200 ranking factors which determines how you as a content creator will be ranked in organic search. Check out Mike Arnesen’s factors that Google likely to use in their calculation:

  • The average PageRank of an author’s content.
  • The average number of +1s and Google+ shares the author’s content receives.
  • The number of Google+ circles an author is in.
  • Reciprocal connections to other high AuthorRank authors.
  • The number and authority of sites an author’s content has been published to.
  • The engagement level of an author’s native Google+ content (i.e., posts to Google+).
  • The level of on-site engagement for an author’s content (i.e., comments and author’s responses to comments)
  • Outside authority indicators (e.g., the presence of a Wikipedia page).
  • YouTube subscribers and/or engagement on authored videos (speculation: multiple-attribution author markup for YouTube videos coming soon).
  • Any number of importance/authority metrics on social networks that Google deems trustworthy enough (Twitter, Quora, LinkedIn, SlideShare, etc.).
  • Real world authority indicators like published works on Google Books or Google Scholar.

Pr Consultant Stephen Waddington has realized that, wrote a blog post about it and refers to a great explanation of Google Author rank by James Carson (Bauer Media) at Brighton SEO in April 2012:

To be an author from Google Author Rank perspective, you must implement the “rel=“author” markup code” into your “media” (blog what ever). And look what happened to my post after I did:

Well, I realize this is a personalization of my search result, but still… Implement you mark up code, and be a great author even from Googles perspective. Follow Kevin Getch instructions in his post “How to Implement rel=“author” for Enhanced Search Results”.

Posted in Google, PR, PR 2.0, Social media, Social network, söktjänster, web 2.0. Tagged with , , , , , , , , , . Comments: 2 Comments

Content is not king – but you might be

Oct122012
Posted by dojan

I recently read a blog post by Jeff Bullas, who says “New Study Reveals: Content is King… Not Social Media”. The conclusion refers to the Online Publishers Association’s (OPA) analysis of its Internet Activity Index (IAI) which shows that the “content sites continue to be a place where consumers spend the majority of their online time”.

OPA produce research into online advertising and media consumption with the goal of advancing the online publishing industry, where the Internet Activity Index is a new way of looking at consumer engagement online.

This six-year analysis of the Internet Activity Index is a monthly gauge of the time being spent with:

  • Content (Sites like NYTimes.com, ESPN.com and Edmunds.com (Content sites)
  • Communications (websites offering email, and Instant messaging)
  • Community (Facebook, MySpace and LinkedIn)
  • Commerce (such as Ebay, Amazon)
  • Search (Google, Yahoo, Bing etc)

In his blog post, Jeff Bullas came up with five key findings from the study:

  1. Internet users continue to spend a majority of their “time” with Content sites, up from 34 percent of total time spent in 2003 to 42 percent in 2009, a 24 percent increase
  2. Emergence of Community (it wasn’t measured in 2003 as it wasn’t statistically significant enough and not on the radar)
  3. Content is still king; the content rich sites continue to be a place where consumers spend the majority of their online time and provide an environment for brand marketers to reach and engage with consumers despite the emergence of  community sites like Facebook, LinkedIn and MySpace
  4. Community sites are reducing the share of online time by communications sites due to community sites ability to offer the same activities such as email and instant messaging more efficiently
  5. Time spent with Search doubled

This is of course good news for both Jeff and me, who are working with content marketing and PR. I guess that’s one of the reasons for why we are so committed to this topic. And it doesn’t surprise me that Jeff’s key take away is the importance to optimize and utilize content for social media. I completely agree.

But I would add a couple of reflections in this matter.

First, I believe there’s too much talk about the importance of great content, for the benefit of being remarkable by organisations themselves. I know Jeff are very much aware of being great is the basis of great content. But still, I’ve seen so many bad practices of organisations which aren’t. And that’s not only a bad idea, it might be devastating. From my perspective, I believe organisations should focus more of being “remarkable”, as Seth Godins says in his book “Purple Cow”. “Remarkable marketing is the art of building things worth noticing right into your product or service.”

Second; what’s the difference between “content sites” and “communities” these days really? I mean isn’t Facebook all about content? What about Pinterst, Tumblr, and other content curation social sites, are these content sites or communities? Probably both?
No, NYTimes is not a community – yet. But Mashable might be… almost, when they launched Mashable Follow – their new “social layer”? However, most of the content these days is published in some kind of social context. And most of todays news items are the basis for discussions.

Furthermore; if community sites are reducing the share of online time by communications sites due to community sites ability to offer the same activities, then we’re not spending less time to communicate, we just do it with new kind of communication sites, don’t we? It’s just a merge. Like the merge of Social and Search, right?
When we’re looking for solutions on our problems, we do search for them, on social networks as well as on the web? Or both on the same time… social search e.g Google Search – Plus your world.

Posted in Google, Information society, internet, kommunikation, Marketing, Media, Social media, Social network, web 2.0. Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , . Comments: 5 Comments

Newspaper industry back to where it was in 1950

Sep172012
Posted by dojan

You guys that still believe there’s a future for newspapers business model in its traditional form (online “papers” included) – this graph is for you.

Yes – this is all about U.S so far. U.S papers have obviously taken the first hit. Many newspapers have been knocked out over there. And more will follow. But I guess the rest of the international paper industry will follow. In U.S the print advertising revenue fell by $2.1 billion in 2011. The newspaper industry are only worth about $34 billion yearly, down from $59 billion in 2000.

Check out the discussion in this matter in Inside Story between Clay Shirky – professor at interactive telecoms dept in NYU, Andrea Stone at Huffington post and Paul Farhi, media reporter for The Washington Post.

 

Posted in Ads, Editorial staffs, journalistik, Media, Media Business, Newsroom. Tagged with , , , , , , , , , . Comments: Leave a comment