Listen up y’all

June 6, 2008 at 11:47 pm · Filed under broadcasting, media, social media, tv

Summing up keepfakingit’s previous post: Broadcasters have for years in the UK shown nothing but contempt for their audience. Despite their audience paying their wages, the corporations have insisted that the AUDIENCE PAYS (through SMS, premium rate calls etc.) every time they communicate with the broadcaster. This is ridiculous.

Let’s examine a few facts here. I recently wrote about Clay Shirky’s assertion that people are clawing back some of the time they spend with their TVs and putting that into more creative endevours. Shirky calls this Social Surplus. As someone who works for a broadcaster and sees far too much TV, keepfakingit calls this common sense.

Now let’s look at a trend that’s on a huge upward curve in the US and is following suit in Europe, the simultaneous usage of PC and television. TV ownership per household is somewhere north of 3 right now (can’t find a reference so you’ll just have to trust me on this one) PC ownership is over two and rising fast. Something’s got to give right? According to Shirky there are only so many hours in the day we can consume (or create) media. Well not really. In ever increasing numbers people are watching TV whilst warming their knees with their 15″ Latitudes. IMing and Facebooking whilst contemplating which buffoon to vote out of Big Brother, by text of course.

Right now I don’t see any major broadcasters attempting to tap this in a meaningful way. Yes the news channels ask and use UGC in ever increasing amounts, but live TV has not yet embraced IM, Twitter or even simple commenting and ratings systems.

Dual users are still in the minority but there’s one breakthrough coming that’s about to push dual usage into the ascendancy. Usable, affordable mobile internet. When everyone’s got virtually free bandwidth in their pocket thanks to wi-fi devices, all of a sudden everyone has a conduit to shout abuse at Davina McCall.

And they won’t have to pay for doing it.
All of a sudden Soccer AM’s MySpace profile or Facebook group can have a meaningful roll before, during, and after each show.

It’s time for the producers and creatives involved in mainstream television to start listening at their viewers level, and maybe even start listening where their viewers are talking. With SMS and premium line voting now almost untouchable in the UK, what have broadcasters got to lose?

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Social media toolsets: The US vs UK

May 31, 2008 at 11:52 pm · Filed under communication, social media

I’m halfway through Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff’s Forrester backed study on social technologies “Groundswell“. Their definition of groundswell:

A social trend in which people use technologies to get the things they need from each other, rather than from traditional institutions like corporations.

100 pages in there hasn’t been anything earth shattering in terms of unexpected insight, though the case studies and different approaches of different industry are worth reading. What is great is the raw data that Li and Bernoff have access to and expose.

From a European perspective some of this data is more than a little troubling. Some hard facts:

Percentage of online consumers using RSS in 2007:

• US: 8%
• UK: 3%
• France: 5%
• Germay: 4%

And some figures on blog and UGC usage (US - UK):

• Read blogs: 25% - 10%
• Comment on blogs: 14% - 4%
• Write a blog: 11% - 3%
• Upload UGC video: 8% - 4%

Yet the percentage of users visiting social networking sites is much more evenly balanced with the US at 25% and the UK at 21%.

Again usage rates differ significantly when it comes to participation in discussion forums and postings ratings and reviews:

• Participate in discussion forums: 18% - 12%
• Read ratings and reviews: 25% - 20%
• Post ratings and reviews: 11% - 5%

And again when various social media roles are looked at the level of engagement of UK audiences are roughly half that of US audiences. Why is this? In some markets lack of broadband is cited as a reason, but it doesn’t take a 2 meg connection to use Google Reader. Similarly, engaging in review cites such as CNet isn’t a high bandwidth task.

Is there then sociological reasons at play? Are Brits simply less inclined to both complain and applaud products and services online? Are they less willing to experiment with new media and plaster the results all over Flickr and YouTube? It would appear so but keepfakingit isn’t so sure why.

Li and Bernoff ( or maybe I’ll call them Charlene and Josh, this is after all social media) point to the reasons for participation in groundswell technologies. Going through these let’s see if there are any pointers to this great Atlantic divide. So, we participate to:

1. Keep up friendships (Facebook etc.)
2. Make new friends, lovers, one night stands (Facebook etc. again)
3. Succumb to pressure from existing friends
4. Paying it forward (you use a review site so feel eventually obliged to submit your own review)
5. The altruistic impulse
6. The prurient impulse (Showing off is fun)
7. The creative impulse (UGC etc.)
8. The validation impulse (we all want to be assured of our place in the world, the rationale behind many blogs)
9. The affinity impulse (Big use case for sports fans).

Nothing in the above jumps out at me as the reason behind this US/UK drift. Let me know your thoughts.

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