Although little attention is paid to this important phenomenon, the blogosphere is turning global in a big way. This "blogalization" is led, surprisingly, by Japan's internet mobile users. As of today more people are writing blogs in Japanese than in any other language, and more blogs are being read by Japanese, surpassing the Americans, Koreans, British and French.
A new blogging study, conducted by StrategyOne, shows that: In an average week, almost three quarters (74%) of the Japanese Internet users who participated in the survey said they read blogs at least once a week. This is significantly more compared to the other countries studied, with just under a half (43%) in South Korea, just under a quarter in the UK (23%) and France (22%) and just over a quarter in the USA (27%).
In Japan only a minority claimed to not read any blogs (26%), far less than other countries such as South Korea (57%), the UK (73%), France (68%) and the USA (69%), according to the study. Japan has the highest proportion (25%) of people who read blogs every day, compared to all countries participating in this research.
English, while being the language of the majority of early bloggers, has fallen to less than a third of all blog posts today. About 37% of the today blog posts are writing in Japanese and 15% are in Chinese, according to the latest data from Technorati, the leading blogs search engine that currently tracking 72.3 million blogs worldwide.
Japanese bloggers appear to write shorter posts more often, probably as a result of blogging from mobile phones. Today, more than 70 million people in Japan are using their mobile devices to surf in the internet, partly as a result of the popularity of mobile Internet services like NTT DoCoMo's i-mode.
52% of users in Japan use the mobile web regularly, compared to a 10% in Europe, according to a new research by Forrester. “When it comes to mobile services, Japan is still ahead of Europe by a whopping five years, even though operators in both regions introduced mobile Internet services at roughly the same time in the late 1990s,” said Forrester analyst Niek van Veen.
“With the incredible growth of the blogosphere, brands and media companies worldwide realize that their communications environment is also in for big changes,” said Peter Hirshberg, Technorati chairman. “The clout that bloggers have developed the U.S. is going global. The lessons that marketers have begun to learn here - get a clue, listen, participate, engage - will soon apply everywhere.”
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Do we really understand Web 2.0 jargon?
Web 2.0 was the word on everybody's mouth in the TheMarker COM.VENTION conference. But putting aside the fact that nobody was really able to define the phrase, it seems that none understand what it really means for our daily digital life.
What drove me to this thought was audience response to a video clip, made by Lior Katz from Wishood, which was presented by Yossi Vardi at the beginning of the COM.VENTION. This seriously funny video clip, called Supermarket 2.0, attmepted to illustrate with significant amount of humor how the Web 2.0 revolution will affect our shopping habits in the future. However, all but a few in the audience gazed at the screen with blank stares. They simply didn't get it.
Understanding humor requires deep understanding of the terminology and jargon. It seems that everybody can talk about Web 2.0. Very few understand it deep enough to laugh about it. Let alone use it.
Supermarket 2.0 - For more funny videos, click here
What drove me to this thought was audience response to a video clip, made by Lior Katz from Wishood, which was presented by Yossi Vardi at the beginning of the COM.VENTION. This seriously funny video clip, called Supermarket 2.0, attmepted to illustrate with significant amount of humor how the Web 2.0 revolution will affect our shopping habits in the future. However, all but a few in the audience gazed at the screen with blank stares. They simply didn't get it.
Understanding humor requires deep understanding of the terminology and jargon. It seems that everybody can talk about Web 2.0. Very few understand it deep enough to laugh about it. Let alone use it.
Supermarket 2.0 - For more funny videos, click here
Friday, March 16, 2007
Is traditional journalism becoming irrelevant?
Do you think traditional journalism is becoming irrelevant? To what extent do journalists still have a role in creating a broad agenda of common knowledge? Journalism is becoming a smaller part of people’s information mix and the press is no longer gatekeeper over what the public knows, according to a new report, The State of the News Media 2007 by the Project for Excellence in Journalism.
The annual report on American Journalism is trying to answer some of the most important questions relating to the status and health of the old media and I think they came up with a very interesting conclusions.
“Journalists have reacted relatively slowly. They are only now beginning to re-imagine their role. Their companies failed to see “search” as a kind of journalism. Their industry has spent comparatively little on R&D. They have been tentative about pressing for new economic models, and that has left them fearful and defensive. Some of the most interesting experiments in new journalism continue to come from outside the profession — sites such as Global Voices, which mixes approved volunteer “reporters” from around the world with professional editors.”
Te report conclude that in a sense all news organizations are becoming more niche players, basing their appeal less on how they cover the news and more on what they cover. “The definitions of enemy and ally in the news business are changing. Newspapers have begun to partner, for instance, with classified-job-listing Web sites they once denounced, brought together by mutual fear of free sites such as Craigslist.”
The broad context outlined in earlier report of this organization remains the same: the transformation facing journalism is epochal, as momentous as the invention of television or the telegraph, perhaps on the order of the printing press itself. The effect is more than just audiences migrating to new delivery systems. Technology is redefining the role of the citizen — endowing the individual with more responsibility and command over how he or she consumes information — and that new role is only beginning to be understood.
The new major trends in 2007 report, which in my mind are the most fascinating, and generate guidelines for the future, are:
1. News organizations need to do more to think through the implications of this new era of shrinking ambitions. The move toward building audience around “franchise” areas of coverage or other traits is a logical response to fragmentation and can, managed creatively, have journalistic value. To a degree, journalism’s problems are oversupply, too many news organizations doing the same thing. But something gained means something lost, especially as newsrooms get smaller. There is already evidence that basic monitoring of local government has suffered. Regional concerns, as opposed to local, are likely to get less coverage. Matters with widespread impact but little audience appeal, always a challenge, seem more at risk of being unmonitored.
2. The evidence is mounting that the news industry must become more aggressive about developing a new economic model. The signs are clearer that advertising works differently online than in older media. Finding out about goods and services on the Web is an activity unto itself, like using the yellow pages, and less a byproduct of getting news, such as seeing a car ad during a newscast. The consequence is that advertisers may not need journalism as they once did, particularly online. Already the predictions of advertising growth on the Web are being scaled back. That has major implications, Among them, news organizations can broaden what they consider journalistic function to include activities such as online search and citizen media, and perhaps even liken their journalism to anchor stores at a mall, a major reason for coming but not the only one. Perhaps most important, the math suggests they almost certainly must find a way to get consumers to pay for digital content. The increasingly logical scenario is not to charge the consumer directly. Instead, news providers would charge Internet providers and aggregators licensing fees for content. News organizations may have to create consortiums to make this happen. And those fees would likely add to the bills consumers pay for Internet access. But the notion that the Internet is free is already false. Those who report the news just aren’t sharing in the fees.
3. Blogging is on the brink of a new phase that will probably include scandal, profitability for some, and a splintering into elites and non-elites over standards and ethics. Corporate public-relations efforts are beginning to use blogs as well, often covertly. What gives blogging its authenticity and momentum — its open access — also makes it vulnerable to being used and manipulated. At the same time, some of the most popular bloggers are already becoming businesses or being assimilated by establishment media. All this is likely to cause blogging to lose some of its patina as citizen media. To protect themselves, some of the best-known bloggers are already forming associations, with ethics codes, standards of conduct and more. The paradox of professionalizing the medium to preserve its integrity as an independent citizen platform is the start of a complicated new era in the evolution of the blogosphere.
4. While journalists are becoming more serious about the Web, no clear models of how to do journalism online really exist yet, and some qualities are still only marginally explored. The root media no longer strictly define a site’s character. The Web sites of the Washington Post and the New York Times, for instance, are more dissimilar than the papers are in print. The Post, by our count, was beginning to have more in common with some sites from other media. The field is still highly experimental, with an array of options, but it can be hard to discern what one site offers, in contrast to another. And some of the Web’s potential abilities seem less developed than others. Sites have done more, for instance, to exploit immediacy, but they have done less to exploit the potential for depth.
If some of you still want to work for the news media industry, you must have to start reading this great report, soon. It won’t be easy! The full report is comprehensive, totaling more than 160,000 words.
The annual report on American Journalism is trying to answer some of the most important questions relating to the status and health of the old media and I think they came up with a very interesting conclusions.
“Journalists have reacted relatively slowly. They are only now beginning to re-imagine their role. Their companies failed to see “search” as a kind of journalism. Their industry has spent comparatively little on R&D. They have been tentative about pressing for new economic models, and that has left them fearful and defensive. Some of the most interesting experiments in new journalism continue to come from outside the profession — sites such as Global Voices, which mixes approved volunteer “reporters” from around the world with professional editors.”
Te report conclude that in a sense all news organizations are becoming more niche players, basing their appeal less on how they cover the news and more on what they cover. “The definitions of enemy and ally in the news business are changing. Newspapers have begun to partner, for instance, with classified-job-listing Web sites they once denounced, brought together by mutual fear of free sites such as Craigslist.”
The broad context outlined in earlier report of this organization remains the same: the transformation facing journalism is epochal, as momentous as the invention of television or the telegraph, perhaps on the order of the printing press itself. The effect is more than just audiences migrating to new delivery systems. Technology is redefining the role of the citizen — endowing the individual with more responsibility and command over how he or she consumes information — and that new role is only beginning to be understood.
The new major trends in 2007 report, which in my mind are the most fascinating, and generate guidelines for the future, are:
1. News organizations need to do more to think through the implications of this new era of shrinking ambitions. The move toward building audience around “franchise” areas of coverage or other traits is a logical response to fragmentation and can, managed creatively, have journalistic value. To a degree, journalism’s problems are oversupply, too many news organizations doing the same thing. But something gained means something lost, especially as newsrooms get smaller. There is already evidence that basic monitoring of local government has suffered. Regional concerns, as opposed to local, are likely to get less coverage. Matters with widespread impact but little audience appeal, always a challenge, seem more at risk of being unmonitored.
2. The evidence is mounting that the news industry must become more aggressive about developing a new economic model. The signs are clearer that advertising works differently online than in older media. Finding out about goods and services on the Web is an activity unto itself, like using the yellow pages, and less a byproduct of getting news, such as seeing a car ad during a newscast. The consequence is that advertisers may not need journalism as they once did, particularly online. Already the predictions of advertising growth on the Web are being scaled back. That has major implications, Among them, news organizations can broaden what they consider journalistic function to include activities such as online search and citizen media, and perhaps even liken their journalism to anchor stores at a mall, a major reason for coming but not the only one. Perhaps most important, the math suggests they almost certainly must find a way to get consumers to pay for digital content. The increasingly logical scenario is not to charge the consumer directly. Instead, news providers would charge Internet providers and aggregators licensing fees for content. News organizations may have to create consortiums to make this happen. And those fees would likely add to the bills consumers pay for Internet access. But the notion that the Internet is free is already false. Those who report the news just aren’t sharing in the fees.
3. Blogging is on the brink of a new phase that will probably include scandal, profitability for some, and a splintering into elites and non-elites over standards and ethics. Corporate public-relations efforts are beginning to use blogs as well, often covertly. What gives blogging its authenticity and momentum — its open access — also makes it vulnerable to being used and manipulated. At the same time, some of the most popular bloggers are already becoming businesses or being assimilated by establishment media. All this is likely to cause blogging to lose some of its patina as citizen media. To protect themselves, some of the best-known bloggers are already forming associations, with ethics codes, standards of conduct and more. The paradox of professionalizing the medium to preserve its integrity as an independent citizen platform is the start of a complicated new era in the evolution of the blogosphere.
4. While journalists are becoming more serious about the Web, no clear models of how to do journalism online really exist yet, and some qualities are still only marginally explored. The root media no longer strictly define a site’s character. The Web sites of the Washington Post and the New York Times, for instance, are more dissimilar than the papers are in print. The Post, by our count, was beginning to have more in common with some sites from other media. The field is still highly experimental, with an array of options, but it can be hard to discern what one site offers, in contrast to another. And some of the Web’s potential abilities seem less developed than others. Sites have done more, for instance, to exploit immediacy, but they have done less to exploit the potential for depth.
If some of you still want to work for the news media industry, you must have to start reading this great report, soon. It won’t be easy! The full report is comprehensive, totaling more than 160,000 words.
Saturday, March 10, 2007
Brand marketers to increase use social marketing
Advertisers are continuing to increase their activities in social networking sites in hopes of generating viral brand awareness and affinity. 48% of brand marketers plan to use social marketing tactics in 2007, compared to 38% who did so in 2006. According to a new report, “Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape,” by JupiterResearch.
Social networking sites are designed for members to create and post content, usually in the form of profile pages. Youth surfers, especially between 18 and 34, are using social utilities websites like MySpace and Facebook to communicate with each other.
“30% of frequent social networkers trust their peers’ opinions when making a major purchase decision, but only 10% trust advertisements,” said Emily Riley, JupiterResearch Analyst and lead author of the report. “Consequently, brand marketers must harness brand advocates and influentials by providing additional motivation for frequent networkers to engage in social marketing.”
The report forecast that advertiser adoption of social tactics will increase competition for attention on social websites among users who are engaged in intense social activity with their peers. In addition to engaging brand advocates to involve social networkers, brand marketers must target interests and activities that attract frequent networkers, and earn trust by mastering social networking flow.
“As brand marketers increase their use of social tactics, they are competing not only among themselves but also with frequent networkers,” said David Schatsky, President of JupiterKagan. “Brand marketers must not act on social tactics as a broad category but, instead, create unique campaigns for different sites.”
Social networking sites are designed for members to create and post content, usually in the form of profile pages. Youth surfers, especially between 18 and 34, are using social utilities websites like MySpace and Facebook to communicate with each other.
“30% of frequent social networkers trust their peers’ opinions when making a major purchase decision, but only 10% trust advertisements,” said Emily Riley, JupiterResearch Analyst and lead author of the report. “Consequently, brand marketers must harness brand advocates and influentials by providing additional motivation for frequent networkers to engage in social marketing.”
The report forecast that advertiser adoption of social tactics will increase competition for attention on social websites among users who are engaged in intense social activity with their peers. In addition to engaging brand advocates to involve social networkers, brand marketers must target interests and activities that attract frequent networkers, and earn trust by mastering social networking flow.
“As brand marketers increase their use of social tactics, they are competing not only among themselves but also with frequent networkers,” said David Schatsky, President of JupiterKagan. “Brand marketers must not act on social tactics as a broad category but, instead, create unique campaigns for different sites.”
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