How the Crowd is Changing the News (SXSW)

Here at SXSW, we attended the session "CrowdControl: Changing the Face of Media or Hype?" At the end, one of the speakers asked the crowd, which they thought it was. Almost everybody responded with the former, while maybe one or two raised their hand for hype.

I think it's pretty clear that citizen journalism, the real topic of this discussion, is changing and has already changed the face of media. There are varying opinions on if that is for better or for worse, but the very fact that these opinions are able to be voiced is a testament to the stength of the crowd.

On the panel were Pete Cashmore of Mashable, Randi Zuckerberg from Facebook, Lila King from CNN.com, Jason Rzepka from MTV, and Joseph Kingsbury of Text100 Public relations.

Much of the conversation was centered around trust. Who can you trust? How do you know you can trust them? How do you know these citizen reporters don't have an agenda? Things of this nature.

Cashmore says brand still plays a role in trust, and that you should have some level of skepticism when a story comes from something like Twitter (assuming you are unfamiliar with the source). His point is accentuated by the fact that here at at SXSW, a massive Twitter hoax regarding Conan O'Brien was perpetrated from Digg's SXSW party the other night.

"People need to become more educated consumers of news" and "learn what you can trust and what you can't," says Cashmore. That is probably easier said than done, and possibly asking a lot of the average person that doesn't reside inside the news industry, but he's right. If people don't want to be misled or misinformed, they need to not only consider the source, but acknowledge multiple sources before totally abandoning the grain of salt.

This actually reminds me of something Andrew Lih said in another session I attended this past weekend about Wikipedia. His advice to journalists (as well as students) was that there is "no better starting point" than Wikipedia, and "no worse ending point."

Cashmore made a point about Wikipedia in that it is controlled by a few people, so it's not exactly the crowd like Twitter is the crowd, or like the Blogosphere is the crowd, but I think the point runs parallel. A tweet may be a great starting point for a piece of news, but it should not be the ending point in acceptance of fact.

The crowd is there for balance. The more viewpoints that are available, the more a reader is able to take away from a story. When points are debated, more info is revealed, and even if some of that doesn't sit well with you, you can use your own judgment to assess where you come down on the subject at hand. This comes back to Cashmore's statement about becoming a more educated consumer of news. Perhaps we only need to strive for a better educated public in general, and the quality of so-called citizen journalism will grow.

That should be easy.

For more from SXSW, check out our exclusive interviews at live.webpronews.com.

Marketing Should Be About “And” Rather Than “Or”

You'll often notice than when a new web service or marketing strategy gets starts getting some buzz, it will often be referred to as a "_____ killer", when in most cases this turns out to be greatly exaggerated or just plain wrong. For marketers, it's important not to get too caught up in this kind of mentality, because as long as you have an audience and they can still be reached through some channel, that channel is alive and well.

WebProNews had a conversation with Google's Avinash Kaushik and former Googler Vanessa Fox just after the State of the Search Union keynote at SMX West last week, and talked about this very principle. Kaushik put it well in that marketers who think of their strategies in terms of "and" will win, and those who think in terms of "or" will lose. In other words, your apt to find greater success in combining strategies than focusing too heavily on one.

This seems like a fairly obvious point, but it's easy to get caught up in the hype of the moment, and place too much emphasis on the importance of whatever that hype may be centered around. That's not to say said hype should be ignored, because new strategies can certainly increase brand awareness, conversions, etc, if you can leverage them in a way that makes sense for your business. However, it's important not to shift too much focus always from channels that are already working well for you, or those you are still improving upon that show promise.

As discussed in the clip above, the lines are blurring among types of marketing, and it's becoming more and more about simply "marketing" rather than just "search marketing" or "social media marketing" or fill-in-the-blank marketing.

Google Announces Another Android Device Giveaway

Game developers - or at least the game developers who attend the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco - are likely to hold Google and Android in much higher regard after March 9th and 10th.  Google's announced that it will give away quite a lot of Android devices on those dates.

Google's employed this strategy to build hype before.  You may remember, for example, that the 4,000 or so people who attended Google I/O received HTC Magics free of charge.  Most folks were quite grateful (and those who weren't probably became happier after selling the phones for $800 on eBay).

Now, as stated on the Android Developers Blog, "Google and GDC will . . . be providing complimentary Android phones to attendees who register for All Access or Tutorials and Summits passes by the Early Bird deadline of February 4, 2010.  Qualified attendees will receive either a Nexus One or a Verizon Droid by Motorola, so they can quickly apply what they learn from the various Android sessions."

Nice, eh?  And relatively smart, too.  Games are popular with all sorts of people, so if game developers create some good ones for Android, the mobile operating system might seem a little more attractive as a result.

A note to cynics: the only real "catch" concerning this offer appears to be that the Droid and Nexus One recipients "may be asked to take a short 10-15 question survey, post-GDC."

Have You Read This?

> Motorola Slates 20-30 Android Phones For 2010 Release

> Google Delays Launch Of Android Phones In China

> Google Tries To Carve Out Its Place In Mobile

The Young Are More Likely To Respond To Mobile Advertising

It appears that it is finally safe to say that if mobile hasn’t completely arrived it is certainly in the room and recognized for its potential. Should we declare 2010 as the ‘Year of Mobile’? Sure, why not. There will be others and honestly it means nothing to hype it. Let’s look at what’s actually going on at street level.

Over at the ZDNet’s  Between the Lines blog, Larry Dignan tells us about a survey from the Bernstein Research’s Jeffrey Lindsay did some research among 360 smartphone users that follows up some initial research he did in the mobile advertising space. Here is some of the information that you may find interesting

• 67 percent of respondents said that smartphones increased their Internet usage for personal use and 45 percent said work related usage rose.
• 95 percent of users use the same search engine for the PC and mobile.
• 37 percent of respondents say they are clicking on more paid search links and seeing more display adds. Users 18 to 34 found mobile ads to be more relevant than their PC counterparts. Older users panned mobile ads across the board.

As Dignan points out, I agree the major piece of data to be gleaned from this is the fact the younger the mobile user is the more likely they will be responsive to mobile ads. The older users referred to breaks out in this chart below.

I’m not surprised by this and I hope the rest of the industry will take heed. When it comes to mobile there may not be an audience unless your product or service skews young. This is likely to change over time but for now it’s the younger set that will allow mobile and advertising to be used as a phrase while others think that the separation of the two is the better way to go.

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