Corporate social media use: lessons learnt

Posted on July 4, 2008 | Leave a comment

The iPhone craze is sweeping the world at the moment and it seems like just about everyone wants one (I would too but after breaking my last phone I paid good money for and seeing the same thing happen to a few friends, I am now of the belief that no one should pay money for a mobile phone, ruling the iPhone out for me). In Australia, three out of the four major mobile operators have secured the iPhone – Optus, Vodafone and Telstra. The fourth, 3 Mobile, seems to be having a tougher time doing a deal with Apple and so interestingly, they turned to social media to help them in their quest.

They set up a blog so that they could inform customers of what was happening with their iPhone negotiations with Apple, and so that Apple could hopefully see how much Three’s customers wanted the iPhone. It was an interesting ploy and one that seemed to really polarize people.

Some people were grateful that Three were being so open and honest with them, in keeping them informed about developments on the iPhone and allowing them to interact directly with Three and other Three customers.

Other people saw it as a desperate marketing ploy to get the iPhone on the Three network, and found it pathetic that Three couldn’t have negotiated with Apple themselves and instead had to turn to their customers to try and convince Apple that Three should carry the iPhone.

Others saw it as a cynical marketing exercise, either as a different take on the ‘register your interest in the iPhone’ pages that the other carriers have had, or a move to see just how many customers they might lose if they weren’t to offer the iPhone.

Three is obviously not a ‘media-facing company’ in the traditional sense, not relying on the mainstream media to generate an income. But it would be interesting to see what sort of reaction people would have to a blog set up in a similar fashion by a media-facing organisation like the AFL. If the league was to suddenly directly interface with its fans and ask them questions about elements of the game, would the fans accuse it of admitting that it was out of touch with its public, or would they see it as an opportunity for greater involvement in the development of the game.

The Three blog is shutting down as of 5pm today, having been open for a week, and it is uncertain as to why this is actually happening. Once again this move has polarised people, who are either disappointed that Three hasn’t secured the iPhone yet or a wondering why the blog is really shutting down.

From this experience it is easy to see why media-facing companies are reluctant to embrace social media. There is so much more control possible in the mainstream media, whereas Three has had a real mixed response from this experience – there have been plenty of people singing its phrases, but also plenty of vitriol from people too, and there is a sense that this experience has devalued the Three brand in the eyes of some at least. I wonder if the same thing would happen to the AFL…

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Why blog? (Why bother?)

Posted on July 4, 2008 | 1 Comment

Firstly, hello and welcome back to New Media Mogul after a brief break in transmission there. Don’t ever let it be said that it is easy to maintain a blog. I’ve found that with other pressures on me, and deadlines due, the blog is the first thing that suffers.

It’s interesting, because the question of ‘Why blog?’ or more broadly ‘Why create social media?’ is one of the questions I am attempting to answer in my research. Reflecting on the creation of New Media Mogul, it came about because I wanted a focal point to force me to write on a regular basis and keep my skills sharp as I spent a number of years researching social media.

Lately I’ve been writing for other purposes, mainly working on a paper I’m going to present at the ANZCA conference in Wellington, New Zealand next week so I haven’t needed to turn to the blog to keep the flow of ideas happening.

But people create social media for a variety of reasons and although I’d (somewhat naively) like to think that it’s because they have a great interest in the subject of their media, I don’t think this is always the case.

There are people like me who blog because it is part of their professional practices – they want to be able to write regularly, network with other like-minded bloggers and build up a reputation.

There are people with stories to tell, although with these types, commercial interests often take over. These people will usually end up being freelance writers who will wind up working on a professional blog, or appearing in a newspaper column or else their blog will be turned into a book (I can think of a few times that this last scenario has occured).

There are people who do it for the attention and fame that comes with it, and obviously for the associated dollars too (Just think of celebrity blogger Perez Hilton who I’ve noticed recently has started doing a segment on the Nova radio network).

Then there are people who don’t seem to derive a lot of fame from creating citizen media. So what is the deal with these people? Are they just the unlucky ones whose creations haven’t been quirky or interesting enough to achieve the fame of someone like Perez Hilton, or whose writing or presentation style or other media skills isn’t good enough to do this in a professional sense?

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AFL to players: Don’t read fan blogs

Posted on June 5, 2008 | Leave a comment

Before I begin, I need to give a thankyou to Half Back Flanker for the contents of this blog post. If I hadn’t been reading this site then New Media Mogul might have missed this story entirely.

It would appear that the AFL has advised players not to read fan websites, for fear that the vicious player appraisals could lead to depressions, according to the Herald Sun.

You can read the article for yourselves, but it certainly seems that the AFL is doing nothing to build up a relationship with sports fans who are citizen media makers. It would also seem that the AFL is not very well read on emerging forms of media, as the article is quite clearly referring to people who post on forums, considering at one point that it talks about users stealing the identities of players. As pretty much anyone who uses the Internet would know, the interactions and behaviours within a forum are totally different to those found within a blog.

However on the plus side for sports fans, it does show that they have gained some power through social media, with even the always busy AFL coaches being familiar with fan sites like Big Footy and the ‘viscious cyber-bullying’ that is found within them.

It’s obvious though that the AFL doesn’t see the value in sports fans who are citizen media makers, with the article at one point quoting an AFL official, Pippa Grange, who described them as people ‘with not much better to do’.

New Media Mogul always considered that the AFL would be one of the more progressive sporting organisations when it came to dealing with new media issues, so it is disappointing to see that they have about as much interest in social media, as as much understanding of the potential of the medium as the other sporting organisations covered recently. The International Olympic Committee, with its extremely censored Beijing blogs, is now starting to look quite progressive in its use and encouragement of social media.

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Citizen media and commercialism

Posted on June 4, 2008 | Leave a comment

While the idea behind citizen media might be that anyone has the opportunity to create media, the paradox is that to successfully create media requires dedication and time, something which a lot of people who have to hold down a job, raise a family, or do any of the many other things that keep people occupied, don’t have time for.

For example, New Media Mogul is produced because it is aiding in my completion of a Doctor of Philosophy; in any other circumstances I would probably not be able to find the time to blog about new media issues.

But the point is that the most successful citizen media products are put out by people who either have a business model behind their site or are at least in part, paid to blog. Examples of this are Bryanboy from the fashion industry who is hired by organisers of big fashion shows to provide instantaneous reviews of the shows, and FanFooty from the sporting industry; a site that runs a ‘super coach’ game and provides news and scores on the side.

There is nothing wrong with people making money from their citizen media contributions, but the question is, does this need for commercialism dictate the extent to which citizen media can bring about change on the media landscape.

One of the hopes for citizen media is that it will give a voice to groups and views within the mainstream media that are ignored, underrepresented or misrepresented, yet if commercialism comes into the equation, then perhaps these groups will continue to be as unrepresented as they are in the current, very hegemonic, mainstream media.

Commercialism may also eventually dictate the range of content that citizen journalists choose to cover, if like more traditional media, it becomes driven by advertising. This has been witnessed recently in the mainstream media, with ANZ withdrawing advertising to The Footy Show because of its treatment of women and the Nine Network being subsequently forced to respond by ‘resting’ Sam Newman. If advertisers gain the same sort of power over citizen media producers, then perhaps a form of censorship around citizen media content will take hold.

This is why the effect of citizen journalism on the media landscape needs to be carefully examined, because what appears at first glance to be a more democratic and open minded form of the media, may ultimately be an extension of all proprietary mediums, but simply with a lower entry cost.

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Just how democratic is citizen media?

Posted on May 31, 2008 | Leave a comment

Proponents of citizen media often talk about the democratic ideals inherent in the medium. And sure, it is certainly more democratic than mainstream media because the cost of entry has been lowered significantly. Instead of requiring printing presses and broadcasting infrastructure, to be a player in the citizen media industry, you only need a computer and an Internet connection.

Yet despite social justice efforts like the One Laptop Per Child program, there are many people in this world who have never owned a computer and never will. There are even more people who have never had an Internet connection in their homes and never will.

So a pertinent question, as we move from what I’m calling the proprietary media landscape dominated by corporations to the discursive media landscape made up of corporate media professionals and citizen media makers interacting with each other, is just how far have we really lowered the cost of entry?

Subsequently are we moving from a Western dominated media that serves corporate interests, to a Western dominated media that serves the interests of those involved in it? In other words, how many Iraqi or Afghani bloggers are there? What about Somalian or Zimbabwean bloggers?

There’s bound to be some, but not as many as middle-class, well educated people who dominated the media in the first place. So while the present situation in media might be an improvement over the past, just how much of an improvement is it?

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How do we judge citizen media?

Posted on May 31, 2008 | Leave a comment

In my last post on New Media Mogul, I talked about Molly’s Monday Machinations, which is one of the leading AFL podcasts going around at the moment. As I said then, it is an authentic product because the creator reminds me of the type of guy you’d strike up a conversation with on the way home from the game, dissecting the team’s performance. It’s obvious that he is passionate about Australian rules football, considering he puts out at least 4 podcasts a week, and he’s well read.

It’s also obvious that the mainstream media still plays an agenda setting role for his podcast, further confirming some analysis conducted on New Media Mogul several months ago now. The podcast is an authentic product because we know what Molly’s biases are – he’s an unashamedly passionate supporter of Australian rules football and a Hawwthorn supporter. This is unlike a piece from a football journalist in one of the metropolitan newspapers, where we don’t know what team they follow and we don’t know if they’re into football, or if it’s just a job for them.

But how else do we judge this content? By traditional standards it isn’t very engaging, and wouldn’t give The Footy Show a run for its money, despite all the controversy that show has created of late. Yet what is it about citizen media that makes it an engaging medium?

Is it some sort of voyeuristic quality? Do we enjoy getting a glimpse into the lives of other ordinary people and what their thoughts are on certain things, in a non-contrived kind of way?

Is it some sort of rejoicing or interest in the banality of it all? In much the same way that people watch Funniest Home Videos for people making fools of themselves, do we watch citizen media because people get up on their soap boxes and sometimes say outrageous things?

So is this how citizen media should be judged? As another form of entertainment, even if it could be entertaining in a peverse kind of way? Or is it because we enjoy the simplicity of this kind of media, in much the same way we enjoy those conversations on the way home on the train?

Or is it some sort of reaction to the mainstream media and all its politics? Then again, considering citizen media producers like Molly are ultimately informed by the mainstream media, are we simply just putting a layer between ourselves and the media influence we’re trying to get away from?

I’m not sure how many of these questions I have answers to yet, but they are all relevant in trying to determine what it is about citizen media that makes it so popular, and what sort of issues arise from its popularity.

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The future of journalism

Posted on May 20, 2008 | Leave a comment

I don’t specifically have an interest in the future of professional journalism, only in how it intersects with citizen journalism, but the topic has generated some interesting debate of late after the recent Future of Journalism summit. It has spawned a blog post on The Age website and a special episode of ABC’s Media Watch, which you can either watch or view a transcript of.

It’s interesting that there are some experts who see a future where armies of citizen journalists will work alongside a select band of journalists and editors in bringing the world its news. Personally I don’t see this as the point of citizen media – it has different aims and ambitions to the mainstream media and the opportunities it presents might be lost if the media landscape was to function in this way.

As I said in the previous post it is good to see content emerging from bloggers that is interesting and authentic and free from the sanitization of the mainstream media. An example of this I’ve uncovered recently is Molly’s Monday Machinations which is a vodcast that appears to be presented from the creator’s bedroom. It’s never going to replace The Footy Show or Before The Game but it is a highly informative and comprehensive program from a passionate fan of Australian rules football. But the point is that the lack of production values make it more authentic and consequently more interesting. Molly is the type of guy you might strike up a conversation with on the way home on the train and dissect the game with, and to have this point of view disseminated within the media landscape is what makes citizen media cool.

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