May 30, 2008

A view from my window in these fun times.

Focus groups have moved to the virtual world - GEM Research hosts conversations with your avatars as does Social Research Foundation where the feedback is often more honest and brutal. As the line between 'virtual worlds', 'social networks' and 'online' disintegrate new forms of marketing emerge daily. It might be time to create a media mogul on Second Life and sell television and print advertising on a tonnage basis - just kidding; its about the conversations.
Generation V - for virtual. This group prefers to seek and receive information digitally and is not defined by demographics, although it tends to start younger but is moving up the age ladder very quickly. Gartner Group now forecasts that online sales and marketing will exceed offline by 2015 - that's a short 7 years for a 90:10 shift to go 50:50.
On the use of web analytics, the guy that wrote the manual says: One of the best ways to understand your audience experience is to put aside the metrics and Web analytics and survey your audience with two or three questions:
- Why are you here today?
- Were you able to accomplish what you wanted to do?
- If not, why not?
- News is no longer a 'finished' product but a service that continues to morph. Think of wiki as a real time story development platform.
- Platforms that offer news are now a way-station to other destinations; one site's content is no longer enough. It is much more fluid.
- Citizen journalism is not about content but about context and variety.
- American news is very narrow; a review of 70,000 stories from 48 publishers across 7 channels shows:
  - Only two countries showed noticeable coverage - and that was war-related. Only 6% of the content was non-US.
  - Topics of interest differed between consumers and the media; people want bread and butter (gas prices, home prices, toy recalls, health insurance for children) not abstractions (political unrest in Pakistan, a lot of the election process)
The news media continues to come under fire for not reflecting what's going on in the broadest sense. A report cited in the Center for Media Research presents these findings:
For a look at the web site of the future check out www.modernista.com