edublogs

Social media's value for organisations

When you're on a panel it's difficult to sum things up, so thankfully other people have done it for last week's "Social Media and the Organisation" panels:

• Adriana: she was the moderator of the morning panel at Online Information - social media must offer value to the organisation, which it will, so we must just make that value clear to those at the top.
• Transforming Business: an excellent summary of the main points from the morning session at Online Info
• InformationToday: a summary of the Q&A and the points made in the morning session.
• InformationToday: a summary of the points we made in the final Online Information panel on the future of Web 2.0.
• TechcrunchUK: a brief overview of MediaTech2.006
• AlarmClockEuro: Looking for proven models is "out of date by three to four years"

I guess there's more out there, but this is all I could find at the moment.

Hi to my new readers from TechCrunch

To those coming in from Techcrunch today, (and Techmeme + Scoble) don't let the 'edu' bit in edu.blogs.com put you off ;-) Edu.blogs.com takes a look at how new technology can be harnessed to engage the biggest market of them all - young people. All the Mediatech2.006 stuff can be found under one roof (with more coming form the guy looking for investment who forgot to mention his $180,000 a month turnover) while next week's LeWeb3 in Paris will be covered with just as much detail and analysis.

Mark Charkin - Bebo.com

  Mark Charkin - Bebo.com 
  Originally uploaded by Edublogger.

Mark is talking about Bebo.com.

He's talking about digital natives being his market, those who have grown up and been born with the internet, those who hang out online, using online as an extension of what goes on in their line. It's an elusive market to engage with and that is where Bebo enters to make its money.
It's the largest social networking website in the UK (Netwise). The core demographic is between 13-30 (although I've had younger students tell me of their time on Bebo).

The top thing Bebo offers to its users is...
CREATIVITY.

It offers small things like being able to create a background for their emails or pages, and big things like sharing music for free direct from the artists' own Bebo pages.

They are taking great care to have fun and not overcorporatise them. They respect their users and the way that they are - should education not take the same attitude, I wonder?

Bebo are looking into making deals with other carriers - mobile ones - to make the Bebo trail stretch further. It's time for education, I think, to get in their first. Come on! It can be done.

Bebo prides itself on the stickiness of the site, averaging 145 minutes per visitor per month. Taking that as an average it means some kids must be spending more than 145 minutes. As Bebo goes mobile soon maybe using AdMob type technology we could see an educational 'invitation' appearing next to User Generated Content.

Mediagraft - advertising in music

  Mediagraft - advertising in music 
  Originally uploaded by Edublogger.

This is cool. Get your music for free with Mediagraft who graft advertising into the music you are listening to. I would hate to have my songs interrupted but I think they're better than that.

They have already successfully done this in the Chelsea Music Show and I would forgo 5 seconds of my time listening to an ad to get some music for free.

And there's no DRM on their music, either. And it works now. And it's free and legal!

The CEO (missed his name) sees this as expanding the music download industry by exchanging illegal downloads for free legal ones.

Two-way TV: Using the TV, Mobile phones and Gaming

  Jean de Fougerolles: TwoWayTV: http://www.twowaytv.com/ 
  Originally uploaded by Edublogger.

I don't like the gambling element of the company, although I'm sure it makes TwoWayTV loads of money. However, I did like the concept of using themobile phone to fling text message objects at the television which, being interactive television, reacts.

Flingons is one such example of this, bringing mobile technology, TV and gaming together under one roof.

Kids can literally throw their mobile phone content at the television to take part in the game, gain hints and move on to the next level.

Social Casual Games: Boonty

  Romain Nouzareth: http://www.boonty.net 
  Originally uploaded by Edublogger.

Boonty is a French Paris-based company run by the enigmatic Romain Nouzareth. They create and distribute Social Casual Games where "Everyone is a gamer". Many mainstream large distribution companies also work at selling the games they create.

• Buy before you buy


• $20 per download game


• 20mb Download


• 60% female audience

They see their future in monetizing social networks of gamers using macro transactions to make their bread, in the same way as SecondLife does, but providing a game which the user owns forever (not just as long as they pay a subscription).
The other major line is the biggest area of growth: mobile gaming. Romain feels that the main companies are concentrating (too much) on the gaming console and Boonty, he believes, will be the number one provider of games through other, more ubiquitous platforms: PC download and mobile devices.

Admob - contextual ads, education and Google

  Anil Hansjee from Google 
  Originally uploaded by Edublogger.

I was really impressed by the idea behind Admob, that you can for a few cents place adverts which are more of an 'information service' for the people using them. And you can gain attention from them, of course. For education, and for our new online and potentially mobile services in LTS and East Lothian, this is such a powerful tool, to allow us to get onto the spaces and mobile sites used by our teen 'market' and draw them into learning.

Indeed, I wish I had had that idea, and I'm sure Google wish they had got in there, too.

But Google are in there. Even if we don't see that line of mobile contextual advertising online yet it's a matter of time before they copy and paste Admob's idea. Just at the close of the break there I grabbed a word with Doug Richard who also thinks that it can only be a matter of time before the more pervasive Google takes that market away from Admob. It's a question, I guess, of whether advertisers want good quality service or pervasiveness. A tricky equation? Not really.

So, the VCs and the man from Google are on the panel now and should see soon what he makes of it.

Anil from Google says that Google are more interested in partnering with taking over (my cynicism) interesting partners than in owning tonnes of content. So, as if it weren't clear, they don't want content they want to offer services, namely those that link people together - through advertising. So hile Admob is cool, I'm now wondering whether I wait for Google before offering my directed advertised learning on the kids' phones ;-)

Update: One thing is clear from Jonathan Weir (Yahoo), too. Micro earning, micro attention, he feels is the way forward, more than subscriptions. When you concentrate on micro earning of attention you are looking at gaining large numbers dipping in for small amounts. With subscription you are looking for smaller numbers spending more time on your service. In education we probably normally feel we want the latter.

What would the impact be if we started looking at micro-attention - very little and very often - instead of subscription based learning online? It goes against some of the ideals of Extreme Learning, for example, but might offer another interesting flavour to the bouquet.

Don't miss your calling - mobile web is here and now and waiting to be exploited

Russell Buckley gives a fascinating insight to the real uptake of the mobile web - it's huge and burgeoning.

The Gartner Hype Cycle shows where we might be in the scheme of things. I would say that most in the public sector and education sector in particular have totally underestimated the spread not only of mobile technology but also how it is being used.

On and off portals are both growing sectors with 14 million UK unique users per month and 24% of mobile users having access (comScore).

Compare that with 19% of US adults who had internet connectivity in 1996. A fad? A far-off dream?

1.6 billion pages per month are served on the mobile web (M:Metrics).

Like the Web in 1995 the mobile web is currently filled with unknown brands and providers.

“Anyone in their right mind who tried to do anything on the internet on a screen that size must be nuts.” 3 UK, (2005)

“Customers will only pay a flat access fee on top of their basic subscription and then what’s free to use on te internet should be free to use on mobile broadband.” 3 UK (2006)

Primary use is from under 24s, with a slight male bias, but the transition from slight user to heavy user is quick. We need to be providing content to keep people using our services wherever they are.

Why? We want to maintain their attention on our web services. For example, a World Cup sponsor gave 0.4% of their ad budget to Admob, a company run by Russell which provides contextual advertising on mobile services - clever company, take a look before Google does ;-). 40% of the company's end website traffic came from Admob's mobile contextual ads. In LTS we might not need an ROI (Return on Income) but we do want a ROA (Return on Attention). This seems an ideal and necessary means of doing that.

Intellectual Property and protection versus opportunity

Intellectual Property, Copyright and the violation thereof are often seen as huge threats to business. RedHat's Bob Young tells us that where kids share music for free on Kazaa, iTunes’ Steve Jobs saw the opportunity to sell the same music at a cheap price in return for good service – more free material, wider selections, excellent search…

Copyright has to have an end-date. In the US Disney managed to push through almost unchecked that copyright will last 100 years. In the UK, EMI’s future is in the balance as courts ruled their Beatles catalogue will be up for public consumption, arranging and copying at the end of 50 years – that’s coming very soon.

Our wonderfully glizzy social networks are not new. Bob Young was selling his Linux toolsets through mailing lists of enthusiastic networking passionate people. It’s only natural that this went onto the web when the web came around, but it’s not one guy’s idea.

“I got you babe” was built not on the inspiration of one man, but on the basis of years and years of music from Mozart to tribal music which merged and created rock and roll. There is no ‘new’ thought per se. We stand on the shoulders of giants.

So the next time someone says their thoughts, ideas or practices are copyright, private, unique – just ask yourself the question, “on whose shoulders did they build it”?

Give me Tomato Sauces - technology allows us to diversify what we offer

  Doug Richards 
  Originally uploaded by Edublogger.

The MediaTech2.006 event is in one heck of a venue. I am sat in the Imax 360 degree cinema in front of Doug Richard, the CEO of Library House and Dragon from the Den, who is leading some impressive proceedings. Since I only got on top of what’s happening today, well, today, I’ve only just discovered what a treat I am in for.

First up is Bob Young, CEO of Lulu, who has built his publishing business on the basis that anyone, anywhere should be able to publish a book. His first point – his publishing company, though it has a London office, should be based in London, not the US. Why isn’t it?

His RedHat company started when its smaller competitors were already doing multibillion dollar business in the software business. The bigger opportunities are the ones that everyone says can’t be done, though, says Young.

His story is based around small is beautiful. Where larger companies would not respond to the many user requests and ideas – turning the technical glitch into a ‘feature’. When you had the blue screen of death you would be told by cutomer support that you had to restart your machine once a week to avoid it – not possible if you’re Ebay or Amazon. This, claims Young, is where the open source ideologies took on a world of their own. Having the source code the engineers of my computer and your computer are able to collaborate and fix the problem without having to go to one main operator.

RedHat makes money out of this because of the healthy competition in serving customers well. And they can do that by being small and nimble. Google might have more money than most, but they are now having trouble innovating because they’re just too big. Lulu, though, and RedHat are based around customers’ needs. It’s not about publishing books, it’s about publisung their books. The market is as varied as its customers and is designed that way.

Wouldn’t it be great if we really saw education that way, and that a service as varied as its customers was built in to the design of what we do instead of being added at a later date? I think we can do this with the current initiatives but only if we use technology, and particularly social media, to make it happen. Otherwise our rather large organisation – Scotland – is not going to be able to be nimble enough to deliver such a varied service.

(For those who don't get the title, watch this)