It’s an exciting initiative especially considering that DR is quite often perceived to be almost impossible to reach and engage in a dialogue with. This shows that to be totally untrue. But there is still one thing about this that’s nagging me.

The thing that worries me is what kind of people, DR gets to inspire it? It’s commonly known from the social networking world that you get the most valuable insights and inspiration from people who are not too much like yourself and who may not have more than a thin relation to you. It’s typically in the third degree of separation this happens.

How does that come into play with this DR case? Well, the question is that if DR surrounds itself with an equal measure of mega fans and die hard critics - and DR is rich on both - it misses the middle: The more balanced view which may be providing the insight that proves to be truly valuable to all and thus important to foster wide adoption and success for the shows resulting from the input.

DR is quick to emphasize that they will still be looking to get input from other channels as well, and that I think is a great idea. It will be interesting to observe this project develop.

Given the almost no cost to develop a web application today combined with (until now at least) more or less easy access to money a lot of different web applications have seen the light and day. My claim is that 98 % of them are of little or no use at all and will die, when the last founder creditcard is maxed out.

There are two reasons for this.

The first one is that many of these applications don’t really solve a big problem for anyone. It may seem like they solve something for the developers themselves and their closest friends, but thats about it.

The second is that they are just plain too hard to use for normal non-geeky people. And this is where mobile social networking is a really good example. How many people besides people really into gadgets and tech and with too much time on their hands, do you know, who would spend time trying to configure, operate and let alone find friends using a mobile social network? I figured as much.

It’s perfectly cool that people are building applications, and it’s great that a lot of different things and concepts are being tested. But lets just not kidd ourselves into thinking that each and every one of them is a potential wonder.

Some, like Nate Elliott of Jupiter Research, seem to believe that unless marketeers get their acts together, social media marketing will die. I agree with the part of getting their acts together, but I don’t think social media marketing as such will die. It’s just a matter of looking at what it fundamentally is all about.

I see three major issues with social media marketing today:

First of all many marketeers seem to think that their products and brands have so much character that people just develop fanlike behaviour out of the blue. So not true for all but very few almost iconic brands (take Apple as a brillant example). It’s just to hard - and really not worthwhile - to develop a relationship with a product. Think about it. Relationships are for people!

This brings me to my second point: Personality. In a time where especially young people talk about trusting their friends more than brands, I would start looking more towards adding personality to my brand. Get a spokesperson, a celebrity…whatever. Albeit an honest one that you can really relate to. Build your profile around that person and use case like scenarios with the products and brands in question and let that be the basis of what you do. Provide people with all kinds of opportunities to engage in an active way with that. People are just so much easier to relate to and engage with.

Finally, redefine ROI. Why insist on using tools from the industrial consumer age in an age where it’s getting more and more social, and where people have been blessed with the tools to bypass traditional corporate messaging, if they really want to? Why not look at relationships and strenght of relationships instead of sales conversion as the basis of your success criteria? Not so say that the latter should go away, but put it into a context where it fits the reality of the web as your market place.

I find the whole argument more or less pointless. Because this is not a question about government backed media like the BBC competing with private niche oriented media. This is really about niche media not really cutting it in order to make a profit. In the end its about strategy, business development and product development.

The fundamental issue for these niche companies is that a lot of them are actually doing something that pretty much anyone else could do. Its not hard to make good content, if you have the experts who can report in a way that people would want to see, read or hear about.

What is hard is to compete against a product that’s much more multi-faceted and extended into a lot of areas, where government backed companies can’t go because of legal issues and private competitors have a hard time going because of lack of insight and expertise. And thats why that is the only sustainable road ahead for these niche companies. Whining won’t cut it.

You can find it here (in Danish).

Personally I don’t get the point of this. I realize newsletters can be highly effective. Yet I find them very unsexy, and even though I’m subscribed to several of them I hardly ever open them. And this brings me to my point:

Why on Earth would a number for ‘Opportunity to See’ be interesting to anyone? It doesn’t say anything about the number of people actually opening up the newsletter and looking on the content and ads in them. It just tells the total number of newsletters sitting idle in peoples inboxes looking like spam.

Do you find such a number sexy? Really?

I know that some might find this useful when trying to sell ads to put in the newsletters. But let’s be honest. Wouldn’t you really be better off without this pitiful list?

The new web service The Point has decided to do something about this. They have developed a service that lets you sign up to do stuff IF enough people decide to do the same - and you decide what that number should be. And that’s a concept, I like.

Actually I think it’s fantastic. Because not only does it allow for people to sign up and only be obliged to deliver when there’s enough of a crowd to get the positive workings of group pressure. It could also be used as a gauge for telling what’s on peoples mind. What’s bothering them at any particular point of time.

Even though I think the service is great, I don’t doubt that The Point still has some work to do before it gains traction. I visited the website the other day, and the number of people signing up for various causes and actually using the service didn’t impress me.

Maybe - just maybe - crowdsourcing is still a concept for hipsters? Maybe the real challenge for The Point is to take the message of this service and it’s usefulness out to regular people and get them to understand the power of it? I think I would do that. The service is definately worth some hype.

(Via Springwise)

Marc Canter has an excellent point about this essentially being another try by the major players (which of course also includes Microsoft) to lock people in. They failed with the portals - now they try with the social graph. I agree. But what is more evident to me is that yet again media companies are left behind.

You could of course argue that News Corp has covered its flanks with the MySpace announcement. But as far as the rest of them goes this again showcases one pitiful and costly lack in media companies asset portfolio: The harbouring of user data and as a consequence user loyalty.

Most media companies still find it hard to cope with having to distribute content outside their own controlled realm. Instead they seem dead set on competing on all the parameters that have once and for all become commodities.

News reporting is a great example. All media compete for speed of news, and yet the news of the recent earthquake in China was broken on Twitter…Need I say more?

With their recent endeavours into data portability the major players have dealt what could in time become a severe blow to media companies. Because at the end of the day the real differentiator in value towards the stockmarket is not whether you are 5 seconds or 2 minutes faster on the last breaking news. It is the number of relationships your brand carries with it. And relationships are manifested in end user data, friends, social graphs and what have you.

In other words: The business value of media companies is eroding - faster than ever before.

No matter the fraction, one thing remains the problem: It’s hard to come by a definition of what ‘citizen journalism’ and media associated with it really is. And as long as that is the case, its hard to have a discussion between the opposing views in an effort to reach a consensus. That needs to change - and I’m part of a small group trying to give input to this change.

Together with Kim Elmose (Politiken), Lars K. Jensen (Ekstra Bladet), Kenneth Ley Milling (UPDATE) and Lisbeth Kjær Larsen (Ekstra Bladet) I have been working on a manifest for citizen journalism. It has resultat in 11 different points, which you can see here (links to Danish site).

The goal behind the manifest has been to kickstart a debate that can lead us towards some serious experiments with citizen journalism. Because we need that as a vital part for media companies to figure out their relevance towards their customers - ordinary people - going forward.

The manifest is not written in stone. It’s more of a process than the finished article. So feel free to comment.

John Batelle links the music business to his childhood-memories of listening to vinyl records on his parents stereo, when he was a child. And he notices that his own children are using magazines the same way today, as he was using albums when he was a kid. Thus he asks the very valid question whether the magazine business will go the same way as the music business did?

Personally I don’t think that they will completely, but we will see a radically different magazine market than the one we’re seeing today.

First of all I think we will see all non-focused commodity-content magazines go away. The competition from the internet will be too big, and there will be no real differentiator to keep these magazines afloat. They will simply not be needed anymore.

Second, I think we will see more nichebased magazines which will digg even deeper into their respective niches. The digging will have to be so deep that a magazine can claim real ownership on the niche. In other words there won’t be room for a lot of magazines within one specific niche. My guess will be 2 magazines for every niche depending on language territory.

Finally we will see magazines develop distinctive personalities. “Personality goes a long way,” they say in the old Tarantino movie ‘Pulp Fiction’, and for magazines they’re right. Magazines with personalities - including on the staff - will have a great story to tell their readers in order for them to buy the magazine. And that is going to be key.

To summarize I think we will see a consolidation of magazines, where all mainstream magazines will eventually go away, and we will be left with perhaps a lot of very targeted magazines but only one or two within every niche. The burden on the magazine to stand out will be so huge that that in itself will be a limiting factor for competition and drive development in this direction.