Mutter to local TV: You're next

Alan Mutter has a message for local TV stations: What happened to newspapers is probably about to happen to you next.

Once it becomes as easy and satisfying to view a YouTube video on your 50-inch television as it is to watch “Two and a Half Men,” audiences will fragment to the point that local broadcasters will not be able to attract large quantities of viewers for a particular program at a finite point in time.

This will shatter the mass-advertising model that has served local broadcasters so well since the advent of the medium that some stations in the best of times were able to pocket pre-tax profits as high as 50 cents for every dollar of advertising they sold. While profits nowadays are running at a more modest 20% to 30%, they are well ahead of the pre-tax earnings of such corporate behemoths as Wal-Mart and Exxon.

The challenge to the lucrative local broadcasting model will have a direct impact on the quality, such as it is, of local television news – the medium that approximately 70% of the population counts as its primary source for news. This is a matter of great concern, for which no clear solution is evident.

The quote comes from the first of two posts adapted from testimony Mutter is scheduled to present at a Media Ownership Workshop being conducted Friday by the Federal Communications Commission at Stanford University. Definitely worth reading.

Photo: Creative Commons licensed from flickr user Tjflex2.

"Don't tell anyone," but it's easy to search everyone's Facebook status

In theory, I'm okay with Facebook being more open to the world. But that assumes that the people using it realize they're likely talking in public, not just among their friends.

Thanks to openbook, you can now see how that's working out, by searching Facebook statuses of lots of people - not just the people in your circle of friends.

The site defaults to a random-rotation of potentially embarrassing phrases ("don't tell anyone," "playing hooky," "rectal exam"), but I'm sure you can come up with better on your own.

In the time it takes to read this headline, another hour of video will be uploaded to YouTube

It's hard to say what's more mind-blowing: That they stream two billion videos a day, or that we got here in just five years.

Happy 5th Birthday to YouTube.

"We're from the artists' collective, and we're here to help"

If I sneak into your yard and paint a picture on your wall, do you now own my painting? Or, as the artist, do I retain ownership of the painting and its context?

What if I paint the picture on seemingly abandoned property? Does the bank now own it? The municipality? What if you like it so much that you decide to cut the art out of the wall -- to protect it, of course -- and move it to your gallery? Have you just become an art thief? And, if so, did you steal from the property owner, or the original artist?

These questions, and more, are playing out in Detroit, where famed street artist Banksy recently splashed his overnight guerrilla art on the crumbling wall of a shuttered factory. The art was promptly rescued from the scene by a "feisty grassroots group" of artists connected with an art gallery, who preserved it by sawing it out of the wall and trucking it to their gallery where, presumably, it now stands preserved like a piece of that other Wall that once bisected Berlin.

I have to admit that Banksy has been, at best, a slow burn for me, and I have very real concerns about art that appears on private property without permission, but there's no question that his current cross-country-America meanderings have been entertaining and have had the beneficial side effect of opening up discussions about art in the public sphere. For instance, in this case, if an artist creates a work specific to a place -- ignoring its legality for the moment -- isn't it better to leave it there, where it speaks for itself, rather than move it to a room with hardwood floors and refrigerated air, where a small, tasteful card explains exactly what "all this" refers to?

As is often the case, the most astute commentary -- from both sides -- can be found on the inevitable Metafilter thread about the art heist:

"This can only legally be described as one thing: Theft of a wall on which an act of vandalism has been committed.

"I love Banksy's stuff - it's everything art should be. It's interesting, relevant, controversial, and it's highly visible. It's accessible. Is it supposed to be permanent? Of course not.

"However, I also agree that it's obviously vandalism. It's part of the discomfort that makes his stuff so interesting. Is the act of vandalism more accepted because of the works? Is it more valuable because he's famous? Is it more relevant because it's discussed? When does it cross the line?

"There are no right and wrong answers to these questions - only legal ramifications. But when something is in the public realm, and it's not your property, you have no right to take it. As soon as 555 did that, they ruined the piece."

Felt wisdom

Why is it that the pundits making the most sense these days are either fake or puppets?

RE: The stolen iPhone prototype, Mosspuppet says:

"My question to you various idiots is: What the hell did you expect them to do? If someone steals your stuff, you call the cops.

"Imagine for a moment that someone broke into your house and stole your television. Would you be guilty of manipulating the system if you phoned the police and reported them? No, of course not, you’d be doing the only reasonable thing you could do. Would you be benevolent if you let it slide and didn’t file an official report? No, you’d be a colossal idiot!"

Sam Phillips rewrites the music business model. And plays guitar. And sings

Sam Phillips is not just a singer-songwriter, she's a mogul.

Well, okay. A mini-mogul. And she'd probably bristle at even that. But through her year-long "Longplay" experiment in making music in semi-public for a paying audience, she's set herself up as a fascinating amalgam of record company exec and free-wheeling artist.

And what's really neat about it, it's allowed average fans to become patrons of her art. Well, mini-patrons. For a dollar a week, anyone can buy into the experiment, directly supporting her work and getting early access to the music as it is recorded and made available to paying members (if you come in late, you still get access to all the music already released).

I'm reminded of this because her latest EP, Old Tin Pan, just came out and, once again, I'm getting to enjoy new music and she and her band are able to (I'm assuming here) keep the food on the table. Or buy some nice shoes. Whatever. And it's really not about the money, but about the support: I pay because I want her to keep at it. There are lots of other performers I'd gladly support similarly, if they'd only ask.

Think of this the next time someone says people won't pay for anything online. They will. We will. We just won't pay for crap or commodity. I'll pay for Sam's music, or Evernote's service or great iPad apps like Appigo's ToDo or the amazingly useful Digging Into WordPress e-book.

There's a business model for you: Make things people want to pay for.

Do pay walls create new opportunities?

The New York Times, as expected, seems to have settled on a date for the paywall to go live: January, 2011.

There's no point in hashing out, again, whether or not this is a good idea for the New York Times and the many other major metro papers considering such a move. The one good thing about paywalls going live is that the theoretical questions will finally be answered in the real world.

No, what's interesting is whether this is a good idea for other sites serving those same markets. If, for instance, The Chicago Tribune eventually opts for a paywall of any kind, do the people in the newsroom of WLS and other local media bliss out over the potential for reaching more news consumers? What about the rapidly growing ecosystem of micro-local news and information sites serving communities and towns? If your local newspaper walls up, will you pay, or find other sources?

By stepping back from a 100% free model -- no matter how carefully (and slowly - we've been talking about this for years) -- the large news sites can't help but create some amount of vacuum into which the smaller sites -- and audience -- will flow.

But that's where this all gets very interesting. Because if we've learned nothing else in the past decade, it's that gathering a large audience -- "eyeballs," as the ad guys used to say -- is no longer enough. Large publishers and tiny publishers need to cover their costs and make a little profit in the bargain if they're going to continue publishing. So flowing into the vacuum isn't enough for the upstarts -- they need real business plans.

Recently in the NY Times Magazine, there was a long look at the business models of the non-traditional publishers that have emerged in recent years. It strikes more of an elegiac tone than I think is entirely appropriate, implying that the task is Sisyphean, but it's essential reading for anyone trying to understand the struggles the journalism business model is facing and will continue to face.

The overriding theme: The future is much, much leaner for journalism, and that business models will need to change, radically, to accommodate that fact:

...the new world could end up looking a lot like the old one, albeit with smaller newsrooms and new players. Politico replaces the Washington correspondent, TMZ is the gossip page and you can get coverage of your baseball team directly from MLB.com, which employs professional sportswriters. In cities like San Diego, New York and Washington, online start-ups are taking on metro news coverage, hoping to tap local ad markets. All of these publications have been hiring real, full-time employees — as have nontraditional providers like Yahoo, which is constructing a new political news site.

If you're a journalist or a publisher, whether you read that passage and weep or rub your hands with anticipation and hope is a good indicator of what the next few years hold in store for you.

Photo: Creative Commons license, flickr user Shawn Econo.

Parkour: The Internet sensation of 2004

I'm reminded of what Jim Halpert said:

"This is Parkour, the Internet sensation of 2004. The goal is to get from Point A to Point B as creatively as possible. So, technically, they are doing Parkour, as long as Point A is delusion and Point B is the hospital."

Now that's targeted advertising

A great ad guy knows his target audience better than they know themselves.

So, when copywriter Alec Brownstein went looking for a new gig, he bought Google ad keywords that were the names of prominent agency creative directors. Why? Because he knew Google-assisted narcissism would eventually come to his aid. Watch:



Total cost to Brownstein: $6.00

What is iPad?

"It's already a revolution. And it's only just begun."

And it's also shards of glass and aluminum if that's how you insist on carrying it around.

Great ad. Great product demo. Lousy example of how to protect your new precious.

(Interesting side note I hadn't noticed before: iPad, like Pink Floyd and Google, takes no definite article, at least according to this ad.)

We're all hyper-retailers now

It feels like something big just happened with the launch of Square, the personal credit-card swiping system that's integrated with iPhone and iPad. Suddenly, anybody can be a retailer that takes plastic.

Sure, you could sell your stuff previously on eBay, Etsy or any number of online marketplaces using the insufferable PayPal, but when it came to the real world, unless you had a merchant account with a credit card company, it was a cash-only experience.

That just changed with a little white cube with a magnetic strip reader that plugs into the iPhone or iPad. After a painless sign-up process, your iPhone now accepts VISA.

Micro-retailers will no doubt rejoice, but I'm thinking the interesting action just might occur in the private sphere. Did I loan you $20 last week? You can pay me back with plastic now. Do you have a side-business walking dogs? No need to collect (and worry about) checks from the customers -- just swipe their card.

There's a great commercial for the product here, with You Look Nice Today's Adam Lisagor playing it about as straight as I imagine he can. And as long as you have an iPhone or an iPad, you can sign up for free and the company will mail you a scanner-dongle, just as soon as they get through the backlog.

Brilliant.

The Angry Birds fans are angry, and empowered

It's still surprising in this inter-connected age that a company can get caught thinking they can pull one over on people. And yet, they do.

Case in point: The wildly-popular Angry Birds iPhone game just got upgraded to an iPad "HD" edition, and the price jumped 500%.

Which, at a mere five dollars, would still be a bargain, if it weren't for the fact that, as many have noted on its iTunes page, it's just an upsizing of the iPhone app, with no new features or functionality. As ttrygve says:

It also didn't move or resize the buttons at all, they're still laid out as though for an iPhone, meaning they're not at all conveniently placed... I feel ripped off, though I still heartily recommend the iPhone version.

In about 30 seconds I went from, "Hello new purchase for the iPad!" to feeling like I dodged a bullet, thanks to my new anonymous friends.

TMI, automated

Given that I've always treated my Facebook account as if it were 100% public, the ever-creeping publicness of Facebook hasn't concerned me much.

But if you think -- or worse, act as if -- Facebook is still the same private walled-garden you joined in 2006, you'd be well-advised to spend a few minutes with this excellent infographic from All Facebook which shows the steady march toward a much more open Facebook.

Hello, future. You look awfully familiar.

Do concept cars look like they do because that's the natural progression of design, or because some Sci-Fi artists in the 1950s decided this is what the car of the future will look like?

Either way, if I have a spare $50k in 2015, I just might get one.

NYT on iPad: Almost as good as...paper?

At first, I tried to enjoy its simplicity, but the NYT "Editor's Choice" app is starting to get really ridiculous. Witness this article that's nothing more than a collection of links that -- are you ready for it? -- don't link.

(Failure highlighted in yellow for your reading pleasure.)

The only explanation: the focus group was infiltrated by radical newsroom curmudgeons.

No wonder Steve hates it.

(UPDATE: Apparently this particular "Editor's Choice" is just shovelware, badly done. The original page makes a whole lot more sense with the links intact.)

Is it easy for a new user to get lost on iPad?

Jakob Nielsen* and crew have churned out a quick usability study of the Apple iPad. And while it's far, far too early (and the number of test subjects too small) to be making any hard and fast recommendations or rules (and Nielsen stipulates as much), the report reminded me of something that struck me this weekend watching a new iPad user (and non-iPhone user) try to acclimate herself to the device.

It's odd that a company (Apple) known for its rigid user-interface standards has bet the farm on what is literally and figuratively a tabula rasa, where anything and everything goes. The only constant is that the hardware button takes you to one of the home screens. That's it. Every single user-interface decision beyond that is open to the interpretation of the individual app designer. Certain conventions are emerging already (such as the sidebar/popover internal navigation scheme seen most prominently in Mail), but every app can be, and often is, a UI adventure.

To exacerbate the problem, once they do figure out how something works, users can't transfer their skills from one app to the next. Each application has a completely different UI for similar features.In different apps, touching a picture could produce any of the following 5 results:

• Nothing happens


• Enlarging the picture


• Hyperlinking to a more detailed page about that item


• Flipping the image to reveal additional pictures in the same place (metaphorically, these new pictures are "on the back side" of the original picture)


• Popping up a set of navigation choices

Nielsen has always been something of a design puritan, so I don't find myself agreeing with everything he's selling here. But this report asks some excellent questions.

The appeal of iPad is how the interface essentially disappears, allowing the user to interact directly with the elements on/behind the glass. But that invisibility also presents challenges to designers to understand that a user may be able to hold only so many interface schemes in his long-term memory.

* The first time I've ever typed Jakob Nielsen's name twice in the same day, I think.

(Traffic photo from flickr user UweBKK. Creative Commons.)

Middlebury College rewards inquiring minds

A colleague sent me a link to Middlebury College's web site recently, and I was really impressed.

It's very simple - just a name, a search box, some navigation and a horizontally-scrolling series of colored bars:



But hidden inside those colored bars is a candbox-like invitation to sample stories about the institution that's kind of irresistible. The folks at Middlebury answered the same question we all do -- "How do we show the breadth of ours schools and universities in a limited space?" -- in an innovative fashion. Yes, as Jakob Nielsen would say, it's Mystery Meat, but in this case, the mystery is compelling enough to be part of the charm.

It's not perfect -- I wish whoever is preparing the photos and screengrabs would take more care that they not lose their vitality in the downsizing -- but overall, it's a site feature that works hard to tell the story of Middlebury. And that's really all we can ask of our sites.

Is it time to retire our digital card catalogs?

I raised a ruckus recently on a higher-ed web design listserv by suggesting that it's time to dump the A-Z index from our websites.

You know. Those alphabetically organized Lists of "Things You May Be Looking For On Our Site"?

Why do we still make them?

Haven't we come down the road a piece from 1997? Back then, manually building a comprehensive site index was part of the job description. How else will people find what they're looking for?

And yet, many much more complex sites these days manage without. Look at the top sites on the web. Does Google have an A-Z index? Does Craigslist? Twitter? CNN? YouTube?

OK, one that does is Wikipedia. And it's a doozy:



Given that Wikipedia is, in some ways, aping an analog counterpart which has the alphabet as its primary organizing system, having an A-Z index is understandable, even if it's not the best way to find content on that site.

Because -- and this is the point of this argument -- we may call these things that display the internet browsers still, but the activity of the typical user these days is less about browsing than it is about search and following links. And, given that we're talking about a non-scalable resource -- time -- I'd rather spend it making pages more findable in search than in a hand-curated, printed (to screen) database.

We threw out the card catalogs in our libraries. Why can't we do the same on our web sites?

One counter argument goes like this: We maintain incredibly complex sites for our institutions, so an A-Z index is necessary to give the visitor some grounding.

I don't think so.

It's entirely possible that I'm mistaken here -- maybe there are good reasons for preserving the old ways of organizing for certain types of web sites -- but it's a limb I'm at peace being out on.

I moved our A-Z guide off the university web site's home page because 1) it's a less than optimal experience for users and 2) it's guaranteed to rot almost instantly. Our old index has more than 1,300 entries, all manually encoded. That's a lot of upkeep.

True, it can be automated from a CMS, but I see a list like this as something that really should be curated, if you're going to do it at all.

Ultimately, though, the real reason we killed the A-Z list was that, in 2010, it just seems that there are better ways:

• Search. We have Google search on our site. It's awfully good at finding what visitors are looking for. And, when it isn't, it's not Google's fault -- it's ours. Getting the "right" pages to rise to the top of search is an incredibly valuable exercise for us because it has the same benefit outside our virtual walls, in Google (and other search engines).


• Navigation. If you do navigation right, you may find that you don't need an A-Z list. This is your opportunity to guide your users toward what you want them to discover. It's like an A-Z list, except it's organized logically, not alphabetically.


• sitemap.xml. I'm surprised that more universities aren't using this simple but effective way to speak directly to the search engines crawling our sites. It can be 100% automated if you want or you can tweak it to your needs. But it's a very useful tool in helping your search engine to make sure that visitors can find what you're looking for.


• SEO. Similarly, I'd rather spend time tuning the SEO of our site than in manually updating a public-facing site index.

So, what do you think? Is there a future for the A-Z index online?

(First photo from flickr user mamsy. Licensed through Creative Commons.)