The Amateur Anthropologist

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I discovered Google Silences yesterday. What’s a Google Silence? It’s when you’re having a big fat old argument with a colleague that’s degenerated from debating solid, intelligent, factually based arguments into ‘Is so!’, ‘Isn’t so!’.

It's at this point that the person you’re arguing with goes suddenly and terribly quiet.

Why?

Because they’re Googling the topic you’re arguing. A Google Silence is followed by two possible outcomes.

“Ha! I OWN you, punk!”

Or

“This is a stupid argument anyway and I think we should move on.”

Tortuous

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Here's something I think is worth sharing. It came to me (and therefore to you) by a tortuous route, I found the link on a comment to an article on Australian marketing uber-blog, Mumbrella (sorry Tim, can't be arsed with the caps and things). But that's how the Internet works, no?

It's the story of how the UK's Guardian newspaper crowdsourced a complex data mining job, using its online readers to help it sift through hundreds of thousands of pages of public records. By making the whole exercise accessible and enjoyable to the public, The Guardian effectively managed to arrange for something like 35,000 people to help intelligently sift through over 170,000 pages of public records unearthed by the great Commons Expenses Scandal. The result was that The Guardian managed to comb 170,000 pages of data in 80 hours, extracting the valuable stuff for its journalists to work on.

It's here. The site, Harvard's Nieman Journalism Lab, is a must-add for your RSS feed if you have any interest at all in the evolution of journalism in the digital age.

I love this case study because it's a really smart application of technology in the spirit of the IBM PC and the Toyota MR2 (two of my favourite things, both originally cobbled together by inspired innovators on shoestring budgets raiding their companies' parts bins). I love it because it's a witty and smart piece of journalistic initiative.

But most of all, I love it because it shows how much more powerful you are when you enlist the help of your customers in the development of your product - which means respecting your customer enough to believe they are worthy enough to begin to possibly understand the arcane intricacies of your unique and difficult profession. Calling for feedback, input, insight or participation from a wider commuinty extends your reach beyond your own organisation's staffing capabilities and brings a wider range of heads to a problem - sometimes solutions to a problem can come marvellously quickly from the uninvolved. It has the potential to broaden your capability to innovate, creates a stronger sense of connection and ownership from customers and folds marketing neatly into product development.

The article on Mumbrella was, incidentally, this one, where News Ltd's editorial director is being a goof about Twitter.

The Monster is Dead

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So Michael Jackson's dead. I had to switch off the television to stem the tide of grief. It doesn't seem more than ten minutes ago we were all being entertained by the sight of him dangling children over balconies, facing charges of child molestation and struggling to cope with a mountain of debt from an insane lifestyle that his ailing career could no longer maintain. The world gasped as his increasingly macabre visage leered out at them, caked in make-up and scarred by surgery after surgery, a grotesque mannequin piping platitudes in a ridiculous, squeaky-soft voice.

He died two weeks before the massive series of 'comeback' concerts, a 50 year-old man rehearsing, no doubt, to push himself through punishing routines that would defeat a 20 year-old as he put everything he had into that all-consuming gamble to try and win over the world that had turned its back on him. We can only wait and see if it's confirmed that he rehearsed himself to death.

The villagers chanting 'Kill the monster' as they marched on the castle with their burning brands are now clamouring to get in front of the cameras and wail about how they missed the monster and how he wasn't a monster really, but a globe-spanning entertainer that brought joy to millions and whose loss will be felt by the whole world.

And I sat there wondering why these people who had so much love for Michael had stood by as he sank into penury, turning away from him and tutting at the freak show. The outpouring of saccharine grief was, indeed, too much for me to bear.

Geek

Image by Larsz via Flickr

Some side effects from this morning's Business Breakfast slot, with no particularly massive point to make, it's just that I found them interesting. But then I'm a geek, no?

Google is the place where 30% of the Internet goes every day - and it spends an average of 8.5 minutes of that day on the site. As we know, those minutes are spent looking for stuff and clicking on the results - including those lovely, lucrative little Adwords. In fact, Google's Q1 2009 revenue was equivalent to the entire US ad spend on print media. Not bad for a few clicks.

In fact, Google's revenue is equivalent to something like 17% of total global TV advertising spend ($123 billion according to Informa). That's not bad for a single provider, no? It's certainly bigger than any single network. Google's pretty good at growing stealthily wealthy, actually.

Ranked #4 globally by Alexa, Facebook currently gets 19% of the Internet's eyeballs every day, BTW. Interestingly, people spend over four times as long there, though - an average of 25.3 minutes a day are invested on Facebook.

The time people spend on Google appears to be a little more productive, however, Facebook's revenues for 2008 were $350 million.

Twitter's revenue - and, indeed, its revenue model remains pure speculation...

When Twitter Falls Apart

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Some commentators are now, quite properly, pointing to the very real failings of Twitter as an ongoing news source on the demonstrations taking pace in Iran.

This chap, Maximillian Forte, link kindly provided in a comment to this post by Graeme Baker, is certainly in that camp and provides a strong and lucid viewpoint.

It's perhaps interesting to look back over events in Iran and how Twitter, as a community, responded.

In the first phase, Twitter clearly led the news agendas of mainstream media, providing on the ground witness and a diversity of updates that caught the popular imagination - including triggering the #CNNfail protest that eventually forced the channel to react publicly and defend its woeful programming in the face of an important series of events.

In the second phase, Twitter started to clog up with useless ReTweets (RTs) of stale information as the public mood drove the need to be somehow participatory. The students in Iran who had been Tweeting updates fought to keep their links to the world open, but were battling not only those who wanted to silence them but trying to have their voices heard in the babble.

With the almost hysterical outbreak of wannabe participants came disinformation - calls to change your location to Tehran to protect the student Tweeters meant that now anyone could 'Tweet from Tehran' - and so more chaff joined the flow of information. That was made worse by a call to remove the ID of anyone you RTed in order to protect them - effectively depriving any information of a source.

If you weren't in the game early or close to people on the ground, and therefore following the right people, by now you were getting some pretty duff information - and fifteenth hand information, at that.

Phase three has been the complete breakdown of Twitter as a news source. The 'turn your avatar green' movement is a symptom of this. Vested interest has meant that clear disinformation is now being sewn into Twitter, with Tweets claiming that Arabs have been brought into Iran, stabbing people's sisters and so on.

But then Twitter was never meant to be a news resource and, I think most people would agree, can not be relied upon as a news resource beyond the fact that, as a platform, it lets fresh eye witness news travel fast. That first phase is where Twitter is potentially solid gold and where it has indeed led news agendas - not only inTehran, but also in the Mumbai bombings and other incidents.

Once it descends into fads and conversation, there is no news value in Twitter - as, indeed, there is rarely news value in conversations. That's just chattering - what the service, in fact, was built to do. Pointing to the chattering then squeaking about how useless Twitter is doesn't mask the fact that Twitter brought the streets of Iran to the desktops of millions of people across the world.

And CNN didn't.

A Nony Mouse

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Whenever I get an anonymous comment on the blog, my heart does a little sinking thing.

Anonymity is the Internet’s great gift and at the same time its burden. It allows people the freedom to be who they truly are, to shake off the bounds of convention and propriety that tie down our everyday lives. It lets people share opinions they otherwise could not voice, speaking freely about their employers, their relationships or their governments. It lets people confess and share, unburden themselves and shout joy without having to worry about reactions, restrictions or repercussions.

It also lets people be mean, shitty and petty without ever having to worry about having to face their victims. It makes people into cowards.

I made the conscious decision to blog and express my own opinions under my own name (I think the only person to do so in the UAE at the time, but I’m sure I’ll be corrected on that one!). That’s something I’ve always done – as a journalist and as a commentator, columnist and contributor to TV, print and radio. I might be wrong, I might be a gob, I may well be a complete arse, but at least I’m out there taking it on the chin in public.

People that don’t have the strength of character to express their negative opinion or unpleasant reaction in the same way do irritate me. If I can be a brave boy, so can you.

Rarely have I seen anonymous comments on blogs justified by a reasonable fear for personal safety – more frequently they’re driven by vested interest. A distressing number of people representing companies still comment anonymously on blogs thinking that they can’t be ‘found out’. That is not the case – I’ve said this lots before – people who host websites, including blogs, can gain access to an amazing degree of highly granular information on visitors who are almost invariably traceable through their IP.

It’s not always about vested interest, of course. Sometimes anonymous comments are just from people who can’t be bothered to do the log-in thing. And sometimes they’re from people who are setting out to crap in someone else’s cornflakes but who don’t have the guts to do so in person. This last is the one that gives me the sinking feeling – a little slice of snarky nastiness dumped into someone else’s life by a person that doesn’t have the guts to do so openly.

Which is why I never bother taking up the conversation with anonymice. Just thought I’d get that out of the system, folks...

The Machines are Taking Over

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Etisalat, the telephone company that likes to say 'ugh', has decided to come to my aid in what has been a workmanlike and drab start to the week and introduce a spangle of special fun into my life.

The Directory Enquiry Service (181 to you, mate) has been cut over to an almost but not totally non-functional IVR system. That's Etisalat's secret - not to be utterly useless, just almost utterly useless. It's so much more devastating to give the subscriber a glimmer of hope before dashing it, I find, than giving no hope at all.

Now when you call 181 you get asked to press * for English. When you do, it talks Arabic to you. This is pretty special stuff, but it's only a start of a special journey into the unknown. You are given a list of things you could want like hotel, restaurant or pigeon fancier's club. You have to either say one of these things or say 'other'. The system will then automatically misunderstand you. This is disintermediation at its best - to replace a human that rarely understands what you want with a machine that never understands what you want.

When you say 'other' you get asked for what you want. So you say, 'Dirigible Repair Specialist' and the IVR system, in a female Hal9000 voice, says, 'Do you want Peter's Patent Pringle Painters Llc? Yes or no.'

So you say 'No.'

And the IVR says, 'Which Emirate are you looking for?'

And you say 'Dubai.'

And then you get an operator who agrees that yes, the machine is totally useless and yes, everyone's been whingeing and yes, he can help you. He sounds amused. As am I.

I called back to get the scripts right for this blog, but I got a human this time 'round, who assured me that yes, she was human and yes, she could help me. She was quite affronted when I told her I had actually wanted the machine so I'd call back for it...

(The system now cuts to IVR when the operators are busy, but only for landline callers, BTW)

(PS: I'll let y'all know when I get the search hit for 'Dirigible Repair Specialist')

Wheels Within Wheels

Part of this week's rich debate around Twitter and social media has been about who you can trust online.

That's an interesting debate when you take the 'turn your Twitter avatar green' service that a number of Twittering types have started to use. The idea's nice and simple - a one-click process via the helpiranelection website will turn your avatar green so that you can demonstrate your support for Mousavi's backers in their call for a recount.

The chap behind helpiranelection is Arik Fraimovich. When he's not helping people to show solidarity with Iranian political movements, he's a software developer. I have to note that, while he is not now, he has previously worked for the Israeli Ministry of Defence. That doesn't mean to say he is aligned to the MoD or is in any way carrying out its will. But the fact that an Israeli with government links is behind a 'back Mousavi' Internet scheme will sit uncomfortably with many in the Arab World, let alone in Iran itself.

I am quite, quite sure that Arik's idea was well intentioned. But 'going green' is, I think, an Iranian choice to make.

Thanks to 'Party Boy'... :)

Paris Hilton Dumb? Hell No!

It's going to be a long, hot summer, people. Not only do we have the tide of infinite-eyed yellow evil to contend with, popping up all over the place ready to embrace us in those little open arms (so that it can tear our throats out and feast on our livers), we've got a localised outbreak of Paris Hiltons.

Ably assisted by a number of drooling morons in our local media, Paris is going to be spending the next three weeks wandering around Dubaii looking for her BFF - Best Friend Forever. This has, somewhat predictably, polarised opinion. A number of people think that it's really amazing (huge, even) that she's here. A number of people are neutral or perhaps even mildly disgusted. And a large number of people are spitting bile at the shallowness of it all.

Chaque a son goute, as they say.

But Paris Hilton is a girl who knows how to create a brand, starting of course with Brand Paris - a global celebrity bandwagon that was launched on the back of the Internet success of a sleazy video. Her squeaky, valley-girl catchphrases (Everything's so, like, amaazing, huuge and hot) and outre dress sense have, hard as this might be to believe, been adopted by millions - including the good women of Latvia. She's famous and, as a result of that fame, she's wealthy - the Hello Kitty of celebrity.

She told media yesterday, mugging with Arabesque jewellery and dresses, that she wants to explore more Brand Paris, including perhaps a club or hotel. Well, we've got the Roberto Cavalli Club, why not the Paris Club?

She also told them she wouldn't discuss money. "That's tacky," she said.

Quite.

Is Mainstream Media DOOMED?

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Does the fact that social media has been leading the coverage of the Iranian protests mean the end of MSM, or mainstream media?

My post yesterday attracted a couple of interesting comments from The National’s Jen Gerson and Insurgency Watch’s Christopher Allbritton. Both are highly respected journalists with ‘form’. Jen’s points also led to a thought-provoking post on her blog last night.

So, to continue the conversation, I thought it might be worth taking their points as a Q&A...

Tonnes of the #iranelection tweets were rehashed MSM coverage
A lot of people were retweeting links to MSM pieces, yes. But if you were following close or primary sources, you were also getting the voice of people on the ground. Some of those voices, incidentally, are suspect. You have to take care over who you’re following and how much salt you take with each report. The skill in that is little more or less than a journalist would use to balance sources – and I do think that many people today have a refined enough news sense and awareness of the Internet to be able to make those judgements by themselves. We're big boys and girls now...

Having said that, a guide to decent breaking news is no bad thing - there are a lot of people out there Tweeting links to things that engaged or amused them - and when you start including hashtags, you have a good contextual stream. If you follow the right people, BTW, you get a better editorial pick than if you follow less acute observers. The choice, you will see, is in who you choose to follow. Same with journalism, same with newspapers. I read Jen because I like her writing and find it insightful. I follow @catboy_dubai 'cos he's a pal and is amusing. I like @deafmuslim because she’s a great writer and quite potty – and challenges my view of things. I choose not to read Germaine Greer any more. I loathe the Daily Mail. My choice of, errr, 'media'.

The awesome pics are from wire services
Images from wire services? Yes, of course. They're the images that most Middle East newspapers will use because they haven't got their own snappers on the ground. So I'll take a Tweet of a Getty/Reuters pic today over waiting until tomorrow

But there were also a lot of important images that weren’t wire service stuff. Like this image, for instance, that struck me so much. BTW, at the moment itself I don’t think we’re looking at sourcing halfway decent images – we’re looking at witness report that tells the story. Quality is not the benchmark.

Verifying information doesn’t mean waiting for a second Tweet. It means calling round sources or being an eyewitness yourself.
Although I am, by dint of my own background as a journalist and writer, minded to agree, I also think we’ve moved on a little. While there is undoubtedly room for sober, reflected, contextual analysis (something we see all too little of, BTW, in our regional media as well as international media) there is also room to take the stream of eye-witness report and form a view from that. If you’re seeing 30-40 people on Twitter saying that police are hitting the rioters hard and then getting Tweets detailing injuries, the flow of events would tend to suggest a measure of reality coming from the ground. Combined with real-time reports from newswires or other sources, you’ve got the story in front of you, but the story presented in a way that no broadcaster can equal – eye witness accounts of events unfolding, real people, real emotion, real reaction.

I do think that MSM often fails to meet that standard of journalistic integrity, BTW. Again, particularly in our region, good, balanced reporting that takes the facts, challenges them and searches for balance, completeness and the three sides to the story (yours, mine and the other guy’s) is often notably lacking.

Disinformation is a problem with crowdsourced media
Agree – because you’re actually in the crowd and so you’re as prone to each new rumour and report that’s coming through. Which is why, going back to your first point, it’s vitally important that we DO have people like Reuters and AP on the ground. Or people like yourself or Christopher. But that’s journalism, not media. I have RSS feeds of the major newswires and get the stories as they break. So I can verify the big stuff – which gives credence to the little stuff. And so I can quickly build a picture of which Twitterers are ‘on the money’ if I want to.

But this comes down to the point, I think. I don’t need CNN or Sky to see what’s happening – in fact, the whole #CNNfail thing was about thousands (tens of thousands) of people feeling strongly that CNN’s editorial judgement was deeply flawed in not affording these events top line coverage. I think many news outfits were unprepared, under-resourced and under-educated on the whole Iran story. So what's better, a young, unprepared cub journalist pitched into covering the Tehran story from the Dubai bureau, or witness reports from on the ground?

By the way, I will never forget seeing journalists in my hotel in Amman reporting 'from the Iraqi border' during the Iraq invasion. Not all journalism is bad, but the really woeful stuff has dented public faith in the credibility of journalism a great deal. And no, I don't like that at all.

Blogging triumphalists don't give us enough credit
I don’t much like the tag ‘blogging triumphalist’, you’ll probably be unsurprised to know. I and many, many other people I know feel that we are not being well served by ‘legacy’ or mainstream media. But it’s the media I’m talking about – not journalism. Journalism online can positively thrive, Christopher himself is a brilliant example of that and I’ll add my two personal favourites, AdNation’s Eliot Beer and mUmBRELLA’s Tim Burrows. Both are former print journalists who have taken their work online and who are part of a richer, faster, more agile and more diverse online media that are winning people’s eyeballs because they give us what we want, how we want it and when we want it.

The crucial difference is that we can select what streams interest us. We can follow the people whose work engages us, whether they’re bloggers, Twitterers, photojournalists, writers or videographers.

And, by the way, one of those streams is wire services – the very same ones that fill the majority of the white space on the dead trees that are shoved into the hotel rooms, houses and offices of disinterested readers all over the Middle East every day. I don’t need to wait until tomorrow to read a watered down version of Reuters’ piece on Tehran, it’s on my desktop in two seconds thanks to RSS. And the pictures, too. AND the eyewitness reports that flesh out my own personal understanding of, and emotional attachment to, what's going on.

Twitter is one part of this emerging new media story, one of the information streams open to us thanks to the Internet. As consumers, we are increasingly using these information streams to customise and streamline the content we believe is relevant to us.

We don’t need translators or people to hold our hands and give us the context that we, poor mortals, are too dumb to seek ourselves. And if that’s journalism’s defence (I do not believe it should be, BTW), then God help journalism.