An interesting article from Knowledge@Wharton looking at the friction between professional journalists/media and user generated content from 'amateurs'.

On the one hand professional journalists are sceptical of the ability and skills of amateurs to research and write-up a story yet research shows just how much they use blogs and social media networks to source stories. Whilst it maybe true that most bloggers work with little or no resource to help research and confirm information and stories many members of the public remain sceptical of everything they read in newspapers. The Express Groups recent actions show just what corners will be cut in search of stories to fill pages and help boost circulation.

The recent book by Nick Davis - 'Flat Earth News' highlighted research showing that media very often accepts press releases and uses them to generate 'news stories' rather than actually researching and validating the stories independently.

For many people it is often the 'wisdom of the crowds' - unpaid amateurs but passionate about a subject - that helps give the information value.

The media has started to encourage citizen generated content and blur the lines of their own staff. The BBC - a broadcaster now uses blogs to help communicate. The press is using audio and video podcasts as well as blogs to help get their stories across and keep them fresh. This is a new dynamic and one that raises many issues.

Interesting comments from the CEO of the Denuo Group (a Publicis company) on the loss of command and control method of advertising (thanks to AdAge).

The big issue for traditional centralised marketing is that it ignores the fact consumers want engagement and participation. Those viral campaigns and 'mash-ups' can tap into the 'mybrand'/'myvoice' generation. A check on the top viral videos of all time will see literally hundreds of variations on the theme.

A quick round up of good posts on the subject of planning your 2008 marketing stategy.

Before you plan read what

Seth Godin  thinks in his latest book (thanks to Sally Falkow)

P&G are going and why they are letting people build their brand (thanks to K. D. Paine)

Brian Solis has to say about engaging with bloggers 

Universal McCann CEO, Nick Brien (above) discusses the brave new world for marketing agencies and client marketing departments (Thanks to Advertising Age)

What are the marketing strategy 'buzz words' for the future? User generated content. Conversations. Engagement.

Roy Greenslades decision to leave the National Union of Journalists after 30 years has highlighted the painful change the print media and journalism is going through in adapting to the new media world. The NUJ are 'rubbishing' Web 2.0 and 'citizen journalism'.

Check out e-Consultancy for their take on the subject.

Also see Jeff Jarvis's comments in his blog.

As it says Broadcast Yourself. Or maybe that should be Watch Others broadcast themselves. That is the power of social media.

As Marshall McLuhan (1911 - 1980), the Communications and Media academic researcher said "With telephone and TV it is not so much the message as the sender that is “sent.”

He died before the internet became such a powerful communication platform so I am sure he would not mind me editing his statement slightly:

'With the internet and online video it is not so much the message as the sender that is sent'

A press release comScore yesterday reported that 80% of internet users (aged 15 and older) streamed video in April 2007. A total of 10% of their time online was spent watching video.

The study measuring video consumption in France, Germany, UK and the USA shows UK consumers are number 1 in terms of percentage watching but France leads on total time spent watching them at 13%. The UK beats all countries again with the total number of streams initiated.

Where are people accessing the video streams from?

• Google                 - 608m (includes YouTube)
• Yahoo! sites          -  58m
• BBC                     -  32m
• Fox Interactive      -  26m
• Microsoft              -  17m

Marshall McLuhan (1911 - 1980)

Great to see a traditional publisher embracing the opportunity that social media can bring to marketing to the teenage market. See report from Brand Republic.

Their strategy is to move towards interactivity with their readership. They will have an editorial board made up of readers from their teenage target market. They already have a page on MySpace. As Anna Rafferty, Director of Digital Marketing said their objective is to engage with people, get them emotionally involved and facilitate dialogue.   

We recently did some of our own research with 18 - 22 year olds and found that they used the internet on average 3 hours a day to socialise, get news and information. For them 'online' is the place to be. Traditional print and broadcast media was well down their list of sources of information.

What is most interesting is that recent research is showing that older age groups are now starting to mirror youth behaviour in sourcing information and socially interacting online.

When I am asked for examples of a social media site and citizen journalism and how it can work I give the example of TripAdvisor.

There was an excellent balanced review – warts and all - in the Wall Street Journal recently.

There are many worthy travel reviewers out there but they are paid to give a review either by the industry or a publication. Some travel undercover to avoid any impropriety but equally hotel management are on the look-out for those people so they can be given extra special service.

Many guide books and even holiday companies provide ‘satisfaction’ rankings on hotels and places. These are very useful but tend to be tied to publication dates and so are many months and sometimes a year or more out of date.

What is good about TripAdvisor is the sheer number of reviews produced covering so many places. The real power of social media would come to the fore if some sort of profiling is provided. A sort of ‘people like me’. A young couple with kids may have different needs and values on services and facilities to an older couple travelling without kids. Knowing more about the people helps improve the potential ‘matching’ of their review.

It certainly appears that many businesses have woken up to the fact that they can be being vetted by anyone. They post comments back about problems now being addressed. One can only hope that such constant inspection will help improve service overall where it is necessary.