Round-up of Internet TV services

So if Motorola's research is on the money and 43% of UK broadband users have watched TV on the internet, where are they getting it from? Until recently there weren't a huge number of legal options available, with BitTorrent and YouTube/Google Video offering the best chance of tracking down that nugget of TV gold. However, progress with rights frameworks and a growing acceptance of P2P distribution mean that the UK's major broadcasters are slowly starting to join the party. 4oD and Sky by Broadband are already up and running with ITV.com and the BBC iPlayer both expected soon. However, it's not just established broadcasters who spy an opportunity in this area. A new breed of aggregators is springing up with a range of technologies and business models, all hoping for a slice of the Internet TV pie. Below is a round-up of eight of the most promising.

Zattoo

Zattoo provides access to (almost) live TV via your PC (or Mac), using a proprietary P2P streaming technology and the H.264 codec. Debuted in Switzerland during the 2006 World Cup, Zattoo is now available in Denmark and the UK with a gradual roll out planned to other territories. The UK offer (currently in private beta) provides access to seven of the BBC's eight digital TV channels (not BBC Parliament) and Al Jazeera English with an impressively short time-lag (approx. 6 seconds). The interface is super simple, comprising a channel chooser and, er, that's it.



Pros: High-quality, full screen rendering of live TV with short time-lag.
Cons: No on-demand content. Offer limited by territory.

Content offer:
Navigation:
Features:
Overall:

Joost

The poster-child for the new breed of P2P TV services, Joost has received the lion's share of press attention thanks largely to the pedigree of it's illustrious founders, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis (founders of Skype and Kazaa). An immersive, full-screen experience, Joost is currently busy signing up content partners (Warner Bros., Viacom, Sony, CBS & CNN have all inked deals) and widening it's beta test in preparation for a summer launch (not without a few teething problems it has to be said). A more detailed assessment of Joost can be found here.



Pros: Innovative and intuitive interface (not an easy combination). Web-enabled widgets.
Cons: Technical teething problems. Content offer not yet compelling enough.

Content offer:
Navigation:
Features:
Overall:

Babelgum

Currently in closed beta, P2P streaming service Babelgum has a lot in common with Joost and has been fighting to get out of the shadow of its media-friendly cousin. Unfortunately I can't help with the cause because I haven't yet received a beta test invite :-( Anyone existing beta testers care to throw me a bone/invite...?

Vuze

Vuze (ne. Zudeo) is a content service built on the back of the hugely popular Java BitTorrent client Azureus (downloaded more than 140 million times according to their blurb). The relationship between the two feels a bit awkward at times with one providing geo-restricted access to a selection of mostly paid-for content, the other providing free global access to the millions of files distributed via BitTorrent. BBC Worldwide is currently the jewel in the content crown with whole episodes of Little Britain, The League of Gentlemen and classic Doctor Who available 'to rent' for $0.99 (assuming you live in the US).



Pros: High-quality video (much of it HD). Comments/ratings.
Cons: Content offer limited by region. Mostly paid-for.

Content offer:
Navigation:
Features:
Overall:

Jalipo

Jalipo describes itself as "the first online marketplace for TV and video" and is boldly backing that claim with the creation of a new online currency, J:Credits (when will they learn?). The streamed-only proposition has five genre categories (News, Sport, Movies, Entertainment & Other) which can be filtered by On-Demand, Live Events and TV Stations. The current content offer is fairly news-heavy with partners including Al Jazeera, BBC World, Bloomberg and France 24. The $64,000 question is whether enough people will be willing to stump up the cash (£1 buys you 196 credits at the current exchange rate, enough for an hour and a half of Al Jazeera at the highest bit-rate). Embedding is apparently on the way although it's hard to see how they'll get this to work effectively what with the need for sign-in/payment.



Pros: Choice of bit-rates. Don't need to download any software.
Cons: Limited content offer. It costs.

Content offer:
Navigation:
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Overall:

Veoh

The Veoh offering encompasses both a web-based Flash player and a P2P desktop app for viewing downloaded content. It also spans both professionally produced and user-generated content resulting in an extremely eclectic content offer. At the time of writing the most popular videos were episodes of Japanese anime series Naruto: Shippūden and Bleach, an illegally uploaded episode of House and a clip of professional attention-seeker Paris Hilton naked. Fortunately, there are a wealth of navigation options to help you find your way through the morass of content including Most Popular, Recently Added, Top Rated, Most Discussed, Top Favourite and Run Length (perfect if you have exactly 2 mins 43 seconds to fill). You can also browse by Channels, Series and People, with options to filter by Most Subscribed, Recently Updated and Top Rated. The most subscribed channels (excluding Veoh's own promos channels) are currently MusiqTone and Prom Queen, although the subscribers numbers are low by YouTube standards.



Pros: Lots of content. High-quality video. Wide range of navigation options.
Cons: Shortage of big-hitter content partners

Content offer:
Navigation:
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Overall:

Brightcove

Founded in 2004, Brightcove is a relative old-timer amongst the Internet TV crowd, although it wasn't until October of last year that it branched out from it's established syndication model to launch Brightcove.com as a consumer destination, aggregating video from its network of publishers. The content offer is mostly short-form (streamed using Flash) with music videos and celebrity clips dominating the 'The Top 10 Buzz'. The primary navigation device is genre, with channels acting as a second-tier filter. Sky One has a channel under TV Faves, although only the Lost recaps appear to be attracting much traffic. On the plus side, the video quality is pretty good and there's one-click integration with a few of the most popular Web 2.0 sites (Digg, Facebook and del.icio.us). As you'd expect from a company which has built its business on syndication, the link/embed/send to a friend options are all present and correct. The recommended Related Videos also seem to be almost always on the money (unlike YouTube).



Pros: Embed functionality and integration with Web 2.0 sites.
Cons: Dearth of compelling longer-form content. Limited navigation options.

Content offer:
Navigation:
Features:
Overall:

Democracy

Democracy (soon be renamed Miro) is an desktop application developed by the Participatory Culture Foundation which enables you to subscribe to over 1,000 free video channels (delivered via RSS) and view them via an integrated version of the awesome VLC media player. It's also possible to search and download from some of the main streaming video sites (e.g. YouTube, Google Video, Revver, blip.tv) without leaving the comfort of the application and they've even thrown in a fully-featured BitTorrent client for good measure. As a consequence the content offer is potentially limitless, although the most popular channels include Adult Swim, Comedy Central, NBC Nightly News and Movies in the Public Domain. The interface will be familiar to iTunes users with the added bonus of a warm and fuzzy feeling resulting from the open-source, DRM-free nature of the enterprise.



Pros: Excellent one-stop shop interface. Potentially unlimited content offer.
Cons: Most mainstream broadcasters too scared to put out DRM-free content.

Content offer:
Navigation:
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Conclusion

A quick scan of the above star-ratings reveals the key challenge for these new players: compelling content. There's no shortage of impressively implemented technology on display here but very little in the way of must-see content. Democracy and Veoh come closest by throwing their doors open to all creators of video and allowing the cream to rise to the top, although the absence of high-profile commercial content will be a stumbling block for some. The bigger question is whether these newbies can get their act together before Apple starts ramping up its television download offering in support of the launch of Apple TV in the UK. It's going to be an interesting next 12 months for Internet TV.

Towards a more meaningful conception of online performance

There seems to have been a fair amount of noise about online measurement recently, much of it from the UK newspaper industry, the rump of which recently committed to publishing its ABCe figures on a monthly basis. What's interesting to me (apart from The Guardian and The Telegraph both claiming victory by citing different metrics) is how rudimentary our current approach to online measurement is. Yes, we've finally moved on from hits (remember them?) but the page impression is still alive and well and the unique user remains largely unchallenged as the daddy of online metrics. Below is a look at some of the key shortcomings of today's main site metrics (I've deliberately steered clear of streams, downloads and RSS as we'd most likely be here all night) followed by a brief rumination (if indeed you can ruminate briefly) on which direction I think we should be taking things in.

Page impressions (a.k.a. page views)

The successor to the wildly inaccurate 'hit' (which counted requests for all files/page elements), the page impression pretty much does what it says on the tin, counting one page impression for every webpage successfully requested by a user's browser. In the early days of the web, one of the main challenges to the accuracy of page impressions was the use of frames, which result in a separate page impression for every frame loaded, thus inflating the total. Whilst the use of frames has diminished in recent years, the rise of Flash and AJAX has threatened to compromise page impressions in the other direction as extensive navigation can often be achieved without the need to refresh the page.

Caching (the temporary storage of a webpage for faster retrieval) presents another challenge to the integrity of the page impression. Whether carried out locally or at ISP level, caching invariably results in fewer page impressions, but not in a way that can be measured or taken account of.

A more fundamental challenge to the validity of the page impression is the fact that a high page impression count doesn't necessarily equate to a good user experience. A user who instantly finds what they're looking for, perhaps just one click from the homepage, will generate fewer page impressions than a frustrated user desperately clicking around a site trying (possibly in vain) to locate a particular piece of content or information.

Page impression totals are also vulnerable to deliberate inflation by developers whose performance is being measured by them. If your salary is determined by advertising revenues, which in turn are dictated by page impressions, then why not spread that bit of content, which could just as easily reside on one page, over many pages, encouraging the user to click through and generate more page impressions? Or how about a spot the ball competition, which refreshes the page with every wrong guess...?

A further challenge to the authenticity of the page impression comes from its susceptibility to robotic traffic (e.g. web spiders, monitoring software, development scripts) and automated page requests (e.g. auto-refreshes, tickers). Whilst the majority of robotic traffic will be filtered out by decent web analytics software (if not by the long-arm of the auditor) some will inevitably slip through the net as the filters are increasingly unable to keep up with the pace of change in this area. How to factor new file formats (e.g. XML) in or out of the page impression equation also presents problems.

Unique users (a.k.a. unique visitors)

One of the longest standing frustrations with the page impression, especially amongst advertisers, has been its lack of correlation with the actual number of people accessing a given site. The arrival of the unique user promised to move site owners closer to an appreciation of the actual number of people visiting their sites.

There are three main ways of deriving unique user figures (although they aren't mutually exclusive and are often used in combination). The first is IP address, the unique numerical identifier which internet connected devices are assigned in order to communicate with each other. The second is cookies, the small packets of information that sites issue to a user's web browser to identify that browser on its return. The third is registration, asking users to sign up/in to use your site, with e-mail address the usual determinant of uniqueness.

Unfortunately all of these approaches, even when used in combination, fall short of accurately reflecting actual user numbers. IP addresses are most compromised as a signifier of uniqueness by the practice of dynamic IP allocation by ISPs (the server maintains a list of available IP addresses and assigns you a different one each time your modem/router requests one). This can lead to both over and under-counting of users as one user can be assigned multiple IP addresses over a given period on the one hand, whilst multiple users can be assigned the same IP address on the other. The rise of home networking and public Wi-Fi has further compromised the notion that a single IP address equates to one user/computer as multiple machines increasingly access the Internet through routers with a single IP address.

Cookies present a different range of problems the most acute of which is 'cookie churn' - the deletion of cookies, causing new cookies to be issued to existing users. The impact of cookie churn is greater over longer reporting period as the likelihood of users (or network administrators) having purged their browser's cookies increases (hence the BBC's decision to switch from reporting monthly to weekly unique users).

A more endemic challenge to the veracity of unique users, whether derived from cookies or IP addresses, is posed by shared-computer use (e.g. in schools, libraries and the home) and multiple computer use by one individual. In is no longer unusual for one individual to have access to a machine at home, another at work and possibly a laptop or other net-enabled portable device. This issue has been exacerbated by the arrival of the full internet on mobile phones (which don't reliably accept cookies) and the increasing use of multiple browsers on one machine (I regularly use Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera depending on the standards compliance of any given website).

The registration option, whilst mitigating against the use of multiple computers/browsers, is not a desirable barrier to entry for many sites and is usually undermined by the use of e-mail addresses as a signifier of uniqueness. It would now be the exception, rather than the rule, to find someone who has only ever used one email address for the duration of their life online. Forgotten passwords mean it's often easier to register with a different email address than reset the password for the old one. Factor in those people deliberately maintaining more than one profile on any given site and unique user figures based on registration start to look less robust.

Visits

Visits are something of a halfway house between page impressions and unique users, combining both metrics to calculate the frequency which which users visit the site (ABCe defines a visit as "A series of one or more Page Impressions, served to one User, which ends when there is a gap of 30 minutes or more between successive Page Impressions for that User"). Aside from being derived from two rather imperfect metrics, visits tend to favour websites which lend themselves to quick, frequent checks (e.g. e-mail, news, weather, social networking) over sites which require more sustained engagement from the user (e.g. gaming, e-commerce, blogging), which is why visits are best looked at alongside our next metric which is...

Time spent

Nielsen//NetRatings recently announced plans to abandon the lowly page view in favour of a 'time spent' metric, citing the rise of Ajax as a key factor in their decision. Whilst arguably an improvement on page views, time spent is critically flawed as a metric by failing to take account of the level of user engagement. Having a website open doesn't equate to being engaged with it, especially in this era of tabbed browsing. It's not unusual for me to have a website open on a tab for days or weeks at a time without actually looking at it.

Where next?

So, if our current metrics are repeatedly coming up short, where should we be headed? It seems to me that engagement, coupled with the value attributed by users to an online experience, are critical to the future of online measurement. I fear we have become too fixated on the figures in our server logs and have failed to exploit the potential of an inherently interactive medium in gauging user experiences. Rather than looking at graphs going up and down and trying to infer what our users are thinking, why don't we start asking them?

As part of its thinking around how to adapt to the Web 2.0 world, the BBC (disclaimer: I work for the BBC) has started asking it's users (by means of a quarterly online survey) to rate different areas of its website according to how likely they would be to recommend them to a friend or colleague. The methodology is known as Net Promoter and was developed by loyalty business model expert Fred Reichheld. Combined with more specific questions about what users like and dislike about our sites, Net Promoter has proved a revelation, delivering tremendous insight into what our users most value and what they find frustrating.

Of course, online surveys aren't the only way of gathering qualitative feedback from users (which is good news as they're invariably self-selecting and can be unwelcome if they appear too often) . Flickr (recent recipient of the Webby Award for Best Practices) has made something of an art form of iterating product features and gauging the community's response, rolling back or tweaking the new features as necessary. By adding simple voting buttons to sites and individual page elements we can start to build up a much richer picture of what audiences are truly engaging with and valuing than a graph of unique users or page impressions can provide.

Whilst unique users and page impressions undoubtedly still have a place in a site's suite of online measurement tools, they need to be lower down in the mix and secondary to more sophisticated measurements of user engagement and appreciation. We must move the debate around online measurement beyond just raw numbers and start to enable our audience to tell us what they really think of our sites and services.

Joost invites

If you're still without a Joost invite I've got a stack to giveaway - just drop me an email (dan at fabricoffolly.co.uk). You can read my first impressions of Joost here.

SplashCast MyPodcastNetwork

Mightily impressed with SplashCast's new feature MyPodcastNetwork, which enables you to playback podcasts via an embeddable Flash player. Below is my favourite podcast, Mark Kermode's Film Reviews, followed by this blog's podcast (provided by text-to-speech service Talkr) which hopefully won't cause a rupture in the space-time continuum when it comes to playing back this post...

The digital water cooler

One of the oft-presumed casualties of the digital, on-demand era is the 'water cooler moment' - that totemic discussion of the previous night's (normally televisual) entertainment, nominally carried out around the office water cooler. The Scotsman recently ran a piece headed 'Last chance to share a TV moment' in response to the launch of Sky Anytime on TV and bloggers are also starting to warm to the theme.

However the advent of digital isn't actually precipitating the death of the water cooler moment. To the contrary, it might just be its saviour. Whilst the explosion in choice that characterised the first era of digital has undoubtedly contributed to diminishing audiences for live linear TV, the second era of digital, focused around greater control for the user, is helping the water cooler moment evolve and adapt to the new media landscape. Below is a discussion of some of the key characteristics of the new digital water cooler.

Asynchronous/Synchronous

One of the false assumptions of those decrying the death of the water cooler moment is that synchronous viewing is a prerequisite for water cooler moments. The Scotsman article references the Only Fools and Horses episode where Del Boy falls backwards through the bar. Whilst those lucky enough to catch this comedy gem live would no doubt have eagerly joined the water cooler discussion at work the following day, those who missed it would have had to wait till the BBC decided to schedule a repeat or include the clip in an compilation programme. Had that episode first aided in the digital era, it would have been all over YouTube within the hour and been emailed around offices up and down the country the following morning. Thus, the water cooler discussion is no longer limited to those who caught the programme live (you can view the OFAH clip here).

Another erroneous assumption is that the discussion also has to be synchronous. Pre-digital, the water cooler moment tended to happen just once, the day after the programme's first broadcast. If you were off sick the day after JR got shot then you would would probably have missed your chance to contribute to your colleagues' forensic dissection of events. The Internet enables those conversations to continue as new people discover the programme. Sites such as TV.com, Television Without Pity and Tape If Off The Internet create separate discussions around thousands of individual episodes, enabling you to join the discussion around whichever episode you've most recently watched.

In addition to enabling asynchronous water cooler moments, digital is also facilitating new types of synchronous viewing and discussion. YouTube recently starting trialling a feature called Streams, which enables users to set up a 'YouTube room' where they can watch and interact with other users in real-time whilst sharing videos. Sites such as Justin.tv and Ustream.tv are taking this further with user-generated content, whilst new and established broadcasters are also starting to dip their toes in the water (e.g. NBC's Heroes Two-Screen Experience and Joost's chat widget. Factor in the increasing amount of unsolicited viewer conversation that goes on via SMS and Instant Messaging whilst people are watching TV and you start to realise that the communal viewing experience is being reinvigorated, not destroyed, by digital technologies.

Macro/Micro

Another key way in which the digital water cooler moment differs from its analogue predecessor is that the conversation can be a whole lot bigger. The Internet's fundamental disregard for territorial boundaries means that anyone with a broadband connection can access a programme premiered on a US television network either live or soon after broadcast and then instantly join the online debate. The water cooler has gone global.

As well as the macro conversations around the latest episodes of Lost and 24, the digital water cooler is also facilitating the most micro of water cooler moments. Asking around the office to see if anyone caught that interesting Tetris documentary on BBC Four last night is likely to be met with blank stares, but go online and you are sure to find groups of people having their own virtual water cooler moments about that very programme.

The challenge for broadcasters is to help facilitate water cooler moments of all shapes and sizes and in all locations (both real-world and virtual). Interestingly, Channel 4 has created a Water Cooler Moments page on it's News site although its disappointingly free of video and appears to be editorially determined rather than based on what users are actually talking about/rating/linking to. A more genuine gauge of water cooler moments are sites like ViralVideoChart.com which scans several million blogs a day to see which online videos people are talking about the most. It's interesting that the second most viewed video on the BBC's domestic YouTube channel to date is an 8-second clip of Dr. Who kissing Martha - a classic water cooler moment which became so before it was broadcast on TV.

The aforementioned Scotsman article contains a choice quote from one of their television critics, Paul Whitelaw: "While I think services like [Sky Anytime on TV] are a good idea in theory, I think it's a shame that watching television has become such an insular thing". An insular thing? What Paul is missing is that the advent of digital is broadening out the water cooler moment beyond its traditional temporal and geographical boundaries to create an ongoing, global debate around must-see video. Not, in my opinion, something to be sad about.

VHS videos - free to a good home

Somewhat belatedly (and more than two years after technical laggards Dixons) I've decided to clear some shelf space and bid a final farewell to what's left of my VHS collection. Rather than spend hours listing the tapes on eBay/Amazon or carting them down to my local Blockbusters (only to be offered a derisory sum for what are some of my favourite movies of all time), I've decided to give them away for free on a first come first served basis. Just email me (dan at fabricoffolly.co.uk) stating which video(s) you'd like (freeloader pays postage). Will be interesting to see whether the VHS market has now dropped away to the point where you can't even give tapes away for free. Will give it a couple of weeks then whatever's left will be dispatched to a charity shop on the Walworth Road...

8 Mile
Aliens
The Big Lebowski
Boogie Nights
Carrie
Chinatown
Close Encounters on the Third Kind
Dr. Strangelove
Fargo
Fight Club
Get Shorty
Ghost World
Go
The Godfather Part II
The Graduate
Jackie Brown
JFK
L.A. Confidential
Live Flesh
Memento
The Negotiator
Nixon
Orphans
Pulp Fiction
Raging Bull
Rain Main
Reservoir Dogs
Seven
Stand By Me
The Talented Mr. Ripley
Taxi Driver
Trainspotting
The Truman Show
The Usual Suspects
Wonder Boys
Wallace & Gromit: A Close Shave

In defence of PowerPoint

Only two contributions seemed to meet with widespread audience approval at last month's MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit. One was Lord Puttnam voicing his concern over the educational deficiencies / moral vacuity of video games (somebody buy that peer a copy of Everything Bad Is Good For You); the other was Emily Bell's promise that the day would be "practically PowerPoint free". Whilst only the former elicited a round of spontaneous applause, the latter certainly prompted a sigh of relief from a roomful of seasoned conference attendees.

What struck me about the audience reaction to these two contributions is just how easy it is to fall into the trap of blaming the medium for the message. Neither games consoles nor Microsoft PowerPoint should be held responsible for the proliferation of poor quality content. They are simply two forms of media which (like the the printing press, the television, the Internet and, for that matter, all other forms of media) can be used to create products of wildly varying quality.

On the basis that video games aren't short of articulate defenders, I will focus on the not inconsiderable challenge of speaking up for PowerPoint, for which the knives appear to be well and truly out. It's been bubbling along under the surface for a long time (see Wired's 2003 polemic PowerPoint is Evil) but the PowerPoint backlash is now in full swing. You could of course argue that the products of a multi-billion dollar software giant neither need nor deserve to be defended but I'm a firm believer in everyone receiving a fair trial (or maybe it's just a perverse desire to defend the indefensible).

The nub of my argument is that bad PowerPoint presentations are the fault of the creator and/or presenter not the software. Put simply, most of us don't know how to use PowerPoint effectively. One of the most elementary errors is replicating the content of the verbal presentation in textual form (usually as bullet points but sometimes, dear God, in full). This was highlighted by a recent piece on The Register, Official: PowerPoint bad for brains, which reported the findings of a team of Australian researchers that the human brain is ill-equipped to process the same information presented verbally and visually at the same time. What is extraordinary is that, like much research, we already know this (by virtue of having sat through such tedious presentations ourselves) and yet show little sign of implementing that knowledge.

Of course, reading out your slides is just one of a litany of common PowerPoint misdemeanours, which include wildly inappropriate use of clip art, illegible font sizes and gratuitous animation to name but three. So, what's to be done? A few years back I ran a training session at work called 'How To Sex Up Your PowerPoint' which included some tips for avoiding death by PowerPoint. Below are my '8 golden rules'. It's notable that they are mostly just common sense (PowerPoint seems to engender a curious leave-taking of senses amongst even the most intelligent of presenters). So without further ado...

The 8 Golden Rules of PowerPoint

1. Plan your presentation before opening PowerPoint

The first thing most people do when they hear they have a presentation to give (after the weeks of procrastinating), is to fire up PowerPoint and start knocking out some slides. This tends to result in 84-slide presentations without any discernible structure. Force yourself to write down answers to these two questions:

- What is your objective for the presentation?
- What key messages do you want your audience to take away? (ideally 3, but definitely no more than 7 as people can only hold 7 things in their brain at once)

It might seem ridiculous but you'd be surprised how often you get half way through creating a PowerPoint presentation and forget what you're trying to achieve with it.

2. Exploit your colleagues

Not in a general sense of course, but when it comes to sourcing images, audio, video or facts and figures don’t be afraid to ask for help. If you've taken the time to plan the presentation you'll know roughly what assets you're going to need and can fire off a few emails asking people for their help in finding them well before the presentation is due. Don’t be afraid of reusing slides or assets (yours or other peoples). If someone has already made a slide which illustrate your point, don’t reinvent the wheel. It’s easy to feel that PowerPoint presentations are like wedding outfits – you have to have an entirely new one for every occasion. You don’t – at the very least you can wear those shoes again. That said, you mustn’t forget Rule number 3…

3. Be ruthless

From when you are first planning the presentation to when you do your final run through, ask yourself "does this slide enhance my point?“. If it doesn't, change it so it does or get rid of it all together. Visuals can be distracting, especially when the alternative is listening to someone talk, so don't use them for their own sake or because it took you ages to build. Chances are they’ll come in handy later on.

4. Be consistent

There are few things more disconcerting in a PowerPoint presentation than fonts which change size, colour and location for no particular reason. Keep your headings the same size and in the same place. The easiest way of doing this is to copy and paste a slide and change the text. If you have a series of screengrabs, keep them the same size and in the same place. Using templates can also help consistency as can the Slide Master.

5. Keep it simple

Chances are you will know a great deal more than your audience about the subject on which you're presenting and its easy to misjudge the amount of knowledge you are assuming or the amount of geek-speak. A very complex presentation can actually be more boring than a simple one. Visually, try to use a little text as possible on the slides and avoid using text smaller than 28-point as your audience won't be able to read it. Don't be afraid of continuing a series of bullet points over two slides (assuming you've already edited them down as far as possible). If the second greatest PowerPoint crime is reading out verbatim text to an audience then the greatest is pointless animation. Try and avoid using animation unless it illustrates your point. We've all sat through presentations where all you can focus on is the hideous slide wipes.

6. Illustrate your points

They say a picture paints a thousand words and they may just be right. An image can make a point more simply and more effectively and be more memorable. However visuals can also be distracting so be sure to apply Rule 3 (Be Ruthless) to your use of images. Also consider using audio or video - a well chosen piece of media can be very powerful. Also, it breaks the monotony of one person talking. Try to use examples which will resonate with your audience, which brings me onto Rule 7…

7. Talk to your audience

Be sure to tailor your presentation to your audience. It’s easy to reach for an off-the-shelf presentation that you’ve used before but your audience will usually be able to tell. Of course, it’s not only what you say but also how you deliver it. Try to talk to your audience not your PowerPoint. It may feel a bit weird at first. Use prompt cards if necessary. If you are going to give out handouts, do so at the end.

8. Rules are there to be broken

The final golden rule of PowerPoint is that rules are there to be broken. Having said earlier on that a presentation should only aim to convey no more than 7 messages, I’ve just tried to give you 8. So, I guess they’re more like guidelines than rules, but 'golden guidelines' doesn’t have the same ring to it…

Postscript: In an attempt to put my PowerPoint where my mouth is, embedded below is a presentation which I created to accompany my post on Key technology trends for 2007. Unfortunately the font (Cooper Black) got lost in the uploading...

Why Heroes raises the bar for multiplatform media

Last year Dan Hill (ex-BBC, now director of web and broadcast at Monocle) wrote an extremely erudite post on why Lost is genuinely new media. One year on and multiplatform media has a new poster child in the form of Heroes which has taken Lost's exploitation of interactive platforms (and the web in particular) to the next level.

First let's look at NBC's 'official' online offering (which, tellingly, is increasingly hard to delineate from 'unofficial' offerings). In addition to the text-based staples of plot synopses, character/actor profiles and interviews, the site has ramped up the content offer in three key areas: video, take-away content and participative features.

Video

As well as the usual video clips, full episodes can be watched on-demand (in the US) via an embedded Flash player, with added functionality appropriated from the DVD experience of chapter points and exclusive cast commentaries (you can even change the audio levels and size of both video windows - see below screengrab). The site also offers video character profiles and behind the scenes footage. This sort of 'value added' content, coupled with on-demand streaming of full episodes, gives users a compelling reason to watch online.



Take-away content

Another key element of NBC's Heroes site is take-away content, from bog-standard wallpaper downloads (both PC and mobile) and e-cards, to more innovative instant messenger icons, widgets (embedded below), MySpace skins and graphic novels (downloadable in .pdf format). Enabling users to take a manifestation of the brand away from the site and display it on their desktop/mobile/blog/MySpace page/IM client and share it with their friends clearly has significant benefits for building brand loyalty and exploiting the power of word of mouse.



Participative features

One of the most impressive aspects of NBC's Heroes site is its range of participative features. In addition to simple quizzes and an interactive map the site runs the full gamut of user participation tools (message board, blog, wiki, user-submitted video). It even features a gallery of Heroes fan artwork, although the most innovate participative element of the NBC site has to be the Heroes Two Screen Experience which actively encourages users to log on during the broadcast to take part in polls and quizzes and interact with other viewers. The extent to which visitors can leave their mark on the Heroes site is unprecedented for a flagship programme site from a major broadcaster.

Whilst arguably cluttered in places, the site is also successful from a presentational point of view, combining consistent navigational elements with randomised promo slots which showcase the breadth of content available on the site.

Web as canvas

Of course, the official NBC site is just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to sites from syndicated broadcasters around the globe (e.g. SCI-FI UK), there are a number of semi-official spin-off sites. 9th Wonders (in addition to being a metaphysical comic-book drawn by one of the characters within the drama) is the name of the "official/unofficial fan site", Beaming Beeman is the blog of Director/Producer Greg Beeman and ActivatingEvolution.org, CorinthianLasVegas.com and PrimatechPaper.com are all dummy sites which form part of the Heroes 360 Experience alternate reality game, which "through original content created specifically for TV, online, and mobile...lets you explore, interact, and discover exciting new characters, sneak peaks, new and expanded storylines and much more."

The Heroes 360 Experience probably warrants a separate blog post. For the moment I'll link to its Wikipedia entry and a video of Heroes' creator Tim Kring discussing the multiplatform ambition and how they use the online chat around the programme as a feedback loop to find out what worked and what didn't.

In Dan Hill's aforementioned post on Lost, he talks about the 'web as canvas'; a notion which Heroes epitomises, not only through it's official daubings (which include a MySpace profile with 45,000 friends and the Zeroes viral video spoof, embedded below, which was seeded to various video sharing sites without any NBC branding) but also through huge swathes of unofficial audience created content.



Audience as creators

In addition to the content aggregated on television sites such as BuddyTV, TVRage and CNET's TV.com, Heroes boasts a huge number of unofficial sites, message boards and blogs. Below is a snapshot of just some of the English language sites devoted to Heroes.

http://www.heroes-tv.com/
http://www.herosite.net/
http://www.heroesboard.com/
http://www.heroesforum.co.uk/
http://www.heroesmedia.com/
http://www.heroesrevealed.com/
http://www.heroestheseries.com/
http://www.heroestv.com/
http://www.heroestvshow.com/
http://www.heroesinfo.com/
http://www.heroeswire.com/
http://www.got-heroes.com/
http://www.discussheroes.com/
http://www.moonoversun.com/
http://www.novembereight.com/
http://www.savethecheerleader.ca/
http://www.superhiro.org/
http://www.theheroeschronicles.com/
http://www.the-owi.com/
http://www.watchingheroes.com/
http://heroes-spoilers.blogspot.com/
http://heroes.starsfansite.com/
http://heroes360clues.blogspot.com/
http://heroesarg.blogspot.com/

Like Lost, Heroes also has an unofficial wiki, which currently comprises almost 1,000 articles (significantly more than NBC's official Heroes wiki) and the series has already spawned at least 10 podcasts (The 9th, The 10th Wonder, 3 Heroes, Cranky Hero, Hero Worship Podcast, Heroescast, Podcast Heroes, Save The Cheerleader Podcast, Sidekicks and The Heroes Podcast with Jeremiah).

More innovative user-generated offerings include a Heroes Character Map, which charts the relationships between the various protagonists and Incidental Heroes - a weekly fan-produced online video series (Episode 1 embedded below).



Below is a broad-brushstrokes attempt to visualise the growth in official and user-created content around Heroes over time (click for enlargement). Note how the user-created content builds in anticipation of the first broadcast, rockets once the show is on air and accelerates in response to new markets (e.g. SCI-FI premiere) or official content initiatives (e.g. Heroes 360 experience).



In view of the volume and diversity of interactive activity around Heroes, it's impressive to note that NBC aren't resting on their laurels, with an expansion of the 360 Experience concept and a suite of social networking tools both in the pipeline. Would be interesting to know both investment and traffic levels for the official Heroes site which is reputedly the biggest driver of traffic to NBC.com.

Born to pun: Is the advent of digital precipitating the death of creative titling?

If once is an accident, twice is a coincidence and three times is a trend, then I've noticed a trend over the last few weeks concerning the impact of digital on the titling of media content.

First up was a fleeting discussion in the 'Democratising content in the user-in-control era' session at last month's MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit about the impact of online search on headline writers (predominantly journalists and bloggers). Ben Hammersley suggested that the best headlines as far as search engines are concerned are those which adopt the does-what-it-says-on-the-tin approach (e.g. Scottish Cup result: Caledonian Thistle beat Celtic), which runs counter to the puntastic tradition of tabloid journalism in the UK which has given us, amongst other gems, the oft-quoted Sun headline 'SUPER CALEY GO BALLISTIC CELTIC ARE ATROCIOUS'. Not what you'd call Google-friendly.

Next came my girlfriend's reaction to my suggestion that we give BBC flagship Sci-Fi drama Life on Mars a go, which was along the lines of 'I don't much fancy a drama set in space' (its actually about a time-travelling policeman). The arrival of multi-channel, on-demand television (plus countless other media options) presents us with so many choices that we don't have time to thoroughly research each one. Instead, we must increasingly decide on the basis of title alone. This was confirmed to me by a piece of audience research on another BBC drama series, Spooks, in which a respondent claimed they'd previously avoided the series on the basis that they'd assumed it was about ghosts (the series was retitled MI5 when it was shown in the States).

Finally came a presentation from Leigh Aspin, Interactive Editor for BBC Radio 4 at an internal BBC event, in which he explained how the "clever, sometimes cryptic" titles of some of the station's programming were making it difficult for listeners to find the content of interest to them in an increasingly crowded on-demand media space. The example he used was a programme called 'Out of the Ashes' which the audience sportingly volunteered would most likely have been about cricket. The programme's original title was in fact 'Foot and Mouth: Five Years on'.

So are we destined to endure a mediascape dominated by channel Five-style Ronseal programme titles such as When Pilots Eject, The Woman Who Lost 30 Stone or Selling Houses Abroad (that last one's actually a Channel 4 programme, shame on them) or, to borrow a phrase from NatWest, is there another way?

I believe there is another way, but its not a quick fix. Part of the solution was outlined by Leigh in the remainder of his presentation, which focused on how richer search and navigation can be facilitated by term extraction run on programme descriptions. In other words, your programme can still be called 'Out of the Ashes' if the keywords pulled out of the programme description and flagged to you (and search engines) include 'cattle' and 'foot and mouth'. Similarly, your punning tabloid headline need not change if the correct metadata can be extracted from the article and supplementary contextual information.

Another weapon in the fight against tedious titling is the power of social software. The title of a YouTube video clip or a Flickr photo can be as inventive as its author's creativity allows as my main routes into the content will be via recommendation or tags, not by title.

These are baby steps that we need to start taking towards equipping our content for the digital age. The giant leap is the semantic web, which promises to deliver a greater understanding of the content of digital media, without getting tripped up by the idiosyncrasies of language. If and when the semantic web can start delivering on this bold promise remains to be seen. In the meantime we may well see a shift in media titling away from the cryptic and the punning towards the more functional and descriptive.

Can brands own colours?

According to marketing lore, it was once possible for a single brand to 'own' a colour; Coca Cola owned red, IBM owned blue, UPS owned brown (or so the legend goes). Regardless of whether this was ever really the case, it certainly ain't true now. Our globalised, digital world has more brands, shouting more loudly, across more media, than ever before.

Not that all companies have given up on the dream of owning a colour globally. Vodafone still seems pretty set on wresting red from Coke's clutches (with some success according to Martin Lindstrom’s 2005 book Brand Sense, in which he claims 30% of UK consumers now associate red with Vodafone, compared with 22% for Coke). The fight for red has been further complicated by the entry of (PRODUCT)^RED last year, which is hoping to own red across multiple sectors. That said, most companies have moved away from a goal of universal colour ownership and relocated the battle for colour supremacy to their own market sector.

Exhibit A is the 2005 legal dispute between Orange and easyGroup over the use of Pantone 151. Both companies had been using the distinctive shade of orange since the mid-90s, but it wasn't until Stelios announced the launch of the now-defunct easyMobile in 2004 that the mobile operator called in the lawyers; unsurprising when you consider that colour is the tacitly agreed brand differentiator amongst the mobile operators, where blue is synonymous with O2, magenta with T-Mobile, orange with, er, Orange and red with Vodafone (sorry Virgin). 3 opted out of the colour war by creating a chameleon logo, which employs different colours in different contexts.

Exhibit B is an Australian court action brought by Darrell Lea Chocolate Shops against confectionary giant Cadbury Schweppes last year. The judge found in favour of Darrell Lea concluding that "Cadbury does not own the colour purple and does not have an exclusive reputation in purple in connection with chocolate in Australia". Whilst Cadbury may have lost in court and been forced to amend the trademark claims on its packaging, it remains indelibly associated with purple in the minds of chocolate-loving consumers.

All of which is a precursor to asking whether it is possible to own a colour in the online space. My instinct is no - there are just too many competing brands. Strong colour/brand association is possible amongst UK mobile operators because there are only half a dozen of them. Likewise, cigarette companies successfully carved up the colours amongst them because there was a limited number of brands, enabling them to take out billboard ads or sponsor Formula One cars primarily on the strength of colour association (purple meant Silk Cut, gold meant Benson & Hedges, red meant Marlboro, black meant John Player Special).

However, the barriers to entry (and by extension, brand creation) on the web are so low that even in the same market sector, companies seem to have accepted the futility of attempting to own a single colour. The practicalities of web design may also feed into this; it's fine for Vodafone's full-page print ads and billboards to be almost entirely red, but that wouldn't work on its website (unless it was aiming to make its visitors' eyes bleed).

If ownership of a single colour is unattainable on the web, how about a particular combination of colours? Graham Beale got the ball rolling on this with a colour scheme montage posted on his blog, Hold and Modify. However, of the 15 represented, I could identify just 2 (Flickr and Blogger). Whilst Graham assures me that his fellow web designers were able to name many more, I think it's fair to infer that Joe Public wouldn't.

Interestingly, the one site which comes closest to achieving colour ownership on the web for me is lastminute.com which has had almost 10 years to stake its claim on a particularly aggressive shade of pink. Shown a swatch in isolation (or in a pink line-up with Smile and T-Mobile) I reckon I would be able to identify it, although that may just be the subliminal impact of their weekly newsletter in my inbox.

Whilst colour will undoubtedly remain a critical element of brand identity, both on and offline, I wonder if it's moving lower down in the mix as the marketplace becomes increasingly crowded and colour ownership is redefined as a pipe dream from a bygone era (the mythology is that Coke began its ownership of red in the 1950s by changing the colour of Santa's suit from green). The democratisation of branding, facilitated by the Internet, has blown the lid off the notion of colour exclusivity and marketing will need to become more sophisticated in response.

The favicon - your 256 pixel brand identity

Despite often being deprioritised (or forgotten about altogether) by web developers, the lowly favicon (a contraction of favourite icon) is becoming an increasingly important aspect of brand identity on the web.

Usually measuring just 16 by 16 pixels, favicons are the small logos that appear next to the website names in your browser's list of favourites/bookmarks. Chances are they are also displayed in your browser's address bar, before the URL of the site.

Another place you will see them is on the tabs of tabbed web browsers such as Opera. Mozilla Firefox, and Internet Explorer 7 which, collectively, now account for over a third of the browser market (according TheCounter.com).

The rise of Web 2.0 has also contributed to the favicon's higher profile as a growing number of social bookmarking sites, syndication tools and API-enabled mashups make use of favicons when linking to other sites. In particular, the increasing use of favicon-based buttons on blogs encouraging visitors to summit to del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, Reddit, Stumble, Technorati etc. (see AddThis).

So, how are web developers responding to the increased attention on the favicon? Representing your brand effectively in just 256 pixels is undoubtedly an enormous design challenge and four main approaches seem to have emerged:

1.) Attempting to replicate the site's logo in it's entirety

This approach stands or falls on the complexity of your site's logo, which clearly favours those companies who designed their logo with favicons in mind (e.g. Blogger , del.ico.us , Digg ). Long-established brands which pre-date the web have more of a conundrum - should they attempt to shrink their existing brand down to 16 x 16 pixels (e.g. BBC , NPR ) or should they design a new logo with this new branding space in mind? Companies who have already successfully distilled their brands down to a simple image (e.g. Apple , Nike , Smile ) have a clear advantage in this area.

2.) Abstracting the initial letter(s) from your site brand

Championed by Amazon (), Google () and Yahoo! () this approach has become increasingly commonplace. The challenge here is to ensure your design treatment is distinct enough from all the other sites using the same letter, or in some cases, a different letter - compare Blogger () and easyJet (). Amazon and Yahoo!'s favicons are particularly successful as they incorporate another brand element besides the font (an arrow and an exclamation mark, respectively).

3.) Creating a custom graphic which attempts to convey the site's USP

More in line with the design conventions of desktop icons, this approach sidesteps the challenges of representing your site brand, but introduces the equally daunting task of effectively conveying the site's purpose in just 256 pixels. More successful examples include Lego () and Threadless ().

4.) Creating an abstract image

The least common approach, its main advantage is that in a world dominated by reduced logos and initial letters, abstract images stand out by virtue of being different. The downside is that is that it swims against the tide of received wisdom regarding branding and the resulting images are often indistinct or unmemorable (see this site's favicon, which I really must do something about). Interestingly, Flickr recently abandoned the initial letter approach () in favour of something more abstract ().

Whichever approach you adopt, it's worth remembering that your favicon is your (potentially permanent) brand presence on the limited and valuable real estate of people's browsers and across the wider web. The cardinal sin of favicons is not having one at all, which just looks lazy. Not having a favicon is like not having a sign promoting your store ahead of the turn off from the main road, when all your competitors have one. Yes, visitors will still find your site via search engines and weblinks and some may bookmark it. But they won't have the visual reminder of your brand when they scan their bookmarks/tabs, deciding where to visit.

In spite of this, a surprising number of high-profile sites are currently without favicons. I was so disappointed by the absence of a favicon for Empire that I created one () and emailed it to the developers who I'm pleased to see have since put it live.

So, what lies ahead for the humble favicon? Well, larger sizes (32 x 32 pixels is increasingly common) and alternative image formats both seem inevitable as does a growing prominence on the mobile platform. I'm hoping use of animated favicons don't become more widespread as gratuitous animation usually pisses people off.

To finish off, below is an A-Z montage of initial letter favicons. First person to name all 26 gets a Cadbury's Cream Egg (click through to Flickr to annotate).

Lost the plot: Why US dramas can't help jumping the shark

Whilst the debate rumbles on over if and when Lost 'jumped the shark' (my personal vote would be Mr. Eko's death by CGI smoke), few seem to be discussing the more significant issue of why.

My contention is that fundamental characteristics of the US broadcasting ecosystem are to blame. More specifically, the economic drivers of commercial television in the States dictate that a show cannot be cancelled if it is still attracting a significant revenue-generating audience, regardless of the quality of the output. The horse must be flogged until it is well and truly dead.

This first hit home for me a while back whilst reading an interview with Lost's creator, J.J. Abrams, in London freesheet The Metro (unfortunately not replicated on their website) in which he explained that he had the overall narrative arc of the series clear in his mind. The creative challenge stemmed from not knowing how many seasons he would need to string that narrative arc out for. As long as enough people kept watching he would need to keep writing.

This disarmingly honest assessment of the realities of making commercially viable television drama in the States brought me up short and got me thinking about why this isn't so true in the UK, where there is a long-established history of quitting while you're ahead (think Fawlty Towers, Monty Python, Blackadder, This Life, Our Friends in the North, The Office, Life on Mars).

Compare this list with some landmark US drama series of the last few years, almost all of which outstayed their welcome (e.g. Friends, The X-Files, Ally McBeal, ER, Sex and the City, 24, The Sopranos, Desperate Housewives, The O.C.) and/or spawned gratuitous big or small screen spin offs (e.g. Friends, The X-Files, CSI).

The most notable exceptions to this rule are Six Feet Under and The West Wing which called it a day after five and seven series respectively, without any discernible drop in quality. The West Wing even survived the death of one of its stars (John Spencer) and a significant change in emphasis in its final series - normally both classic precursors to a bout of shark jumping. The Simpsons looks likely to one day join this list although until the final episode airs (and with a big-screen outing on the way) it could still blow it. I also have high hopes for House which has already clocked up three seasons without dropping the ball.

So, why are there more examples of British series which have called it a day before jumping the shark? The most obvious explanation is the strong role of public service broadcasting in the UK. Unlike its commercial competitors on both sides of the pond, the BBC can afford to prioritise quality when deciding whether to commission additional seasons as it doesn't need to worry about ad revenue. The shorter seasons may also be a factor (UK seasons are typically 10 or 12 episodes versus 22 in the US) as may the absence of a syndication model.

However, I also wonder if there's something embedded in the British psyche (which extends to programme-makers) about not over-egging the pudding, in play here. I suspect that the BBC would have happily commissioned additional series of Extras or The Office if Gervais and Merchant had been willing to write them. Similarly, there feels something inherently British about the Blackadder team calling it a day after four series when the temptation to carry on must have been almost irresistible.

Of course there have been popular British TV series that refused to take the hint and carried on well past their sell-by dates (Only Fools and Horses leaps instantly to mind) although they seem fewer and farther between than their transatlantic equivalents. Here's hoping that my latest US drama of choice, Heroes, knows when to call it a day. I have to confess I'm not optimistic...

MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit 2007

Somewhat belatedly (thanks to avalanche of day-job work) below is a distillation of my notes from last Thursday's MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit. Rather than summarise the whole conference (which would no doubt duplicate much of the Guardian's own blog coverage) I've picked out some of the key themes and stats. So, with a nod to John Crace, here is the MediaGuardian Changing Media Summit 2007 digested:

The 10 key themes

• We continue to overestimate the short-term impact of technologies whilst underestimating their long-term impact
• Underlying audience needs remain unchanged (information, entertainment and communication)
• Media companies need to focus on the impact of technologies on user behaviours rather than getting hung up on the potential of technologies
• 'Old media' has lost its stranglehold on distribution. In response, media companies need to work out what they do best/uniquely and focus on that, then form partnerships (with both amateurs and professionals) to do the other stuff
  
• Communities are not the same as audiences and require engagement not just eyeballs
• Editorship is important in the changing media space. Journalists will always be needed but the ones who will survive/thrive are those who actively listen to/engage with communities
• Young people don't care about brands/only care about brands (no consensus on this one)
• The industry's current approach to user-generated content and rights is to take down content if someone asks you to
• On-demand consumption of broadcast content won't overtake live consumption anytime soon, although on-demand listening/viewing will increase and live audiences will continue to decline
• Revenue models are still uncertain in the changing media space. What mix of ad-funded, subscription and free content will work best?

The 10 key stats

People invariably bandy stats around at conferences. Below are ten which caught my attention (with attribution).

• The Guardian's podcasts are generating 1 million downloads a month (Emily Bell)
• Reuters employs 2,400 journalists and has an estimated audience of 1 billion people each day (Geert Linnebank)
• Second Life has almost 5 million 'residents' (Justin Bovington)
• 25,000 businesses are trading within Second Life (Justin Bovington)
• The average age of Second Lifers is 33 (Justin Bovington)
• Habbo Hotel has 74 million player characters and 7 million unique users a month (Timo Soininen)
• 1 in 5 people surfing the Internet are listening to radio at the same time (James Cridland)
• 47% of mobiles sold in the UK in the last year have had an FM chip in them (Natalie Schwarz)
• Feedburner serves 21 million feeds to 14 million unique users each day (Steve Olechowski)
• Last.fm has 15 million unique users a month (Felix Miller)

The 10 key buzzwords

• engagement
• distribution
• content
  
• brand
• on-demand
  
• community
  
• blogging
• syndication
• "dead tree version" (i.e. printed)
• multi-platform
  

The 10 key namechecks

• Second Life
• The Guardian
  
• Twitter
• Google
• YouTube
• BBC
• Channel 4
• Sky
• Reuters
• BT
  

The long tail of social networking

In case you hadn't noticed, social networking's gone got niche. Whereas the first wave of social networking sites (e.g. Classmates, SixDegrees, MySpace, Friendster, Linkedin) were relatively broad churches, with demographic emphasis the main differentiator, some of the latest kids on the social networking block are more niche than a Wim Wenders movie.

The unspoken rule of the first generation of social networking sites was to keep the focus general enough to facilitate a rapid growth in membership. However, the inclusive social networking model has become increasingly less viable for start-ups as the marketplace has become more crowded and dominated by a handful of big hitters (e.g. MySpace, orkut, Xanga, Facebook, Bebo).

This has paved the way for a new wave of social networking sites focused on niche areas of interest or identity. Don't believe me? Check out the hastily cobbled together A-Z list below which runs the gamut from Activism to Wine via Training shoes (strictly speaking it's an A-W, as I haven't yet found a social network dedicated to xylophones, the Yakuza or Zoroastrianism).

The narrow focus of a site like SneakerPlay may put a comparatively low ceiling on its potential membership, but it also increases its attractiveness both to users with that particular interest and to advertisers who are keen to hit their target demographic with greater precision (Nike currently has a banner ad for its AF1 Playoffs running on every page on SneakerPlay).

The recently relaunched Ning is the logical next step in the specialisation of social networking, as it enables you to create your own social network. With over 30,000 Ning networks already created, this opens up the possibility of a significant long tail of social networking although many of the networks are either still being set up or only have one member (the founder).

Whilst I suspect the current long tail of social networks doesn't begin the stack up against MySpace's 150 million odd user accounts, I doubt that will still be true in a year or two as niche social networking matures and more generic social networks start to see a decline in traffic.

A-Z of niche social networks

Activism: Care2, TakingITGlobal
Art & Design: Amateur Illustrator, Stuart, Teapotters
Auctions: biddingBuddies
Books: LibraryThing, Shelfari, Tagabook
Cars: CarDomain, CarSpace, Carster, Motortopia
Clubbing: AfterTheClub, DontStayIn
Comics: ComicSpace, Hypercomics
Cooking: BakeSpace, Group Recipes, Open Source Food
Cycling: BikeSpace.net, velospace
DIY: Curbly
Ethnicity: BlackPlanet, Koolanoo, Quespasa, WorldLounge
Fashion: ShareYourLook, Shoutfit, Trendmill
Fitness: ontri, PlayLocal, Traineo, We Endure
Film: Flixster, Yamji
Football: Joga
Gambling: Gaambol, Gottabet
Health: DailyStrength, OrganizedWisdom, RealMentalHealth
Hunting: TheHuntZone.com
Intelligence: intellectConnect
Motherhood: ConnectingMoms, MommyBuzz, MothersClick
Music: Hip-Hop.net, Linked Musicians, MakeOutClub, MusicHawk
Neighbourhood: ((echo))MyPlace, My Neighbourhoods
Outdoor activities: MyOutdoors.net, Outdoorzy.com, thoos
Parenting: GotKidsNetwork, Minti
Pets: Animal Buds, Catster, Dogster, Fuzzster, HAMSTERster, Petster
Photography: The Black Stripe
Politics: essembly, HOTSOUP.com, My.BarackObama.com
Religion: MuslimSpace, MyChurch, OakTreeIdea, ShoutLife, Xianz
Rugby: RuggerSpace.com
Smoking: Smoking Passions
Sports: FanPage, FanNation, FanSpot, Takkle, SportsMates, Ultrafan
Trainers: CriticalSole, Sneakerplay
Travel: TravBuddy, Travellerspoint, TripConnect, TripUp, WAYN
Video games: Gamervision, The Great Games Experiment
Wine: Bottletalk, Cork'd, Vinorati

How many posts is too many?

You can't have too much of a good thing, right? Not so, suggests a recent poll on why readers unsubscribe from blogs. The (admittedly unscientific) survey on ProBlogger found that "too many posts" was the most common reason for readers unsubscribing from a blog's RSS feed, way ahead of "infrequent posting" and "uninteresting content".

Whilst the methodology and sample size (109) can hardly be described as robust, the sentiment struck a chord with me. It also bought to mind a recent Read/WriteWeb post on The Attention Economy, which argues that the information explosion precipitated by the Internet is causing a scarcity of attention. We no longer read, we skim. And we vote with our feet.

This chimes with my recent experience of trying to keep on top of 40 odd feeds via Bloglines, some of which are populated with new posts upwards of 40 times a day. Catching up with all my blog reading only to return a few hours later to find dozens of unread posts elicits a bailing-out-a-sinking-ship feeling in me, which is why I too have started voting with my feet. Is Ubergizmo a half-decent gadget blog? Yes. Are the posts generally interesting? Yes. Do I have the time/inclination to read 40 Ubergizmo posts a day? No. Have I unsubscribed as a result? Yes.

"But you don't have to read them all!" I hear you cry. Well, that's true but I don't want to have to scroll through all those posts to see if there are any that really float my boat. Not when I can subscribe to Gizmodo UK which publishes a far more manageable number of posts per day.

Of course, one man's over-posting is another man's under-posting and there's clearly no optimal posting frequency (there are no doubt some readers eagerly refreshing their browsers every other minute in anticipation of the next Ubergizmo missive).

Maybe the problem isn't that there are too many posts, but that I need a more effective filter. Perhaps it's outmoded of me to attempt to source my reading solely by author/publisher. Which is presumably where Spotplex is hoping to come in. The recently launched Digg-alike differs from the daddy of all popularity sites by tracking user click-throughs (rather than votes) to determine which posts should make the front page.

Whilst it's nice to have an alternative barometer of the blogosphere, Spotplex doesn't (yet) take account of my personal tastes or those of my friends (which Bloglines kind of does do, albeit in a dumb way). I'm thinking maybe I need some sort of mash-up of the two which indexes my favourite blogs, but prioritises the most popular posts, as well as filtering the wider blogosphere against my profile for posts which may be of interest to me.

On the basis that pretty much anything I think of in Web 2.0 space of late seems to have already been realised somewhere, I'll wait for someone to point me in the direction of a Spotplex/Bloglines hybrid. Until then, I'm off to cull some prolific posters from my blogroll...

Directory of online profile aggregators

Following on from my previous post on Ziki and Frank Gruber's (presumably tongue-in-cheek) suggestion of an 'aggregator of aggregators' in his excellent round-up of web profile aggregators, below is a quick A to Z list of sites which enable you to aggregate your digital life. Feel free to point out any I've missed and I'll try and keep the list up-to-date.

claimID
Explode
FindMeOn
Iceflake
Lijit
Metathings
Mugshot
Naymz
onXiam
Opinity
Ozmozr
Profilactic
ProfileFly
ProfileLinker
Snag
SocialNetwork.in
SocialURL
Spokeo
Suprglu
The Internet Address Book
TheyMatter
ufeed
Wink
Ziki

I say roll on OpenID...

Ziki: social networking lite

Interesting promotional model from new(ish) social networking site Ziki, which is offering the first 10,000 people who sign up (they've had 7,960 so far) $10 of free sponsorship on Google, Yahoo and MSN so when someone searches for your name, a link to your Ziki profile is displayed in the paid-for results. In addition to basic personal info (age, location etc.) and a photo, you can also state your reasons for having a Ziki profile from a set list (e.g. networking, job opportunities, friendship, dating) and input tags/keywords which describe your areas of knowledge/interest (which then operate as a navigational tool to find like-minded people). Once you've verified your registration you can also start adding links and feeds to reflect your wider web presence.

It's an interesting example of 'lite' social networking, where your profile is more of an aggregation page (à la claimID , Profilactic and Suprglu) than a MySpace-style content repository. As a result it's more likely to appeal to older, more web-savvy users than your average social networking site.

The free search engines links (presumably a precursor to a paid-for service) provide a nice incentive to sign up and will particularly appeal to those with common names (Google returns 180,000 matches for "Dan Taylor"), although may be of less value to high profile bloggers and the geek elite whose names already appear top of most web searches.

My media consumption diet

With nods to Jeremiah Owyang for kick starting this meme and James Cridland for alerting me to it via his blog, below is a rough approximation of my media consumption diet.



(chart created using Zoho Sheet)

Web

The web is undoubtedly my main media channel (maybe because it encompasses all of the below in one?). Excluding work access, I reckon I stack up around 18 hours of web access a week, which probably breaks down something like this: reading blogs/news feeds (5 hours), trying out new sites (4 hours), writing this blog (4 hours), emailing (2 hours), searching for information (1 hour), Flickring (30 mins), buying stuff (30 mins), selling stuff (30 mins), website design/maintenance (30 mins).

Estimated time spent per week: 18 hours

Music

Having parted company with the bulk of my CD collection last year, the vast majority of my music listening (excluding radio) is now done either via iTunes or on my iPod. According to last.fm I've listened to 11,355 tracks since registering at the end of February 2005, which works out just over 100 tracks a week. Assuming a average track duration of 3 minutes, I'm averaging around five and a half hours of music listening a week. Factoring in the listening which last.fm fails to capture I reckon the actual figure is nearer 7 hours a week.

Estimated time spent per week: 7 hours

TV

As previously posted, I don't watch a great deal of live TV, with DVD boxsets and downloads accounting for the vast majority of my TV viewing. It also fair to say that I have something of a penchant for US drama. In the past 12 months I've plowed through assorted seasons of Lost, House, Desperate Housewives, 24, The O.C., The Sopranos, The West Wing, Six Feet Under and Entourage. For my money, the standout UK series of last year was Planet Earth which just blew me away.

Estimated time spent per week: 7 hours

Radio

It's a dilemma whether to count ambient radio listening as, like Mr. Cridland, I work in an office where the radio is always on. In terms of active radio listening then its Jonathan Ross on Radio 2 on a Saturday morning, Stephen Merchant on 6 Music (via the BBC Radio Player as I'm not normally near a radio on a Sunday afternoon) and snatches of the Today programme as I get ready for work. Excluding ambient listening I reckon it's around 5 hours a week; including, it's probably more like 35.

Estimated time spent per week: 5 hours

Books

I have something of a famine or feast mentality when it comes to books, depending on whether I'm on holiday or not. I read 18 books last year but almost none of them whilst in this country. Last year's reading list was predominantly a mix of contemporary fiction (Rupert Thomson, David Mitchell, Jonathan Safran Foer, Patrick Neate) and media geek must-reads (The Long Tail, The Tipping Point, Freakonomics, Everything Bad is Good for You). Assuming an average reading time of 6 hours per book, I spent 108 hours reading last year which works out at just over 2 hours per week.

Estimated time spent per week: 2 hours

Newspapers

I buy The Guardian on Mondays (for the Media supplement), Thursdays (for the Technology supplement) and Saturdays (for the magazine and The Guide). I occasionally get caught without something to read on the tube and pick up one of the London freesheets but invariably feel dirty afterwards.

Estimated time spent per week: 2 hours

Films

Films are an enduring passion of mine although I try to only see films I think will be worth the investment (which I guess is why 30 of the 40 films I saw last year appeared in my films of 2006 list). Of that 40, I watched 23 at the cinema and 17 on DVD. Assuming an average running time of 2 hours (the days of the 90 minute movie are all but gone), I spent 80 hours watching films last year which works out at one and a half hours per week.

Estimated time spent per week: 1 hour 30 mins

Magazines

My long-standing subscriptions to Q, Sight & Sound and PC Format all fell by the wayside some time ago and the only magazines I still subscribe to at home are Empire (still the bible for movie lovers) and Web User (can't be wrong for £1.99). I also tend to leaf through the office copies of Stuff, T3, .net and Wired, although less so now that Engadget is taking care of my gadget obsession in a more timely fashion.

Estimated time spent per week: 45 mins

Podcasts

Despite the dozens of podcast subscriptions currently eating up my hard disk/bandwidth, there's actually only one podcast which I listen to religiously and that's Mark Kermode's Film Reviews. Clipped from Friday's edition of the Simon Mayo show on BBC Radio Five Live, it's half an hour of pure radio gold. More occasional listens include the Best of Moyles enhanced and Media Talk from Guardian Unlimited.

Estimated time spent per week: 30 mins

Video games

Until the arrival of my Wii on Tuesday I would've put a big fat zero down for video games, but having had a quick go on the game-changing Wii Sports (and with WarioWare Smooth Moves and Zelda: Twilight Princess waiting to be unwrapped) I think I may have to revise that figure. Let's start with a conservative estimate of 20 minutes.

Estimated time spent per week: 20 mins

Conclusions

- I spend 44 hours a week (39% of my waking hours) consuming some sort of media (although some of those hours are concurrent)
- My media consumption habits aren't very typical