The world according to Google: How Can I?

I’m sure there is a rational explanation…

Hotmail Fail Study: How to lose loyal customers and influence nobody… (Hotmail account blocked from sending messages)

Well we all knew Microsoft was in tough waters. Their OS under attack from the likes of Apple and Google. Their attempt to beat apple in the mp3 market failed. Their attempt to challenge Google in the search market also failed (although Bing is trying hard). Now it seems the company or rather their hotmail division (in a sign of good charitable faith) has decided to lend a hand to competitors  and block people’s hotmail accounts without any warning.

Background: I have used the same hotmail email account for almost a decade now and although I switched to gmail  a while back, I do occasionally use my old account to send personal emails (by personal I mean family and old uncles/aunts). Much to my amazement tonight, hotmail had decided in its infinite wisdom to block my email account without giving me any reason or warning (the help text says something about spam email!). Well other than my seasonal greetings to relatives (which I sincerely hope they don’t consider as spam…), I have sent nothing even remotely related to any sort of solicitation or spam email.

I filed a complaint to their support forum as follows:

Much to my utter frustration, you guys have decided to block my account. I have never indulged or sent anything close to resembling spam. Its funny how my gmail account has never once breached my privacy and decided to block me.

Please reopen my email account at your earliest convinience.

{removed email address} (I have used this for over a decade now but not too sure of the future at the moment…)

P.S I also have the right to demand an explanation for the breach of my privacy and blocking of my account.

Strangely enough, as I was typing this out my email had been reactivated but still no sign of an explanation from Microsoft. Upon further investigation I found the hotmail support forum full of similar complaints. Even more surprising are some of the tech support responses, for example:

“Thanks for posting back. After checking your account, I didn’t found any indication that it violated the Terms Of Use

(TOU) so I’ve now lifted restriction and you can now resume sending your messages.”

Excuse me but since when did Microsoft decide to adopt the rule “Guilty until proven innocent“?

Fear not Microsoft, Thankfully I did a course on American Govt. and Politics and would like to share some constitutional thoughts with you, especially regarding the fourth amendment (Bill of Rights):

• Fourth Amendment – Protection from unreasonable search and seizure: The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Now before the trolls activate, I am fully aware what Microsoft is doing isn’t completely illegal and companies ensure (or rather insure) it in their terms of service that they can get away with this. The point I am trying to make is the fact that these sorts of actions piss users off very quickly and in a social web they can and do have social consequences (See the Hell in Dell example). Now in the good old days, I would have fired off an email to Don Dodge who would have made sure within seconds this issue got to the right places (something he actually did regarding my quick email on a Xbox screw up incident in 2008). Sadly these days, I am quite clueless about Microsoft. Ray Ozzie vanished a long time ago and Steve Ballmer scares the crap out of me (especially when he is next to a chair!).

So Microsoft (I know you are utilizing all those noise listening social media tools):

• Please don’t block our Email accounts without any evidence
• Please don’t reply “afterward” that you did not find any violations or wrongdoing whatsoever!
• Please for your sake, develop the proper technologies and tools to detect violations Before blocking our account.
• Please hire tech support who can write proper sentences, I know things are cheap in India but many Indians know how to write in English, why not hire them…. “I didn’t found” = “I didn’t find”
• Please take a look at the complaint forum Here. See how many people are already complaining about this.
• Please understand: Doing Good and doing things the right way pays off. Read Google, Umair Haque

Thankfully I switched to Gmail a while back… It is quite frustrating not to be able to send any emails!

Google considering pulling out of China and other such nonsense…

Well it took them four years but it seems Google has had enough, they are considering reviewing their business operations in China.  A statement on their blog can be found here. So before we prepare ourselves for a standing ovation, lets ask a few questions:

Does Google help the Human Rights Cause by pulling out of China: Simple answer, NO. The Chinese government will continue its crackdown on the internet along with those it perceives as a national security threat. Google’s exit will not in any way hamper the govt efforts and if anything this move will do more harm than good. Google’s presence in China and its work ethos (Do No Evil etc.) exposes employees to the culture that promotes human ideas and respect for people. The proponents of Modernization theory (among others) understand the importance of ‘agents of change’ in the development of democracy.

Does Google help the Google Cause by pulling out of China: Simple answer, NO. Last time I checked Google was still trying to organize the world’s information, and it certainly will not help if it decides to pull out from a country which will replace the US in terms of internet usage and information output (remember I said information output not knowledge). On the products/services front, ignoring a country with more than a billion people makes very little economic sense (and not surprisingly little strategic sense as Google does not gain much…. or does it?).

Does Google help its Chinese and US competitors by pulling out of China: Another simple answer, Yes. Baidu is the current search leader in the country and will be more than glad to fill in the vacuum.  The oldies bunch (Yahoo, Microsoft etc.) will view this move very pleasantly as well. Bing anyone?

Does Google help the Chinese government by pulling out of China: This one is a tricky answer and requires a deeper understanding of Chinese politics. One thing evident is the importance of control and sovereignty to the Chinese government. China in its dealing with other states on areas such as energy security does not interfere with local politics or place any political/democratic demands (unlike its western counterparts). This is the same approach that it expects from outsiders when dealing with the Mainland. The phenomenon of globalization and a global civil society has significant impacts on the International System, and technologies (especially those  Google provides) are at the forefront of this evolution. It will be very interesting to see how states like China adapt to new paradigms.  At the moment though, having control of the search market through local outfits helps further Chinese interests than dealing with foreign companies with “foreign agendas”.

So if on the face of it, the move makes little strategic sense, why would an almost $200 billion global company with a host of strategic advisers, analysts and investors (to keep happy) attempt to ‘increase the temperature‘ now?

The first and most obvious part of the answer may lie with Mr.Scoble. Goodwill generated by the western consumers (which includes me) goes a long way today and companies are increasingly realizing the powerful affects of the social networked movement. Now whether this is enough to precipitate a major strategic maneuver by Google is difficult to answer. Personally, I am far more interested in seeing how the Chinese living in China view this action from Google (assuming it does follow through). We in the west will more likely than not move on to other more interesting stories…

Another interesting but questionable hypothesis ponders whether part of Google’s frustration has something to do with its less than stellar share size in the Chinese search engine market. The pie chart below indicates Google’s market share in Q2 of the Chinese search engine market in 2009 ( a little lower than Q1).

Whatever the reasons are, I think Google’s recent actions are what we call in the political world “posturing“, meant to raise the temperature to ‘warm’ but never ‘boiling hot’. After all, unless this is part of a clever attempt to marginalize Google from China (and yes the Chinese are very proficient in this game), it makes little strategic or humanitarian sense for Google to close office and wind up its operations, infrastructure and investments in the People’s Republic of China. Either way we can rest assured that billions of dollars do offer one with access to the right sort of analysis and intelligence.

P.S. The support pours in: Mashable Scobleizer Tweets

Update: Just read a very interesting Blog . Author doesn’t agree with me but he can back up his points in style!

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– Danial Jameel www.twitter.com/danialj

Net Economics: Mass Content Vs Exclusivity

This is the  central dilemma faced by many start-ups and community based websites. Should the content be directed for the Masses (i.e Free for all, low price) or remain exclusive (i.e Higher Price factors or Invite only)? A good blog regrading the pricing of products for start-ups and software companies can be found here: http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/170/Startup-Pricing-Models-Free-Forever-Freemium-and-Freedom-To-Pay.aspx

Pricing is after all an element of economics and therefore i will be approaching it from that perspective (I’m glad i took economics at university). I will be discussing some real life case studies and business models in an attempt to reveal some useful insights regarding Mass Content VS Exclusivity and Pricing.

The basic fundamentals  to keep in mind is that pricing should be factored in according to the market you intend to target, the cost of production (in this case your development costs) and the intended goal of your company:

• Short term: Mint money for now,  sell it off to a big fish etc. This is more suitable for Venture Capital funding investing in companies for acquisition. Hence, it should not be surprising to find why many of the web 2.0 ventures are so google dependent. In my view this web 2.0 bubble exists largely due to major players like Google and VCs who fund such hypes and prepare them for acquisition( A stark contrast to the technology bubble of the 1990’s where IPOs and Wall Street was the buzz).
•  Longer term approach: Develop a strong foundation, build clients and form a community, sustainable profits, Growth now Profits later, long term commitment etc. This is more suitable for VC funding with a clearly defined strategy on entry, exit and return on investment. Ventures such as these are not common in the current web 2.0 bubble. Good example of such ventures include Amazon, Ebay and Google. I believe for establishing and branding a strong foothold in the Internet, the focus should be more on growth than profits. Money is important but it should not be the sole basis for a long term approach.

Case Study 1: Traditional Model

                           Toyota and Porsche:  Toyota (Toyota Motor Corporation, Toyota Jidōsha Kabushiki-gaisha) under it’s brand name, it produces and markets products for the mass middle class. Cars are priced from $11,000 (Yaris Liftback: $11,158) to $56,215 (Land Cruiser SUV). Toyota sells more expensive models under a different brand name called ‘Lexus’ which is targeted for wealthier consumers. I don’t want to get into the details of branding but it is useful to understand that many companies prefer to choose a different brand name to target another consumer segment.  Toyota is currently the eight largest company in the world in terms of revenue ($179 Billion) and the most profitable automaker ($11 Billion 2006).

    Porsche markets it’s car to customers whose average annual gross income is around $200,000 or more. Prices start from $45,600 (Porsche Boxster) to $123,000 (Porsche 911). It’s revenues are around $9.76 Billion. The purpose of this model is not to point out that mass consumer and mass content items are more profitable than exclusive ones but to indicate a pricing strategy in accordance with the target audience.

Case Study 2:  Internet vs traditional media advertising

Google/Video streaming Ads and  Magazine/TV Ads: Google adwords are based on PPC (Pay per click) mechanism where advertisers are charged when a web surfer clicks on the link. Advertising is Google’s main source of revenue and the price is low in comparison to traditional advertising platforms. Cost on similar web advertisment platforms is usually incurred either by clicks or per thousand impressions. The intended audience is of-course very diverse and is a major factor behind Google’s immense success. Online advertising costs are also low due to the low costs involved in displaying the advertisements. Video advertisement streams are usually several seconds long and embedded before the actual video presentation that users view. They can also include clickable banners embedded at the end of the video (aka Revver.com). Pricing may vary from impression based, PPC,  or a flat fee similar to traditional TV based advertisement. The overall price is relatively lower than traditional major televisions companies(unless you plan on advertising on Youtubes frontpage) and is usually based on the number of viewers the website receives.

Traditional Media platforms such as Magazines and TVs price their advertising according to their status within the industry (i.e How big they are, who is their audience, Their client list and global reach etc). While advertisements to your local metro papers maybe affordable, bigger platforms are much more expensive and hence out of reach for many small and medium clients. In my opinion this discrepancy is what the Internet so brilliantly fills and is an important factor to the growth of advertising on the Internet. Despite Traditional media outlets current dominance on advertising, the rapid growth of Internet advertising alongside it’s fast growing user-base will pose some interesting challenges in the near future.

Case Study 3: Community based websites

MySpace vs Facebook: MySpace is probably the leading community space website and the fifth most popular English-website on the Internet. Although it’s revenues are not disclosed and tied in to their parent company News Corporation, MySpace has shown its potential as a result of several advertising and music related deals. Whether the early website model was profitable or not still remains controversial and many interesting views can be seen from major bloggers and technology analysts. The site was open to all users and catered to a diverse audience.

Facebook on the other hand, was restricted to University students only during it’s early years. This approach could very well be an important reason for its success as it sought to cater to a niche market. Once the website has achieved it’s initial objectives they sought to expand and currently allows all users to sign up.  Facebook’s example is interesting as it shows the trend of how company goals can be expanded to cater to new markets and how exclusivity once successful can be turned towards mass content.

I have to admit that these issues are very central to most new internet Startups and there is no one easy solution. Should your next venture go for exclusivity or mass reach? Should it be free or priced? Should the income come from users or advertisers? These questions can only be answered on an individual basis and after a detailed analysis of your company (the basic indicators that I laid out above). The real struggle is to maintain the ability to adapt and most important of all to survive. There is no right answer and a right answer now may have to be changed later. That, in my opinion is what makes business ventures so challenging and rewarding at the same time…

Danial Jameel

By The Numbers: 001

This is the first edition of the weekly review of Numbers “By the Numbers” (sorry if the title is not jazzy enough, 4:30 am wakeups and UReporting development comes with a price!).  It deals with facts and more importantly numbers in the Technology and Current Affairs Arena. Some light humour has been added for flavour…

MP3 Market

Apple Ipod : 88 million+ units worldwide (88,701,000 units as of January 2007 to be exact, from 2002 Q1)  and 3 million units sold worldwide every month.

Microsoft Zune: Estimates 1 million sold by June 2007 (some commentators are skeptical on this target). Microsoft has however managed to be the second major Mp3 Player in the US market with estimates ranging from 2-6% of the mp3 player market. It’s Marketing Campaign allotment was around $100 million.

 

Next Generation Video Gaming Consoles

Nintendo Wii: The Nintendo Wii has ‘sold’ 3.19 million units. It is estimated to exceed Xbox 360 Shipments by Fall 2007. 

Sony Playstation 3: Shipped over 2 million units (PS and Xbox are tracked by units shipped and not sold). It is estimated to exceed Xbox 360 shipments by the end of 2007.

Xbox 360:  Shipped over 10 million units with a target of 12 million unit shipment by June 2007.

 

World Wide Web

Total number of Users: 1,114,274,426 (1 Billion+ users)

Asia: 398,709,065 (~399 million) – Population Penentration (10.7%!!!!)

Europe: 314,792,225 (~ 315 million) – Population Penentration (38.9%!!)

N.America: 233,188,086 (~ 233 million) – Population Penentration (69.7%)

Africa:  33,334,800 (~ 33 million) – Population Penentration (3.6%!)

South America: 96,386,009 (~96 million) – Population Penentration (17.3%!)

Middle East: 19,424,700 (~19 million) – Population Penentration (10%)

Australia-Pacific: 18,439,514 (~ 18 million)- Population Penentration (53.5%)

 

Video Streaming and Multimedia Platforms

User Generated Videos Content:

Flash: 97% market share claimed by flash, 90% quoted by market analysts.

Quicktime, Realplayer and Windows media: The rest is shared between these three major formats

Video Streaming: (Pay close attention!) (Source: Research and Markets study, based in Ireland)

Windows Media: 50.8% of all video streams on the internet (2006 estimate)

Flash: 21.9%  (2006 estimate)

AOL Media: 11% (2006 estimate)

Real Media: 9.3% (2006 Estimate)

Apple Quicktime:  under 2% (2006 Estimate)

Please let me know if you require refrences and sources for other statistics.

Danial Jameel

Citizen Journalism! It's here, It's working, It's profitable, It's South Korean?!?

Once again my mindless voyage of reading and vacuuming newspapers around the world (A bad habit i picked up when i was 14 years old) has led to another interesting find http://www.OHmynews.com (Founded in 2000). An English version is also available for the rest of us.

Well this site isn’t exactly new and isn’t exactly the latest web 2.0. It is however a site that works, a site that puts newspaper journalists and citizens on similar footing, a site that generates $6.5 million in revenues every year (not a significant sum but we must consider it is primarily a South Korean based website), a site that should have switched on light bulbs in the newspaper industry.

Citizen Journalism as the name suggest is exactly that. The site has over 50,000 reporters coming from all walks of life (activists to house wives) and despite of the meagre payment $20 per article, it is getting a huge response in South east Asia. As stated before the website itself provides value and recognition to the users and hence users often tend to overlook the price factor. This is the reason why Youtube is the king of the hill and Revver is not. Youtube is a community, revver is a money orientated market.

There is nothing fanciful about the site, what it does do is follow the golden rules laid out by all the Key bloggers on web 2.0 and community space.

Here’s a general list in simple English and in no particular order:

1) Content and User Content

2) Community development

3) Scalability

4) User Friendly

5) Hyper social

6) Features: Web blogs, Forums, Wikis, open API, Web services, RSS and efficient technologies such as AJAX

7) Networks and Networking

8 ) Rich Internet Applications

Feel free to add to this list!

Danial Jameel

Evaluation of the Reforms Proposed in the Newspaper Industry

 The problem has been stated and  key players in the industry and blog space have duly posted their list of reforms. Here is an interesting blog emailed to me by a fellow Entrepreneur and Senior Software developer from Montreal. 

http://doc.weblogs.com/2007/03/24#howToSaveNewspapers (Doc Searls WebBlog, appropriately titled ‘How to Save Newspapers’) 

Doc (I hope he doesn’t mind me calling him that) proposed some very important recommendations and I feel an evaluation is in order.

“1) Stop giving away the news and charging for the olds.Okay, give away the news, if you have to, on your website. There’s advertising money there. But please, open up the archives. Stop putting tomorrow’s fishwrap behind paywalls. (Dean Landsman was the first to callthis a “fishwrap fee”.) Writers hate it. Readers hate it. Worst of all, Google and Yahoo and Technorati and Icerocket and all your other search engines ignore it. Today we see the networked world through search engines. Hiding your archives behind a paywall makes your part of the world completely invisilble. If you open the archives, and make them crawlable by search engine spiders, your authority in your commmunity will increase immeasurably. (This point is proven by Santa Barbara vs. Fort Myers, both with papers called News-Press, one with contents behind a paywall and the other wide open.) Plus, you’ll open all that inventory to advertising possibilities. And I’ll betcha you’ll make more money with advertising than you ever made selling stale editorial to readers who hate paying for it. (And please, let’s not talk about Times Select. Your paper’s not the NY Times, and the jury is waaay out on that thing.)

2) Start featuring archived stuff on the paper’s website.Link back to as many of your archives as you can. Get writers in the habit of sourcing and linking to archival editorial. This will provide paths for search engine spiders to follow back in those archives as well. Result: more readers, more authority, more respect, higher PageRank and higher-level results in searches. In fact, it would be a good idea to have one page on the paper’s website that has links (or links to links, in an outline) back to every archived item.“

 Pros:Makes content more accessible to consumers. More Search engine exposure. Creates new advertising opportunities and space. Users prefer free content.

Cons: Loss of revenue generated by paid access.

Comment:  Archives are an important aspect of on-line newspapers and not surprisingly several International newspaper have been providing free archive content since their inception (e.g www.dawn.com). It seems to be working for them and there is no reason why their North American counterparts should not follow suit.

“4) Start following, and linking to, local bloggers and even competing papers (such as the local arts weeklies). You’re not the only game in town anymore, and haven’t been for some time. Instead you’re the biggest fish in your pond’s ecosystem. Learn to get along and support each other, and everybody will benefit.”

Pros: You help them, They help you. This is one of the reasons why blogs are so successful

Cons: Free advertising for other blogs, websites and even competition.

Comment: It works for blogs, it has worked for forums, it might also work for Newspapers. Unfortunately, As I stated earlier in my recommendation Collaboration is not something present within the newspaper industry and ironically in the on-line arena this seems to be a very plausible solution.

“6) Start looking to citizen journalists (CJs) for coverage of hot breaking local news topics — such as hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, wildfires and so on. There are plenty of people with digital cameras, camcorders, cell phones and other devices that can prove mighty handy for following stories up close and personally. Great example: what Sig Solares and his crew did during Katrina.”

Comment: Couldn’t have said it better.

“8) Uncomplicate your websites. I can’t find a single newspaper that doesn’t have a slow-loading, hard-to-navigate, crapped-up home page. These things are aversive, confusing and often useless beyond endurance. Simplify the damn things. Quit trying to “drive traffic” into a maze where every link leads to another route through of the same mess. You have readers trying to learn something, not cars looking for places to park. And please, get rid of those lame registration systems. Quit trying to wring dollars out of every click. I guarantee you’ll sell more advertising to more advertisers reaching more readers if you take down the barricades and (again) link outward more. And you’ll save all kinds of time and hassle.”

Pros:  User friendly, easy to navigate, ease of use, the list goes on.

Cons: Complicated websites should be avoided not just by newspapers but all other organizations and entities.

Comment: It’s amazing how rare easy to navigate news based websites are present on the Internet. To a certain extent this is understandable due to the diverse and mass volume of content present. However, they are various technologies and platforms available to address these issues. An issue UReporting has taken to heart and will be implementing.

In conclusion, I would reiterate that there is still enough time for reforms. Newspapers have been a pinnacle of our society for a long time and such organizations with their professional journalists and quality content continue to rank higher on the credibility scale than blogs, wikis and the like…

Danial Jameel 

Google and Microsoft two sides of the same coin?

While trying my level best to avoid the recycled rhetoric and blogs on Youtube killers, end of news media and web 2.0, here’s an interesting article I picked up while reading an international newspaper. 

Here is the link: http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2041991,00.html  titled ” Google’s expansion is coming at a price: it’s losing its popularity”

“The war between the two has become especially bitter as Google has been poaching some of the best talent from Microsoft, infuriating its executives and spooking its investors. But Google seems to be winning the battle for hearts and minds as it presents itself as the place to work if you are young, ambitious and talented. Thirty years ago, Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates conveyed a similar message. History is turning full circle. But as Google expands into new areas across the media landscape, threatening companies far beyond Microsoft, it is also attracting some of the fear and loathing with which Gates is all too familiar.”

Things are heating up a little and in all fairness this should not be surprising as such is the logical outcome of companies which attain a quasi-monopoly status. Google right now is to Internet what Microsoft has been to software for a long time and as the company grows it will inevitably start stepping into territory claimed by others. 

 “‘A search engine that can show films and pretty much anything else for free looks like it can turn the world of entertainment on its head,’ says one analyst. ”

As I stated earlier, this Google vs Media giants competition had little to do with innovation but everything about money and stepping on one’s turf.

Like Microsoft, soon Google (if it has not already done so) will start competing in markets which have little to do with the company vision or goals. The reason for this is simple, after having dominated their market, they are using their success to tap into others.  This is again not something  Ground breaking as such actions are part and parcel of Human society.

Another interesting news that has caught my attention is in regards to the dark fibers being bought up by Google and both Microsoft and Google investing massively on Data Centres. While the theories revolves around parallel Internets and google software, I would like to add another twist to this equation. One which  looks things from a broader (the point of my blogs!) and a sustainable perspective. 

A little flashback is in order and let me take you back to 2004 where a little light bulb went on in my head. It was a Sustainable Development class with Prof. David K Foot (one of the finest in the world) at University of Toronto. Mr. Foot with his usual Australian accent proudly declared that the Internet which serves us all things free is in-fact an illusion and if things continue we might as well be heading for a collapse in the future. None of us took him seriously as how could our email accounts ruin the Internet, but recent events have started making me think again.

While a more detailed analysis will be published on this blog in the near future, I will attempt to brush by the surface for now. There are increasing reports that telecommunication and Internet service providers want to prioritize bandwidth usage on the basis of content instead of just letting things flow unchecked. Of-course the major Internet companies like Google are against such moves but it is becoming more evident that costs are slowly rising and bottlenecks are appearing especially with the meteoric rise of video streaming on the Internet.  The surprising aspect of Overshoot is that we don’t see it coming, like global warming, like the Stock market crashes and the great depression. All things which are not sustainable will eventually correct themselves or collapse. However even a correction leads to a sharp and often unwanted crash of some sort and it is something we have all witnessed during the tech bubble burst on March 2000.

The question that I will soon be proposing in a series of blogs is simple: Is The Internet Sustainable?

Danial Jameel

What The *Bleep* is UReporting?

These were the words of wisdom passed on to me by a blogger from the other side of the world recently. To keep things simple (*Ahem* iron curtain simple for now)

It’s an upcoming project related to news based information and media.

For those of you who are not satisfied with this answer, I propose a little Patience for the time being… Interesting events will be unfolding this summer.

As far as the technology goes and yes quite a few couldn’t believe it, it is almost everything Microsoft. It uses and builds upon various Microsoft technologies and believe me I couldn’t be happier.  A number of individuals have asked me recently why do i choose Mr. Bill Gates over LAMP and Google technologies, some even point out the current Apple commercials running on TV (highly amusing… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuqZ8AqmLPY  ). The answer to this is quite simple and based on two fundamental reasons. 

1) Microsoft has a huge infrastructure and several technologies which complement one another. You can do everything and anything on a Microsoft platform.

2) I talked about values earlier and we feel that our values identify with the values of Microsoft and Mr. Gates in particular.  Like him or Hate him Bill Gates has done a lot to help this world become a better place, he has given away a significant proportion of his wealth to assist those who are not as fortunate as us (sadly they constitute more than two thirds of humanity). If we look amongst ourselves, there are very few of us who could claim doing something similar.

Our lives are like a bubble where most of us only see and care about what lies within. Sometimes we forget that beyond this little dot (and yes it is a very small dot!) exists many problems left unsolved, many questions left unanswered and many lives who have yet to live…

  Two simple and yet powerful reasons…

Danial Jameel

D-Day for the Newspaper Industry?

After much bedroom blog reading over the years, annoying quite a number of top guns in the technology and Political arena, I have finally decided to come out of the closet and start (Yes Start!) my very own blog! 

 Well so much for my welcoming party! Now its time to get down to business.

Those of you who are informed of the current web 2.0 sensation and how some pundits are declaring the decaying of the media and newspaper industry. Here’s a nice article by Robert Scooble which i picked on Don Dodge’s blog The next Big thing (yet another testament to the success of blogs!) http://scobleizer.com/2007/03/24/newspapers-are-dead/

Now I understand the concerns are real and very relevant but it’s funny how we tend to look at things from a small perspective. I posted a response on Don’s blog, where I attempt to discern the print indusrty’s  decline due to social evolution rather than just training journalist for the online world. The newspaper industry was threatened by mass- consumerism and celebrity related magazines in a not so distant past and the major reason for their failure was the shift of individuals from Citizens towards consumers (Our thanks go to Edward Bernays and his Public relations! Do read up on him, he is one of those hidden figures who has had a major conscious or should i say ‘Sub Conscious’ impact on the American population).  History is old but it is an important lesson for those who wish to avoid mistakes…

I Posted this reply on The Next Big Thing: http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/

“That is a very interesting point and one that has been prevalent for several years now. However there is one important thing which needs to be understood and when we talk about newspaper and magazines we have to define its content as-well.
The print media even before the threat of the internet has been going through drastic changes. People were moving away from citizen related information towards Consumer related ones. Time magazine which at one time would not even consider celebrity news had started including such content on it’s cover page. Today, Reporters who cover war stories are paid far less than a paparazzi taking a picture of Angelina Jolie’s latest affair (it is sad but true). The underlying cause of this trend was not the magazines themselves but the demand of individuals which moved towards mass consumerism.
With the advent of the Internet and web2.0, the trends again seem to have changed as individuals have found new avenues to discuss and find content information. Partly to blame is of-course the print media itself as most magazines recently are more about glamour and glitz than quality content. The other part  is the demand by individuals, the Internet offers a more interactive way of sharing information and as the web penetrates more globally we will see this trend increasing. Magazines and newspaper have been and still are an essential part of human society. We are curious creatures and information is something we all thirst for since childhood. The print industry was a direct byproduct to fill this need. In the end the medium may change but the flow of information and hopefully knowledge will continue to spread.

Personally I believe The news media on their part should consider the following measures:

1) Provide more than just news content on their websites. Attempt to develop a community. New updates on Reuters, ABC etc are a good start. Allowing Journalists to blog is also a step in the right direction

2) Stop competing on the web arena and actually collaborate online. It might sound strange but having one platform to direct all online users would be much more effective than diverting users here and there. This unfortunately will never happen as such a thing is not present in the DNA of the print industry.

3) Start taking some risks. They have the brand name which gives them an edge over new competitors.

4) Start thinking globally for online content. Reuters and BBC are doing a great job but they need to have more international interactions on their website. It’s one thing to send an American to cover a story but entirely different to have local journalists and individuals tell their stories as well.

5) Maintain values. Several of the big tech-bloggers and pundits today consider video, blogs and portals to be the most important aspects online today but I believe that values such as Trust and Honesty rank a little higher than distribution mediums and will continue to play an important role in the coming years.

I will be trying to address some of these issues in my upcoming project http://www.UReporting.com . Let’s see how it works out :)”

Feedback is most welcome

Posted by: Danial Jameel | March 26, 2007 at 10:55 AM