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December 24, 2004

Joi to the world

: Joi Ito writes the perfect Christmas greeting to the world for this year: A call for remembering the need to use this new medium of ours to build bridges with global voices. Joi reprints the latest version of the Global Voices Convenant (formerly a manifesto; thanks for changing it to covenant, folks). Says Joi:

...at our fingertips, we have the ability to reach out and speak to, build bridges with and interact with those people we have been "wishing well" to in the abstract for all of these years. We have a long way to go before we are able to hear the voices of everyone on earth, but I believe that providing voices and building bridges is essential for the World Peace we all wish for.

Amen.

Others are wondering what the year ahead holds for blogging and media. Others are saying that blogs will get respect or advertising or big-media attention.

My fondest hope is that blogs grow ever-more international. I've now met bloggers from Iraq, Iran, Kenya, Malyasia, China, the Phillipines, India, Germany, England, Australia, Canada, France... Blogs have allowed me to build or cross bridges that would not have been possible before: person to person, around boundaries, around governments, around censorship, around prejudice, creating understanding and friendships. It's a small process, a link at a time. But that is how our world works now. It's not about masses. It's about masses of individuals. Every link we build to someone in another land, every bit of understanding we share, every friendship we form is a link to world peace.

So Joi could not have written a more appriate message for Christmas: It's about people. It's about peace.

: And thanks to Doc for the headline.

: The Global Voices covenant is already being translated into other languages. The start:

We believe in free speech: in protecting the right to speak -- and the right to listen. We believe in universal access to the tools of speech.

Wir glauben an Meinungsfreiheit: Schutz des Rechtes, seine Meinung zu äußern. Und des Rechtes, zuzuhören. Wir glauben an unbeschränkten Zugang zu den Instrumenten von Meinungsäußerung.

إننا نعتقد بالكلمة الحرة: بحماية الحق في إسماع الغير وحصول الفرصة للإستماع لهم. لكل فرد في هذا العالم الحق في الحصول على أدوات تساعدهم على ذلك.

Nous croyons en la liberté d'expression, en la protection du droit de parler et du droit d'écouter. Nous croyons en l'accès universel aux outils d'expression.

Now that is how to say Merry Christmas to the world.

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Consumer-driven advertising

: In a piece for Technology Review, John Battelle translates the weblog discussion on sell-side advertising started by Ross Mayfield and picked up by Battelle here (I joined in here). Battelle changes the name to publisher-driven advertising but I don't think I like that because it doesn't go far enough.

What we really want -- the endgame -- is consumer-driven advertising.

Says John:

Ideally, commercial media would consist of equal partnerships between three parties: publishers, the audience, and advertisers. In reality, advertisers, the group with the most money, hold all the cards. Publishers have been relegated to the role of supplicant, and the audience—well, we pretty much have to swallow whatever deal the publisher and the advertisers cut.

For the most part, the Internet has inherited this model from print publishing: on the Web, there are far more publishers trolling for ad dollars than there are advertisers doling them out. But the Internet’s interactivity suggests an alternative economy in which the long-standing imbalance between publisher, audience, and advertiser could be corrected. A system of Internet-based marketing, which I’ll call Publisher-Driven Advertising, or PDA, may be soon possible. In this system, publishers would pick and choose from a vast supply of advertisers.

The idea, to recount it as simply as possible, is that rather that advertisers would make ads available; publishers would pick up the best ones for their audiences and interests; advertisers would pay only for performance.

In the previous discussion, I tried to take this another step by suggesting that publishers (bloggers, that is) and consumers should create advertising. Yes, there'd be screeching that the creative wouldn't match the advertisers' brand messages -- but when you think about it, that's damned silly: Who better to create the brand message the works than someone who has bought your product?

Now I will take this one step further, arguing for consumer-driven advertising and ad transparency: In this new medium with all its targeting power, how much better it would be if we could tell the targeters: Don't give me car ads because I'm not in the market for a car now, thank you. Don't give me feminine products because I'm a man. Don't give me booze ads because I'm on the wagon. We'd be telling them not to waste their money paying for our eyeballs. That's better for the advertiser: far more efficient. It's better for the publisher: far more efficient. It's better for consumers: far less irritating. It makes advertising actually useful. What a revolutionary concept!

See Jarvis' First Law of Media: Give the people control of media, they will use it. The corollary: Don't give the people control of media, and you will lose. (More broadly expressed: Bet on that which gives citizens control. And bet against those who try to maintain control apart from the public.)

See also Oren's corollary: Every ad a wanted ad.

Clearly, this doesn't work for every product ("please, please give me ads for the latest and greatest in toilet paper tissue"). But when this does work -- when the consumer becomes your advertiser -- then we have reached the real ideal to which Battelle refers.

In this brave new world of advertising... Palm puts out a marketing RFP for the Treo. I am a big Treo fan and I know many of you are, so I sign up to put that ad on Buzzmachine, getting paid for all your clicks (or perhaps even purchases). But then I see that I can do a better job selling the wonders of the Treo because, as a consumer I know what appeals to me, so I create my own ad that outperforms Palm's creative. Meanwhile you, dear reader, get to tell my ad-targeting software that you aren't in the market for a phone and so I won't waste that pageview on you; I'll sell you a good book, instead.

In the end, everybody benefits -- except, perhaps, for the old-style ad agency that made its money off creative and media buying, a model that will have to change along with the rest of media in this new age.

: MORE: When I first posted about creating ads, I thought it was a little nutty. But since then, we've seen the consumer-created iPod ad getting great distribution. Here's the NY Times reporting in the phenom.

New ads and ideas for campaigns are increasingly popping up without client or agency involvement, whether online, on television or metaphorically nailed to boardroom doors.

Various people with diverse motives are behind the proliferation of vigilante marketing. They are freelancers and fans - even agencies - looking for accounts, and they have shown up this year to advertise or try to advertise products as they see fit.

George Masters of Irvine, Calif., who teaches Web design and graphics to high school and community college students, said he created a 60-second animated commercial for the iPod Mini music player partly because he likes making animation with graphics. But he also said that some measure of evangelism was involved.

: See also the wonderful SpecSpot, where creative types show off their talent in hopes of attracting work by making fake commercials for real products -- many much better than the real commercials. (I first wrote about it here.)

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Turning the world into podcasts

: Thanks to the link from Instapundit, I just downloaded BlogMatrix Sparks "to record streaming Internet radio programs and download podcasts and store them in your media player (iTunes or Windows Media Player). Sparks! uses an interactive directory of radio stations and podcasts to help you find content."

There is no documentation yet but it's quite cool. I'm using it to record my appearances on Air America's Morning Sedition

In fact, I now see that David Janes, creator of Sparks, is the nice guy who recorded my last appearance on Morning Sedition.

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Americans and religion

: A new Gallup poll on Americans and religion says:

: Eighty-eight percent of Americans say it is OK to say merry Christmas "as a way to spread holiday cheer."

: Of those who do not identify with a Christian religion, 79 percent say it's OK to say Merry Christmas.

: Asked which greeting they would use with someone they just met, 41 percent said they'd say happy holidays while 56 percent said they'd say merry Christmas.

: Asked whether they're upset with the shift from merry Christmas to more secular greetings, there's a split: 44 percent said it's a change for the better, 43 percent for the worse.

: Regardless of religious affiliation, 96 pecent of Americans celebrate Christmas. Four out of 10 Americans say they attend religious services on a regular basis.

: Eight-four percent of Americans identify themselves as Christian. Another five percent are affiliated with nonChristian religions.

"Religion is very important to about 6 out of 10 Americans, while another quarter say that religion is fairly important in their lives. Only 16% of Americans in 2004 said that religion was not very important to them. This measure of the personal importance of religion to one's daily life has not changed much during the last decade."

What does that say to those who argue that Republicans are the religious ones? Yes, the poll finds that Republicans are more likely to attend church than Democrats or independents. But they didn't get 84 percent of the vote.

: Among the 9 percent who say they have no religious affiliation are agnostic or atheist, "tend to be politically liberal, Democrats, independents, younger, living in the West, students, and those who are living with someone without being married." In short: Berkeley.

: Protestantism is fading. Young people, 18 to 29, are the least likely to attend church overall. Among Protestants, only 37 percent of 18 to 29s identify themselves as Protestant vs. 63 percent for those age 65 and older.

: SEPARATELY: See this report about the International Bible Society sponsoring the distribution of New Testaments in the Colorado Springs Gazette. There's a supposed controversy about this. I don't know why. There are ads for churches and synagogues in every paper. I get plenty of advertising that doesn't relate to me; if this doesn't relate to you, then ignore it. I agree with Tom Rosenstiel:

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, a Washington research organization affiliated with the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, disagreed.

"I think there is a free speech issue here," Mr. Rosenstiel said. "I think this is one of the things about newspapers: they deliver you everything. If a newspaper is open to all, I don't understand the issue here. Are we frightened of having this in our house? Should people of one religion not read the scriptures of another? We can't neuter our society."

The problem, from a press perspective, is that reporters are forever on the lookout for someone who is going to be "offended" and that becomes a story: "Some Jews and Muslims said getting the New Testament with the Sunday paper felt like being proselytized in their homes. Journalism critics debated whether this was free speech or skating too close to an endorsement of a particular religion." But, in fact, only five people canceled subscriptions over this -- far fewer than when a cartoon is dropped, the publisher said.

This shows how the press encourages our culture of complaint, our society of offense.

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America, the digital third world

: Network visionary David Isenberg cites an article on why we are so far behind other countries -- even Jamaica -- in mobile uptake and quality and then says:

Too many networks, not enough investment. The same thing seems to be happening in U.S. broadband policy. The United States, the FCC, the telcos, etc., are making a big deal out of multimodal competition. (The telcos want to keep other people off the poles, outa their fiber, and offa their twisted pairs, so they support the idea -- idea -- of cable plus wireless plus broadband-over-powerline plus . . . This might be good for the telcos, but will it put the U.S. behind the rest of the developed world for the next 20 years?

And I note this on the FCC's site today reminding utility-pole owners that they have to provide access to their poles for wireless companies at a reasonable rate.

We're combing navel lint while the rest of the world is racing ahead of us.

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