http://blog.scoopasia.com/ Technology in PR, marketing, and the media. en benjamin.koe@hillandknowlton.com.sg Copyright 2006 2006-09-15T16:04:00+08:00 http://blog.scoopasia.com/index.php/blog/sph_vs_yahoo/ Media Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) announced two JVs worth $2 million each with Norwegian media company, Schibsted, to take Singapore's agenda-setting media giant beyond the island and deeper into cyberspace.

Although SPH's strength comes from its newspapers, the JVs will develop "online classifieds, search and directories and other Internet opportunities", according to a self-promoting news article.

It's great to see SPH getting more involved in the online space, but doesn't this move bring the tiny country's incumbent media in direct competition with the global portal giant Yahoo! Inc. which already has all that the JVs are planning and more? Not to mention eBay, Google, BaiDu, and many other toes the JVs may be stepping on.

It would be interesting to see how these efforts complement its excisting Web properties: ST701, Stomp, and Straits Times Interactive.

In the true spirit of the online social media, I reckon the JV should launch a Gawker Media type business "buying out" a few prominent regional blogs. Hey, it worked in the US, could be worth a shot here. Or maybe I just read too much Business 2.0.]]> 2006-09-15T16:04:00+08:00 http://blog.scoopasia.com/index.php/blog/pr_firm_now_has_research_tool/ Public Relations Waggener Edstorm posted a press release on Scoopasia about a new PR tool that "measures the effectiveness of brand messages in online and offline media to aid strategic communications programs".

The massive growth of the social and online media in the last few years have given birth to the need for tools and systems to give order to the chaos. There's Google BlogSearch and Technorati as examples of search engines, and all the way from an alternate industy: Nielsen BuzzMetric's BlogPulse has come in to join the fun.

What's really interesting here is that now PR firms are taking technology into their own hands to deliver results for their clients behind closed doors. And if they succeed in-house, the service can be sold publicly for added profit.

Although right now we're seeing very little PR + Tech action in Asia, I'm glad Waggener Edstorm is taking the first step. There'll be more to come. I promise.]]> 2006-09-08T14:26:00+08:00 http://blog.scoopasia.com/index.php/blog/first_connection_wirelesssg/ Media
Up till now, it's been 3 hours and no drop out. Not bad despite not having a full bar on this sofa in the corner. This is what it's made of:

• SSID: Wireless@SG
  
• Channel: 1 (At least in Starbucks)
  
• No login, but there's a splash page with a button to click.
  

But there's one thing I didn't like about it. The network appears to only allow Web (HTTP) and email traffic. Which could mean that many ports are blocked. Skype worked, but MSN didn't by default. I had to route my MSN traffic through HTTP for it to work.

You might want to use Web-based IM clients such as Meebo when you use Wireless@SG .

Apart from the usual work, reading, and writing this blog post, I did download the latest version of AdiumX (20MB) and it felt as if IDA did keep their promise of 512Kbps per user. Thanks again guys, I think you'll see me around the area a bit more this month!]]> 2006-09-03T08:27:01+08:00 http://blog.scoopasia.com/index.php/blog/online_media_gets_to_stand_with_magazines/ Media
It was Scoopasia's first time among the magazine publishers and what was really interesting was how the committee (many of them old-timers in the print publishing industry) embraced the online only media, like us!

It was a great time, despite a small commotion about whether or not to admit publishers who we not audited. All are still allowed to join.

So my question now in reflection is what then makes an online publication worthy of joining a publisher's association? Would an individual's blog with a business model be part of the MPA? What if a community of like-minded people come together to compile an ongoing wiki? Do posts to a forum count too? Or what about a e-zine published only via RSS?

Although it is probably impossible to put online media in a box and call it legit and I foresee long debates within the association to approve online media for membership, I'm just glad that associations such as the MPA are taking an active step forward in approaching the online media and allowing them a membership right next to the most established in our industry.

They even showed us the breakdown of the committee and there actually is a member dedicated to online media! Superb!]]> 2006-08-21T15:16:00+08:00 http://blog.scoopasia.com/index.php/blog/the_future_belongs_to_the_amateurs/ Media State of the Blogosphere report...

• The Blogosphere is over 100 times bigger than it was just 3 years ago.
  
• Today, the blogosphere is doubling in size every 200 days, or about once every 6 and a half months.
  
• From January 2004 until July 2006, the number of blogs that Technorati tracks has continued to double every 5-7 months.
  
• About 175,000 new weblogs were created each day, which means that on average, there are more than 2 blogs created each second of each day.
  
• Total posting volume of the blogosphere continues to rise, showing about 1.6 Million postings per day, or about 18.6 posts per second.
  
• This is about double the volume of about a year ago.
  

The power and massiveness of the amateur content creators are now a force to be reckoned with. Today we see how in only four short years amateur content creators turn the Wikipedia into the world's largest encyclopaedia (1 million English articles, compared to 80,000 in the Britannica).

Will journalism be the next victim? Will marketing still require the middle man? Does music have to be played first on radio? Do albums have to sold in CDs? Will reaching the masses be done best through word-of-mouth? Editor the gatekeeper or news by popular vote?

Argh...too many questions! But boy is this going to be an interesting future. Long live the amateurs!]]> 2006-08-07T15:06:00+08:00 http://blog.scoopasia.com/index.php/blog/channel_newsasias_new_do/ Media Channel NewsAsia on your new site. I haven't been following your development, but this morning's breakfast table reading (yes, I do mine online) was a pleasant treat. I love the way its clean, and most of all fast!

Although they haven't yet gone full steam into Web 2.0, I must commend them on their good use of a CMS that renders static .html pages which contributes to improved speed and probably performance for their servers. The banners are a bit in-your-face, but heck, its a living ya?

I love the way every section is a channelnewsasia.com/section. No more dynamic queries in the URL. I also like the flash-based videos pegged to the story idea, but why is the screen still blank after almost a minute's wait?

But seriously, can you please get rid of the evil refresh-my-page-before-I-finish-reading script. I know you've got it pegged at 360 seconds which is plenty for most people, but sometimes I do stop to look at the pictures before I read to the end. OK, I admit, I read slow.]]> 2006-07-17T02:06:00+08:00 http://blog.scoopasia.com/index.php/blog/big_brother_web_stats/ Marketing ClickTale, an Israel-based startup that takes you one step beyond the normal web stats showing you movies of exactly how what users are doing on their web sites.

Yes I know, Orwellian. But if you are willing to ignore privacy concerns, or openly tell users that they're being tracked, I think it serves as an extremely powerful tool especially for web designers and people who are concerned about human behaviour on their sites.

If done well, a web master can re-engineer a site to be more sticky. For publishers, it means more web impressions and thus more money from CPM ads.

It also means you can find out how long on average a user takes before he/she clicks that "well positioned" promotions banner.

Right now they're still in beta. But before long it'll be a service you can use to monitor everything from your personal blog, online publications, and even corporate websites.

George Orwell was right all along.]]> 2006-07-16T09:43:00+08:00 http://blog.scoopasia.com/index.php/blog/ask_everyone/ Public Relations
Lots of prominent people including Dr Steven Hawking and U2's Bono have made headlines asking questions already. There's no guarantee the quality of the responses, but then again, Yahoo is by far the biggest community aggregator on the Internet, so this is your best shot.

For Asian country specific Yahoo! Answers, try:
- Singapore (http://sg.answers.yahoo.com/)
- Taiwan (http://tw.knowledge.yahoo.com/)
- South Korea (http://kr.ks.yahoo.com/)
- Hong Kong (http://hk.knowledge.yahoo.com/)
- Japan (http://chiebukuro.yahoo.co.jp/)
- China (http://ks.cn.yahoo.com/)]]> 2006-07-11T13:27:00+08:00 http://blog.scoopasia.com/index.php/blog/the_inflated_web/ Marketing
Many of the more established print publications have their circulation numbers audited by a third party, but online that's not often the case. Most marketers are left trusting the numbers provided by the publisher and that could easily be falsified.

Any online media worth their salt, would have two types of web statistic tracking systems. A web server log analyzer and a page tagging web statistic system.

Page Tagging
Very simply, page tagging is the real numbers you want to see. It works by having a little JavaScript code attached to the page which counts "1" everytime a real person loads the page in a browser. If the page doesn't load, say from a search engine bot visit or hacker scripted attacks, it doesn't count. So these are as pure the numbers you can get.

We, at Scoopasia, use a third party to monitor our stats, Google Analytics. We can't, even if we wanted to, serve up mock results because we don't control the counting that goes on at the Google Servers. And we encourage all publishers to do the same, maybe with more professional services like WebTrends (but not their web log analyzer).


Web Server Log Analyzers
These are not evil programs, but they are meant for technical and internal use only. What this counts is practically everything that makes a request from the web server. Numbers given out on these log analyzers are often inflated (I've seen 5X inflation before).

Why is that so? Because...
- It counts everything from search engine bots to hacker attacks.
- Users behind proxies which use random/dynamic IP addresses count as additional visits.
- Failed attempts and automatic reconnects are also counted.

Lots of web sites have Web server log analyzers such as Webalizer and AWStats because they are free (open source) and usually come stock with any Linux web hosting plan.

Buying Ads
I know there are publishers out there who, knowingly or not, report their inflated figures to the market in hopes of winning the ad budget. As a marketer, you should always only pay for ads by CPMs or click-throughs.

The Web, of all places, is the one medium you can track movement down to the very hit. So take full advantage of that and make every impression or click count. Please don't fall for those run-of-site type ads that don't yield measurable returns. For all you know, you're getting 5X less eyeballs than you think you're getting.]]> 2006-07-09T16:10:00+08:00 http://blog.scoopasia.com/index.php/blog/how_to_build_a_pr_blog/ Public Relations
All they know is that they want to get into the blogosphere to create some buzz. True, that is the goal, but simply having a blog-like web site with new posts coming in from the top and exiting at the bottom is not going to get any good readership. The blogosphere is already flooded with content beyond comprehension that search engines such as Technorati and Google BlogSearch have to be used to aggregate and sort through the mess.

So then, what can PRs do in the blogosphere that will work? My advice is go look at the Official Google Blog. The philosophy behind that blog is simple: an information channel for the company. Any journalist, analyst, member of the public, or competitor knows exactly where to look to find information on Google--on the Google Blog!

Not only is the content of value, but the nature of the single source of information. Many readers with interest stand waiting at the digital fence for a glimpse of the latest and greatest news from the company. Hmm..that makes me wonder if Microsoft had such a channel, would the independent and popular Microsoft Watch site capture as many eyeballs?

Google's method is one that's done in house, which in many situations could cannibalise agency press release writing work. But on the flip side, if the expertise lay with the PR agency, then forget the press releases and begin blogging!

This case, to me, proves an old point that "content is still king". So alternatives could be a blog of a personalities (e.g. Say the CEO blogs), in-depth knowledge on a subject (e.g. Say Nokia on mobile technologies), or the blogger happens to be a PR person (e.g Say if Xia Xue were in PR...mm..oh my).

One last word of warning: the people who have figured out how to use the Internet to read blogs, have also figured out the difference between good content and marketing. Sure you can have a positive spin, but if you sell, you'll start to smell.]]> 2006-07-03T15:18:00+08:00 http://blog.scoopasia.com/index.php/blog/polluting_the_blogosphere/ Public Relations
Recently, a startup called PayPerPost was established as a community to link paying advertisers to bloggers willing to blog about their offerings for cash. Don't get me wrong, I love web communities and I love buzz markerting, but taking advantage of a hobbist blogger is simply wrong.

I'm sure PayPerPost will work when it begins, but one thing its founder Ted Murphy is forgetting is that Web 2.0 is not about technology but society. Soon objective platforms such as digg will see through paid editorial, members of Technorati will stop linking to crap, and blogs with paid editorial will fail as credibility pulls them down like a millstone.

The social web is too intelligent as a whole to fall for fake buzz. Its in our nature to seek the truth. On the flip side, maybe PayPerPost is doing the publishing community a favour by creating a Darwinian split raising the credibility and authority of true editorial.]]> 2006-07-01T21:12:00+08:00 http://blog.scoopasia.com/index.php/blog/why_dont_prs_use_ims/ Public Relations
He gave good reasons for why the enterprise should begin using IMs for communication, and one obvious one being for sales/account management. Then it struck me, if sales people can convince their clients to keep them on their IMs, why don't PR do the same with journalists? Why don't I have any PRs on my IM which is on almost always?

And privacy really isn't much of an issue, even my MSN client on the Mac (Yes, I use MSN on a Mac), allows for two accounts--one private, one corporate.

I can understand that some journalists feel that IMs are getting in a bit close, but then, we'll have to continually live with tons of emails, loosing some to over-zealous spam engines, and even more time consuming calls...on the mobile!

So, back to my point, if I have all my PRs contacts on the corporate MSN account, that's fine, my life outside work will carry on as usual. I think.

And if what Werndorfer was talking about with database driven keyword lookups, the future of PR to journalists communication could look something like: "Hi Ben, remember that media invite", with a link on "media invite" to the actual document.

Instant information, no spam filter traps to worry about, no more email with big attachments bounced, and direct real-time information exchange. Well, that's for the future, but for now MSN is good.]]> 2006-06-22T15:02:00+08:00 http://blog.scoopasia.com/index.php/blog/online_medias_long_tail/ Public Relations
The term “long tail” was coined by Chris Anderson, editor-in-chief at Wired, in an article he wrote in his magazine some time last year (sorry no exact date because my old copies of Wired are in some box). The long tail was a phenomenon Anderson noticed about online retailer Amazon that made its profits grow in a way physical stores could never achieve.

Because Amazon.com has no physical storefront and no limited shelving inventory, the online retail giant ended up earning an amazing amount from the lesser-known, less-popular items it stocked. Say, the two baby-boomers who buy Beatles albums, or the handful of old girls who still adore Elvis. They all add up, and that’s what the long tail is.

Stores such as HMV and Borders that we frequent are unable to stock these “oldies” and tend to capitalise on the newer popular albums to survive.
So why does the online media have a long tail too? Because the social web (some like to call it Web 2.0) is getting more popular.

As an editor of the online technology publication TechPlanet Asia, I track the site’s statistics quite often, and most recently, I’ve noticed that many of the older, more popular stories continually get around 15-20 hits a day. Sure when it first came out it was like a few thousand hits, but that’s what’s so amazing: its always online nature enables it to be shared, linked, indexed, and read over and over again creating a gradually tapering long tail that ends only when all interest is lost on that topic.

From a PR point of view, wouldn’t it be awesome to have a story that features your client sit permanently on an ever-growing long tail? I don’t have specific numbers here, but compared to a large print daily with say 300,000 subscribers, how many actually eyeball your story, and worse still, how many people keep the article?

Even in a best effort scenario, say a really hard hitting story gets photocopied many times and passed around a community like a church, office, or even a school. But what is that compared to the millions of readers on Google News? The never-ending linking on blogs, the (I’m sure you do this) mass emails that keep rolling?

So how does a PR person take advantage of the long tail? Well, just go with the most connected sites. And that includes blogs too!

Here are a few pointers:

• Go for sites that are indexed by Google News. Unfortunately, some of the gated/paid sites don’t let Google share the news, so they end up getting a lot fewer readers.
  
• Go for sites where articles have quick links to social web portals such as Digg, del.icio.us, Furl, Reddit, etc and easy tell-a-friend email mechanisms.
  
• Go for sites that don’t ever delete their content. Some more prominent media, including scientific journals, only put their online content up for a while because they make more money when readers buy the printed copies.
  
• Go for sites with permalinks. That means the URL of the article never changes. Like on Scoopasia! But seriously, some older web sites move older articles into archive on a different address. This is very important because links on blogs and social web portals will suddenly be broken and that’s the end of your story’s long tail.
  
• Go for sites with multiple region content sharing agreements. ZDnet for technology news is a good example because its Asian content gets filtered to its US, UK, and Australian sites, and vice versa.

If only there was a mechanism to tabulate the effect of the long tail on online media because I’d rather frame that report up than a clipping of a newspaper’s front page article.

Just in case you want to find out more about the long tail, Anderson’s article became a blog, which became a book, and I’m still waiting for it to ship.]]> 2006-06-16T03:39:00+08:00 http://blog.scoopasia.com/index.php/blog/searching_for_trends/ Public Relations Google Trends and when I first saw it, it was screaming "PR Tool!".

What it does is it allows you to type in keywords you want to track and it draws graphs for trends in both Google Searches and Google News. But the real power is in its ability to do comparisons and segregate the results by region and country.

So, an example would be say comparing car makers Toyota an Honda. So I'd type in "Toyota, Honda" to compare the two. What I found was that there were a lot more searches for Honda than Toyota in the last two years, but even more important was that mention of the two companies in the press were about the same.

And bringing the results back to the region, I found that Malaysia was the number one country searching for these brands and that they looked up Toyota a lot more than Honda. But in second place, Thailand cared more about Honda than Toyota.

There's a lot more that you can do with Google Trends, but do remember that the results are an approximation and that the system is still under testing. But I'm sure some it'll give some PRs justification to go, "see, told you so."

]]> 2006-06-08T15:30:00+08:00 http://blog.scoopasia.com/index.php/blog/adobes_amazing_acrobat/ Public Relations
Database Connectivity: One of my favourite features is the ability for PDFs to connect to backend databases. You don’t need very much else other than Adobe Acrobat Professional for Windows (the Mac one doesn’t have this) and a good database application like Microsoft SQL.

What happens is that you can create a form right on the PDF that would allow the recipient of the document to type right into the document. That’s right, straight into the PDF from the free Adobe Reader that just about everyone has.

Gone are the days of “click here to RSVP” on a website. From a marketing point of view, that’s convenience, consistent layout/design, and potentially more RSVPs/registrations. And the same technology can be applied to magazine subscriptions, services applications, etc. Instant credit card application anyone?

Controls: Most of the more adventurous ones would have discovered the ability for Adobe Acrobat to limit a user’s ability to print, copy text, edit, etc. But have you considered revoking the whole document from a user’s desktop?

There is this server-side software called Adobe Policy Server. Just like the no print, no edit, no copy policies we can introduce with Acrobat Professional, this one can let you revoke documents from any Internet connected computer. Made a boo boo in that press release? =P Just a thought.

Tracking: With the same Policy Server and certain extensions (don’t want to get too technical here) even more amazing things can be done. Most marketing managers are already familiar with Web tracking like CPMs, etc. But how about finding out how long who reads a page on that PDF? Who clicked the promo box? How many percent read from cover-to-cover?

Imagine that, justifying ROI the moment a PDF is sent out. Fantastic.

But I must warn you, Adobe Policy Server is not cheap and is not desktop software, but a good marketing company with a competent technical team would be able to pull this off nicely.

Although this technology and software are not fantastically new, I’m disappointed by the low adoption of it in Asia. I’ve mentioned it to a few PR people I’ve met and received a lot of excitement, but that’s it till now. I’d love to see it in action though. I’m sure we will, someday.

Note: The wonderful things mentioned here are purely my opinion and findings. No marketing dollars from Adobe contributed to this.]]> 2006-06-01T10:43:00+08:00