The BBC Culture Show, YouTube and the future of TV

FireShot Screen Capture #248 - 'BBC iPlayer - The Culture Show_ 2013_2014_ YouTube - The Future of TV_' - www_bbc_co_uk_iplayer_episode_b039r4s9_The_Culture_Show_2013_2014_YouTube_The_Future_of_TVI have just watched the latest programme of the BBC’s The Culture Show.  It looked at the phenomena that is young people creating ‘programmes’ on YouTube that are attracting audiences as large as those associated with conventional TV programming.  It therefore posited the question “Is YouTube the future of TV?”

On one level it was an interesting and well produced programme – but on another it was naive and deeply flawed, exposing the familiar inability of traditional media to understand social media.

The first flaw was the idea that social media only starts to become serious when it produces something that looks like traditional media.  The artists and programmes featured may well be generating large audiences, but they none-the-less represent only a tiny fragment of the content or usage of the platform that is YouTube.  It is of course this other usage of the platform, that The Culture Show did not feature, which is having by far and away the greater cultural, social and economic impact.  But because this didn’t look like TV, it was ignored.  This is a usage, incidentally, which YouTube itself is also ignoring, because you can’t easily grow advertising dollars within it. Continue reading →

Big data: turning hay into needles

Here is a quick riff on an analogy.  Small data analysis is all about looking for needles in haystacks.  Big data analysis is all about turning hay into needles (or rather turning hay into something that achieves what it is we used needles to do).

Being more specific.  Small data analysis (i.e. the only form of data analysis we have had to date) was a reductive process – like everything else in the world where the data and information channels were likewise restrictive, largely as a result of their cost of deployment.  Traditional marketing, for example, is the art of the reduction – squeezing whole brand stories into 30 second segments in order to utilise the expensive distribution channel of TV.  Academic analysis likewise – squeezing knowledge through the limited distribution vessel that is either an academic or a peer-reviewed publication.

As a result the process of data analysis was all about discarding data that was not seen to be either relevant or accurate enough, or reducing the amount of data analysed via sampling and statistical analysis.  The conventional wisdom was that if you put poor quality data into a (small) data analysis box – you got poor quality results out at the other end.  Sourcing small amounts of highly accurate and relevant data was the name of the game.  All of scientific investigation has been based on this approach.

Not so now with big data.  We are just starting to realise that a funny thing happens to data when you can get enough of it and can push it through analytical black boxes designed to handle quantity (algorithms).  At a certain point, the volume of the data transcends the accuracy of the individual component parts in terms of producing a reliable result.  It is a bit like a compass bearing (to shift analogies for a moment).  A single bearing will produce a fix on something along one dimension.  Take another bearing and you can get a fix in two dimensions, take a third and you can get a fix in all three dimensions.  However, any small inaccuracy in your measurement can produce a big inaccuracy in your ability to get a precise fix.  However, suppose you have 10,000 bearings.  Or rather can produce a grid of 10,000 bearings, or a succession of overlapping grids, each comprised of millions of bearings.  In this situation it is the density of the grid, the volume of the data and, interestingly, often the variance (or inaccuracies) within the data that is the prime determinant of your ability to get an accurate fix.

To return to haystacks, it is the hay itself which becomes important – and rather than looking for needles within it it is a bit like looking into a haystack and finding an already stitched together suit of clothes.This is why big data is such an important thing – and also why a big data approach is fundamentally different to what we can now call small data analysis.  It is also why there is now no such thing as inconsequential information (i.e. hay) – every bit of it now has a use provided you can capture it and run it through an appropriate tailoring algorithm.

Note to marketing department: there are no audiences in social media

audience(Here is my column for publication in this month’s Digital Age).

Organisations only start to create measurable value from the usage of social media when the senior management of those organisations really understand what social media is all about.  Unfortunately, the journey towards this understanding is often a long and difficult one.

The first mistake senior management usually make is to assume that social media must fall somewhere within the remit of the marketing or communications department.  This is an easy mistake to make because this thing is called social ‘media’ and media is something that marketing people are paid to understand.  Marketing people themselves are usually keen to assume responsibility because it seems to present opportunities to create this thing called engagement with their customers which sounds good.  They will also find that the agencies they deal with are already knocking on their doors trying to sell them social media solutions and they are not knocking on the doors of any other departments.  Therefore having the marketing department take responsibility for social media seems such a logical decision that it barely generates any consideration at all.

However, there is a fatal flaw in setting off in this direction.

Marketing depends for its success on the identification or creation of an audience. Continue reading →

I am an anti-social-media expert

I am an anti-social-media expert according to Steve Henry (one of the founding ‘H’s in HHCL – voted Campaign magazine’s ‘Agency of the Decade’ in 2000).  I quite like this.  I think the key lies in the punctuation (as in eats, shoots and leaves) in that the hyphens imply that I am anti social media experts as distinct from an antisocial expert.  Although Steve’s description of me as someone who – mentally – is a drinker in flat-roofed pubs that welcome Rotweiler owners, leaves room for plenty of ambiguity.  (Key in that one is the word ‘mentally’ I believe).

But I guess you only have to look at some of my recent posts to see plenty of push-back against the establishment of social media folk who – mentally – drink in the child-friendly gastro pubs.  Socially, of course, I go for child-friendly gastro so perhaps Brian Solis has a Rotweiller and a pair of Doc Martens in the cupboard.

What is the E=MC² of social media?

To continue the theme of simplicity.  I like analogies and stories.  Here is one about simplicity and the need to shift from observation to explanation.  Before Einstein, physics appeared to be a complicated business and there were lots of people running around describing this complexity.  Then Einstein came along and said “you may see complexity, but what I see is E=MC²”.  This is probably the greatest piece of simplicity the world has ever seen.  Even I can understand that formula and yet it has the power to the explain the way universe works.

It didn’t necessarily make physics itself easier, but it provided a framework for understanding it and building practical applications.  We need something similar in social media.  We have plenty of people running around describing what is happening, but not enough people trying to explain why it is happening.  We need to find the E=MC² of social media.

My attempt at it is this.  The social media revolution is all about the liberation of information from restrictive means of distribution.

That is it.  The medium is no longer the message, the message can be itself, freed from the requirement to shape itself to the channels (networks, platforms etc) it has to sit within.  The implication of this for communications is the we are likewise liberated from the need to talk to audiences.  The implications of this for society in general is that trust has been liberated from institutions and can now live within transparent processes.  Information can be trusted on its own account, rather than via trust vested in the channel or institution from which comes.  After all, what is Twitter?  It is not an institution, it is a process, Wikipedia likewise.

Unfortunately, we all remain channel or institution fixated, because that is the way we have always done things, or because we have a commercial interest in a particular channel or institution.  Or because to embrace the implications of this shift is to accept that the world is going to change.

Article on Big Data in Sunday Telegraph’s Business Technology supplement

FireShot Screen Capture #242 - 'Richard Stacy_ The algorithm is the most powerful tool of social control since the sword - Business Technology' - biztechreport_co_uk_2013_07_richard-stacy-the-algorithm-is-most-powerfHere is a small article on Big Data I wrote as the opening shot in the Business Technology supplement published yesterday in the Sunday Telegraph.

Big Data is certainly a big buzzword, but there are those out there who say Big Data is nothing really new.  As a rule I find these people have careers based on what we can now call small data (or perhaps that should be Small Data).  Big Data certainly is something new, and there are two reasons why it is aptly named.

First, Big Data is really big.  It is not just a bit larger than the data we had before, nor is it just lots more of small data.  Big Data is defined by the fact that it is so large, it cannot be handled by the tools or techniques conventionally associated with data analysis (one of the reasons its rubs small data people up the wrong way) and this also means we can use it to do things which were not possible when all we had was small data. Continue reading →

The latest croissant of absurdity from the SocialBakers

Every month I receive an email from measurement / metrics company SocialBakers alerting me to the latest  league table of performance for UK Facebook pages.  I usually avoid opening this email because it depresses me, perpetuating as it does, the view that Facebook activity and social media in general is a numbers game that is all about creating the maximum number of fans and this thing called engagement.  However, this month I took a look, just to see if things were changing.  They were not.  The part of the report that always depresses me the most, remained depressing.  I have shown it below. Continue reading →

Social media: the simplicity manifesto

Social media is not complicated.  There may be people who want to make it look that way because it helps them make money.  Or there may be people who make it look that way, because they themselves are looking at it the wrong way (Brian Solis, Jeremiah Owyang).

I have been in the communications business for 25 years and I have always seen my job as creating simplicity: to take a complicated thing and reduce it to its essence, be that an essence expressed in a few words or a definition of basic principles.  So here is my simplicity manifesto for social media: a reduction of seven years of thinking into 10 core principles or statements.

1. It is a Big Thing – just look at history

Social media is a big thing, Continue reading →

Brian Solis and his new conversation prism. Useful or just confusing?

JESS3_BrianSolis_ConversationPrism4_WEB_1280x1024Brian Solis has just published a new version of his conversation prism.  You have probably used one of the previous versions as the title graphic for your presentation on social media – it has almost become the default here.  I used to use it as such, but then I stopped.  I did this after someone attending a workshop said “whoa – stop right there.  That’s the problem.”  I asked what she meant and she explained that this picture simply illustrated why she was intimidated by social media – multiple segments, hundreds of bright shiny tools you need to be familiar with.

I think she was right.  Diagrams such as this perpetuate a way of thinking which, increasingly, I try and lead people away from, which is the idea that social media is both complicated and defined by a dazzling array of tools.  Continue reading →