The Buffalo Blog

Android - the dawn of open-source mobile

The launch of Google’s Android mobile phone operating system only serves to further enforce where the industry and the business world as a whole is going. The principles expounded in the popular Wikinomics book are playing out before our very eyes in what is a highly exciting time for all those involved in the IT industry.

Open source, in phones, DTP applications, enterprise software and so on, is undoubtedly the future of software provision and it’s the canny companies, the ones that are getting involved now, who will steal a march in their particular industries.

Google’s endorsement of open source has been unwavering and Android only enforces this stance. It will be highly interesting to see how well the platform takes off but one only needs look back a few years for a prediction. Just look at the popularity of the page-editing possibilities on MySpace – people love customisation and will lap up new modifications and tools.

But what does this mean for the rest of the phone industry. Well, there are numerous very nice phones with decent operating systems on the market at the moment but none have the potential of the Android platform to truly change the way the industry thinks, Apple included.

I have often wondered why Apple and Google didn’t pair up to create the iPhone’s operating system. Two companies with a similar creative, innovative and cutting edge ethos could have created something truly beautiful and completely unstoppable. Granted, Apple would have to go somewhere it’s never gone before but the outcome of not exploring this route could be dangerous. As it is Apple’s beautiful though it is, but closed-source, closed device, iPhone will be up against a potentially massive force.

Having said this, it’s never to late to get involved. The beauty of Android is that it can be adapted and modified to suit any new phone. HTC’s privilege being the first phone to launch with Android it a real coup. No matter how good their proprietary systems are, canny companies will be giving Google a call – I wonder if Apple will one of them...    

Quality PR writing

A badly timed press release darkened my desk (should I say inbox these days) this morning as I sat down to my first caffeine hit of the day. The research release for the ‘Writing for Publication Masterclass’ announced: ‘Only 3% of editors say PR articles are "well written", says survey’. Scary stuff indeed and, while the research is obviously self-serving, it should hit home to those who think all coverage is equal in value regardless of content.

Ever feel yourself ticking off coverage quotas, filing another piece of coverage and forgetting about it? Another one in the bag and another win on the PR versus journalist scorecard? If this is you then this release should be even more worrying.

With the continued development of online publications, the growth in ‘fast media’ like blogs and the rapidly shrinking news rooms all over the country, the focus has never been further away from ensuring quality content is posted. Unfortunately, in many cases, the need to break stories and to make sure that publications are the fastest, most up-to-date 24 hr news services around, is coming well ahead of quality assurance.

The pressure to get things up and ‘done and dusted’ is also feeding through to PR and this is where the release should hurt. Many publications try to get a certain amount of contributed articles up each month with a quota that must be filled regardless of quality. So that’s a great thing isn’t it? PRs can reel off any old article and get it printed saving time and money! Likewise being in charge of the corporate blog makes things even easier, as long as we keep getting the right volume of blogs up everything is great! Or is it?

No - this definitely isn’t the way things should be going. Yes you might be able to get something slightly sub-standard printed (much to the editor’s dismay no doubt) but this is of no value whatsoever to clients. If it’s pants no one will read it and your client message will be lost, no argument – this is PR 101 and anyone calling themselves a PRO should know it.

In true PR style I feel I should issue a call to action to in-house and agency PROs alike: Remember the reason behind your coverage. Make it good and make it salient so your client has the best chance of getting some value out of it.

Microsoft sends online advertisers back to the drawing board

A new sideswipe from Microsoft towards Google has been reported today. Apparently the new Internet Explorer (no 8) allows users to fly below the online targeting radar using an ‘InPrivate mode’.

 

This means that targeting services using cookies simply won’t work – every time an ‘InPrivate’ user visits a website they are effectively a new and unknown entity effectively destroying any possibility of targeting relevant online adverts. 

 

While this is great for those concerned about privacy it doesn’t bode well for those interested in free and diverse web content, for example ad-funded online TV. Advertisers won’t just pee their money into the wind - if they don’t know who they’re targeting they simply won’t invest. This means less content. 

 

Where to go from here then? Personally I don’t think that many people are worried about the brands they trust knowing a bit about them. Consider the infinitely helpful suggestions you get from Amazon whenever you log on…I would never consider deleting my Amazon cookies.

 

Companies could try and encourage the use of different browsers such as the open source Firefox, but this isn’t likely to crack the problem and certainly won’t win over the privacy advocates. So the onus has to be on making online ad targeting as ‘helpful’ and non-intrusive as possible. Only by making users go ‘Oh yeah – why didn’t I think of that’ rather than ‘Oh no – how do they know I like that?!” will online ad targeting ever be truly successful.

BEBO goes to Gliese 581c to break intergalactic PR boundaries

BEBO is breaking into new markets like never before. Rather than limit itself to Europe or even the Earth, it plans to build the social networking phenomenon Gliese 581c.

In a classic PR stunt, the networking site has announced plans to send 500 messages, to the nearest planet able to support which happens to be Gliese 581c, a mere 20.5 light years away.

Whether the market conditions are right for this hubris-laden move is yet to be ascertained. However, it is hoped that the iPhone will be well-established on the planet, vastly enhancing the chances of starting one or two BEBO communities, when the messages finally get there in 2029.

To sum up a rather ridiculous post I can only say it’s nice to see the old PR tactics are still going strong in this time of change – well done to the BEBO comms team.

“Sous-veillance” turns Big Brother on his head

Silicon reports on the growth of "Sous-veillance" this morning, a growing trend (apparently) in which techno-savvy busybodies can take videos of the nation’s crumbling infrastructure and bring the government into line by posting them on YouTube. In a report by the European Information Society Group (Eurim), it laid out its vision of turning ‘Big Brother’ on its head so we can collectively scrutinise those in power with our camera phones.

This is hailed by the report as a major step in increasing citizen engagement but is it actually going to work?

While the report is well intentioned, the technical nous and equipment needed for angry citizens to upload their videos could be prohibitive. The trouble is that the people who do the majority of complaining about public services, and I’m making a sweeping statement here, are likely to be precisely the ones without the knowledge to get these videos online.

It’s also unlikely that the videos are actually going to have any affect on those in power. Unless someone catches Boris Johnson graffitiing a bendy bus, or something similarly sensational, these videos aren’t going to be top of the YouTube charts so won’t be seen and definitely won’t create the required angry mobs needed to start a political movement.

The verdict? This report is well intentioned but "Sous-veillance" is unlikely to take-off unless done on a local and very specific scale.

Mediaset sues Google

Interesting to see another big company dive into a costly YouTube copyright lawsuit without fully assessing the opportunities that may be at hand. Mediaset, an Italian media group is suing Google for 500m Euros for alleged "illegal commercial use" of copyrighted clips on YouTube.

While Buffalo in no way condones dodgy copyright dealings and thinks it’s wrong for others to benefit from other people’s hard work, Mediaset could really benefit from taking a more ‘laissez faire’ approach. In a similar vein to my previous post 'A word on music piracy' there are obvious unexplored avenues that could turn situation into a great opportunity.

As with most forms of Social and Web 2.0 media it can often be great marketing to simply let go of the message. Doing so in YouTube is likely to be the best policy. This doesn’t mean just giving in, rather attempting to turn a bad situation into something really profitable.

There are also numerous benefits to be had by doing this. For example: why doesn’t the company strike a deal with Google for instant click-through purchases where its clips are featured?

It’s also true that many YouTube users check out the latest trailers, view an episode of a programme or even listen to music before moving onto an actual legal and profitable purchase. In this sense the site becomes a showcase and ‘try before you buy’ mechanism, complementing rather than negatively affecting the company’s sales.

While the likely recompense for Mediaset, should they win the lawsuit, is large, the rewards could be much greater if they tried a more canny approach…

Cuil to cull Google?

News reports today on the launch of Cuil, a new search engine set up by a band of Google defectors, in a bid to challenge the domination of their former employer. Apparently Cuil boasts a page index three times the size of Google, but this unsurprisingly is denied by its big brother.

The first thing is that it’s great to see some kind of new life is still left in the search industry, where AltaVista, Ask, MSN, and Yahoo, while representing fair-sized companies, have still failed to capture a decent portion of the market. There has also been little sign of a challenge to the incumbent from these existing players – the proposed Microsoft-Yahoo deal, that could give it the scale and cash to mount a real challenge, continues to blow hot and cold.

However, while search mutineers obviously have the inside track on the invincible Google, it remains to be seen if they’ll ever be able to truly lock horns with such an established player. Technology and algorithms they may have, but Google grew up in a time where it was obviously far ahead of its rivals. At the time those customers demanding quality and relevant search results were there for the taking and Google took the opportunity.

Cuil is attempting to steal a march in what is a veritable monopoly in the search space. ‘Googling’ is well engrained in the mentality of today’s internet user and will be a hard habit to break – anybody fancy ‘Cuiling it’? So to have any chance of success Cuil needs to offer something substantially different and substantially better than Google – a mammoth task.

Whether a group of ex-Googlites have the scale, investment or the technical knowledge to do this still remains to be seen. For all we know they could be sitting on something that could blow the industry wide open, of they could just be another ‘me-too’.

What I will say, is that for an industry desperately needing some healthy competition, I wish Cuil all the luck in the world.

Bad Bloggers

Communication has taken a new turn in recent years.  The freedom to communicate with vast audiences has never been as great as it is today.  Businesses, governments and the public all have the access to platforms that allow them to speak to whoever they want, whether the audience like it or not!

There is now a growing trend of those who are now using these communication vehicles to undermine, belittle and in some cases attack other people.  These acts of libel are now creeping into the business sphere. Some online publications for example, have been experiencing high volumes of businesses posing to be rivals and posting pretentious, potentially damaging, blogs and opinion pieces. An example is IT Director, a respectable publication, that is now actually having to vet people who post articles or opinion pieces in order to ensure that they are actually the person who they claim to be.  This underhanded posting is clearly not cricket, however in such an unregulated arena as blogging who’s to stop them?

The media have highlighted the issue of detrimental communication backfiring on individuals.  The Times commented on how Tricia Walsh-Smith’s YouTube divorce campaign went against her when the settlement judge condemned her for humiliating her husband.  Of course the more these occurrences are brought into the legal limelight the more likely it is that bodies will attempt to regulate the social media landscape – this would be damaging for content and blogging in general.

If businesses are found to be misusing blogs, forums or various other new media communication tools then there should undoubtedly be heavy consequences. The problem is that without going down costly legal routes this is unlikely to happen. In the meantime social media users should band together and regulate for themselves. It is up to the reader to be vigilant and savvy enough to question supposedly independent pieces and to flag them up as soon as possible.  Businesses and individuals using these innovative forms of media simply to vent grudges or slander competition should be exposed for what they are doing.  Hopefully through this collective ‘policing’ of the new media landscape, social media can remain free from restrictive legislation without compromising the content.

A word on music piracy

News in the Guardian today reports on a government-backed drive to crush internet music piracy by targeting severe offenders parents.

The move, backed by BT, Virgin Media, Orange, Tiscali and BSkyB, will see stern ‘disist or face the consequences’ type letters dropping unhappily on to people’s doorsteps in hope of simply scaring kids out of the illegal downloading game.

Of course illegal music sharing is a bad thing and does lose the industry large amounts of money each year. However, I can’t help thinking that this is approaching the problem in the wrong way.

Yes the problem is rife amongst young people but generally this kind of thing is frowned upon in adult society. The result is that that kids usually graduate from the world of Bittorent and other P2P file sharing into the paying and legal world of marketplace of iTunes.

Microsoft has the right idea in this area – it actually uses the proliferation of illegal Microsoft software to inform its future strategy and seek out new markets. Growing use of pirated software in a developing country can then be developed into a paying and profitable customer base.

Adopting a policy of fear to get kids out of illegal music, rather than turning the situation into an advantage, runs the future risk of losing possibly long-term and lucrative customers.

TiVo lost in the Amazon jungle?

An interesting Slashdot post today notes a new deal struck between Amazon US and TiVo (the popular US advert-zapping set top pox much maligned by the advertising community). Rather than partnering to deliver video content from Amazon or something similarly innovative, it seems that TiVo has sold its soul doing a full circle and become a product pushing device in its own right.

The deal it appears is to serve up instantly buyable merchandise around certain top US shows so that viewers can watch and buy right away. Of course this is better than simple scattergun advertising but will TiVo users see it this way? After all, they bought the box to escape from adverts only to find themselves being served adverts through the very same device.

I have heard chatter about some new and more exciting developments in the IPTV advertising space. One such example is being able to provide targeted ads alongside web delivered content relating to their content and previous purchasing tastes. Such a service could technically serve different ads to different people even thought they were using the same IPTV service and watching exactly the same show.

This is a great idea and is likely to garner greater response and be much less intrusive than traditional methods. However, the way this kind of IPTV ad is delivered and the data used to target consumers obviously will have to be implemented smartly to avoid flak from internet privacy advocates.

Either way, surely this is where the market should be looking? Somewhere infinitely more effective than an advertising killer starting to provide adverts..