Media’08 in Sydney: from eyeballs to stakeholders

While we often take part in telecom / mobile / Internet or investment events, it is quite uncommon to join Media events (maybe aside from Ad-tech). Even more uncommon for us is to fly 10 hours down South to do so. Thanks to XMediaLab (a new media think tank heading from Australia and organizing events in cities around the globe) and Fairfax (the largest Australasian publisher and very strong player in online media), we got the chance to join their “Media 08” event in Sydney.

Turnout was pretty good – about 300 – and since most folks back in Beijing kept saying “enjoy your surfing in Australia” I felt compelled to take a picture of the audience to prove I actually did work there. It is an interesting point of view – and the picture can be used by all other fellow presenters to prove they were there (like the classmate who was answering on your behalf during the class).

Hearing from media people is fascinating as they are the ones gathering the so-called “eyeballs” (formerly known as “the audience”), to serve to corporates via advertising. Even though this perception is still largely en vogue, it was heartwarming to hear about compelling content (idea courtesy of Assia Grazioli-Venier from Ministry of Sound TV) and ideas to turn eyeballs into stakeholders of the media (idea courtesy of Jean Kim from the pioneering citizen journalism site Ohmynews).

We also contributed a presentation on innovations in Asia and new business models for online communities, drawing comparisons between Facebook, Cyworld (Korea), Mixi (Japan) and QQ (China). Interestingly, Facebook does not look so good in those comparisons.

:: Download presentation here or view it on slideshare ::

Starting with some keywords, below are some takeway ideas from some of the presentations that marked me the most:

• Quality
• Trust
• Engagement
• Return channel
• New business models
• Audience as content

Kevin Anderson, Head of Blogging & Interaction, The Guardian

• Engage “people formerly known as the audience”
• The sites that succeed are the ones most useful to the user.
• Social media faux pas:
• Mass media focuses on celebrity not engagement
• Does not know the difference between “provocative” and “thought provoking”
• “Community is a pub”
• User engagement cycle
• Casual users (bookmarking, tagging, adding to group, attention date
• Connected users (commenting, rating, voting, endorsing)
• Committed users (UGC, soulmates, tools for contents and users, social site skills, profiles)
• Catalyst (networking tools, blogggin tools, networked journalism) | All this builds attention
• Social media editorial strategies
• Open up to audience
• Involve the audience in meaningful ways
• Tap into the wisdom in the crowds

Vicky Taylor, Editor, BBC News

• How do you ensure quality of content?
• How do you protect the trust in the brand when including UGC
• Example: Burma reporting
• People won’t engage with you if they don’t trust you.

Jean Kim, Director, International Division, Ohmynews (Korea)

• Book: culture code?
• Quality
• In Japan, quality means “perfect”.
• Toyota Lexus slogan: “perfection”
• American concept of quality: “it works”
• Korea: “new” or “innovative”. Country of early adopters
• Amazon makes more money selling “misses” than “hits” because transaction cost is very low
• In US, Barak Obama is doing online fundraising vs. fundraising dinner by Hillary Clinton. Obama has a near-zero transaction costs on the net.
• “On the net, nobody knows you’re a dog” : credibility and trust issue
• Ohmynews Editorial process
• Citizen reporters (60,000)  Hard news & opinions, film and book reviews, media criticism  Screening by News Guerilla Desk
• Staff reporters (65)  Hard news, analysis, columns and editorials  Screening by editorial desk
• What is news? Need to deconstruct and redefine before reconstructing.
• Business models?
• Hundred years old business model!
• WPP: audience as eyeballs
• Google: audience as eyeballs
• YouTube: audience as eyeballs
• Citizen journalism: Audience as content
• Do-it-yourself journalism. Burning desire to be recognized and accepted. They need training. New business could be education and training. People are willing to get money to get those basic skills to get attention and respect.
• 6 billion people as advertisers: Citizen journalism as People’s Ad Agency
• Business strategy of Boeing: turning their suppliers into stakeholders.
• Now, turning “Eyeballs” to Stakeholders.
• “The medium is the message”
• Books | “Real message of the print is nationalism” (Marshall McLuhan)
• Eyeballs | “The real message of the audience is commodity”. Media sells eyeballs as commodity to advertisers (Dallas Smythe)
• Flickr | “The real message of the digital camera is online-share” (Flickr)
• YouTube | “The real message of YouTube is syndication” (Chad Hurley)
• OhmyNews | “The real message of citizen journalism is education” (Oh Yeon Ho)
• Internet | “The real message of the internet is planet-sized brain” (Jean Kim?)