In response to low prime time ratings, multimedia giant MTV is now creating a live talk show that uses various social media platforms during the program.  Advertisers were convinced that this would be MTVs biggest daytime talk show since TRL ended in November 2008.

As traditional media outlets battle to engage their audiences and produce relevant content, cable network MTV answered the call with the Alexa Chung Show. The after school show will interact with young viewers by updating social network sites Facebook and Twitter 24 hours a day allowing them to upload videos onto the program website.  This show comes at a time when MTV in the past three months lost 18% of its viewers who rather watch videos online than television.  Stephen Friedman, MTV president, mentioned that advertisers would be reaching the “millennial generation” – those born between 1980 and 2000 – if they purchased airtime during the program.

In a recent MCDM class we discussed a few possibilities why Twitter has not reached the youth market yet and how come micro blogging was not popular amongst teenagers.  The question remains, will MTV’s approach bring more young users to micro blogging or is this a risk for traditional media companies to take.  How will this change television networks reactions to compete with a new “culture of sharing”?

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Click here to view the embedded video.

I’ve also received a bit of attention recently (“Plugged In: UW is Tweeting Its Way Into a New Social Media Ecosystem”) on my encouraging students to distract themselves with open laptops and Twitter while in class.  Here’s how we use hashtag conversations such as #mcdm581 to enhance the in-class conversation while Gillin was chatting with us:

harryhay We’re all going to ride the term social media expert for the next few years!

coreybgil crowdsourcing ideas via social media is great for b-storming & new products/enhancements, but still dev value in R&D

chengtracey negative voices are inevitable and can work as a positive thing.. Should be accepted as a part of business

SunaG Based on my niece & nephew’s FB wall-posts , I can’t agree with Gillin’s assertion that teens lik FB is b/c of privacy

markshea Paul Gillin’s blog = http://paulgillin.com/

nicolepairlee UMASS Dr. Barnes: the highest adoption for social media is among nonprofits @pgillin

chengtracey nonprofits take more use to social media because of simple budget issues..

matthewstringer With all due respect to Mr. Gillin, I don’t think he’s seen MySpace lately… ever? MySpace is teenage public broadcasting.

SunaG Teens not into Twitter. Great app for b-to-b really

nicolepairlee “teenagers dis tweeter and thinks it’s for old people” @pgillin

peichieh Don’t try to use FB or Twitter for B to B marketing. Use Blogs or podcasts.

markshea I still want to know more about Metz’s concept of Return on Participation (ROP). Is it a better measure in digital media?

SunaG All of the organizations he named as businesses that are the new media are kinda niche media players tho’

peterlux Even if ROI is debatable, can you afford to be absent? What’s the branding cost of seeming out of touch and out of date?

harryhay What’s your ROI? brand value, new customers, online orders, the web can measure a lot – decide what matters and don’t wait!

markshea #mcdm581 #uwmcdm It could be argued that social media lives at both political poles, communist and democratic…perhaps the best of both.

rebekahj To determine ROI, have to know what is important to the org: downloads, tweets, mainstream media mention, etc.

hpitlick lack of trust? power to the people? Social media really is communism!

harryhay Creating trust in reporting/journalism – hyperlocal or hyperfocused – starting with a small, dedicated audience – earned over time

chengtracey who is to decide who is trustworthy?

markshea #uwmcdm #mcdm581 Certain companies can survive, thrive and succeed as trusted authority.

SunaG Can biz, org, individuals become the trusted source of media?

coreybgil Gillin: Would like to see businesses emerge as trusted sources.

markshea #uwmcdm #mcdm581 Mainstream media…old BIG media will down size in the range of 85-90% if they hope to continue competing, Paul Gillin says

rebekahj Gillin says “trad media will have to downsize and shift their operations 180 degrees to be successful.”

chengtracey during recession is the best time to see how businesses do their business

rebekahj Can traditional media survive with social media tools? Question to Paul Gillin

SunaG Skype session w/ auth Paul Gillin -Secrets of Social Media Mktg &The New INfluencers. He’s a bit low-res (on screen, not content)

markshea #mcdm581 #uwmcdm Paul Gillin references http://beingpeterkim.com.

peichieh citation from mainstream media on Susna Boyle’s wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susan_Boyle

markshea #mcdm581 Anybody who can speak, will speak. This is the great global change that has come with the Internet says Paull Gillin.

nicolepairlee getting input [tweets] from your students while you’re teaching, a new phenom @pgillin

rebekahj Listening to Paul Gillin -Secrets of Social Media Marketing!

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Visually, things seem to be falling into place (historically known as the crapper), and now it is time to find that perfect minor chord to send your audience weeping after they view your piece.

The musicscapes are vast and this post (in three parts) will only attempt to provide some guidance for those creating audio-visual projects to navigating the creative commons music territories (or swamps).

We begin with the very nifty OWL Music Search. OWL helps you find music you like by letting you open an mp3 file from your own library, select a section you like, and it will match it against over 98,980 songs from a variety of commercial and independent catalogs, including ccMixter, Magnatune, and Jamendo. Their catalog is growing as they continue to index music. The search is based on the characteristics of the sound wave of the clip you specify. The search allows you to hone your search on music available for commercial use. OWL is also featured at the Creative Commons Project site as an applet on their search page.  The results are hit and miss depending on the uniqueness of the clip you choose, but it is a superior way to search for music than tags.

Jamendo is another great cc-music community, it offers a freeform text search box, as well as the ability to search by tags (also known as the needle in the hay stack method), artists (really), and albums (right). If you are a regular user of the site, then through building your playlists and community interactions you can build a reservoir of songs for future use. However, in a pinch (or business as usual) your best bet is to use the Albums search page and turn the advance search on allowing you to add tags and limit the search to music licensed for commercial use (no one can take that dream from you).  If there is a need to commercially license a piece of music separately, the site will help you do that and give the artists 50% (which they call fair).

ccMixter is yet another great resource (I cannot help you there). A word of caution though: most music under ccMixter is available under a creative commons sampling license, meaning ok only for noncommercial use (and abuse).

Our final featured resource for this post is the Internet Archives NetLabel directory. A NetLabel is the Platonic version of a real life Label. They publish a collection of hand-picked artists virtually (and hopefully) under a variety of creative commons licenses. The site had some nice features like Most Downloaded and Staff Picks. You can also search by tags and subject. Again your best bet is to find which of these labels publishes music closest to your liking and keep a list of those handy.

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Last night, we had a scintillating conversation as to whether it was social media that produced Obama’s victory.  Our whip-smart students quickly concluded that it was impossible to prove whether one produced the other (especially because of all the other factors at play: the economy, Palin, Bush, Obama’s charisma and excellent community organizing).  One perceptive student remarked that the only accurate way to gauge the effectiveness of social media would be to create two identical candidates and track them (it’s a Research & Methodologies class after all!).

However, in looking at mybarackobama.com and analyzing a slew of articles (such as this one, and see The Digital President), we did decide that it did represent an superb execution of a social media strategy — and in that way can serve as communications model well beyond the political arena.  We then asked ourselves whether he would still use this approach once in the White House.

We have our answer today: Change.gov.  This appears to be Obama’s platform for “Open government.”

The story of the campaign and this historic moment has been your story. Share your story and your ideas, and be part of bringing positive lasting change to this country.

Without a doubt, the president-elect’s staff intends to engage his supporters in the new Administration’s agenda.  Of note: there are less participatory tools on this site compared to mybarackobama.com (notably no “Action” menu item).  At this point, it appears to be a slickly-designed online suggestion box, thought I do like the emphasis on “storytelling.”

But it at least extends the sentiment he fomented during the election.  And certainly, many candidates to come will attempt to emulate Obama’s social media strategy, probably to varying degrees of success (and failure).  As we have seen in the MCDM, it’s not enough to have the technology.  You’ve got to have a clear idea of what you want to communicate, and exemplary campaign organization in both the physical and virtual world.

p.s. I briefly considered archiving the front page of my dead-tree newspaper yesterday.  Not just because of the Obama victory, but because I probably won’t be subscribing to a newspaper by the time the next election rolls around (if they even exist by then).  Still, I love this really cool collage of all the newspaper headlines. [Thanks to Teachstreet.com's Dave Schappell's Twitter feed for inspiring this post]

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The absolute best show on television right now is Mad Men, and it just happens to be about advertising, advertising in the early 1960s when it was experiencing a renaissance. On the DVD extras of season one, there is a great vignette about advertising, in which someone notes that the greatest feat of the advertising industry is convincing people they need advertising. If toilet paper weren’t advertised, would you stop buying it?

The segment on advertising is really fascinating and I’m unable to do it justice in a blog post. Regrettably, I could not find it on-line, but this Making of Mad Men vignette has some insight into advertising as well. If you haven’t seen the show, you are missing a truly remarkable and unique piece of storytelling.

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There is still talk about an ad revenue model by analyzing content of tweets and running relevant advertising alongside the tweets. The real potential of that model will require the collaboration of third-party developers especially for smart phone clients unless Twitter wants to release its own client, of course. Because of the CAN-SPAM act, advertisers and your wireless carrier cannot, if you have not opted-in, send messages directly to your phone. However, if you willingly sign up and agree to the terms of use of a service that will occasionally advertise to you, then the twitter client can acquire geographic data from your smart phone and deliver location-based advertising directly to you in the form of tweets, or if you have the option enabled, as SMS.

If that first idea proves legally untenable, the Twitter database is still a prime candidate for creating opt-in lists of customers who can be used in focus groups, and with whom to communicate new marketing ideas and get immediate responses. Imagine the creation of gadget geeks twitter groups, people who will actively subscribe to hear about the latest and greatest gadgets and potentially buy them or test drive them. Now multiply that image with all other market possibilities. Twitter can make money by offering aggregation services and monetize the commercial uses that are already happening on the service. In order for this model to be viable though, Twitter has to remain free for non-commercial users.

I guess we will hear their answer sometime next year. For now, happy ad-free tweeting to all, while it lasts.

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Is this helpful? Has it been distracting? How did you all find the twittering in class?

-Adri

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Ok, not a scintillating post title, but you students are the star attraction here, not me.

A Top Blogger Sees an End to Blogging: the novelty of CEO’s “blogging” will end. They’ll just “communicate.”

How We Use Twitter for Journalism: “use of Twitter so far has included: the discovery of breaking stories, quality assurance, and the promotion of our work.”

Great Minute Papers, you all clearly enjoyed our speaker, Scott Ehrlich:

Government needs to acknowledge that the power of institutions — has suffered a shift to the power of the people.

I don’t know what Web 3.0 will be, but I think it will be applied to search online.

The era of transparency is coming.

Utility drives the business of the web. A truer word was never said.

I don’t believe we are in an echo chamber. I think we are ahead, in the experimentation phase, where we are able to define how social media is used by the 50% (currently inactive) people.

I want to be like Scott when I grow up! (He’s proof that people can predict the future — he has clear ideas about what people want and don’t want).

I liked the idea of “utility” — put content where consumers keep visiting — i.e. banking, travel, weather.

It is determined. The new Tragedy of the Commons is time and attention span. I agree, we have reached a point where there are just too many applications.

Great speaker. Why is it that the visionaries never stick around the corporation after the founding? The rest of us get stuck maintaining and incrementally improving the flagships, fighting the execs that weren’t bright enough to move on. Maybe I should Twitter as “bitter?

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