A seminar 4Talent...
Salutations from my budda bag.
A very interesting afternoon was had by all. Martha Lane Fox was unfortunately taken ill but Adam Gee (Commissioning Editor, New Media Factual of Channel Four) stepped in to chair the panel made up of: Emily Renshaw-Smith (Manager of Development and Production, Current TV), James Kirkham (Director of digital strategy agency Holler) and James Fabricant (Head of Marketing and Content for MySpace UK & Ireland).
The seminar kicked off with a short film directed and produced by Nic Stacey and Rob Marchant, which showcased the cutting edge of the internet revolution. The film is now used by the President of Linden Labs in his corporate presentations.
Adam then delved into his thoughts on the impact of digital technology on new media, noting 3 key points:
1. We are in an "on demand" age;
2. We operate in a networked environment; and
3. We expect a two-way conversation with our media.
What Adam now wants to see are sites that:
1. Clearly explain what the key concepts are - he cited Flikr as an example: you can use the site to: (i) store, (ii) search for, (iii) sort, and (iv) share photos. This is immediately visible to any user.
2. Answer the question, "What's in it for me?" - again, Flikr will allow a user to review photos and read others' reviews.
He then gave a brief rundown of some of the current projects that C4 are collaborating on:
1. Moblog (a TV series showcasing the mobile blogging site started by some guys in a bedroom in the UK);
2. A "top secret" project with Flikr based around the development of digital photography skills;
3. Big Dig (an archeology-based show);
4. 121 (a site providing co-authored blogs;
5. Four docs (documentaries made by the community);
6. Lost Generation (a site helping to map the lives of the 800,000 people on war memorials in the UK)
7. Breaking the News (a site providing tools for the community to cut their own news items)
Adam also mentioned that they are working with MySpace to create projects with more reach and impact by tapping into the two "modes" of MySpace - (i) marketing (due to the high volume of people) and (ii) communication (due to the sharing of information on the network).
Rather poignantly for Mesh, Adam advised, "do it, do it", to all the new media publishers out there, but warned that we should take care to spend time researching what will give sites their "stickiness". That is exactly what we plan to do with Mesh and why we value so very much our Founding Members - the ones who will transform our seed concepts into key functions on Mesh.
Emily then stepped up to the discussion and explained what is being developed at Current TV headquarters. Current TV was the brainchild of Al Gore and Joel Hyatt with the aim of giving a voice to the younger generation of media "transumers".
She explained the presence of the "global conversation" promoted by the web and the emergence of "VC squared" - viewer created content in the new media arena. She also shared the advertising revenue model which is keeping the channel alive - entities like Sky TV will pay to host the channel and advertisers like L'Oreal will buy space in relevant sections of the channel, for example, "Current Style". In the future, they are looking into ways to monetise the website and have not ruled out the revenue sharing model. Watch this space!
James Kirkham then provided a very entertaining whizz through the difficult task of engaging the online generation who have been turned off from their television sets - giving the example of the viral strategy employed for the teenage angst programme, "Skins".
Interestingly, he noted that the notion that "online is magic" is a farce and that technology facilitates but it is the audience that creates. The biggest change, he said, is that the once passive consumer of all types of media is now an active participant who uses a variety of different methods to contribute. It is no longer the marketing department of a brand that pulls the strings, it is the webmasters, forums owners and bloggers, he said.
James shared the E4 brief for Skins in order to demonstrate his point. E4 required Holler to "Turn the Skins launch into an entertainment event for an audience increasingly spending their time away from the television". Holler's advice was: "You are a guest in their attention span - bore them and they will ruthlessly filter you out. The opportunity? Get it right and they will actively market to each other."
The first episode was watched by more than 1 million viewers and they raised awareness to over 80%. Pretty impressive job on engagement of the community before the first episode had even aired.
Last but not least, James Fabricant led the final panel discussion. He started with a well-edited corporate MySpace montage before introducing MySpace as "a lifestyle portal built on a social network." He also sought to impress with the user stats - 180 million members globally, with about 20,000 joining everyday in the UK alone. He continued with a statement that the "value" of a network was the "square of the number of nodes on that network" (each MySpace user being a node).
Personally speaking, I do wonder about the so-called "value" of the simple idea of everyone being in the same place. Surely, the most important factor in "value" nowadays is the standard of the content. For me, the user interface on Facebook beats MySpace hands down. I don't care about how great a new musician might be if I have to wade through thousands of pages flashing at me, adorned with twinkly backgrounds and irritating "Pimp my MySpace" banners. Sit on My Space? [the words I saw tattooed on a building in Barcelona recently] I'd rather not thanks. I have a boyfriend.
I asked James how MySpace feel about the ground being gained on a daily basis by Facebook. He replied that all the newer sites represent "healthy competition" in a trend that's here to stay - long live the online network. Noting the key difference, he said that he believed Facebook to be a "clean tool with a utility base", whereas MySpace had taken a "lifestyle and cultural approach to social networking". I remain unclear as to why the latter approach has to be so ugly by default.
To finish, Adam Gee commented that in a year when Google ad sales will outstrip C4's, there has been a definite "shifting sands" in which media owners are now calling the shots.
In all, it was a solid discussion on a topic that has already been well-documented and that is highly dynamic and fascinating. The Mesh Heads heard nothing, in terms of theory, that we did not already know from the excellent research conducted by Piper Jaffray, "The User Revolution", but it was a very worthwhile event for meeting new people and generating ideas.
Mesh would like to thank Channel Four for the "Making it Multimedia" event and looks forward to enjoying the "Four days in June" party tomorrow evening. Thank goodness I have Friday off. I feel a hangover coming on already.
