Thanks for lunch eBay

I was lucky enough to go to an eBay Canada event today to meet Jeffery Cole from the Center for the Digital Future. Jeff spoke about the research he is doing on the social, cultural and media implications of internet usage and showed slides from his 2007 Digital Future Report.

He mentioned all of the points you’d expect in a presentation about internet usage:

Growth of user generated content:
> 21% of teens keep a blog, share photos or maintain their own website.
> Internet infrastructure not set up for all of this uploading – 6 megs per second download speeds and almost nothing up.

Significance of social networks:
> 43% of people on social networks say that their online connections are as important as their offline connections; 49% for teens.
> “MySpace are not going to keep their teenage users. For teenagers a social network is like a night club – when the uncool people show up they leave.”

The Internet influencing politics:
> 40% of Americans online feel they are gaining political power because of the web.

I asked if he thought we would see the same culture of star political bloggers in the 2008 presidential campaign or if he thought we might see something more widespread and grassroots. He talked about politicians needing to be more careful of what they say (i.e. citizen journalists are everywhere) but I’m not sure he answered my question.


I thought the two most interesting points he made were the most basic.

1. The ‘always on’ culture of broadband is changing how we use the web: We don’t log in now – we are constantly logged in. In fact, logging out now takes more of an effort. This completely changes our relationship with the digital tools around us.
2. Internet penetration is at 100% of those willing: His point was that today not having the internet at home requires more of a decision than having it. Penetration in the US and Canada still isn’t at 100% but it’s not because people have been slow to adopt, it’s because they are making a conscious decision to keep the web out of their homes.

Reuters (talks about) embracing citizen journalism

After working in the publishing business for 2 year I have a real interest in seeing how that industry deals with the shift toward social media and citizen journalism. So, it has been great reading some of the stories that have come out of the WeMedia conference in Miami.

One of the biggest hurdles for citizen journalism is the rift it has created between the people in charge of traditional media companies and the journalists that work for them. I found that it wasn’t uncommon for writers to feel that the only reason their organisations were interested in citizen journalism is because they could save money on reporting and lay off ‘proper journalists’. Chris Ahearn, president of Reuters, thinks it’s a confidence issue: “as soon as we get over this crisis of confidence we will realise that this is a golden age of journalism.”

In fact Chris had quite a few interesting things to say – there is a post about his speech on the Gaurdian’s OrganGrinder blog.

I think Reuters will play a particularly interesting role in the shift toward social media. The fact of the matter is that most media companies, particularly newspapers, are cash strapped. They are doing less reporting themselves and are relying more heavily on picking up syndicated stories from organisations like Reuters. If Reuters starts sending out citizen journalism over the wires it becomes easy for editors to simply start running it. This is in comparison to getting your own citizen journalism system off the ground – a massive undertaking for most news organisations.

I don’t think this is ideal – but it could be a good start. I’m a believer in news communities. I think citizen journalism works best when someone in a community writes for that community (either virtual or geographical). So with Reuters sending out citizen journalism ‘feeds’ they will likely be detaching the journalist from the community – which in my opinion makes it less powerful.

Still, if editors become comfortable running these stories I think it is a much smaller leap to start asking their own readers to contribute to their newspapers and TV shows in more meaningful ways. I’m optimistic.

UPDATE: I should have mentioned the other big piece of citizen journalism news announced at WeMedia: The partnership between NowPublic and Asociated Press.

From the press release: “Contributions to the AP news report from NowPublic’s network of participants could take many forms over time, said AP Deputy Managing Editor for Multimedia Lou Ferrara. “They could range from simple eyewitness accounts to originally produced content.”

Of course NowPublic is another Canadian startup – based in Vancouver. Great to see them doing so well.