Online NI

Economist

http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9990635

“The value of a social network is defined not only by who’s on it, but by who’s excluded,” says Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley forecaster. Despite their name, therefore, they do not benefit from the network effect. Already, social networks such as “aSmallWorld”, an exclusive site for the rich and famous, are proliferating. Such networks recognise that people want to hobnob with a chosen few, not to be spammed by random friend-requests.

This suggests that the future of social networking will not be one big social graph but instead myriad small communities on the internet to replicate the millions that exist offline. No single company, therefore, can capture the social graph.

Here in BBC NI Online (where I am Editor), we have just realised that we missed our 10th birthday.  In June 1997 Marty Johnston delivered a floppy disc to Broadcasting House with bbc.co.uk/northernireland on it.  It was the days before Google, Facebook and Technorati. Blogging was not in our vocabulary.  Most people connected to the internet with a 25k modem.  Hardly anyone had internet at work.  We don’t have the original page - but you can find the 1999 version on the Internet Archive: http://web.archive.org/web/19990221174013/www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/

Simon Nelson’s new commissioning strategy for multiplatform content has been well flagged over recent months.  So when he stood to speak, at the BBC’s Media Centre in White City, London, (26 September 2007) he confirmed most of what content producers both inside and outside the BBC had expected.

While short in surprises, Simon’s strategy is massive in both ambition and vision.

"It’s too easy to dismiss the multiplatform opportunity as simply getting our programmes onto new devices or creating websites alongside programmes.

 "The lack of a commercial imperative and the privilege of licence fee funding oblige [the BBC] to drive innovation and break new ground in attempting to serve all audiences in the UK … We will be able to liberate our content from the limitations of the live linear schedule.”

Those of us who have worked in non-linear digital media have never resigned ourselves to being a “bolt-on” and Nelson’s dramatic vision for BBC puts interactivity, multi-platform and non-linear at the spearhead of the BBC’s way forward.

Here are the headlines but I recommend you read the whole speech .

What does it mean for the Digital Content industry in Northern Ireland?  Recently (and particularly since last week) I have been urging TV producers and digital media/interactive producers need to get to know each other very well indeed.  I’ve worked in traditional media for most of my career and in digital interactive for almost a decade.  Both parts have a great deal to offer each other.  Sure, there are concerns – particularly around rights management.  There is a lack of understanding on how all this new fangled stuff works on the traditional side and how that TV thing works on the new media side.

You can go to all the seminars and read all the trade information you like, but there is no substitute for working together to develop ideas.  And reading and listening to Simon well developed multi platform engaging content ideas are what he and commissioning editors (not just in BBC) are going to be looking for when it is appropriate.

That is the latest view from Silicon Valley. Technology investors and entrepreneurs, long obsessed with connecting to teenagers and 20-somethings, are starting a host of new social networking sites aimed at baby boomers and graying computer users.

The sites have names like Eons, Rezoom, Multiply, Maya’s Mom, Boomj, and Boomertown. They look like Facebook — with wrinkles.

And they are seeking to capitalize on what investors say may be a profitable characteristic of older Internet users: they are less likely than youngsters to flit from one trendy site to the next.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/12/technology/12social.html

Bob Geldof’s Ten Alps production company today launched the UK’s first local authority broadband TV channel in Kent.

Ten Alps won the £1.6 million two-year tender to run Kent TV after a tender process launched by Kent County Council.

The broadband service, available at www.kenttv.com, features a mix of local features, information and council listings while, the Kent News local newspaper provides news headlines.

Local people are also able to contribute by uploading their own content.

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,2174430,00.html

This blog has been idle for about a year - in fact it hardly started before being abandoned.  Meanwhile at my other blog http://davidsims.blogsome.com/ there has been a distinct editorial drift from New Media to a more personal diary.

So I’ll be restarting this blog in hopes of making sence with what is going on in the Media.  Less a place for me to comment, more a place to gather interesting stories.