A Brief History of the Murdoch/MySpace Disaster
Maybe MySpace was doomed from the beginning. The layout was horrific, the experience was sloppy, and they even made you learn basic html in order to put sparkly animated gif backgrounds on your ugly profiles. If you’re like me and everyone else, once Facebook came along and provided a clean, clutter free, spam free alternative, you flipped the switch in a heartbeat and never looked back.
MySpace, to put it bluntly, sucked. I barely remember the experience, and, like you, I have no desire to relive it.
However, what I have every desire in the world to relive is the story of how Rupert Murdoch lost $580 million investing in and then completely mismanaging it. Do I relish in every Murdoch failure I can get my hands on maybe a bit too much? Yes, I do. But unlike The Daily, the coffin of which I’ve gleefully been hammering nails into a bit prematurely, MySpace is dead, with no hopes of resuscitation.
Yesterday Reuters provided a spectacularly in depth account of how Murdoch blundered his first and only foray into the social arena. It may fall into the TL;DR category for many, but if you enjoy languishing in the failures of Uncle Rupert as much as I do, it’s a day maker.
OLD MEDIA THE GUARDIAN
The Guardian: Dead in a Decade?
Has the Guardian been making £226 more per reader in annual ad revenues than they were during their print heyday? Of course they haven’t. Yet as the above graph provided by Malcolm Coles shows, this is the difference in the amount of money he’s been giving them to read their paper every year.
And it isn’t because he’s been cheating. He’s simply replaced his daily newsprint habit — which he estimated was running him £230 a year — with their £4 (one time fee) iPhone app and free website. With the Guardian’s circulation numbers falling to an all-time low of 200,000, one can only wonder how much longer the paper can keep this business model alive.
Since American newspaper giants the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal have both introduced payment models over the past year for their digital content, this would seem the way forward not only for the Guardian, but basically every paper suffering a 21st Century revenue crunch. As Coles notes in his post, which begins with the words “Dear the Guardian: Please let me give you more money,” the Guardian provides a service which he values greatly, and one that he is more than willing to pay for.
While that sentiment must surely whet the appetites of the Guardian’s accountants, it would be dangerous to assume it is wide spread. The results of the Journal and Times’s ventures into digital subscription territory are anything but certified. Over the past decade, readers have become used to getting their news from a wide variety of sources. And while they may have stopped paying the people who create the news for their news, chances are they’ve seen what they actually spend on media increase dramatically.
Back when the only way to read the news was in the newspaper, buying a newspaper was pretty much your only media expense. TV was free… and that was it. Now? Phone, internet and cable bills have replaced newspaper subscriptions. People may technically get their news for free, but they pay for it in other ways. As the recording industry knows all too well, the honour system isn’t anything close to a revenue model — it’s a joke. When there’s a way to get something for free — even something like music that everybody loves — most people will get it for free.
All of this leads to no easy answers for the Guardian, and newspapers in general. Unlike music, the news can’t be reported from your parents’ basement; when newspapers go under, the news will largely go with them. While Coles may be pleading for a way to pay the paper more money, he is most likely in the minority. And until the Guardian files for charity status, they should be treated like the for-profit business that they are. People are reading the news more than ever — figure out a way to make money off it, or start running some amazing pledge drives.
Only Fifty People Per Day Twittering About The Daily
It took a few long minutes of staring at the above graph to realise it wasn’t being scaled. As in, each tweet doesn’t represent one thousand tweets, or one hundred tweets, or even two tweets. There are literally fifty people per day — FIFTY — tweeting about Rubert Murdoch’s The Daily articles from their iPads.
There is almost no end to the delightfully petty amount of ways I can put this staggeringly low number in context for you.
Let’s see… I personally have only slightly fewer toes and fingers than The Daily has people tweeting about it.
At this very moment, the article on the front page of The Guardian has had 59 people tweet about it. One single article, compared to an entire “news” “paper”.
A full 95 people have tweeted about an article currently buried on the Huffington Post somewhere entitled Do Narcissists Know They Are Narcisissts?
It would appear that the answer to that question is no, they don’t.
From the outset, The Daily has been a blatantly narcissistic venture — willfully ignoring not only every modern method by which people receive their news, but also shamefully pandering to the lowest common denominator in what can be considered news.
From the now infamous memo declaring the Egypt story to be over, now go find the oldest dog in South Dakota to the fact that they sent an entire camera crew to a porn star’s book reading in New York earlier this week, the virtual rag has assumed their readers are assholes, and produced a product for them to wipe themselves with.
Also, when the number of times I’ve had sex in a single day surpasses the number of people The Daily had tweeting about it, I will write an update and let you know. After all, not all of us narcissists are blind to our ways.
Just Like All of Their Readers, Vice Now Has a Trust Fund
Vice Magazine continues to become one of the most unlikely mainstream crossover stories of the 21st Century. What was once a local Canadian monthly run by recovering and/or not recovering heroin addicts focusing on informative topics like injaculation has become an international empire. Boasting 750 employees in 34 countries with a circulation of 1.1 million and offshoots into industries like advertising, music recording and television, Vice has done what many consider to be largely impossible — hold the attention of a hipster audience for more than a single season.
With a new massive round of fundraising to the tune of tens of millions of US dollars from the likes of Viacom and WPP, Vice has become bedfellows with some of the largest media companies in the world. This is amazing news for the hipster bible, giving them the liquidity to expand into the massive “emerging markets” of China, India and Brazil.
Vice was already partially owned by Viacom, and the “Vice sells out”” story has been a mainstay of media blogs and complainy pants 30-somethings for damn near a decade. Vice sold out when they changed their name from Vice Montreal; they sold out when they moved to New York; they sold out when they put a BMW ad on their cover; they sold out when co-founder Gavin McInnes left because he was sick of them selling out all the time.
Technically there isn’t much news here aside from the fact that Vice has a lot more money than they used to. If you’re shocked to realise Vice isn’t being run out of the Old Blue Last basement, I’m sorry to shatter your fantasy world.
However, the new round of funding does give us an opportunity to reflect on where hipster culture on the whole has gone over the last decade or so. Ugh — save it for your dissertation you say? Well, yes, that topic is boring and long, and hardly relevant. The entire idea of a hipster culture has gone the way of Vice — co-opted by the same co-opters that have been co-opting everything worth co-opting since the hyphen was invented. Plain and simple, it’s done. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. The Grateful Dead sold out arenas for decades after tie-dyed t-shirts were chic; Pearl Jam sells out arenas even though nobody has not been calling them daughter for twenty years; people are still on the cover of NME even though nobody gives a shit about who is on the cover of NME. Cultures don’t die, they just become old and irrelevant. Vice, it would seem, have been on their way there for some time… but haven’t arrived just yet. If they had, I probably wouldn’t have wasted all this time writing about them.
Journalism Students Create Hyperlocal News Sites, Learn Hyperlocal News Lessons
Remember when “hyperlocal” news used to be called the far less sexy but probably just as accurate “local” news? But then “local” became synonymous with “nobody reads this shit” and in order to lure student journalists away from the fast paced and exciting world of gossip blogging they had to invent an exciting new prefix to make local seem cutting edge and fast paced instead of geriatric and arthritic? Those were the days!
The rebranding has been so successful that getting involved in hyperlocal news is practically the new inventing a fart-sound app for the iPhone — everybody wants in on the trendy action. Especially, it would appear, one of the student journalists blogging over at the informative if not gimmicky Wannabe Hacks, a site where five (you guessed it) wannabe journalists document the courses they are respectively charting to achieve this ambitious goal. One of these wannabes just spent three weeks playing actual journalist at uberhyperinsanelylocal news sites Islington Now and Hackney Post. The goal of this exercise was to “bring together all of the skills we’ve learnt over the past six months and put them to work in a working news room.”
The takeaways from this exercise were varied, not at all specific to a sooooooooofuckinglocal news setting, and maybe even a bit fascinating. At the very least, far more informative than the last time we explored the topic of journalism at Snipe.
Time Out London Launching New Email Spamming Service to Compete With Groupon
Groupon founder Andrew Mason may or may not be kicking himself in the dick these days for turning down Google’s reported $5-6 billion buyout offer. Less than a year ago, hardly anyone had heard of Groupon. But then a few months ago, Groupon was the buzz of the online world — a hot new monetisation model which, with 2010 revenues of US $760 million, was actually successfully monetising. Making money! A rare thing for web startups. An even rarer thing in this economy. So rare, in fact, that Mason figured he’d hit upon a winning business model, didn’t need to sell anything to Google to keep success alive, and turned down billions of unbelievably real American dollars.
It’s amazing what a few months can do. One thing that Mason, who we assume is smart, apparently didn’t count on is the mind-boggling preponderance of companies that would copy his exact business model. Entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, startup junkies, established web services like (we never saw this one coming) Google, and even publications are all jumping on the straight-to-the-spam-folder-of-the-day bandwagon.
The latest? That diarist of every cupcake, burlesque show, or twee market — Time Out.
Time Out is promising exclusive discounts, deals and savings, so pretty much the exact same thing as every one of their competitors. The only difference? These deals will be hand picked by Time Out! Which is not a selling point!
Hilariously, although the term Groupon only entered the cultural lexicon around the same time everyone found out King George VI had a stammer, Time Out is already very late to this dumb game. American businesses are already experiencing what’s known as Groupon remorse, and anyone who signs up for more than one of these services knows how quickly the prospect of buying a bunch of food at a place you’ve never heard of turns from new and exciting to the modern equivalent of phone solicitation — instead of calling at dinner, these things clog your inbox at breakfast.
Excerpts From the First Ever English Agony Aunt Column
In an incredible find on the part of The Awl, what they claim to be the first every English Agony Aunt column has been dug up from the annals of printed history. Dating back to 1691, the column birthed what so many of us take for granted — the ability to deliver unqualified advice in a public forum, and be taken seriously.
That title was The Athenian Gazette: Or Casuistical Mercury, Resolving all the most Nice and Curious Questions proposed by the Ingenious of Either Sex.
Here’s how it worked: Say you were wondering, as many a good English citizen might, whether the Pope is the Antichrist. Delighted that there’s finally a group of eminent scholars you can ask, you send your question either to the Roterdam Coffee-House in Finch-lane or to the one in Stocks-Market. The illustrious “Athenian Society” (which was, basically, just Dunton and two of his pals) would then meet twice a week at Smith’s Coffeehouse to answer the questions, which they published from 1691 until 1697.
It was a new idea and not without its skeptics (one person wrote in to ask, “Why do you trouble your selves and the world with answering so many silly Questions?”). It also proved to be incredibly popular.
Unlike the serialized version of The Wire that tantalized the internet last week (and is very worth reading in full), this column was actually real! They’ve got lots of excerpts from the original Q and A, opening a window into the mind of a late 17th century Brit.
The Guardian Trying to Make Another Splash in States
The Guardian is planning a big digital expansion to the States — one that is so far light on details, but promises at least a new American editor. As editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger explains:
The new Web site will give prominent placement to Guardian stories dealing with the presidential campaign, the Middle East and cultural news relevant to American readers—think Ian McEwan.
Articles about local British politics—which might, under some circumstances, take top billing on theGuardian’s primary Web site—will not appear on Guardian America if they do not seem relevant to American readers.
Except, whoops! That was an article from 2007. And also whoops, that was already his third attempt to beef up an American home base.
So what will be different this time around? We literally have no idea.
“We’re not in a position to say more than that at the moment,” Rusbridger said. But he offered that “the United States is going to be a more important part of what we do in the future.”
Sounds… promising and different?
Google Launches New Online Magazine
My first thought upon hearing that Google just launched an online publication? “I wonder if it’s search engine optimized.”
My second thought? “Weird.”
I use Google’s products A LOT — I have an Android phone, Chrome browser, Gmail account, Calendar, Docs, Reader, Maps, YouTube, etc., etc. I’m hardly unique. Google holds an incredible amount of sway over our daily lives, and we let them. Why? Because we trust them. They are overwhelmingly good at what they do, especially considering the fact that I don’t think I’ve ever paid them for the privilege of using a single one of their offerings. What a concept — what a company.
Such a company, in fact, that it’s often easy to overlook the fact that they are, like all companies, motivated by profit. Since we, their users, aren’t the source of their earnings, we aren’t technically their customers — we are their product. Their customers? Well, they’re the target audience of Google’s new online magazine, Think Quarterly.
This makes Think Quarterly one of two things to you: boring, or illuminating. If you’re like the majority of Google’s users — love the sausage; don’t care how it gets made — Think Quarterly is a snooze fest. Most of the articles are about data, mobile… you’re already asleep.
However, if peeling back a few layers of the onion to reveal what truly motivates Google, their partners and advertisers intrigues you, it’s a fun read. Fun, but weird. Why weird? Because when the layers get peeled back, and Google starts talking “business” and “metrics” and how to transform such things, I’m reminded that Google and I actually have nothing in common, and that they are using me just as much as I use them. It’s a symbiotic relationship — a fact that I am very aware of, but am all too willing to forget.
(via soup and newsgrange)
Meet The Lady’s First Ever Astrologer!
The best kinds of funny people are the kinds that really go for it — live their lives as if the entire thing is one big joke and fully method act the pants off of their funny little lives. Local blogger and purveyor of premium wit, Madame Arcati, is this kind of funny person. For example, she still uses an AOL email account — for the jokes! It’s funny because she’s playing in to the stereotype that only old people still use that backwards form of communication. What a great length to go for the sake of a joke.
Also, she proudly displays a gushing quote that the editor of The Lady once sent her in an email on the top of her page, a move I always assumed had been done with a for-the-jokes wink and a nudge because HAH, The Lady. Single women over 50. Too funny!
That was until yesterday when, WTF, The Lady went ahead and made her their first ever astrologer.
This week I make my debut in The Lady as its (first?) astrologer. My weekly horoscope column is terse and prescriptive and will (probably) improve your life. It is accompanied by my feature on why astrology is not rubbish – an idea suggested by editor and Virgo Rachel Johnson.
An impressive use of humorous parentheses, Madame Arcati. Hopefully this new gig won’t change her too much. Sine everyone over at The Lady also still uses AOL email accounts, chances are… it won’t.
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