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This week’s link herd October 20, 2014

October 20, 2014 by Andrew Leave a Comment

It’s a mega catch-up! This week’s Link Herd has discoveries dating back the past few weeks. Perhaps think of this post as a feeding frenzy of “we’re all publishers now” goodness as we examine trends in the marketing, media and publishing world.

herd15

  • Disney’s Frozen Marketing And Online Singalongs
    Insight from UK’s Unruly Media on how Disney was able to generate interest and money by allowing Frozen and its iconic songs to flourish on YouTube.
  • Publishers keep tabs on Google’s latest skirmish
    Newspaper publishers in Germany have found Google News won’t be showing their snippets any more. This is Google defending themselves from legal claims of copyright infringement. Is it a case of be careful of what your wish for?
  • Love it? BuzzFeed Wants to Help You Buy It Too
    Buzzfeed adds a “click to buy” button. That would be standard for most sites but for Buzzfeed the implications are larger as retailers will find it much easier to determine whether the site’s readers are actually interested in buying items.
  • The New York Times needs to rethink its strategy — untargeted mini paywalls aren’t the answer
    The NYT is laying off staff, closing one app and taking a hard look at another under-performing mobile strategy. In this piece Mathew Ingram argues that unfocused paywalls aren’t the answer; readers won’t pay premium for content slices. They will, however, pay for relationships so turn the branded journalists into something worth paying for.
  • How to modernise a public relations agency or communication team
    How well is the PR industry adapting to a world in which we’re all publishers? Not well enough argues Stephen Waddington,President of the CIPR, argues that change has been talked about but not actually done. In this piece he walks the industry through some steps to achieve change.
  • Stop Making Misleading Studies on News and Social (by @baekdal) #opinion
    Baekdal tears into a Newspapers vs Facebook report and in doing so makes a host of well argued points. The piece covers everything from what ‘direct traffic’ in analytics actually means through to the definition of news.
  • Soledad O’Brien Brilliantly Explains How Brands Should Work With Elite Storytellers
    Modern media companies want brands to underwrite the stories they can’t necessarily afford to tell, and brands want to be a part of great stories. But very often, that partnership doesn’t work because brands are reluctant to do the things that go into truly great storytelling: namely, taking a leap of faith and relinquishing control.
  • Here’s What 2.7 Billion Social Shares Say About Online Publishing
    A in-depth study into what sort of content and which publisher is statistically significant in nearly 3 billion shares. The answer? Very few publishers and no trends. Old press tends to be more negative than new press. Facebook dominates shares. Surprised?
  • PewDiePie is sick of internet comments too, removes them from his YouTube videos
    King of YouTube the gamer PewDiePie is fed up of YouTube comments. It’s all spam or self promotion according to the vblogger. He’s going to turn them off from his channel and use Twitter or pehaps even Reddit instead. A challenge for Google?
  • YouTube introduces fan funding to allow users to donate to their favourite vloggers
    YouTube is introducing a “tip” system to let fans donate small dollar values to their favourite vloggers. Google takes a 5% cut. The result will likely be a boom in magic middle vloggers who will be able to step up their game, or be more willing to, with the additional revenue.
  • Who owns the rights to branded content: publishers or brands?
    An interesting question and one that’s taken a surprising time to surface – who owns branded content? Can brands pull content after they pay a platform to publish it? If they do then is the publisher due further compensation?
  • Will travel blogging as we know it fade into the sunset?
    Drew Meyers, co-founder of Horizon, argues that travel blogging as we know it today is likely to become a thing of the past as habits change.
  • 500 Publishers On Content Marketing Best Practices [Research]
    500 publishers, including some big names, contribute to a survey about being pitched too. Some of these publishers get dozens of pitches each and every day. Some of these publishers never respond to a pitch.
  • Google Launching Ad-Free YouTube Music Key Subscription Service
    The advertising community may well be up in arms over this rumour – imagine if YouTube users could opt-out of ads. Imagine if that also came with a music subscription! Where would video ads go? It is just a rumour. I think it’s a good move from YouTube too.
  • Brands should be collaborators, creators and curators – not just advertisers
    Very much in tone with ZEST’s “Creators, Curators and Community Moderators”, Georgia Arnold executive director of the MTV Staying Alive Foundation argues that brands should be more than just advertisers.
  • The LinkedIn challenge: acting like a publisher
    LinkedIn’s senior director of global marketing talking about the challenge the network faces – creating and growing a publishing arm within a platform company.
  • We Have a Rape Gif Problem and Gawker Media Won’t Do Anything About It
    A horrible story from Gawker staff about Gawker Media. The Jezebel team are at their wits end having to deal with horrible gifs that get posted as spam. The company won’t block them. As a result poor Jezebel staff have to delete each by hand.
  • Need more evidence that publishers and agencies are evolving on the same path? Mashable’s future is branded content and consultancy
    Mashable’s CRO describes the company as a “hybrid tech-media company” and wants the phrase native ads banned. Mashable is pushing further into branded content and consultancy.

We’re all professional video makers: AirDog

June 16, 2014 by Andrew Leave a Comment

We’re all publishers. I don’t just mean brands and agencies but every one of us. As people become better and more able to produce fantastic media then the bar pushes ever higher for brands. Keep that in mind and check out this video pitch for a drone called AirDog.

At the time of writing the AirDog has $70,000+ worth of pledges and needs $200,000 to successfully fund. The campaign closes on Saturday 26th of July. You can contribute to the campaign here.

I’m no sports fan but even I can see the attraction to having a drone like this. Furthermore, you don’t need to ask a friend to help. I speculate this will mean some of the crazy stunts that normally happen when no one is around to see – or stop them – will be recorded.

It is easy to imagine YouTube channels springing up with content fuelled entirely from AirDog. It’s also easy to imagine professional broadcasters having a challenge on their hands. You no longer need a copter to take shots like this. Equally, if a professional sportsman or woman was to wear and AirLeash – who’s AirLeash would they wear?

From YouTube to cinema: Camp Takota review

February 15, 2014 by Andrew Leave a Comment

Elise ends up in Camp Takota after her life crumbles. The social media manager gets fired after a social media mix up and discovers her fiancé is cheating on her.

Life in Camp Takota does offer something of a restart. She has friends there, time and space to reassess her life and goals. When the future of the camp is thrown into doubt all that healing is put at risk. In order to save the camp Elise and her friends must change the lives in ways none of them had expected.

I enjoyed Camp Takota and this is despite the synopsis falling safely into the type of movie I would normally try to avoid.

I enjoyed the film for all the right reasons. The main actors; Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart and Mamrie Hart put on strong performances. The plot twists are tight, believable and engaging. The film is well shot, easy to watch and engaging.

I actually cared about the fate of Camp Takota. Sure, yeah, the mobile app developing villain is dangerously close to a parody too far… close, but not over the line. I watched the villain flop about and was all too aware that I knew Shoreditch hipsters cut from the same archetypical cloth.

I watched Camp Takota on my big Philips screen in the living room. The movie was streamed via the PC in the spare room which had legally downloaded Camp Tatoka from the web.

In fact, if you want to watch Camp Takota then this is the route you’ll likely take. That’s one of two reasons I was watching the movie in the first place.

I had two reasons to watch Camp Takota. Firstly, I had no choice. My partner is a loyal fan of the YouTube channels of the three main actresses; Grace Helbig runs It’s Grace, Mamrie Hart runs You Deserve a Drink and Hannah Hart runs My Harto with over 1 million subscribers and famous for My Drunk Kitchen. The three are YouTubers and vloggers. We had pre-ordered the movie and behind the scenes documentary when it was first announced.

The other reason I was going to watch an American camp movie (not a natural choice for a gamer geek in Scotland) was because I had faith in the team. The YouTube antics of the three actresses are great. We watched the live stream of the trio celebrating as Hannah hit the 1 million mark. It was 3am in the morning when that happened, here in Scotland, but they’d kept us entertained.

Sure enough, Camp Takota proves to me that YouTubers with real personality, wit and acting skills can front a film. It also proves to me that YouTube celebrities can successfully promote a film.

I enjoyed the film more than I thought I would. The surprise for me was how well these three YouTube stars acted. I wasn’t surprised at how well the movie was put together or promoted.

I expect – and hope – we’ll see more of this. The costs of making good quality content are coming down. The skill sets are out there. We should all benefit from the extra diversity and competition.

Machinima faces backlash and boycott

January 6, 2014 by Andrew Leave a Comment

YouTube went on a copyright crackdown. The system is strongly in the favour of anyone making a complaint as Google needs to stay in “Safe Harbour” of the US’s Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

As a blogger I’ve been hit with this. I upload a game trailer to YouTube in response to a request from PR or a Digital Marketing agency – or even the game maker themselves – and write about it. Some-time later; 12, 18 or even 24 months someone else claims copyright on a fragment used in the trailer. It could be a logo. It could be a slice of music. It could be anything.

YouTube’s response; the entire channel gets a black mark against it and you lose all access to ad income and a host of tools. Three black marks and you’re out completely.

I’ve protested each black mark I’ve had, being able to cite written permission I had to use the video and won every time. One day I won’t win and I’ll lose my channel. Most recently my counter-claims haven’t even been contested. I just have to wait a few months for the system to automatically rule in my favour given my counter-claim remains.

It’s a worse situation for super user level computer game bloggers though. Many of them had been part of large networks like Machinima and they had some extra protection; a higher tolerance against what counts as a copyright match.

That changed recently and very many YouTubers, people who made their money off the platform, got hit by waves and waves of copyright claims. The networks like Machinima were no longer given special treatment. So, what’s the point of them?

I argue that digital agencies are acting increasingly like publishers – they use content to engage and audience and earn money from that. I also argue that publishers have to act like digital agencies – they have to help promote and market the content produced by their creators. Why? What else are they doing? Publishing to YouTube is a push button affair once you have your video. Again; what’s the point of the publisher collective?

In this protest video Clash, with some 180,000 subscribers, underlines that he’s trapped in a contract with Machinima, that they take an undisclosed cut for doing nothing and he can’t get out. He urges a boycott and announces he’ll stop running ads completely.

I hope Clash investigates other ways to make money from his videos. It is possible. He could become a store and overlay to his own products. That’s allowed. It’s even possible to put affiliate links in the video descriptions.

We’re yet to see what Machinima does. Clash’s protest makes it hard for them to delete his channel without seeming churlish. They make terminate his contract – or if there’s fine print in there about not bringing the brand into disrepute (a common clause) then there may be legal action.

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