Upon discussing message disconnect: “what you try to convey and believe has been understood has nothing to do with what your interlocutor hears or understands” a friend pointed me to an incredibly silly but I am guessing therapeutic for the burned-out employees website. There I found a funny poster on San Fermín, one of the most ludicrous of the many ludicrous Spanish yearly feasts.
The last country report on Internet in Russia was released by the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) at the end of March 2007. It presents interesting data on number of people online, by regions, in this massive country. By Winter 2006-2007 it seems 28 million Russians were online every month. At that time that was about 25% of the population, versus 72% in Australia or 53% in Spain for the same period.
See below how the Russian 6 month audience of Internet users in the Winter 2006-2007 was split per regions.
As I mentioned in a previous post on online ad spend a few days ago, the loss of newspapers to Internet is the most significant and painstaking one around. I mean, really, in the period 2004 - 2007 loss is at anannual 890$ million in the US from printed newspapers to advertising dollars spent online.
My question is, is this loss to other-than-newspaper online resources or does it also include gain (that’s what I call negative gain ;-) in online newspaper bottom-lines…?
The balanced scorecardis a strategic planning and management system used(*) to align business activities to the vision and strategy of the organization, improve internal and external communications and monitor organization performance against strategic goals.
The balanced scorecard suggests we view 4 critical perspectivesof our business:
Learning & growth: includes training, learning, corporate culture and attitudes, self growth. Individuals are the main repository of knowledge of an organisation and the critical resource. Communication among workers is key, as is avoiding brain drain.
Business process: Metrics based on internal business processes allow management to monitor how well the business is running and wether it’s products/services are well accepted by clients.
Customer: Indicators on customer satisfaction and tools to improve and monitor customer relations are critical
Financial: Timely and accurate financial data is still a key to manage the business. Data should be centralised and of fast and easy access, but financial data should not be the only indicator, thus the original intention of the word “balanced”.
It was ideated and first detailed by Robert Kaplan and David Norton. Image courtesy of Metrus
(*) Used in business and industry, government, and non-profits worldwide
Tom Waits was a big part of my musical adolescence. He was there during my various boarding school experiences, he was there when I graduated from NYU’s College of Arts & Science, he was there when I started the Non-Profit section of a Spanish local paper… I have always been a great fan of Jim Jarmusch and of course, he was there with him all the way.
Some of my favourite songs are Tom Traubert’s Blues from the 1976 album Small Change (also in the 1987 collection The Asylum Years); the somewhat novel You Can Never Hold Back Spring from the 2006 tr-anthology Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards. (Yes, Brawlers twice ;-); and Please Call Me Baby from The Heart of Saturday Night album (1974).
I want to share the lyrics of a great Tom Waits song I just recovered form the trunk of remembrance, Drunk on The Moon, from The Heart of Saturday Night. Hope you may enjoy this 1976 soundstage video and the lyrics as much as I.
Tight-slacked clad girls on the graveyard shift
‘Neath the cement stroll
Catch the midnight drift
Cigar chewing charlie
In that newspaper nest
grifting hot horse tips
On who’s running the best
And I’m blinded by the neon
Don’t try and change my tune
‘Cause I thought I heard a saxophone
I’m drunk on the moon
And the moon’s a silver slipper
It’s pouring champagne stars
Broadway’s like a serpent
Pulling shiny top-down cars
Laramer is teeming
With that undulating beat
And some Bonneville is screaming
It’s way wilder down the street
Hearts flutter and race
The moon’s on the wane
Tarts mutter their dream hopes
The night will ordain
Come schemers and dancers
Cherry delight
As a Cleveland-bound Greyhound
And it cuts through the night
And I’ve hawked all my yesterdays
Don’t try and change my tune
‘Cause I thought I heard a saxophone
I’m drunk on the moon
Online advertising spending is prognosed to be 9,3% of the total advertising market in 2008. That’s a nice growth from 2007, where the number was 7,4%. This data is for the US market and we’re talking about $27,5 billion in 2008.
On the downside, we were informed today by a German publisher that it is estimated that newspapers lost an annual 890$B in the past 3 years to online advertising…
There is Pamela Anderson and then there is Pelle Anderson. He’s one of the ideators behind the Metro newspaper concept. He argues that the most off-putting thing in a newspaper is “boring photos and articles”. It’s not so much about format, design and layout, if the content sucks, you’re toast. I agree.
Then he goes into some digression in an interview on News & Tech about some elements which I consider critical not just for daily press, but also for classifieds. He argues that “there are two prevailing cultures in the daily newspaper sector: that of the major population centers and that of rural areas. City culture is the same the world over”, he states.
As a matter of fact, he is not mistaken: the concerns of metropolitans worldwide are similar and the free sheet is a tribute to this. In this light, geographical identification becomes a unifying thread in product design. But it gets more sexy when you touch classifieds. Dailies and printed sheets could never manage to suit the needs of each district in a metropolis: they cannot afford the cost structure. But hyper local classifieds can… online.
My dream was, when I moved to Paris as when I moved to Istanbul, to use a hyper local environment to tell me things like: who is selling a couch near my new flat; who is a good shiatsu master near my new home; who can deliver fresh produce to this apartment? I need privates offering goods and services and exchanges; I need professional services which I can locate by proximity; I need neighbours like myself to tell me who is the best fromagier in the Poteau market in Montmartre or to tell me who is the best fishmonger in Yesilyurt. And I want all this in one integrated interface.
So, infact, in Anderson’s printed world such micro-targeting will not happen, but in the networked economy it’s a reality. And it bites.
In the photoentrance to my ex-house in Paris, 18eme. Rue du Mont Cenis
In my statistics panel I observe wide eyed how, week after week, the Monkey: Journey to the West post in my blog attracts the highest traffic in spite of the fact the show finished months ago. Sure the book is a classic and everyone is interested in Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn, but damn! This is interesting…
So, with this in mind, I start wondering about how trends are created and venture to Google Trends (or the Zeitgeist) for a peep of today’s hot topics. To my surprise, in US trends, I find alongside the infamous bachelor Gary Zerola and Arlington mayor Carmen Kontur the word gymnophobia on today’s 14th position. I veer off topic (as usual) as I am fascinated by phobias.
Gymnophobia is an abnormal and ongoing fear of nudity. Sufferers experience undue anxiety (even though they realize their fear is irrational) of nudity. They worry about seeing others naked or being seen naked, or both.
Other possibly unheard of phobias are:
Ephebophobia: fear of youth Coulrophobia: fear of clowns Ergasiophobia: fear of work Neophobia: fear of newness Paraskavedekatriaphobia: fear of Friday the 13th ;-) Panphobia: fear of everything Taphophobia: fear of being buried alive Pteronophobia: fear of being tickled by feathers Ablutophobia: fear of washing or bathing Acarophobia(illustrated): fear of itching or of the insects that cause it
Thanks In My Opinion (I think this blogger is a collector of trend terms., ie. what I am doing right now ;-)
It seems that the word phobia is most searched in The Philippines by region and in Houston (Texas) by city. Interesting…
