Extraordinary Twitter Delusions and the Madness of Crowds

For this last post, I've decided to go out with a bang and a reference to one of my favorite books, by Charles Mackay. Latest in date, Twitter (as in, Twitter will save the world).

A new contender, Karim Gargum, a self-proclaimed online marketing expert, proclaimed that Twitter will menace google, because people will from now on search for content on Twitter rather than google.

His presentation is below.

10 Twitter Future Trends

View more presentations from Karim_Gargum.

If you clicked on the hyperlink on the genius' name, you noticed it's a broken link. Yes, the visionary can't even get a URL right.

So let me join with David Letterman (check Billy's blog if you haven't seen the video yet), and conclude: THIS IS FUCKING STUPID PEOPLE!! (also note the use of the fleeting expletive - the FCC has jurisdiction over broadcast, not the internet).

With that, I bid you farewell.

Is my local paper going down?

A month ago, I reported that my El Segundo Herald was advertising a "stimulus package": any add ran in any of their three South Bay papers would for free in the other two papers.

This week, the Herald reports going online. What's going on here? I do not see a point for a free local paper to go online, unless they upload special content that is not in the print version, but it does not seem to be the case here.

There are reasons why pay print papers would go online, amongst the the following:

- offer additional content
- offer free content in order to compete in a free world, where people do not want to pay for the paper anymore.

But the Herald is free already! And it's already widely distributed. I get it on my doorstep. I get it at the coffee shop. I get it at the pizza place. And this is where I read it, too. My need are already fulfilled, and I will not go online to read it.

So why go online? ... Oh wait ... is my local paper secretly planning on going paperless soon ?!

Any thoughts?

Why Twitter is useless, as far as journalism is concerned

I understand that my feelings for Twitter put me in the minority in the class. I argue that Twitter is a useless piece of junk, tailored for hipsters / virtual social networking fiends / blind lovers of mark zuckerberg. I further argue that Twitter, and any site of the sort, will have no positive impact / have no future, as far as quality online journalism is concerned.

While a lot of people will call me heretic, numbers have emerged that indicate that I may be right after all. According to Marketing Charts, only 41.7% of Twitter users DISagree with the fact that "you should follow people who follow YOU". Meaning that 58.3% of users do not disagree with that statement. Also, 58.1% of users do not disagree with the statement "people you follow should follow you back."

Now people, if this is not the proof that Twitter, like facebook, is an ego-boosting medium with no educational value, I don't know what is. "People should follow me because I follow them"?! And this community is supposed to be the future of journalism?

The Oracle on the future of newspapers

In case you missed it.

Mr. Buffett on Newspapers

Mr. Buffett has long held himself out as a newspaper man. As a child, one of his first jobs was delivering newspapers. An Omaha newspaper Berkshire owned, Sun Newspapers, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1973 based in part on a tip Mr. Buffett provided. One of Berkshire's biggest investments in the 1970s was the Buffalo News, which it still owns.


But his view on the future of the newspaper industry is dismal. "For most newspapers in the United States, we would not buy them at any price," he said. "They have the possibility of going to just unending losses."

As long as newspapers were essential to readers, they were essential to advertisers, he said. But news is now available in many other venues, he said.

Berkshire has a substantial investment in Washington Post Co. He said the company has a solid cable business, a good reason to hold on to it, but its newspaper business is in trouble.

Mr. Munger called newspapers' woes "a national tragedy....These monopoly daily newspapers have been an important sinew to our civilization, they kept government more honest than they would otherwise be."

A Washington Post Co. representative couldn't be reached for comment

add bugets move online (continued)

The European Interactive Advertising Association reports that 70% of advertisers plan on increasing their internet advertising budget in 2009 (37% increasing a lot and 33% increasing a little). The anticipated increase in the internet add budget is estimated at 18% for 2009, 21% in 2010, and 15% in 2011.

According to the report, 46% of advertisers think that the budget comes from magazines, 37% think it comes from TV, and 32% think it comes from newspaper adds.

Good news for news: the online add market is growing fast

Good news for news: the online add market is growing fast. At least in India. The World Advertising Research Center predicts the Indian ad market will post an 8% uplift in revenues over the course of the year. And according to an executive at the Starcom MediaVest Group, the internet adspend will grow to take 10% of many brand owners' total advertising expenditure by the end of next year.

Will we see the same trend in Western countries? I’m willing to bet on it, even though DTV, with its capacity to better target more refined classes of users, will be a strong competitor.

The conclusion to this, in my opinion, is that online news organizations need to spend resources on having an effective, tech-savy add-selling department (i.e. unlike what’s happening with the European papers, see post below on geolocalization)

Herald Publications in trouble, offers "stimulus package"

Herald Publications, which publishes my city's weekly free paper, the El Segundo Herald, is in trouble. In their own words, "Herald Publications recognizes that many families and business, including us, are struggling."

As a result, they are offering a stimulus package: any add ran in any of their three South Bay papers will be ran for free in the other two papers.

I'm a bit puzzled by the whole thing, because I would have thought that micro-local papers such as the El Segundo Herald (El Segundo = 16,000 residents) would have been shielded from the add crisis. When you think about it, craigslist isn't that local, as far as really big cities, especially a suburban city such as LA, are concerned. If I want a cheap couch, I'm more likely to find one in the El Segundo Herald classified section than I am to find it on craigslist (on craigslist, I will most certainly find one in Downtown LA, one in Santa Monica, one in Los Feliz, etc, but it will take me much sorting time to find one in El Segundo).

But I guess my instinct is wrong. I mean, how bad is it that a paper has to offer triple the circulation for the price of one in order to lure advertisers?...