March 11th, 2009 by mhjones

I read someone on Twitter describe this week’s ad:tech Sydney conference as a “love-in for marketers and ad agencies.” (Read ad:tech twitterings here.) It’s an interesting description that betrays an obvious slant towards the “other camp” which I heard one ad agency exec describe with a hint of derision as “all these social media consultants.”

As an aside, we’ve also got the “tech” part of this whole “ad:tech” meme. But that’s been conveniently sidelined in the battle of marketing ideologies. Maybe we just take technology (ie. the one giant computer called the internet) for granted now, since it’s use-case scenarios that matter.

So all this got me thinking. What is it about the mindset of agency-types, and the mindset of social media consultant-types (I tend to fall into the latter), that causes mild friction at events like ad:tech? Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: Events, Marketing, Social media
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February 21st, 2009 by mhjones

A few people have asked me what I’m doing these days so I thought it’s about time I wrote an update!

Many of you already know I’ve been a technology journalist for more than a decade, and I’ve continued to work as a freelance contributor for The Australian Financial Review, producing video interviews and The Scoop (which is on an extended summer break). But what you might not know is I’m also a keynote speaker and workshop host focussed on, you guessed it, digital media and internet trends (btw, you can book me direct, or via agencies like Saxton and ICMI). Why? I’ve always made career decisions based on a simple premise. If the idea sounds scary, I do it! Life is more fun that way.

So last November I found myself on a big stage at the Financial Planners Association Conference on the Gold Coast speaking about social media in front of a few hundred people. It was one of a dozen or so keynotes and workshops I have delivered over the past 6 months or so.  The folk at the FPA were kind enough to send me some photos of yours truly on stage, pictured here. Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: Marketing, Personal, Social media, Twitter
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February 13th, 2009 by mhjones

I live for moments of clarity, when all those passing thoughts and observations suddenly collide and create something new. And this time it was during a chance encounter on ustream.tv, the free video channel community.

One of my twitter buddies had linked to a test broadcast by ABC personality James Valentine. He was in a radio studio with an engineer (off air) and trying to figure out how to possible weave a live video feed into his radio show.

And here we were, some 92 people who had caught wind of the experiment and buzzed by to see what the fuss was about. James was engaging directly with the assembled onlookers. He wanted to get the sound working. Technical stuff. As an aside, it was fun to discover one of the ustream participants was an old friend who I’d not seen for years – the online equivalent of bumping into someone in the street.

Meanwhile, I had other stuff happening while ustream’s live comments unfolded. I was glancing at my twitter stream (you can find me here, btw), reading email, doing some online research ahead of a social media workshop I was to host the following day, synching my ipod and smartphone. Just your regular Joe with an digital attention deficit disorder. Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: Aussie media, New media, Social media, Twitter
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October 12th, 2008 by mhjones

Amid all the economic commentary, there’s a quiet murmur among digital media and social networking people. Will the bad times hit the marketing and tech industry’s brightest light and snuff it out?

What’s clear to me is that the return to economic fundamentals will rub off on everything else. In tech, media and marketing circles, that means a flight to quality companies, quality products, and the radical pursuit of simplicity.

So it’s incumbent on the digital media industry to clearly articulate the social media value proposition. I think we need less talk about social media theory, less industry obsession with jargon and the wow factor, and more focus on real results achieved by companies using social media. Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: Marketing, Social media
Comments: 9 Comments »

July 22nd, 2008 by mhjones

Ok, let’s be honest. Would you rather read a good story or a bad story? Do you like happy endings (non-Hollywood style), or the dramatic melancholy of an unresolved dissonance?

If you think about the new media meta-narrative, it strikes me that we’ve become fixated on the drama that’s affecting incumbent media. You’re familiar with the story: mainstream newspapers and TV are “losing” while new media like consumer-generated content and social networking is “winning.”

Just about every media debate I can think of – blogging vs. journalism, the future of advertising, digital rights management, mobile content – fits into this paradigm. Every conference, panel discussion or private meeting I’ve enjoyed over the past two years has roughly echoed this story. And it’s a fascinating story, even if it sometimes seems overplayed. It’s fascinating because it echoes other big underdog stories that capture our attention: David vs. Goliath, Vietnam vs. the United States, Maxine McKew vs. John Howard. Read the rest of this entry »

Tagged: Media, Online, Social media
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July 7th, 2008 by mhjones

If you’re one of my select, loyal readers you might have noticed that I’m tending not to write as frequently on this blog as times past.

My interest in the convergence of media, technology and marketing hasn’t changed. If anything, it’s deepened. What has changed is that my attention is increasingly divided between different forms of social media. And most of my social media time is currently soaked up by Twitter. If you want to follow my twitter musings, check me out at twitter.com/markhjones.

Tagged: Random musings, Social media
Comments: 3 Comments »

June 25th, 2008 by mhjones

On Monday I spoke at Jed White & iTechne’s Pubcamp conference in Melbourne on the subject of social capital. I spoke for 10 minutes about what I called “social capital transfer” - the notion that individuals build social capital inside web communities, which in turn builds or depletes the social capital ascribed to their employer.

And when a net-citizen moves jobs, there is social capital transfer that takes place. Understand how this works, and you understand the digital economy.

Below, the controversial “old vs. new media panel” facilitated by yours truly, pic shot on Ben Barren’s b’berry.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Tagged: Social media
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May 30th, 2008 by mhjones

When US tech entrepreneur Jason Calacanis flew into Sydney for CeBIT this month, I joined the queue of Aussie journalists who wanted to meet the man who sold a blogging company to AOL for US$25 million (yes, we’d ALL like to do that…).

Here’s the result of our chat - part 1 and part 2 - on the new-look, big-screen tv.afr.com that my colleague at Fairfax Business Media, Marc Tewksbury, has been working on for months (btw, nice work Marc!). You can also watch it over at misaustralia.com.

Tagged: MISaustralia.com, Social media, Tech news, The Australian Financial Review, Weblogs
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May 23rd, 2008 by mhjones

Facebook CEO Marc Zuckerberg has stressed his desire to keep the company an independent operation.

“You can tell, from our history and what we’ve done, that we really wanted to keep the company independent, by focusing on building and focusing on the long-term,” Zuckerberg told Reuters while in Japan to launch a Japanese language version of Facebook.

Well, he’s right in one sense. You might recall his famous US$1B Yahoo! snub that made the cover of Fast Company.

But really, what else was he going to say? Microsoft is already an investor in the business and he doesn’t want to upset the facebook community (again) by appearing to blatantly chasing the dollar.

I got thinking about this because of a conversation I had with Jason Calacanis this week. He was in Sydney to attend and speak at CeBIT, and I recorded a video interview with him for misaustralia.com (stay tuned for that).

And we got talking about social media business models, as you do with someone like Jason. His point was that the only real way to make big money from social networking is to sell it to a bigger internet player. There’s little money to be made from the ads wrapped around social media - which is what free email services like Yahoo! Mail and Gmail are. You need to take them and dump them into a larger bucket where you can charge for different, higher value services, Jason said.

I don’t completely agree with his assessment because Yahoo! Mail is one of the biggest traffic generators among Yahoo!’s web properties. There has to be a very nice income stream from associated traffic on that site alone.

But yet there is clearly merit in the sell-out idea from Mr Zuckerberg’s selfish perspective. And Jason would know, he made about US$25million from selling Weblogs, Inc. to AOL.

Tagged: Random musings, Social media, Tech news
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May 18th, 2008 by mhjones

Hey everyone, have you heard of weblin? I came across the service over at mashable and I’ve been playing around with it over the weekend.

No idea what I’m talking about? Think Second Life avatars bust out of the portal and start visiting the real web. Technically speaking, you download a small piece of software, create an avatar which follows you around the web on sites that support weblin, and you chat with people. You can even set your status, or presence, in the same fashion as IM & Skype.

The concept is bizzare, but at the same time makes sense as a logical evolution of what many now think of as the “live web.” At any given moment in time there have to be other people looking at the same web page as you - particularly when you’re on popular blogs, news sites, Google etc. So why not talk about what you’re all looking at? Gives new contextual meaning to the well-worn phrase “social media is all about conversations.”

But so far I’ve only seen one little Aussie flag next to a bunch of weblin avatars that popped up and started walking around at the bottom of the screen while I was using Gmail. (Which, btw, is a really bizzare experience. You’re reading email and there’s all these avatars on your screen. I’m presuming they can’t read my mail… ???)

Anyway, I tried to talk to the Aussie avatar but he disappeared before reading my IM chat. So, I’d like to know if anyone in Australia using weblin? What do you think about it? If not, visit weblin.com, get an avatar and look me up. I’m going by the name of “Ozman.”

Tagged: Social media
Comments: 3 Comments »