Coleman believes there is a disconnect between government and the people, based on a growing public fear that individuals no longer have the power to influence the political world.  

Join Professor Coleman as he draws upon new research and public survey data to argue that the internet has the potential to open up a new space for civic efficacy.

Respondent: James Crabtree, senior editor, Prospect Magazine and trustee, UK Citizens Online Democracy

Chair: Matthew Taylor, chief executive, RSA

The speakers point out that while the Obama campaign was great at getting people involved in the campaigning side of things (funding, getting out the vote etc), it never allowed ordinary people to get involved in policy formulation. Which raises the question that the Internet is great at marketing but much less good at providing spaces where citizens can put forward ideas in ways that the existing system can embrace.

Worth a listen.

It seems to me the responsible thing for the news industry to do, while it is laying off its reporters and editors and the rest, is to help us come up with a Plan B — what we will do for news once all that is gone.

Apart from the absurdity of such a ‘responsibility’, Winer’s comment is also an indication that no-one knows what will happen to the media in the future except that big changes are coming and that our media landscape will be much more diversified than ever before bcause of the emergence of new voices on the Internet.

The notion that no-one really knows what the future will look like was re-inforced for me last week at the future of journalism conference.

It is not even clear to me that the exisiting media will disappear anytime soon. The recent spate of speculation has been, in part, provoked by the financial problems facing the NY Times.

Newspapers are the heritage media most underthreat, largely because of the massive loss of classified advertising. Classifieds are actually more effective online than on paper. Newspapers also have a problem with time and keeping their sites fresh throughout the day (and night) but they are rapidly adjusting to that with, among other things, the use of video and bloggers.

While the growth of the Internet is making the market for advertising more competitive, there is still little to suggest that television and radio is going to adjust soon.  After a period of denial, TV and radio are also now moving fast to embrace the Internet.

Moreover, the audience for a post-media environment is still very small. Miniscule, in fact, as this comment from Brian Robinson on Jeff Jarvis’ blog puts it, and I quote it in full:

This all sounds very erudite, and very analytical. But nowhere in all of this is there any idea about how to feed the bigger audience for news and information. The assumption is that everyone is online reading all of the blogs and twitters and links and God-knows what else there will be in the future, and then recompiling everything for themselves to come up with the news of the day.

Guaranteed that does not describe the real audience for news other than the uber-nerds that read blogs like this (myself included) and who maybe blog and twitter themselves. The real world, even the so-called Internet generation, doesn’t have much time for that. That’s why the biggest sites in terms of traffic remain the BBC, Guardian, Times, NY Times, WPost etc. — people know they can go there and get a compilation of stuff that gives them a good idea of what’s going on.

In what you describe above, where is the idea that these readers will be better served by the info age? In the UK when I was growing up, you had the intellectual papers and then the tabloids which (no surprise) were the best read of the lot. They may have been lurid and sensational, but they provided good snapshots of the bigger stories of the day along with the crappy stuff. How is anything that you propose going to address this audience — or is journalism not bothered with them anymore?

Finally, where in all of the stuff you say is the word story? You speak of links and opinion and organization and blah, blah, but where is the discussion about what story means in the current scenarios for news? People don’t read links, they read stories. And for the great mass of readers — outside of the nerds — that still holds true. What I see here is the fracturing of story, not a way to tell a better one. Or do I have that wrong?

Excellent stuff, Brian.

Unless, we can have a post-media that serves the needs of everyone, the whole audience, than the heritage media will continue to not only exist but also to be far more relevant than either the most-read bloggers and twitterers.

New technologies seem to follow a certain pattern of adoption.

First, they are rejected as useless.

We all know the amusing anecdotes that involve famous people predicting that telephones and computers were just fads.

Websites were not seen as necessary 15 years ago, but within  a few years everyone had one and now they are essential.

If you don’t have a good website, you’re not going to be taken seriously.

Especially as we now live in a world where people google everything, whether they researching a potential purchase or checking out a business contact.

During this transition from uselessness to ubiquity, we hear a lot about ROI.

What’s the ROI for the fax machine, the website, the mobile phone, the blackberry.

Part of the problem here is that ROI grows exponentially with their adoption.

Like the fast disappearing fax machine. If you are the only person in the world with a fax machine it is pretty useless.

But once most of the people you do business with have them they are invaluable.

So quizzing people about the ROI of things sounds clever when they are relatively new, it sounds a bit less clever when everyone has one.

If you want to be in business and get taken seriously there are things you need like a mobile phone, a web address, an email address and a business card.

My argument is that pretty soon that list will include blogs and other social media accounts, like twitter and linkedin.

When people want to check you and your business out, they will look for your blog.

They expect your blog will tell them a lot about who you are, what your views are on key topics, whether you are insightful or a bit obvious and so on.

They will google your name – what will they find?

What will your future boss or client or customer find?

Will they find lots of people linking to you with approving comments, or not?

When blogs are ubiquitous, we won’t keep asking what is the ROI of my blog but more interesting questions like how can I make my blog better, attract more readers, have more influence – and keep the costs down.

So why will everyone have a blog?

First. Because they are cheaper and more powerful than existing websites.

I’m not talking percentages here; I mean orders of magnitude cheaper and orders of magnitude more powerful.

They look better, they load faster – blogs are designed for sharing information and for communicating, they have lots of features to help do these things.

In fact, blogs are websites designed to maximise the power of the Internet.

Second, because search dominates the universe

And you need to be high on the search list when your customers, investors, regulators, politicians, media etc go looking for stuff that affects your business.

You can’t allow a vacuum and you can’t let your critics fill that vacuum.

If I google you or your business and I don’t find anything than that’s a little sad.

If I google you or your business and I find lots of criticisms and no responses, well that’s a little disturbing.

Search engine optimisation is fine, everyone has to do it to some extent.

But the big thing is content – regular, fresh, compelling content.

The media provides regular, fresh, compelling content.

And now so do bloggers.

Traditional corporate websites do not.

If you don’t blog you’ll get left behind.

We’ve seen some social media action in Australia through Telstra.

We are seeing a lot more in the USA.

Technorati found -Most bloggers describe themselves as personal (79%), followed by professional (46%) and corporate (12%). Of course, these descriptions are not exclusive and 69% of corporate bloggers also describe themselves as personal and 65% of corporate     bloggers describe themselves as professional bloggers

One-quarter of US industry associations have blogs, about another third have plans to start blogging.

I think the successful Obama campaign will drive a further sharp increase in social media and social networking.

Especially, if Obama uses social media and networking to build and activate support for his policies and programs while he is in office.

So the era of web 2.0 is rapidly coming upon us.

Web 2.0 is first of all about publishing and broadcasting.

That is re-inventing the Internet as a publishing and broadcasting medium rather than the old idea of document storage.

It is about communities.

Search drives a lot of traffic but so do communities.

Microblogging services like Twitter and social networking like facebook and lots of stuff like friendfeed are also driving traffic.

These services act like personal referrals from people you know – you say I like this article and people on your facebook friends list will also go and have a look ditto twitter and friendfeed.

Ernst & Young uses its facebook presence to recruit people because facebook is where young people – and not just young people – hang out.

Telstra uses twitter, so do Virgin Atlantic, the McKinsey Quarterly and LabourStart and many more will do so.

So I just think it’s inevitable.

But what are the pitfalls.

Content is the main pitfall.

Most blogs fail because people simply don’t post interesting stuff on a regular basis.

And they don’t interact with readers and communities.

If you can’t write or don’t like writing you won’t be a successful blogger.

If you want to start a blog, and you should, find someone in your organisation who loves writing.

If you can’t find someone internally, recruit someone – it will make all the difference.

Have some clear goals, but don’t over-strategize.

Good bloggers do it and learn from their audiences. What do people click on and respond to?

Develop clear guidelines but keep them simple.

Yes, there are issues about disclosure, defamation and so on.

But it is easy to exaggerate them.

Finally, integrate.

Don’t do social media as a stand alone.

Make it part of your overall communications strategy.

Thanks.

• they can be updated (published) easily and directly by ordinary people with no particular IT expertise
• they encourage, indeed thrive on, regular updating
• they go out of their way to encourage linking and sharing (i.e. they are much closer to the original intent of the web than the first generation of largely ’stand-alone’ websites)
• they are simple, emphasise content rather thean cute graphics, and are far more user friendly than all that clunky nineties stuff

These blog features have proven to be so effective that they are being rolled out progressively across the whole web, in that sense, the blog revolution has already been won.

Oracle Australia also commented on Tanner’s plans.

According to the first annual AIMIA Digital Services Index™, to be announced on Wednesday,, revenue generated through digital services as a proportion of total revenue jumped by 17 percent this year, and now accounts for almost one in every four dollars earned

The research also demonstrated a shift in the way organisations are interacting with customers, with companies planning to target 40 per cent of customers through digital initiatives 2009.

The Index found that online advertising, traditionally regarded as the mainstay of Australia’s digital services industry, accounted for only a third of spend on digital marketing.

Perhaps the most striking finding of the project so far is that while the Net may seem to be everywhere, a fifth of Australians have never used it. And in Britain, the non-users are almost a third of the adult population. In other words, there is a digital divide in Australia and it reflects patterns of uptake that are repeated elsewhere in the prosperous West.

If you’re male, employed or studying, if you have a university degree and a higher than average income, you are more likely to be online. These patterns are familiar, but the Net is changing, and computers have been getting cheaper. The divide is not as simple as the old idea of the better-off information “haves” and the struggling “have nots.”

Lower-income families with children are much more likely to have access to the Net than those without children. Many older non-users actually do access the Net through their friends and families. So the digital divide is, in some cases, more likely to be a digital choice. At the same time, new divides are appearing around the more recent internet technologies.

It might also have a lot to do with slow speeds and high costs in Australia.