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Chocolate, the internet and the BBC engage

By
Ryan Morrison
Published: February 12, 2010Posted in: General, New MediaTags: , , , , , , ,
Chocolate, the internet and the BBC engage

I get sent a lot of press releases and I ignore almost all of them. Especially the ones that send me a top ten list and talk of a new groundbreaking methodology behind their results.

But I couldn’t pass by on one that gave a list of brands in an order that isn’t what you’d normally expect to see.

This particular list by Hall & Partners puts Cadbury and Google at the top and measures brands British people most engage with.

In the top five of this lis are a confectionary company, three new edia companies and the BBC.

Google takes the number one slot as the brand British people most engage with and personally I can see that – it’s a lot of people’s homepage, it is almost everybody’s search engine and it’s apps are becoming more prevelant in the mass user base.

Then there’s Cadbury – most people love chocolate.

Amazon takes the third slot in this research and the BBC is in fourth with Facebook taking up the fifth – I thought Facebook may be higher than Amazon as Facebook sucks you in but I guess not.

The rest of the list includes more common consumer brands like Marks & Spencer, Sony and Dove.

But one surprise is Microsoft – I thought they would be a LOT higher, especially as they’re the most used OS by a long way but I guess the ‘average’ user doesn’t notice the OS.

Is it that MS Windows has become so much part of the furniture that people don’t realise who it’s by? Or is the fact that Microsoft is in the top ten and NOT Apple a sign that Windows does hit the mark in terms of user recognition but the iPod doesn’t?

Or is this just yet another silly survey?

Photo credit: by ell brown on Flickr (Creative Commons)

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Am I confusing people by linking in line text?

By
Ryan Morrison
Published: February 8, 2010Posted in: General, MediaTags: , , , , , , , , ,
Am I confusing people by linking in line text?

I know inline linking is important, I do it all the time and I understand how it helps keep the information flow going and aids the user journey from one site to another or between two sites.

And I understand how linking large chunks of text, describing the thing your linking to helps with Google Juice and page rank – that’s all obvious.

But what I’m really wondering is, and I’m thinking here about the person reading the article and not the money I might make from ads or the Juice I’ll get from Google – does linking long bits of text cause problems for novice users and skim readers?

According to an article on the Read Write Web, research by Jakob Nielson shows people only spend 4.4 seconds for every additional 100 words written on an article with more information and words.

The research also found that people read around 20% of the text on an average page and that they will spend some of the limited time on the page working out navigation and looking for images.

I’m not convinced this is people only reading the first 20% of the article, although they are more likely to be reading the first 20% properly – I think it is people reading the first few paragraphs and then skimming through the rest.

I don’t mind people skimming my articles, when I’m writing for the BBC I’ll write with all the main information in the first four paragraphs and then expand underneath that.

The idea there is that people can get everything they need to know about the article by just reading the first 70 words or so – but I prefer to be able to write more conversationally on my blog.

Should link titles be kept very short in the body text?

Having to tell a story within four paragraphs and then being able to continue it after that makes it a lot harder to write in a conversational way – it’s no impossible, just more difficult.

So, if you do decide to do what I’ve done on my blog and attempt to hold people for longer, to converse with them throughout the post and try to keep their attention – you need to be careful about post clutter.

For example

When I add an image to this blog I always make sure it is aligned to the right, that keeps the left hand side clear for text.

I’ll try to put sub-headings into very long posts to break it down and make it easier to skip through bits you’r not bothered about, or even to get a ‘rough idea’ of what’s going on.

I try to write very short paragraphs, ideally no more than one point per paragraph to make skim reading even easier.

And I’ll make sure any body links are clearly identified – brighter blue, bold and or underlined.

But that is what made me come up with the idea for this blog post.

I was reading a post the other day, can’t remember exactly what I where it was but I know it had a very long body link.

This link was spot on for Google Juice etc, it linked the explanation of the site it was linking to – it explained why it existed.

Unfortunately I nearly missed half the paragraph of text because my brain has been trained, over years of internet use to skip the link.

I just didn’t notice it and my brain just automatically stopped read at the last word before the link and picked it up with the first word after the linked text.

Here is an example of an SEO friendly link taking you to a Facebook group asking if a sausage roll can get more fans than Cheryl Cole that has nothing to do with this post but should help explain my point.

If your brain works anything like mine it would have read ‘link taking you to a …. that has nothing to do’ filling in the bit in between with the word group.

So the question I’ve been asking myself is – does long body linking cause problems for skim readers?

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How I managed to avoid the X-Factor

By
Ryan Morrison
Published: December 15, 2009Posted in: General, MediaTags: , , , , , , , , ,
How I managed to avoid the X-Factor

I’m writing this post listening to a Spotify Playlist I created specifically for blogging (it inspires me to actually write instead of thinking about writing) and praising myself for having avoided the X-Factor and I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here this year.

And I don’t mean just avoid watching it – I mean avoid it almost completely (with the exception of the odd photo of the stupid haired jedtwins thing) – I’ve not seen a single episode or video clip, I’ve not heard a song by or seen performance from ANY of the two shows.

But to achieve this I’ve had to pretty much avoid all of the main television networks, all television news, YouTube, shop windows, electronics shops and more – I’ve even had to avoid looking at the plasma on the wall in the BBC Jersey newsroom.

I haven’t watched a single show on ITV, the television at home has not been set to the channel once in the last few months and I only watch shows on the BBC or Channel 4 recorded through Sky+ or through iPlayer/4OD.

This isn’t so much because I’ve got a moral objection to the show – talent shows have been around for decades – more than I know I’ll get sucked into the crap and hate myself for it afterwards.

However, I have now heard the winner singing his version of the Miley Cyrus song, The Climb (heard not watched) – so I could comment with a tiny bit of knowledge and …. It’s rubbish.

He sounds like a poorer version of Gareth Gates, he has no feeling or emotion invested in the song and just dies.

I’m not a massive Miley fan but as I have a 9 year old Hannah Montana obsessed daughter I do know her music well (was dragged to see the film) and at least she has an interesting twang to her voice, a unique element and a bit of passion – the X-Factor one is just rubbish.

I can’t bring myself to come up with anything more creative than that because his voice and interpretation doesn’t deserve anything more creative.

Yes it will probably go to number one this week and so be Christmas number one (hopefully Rage Against the Machine will be at number two) but that doesn’t mean it isn’t rubbish – it’s just another item of merchandising that the fans of the television drama that is X-Factor have brought to support and show alliegence to their favourite show.

I’ve got no problem with that at all, in the same way that I’ve got no problem with the charts being manipulated by Facebook fans – the charts are meaningless and have been for a long time.

What matters is the songs/artists my friends suggest – the songs I discover myself through hours of scouring Spotify (like tonight) and the playlists I find hidden around the blogosphere.

Than and the charts in iTunes around specific genres. But that hasn’t stopped me getting the Rage Against the Machine song or listening to the rubbish X-Factor song.

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It’s not all about the money

By
Ryan Morrison
Published: September 20, 2009Posted in: General, MediaTags: , , , , , , ,
It’s not all about the money

Everytime a public organisation comes up with what is basically a good idea, something that will provide interesting content for free for the public in an easy to use way – somebody, usually somebody running a private company – jumps up and down and screams about it hurting the ‘commercial sector’.

I can completely understand a newspaper group getting a little anxious when they’ve got a big new service ready to launch, advertising in place and then someone like the BBC, the Government or another publicly funded body launches an almost identical service with tax payers money – but how often does that actually happen.

Most of the time the excuses for objecting to a cool new public service site, channel or project is that it would stop the private company from being able to create something similar in the future – thus cutting off a potential revenue stream.

But for me that is where the argument completely falls down – in most cases the public service version would be advertising free and as the commercial version would probably be advertising funded – I don’t see where the competition is?

OK so there would be a little bit of competing for eyeballs but I like to think that people are smart enough to rely on more than one source for their news and information – I use Twitter and Facebook even though Facebook is fast becoming Twitter.

I read every major newspaper website, I read more than one blog, even if they’re on the same subject and belong to several forums covering the same subject area.

What I’m saying is – why does it matter if the BBC runs a service similar to one a commercial company might run when the commercial company will live or die by advertising revenue (charging for things on the web doesn’t work unless its a mobile app) and the BBC won’t be taking advertising?

Equally why shouldn’t a local council create a local online television service to let people know what is happening in their town if they can afford it – although if they’re cutting other services I would suggest maybe thinking again?

In fact, scrap the example above as that really just seems to be about promoting the council – what councils should really be doing, and this would help local newspapers – is filming all council meetings and then providing a feed – for free – to all the newspapers, radio stations and other media in their area.

Those media services could then broadcast that feed on their sites, cut up videos/speeches to publish with articles and even be able to properly cover local council meetings without having to send a reporter – it could just be on a TV in the background in the newsroom.

This would provide local news services with free content, would allow them to have a journalist doing something else and would hopefully encourage greater transparency in local government.

If councils have the money to launch a TV service or newspaper promoting the council – surely that money would be better spent actually covering council meetings.

In fact, maybe that is something the BBC could help fund with some of the ‘digital switchover money’ instead of giving it to ITV or other broadcasters.

It could be an extention of the digital democracy project but instead of it all being broadcast on the BBC – it could be part of BBC Parliament with a branding free feed offered to each of the relevant local newspapers, websites, blogs and radio stations.

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Covering a music festival – socially

By
Ryan Morrison
Published: August 26, 2009Posted in: General, MusicTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Covering a music festival – socially

A weekend for me is usually a fairly predictable affair; I wake up on a Saturday and spend the day looking after my (nearly) six year old son while my wife goes shopping with our eight year old daughter and toddler.

Then on Sunday we spend the day together as a family – go the park, sometimes to the zoo and usually have a Sunday roast at around 2pm – like I said, all pretty predictable.

But one weekend a year, the first weekend in September to be exact, I spend nearly a full 23 hours interviewing, listen to, photographing or filming bands.

The first weekend of September is when the Jersey Live music festival happens at the RJA&HS Showground in Trinity, Jersey.

This is the sixth year of the event and the sixth year I’ve covered it for the BBC in Jersey.

For the first four years I spent the weekend gathering content and then pulled it all together for the BBC Jersey website, BBC Radio Jersey and a bit for BBC Channel Island News (then BBC Spotlight Channel Islands) on the following Monday.

Then last year I tried an experiment – instead of holding all the content and publishing it on Monday – I’d publish as I went along – socially.

2816227820_468f2e56da_bActually the original idea was to publish it all to the BBC Jersey website – updating a series of features and galleries as the weekend went on.

But it didn’t really work out that way due to an error with 1) logging into the BBC FTP server and 2) intermittent WiFi in the press tent.

So our coverage sort of went social by accident and by that I mean photos on Flickr and updates on Twitter – with slightly longer reviews posted to our MySpace blog.

This year we have a whole new look BBC Jersey site, a new publishing system and no way to update the site remotely on a non-BBC laptop.

So I’m planning to go social from the start and will be tying the whole thing into the various social media pages for my show – BBC Jersey Introducing.

As with last year I’ll be posting photos to Flickr as I come out from the front of the stage, or as I get back from wandering the festival site taking photos of people.

Then I’ll write 140 character reviews of the bands on the various stages I visit (as will the other two people covering the festival with me) on Twitter as well as using our Twitter stream @jsyintroducing to write any interesting festival facts or stories.

I’ve also set up an Audioboo account for BBC Jersey Introducing where I’ll have the phone next to me when I interview bands – so you’ll be able to hear (albeit slightly lower quality) interviews as I do them.

I’ll then be pulling the mass of content together using Tumblr so it can be found in one place and having that re-post the mass of content to the BBC Jersey Introducing fan page on Facebook.

I’ll then be able to use all of the above to help me write the various reviews, articles and create the galleries that will make up the bbc.co.uk/jersey coverage of the festival.

It will also help me piece together my first ‘post festival’ show on the following Saturday as the highlights will be on Twitter and Facebook.

And obviously I’ll be trying my best to respond to any comments or feedback on any of the various social sites while running around the Showground in Trinity.

So if you’re not going to Jersey Live but want regular updates on what’s happening just follow @jsyintroducing on twitter, become a fan on Facebook at jerseyintroducing, follow my boos or keep track of the whole thing on Tumblr.

Or you can still do all of the above from a half decent mobile if you’re AT the festival – you might even hear about a cool band just starting you might not have gone to otherwise.

Then again you could just enjoy the event and catch up with our coverage on the BBC Jersey site on Monday – they’ll even be video.

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Bands: Don’t go with Facebook

By
Ryan Morrison
Published: April 23, 2009Posted in: Entertainment, GeneralTags: , , , , , , , , ,
Bands: Don’t go with Facebook

There is a blog post on Mashable written by Stan Schroeder which basically explores and asks whether you would be prepared to pay Facebook for your own persistant URL – so mine would be facebook.com/upyourego.

In my case the simple answer is no. I’d much rather set up upyourego.com/facebook and give that out to people with a redirect to my Facebook profile.

I’m not a big fan of facebook, I’ve got a profile and have to use it as people seem to insist on getting in touch with me through it – but I personally wouldn’t pay for a vanity URL as I DON’T WANT people to find me on there – unlike Twitter, Flickr, MySpace et al where I actively hunt for friends (god that makes me sound sad!).

But, I do present a new music show for the BBC, a show that involves playing music by unsigned bands with no label promoting them and usually no website – so after playing a track I give the bands myspace address.

We Are Scientists

This is great because it means people can find out a lot more about the band easily, can listen to more of the bands music and find out when they’re playing next.

It also acts as a great way of cutting some of the waffle about the band ‘to find out more go to myspace.com/greatband’. In fact for the rest of this article I’m going to use an actual MySpace profile for a group in Jersey I’m into right now.

Brobots: myspace.com/brobotsyeah

However an increasing number of bands are turning to facebook as their platform of choice – basing this on the fact that as ‘they’re are a lot of people on facebook’ they’ll be found easier.

Unfortunately this creates a problem for giving out that domain name, for selling the band on air and for the band selling themselves at gigs.

DSC_0139

If the band have Facebook as their prefered social site of choice it means to promote the bands home online I have to say something along the lines of ‘to find out more or hear other tracks from ‘insert band name’ go to Facebook and do a search for ‘band name’ and it is probably the fourth one down

Instead of the much friendlier – go to myspace.com/brobotsyeah.

So from that point of view only – I’d say it would be in the interest of a band, comedian etc to pay for a premium URL – just to make marketing easier. But personally, if I was advising a band I would tell them to YES get a Facebook fan page and fill it with links to all the other social sites online that work with bands much better.

Or just stick with MySpace – after all the people listening to the music and will be really into it, the people playing the music on the radio and finding new bands to play at their club night – still use MySpace.

In face almost all my band communication and a large chunck of production for my show is done through MySpace.

And when a band only have a Facebook profile I’ve started setting up tiny URLs for the bands that only use Facebook and giving that out on air instead.

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BBC going short?

By
Ryan Morrison
Published: January 7, 2009Posted in: General, New MediaTags: , , , , , , ,

The all new BBC Backstage Idea Store allows the more geeky of BBC user to suggest things that could be done with BBC data and ways of improving existing BBC web services.

One such suggestion is asking whether the BBC should have its own short url service like TinyURL or bit.ly.

The rationale as defined by the poster (LoopZilla) says:

bit.ly, snurl, tinyurl are used by the BBC and many others.  What doesn’t the BBC have its own short URL service?

Image representing bit.ly as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

The basic concept behind it seem to be that as the BBC increasingly uses services like Twitter (and those services become popular with the BBCs audience) and other such systems that involve creating content in a minimum of characters – making shorter urls available will become more important.

there are many a move taking place within the BBC to standardise URLs introducing PIPs and codes – BBC News and Sport already have them – /programmes and iPlayer share them and the new /music uses standard codes as well.

So the question is – would it be any stretch of the imagination for the BBC to introduce its own short url service with a BBC domain name instead of using a commercial one that could do any number of things that might bring the BBC brand into distripute without warning.

Short URL services are only of any use on micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, within Facebook updates or when sending Instant Messages.

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

Other than that you’d be just as well using the full URL. I mean on a blog you’d (in the post or in the comments) you could just as easily create a quick link with a word or two to send someone to a website.

On this blog I offer a TinyURL version of every story – for example the post on the new Being Human series has the full URL:

http://www.upyourego.com/blog/index.php/2009/01/06/the-next-big-geeky-cult/

But can also be accessed here:

http://tinyurl.com/73sgpy

A comment from Derivadow on the Idea Store post  suggests that short urls are NOT a good thing as they break Google Juice.

URL shortning serivces are evil, because they break the web and harm your google juice. A much better soultion is to design short urls in the first instance.

I’m not sure I understand why people don’t like URLs – they are what makes the web, services that try to replace them (eg DOI) or services that provide another level of indirection and therefore a single point of failure cause fractures in the fabric of the web. Don’t do it people!

To a certain extent that makes sense – but if the story lives in one place (at the full URL) with the short URL available using the same code it will still break the Google Juice – but does it really matter for the BBC?

In fact is Google Juice REALLY that important? Surely what is equally important is getting as many people as possible to see your content – if someone sends it to their 10 thousand friends on Twitter – that would be a big boost to anybody.

1980s computer generated titles.
Image via Wikipedia

It would be interesting for the BBC to offer short url’s for some of their news stories and it shouldn’t be THAT difficult really – the code to do this isn’t exactly ground breaking.

For news you could just use the same code already in place.

So the page could exist at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/7814054.stm

But have an alternative URL at

http://bbc.im/n/7814054

In fact a link to an iPlayer video could exist at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00gndt1/

To:

http://bbc.im/i/b00gndt1

Dot IM is the domain for Isle of Man and is already owned by the BBC and not in active use.

The examples above use a folder like letter to show what area of the site it comes from – but if the codes are really unique that shouldn’t really be necessary.

The iPlayer example could just as easily be: http://bbc.cim/boogndt1.

If the app was built properly it could also be extended to those sites without unique codes (where the journalist writes the filename). At the time you create the story you’d also create the short code by giving it an ID (that was matched against the database to make sure it wasn’t already in use.

So this story on BBC Jersey:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/jersey/content/articles/2005/12/14/civil_partnership_feature.shtml

Could become:
http://bbc.im/jcivpart – or to make it more forumulaic could be date and creation based so http://bbc.im/09010625

Oh and the short url service I set up is gtfa.eu (get the flip away you). Oh and while you’re at it – this could be a useful plugin to install: http://www.longurlplease.com/

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FFS leave the BBC alone

By
Ryan Morrison
Published: November 10, 2008Posted in: EntertainmentTags: , , , , , , ,

OK so I’ve avoided the Sachs-venetian blind bollocks on the grounds that I don’t really care and think the whole thing has been blown completely out of all proportion.

So two comedians, known for sailing close to the wind were left in a studio together to record a show they KNEW wasn’t going out live.

They got themselves a little bit (ok a hell of a lot) over excited and over stepped the taste and decency mark – even I accept that fact.

What I don’t accept is the horrific disproportionate response to it – first the show should NOT have been aired – the fact that it was should have led to the SUSPENSION of the senior producer responsible for approving it.

Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross should have been made to give a public apology and that should have been the end of the matter.

But it wasn’t, it became the TOP SODDING STORY across all media for about a week! And to a certain extent is still a major story now – and I can just imagine what the Daily Mail will do the week Jonathan Ross comes back.

Lets take a look at a few numbers – originally two people complained about the broadcast – after the broadcast had gone out. This is about right and proportionate – you’ll get at least one or two people complain about every show that goes out.

Then when the Mail on Sunday complained about it in print another 10 thousand people complained – about the fact that it had happened even thought they weren’t ‘directly’ offended by it.

The Daily Mail and every other media followed the Mail on Sundays lead and in the end about 30 thousand people complained.

So far there are over 50 thousand people on a Facebook group called ‘SUPPORT RUSSELL BRAND & JONATHAN ROSS’ and more in other related groups.

My biggest concern about this whole sorry episode is that, instead of making sure producers are told to follow the current (and very strict) procedures for ALL SHOWS – there will be a sanatising, a Mary Whitehouse-esq watering down of the BBC.

My fear is that the corporation will be forced into a corner that leaves it too scared to take risks or to do anything different – fortunately I don’t think that fear will be realised.

I think there are enough intelligent people to see through the Daily Mail’s thinly veiled bitter little attack on the corporation – but who knows.

I’ve restricted myself from posting what I really wanted to post – on the grounds of taste and decency and I’ve resisted posting the YouTube video of the whole Sachs-pogoda segment.

Top Gear

What I will say though is that the Daily Mail’s latest target – Jeremy Clarkson and Top Gear seems to be back firing.

There are a LOT of very fierce Top Gear supporters and fans out there – covering a seriously wide range of people (young, old, socialist, conservative, male, female…).

The DM wrote an article the other day complaining about Jeremy Clarkson apparently giving the finger to a police officer in the most recent Top Gear (the American Roadtrip).

First this is bollocks and taken out of context (it was just a funny segment in a scripted show that was having a laugh and taking the piss) and secondly – who gives a flying one – sometimes people just need to lighten up and learn to laugh.

If you don’t like it (and they clearly don’t like Top Gear as they complain about it so much – although they do watch it every week for some reason) don’t watch it – Strictly Come Prancing about in sequins is on BBC One at the same time after all.

Interestingly – this article seems to have disappeared from the Daily Mail website – interesting given the volume of anti-Daily Mail comments I read on the article before the story was pulled.

I think the Mail may well be pushing people more in favour of the BBC and the licence fee with their constant whinging and complaining – instead of making people against it (which seems to be their goal).

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Social media festival coverage

By
Ryan Morrison
Published: September 3, 2008Posted in: Entertainment, General, MusicTags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

The Zutons at Jersey Live Let me tell you about my weekend and the reason I haven’t blogged much in a few days. It all starts with an ftp client and a wristband.

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