John Witherow is hard at work today, but luckily most of his work will be done by other people - his team. For John is the long-standing Editor of The Sunday Times and will be beavering away today so that we can get the paper in the morning. Luckily, he doesn't have to write it all himself; we could be waiting several weeks otherwise for him to get it all done. The way The Sunday Times works - even if you don't like its politics or doubt its accuracy - is an important lesson for website owners. Indeed, new research on Wikipedia shows that the collaborative way in which content is produced is, in fact, the best way to go about it.

This research, from the University of Arizona, found that the highest quality entries on Wikipedia were those with most collaboration and in which the teams putting together the article had specific roles. Some people merely added content, others added content and justified it, and others re-wrote and edited material. The researchers found that when teams were working together, with individuals taking up specific kinds of writing and editing tasks, the quality of the resulting article was highest.

Strangely, this is the way newspapers work. Different people in the production process have specific writing and editing roles. Reporters merely write the articles. Sub-editors then seek to justify that what has been written is correct and that it fits the space. "Back Bench" editors, as they are called, then re-write and hone the article so that it fits the political viewpoint of the publication. The result is invariably a much better article than even the best reporters can produce. It is a system that goes back centuries and endures today, simply because it works.

With Wikipedia it appears that those articles which have been assembled rather on the newspaper production model are those which are the best ones. In other words, quality content comes from teamwork - but, importantly this research tells us - only when team members are assigned specific roles.

This is an important consideration for many website owners. Much website content is "home produced", especially in the small business sector. Even if you have a ghost writer, website content rarely goes through much of a review process. Usually what happens is somebody writes it and then someone else approves it. Often that's the same person - even in big business. The consequent quality of what appears online is therefore not as good as it might be.

So, assembling a website team - with specifically assigned roles - could well help boost engagement as a result of increased quality. Here's what you could do:

• Appoint a website writer (that might be you, of course)
• Get someome to be the "sub-editor" who checks the text only for accuracy and adds relevant links, pictures, charts and so on
• Ask another person to review the article and re-write it if necessary for grammar, spelling, clarity and house style

Giving people these specific roles will, according to the University of Arizona research, boost your quality. At the moment you might have a couple of people writing and "approving", but it seems such roles are too generalised. Providing your staff with much more specific roles - just like a newspaper - means your quality will rise.

And what do you do if you are on your own? Easy. Use a three-step process:

1. Write the article or blog post, but don't worry about links and graphics
2. Check the article for accuracy and then add relevant links, images and so on
3. Come back to the article after a break and then re-read it, concentrating this time on grammar and spelling

Even the worst online writers can improve the quality of their work in this way. And just think, you only have to do it for a few hundred words each day - not the 250,000 words (five novels worth) that will appear in tomorrow's Sunday Times..!

Mark Thompson, the Director General of the BBC, will doubtless have several nasty things said about him today. In the pubs down the road from TV Centre in Shepherd's Bush, disgruntled staff will be slagging him off, no doubt. Newspapers tomorrow will be full of vitriol poured out against him. And Twitter and Facebook are already awash with people criticising his proposals to axe BBC Six Music and the BBC Asian Network.

Tucked away in his announcement today was the proposal to scrap 50% of the existing BBC web presence. The headlines shouted the notion that the web budget would be cut by 25%, but apparently one way of doing this would be to cut the size of the BBC website's presence in half. Just when you thought there was one organisation that understood the internet, in one swoop, the boss reveals that he - at least - doesn't seem to know much about the web.

For a start, even if they remove half the BBC's web presence, it won't save them much money, if any. True, there'll be a slight saving in storage costs, but that's pennies compared with the production costs. And even they are cheap in comparison to an hour of Strictly Come Dancing. The theory appears to be that if you "get rid" of half the website, it will enable us to save money. In fact it will cost money. Here's why. Firstly, if there are areas which the BBC removes from the web, other content producers will fill the gap. That will take audience away from the BBC Online to alternative websites. One of the benefits of the massive BBC presence on the web is the fact that people stick with their websites, moving from one page to another thanks to the massive amount of content. Slash that content and overnight the online audience will plummet.

And with it will go the cross-media promotional opportunities the BBC gets. They will find that their reduction in online audience fuels a reduction in TV and radio audience. They have forgotten that we now live in a multi-media world with people consuming information in multiple ways. They watch the TV show, go to the relevant web pages promoted on the programme and see, for instance, that one of the stars is on the radio next week. Cut your website and you reduce such promotional potential.

But that's not all. Slash and burn your website, as Mark Thompson is proposing, and you give the likes of The Guardian to further increase its production of podcasts - eating further into the BBC audience. Already, The Guardian is one of the world's biggest audio and video podcasting producers with millions of listeners and viewers worldwide. It only needs the "nod" from the BBC that there is now a bigger gap to fill and boy will they fill it.

Furthermore, the BBC website announcement comes the day after the publication of a report pointing out the ever increasing move to online consumption of news. You might call it bad timing or madness, but to suggest that you will halve your web presence, just after a study proves the increasing value of the Internet to an organisation like the BBC is, at the very least, unfortunate.

True, the BBC needs to save money and provide value to us, its audience. But the website proposal - whilst popular with politicians and competitors - is probably the single, most ludicrous suggestion that has been made by the Corporation. To cut the web presence so significantly will have serious, dramatic and possibly irreversible consequences for the BBC. Far from reducing its web presence, it should, like every organisation be seeking to increase it. Rather than spending less money on the web, the BBC should be spending more.

The world has changed;  today's announcement reveals that the BBC either thinks it is immune to that change, or that it has to please politicians who are about as web savvy as my ginger tom cat.

And does this have an implication for your web business? Of course it does. It shows that changing your web presence will have implications for you, beyond your website. Any changes you make, in order to save costs online, will have consequences outside your control. For the BBC it is various Facebook groups damning the suggested changes. For you it could be negative Twitter comments. Changes to your web presence must not be taken lightly. The suggestions from the BBC today about their website shows they have not understood the web and the implications of their ideas. Don't let your business get caught in the same way. Invest more in your web presence - not less; online is the only future many businesses have. And it is the only future that traditional media outlets have. By cutting the website, it seems as though the BBC is struggling to get the "good old days" back. It looks like the BBC is going backwards, rather than forwards. By September we could be tuning in to the Light Programme or the Home Service. But at least we will be safe in the knowledge that they will be coming from spanking new £1bn offices and studios. What a good way to spend licence payers money that was...!

Happy New Year; have a great 2010. Thank you so much for supporting me over the past year and reading my blog - it is much appreciated. In 2010 I have plans to expand the service I provide and to write more practical articles to help you enhance your online business. I look forward to 2010 with enthusiasm for a brand new year of excitement on the internet. If you thought 2009 was fun online, wait until you see what 2010 will unravel via the web - touch, smell and much more besides. See you next year....!

Whether it's Christmas to you, or just a seasonal holiday, I'd like to wish you the very best for you and your family - and thank you for being a loyal reader. We are coming towards the end of the first decade of the 21st Century and we are ending with financial difficulties the world could not have imagined just ten years ago. So, as you sit around the fireplace, supping mulled wine and munching mince pies you may reflect on the past year and look ahead to the coming decade with a little trepidation. But whatever you actually do this Christmas it pays to look forward to a bright future, rather than mither about past misfortunes; you can't change history, but with the right mental attitude you can shape your future and thus change the history that is yet to come. Whether you get socks this Christmas, or the Caribbean island of your dreams have a good, relaxing time. As you spend time with the ones you love this holiday season, I hope you enjoy yourself and come back to work ready for action with a bright positive outlook for the next decade. Happy Christmas.

Michael Jackson's sad death is a shock to us all; people will always have that "flashbulb" memory of always knowing where they were when they heard of his demise. For many, they will have been sitting in front of their PC screen, suddenly aware of a flurry of tweets in Twitter about an announcement on the TMZ blog that Michael Jackson was on his way to hospital.

The celebrity gossip blog said: "We've just learned Michael Jackson was taken by ambulance to a hospital in Los Angeles ... and we're told it was cardiac arrest and that paramedics administered CPR in the ambulance ... and it's looking bad." Within minutes Twitter, Facebook and MySpace had ground to a virtual halt because of the huge volume of traffic generated by people sending messages and updates. In fact, these sites had not seen this level of traffic since the inauguration of President Obama - and that was a record.

The traditional media, however, was comparatively slow to respond; the BBC for instance only reported the death of Michael Jackson once it had been confirmed by the Los Angeles Coroner. By that time, though, the internet was awash with the details of the death, including video footage of Michael Jackson being taken away by paramedics from his home (see below).

The internet also saw a flurry of false reports about other high profile "deaths" such as Jeff Goldblum. The rapid retweeting of messages reporting his "death" - without checking the facts - only helped fuel the flames. Hence it is understandable why the traditional media waited to report Jackson's death, rather than rely on speculative and potentially inaccurate items online.

It shows that in spite of the speed of online reporting you still can't beat good, old-fashioned checking of the facts. All too often we rely on online sources of information, but fail to corroborate what we have gleaned. In the "good old days" you could trust your sources - such as a newspaper like The Times, or The BBC. Or you would look at the publisher of a book you were reading and see they were solid and reliable.

Checks like that are not so easy online and often you could find yourself using incorrect information on your own web sites - reducing the trust that others have in you. Hence, whatever you produce on your web site should have its facts checked, or you should only use trusted sources. And don't retweet things unless you are sure of their veracity.

Thankfully, the mainstream media were able to quickly check the facts on the Michael Jackson story and tell us the sad news was true. His death has a special significance for me.

At the time that his album "Off the Wall" came out I was working at Polydor records, busy trying to promote bands like Sham 69 and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Many lunchtimes I'd pop across the road from our offices just off Oxford Street and go into "The Hog in the Pound" pub at the top end of South Molton Street for a beer and a sandwich. For what seemed like ages, every day I went into that pub the only music that was playing was "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough" - the single taken from that album. At Polydor we had fought hard to beat Michael Jackson's success and at every turn he was winning; the daily blast of his music in the pub merely served to remind us that we were battling against a huge talent. One which we shall now sadly miss.

It's strange to reflect that if Michael had died at that time the media coverage would have taken longer - maybe up to 24 hours - and the rumours about other "deaths" would only have been shared amongst a handful of pranksters in a pub or two here and there. Thirty years on and we are living in a very different world, where rumour spreads worldwide within moments and fact checking or establishing truthfulness is not so easy - yet ever more important.

It's a sad day for Michael Jackson's family, friends and fans. But it will be a sad day for all of us if we ever started to rely on anything we read online.

Phorm is a controversial online advertising system that has already annoyed the founder of the web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee. Today, the top web sites in the world have been urged to stop using Phorm since it is thought to invade privacy.

Here's how it works: it monitors what web sites are being looked at on any particular computer. It then delivers advertising to match the kinds of topics that are being viewed. This is known as "behavioural advertising" and the marketing world is cock-a-hoop about it because they think it is the answer to their prayers.

For years, no-one has really known if advertising works. It's all rather a "hunch" that it does. A company spends millions on TV adverts and sees its sales rise. The advertising industry connects the two sets of figures and says "hey look, the more you spend on your ads, the more sales you make". But as any student of statistics will tell you, putting two sets of data together and claiming a direct relationship is most unwise. Advertisers, of course, know this but they worry that if they reduce their advertising, their competitors will steal market share. Hence, companies continue to advertise based on a statitistical quirk, a hunch and fear. Advertisers still use the 19th Century line "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half."

Advertising gurus would like us to think it is a science, but it is more art. Hence the reason why Phorm appeals so much to  the industry. It is based on "science" - tracking exact interests and feeding precise advertising to the online user. Add to that, you can analyse the impact of the behavioural advertising much more easily because you will be able to get data which shows that precisely targeted adverts lead to more sales, for instance.

Oh what a dream for the advertisers. Precise data - at last - and the ability to deliver an advert only to those people who will be really interested. Is it any wonder the advertising industry is full of glee about behavioural adverts, like those from Phorm?

Well, their happiness will be short-lived because they appear to have forgotten one thing, so focused are they on the technology. They've forgotten people - and what they actually do.

 

Imagine you are in a restaurant and you are chatting over a meal. Imagine that the person on the table next to you is listening to your every word and making notes of all the topics you talk about. Would you like that? Let's assume you are annoyed, but try to ignore the eavesdropper. Your conversation then turns to the fact you are looking for a new, environmentally friendly car. The individual on the next table now jumps up, steps over to you and pushes a slip of paper in front of you with a picture of an environmentally friendly car in front of you with "special offer" typed on it.

You might ignore this interruption - but what if it continued throughout the meal, with slips of paper on every topic you spoke about? How annoyed would you be? Very. Well, that's what behavioural advertising like Phorm does. Unlike the interruption of traditional web advertising, which you can easily ignore, it's much more difficult to ignore behavioural advertising because it is there, right under your nose, waving away at you using words you are using and reading.  Consequently you know you are being watched. And most people hate that. Just as they hate the person on the restaurant table next to them listening in to their conversation.

In other words, people will rebel against behavioural advertising. Most traditional advertising is ignored - few people actually click on online adverts. Google, for instance, is able to make money from its AdWords programme, simply because of the vast numbers of people who frequent its web site. Most people never click on a sponsored link.

The argument from the advertising industry is that if the adverts are more narrowly focused on our precise interests, we will like them more and act on them more. But the reverse is true because we will become acutely aware that we are being watched and monitored. Even if Phorm cannot identify individuals by name and doesn't store the data it uses to process the advertising, the fact is we will feel we are being watched.That will annoy us intensely and we will avoid using web sites that make us feel that way.

We have accepted traditional advertising because we know it's not personal. But as more and more people feel they are being watched they will rebel against behavioural advertising - no matter how reassuring the companies may be on privacy.

The current campaign focusing on privacy is all well and good - and may achieve some success with some of the world's biggest web sites. However, Phorm and the other behavioural advertising companies have failed to understand human behaviour at all. It will work against them because most people will avoid web sites that use behavioural advertising in a big way.

At the moment, it is all experimental with few targeted adverts. As the industry attempts to crank this up they may well find another statistical relationship - increased behavioural advertising linked to decreased sales.

What year was the World Wide Web born? Who invented the World Wide Web? When did the World Wide Web begin? These are the questions that many people are asking today - the "official" 20th birthday of the WWW. Happy Birthday World Wide Web.

It's hard to believe that it is only 20 years since the research paper that designed the basics of the World Wide Web was submitted by Tim Berners-Lee. It was another 17 months following this invention before the first web site saw the light of day in August 1991. Since then we have seen dramatic progress, of course.

The web has gone from pages of text that could have interconnecting links, to online shopping, video, user-generated content, social networking and a host of other features which were not even envisaged 20 years ago. The web has been used for crime, prostitution, fraud and even child abuse - yet it still continues to attract more and more of us to lead much of our lives through it.

Now, there is a new use - unpredicted 20 years ago - "behavioural targeting". In this, companies like Google will be able to monitor your every move and provide advertising that is specific to you and your apparent needs - as judged by a measure of your online behaviour. This is a use too far for the inventor of the Web and Sir Tim Berners-Lee is now lobbying widely to prevent such an invasion of privacy via the Web.

Things often don't develop the way originators think they will go. After all, the inventors of the computer thought there would only ever be the need for one on each continent...! The inventors of Twitter probably never thought it would become a crisis management tool either. And Sir Tim Berners-Lee probably didn't envisage much of what we can now obtain via the Web.

So, you have to wonder what will happen in the next 20 years? It seems certain that other senses will be added. At the moment the web is purely visual and auditory, but before long tactile features will arrive as will smell. The 3D web is already with us and will become much more commonplace before too long. And then, in the not too distant future, the linking of biological systems to computing will be improved, enabling a whole new set of ways of using the World Wide Web - like copying the entire contents of your brain to a web site...!

At the same time, today, 20 years from the foundation of the Web, still 25% of businesses have yet to even get a web site of any kind. They have a lot of catching up to do. With the pace of change with the World Wide Web, the almost daily development of ideas for Twitter and the likely addition of tactile senses within a year or two - unless your business is keeping up-to-date with these changes you are also going to get left behind.

The Web will change more dramatically in the next year than it has done in the past 20. You need to keep up, or your business will be in the "dark ages" of the Web - and that won't do your bank balance any good.