Everton fan Andy Burnham is "in charge" of the media in the UK since he is the Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport. However, rumours reach me that he is considering setting up the equivalent of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) for the Internet.

The PCC is an independent body which handles complaints made against newspapers and magazines in the UK. Last year it dealt with more than 4,300 complaints, up 70% on 10 years earlier. But these complaints were mostly made about British newspapers. Consider for a moment the staggering number of complaints that might be made about web sites.

Apparently Mr Burnham's idea is that web sites would agree to the code of conduct of the new body, in the same way that newspapers and magazines sign up to the PCC rules. Once again, the UK Government is demonstrating its complete lack of understanding about the Internet.

Apart from the fact that the sheer number of web sites and potential complaints would make the whole thing unwieldy and difficult to administer, the whole notion goes against the very principle of the Internet. Having a Government sponsored body censoring our online activities would not get off the ground simply because too few web site owners would sign up to the idea.

Lack of control
As before, this is a Government flailing around in a hapless attempt to get control of the Internet. Swedish politicians were at it the other day as well; they wanted to be able to read everyone's international emails...! Politicians are finding it difficult to come to terms with the fact that the Internet is reducing their power. They can't even control our fears over rising oil prices because no matter how much propaganda they put out about it being a "blip", there are thousands of blog entries and social networking notes making us all worry. In the past, Government statements would have helped stabilise things more easily - not any more.

And if, as a Government minister, you come up with a mad-cap idea on some new "blogging police" you are bound to have it shot down in flames by the very bloggers you want to keep in check.

There's a lesson for all of us in this - especially businesses. Gone are the days when you could control information and its flow to people. The people are now in control - and politicians don't like that. And neither to "old world" chief executives.

Labels: blogging, future, politics

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At June 19, 2008 9:02 AM  Gideon said…

Today is the worldwide (apparently) Earthday. You knew that this morning if you strolled along to Google to discover the logo had changed. In fact for every Earthday for the past seven years, Google has changed its logo in honour of Earthday.

The idea behind Earthday is to mobilise people to take action on the environment. But it is likely to have little impact. The day has had scant attention here in the UK and the British media hasn't rushed to cover the topic. And the reason why isn't hard to see.

All you need to do is visit the Earthday web site and you will see immediately that this so-called "global" day is really only taking place in the USA. It's rather like the "global series", which is a match between the USA and Canada. The American view of "worldwide" appears to mean it covers ALL of America...!

OK, I know, I'm being stereotypical. But, take a look at that Earthday web site. The phone number is a USA number and we are being urged to call our "representative" or "senator". But outside the USA, we don't have them. Equally, all the headlines at the bottom of the page are American, not global. Dig deeper into the site and you discover that there are international projects taking place and that over 1 billion people worldwide will be celebrating today's Earthday.

But, the immediate American focus of that front page means that instantly people elsewhere in the world think "this is not for me". In the fraction of a second people take to make their mind up about a web site, this one simply screams "I'm a page for Americans" - hence the rest of the world may look away.

You only have half a second to engage people and make them want to read more of your web site. If you are promoting a global environmental day and you want to attract international audiences, making your site so obviously American from the outset could work against you. Equally, if your web site needs to attract middle-aged builders or young women interested in knitting wools, make sure you site shouts out "this is for YOU". Attention spans are getting shorter and your site needs to make an immediate connection with your target audience.

Sadly, the Earthday site which has so much global potential signals it is only for Americans in that moment when people visit. Make sure your site sends out the appropriate signals for your target audience, otherwise you will lose business.

Labels: future, internet marketing, internet psychology, politics

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At April 23, 2008 9:02 AM  Rob Watson said…

At April 23, 2008 1:35 PM  Hjörtur Smárason said…

European politicians don't always have a good reputation. They are perceived as a bunch of people who just chat, cost money and don't have any real powers. But they have made a decision which will be significant as far as the Internet is concerned.

The European Parliament has voted out proposals to ban persistent "file sharers" from the Internet. Several European governments and huge pressure from the record industry led to arguments in favour of banning file sharers from having accounts with Internet Service Providers. But the European politicians narrowly threw out those notions because they conflicted with the Europe-wide stance on personal freedom.

Now as someone who used to work in the record industry, I'm convinced of the need for musicians and artistes to be paid for their creative work and their entertainment. But as I said last year when writing about buying music online, the record industry is rather like King Canute - expecting the problem to go away. It won't. They have to accept that selling recorded music is no longer an option for them; they have to find other ways of making money from music.

The European politicians have noted that. Also, they realised that it's not actually possible to ban anyone from an account with an ISP. They can set up another identity and carry on as normal. Even if they cannot create a new "self", they can use someone else's Internet connection to download music.

So although the politicians voted out the proposals on "freedom" grounds, it recognises the fact that what the phonographic industry and national governments want is complete nonsense. Even though the European decision has no legal status, it sends a signal to those wanting the bans that they need to think again. First step, perhaps, would be for the music industry and national governments to try to understand the Internet and the psychology behind why young people in particular are never likely to want to pay for music.

Labels: internet, politics, social networking

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At April 13, 2008 2:34 PM  Jeremy Jacobs said…

At April 16, 2008 4:27 PM  Jeff said…

Let's get this straight - sexual offences are abhorrent; I am in no way a defender of people who have committed sex crimes. As a psychologist, though, I'm aware that many of them are victims themselves, having been abused as children. But the Government rightly wants to clamp down on sexual offences.

But their latest "initiative" is just laughable; it clearly demonstrates, as if we needed any more evidence, that they do not understand the Internet at all. What they want is for sexual offenders to tell the authorities what their email address is. Then the authorities will contact places like Facebook and they will ban these email addresses. The idea is that it will prevent sexual offenders from preying on people online.

Apart from the fact that around 60% of all sexual offences are committed within families, the notion that you will reduce sexual crime by banning email addresses is plain nonsense. A criminal will happily give the authorities their email address and within seconds have a new one. The authorities will then ban the "official" email address while the offender carries on using another one.

"Aha", says the Government, "we've thought of that". Well tosh; they haven't. They claim that anyone who gives a false email address will face five years in jail. But how will they find out that an offender is using a second email address? They won't, until that person is prosecuted for any subsequent crime.

Once again, the Government is making itself a complete laughing stock when it comes to Internet policy. The problem we have is that as society is increasingly run online, we desperately need a Government that understands the world of the Internet. But there again, they've never understood the "real world" either.

Labels: internet psychology, politics, social networking

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At April 04, 2008 12:39 PM  Rob Watson said…

At April 04, 2008 12:54 PM  Graham Jones said…

At April 04, 2008 1:13 PM  Lori said…

At April 04, 2008 1:55 PM  A. said…

At April 05, 2008 3:49 PM  Jeremy Jacobs said…

At April 05, 2008 6:54 PM  Mark Lee said…

So, the British Government is suggesting that people who download things illegally should have their Internet access cut. Whoopee doo, let's deal with those naughty people. Cracked it. Er...not.

Firstly, people can easily hide their illegal downloads. Even if ISPs could ban people from using their systems, they'd have to find them first - and that is difficult. Secondly, if it were possible to track offending ISP users, there's no guarantee that the person paying the bill is the offender; illegal "piggy backing" on broadband connections is rife - and difficult to stop when so few people take the necessary precautions. And how do you ban people from downloading at public sites, like free Wi-Fi sites?

More troubling, however, is the fact that younger people do not see downloading music as illegal or immoral. They view music as a free resource. They have grown up downloading or "ripping" music. Technically it is illegal, but they don't view it as such. They believe it is their "right" to have music when they want it, without payment.

The music industry doesn't yet realise this and, it seems from the latest notion from Government law makers is that neither do politicians. But then who said those in politics had any notion of the real world?

Here's what's likely to happen. The producers of music - the bands and artistes - will connect directly with their audiences providing free downloads. They will make their money from live gigs and associated product sales, all organised by web-based promoters. The music industry will have largely disappeared - all faster than they think likely. Politicians meanwhile will try to stem the tide of cash away from this "important industry". But they have yet to realise the horse has bolted; dealing with that open stable door is useless.

Labels: future, internet, internet psychology, politics

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At February 13, 2008 1:20 PM  Rob Watson said…

At February 13, 2008 5:38 PM  Kat said…

At March 13, 2008 10:19 PM  Matt said…

Hundreds of thousands of Internet shoppers are disappointed this week because Tesco has had to take down its online house sales section. It may sound daft, but people do go "shopping" for the biggest purchase in their life - a house - online. Internet estate agency is big business.

However, there are (would you believe!) rules about being an estate agent. And it seems the Office of Fair Trading reckons Tesco is breaking those rules. Now call me an old cynic if you like, but Estate Agency is not one of those professions that people think is bound by rules. Indeed, surveys have consistently placed estate agent as one of the least respectable professions.

I haven't sold a house in 11 years, so it may be different now, but all they did was write some details of my house (which I could have done more quickly, more accurately and with better sales copy). Then they took this inadequate information and mailed it to a list of people, most of whom didn't want the details. They also put a picture in the window of their shop and then waited for people to walk in. I was charged nearly £6,000 for this "service".

Tesco, on the other hand, was pushing the properties on their site to millions of targeted potential purchasers for a mere £199. And that, apparently, makes them an estate agent. Clearly, Tesco was doing the wrong thing - after all, it was using some of the best marketing brains in Britain, it was charging an appropriate price, it was providing high levels of customer service. Obviously that's all wrong for an estate agent. The "rules" must mean you can't do all that good stuff.

So, Tesco's online shop for houses has been taken away. But - and Tesco probably wouldn't do this for reputational purposes - all you have to do is set up the business outside the UK. Then you can sell the houses online but not have to abide by the "rules" from the UK Government.

Governments around the world are busy trying to make Internet retailers abide by their local laws and regulations. But savvy online retailers circumvent them by establishing their business outside the jurisdiction of the country. This current battle between Tesco and the OFT is just another example of the fact that business legislation the world over was written pre-Internet and is no longer suitable for the way we do things any more. Governments need to understand that.

Labels: politics, shopping

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You can't have missed the debate in the UK about the sailors captured by the Iranian authorities who then later sold their stories to the national media. Whichever TV or radio station you tune into lately, there is some discussion about this issue. Equally, throughout the Internet there is a huge amount of debate on the topic. Now, politicians are calling for an inquiry into the situation. There doesn't need to be an inquiry because it is so obvious what happened. Within minutes of these poor individuals being released the story was around the world on the Internet. Thousands of words were written within an hour or so of the release happening. That chatter on the Internet helped inform newspapers, magazines, TV and radio programmes who gave it immense coverage. It was a day later before the individuals involved were brought back to the UK and it was a further 36 hours before they gave a press conference. In that time newspapers in the UK had produced two editions, there had been endless hours of TV and radio coverage and yet more thousands upon thousands of words had been written on the Internet. By that time, the tabloid press had been given a chance to bid for stories. The Royal Navy, it seems, bowed to the relentless pressure and allowed their personnel to sell their stories for six figure sums. How did this happen? Because the Ministry of Defence and the Royal Navy waited too long to get their sailors in front of the cameras. Had they put up their servicemen and women straight away; had they delivered their stories to all the media in press conferences almost immediately upon release, there would have been no bidding war. The Ministry of Defence and the Royal Navy appear to be living in a media world where there is plenty of time to think about things, to get things organised. But nowadays, thanks to the Internet, you only have minutes to respond; otherwise the story takes on its own life and you lose control. So, if your business, your venture or anything you get involved in attracts media interest of any kind you need to respond straight away. Don't wait, like the Navy did; if you do, that pause, that gap, leads to a media vacuum and the consequences of that can be dramatic, as we have seen with the coverage of the selling of stories in the past few days.

Labels: internet, internet psychology, politics, social networking

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If you want to get a top blog you need to write about politics or blogging itself. That's the conclusion you can draw from a year-long study by Internet metrics analysts Nielsen. They measured the top blog postings according to how many people commented on them and how many links each blog posting received. By this measure the most popular blog posting of 2006 was one on the blogging system, Live Journal. However, six out of the top ten posts were on American politics. The remainder were all on blogging. The top 100 posts of 2006 were based on the same two subjects plus the addition of humour. My own research shows something similar. A year ago I set up Newsology, a test blog which looked at the psychology of news, including politics. I haven't posted to that blog in over a year, yet it continues to attract readers and subscribers each week to its RSS feed. Clearly Internet users are interested in political matters; if you are running an online business, writing about the politics of your sector could therefore help boost your readership.

Labels: blogging, politics

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At December 31, 2006 12:51 AM  Jeremy Jacobs said…

One of the difficulties that governments face is that the global nature of the Internet makes their job more difficult. Even in relatively open societies like the USA and the UK, it's possible for governments to exert some control over their citizens using taxation policies, for instance. However, with the existence of the Internet governments are being frustrated at every turn. How does the UK government, for instance, legislate for online activities that actually take place elsewhere in the world? How does the Australian government collect income taxes on revenue generated by a Sydney-based business where the money was raised and spent in the USA? Governments are grappling with such issues and finding it difficult. Some people are living entirely online with all income being generated outside their tax system and being spent outside it. Add to this the fact that barriers are being broken down. People in some countries are beginning to discover that those in power have lied to them in order to control them; some people are learning that other religious beliefs exist, for the first time. Such knowledge and information sharing is changing the way societies work. And governments don't like that. So, consider how governments will react to the latest development from Canadian scientists. They have come up with a way of circumventing government imposed Internet censorship. Some countries restrict Internet access, but with this new technology that will be possible to get round. This will open the floodgates to change within restricted societies and will mean dramatic changes worldwide. It will eventually lead to the end of government as we know it today.

Labels: future, politics

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At November 29, 2006 1:20 AM  Jeremycj said…

Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web, is concerned that if the development of the Internet is left unchecked it could lead to the spread of misinformation. Some would say that is already happening. You can find plenty of web sites that are blatantly untrue; you can even find people hiding behind false identities so they are more able to spread such negativity. Even so, Sir Tim wants to set up a research project to look into such issues.

There is no doubt that the Internet will see radical transformations in society. For instance, political systems are currently battling away to stay in power in spite of the breakdown of international barriers. Old regimes are fighting hard against the influx of new ideas. Taxation systems are being bolstered against the possibilities of international trading without barriers. People are becoming more connected than ever before; in the past most people could count around 100 friends and acquaintances, now younger people are counting them in their tens of thousands. And the way we think is changing – people expect instant answers, rather than having to wait. Plus our behaviour is altering; we spend more time connected via a computer which we use as an extension of our brain.

Clearly human society and behaviour is on the cusp of significant change – probably the most significant change since our ancestors got up from all fours and started walking on two legs. Wouldn’t it be fascinating to come back in 1,000 years time to see what the impact had been? And whether or not Sir Tim’s research project had been influential in avoiding the potential problems he foresaw.

Labels: internet, politics

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In the past few days I've been reading about the increased use of bans on blogging. One company held a meeting where it banned anyone from blogging. The company, Nielsen, is a well known and respected media business, so why did they ban bloggers from their meeting? They claim it's because the meeting was a private client meeting. But that misses the point. Every day, there are private client meetings in offices and hotel rooms worldwide. And after every one of those meetings the clients come out and talk about what happened in the meetings. Almost never are those meetings kept secret. It is normal human behaviour to want to talk about what you discovered in a meeting. Blogging is merely an online replication of that behaviour. To ban it is to straight-jacket people. It's the same as saying you must never, ever, talk about what was said in a meeting. Even if a meeting is "held behind closed doors" and is supposed to be confidential, we still find ways of anonymising the details so that we can discuss what happened. Banning blogging from conferences will feel like a huge restriction to delegates and will make them less likely to attend.

Plus, there's another problem. Blogging from meetings adds to the reputation of the company who hold the meeting. Banning blogging makes it more likely that there will be negative blogs from the people who cannot write about what they hear or who feel restricted. The result in the "blogosphere" will be more negativity and less positivity about the company involved. In other words, banning blogging will reduce a company's reputation, not enhance it.

Labels: blogging, politics

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A survey of 750 of the world’s leading “futurists” has revealed a largely negative view of how the Internet will affect our lives by the year 2020. According to the research, we’ll have less access to the Internet because of limitations imposed by governments. The futurists also believe addiction to online virtual reality will be a major difficulty and that the Internet will be a hotbed for the production of terrorism. So, shall we all give up now? Of course not. This pessimistic view of the Internet is unlikely to come true. True enough, some governments will try to restrict Internet access, some people will get addicted to virtual reality and some people will be able to connect with those who have extremist views. But these kind of things have happened in human society for thousands of years, without the Internet. To suggest that the Internet is going to bring these things about is nonsense. Luckily one Berkeley professor who has commented on the research has said that social norms will iron out the worst excesses of the Internet. And that is right. The psychology of the Internet is little different to the behavioural aspects of human society without the web. We have had addiction, attempts by governments to control us and extremism without the Internet. And besides, futurists once predicted that the microwave oven would spell the end of eating out in restaurants..!

Labels: future, politics

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Chinese censors are tightening the rules about the distribution of news within China. According to The Times, news organisations, such as Reuters, mist first get their material approved by the Chinese authorities prior to distribution. Restricting access to news is fairly typical in authoritarian states or in countries running under dictatorships. After all if you were to let your people know about everything that was going on, you would risk losing your power. However, the Chinese authorities haven't yet reckoned with the Internet. True, they have tried to restrict access and yes, getting unrestricted access to the Internet in China isn't that easy. But it is possible and millions of young Chinese people have the ability to read news from around the world, without the intervention of the official censors. Because of this, the attempts by the Chinese authorities to restrict access to official sources of news look more like the beginnings of the last gasps of a dying system. It is yet another example of how the Internet is responsible for changing our relationships with governments. Most governments around the world, including the UK and the USA, have yet to understand how the Internet will reduce their power in significant ways.

Labels: future, politics

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