Marketing Week Live – pre-event for bloggers

So last night I took advantage of a very kind invitation by Marketing Week to come along to a pre-conference meet-up for bloggers.

Partly they were showing off some nice new technology, which I haven’t been told not to mention (and I’ve seen it publicly referenced by the developers), so I think I’m OK to pimp the fact they’ve got a really nice Augmented Reality app produced specifically for the conference, which includes image recognition to save a boatload of time and effort for attendees who own an iPhone. I may have ribbed them about the lack of a Symbian/BlackBerry/Windows Mobile version, but to be fair, the iPhone is a pretty logical choice for an app for a marketing event. And although I’m normally a bit sceptical about the utility of a lot of AR apps, the way they’ve integrated the things you actually want and need to do at a conference is pretty neat.

The other part I really enjoyed was talking to the people behind the event (and fellow marketer/blogger types). I really got the impression that the rise in mobile, social media and new digital businesses has encouraged them to not only look at the large traditional rivals, but also smaller, perhaps more innovative events, and that they’re starting to evolve what they’re doing to offer more value to attendees. That’s as important for an event that’s free to attend as it is for a paid event at a time when most marketing and creative departments have felt a bit of squeeze, and time out of the office is at a premium.

Hopefully the team behind the event also felt the blogger meet-up was worthwhile as I’d love to chat more about their plans for events and their integration of digital and social elements. As someone who attends, runs roundtables and presents, the event space is undergoing the same disruption and changes as so many other industries, and it’s interesting to witness the evolution necessary.

Marketing Week Live takes place on June 29th-30th at Olympia in London, and it’s free to register.

(Disclosure: I had a couple of free beers. I also have friends who work at Centaur Media, but none of them are directly involved in Marketing Week Live as far as I’m aware.)

Great news for Facebook page security

There’s good news for every company and employee currently involved in running a Facebook page on the social network – you can finally remove the creator of a brand page.

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Until now, the original creator of a Facebook page couldn’t remove themselves or be removed, without personal intervention by someone in the Facebook team. Which meant you were completely screwed if your marketing agency started the page but you’d parted company, if you’ve sold your page, or particularly if you’d created a page as an employee and since left that company.

That was exactly what happened to me in the past – having left a company, I couldn’t remove my access as an administrator to any of their pages. Luckily I was never overcome by the urge to do something mischievous, and the biggest worry was that someone, or something, else would befall their page and they might mistakenly think it was me.

So it’s great news that you can finally be removed by other admins – of course, now any other admin could mount a coup d’etat by removing you at any point, as the option is always there, rather than something you can select to appear when you might choose to leave. But it’s nice to see a change by a social network to aid users and brands alike.

To remove someone, just go to ‘Edit Page’ and scroll down to their entry under admins in the right-hand page column.

Newspapers, Magazines, and the Apple iPad

While newspaper and magazine publishers have seen some good opportunities and success with the iPhone, the larger form factor of the iPad has definitely seen a huge leap in interest and the number of dedicated newspaper and magazine applications being produced, with figures already being shared by various publications about their success.

The Time sold 5,000 iPad apps in 3 days at £9.99, the Wall Street Journal has 10,000 customers paying $17.29 a month (free to print/web subscribers), The Financial Times has had 130,000 downloads of it’s free application. The Australian has had 4,500 downloads at $4.99 a month, the Guardian Eyewitness free app has had 90,000 downloads. And Wired is apparently selling more copies on the iPad than in print (print sales were quoted at 79,000).

(Figures from conferences I’ve attended, Paidcontent, New York Observer, Venturebeat)

All very impressive…but…

1) Friend and former magazine colleague Dave Cushman makes a point which quite a few other people have also discussed – is this an illusion of a long term future for publishers? He picks up on the open/closed, silo/network challenge, and that many publishers seem to see print sales dropping just because we can’t buy a lovely digital version of a print product. (Ignoring the fact that I carry 2-3 digital devices past at least 2 news stands every morning, with print products which already look good, are eminently portable and mobile already, and don’t require any net connection/investment in a new device).

2) The first month of figures are pretty much meaningless. Talk to me in six months about the number of app downloads, subscriber figures, and revenue. Then it’ll be clear whether the approach you’ve taken to the iPad is actually a solution, or just a very temporary bump.

Most applications will see good figures for the first month or two. They’re new in iTunes and get a little bit of promotion purely for that. And in this case, they’re also getting the bonus of a huge amount of hype around the iPad, and large amount of cross-promotion from the existing print and digital products. Here’s a question – How much revenue was given up in house ads to get the revenue the iPad app has generated?

The iPad is still hugely important:

I’m not denying the impact and value of the Apple iPad. It’s been extremely successful so far ( 2 million already sold), and is definitely driving a new way of accessing digital content (the web as well as apps).

But it’s far to early to say with certainty that the future of digital publishing lies in applications, and particularly in products which haven’t adapted to any benefits of digital distribution other than an easy paywall via iTunes. The larger iPad screen and speedy browser means a great way to surf the web for content without cost in many, many cases. And allows me to see all the peer-created and recommended content that is filtered for value to me in a more effective way than news organisations currently manage.

It’s only when excited new iPad owners have overcome their initial app-downloading frenzy and we can analyse repeat usage we’ll see whether this new distribution channel works for magazines – and whether anyone gets away with packaging the same product.

A couple of weeks of catching up…

Life is has been a bit hectic over the last couple of weeks, with three conferences, a new sponsor, and a new logo for ORD amongst other things….

So in the past 2 weeks I’ve been at The Specialist Media Show (hosting a roundtable), The Open Mobile Summit (As a guest of Nokia), and M-Publishing (hosting another round table).

It’s been really interesting to see the differences with 3 events in such close proximity. The Specialist Media Show launched this year with the first event in Peterborough, attracting a lot of print publishers who have an enormous amount of knowledge in their specialist areas, but are generally still a bit nervous about digital, and intrigued but curious about mobile.

It was really good to chat to a lot of people who have the passion and knowledge of global niche subjects to result in successful digital businesses, and I think the conference helped a few of them find a stronger resolve to drive ahead with digital.

The next day’s Open Mobile Summit was a world apart as it provides a platform for a lot of senior people and big names in mobile – unfortunately I could only attend for one day, but there were definitely a number of brilliant talks and panel discussions. I went from being the only person checking in on Fourquare in Peterborough to sitting near the founder of Gowalla in 24 hours! And it was good to chat more to the Nokia team and find out more about what they have planned – they’re definitely not standing still..

And then came M-Publishing – which as a mobile event concentrating on publishing was extremely focused, pretty fast-moving, and very valuable to anyone producing text/video/audio content and hoping to mobilise and monetise it. Really interesting talks and debates, and a lot of fairly honest and open discussion about what has worked and what might not have succeeded in the mobile space.

I think the main thing out of all of this is that a growing number of people in traditional content are starting to get their heads around digital. I might have spent 5-10 years complaining about how reluctant they were, and there’s still a massive way to go for many of them, but I really do think they’re starting to change – possibly inspired the most by the lure of the iPhone/iPad/iTunes route. And it’s going to push digital companies to innovate even faster, which is going to be interesting.

You may notice a lovely animated banner on here and 140char.comBullguard, and their internet security products, which is not only good from a ‘I won’t go bankrupt paying for hosting’ point of view, but also extremely timely given the recent PHP exploit which infected major hosting companies, the rise of malicious software on Facebook, and a whole host of other things which are making digital security incredibly important.

And last, but definitely not least – if you head over to Online Race Driver, the great new guide to online racing I run in conjunction with some fellow virtual petrolheads, you should spot a fantastic new logo on the site. It was done by the fantastic designers at Jigowatt, and they did a fantastic job of referencing classic motorsport logos/colours, and then producing something which works in the different ways needed for a digital logo. (Disclosure – many of the team are former colleagues, and friends, of mine).

They do pretty much everything, but are particularly good with WordPress, which could well come in handy!

Plus, a new map pack came out for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which is still the most addictive videogame experience I’ve had in a long time. Fatherhood is still a surprising and amazing thing which delights me on a daily basis. And there’s still the part of my day spent working at an innovative and fast-moving radio and digital business.

But I have some more cunning plans….