Category Archives: business

After the Great Unbundling comes the News Club

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Clay Shirky has said it before and recently said it again, this time in response to news of Warren Buffet‘s investment in news organizations:

“(…) good local coverage isn’t enough, because ordinary citizens don’t pay for news. What we paid for, when we used to buy the paper, was a bundle of news and sports and coupons and job listings, printed together and delivered to our doorstep.

People are still happy to pay for reproduction and delivery, of course. We just pay our ISPs now. And we still care about news and sports and coupons and job listings — we just get them from different places, and, critically, money that goes to Groupon or Hot Jobs [correction] no longer subsidizes the newsroom. Ad dollars lost to competing content creators can be fought for; ad dollars that no longer subsidize content at all are never coming back. (…)”

To draw a picture of where I’m coming from (which, according to Jay Rosen, is “easier to trust than the View from Nowhere”): Continue reading →

Looking for complex organizations in Finland

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The recommendation technology which I'm working on at Cluetail will be most beneficial to organizations with complex communications structures.

As a starting point for mapping complex organizations in Finland, I am hoping to find a list of large, internationally operating, Finnish companies (and other organizations), sorted by number of employees.

Any advice on where to look?

Fortune 500 blog more than expected

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As social media becomes more integral to the business function, one should expect evidence of it in the use of blogs, podcasts, Twitter or
other tools.

Today I found part of the answer to my post from April 9, 2009: Have blogs become an essential business tool?

A new study titled 'The Fortune 500 and Blogging: Slow and steady and farther along than expected', by Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, Research Chair of the Society for New Communications (SNCR) and Eric Mattson, CEO of research firm Financial Insite, indicates that the Fortune 500 are farther along in their adoption of public-facing corporate blogs than previous data has suggested.

“It appears that those companies that have made the decision to blog
have utilized the tool well. There is frequent posting, ongoing
discussion and the ability to follow the conversation easily through
RSS or subscriptions,” Barnes states in an email distributed by the Society for New Communications Research.

“Those F500 companies that have
taken the leap into the blogosphere represent all the things that make
social media great. They’re diverse in both size and industry, thereby
adding a range of new perspectives to the online conversation. They’re
enabling their readers to better control and participate in that
conversation. And they’re exploring other ways – like videoblogging and
podcasting – to communicate with their community.”

“Given that the Fortune 500 stand as a
model for business success, it is interesting to examine their
involvement in the social media arena," Mattson added.

Have blogs become an essential business tool?

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[UPDATE, April 24, 2009: Here is part of the answer: Fortune 500 blog more than expected.]

The abstract of Jeffrey Hill's MBA dissertation from November 2005 reads:

"(…) Although weblogs are being promoted as a potentially valuable business tool in the trade press and mass-market business literature, informal surveys suggest that only a small number of companies are actually using weblogs.

Reliable academic studies about the use of weblogs in business have yet to appear. This study aims to contribute to filling this research gap by investigating the attitudes and experiences of small business bloggers using weblogs as a marketing and communications tool. Qualitative interviews were carried out with fifteen small business bloggers representing a wide range of business activities.

The results indicate that weblogs are being used for many different purposes and that the bloggers believe them to be an effective marketing tool. However, this perception is based more on the bloggers' trust in the benefits of the medium than on any measurable ROI (return on investment).

Moreover, there is little evidence that dialogue is taking place with customers, although the literature tends to advance this dialogue as one of the main advantages of using weblogs. More research needs to be done to determine who is reading company weblogs and what their effect on consumer behaviour is. (…)"

I wonder if anything has changed since? The ROI debate is still very problematic. Then again, if we view blogging merely as taking part in conversation, do we ever measure the ROI on talking with people in the corridor, on the street or in the shopping mall?

What do you think? Have blogs become an essential business tool?