The Daily Me is finally arriving with the convergence of social news and tablets

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Last week I wrote about Flipboard and Paper.li: Social news curation hits the tipping point. The news today is that Betaworks, which developed or supported the highly successful Tweetdeck, bit.ly, Tumblr and far more, is working on News.Me, a ‘personalized news service’, in collaboration with New York Times.

While neither organization would say much about it, this will clearly be a social news service that will tap, among other resources, the vast data bit.ly has (presumably) collected on what links are shared on Twitter and other social networks. New York Times invested in Betaworks in its March $20 million Series B, and then shifted one of its early stage products into Betaworks, where it is soon to emerge as News.Me.

In his 1995 book Being Digital Nicholas Negroponte wrote about the idea of a ‘Daily Me’ newspaper, that would provide news tailored to the individual. This spawned a multi-year debate about the supposed evils of the Daily Me, which would mean people wouldn’t be exposed to the diversity of the world and would live within their own navels.

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Seven trends driving the future of financial advice

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The main reason I haven’t been able to blog or Twitter much over the last week is that I am currently on a national speaking roadshow for a major financial services firm, hitting five cities in six business days, ending today. The firm is building relationships with its key financial advisors, hosting dinners in the best restaurants in each city, preceded by presentations from a prominent industry figure on the role of regulation and from myself on the big-picture future.

While I work across many industries, my background in financial services means I am often drawn back into the space. Some of my reflections on financial services trends are captured in posts I’ve written after keynotes I’ve delivered on the role of the reputation economy for professionals and financial advisors and the future of global financial services.

The future of financial advice is a massively important issue, not just due to the size of the sector, but also because quality advice is critical for many people in supporting their financial well-being. I will spend some more time delving into this issue, but for now here are seven key trends and issues that I see are driving the future of financial advice.

1. Transparency is making commissions more visible.

Transparency is an inexorable trend across industries, not least in financial services. Visibility of what are sometimes massive advisor commissions on financial product is shaping attitudes to what is fair and appropriate.

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7 Shifts: The Future of Social Media and Internal Communications

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Melcrum recently released a report on How to use social media to solve critical communication issues, with as usual some great case studies and many practical insights. Go to the report website for a full overview and executive summary.

I was asked to write the closing section in the report, on The Future of Social Media and Internal Communications. Below is my article in full. If you’re interested in the topic also see my recent Thoughts on the future of workplace communications.

The Future of Social Media and Internal Communications

Organisations achieve their objectives by bringing together the talent and energy of many people. As such, the raft of emerging communications platforms today have the potential to literally transform how organizations work. From the 1990s, email fundamentally changed how most jobs were done. Now a wealth of new communication tools are being used to create sometimes dramatically different ways of working.

Based on the rapid emergence of social media and other new communication platforms, there are seven key aspects to how organisational communication will change.

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Flipboard and Paper.li: Social news curation hits the tipping point

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Flipboard and Paper.li are two of the hottest properties in media today. Over the last six weeks they have taken social news curation to a new level. This will undoubtedly soon spawn hordes of competitors, while these leaders in the field continue to evolve their offerings. The result will be that we all have far better access to the news that we want from world of infinite information.

Flipboard was launched on July 21, at the time announcing that they had received $10.5 million in funding. For several weeks it was ranked one of the top few free iPad apps in the News category in US, UK, and Australia, attracting massive interest for what it calls a “social magazine”.

Paper.li has been around a bit longer, but has just taken off properly in the last few weeks, as the chart below illustrates.

paperli_alexa.jpg

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Visualization of top iPad News apps in Australia

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As part of our ongoing research into iPad and media, and also to provide some insights for the audience of the iPad Strategy Workshop we ran at Newspaper Publishers Association, we created a visualization of the top 30 paid and free iPad apps in Australia, as of 24 August 2010.

ipadnewsappstop30australia_500w.jpg

Click on the image for full-size pdf

The chart shows in the left hand column free apps, and on the right hand side paid apps, each ranked from #1 to #30 in order of popularity on iTunes. The following bar shows the price (for paid), the user rating on iTunes, and the size of the download in MB. The horizontal axis for paid apps indicates price.

The color code shows the type of app, bringing to attention a number of interesting features, for example that aggregators are very popular in paid apps, and that broadcast and newspapers dominate in free apps.

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Presentation from iPad Strategy Workshop at Newspaper Publishers Association

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The iPad Strategy Workshop at Newspaper Publishers Association Future Forum was a big success. In a large room laid out for 120 there was just standing room by the time it started, with great content and a highly engaged audience.

The Twitter stream for #iPadStrat gives a pretty fair overview of proceedings, though there were just a small minority of people on Twitter in a room full of newspaper publishers.

Here are the slides from opening presentation, as promised:

iPad Strategy Workshop at Newspaper Publishers Association Future Forum

View more presentations from rossdawson.

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Launch of iPad Media Strategy framework

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This morning I ran the iPad Strategy Workshop at Newspaper Publishers Association Future Forum in Sydney. To provide a framework for discussion at the workshop (and also as part of our ongoing research into effective approaches to the iPad for media and news organizations) I created a visual framework of key strategic issues, as below.

ipadmediastrategy_500w.jpg

Click on image for full-size pdf

I will delve into these strategic issues in later posts.

This is a Beta v1 version, so as always, please give feedback on how to make it more useful, including anything that’s missing or things that could be put better.

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Live notes: Afternoon of PANPA Future Forum conference

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Following my live notes from this morning of the Newspaper Publishers Association Future Forum conference, and before my closing keynote, here are quick notes from the afternoon session.

Jan Rezab from CandyTech in Czech Republic was originally going to speak about mobile but decided that it would be more valuable to discuss Facebook. According to their statistics, over 1 million news articles were shared globally in July and August, with 100 million news items seen as a result. Media organizations in Australia are not strong on Facebook, with the most prominent, FHM, having 13,000 likes on its Facebook page, and the top newspaper, news.com.au, 10,000. In contrast, regional radio Europe2 has 300,000 fans over the sites for its various shows.  

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Live notes: morning of Newspaper Publishers Association Future Forum in Sydney

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I am at the Newspaper Publishers Association Future Forum conference, where I am giving the closing keynote later today. I will endeavor to capture a few thoughts through the day.

The overall tone is of an industry that absolutely recognizes that it is in dramatic transition, and is by no means in denial of the scope of change that is required. This creates an appetite for learning and ideas, and hopefully a broader shift to what I think is a very real optimism from the presenters.

I have to say that I agree with almost everything that John Hartigan, CEO of News Limited, said in his opening presentation. The rhetoric was all about new platforms, the role of the iPad, the necessity of journalists becoming entrepreneurial, visual storytelling, and creating news in multiple formats relevant to different delivery platforms. John clearly is a believer; the issue is in making it happen.

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Infographic: The NewsScape – 8 sources of value creation in a post-channel media world

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Tomorrow I’m doing the closing keynote at the Newspaper Publishers Association Future Forum conference in Sydney, with already considerable attention on what I will discuss.

I have just prepared a framework to crystallize some of my thoughts on the news landscape today, which I’ve called The NewsScape. Individual channels – such as print, TV, internet, and more – are becoming meaningless. In the post-channel media world we are entering, the entire landscape is laid open. The NewsScape shows how value is created in this world. (Media revenue models are addressed elsewhere with an update on this coming.)

The NewsScape

Click on the image to see large version

Interfaces are the furnace at the heart of how we access news. Adding to the established interfaces of newspapers and television, newer interfaces including phones and tablets have emerged. Before long digital paper that has most of the great qualities of print as well as the advantages of the digital will be available at reasonable prices.

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