On Saturday I was interviewed on ABC24 about the news that Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) had said that it is acceptable for celebrities to do paid promotions on Twitter without disclosing their affiliation. This followed the announcement on ABC’s MediaWatch program that celebrity chef Matt Moran, among others, had accepted payment from South Australia’s Tourism Board for tweets.
I was asked why there was any difference with the “cash for comments” furor from 1999 when radio personalities were charged and fined for making on-air endorsements without disclosing payments made by the companies concerned.
There is of course no essential difference. Twitter is media. As attention shifts from traditional channels such as TV, radio, and newspapers to social media, naturally advertisers want to shift their presence to the emerging channels. That is absolutely fine. If advertisers want to use social media to get their messages across, that’s OK – users have many ways to deal with that. However there are clear regulations and norms on advertising in traditional media, where commercials are clearly delineated.
The US Federal Trade Commission has provided detailed endorsement guides, specifically revised to include social media, “because truth in advertising is important in all media – including blogs and social networking sites”.
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The Power of Innovation keynote in Luxembourg
By Ross DawsonI recently gave the opening keynote at the Golden-i Awards in Luxembourg. Luxembourg for Business has produced a five minute video about the event, including an interview with me and also the organizers talking about my “very inspiring” keynote. Click on the image below to see the video (start from 1:00).
The video provides some more context to my recent post on How Luxembourg is playing to become a technology hub. It was fascinating to see the energy and innovation in this small country in the heart of Western Europe.
Will offices still exist in the future?
By Ross DawsonI’m currently doing a five-city speaking tour for Canon, speaking about the future of workspace. In my keynote I talk about the driving forces of change in work and organizations, the changing nature of the workspace, and the leadership required to create the next phase of work.
Until recently there were two major workspaces for knowledge work: offices and field work. Communication technologies, economic shifts, and changing corporate attitudes have enabled the rapid rise of home workers. In addition, co-working facilities or what I call the cloud workplace are becoming prominent in providing many of advantages to workers of office work without requiring commuting into a central office.
When we think about the future of workspace, given the massive shift to distributed work, the question arises of whether centralized office will still have a reason to exist in the future.
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MIT global study on social business: Executives increasingly understand the value and success drivers
By Ross DawsonMIT Sloan Management Review together with Deloitte have just launched 2012 Social Business Global Executive Study and Research Project, drawing out some very interesting insights from a survey of almost 3,500 executives from 115 countries.
Below the slides of the report I have selected several of the interesting slides with brief commentary.
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How Luxembourg is playing to become a technology hub
By Ross DawsonA few weeks ago I gave the keynote at the IT Nation Golden i Gala and Awards and earlier in the day ran a CIO workshop on Creating the Organisation of the Future.
In my brief time in Luxembourg I learned about some of the many things that are happening in the tech scene in nation. As a tiny country of half a million people, it has the highest GDP per capita in the world, currently based primarily on its strong financial services industry, facilitated by its strong banking secrecy laws. Luxembourg is the second largest funds management market in the world after the US. However an economy dependent on financial services is not necessarily the best position to be today. As such the government and business sectors are seeking to build Luxembourg into a technology hub, with ICT named by the government as the third of five pillars for national development.
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Creating emergent, adaptive systems in organizations
By Ross DawsonIn my keynotes and executive sessions I often use the analogy of ant colonies, in which the collective intelligence of the colony is far greater than that of its individuals.
Since the collective intelligence of many – or even most – human organizations is significantly less than the intelligence of many of its participants, there are no doubt lessons we can learn.
In my book Living Networks I included a small section on Creating adaptive systems in Chapter 6 on Network Presence. The company I mention, CompanyWay, was subsequently acquired by AskMe and in turn by HiveMine, by name at least keeping to the spirit of the initial concept.
The underlying concepts described in the passage below are now being implemented into some of the most interesting crowdsourcing platforms of today, building the mechanisms whereby we can create value – and hopefully intelligence – from many.
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Australia takes the wrong path on Twitter advertising disclosure
By Ross DawsonOn Saturday I was interviewed on ABC24 about the news that Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) had said that it is acceptable for celebrities to do paid promotions on Twitter without disclosing their affiliation. This followed the announcement on ABC’s MediaWatch program that celebrity chef Matt Moran, among others, had accepted payment from South Australia’s Tourism Board for tweets.
I was asked why there was any difference with the “cash for comments” furor from 1999 when radio personalities were charged and fined for making on-air endorsements without disclosing payments made by the companies concerned.
There is of course no essential difference. Twitter is media. As attention shifts from traditional channels such as TV, radio, and newspapers to social media, naturally advertisers want to shift their presence to the emerging channels. That is absolutely fine. If advertisers want to use social media to get their messages across, that’s OK – users have many ways to deal with that. However there are clear regulations and norms on advertising in traditional media, where commercials are clearly delineated.
The US Federal Trade Commission has provided detailed endorsement guides, specifically revised to include social media, “because truth in advertising is important in all media – including blogs and social networking sites”.
Read more →
Researchers develop ‘smart’ touch-responsive internet-enabled newspaper
By Ross DawsonMy European speaking tour (ending today) has had two primary themes: crowdsourcing and the future of corporate IT. However at a couple of points, notably a guest lecture to Moscow’s Higher School of Economics’ School of Journalism, I have delved into the future of media. As always, my well-known Newspaper Extinction Timeline has come up as a hot topic of discussion.
One of things I always have to point out is that we should not be comparing newspapers with the tablets of today when we think about the choices people will make in how they access news. Tablets similar to those of today will be given away for free and digital paper which has all the qualities of today’s paper plus the advantages of digital at a low cost will be the alternative.
The e-ink initiatives have some way to go, however it seems there are other paths to this outcome, as shown in this video.
In a post on BBC College of Journalism website Paul Egglestone of University of Lancashire’s school of journalism writes:
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Next generation gesture recognition will transform how we interface with computers
By Ross DawsonIt seems as if the next generation of how we interface with computers may be here.
I have long spoken about how we will transcend antediluvian computer interfaces such as the mouse, from predictions about the future of the home to commenting on real-life ‘Minority Report’ interfaces and the merging of physical and digital worlds.
If the announcements and videos from startup Leap Motion accurately indicate the power of the technology, it will greatly accelerate the shift to new and better interfaces.
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Why crowds are an extension of our capabilities
By Ross DawsonMarshall McLuhan very often provides an instructive reference point for how we understand our changing world. As I wrote in my Chapter 1 of Living Networks:
In my keynote on The Future of Crowds at TheNextWeb conference shown below I built on this perspective to suggest that:
“Crowds are an extension of our capabilities”
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We have a choice whether to be optimistic or pessimistic about the future
By Ross DawsonBelow is a brief interview I did when I spoke at TheNextWeb conference in Amsterdam recently.
Some of the points I cover:
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