Alec East

Just found a great article courtesy of Ben Ayers in the New Statesman from way back in 1999 on the subject of the [then] future of newspapers. The early reference to Fax and Data-lines sets the stage for a beautifully dated article that acts as a reminder of the long-tail nature of the internet  but more interesting is what the benefit of hindsight bestows on the piece.

It is strikingly evident that just as much confusion surrounded the future of newspapers then as it does now. The Sun‘s first stab at online was “currantbun.com“  which tried its hand at being an internet service provider (still with some live user pages)… But more interesting are some of the views from prominent industry leaders of the time.

An alleged quote from  Paul Dacre,  the powerful editor-in-chief of the Mail titles, claims he told his 1998 staff summer party:

“A lot of people say that the Internet is the future for newspapers. Well, I say bullshit.com.”

10 years on the internet is a long, long time – youtube has only been around since 2005 – and I wonder how today’s articles shouting the benefits of social media and the mobile web will read in 5 or 10 years. I’d bet a tenner that those terms will be as dated as information superhighway or cyberspace are today.

More vanity.

While rumaging through my sites analytics on a sunday evening, I found a bunch of traffic comeing from Digital Art Magazine.  When I went to find out why, I was chuffed to discover a handful of articles that I contributed to over the past few years.

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I’ve worked directly with the internet for over 14 years and, as a result, I am what you might call a “power user”. It’s normal for me  browse several windows at the same time, construct complex searches and automatically know which keyboard commands will skip me through pages, so it’s easy to forget that most people use the internet very, very differently.

My wife is a typical example of normal web-user behaviour; someone who goes to Google and searches for a brand name (Hotmail/MySpace/Nike/Amazon etc) and clicks the resulting link. I’d even say that most people start their journey at a search engine and rarely, if ever, type a URL or domain name into the browser. Google/Yahoo/MSN etc have become the primary gateway to the web for most users.

Hitwise recently published search analysis that, unsurprisingly, showed  media and retailers dominating the list of most searched for brands in the UK with Facebook in pole position.  The most popular searches will, obviously, create the most visited sites so Google is now your new URL. Brand becomes king and a findable site (SEO & SEM) has become fundamental if you want to drive traffic to your site.

I originally wrote the following post when I was CD of Do Tank Studios but I wanted to reproduce it here for two reasons: It’s still relevant and I like it.

It seems to be flavour of the month again to proclaim the death of TV advertising but I’m not convinced the detractors are really seeing the big picture. Sure, broadcasters have seen their revenues fall as the number of broadcast channels increase and Internet focussed digital marketing strategies encroach on their monopoly but that’s just the free market economy in action; the extortionate rates broadcasters have got away with until now are no longer justifiable. TV is no longer the only way to get market reach and engagement…

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