Network numbers

 

An article in the Guardian recently caught my eye: Why web.2.0 adds up to a revolution for our industry looked at the maths of networks and how they apply to different networks for carrying information.

It got me to thinking: how do the numbers really shape up? What would my ‘number’ be? And are they already too scary to contemplate given that the pioneers of broadcast media promotion would have started with much smaller numbers? Or is it just perception – was the risk still there even with smaller multiples?

She’s a model and she’s looking good  

There are three models. I’ll try and summarise quickly so I can get to my point.

• The first, for broadcast, is one-to-many and named after the broadcasting legend David Sarnoff. It takes the relationship between viewers and possible interactions as parity: a broadcast to 20 recipients as a point value of 20. In other words, 20 people would receive the broadcast but that’s where the interaction, and possible number of connections, ends.
• The second, for email or telephone, is one-to-one. Named after Bob Metcalfe, it takes the number of participants and raises them to the power of two. This is because all the participants are singly interconnected. A network of 20 yields a Metcalfe score of 400.
• Then there is the web. This many-to-many relationship goes another order of magnitude higher. Because everyone can talk to everyone else, this network – named after Professor David Reed – calculates the number of connections as two raised to the power of the number of participants. So a network of 20 has a Reed value of…

 … and this is where the article piqued my interest. “Over a million,” it said. “How many over a million?” thought I. So, in my slightly geeky, probably autistic way, I opened a spreadsheet, saved it under the name ‘netwroks.xls’ (sic – I have a headcold), and figured it out. Precisely, it’s 1,048,576. So, just over a million then.

The point of the article was that this is essentially the same interaction we see everyday but in the Web 2.0 world the constraints of time, geography and cost are removed. That is why these numbers are so real and so scary. They hold potential for huge gain or huge loss, and thereby huge risk.

Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht

But what exactly are these numbers? Let’s employ netwroks.xls to find out.

Friendly Ghost, at time of posting, has 162 subscribers. Let’s chuck it into the spreadsheet and see what comes out. The maths states that I have a Sarnoff score of 162 – one to one – and a Metcalfe score of 26,244. In other words, if all my subscribers could email each other, they could have 26,244 separate interactions. Cool.

But my Reed score would be – stretch that column out and change the format so I can see the figure because those funny scientific notations don’t mean much to me - 5, 846, 006, 549, 323, 610, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000.

That’s an awful lot of zeroes. So many it even starts to spell ‘ooooOOOoooo’.

Let’s look at some of the more popular on the PowerPR index. Of those that advertise their subscribership, Neville Hobson is rated highest. His Sarnoff/subscription figure is 1,704. So, his Metcalfe score is 2,903,616. His Reed figure is – oops, here we go, Excel can’t handle it. We get a NUM! error. So, Neville Hobson is off the scale.

So are the Online Marketing blog (Sarnoff 8,983, Metcalfe 80,694,289) and PRSquared (Sarnoff 1,143, Metcalfe 1,306,449). Excel is borked.

Let’s down the ante. Wagner Comms has a Sarnoff of 334 and Metcalfe of 111,556. This gives it a more manageable Reed figure. It’s a mere 34, 996, 011, 596, 528, 200, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000.

Canuckflack is lower on the PowerPR index but has a higher subscribership (an object lesson in the weakness of the index if ever there was one). Sarnoff 535, Metcalfe 286,225 and Reed of 112,472, 844, 863, 580, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000.

Wow. This webpage would be borked too if I hadn’t put those spaces beween the zeroes.

Time. Travel. Communication. Entertainment.

I need to stop going ‘wow’. We’ve had a bit of number-related fun. Let’s think for a second. It’s hardly surprising that we’ve yet to embrace Web 2.0. These numbers scare the willies out of us. They are astronomical. But then, when newspapers came about, there must have been some brave soul who put the first ad in there. Same for broadcast: who put out the first commercial on radio, or TV? Who had balls enough to dip them in the cold waters of what was then ‘new media’? I’m talking advertisements here because, well, PR is probably more difficult to quantify in terms of who was influencing the influencers, so to speak.*

The first paid-for British TV ad was for Gibbs toothpaste – and, by the miracle of YouTube, here it is!

Its style is jerky and uncertain. Hardly surprising. It was after all a step into the unknown.

The first British radio commercial was for Birds Eye foods in 1973. Sadly there is even less information about that online (we need an audio equivalent of YouTube). My guess is that it was slightly more sophisticated by comparison. The first clickable banner ad was sold in 1973 by Global Network Navigator (GNN), to law firm Heller Ehrman LLP, when the total domain name database registered 4,000.

Beam myself into the future

These were all the acts of people with the foresight to see that the new media was simply another vehicle for promotion. And yet, even though they ramped up through the multiples of network numbers, they all started at a very early time in every media. Was the risk any less? The numbers were certainly smaller.

Web 2.0 is here now. It’s massive, and massively interactive. Quantitatively and qualitatively it is different. I cannot deny that the other day I read some broadsheets and the thought crossed my mind that the high quality of journalism displayed was a strong argument simply to concentrate on the industry-strength solutions, that is, the huge influence and comparatively low popularity of more traditional media. Perhaps we really shouldn’t get involved with the amateur rumour-as-fact blogosphere, and just let them talk amongst themselves while we get on with real jobs in the real world.

We’re charging our battery

But then, what would we lose? Action could provide us with so much. It could even cause us to lose so much. Inaction will certainly cause us to lose out. Perhaps we should stop worrying about the figures, get our heads down and just go for it.

* Advertising and PR are difficult to categorise anyway. Who’s to say what the first examples were? Signs painted on walls in Babylonia could have been the first adverts, but then again so could any cave paintings, which probably said “This is our domain” or “We have magic” or “Ouch, I wish I’d been more careful with that axe.”

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Network numbers

 

An article in the Guardian recently caught my eye: Why web.2.0 adds up to a revolution for our industry looked at the maths of networks and how they apply to different networks for carrying information.

It got me to thinking: how do the numbers really shape up? What would my ‘number’ be? And are they already too scary to contemplate given that the pioneers of broadcast media promotion would have started with much smaller numbers? Or is it just perception – was the risk still there even with smaller multiples?

She’s a model and she’s looking good  

There are three models. I’ll try and summarise quickly so I can get to my point.

• The first, for broadcast, is one-to-many and named after the broadcasting legend David Sarnoff. It takes the relationship between viewers and possible interactions as parity: a broadcast to 20 recipients as a point value of 20. In other words, 20 people would receive the broadcast but that’s where the interaction, and possible number of connections, ends.
• The second, for email or telephone, is one-to-one. Named after Bob Metcalfe, it takes the number of participants and raises them to the power of two. This is because all the participants are singly interconnected. A network of 20 yields a Metcalfe score of 400.
• Then there is the web. This many-to-many relationship goes another order of magnitude higher. Because everyone can talk to everyone else, this network – named after Professor David Reed – calculates the number of connections as two raised to the power of the number of participants. So a network of 20 has a Reed value of…

 … and this is where the article piqued my interest. “Over a million,” it said. “How many over a million?” thought I. So, in my slightly geeky, probably autistic way, I opened a spreadsheet, saved it under the name ‘netwroks.xls’ (sic – I have a headcold), and figured it out. Precisely, it’s 1,048,576. So, just over a million then.

The point of the article was that this is essentially the same interaction we see everyday but in the Web 2.0 world the constraints of time, geography and cost are removed. That is why these numbers are so real and so scary. They hold potential for huge gain or huge loss, and thereby huge risk.

Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht

But what exactly are these numbers? Let’s employ netwroks.xls to find out.

Friendly Ghost, at time of posting, has 162 subscribers. Let’s chuck it into the spreadsheet and see what comes out. The maths states that I have a Sarnoff score of 162 – one to one – and a Metcalfe score of 26,244. In other words, if all my subscribers could email each other, they could have 26,244 separate interactions. Cool.

But my Reed score would be – stretch that column out and change the format so I can see the figure because those funny scientific notations don’t mean much to me - 5, 846, 006, 549, 323, 610, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000.

That’s an awful lot of zeroes. So many it even starts to spell ‘ooooOOOoooo’.

Let’s look at some of the more popular on the PowerPR index. Of those that advertise their subscribership, Neville Hobson is rated highest. His Sarnoff/subscription figure is 1,704. So, his Metcalfe score is 2,903,616. His Reed figure is – oops, here we go, Excel can’t handle it. We get a NUM! error. So, Neville Hobson is off the scale.

So are the Online Marketing blog (Sarnoff 8,983, Metcalfe 80,694,289) and PRSquared (Sarnoff 1,143, Metcalfe 1,306,449). Excel is borked.

Let’s down the ante. Wagner Comms has a Sarnoff of 334 and Metcalfe of 111,556. This gives it a more manageable Reed figure. It’s a mere 34, 996, 011, 596, 528, 200, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000.

Canuckflack is lower on the PowerPR index but has a higher subscribership (an object lesson in the weakness of the index if ever there was one). Sarnoff 535, Metcalfe 286,225 and Reed of 112,472, 844, 863, 580, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000.

Wow. This webpage would be borked too if I hadn’t put those spaces beween the zeroes.

Time. Travel. Communication. Entertainment.

I need to stop going ‘wow’. We’ve had a bit of number-related fun. Let’s think for a second. It’s hardly surprising that we’ve yet to embrace Web 2.0. These numbers scare the willies out of us. They are astronomical. But then, when newspapers came about, there must have been some brave soul who put the first ad in there. Same for broadcast: who put out the first commercial on radio, or TV? Who had balls enough to dip them in the cold waters of what was then ‘new media’? I’m talking advertisements here because, well, PR is probably more difficult to quantify in terms of who was influencing the influencers, so to speak.*

The first paid-for British TV ad was for Gibbs toothpaste – and, by the miracle of YouTube, here it is!

Its style is jerky and uncertain. Hardly surprising. It was after all a step into the unknown.

The first British radio commercial was for Birds Eye foods in 1973. Sadly there is even less information about that online (we need an audio equivalent of YouTube). My guess is that it was slightly more sophisticated by comparison. The first clickable banner ad was sold in 1973 by Global Network Navigator (GNN), to law firm Heller Ehrman LLP, when the total domain name database registered 4,000.

Beam myself into the future

These were all the acts of people with the foresight to see that the new media was simply another vehicle for promotion. And yet, even though they ramped up through the multiples of network numbers, they all started at a very early time in every media. Was the risk any less? The numbers were certainly smaller.

Web 2.0 is here now. It’s massive, and massively interactive. Quantitatively and qualitatively it is different. I cannot deny that the other day I read some broadsheets and the thought crossed my mind that the high quality of journalism displayed was a strong argument simply to concentrate on the industry-strength solutions, that is, the huge influence and comparatively low popularity of more traditional media. Perhaps we really shouldn’t get involved with the amateur rumour-as-fact blogosphere, and just let them talk amongst themselves while we get on with real jobs in the real world.

We’re charging our battery

But then, what would we lose? Action could provide us with so much. It could even cause us to lose so much. Inaction will certainly cause us to lose out. Perhaps we should stop worrying about the figures, get our heads down and just go for it.

* Advertising and PR are difficult to categorise anyway. Who’s to say what the first examples were? Signs painted on walls in Babylonia could have been the first adverts, but then again so could any cave paintings, which probably said “This is our domain” or “We have magic” or “Ouch, I wish I’d been more careful with that axe.”

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Network numbers

 

An article in the Guardian recently caught my eye: Why web.2.0 adds up to a revolution for our industry looked at the maths of networks and how they apply to different networks for carrying information.

It got me to thinking: how do the numbers really shape up? What would my ‘number’ be? And are they already too scary to contemplate given that the pioneers of broadcast media promotion would have started with much smaller numbers? Or is it just perception – was the risk still there even with smaller multiples?

She’s a model and she’s looking good  

There are three models. I’ll try and summarise quickly so I can get to my point.

• The first, for broadcast, is one-to-many and named after the broadcasting legend David Sarnoff. It takes the relationship between viewers and possible interactions as parity: a broadcast to 20 recipients as a point value of 20. In other words, 20 people would receive the broadcast but that’s where the interaction, and possible number of connections, ends.
• The second, for email or telephone, is one-to-one. Named after Bob Metcalfe, it takes the number of participants and raises them to the power of two. This is because all the participants are singly interconnected. A network of 20 yields a Metcalfe score of 400.
• Then there is the web. This many-to-many relationship goes another order of magnitude higher. Because everyone can talk to everyone else, this network – named after Professor David Reed – calculates the number of connections as two raised to the power of the number of participants. So a network of 20 has a Reed value of…

 … and this is where the article piqued my interest. “Over a million,” it said. “How many over a million?” thought I. So, in my slightly geeky, probably autistic way, I opened a spreadsheet, saved it under the name ‘netwroks.xls’ (sic – I have a headcold), and figured it out. Precisely, it’s 1,048,576. So, just over a million then.

The point of the article was that this is essentially the same interaction we see everyday but in the Web 2.0 world the constraints of time, geography and cost are removed. That is why these numbers are so real and so scary. They hold potential for huge gain or huge loss, and thereby huge risk.

Eins, zwei, drei, vier, fünf, sechs, sieben, acht

But what exactly are these numbers? Let’s employ netwroks.xls to find out.

Friendly Ghost, at time of posting, has 162 subscribers. Let’s chuck it into the spreadsheet and see what comes out. The maths states that I have a Sarnoff score of 162 – one to one – and a Metcalfe score of 26,244. In other words, if all my subscribers could email each other, they could have 26,244 separate interactions. Cool.

But my Reed score would be – stretch that column out and change the format so I can see the figure because those funny scientific notations don’t mean much to me - 5, 846, 006, 549, 323, 610, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000.

That’s an awful lot of zeroes. So many it even starts to spell ‘ooooOOOoooo’.

Let’s look at some of the more popular on the PowerPR index. Of those that advertise their subscribership, Neville Hobson is rated highest. His Sarnoff/subscription figure is 1,704. So, his Metcalfe score is 2,903,616. His Reed figure is – oops, here we go, Excel can’t handle it. We get a NUM! error. So, Neville Hobson is off the scale.

So are the Online Marketing blog (Sarnoff 8,983, Metcalfe 80,694,289) and PRSquared (Sarnoff 1,143, Metcalfe 1,306,449). Excel is borked.

Let’s down the ante. Wagner Comms has a Sarnoff of 334 and Metcalfe of 111,556. This gives it a more manageable Reed figure. It’s a mere 34, 996, 011, 596, 528, 200, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000.

Canuckflack is lower on the PowerPR index but has a higher subscribership (an object lesson in the weakness of the index if ever there was one). Sarnoff 535, Metcalfe 286,225 and Reed of 112,472, 844, 863, 580, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000, 000.

Wow. This webpage would be borked too if I hadn’t put those spaces beween the zeroes.

Time. Travel. Communication. Entertainment.

I need to stop going ‘wow’. We’ve had a bit of number-related fun. Let’s think for a second. It’s hardly surprising that we’ve yet to embrace Web 2.0. These numbers scare the willies out of us. They are astronomical. But then, when newspapers came about, there must have been some brave soul who put the first ad in there. Same for broadcast: who put out the first commercial on radio, or TV? Who had balls enough to dip them in the cold waters of what was then ‘new media’? I’m talking advertisements here because, well, PR is probably more difficult to quantify in terms of who was influencing the influencers, so to speak.*

The first paid-for British TV ad was for Gibbs toothpaste – and, by the miracle of YouTube, here it is!

Its style is jerky and uncertain. Hardly surprising. It was after all a step into the unknown.

The first British radio commercial was for Birds Eye foods in 1973. Sadly there is even less information about that online (we need an audio equivalent of YouTube). My guess is that it was slightly more sophisticated by comparison. The first clickable banner ad was sold in 1973 by Global Network Navigator (GNN), to law firm Heller Ehrman LLP, when the total domain name database registered 4,000.

Beam myself into the future

These were all the acts of people with the foresight to see that the new media was simply another vehicle for promotion. And yet, even though they ramped up through the multiples of network numbers, they all started at a very early time in every media. Was the risk any less? The numbers were certainly smaller.

Web 2.0 is here now. It’s massive, and massively interactive. Quantitatively and qualitatively it is different. I cannot deny that the other day I read some broadsheets and the thought crossed my mind that the high quality of journalism displayed was a strong argument simply to concentrate on the industry-strength solutions, that is, the huge influence and comparatively low popularity of more traditional media. Perhaps we really shouldn’t get involved with the amateur rumour-as-fact blogosphere, and just let them talk amongst themselves while we get on with real jobs in the real world.

We’re charging our battery

But then, what would we lose? Action could provide us with so much. It could even cause us to lose so much. Inaction will certainly cause us to lose out. Perhaps we should stop worrying about the figures, get our heads down and just go for it.

* Advertising and PR are difficult to categorise anyway. Who’s to say what the first examples were? Signs painted on walls in Babylonia could have been the first adverts, but then again so could any cave paintings, which probably said “This is our domain” or “We have magic” or “Ouch, I wish I’d been more careful with that axe.”

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Diana: no wonder people are confused

I work close enough to Kensington Palace Gardens to walk around them occasionally at lunchtime. It’s a post-prandial palliative for the pressured world of PR.

Today, however, it was quite surreal, more so than usual (it gets surreal occasionally when you are dive-bombed by Canada geese or see terrapins floating around in the pond). Today, it was full of people bemoaning the loss, ten years ago to the day, of Diana.

There wasn’t actually weeping and wailing or gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair, but it was quite strange. It was almost like walking into a stage set, with media everywhere (the nice man from London news was there but he didn’t say hello), someone playing Candle in the Wind on a stereo, phalanxes of photos, people picknicking. All you needed was Elton John to materialise from thin air and the suspension of disbelief would be complete.

Stepping into this parallel universe it occured to me that really, that was the Diana phenomenon. It was the closest people got to ‘real fairytale.’ Diana was real, she was really a princess, she had real children, you can really see where she really lived, and died. She also appeared on the telly a lot.

This crossover between real and fantasy was, today, for me, a crossover between real and media. Which are essentially the same thing in a lot of people’s minds. Remember how strange it was to see Larry Hagman interviewed on Wogan while at the height of the evil incarnate that was JR, around the early 80s? And apparently John Altman has been abused in the street during his stints as Nasty Nick on Eastenders.

It seems to me that as entertainment swallows reality, so news programmes adopt the entertainment clothing (or lack thereof - what could be more entertaining than Emily Maitlis’s legs). No wonder people are confused. After becoming hooked on the Spencer Soap (think Dallas/ Dynasty/ Eastenders/ Coronation Street rolled into one, mixed to a dropping consistency and baked for 3 years at 700 degrees fahrenheit) they’re still bereft. They still want that elusive yet strong fix of realityfantasy. And today, in Kensington Palace Gardens, they were able, tantalisingly, to step back into that media-created fairytale.

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Diana: no wonder people are confused

I work close enough to Kensington Palace Gardens to walk around them occasionally at lunchtime. It’s a post-prandial palliative for the pressured world of PR.

Today, however, it was quite surreal, more so than usual (it gets surreal occasionally when you are dive-bombed by Canada geese or see terrapins floating around in the pond). Today, it was full of people bemoaning the loss, ten years ago to the day, of Diana.

There wasn’t actually weeping and wailing or gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair, but it was quite strange. It was almost like walking into a stage set, with media everywhere (the nice man from London news was there but he didn’t say hello), someone playing Candle in the Wind on a stereo, phalanxes of photos, people picknicking. All you needed was Elton John to materialise from thin air and the suspension of disbelief would be complete.

Stepping into this parallel universe it occured to me that really, that was the Diana phenomenon. It was the closest people got to ‘real fairytale.’ Diana was real, she was really a princess, she had real children, you can really see where she really lived, and died. She also appeared on the telly a lot.

This crossover between real and fantasy was, today, for me, a crossover between real and media. Which are essentially the same thing in a lot of people’s minds. Remember how strange it was to see Larry Hagman interviewed on Wogan while at the height of the evil incarnate that was JR, around the early 80s? And apparently John Altman has been abused in the street during his stints as Nasty Nick on Eastenders.

It seems to me that as entertainment swallows reality, so news programmes adopt the entertainment clothing (or lack thereof - what could be more entertaining than Emily Maitlis’s legs). No wonder people are confused. After becoming hooked on the Spencer Soap (think Dallas/ Dynasty/ Eastenders/ Coronation Street rolled into one, mixed to a dropping consistency and baked for 3 years at 700 degrees fahrenheit) they’re still bereft. They still want that elusive yet strong fix of realityfantasy. And today, in Kensington Palace Gardens, they were able, tantalisingly, to step back into that media-created fairytale.

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Can I stay – and die – in a house in Tuscany please?

Today I nearly threw my copy of the Guardian across the room. The offending article – quite literally – was Alexander Chancellor’s tome on the trying social life he leads among the glitterati in Tuscany.

It was of vague interest to me, if a little irritating, that he learned of Diana’s death in a house ‘in which he was staying’ in Tuscany. Now, I don’t actually know any people who ’stay’ in houses, let alone in Tuscany. Usually people go on holiday and stay in hotels, or B&Bs, or camp. And how do you actually get to ’stay’ in a house? If it’s not your own house – which it can’t be, because surely you ‘live’ in your own house and even if it’s a second house you’d say so – then it must be a friend’s house. And, if it’s in Tuscany, then your friend is probably either a rich Italian or a very rich non-Italian.

He continues: “Two days later, I went to Presaro on the Adriatic coast to conduct a prearranged interview with Luciano Pavarotti at his holiday villa.” There we go again – ‘holiday villa.’ Am I alone in thinking holiday villas are, well, posh? I know Brits are rapidly buying large amounts of coastal Spain but do they all have ‘holiday villas’? Then there’s a double-whammy: turns out Pavarotti was inconsolable over Diana’s death (it made him “cry all day”) then, by turn, that Chancellor is infatuated with Pavarotti. “He is” – apparently – “a very lovable man.”

What is going on here? Do I want to read this? Where does ‘Hello’ end and ‘The Guardian’ begin? Am I alone in finding the death of Diana, staying in houses in Tuscany, and opera, utterly inconsequential?

There’s more. “Three years ago we were here once again in August when a friend, Lady Victoria Waymouth, an interior designer, was rushed into hospital in the south of France. She died there a few days later… her elder sister was staying with us in Tuscany at the time.”

So, to recap: he still ’stays’ in a house in Tuscany; he’s friends with Lady Victoria Waymouth; she’s an interior designer; and her sister is also ’staying’ with them, in this house, in Tuscany. “Victoria’s GP” turned out to be a homeopathy quack, so she died. Sad, but again, why “Victoria’s GP”? I don’t call the nice person who sits behind a desk and gives me pills ’my doctor’. I don’t say to people “I’m going to see my doctor”. I’m going to the doctors. Or I’m going to see the doctor. Not “I’m going to see my doctor. In Tuscany. She’s a homeopath, you know.”

Now, obviously Lady Victoria Waymouth’s death is a personal tragedy, as was Diana’s, as will (presumably quite soon) Pavarotti’s. But why does Chancellor feel the need to base his various angst-ridden social calamities around Tuscany? Is he working on a book? He’s certainly not writing Guardian material, for everything he says in this article makes we want to, well, puke. To misquote Pulp, take your house in Tuscany and shove it right up your arse.

I sense tectonic plates shifting. Is it me? Or is it the Guardian? Or is society drifting away, presumably Tuscany-wards? Someone, or something, must be to blame. Or should I just sit on the fence, blame no one, and take up the Independent instead?

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It’s all about the data, stupid: Last.fm wins, Pandora loses

Today I read in the Guardian about Last.FM being adopted by Music Week to provide the publication’s first online-based chart. As the piece astutely says: “it’s the data generated by the site’s 20 million enthusiasts that is priceless.”

I’m typing this while listening to Pandora, the alternative to Last.fm which I found out about through Seamus McCauley at Virtual Economics. It is a truly wonderful idea. By identifying a set of musical parameters for each song, Pandora can then match any music to any other music by how ’similar’ they are. So, for example, if you want to listen to music that is ‘like’ Beck, you set up a station for Beck and Pandora comes up with similar material, in my case specifically Cracker and Modest House. I have no idea who these bands are but they sound great.

Pandora is the result of the Music Genome project, the exercise of which - identifying musical properties –  is neatly referred to as the music’s ‘DNA’. By building up a playlist in Pandora you are essentially matching music DNA to your own DNA. One project I recently set up at my company is a company-wide Pandora music station. Anyone from the company can log on and add their preferences. In this way we end up with the company’s music DNA, we get to listen to some half-decent music (no more Gwen Stefani),  and some people learn a bit about new media to boot. Everyone wins.

In one respect Pandora is beautifully elegant. It approaches ’social radio’ through the music and is almost uncanny in the way it brings up musical suggestions similar to those friends’ compilations made on chrome tapes in the 80s (yes, I am that old). In another, however, it is ugly. It relies on musically astute contributors to identify musical DNA in what I would describe as an extended exercise in folksonomy. So whereas you just kick-start Last.fm and let it chug away with its Amazon-like referential algorithms, Pandora will always involve considerable manual effort.

But where Pandora has really missed the trick is in its marketing data. Get this: its license only allows ‘broadcast’ in the US. Yes, you read that right. Pandora is only available to north Americans. And if a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his ass when he hopped.

So I imagine the Pandora marketing database is, to put it mildly, totally screwed. I daresay they have a fair proportion of subscribers based at the White House zipcode (20500), the Pentagon (20301) or even Beverley Hills 90210. I certainly cannot imagine how their potentially ‘priceless’ marketing data is worth a dime. Or a Euro, come to that. How sad.

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It’s all about the data, stupid: Last.fm wins, Pandora loses

Today I read in the Guardian about Last.FM being adopted by Music Week to provide the publication’s first online-based chart. As the piece astutely says: “it’s the data generated by the site’s 20 million enthusiasts that is priceless.”

I’m typing this while listening to Pandora, the alternative to Last.fm which I found out about through Seamus McCauley at Virtual Economics. It is a truly wonderful idea. By identifying a set of musical parameters for each song, Pandora can then match any music to any other music by how ’similar’ they are. So, for example, if you want to listen to music that is ‘like’ Beck, you set up a station for Beck and Pandora comes up with similar material, in my case specifically Cracker and Modest House. I have no idea who these bands are but they sound great.

Pandora is the result of the Music Genome project, the exercise of which - identifying musical properties –  is neatly referred to as the music’s ‘DNA’. By building up a playlist in Pandora you are essentially matching music DNA to your own DNA. One project I recently set up at my company is a company-wide Pandora music station. Anyone from the company can log on and add their preferences. In this way we end up with the company’s music DNA, we get to listen to some half-decent music (no more Gwen Stefani),  and some people learn a bit about new media to boot. Everyone wins.

In one respect Pandora is beautifully elegant. It approaches ’social radio’ through the music and is almost uncanny in the way it brings up musical suggestions similar to those friends’ compilations made on chrome tapes in the 80s (yes, I am that old). In another, however, it is ugly. It relies on musically astute contributors to identify musical DNA in what I would describe as an extended exercise in folksonomy. So whereas you just kick-start Last.fm and let it chug away with its Amazon-like referential algorithms, Pandora will always involve considerable manual effort.

But where Pandora has really missed the trick is in its marketing data. Get this: its license only allows ‘broadcast’ in the US. Yes, you read that right. Pandora is only available to north Americans. And if a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his ass when he hopped.

So I imagine the Pandora marketing database is, to put it mildly, totally screwed. I daresay they have a fair proportion of subscribers based at the White House zipcode (20500), the Pentagon (20301) or even Beverley Hills 90210. I certainly cannot imagine how their potentially ‘priceless’ marketing data is worth a dime. Or a Euro, come to that. How sad.

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It’s all about the data, stupid: Last.fm wins, Pandora loses

Today I read in the Guardian about Last.FM being adopted by Music Week to provide the publication’s first online-based chart. As the piece astutely says: “it’s the data generated by the site’s 20 million enthusiasts that is priceless.”

I’m typing this while listening to Pandora, the alternative to Last.fm which I found out about through Seamus McCauley at Virtual Economics. It is a truly wonderful idea. By identifying a set of musical parameters for each song, Pandora can then match any music to any other music by how ’similar’ they are. So, for example, if you want to listen to music that is ‘like’ Beck, you set up a station for Beck and Pandora comes up with similar material, in my case specifically Cracker and Modest House. I have no idea who these bands are but they sound great.

Pandora is the result of the Music Genome project, the exercise of which - identifying musical properties –  is neatly referred to as the music’s ‘DNA’. By building up a playlist in Pandora you are essentially matching music DNA to your own DNA. One project I recently set up at my company is a company-wide Pandora music station. Anyone from the company can log on and add their preferences. In this way we end up with the company’s music DNA, we get to listen to some half-decent music (no more Gwen Stefani),  and some people learn a bit about new media to boot. Everyone wins.

In one respect Pandora is beautifully elegant. It approaches ’social radio’ through the music and is almost uncanny in the way it brings up musical suggestions similar to those friends’ compilations made on chrome tapes in the 80s (yes, I am that old). In another, however, it is ugly. It relies on musically astute contributors to identify musical DNA in what I would describe as an extended exercise in folksonomy. So whereas you just kick-start Last.fm and let it chug away with its Amazon-like referential algorithms, Pandora will always involve considerable manual effort.

But where Pandora has really missed the trick is in its marketing data. Get this: its license only allows ‘broadcast’ in the US. Yes, you read that right. Pandora is only available to north Americans. And if a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his ass when he hopped.

So I imagine the Pandora marketing database is, to put it mildly, totally screwed. I daresay they have a fair proportion of subscribers based at the White House zipcode (20500), the Pentagon (20301) or even Beverley Hills 90210. I certainly cannot imagine how their potentially ‘priceless’ marketing data is worth a dime. Or a Euro, come to that. How sad.

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BlinkList | Blogmarks | Digg | Del.icio.us | Ekstreme Socializer | Feedmarker | Furl | Google Bookmarks | ma.gnolia | Netvouz | New PR | RawSugar | Reddit | Scuttle | Shadows | Simpy | Spurl | Technorati | Unalog | Wink | Yahoo MyWeb2

It’s all about the data, stupid: Last.fm wins, Pandora loses

Today I read in the Guardian about Last.FM being adopted by Music Week to provide the publication’s first online-based chart. As the piece astutely says: “it’s the data generated by the site’s 20 million enthusiasts that is priceless.”

I’m typing this while listening to Pandora, the alternative to Last.fm which I found out about through Seamus McCauley at Virtual Economics. It is a truly wonderful idea. By identifying a set of musical parameters for each song, Pandora can then match any music to any other music by how ’similar’ they are. So, for example, if you want to listen to music that is ‘like’ Beck, you set up a station for Beck and Pandora comes up with similar material, in my case specifically Cracker and Modest House. I have no idea who these bands are but they sound great.

Pandora is the result of the Music Genome project, the exercise of which - identifying musical properties –  is neatly referred to as the music’s ‘DNA’. By building up a playlist in Pandora you are essentially matching music DNA to your own DNA. One project I recently set up at my company is a company-wide Pandora music station. Anyone from the company can log on and add their preferences. In this way we end up with the company’s music DNA, we get to listen to some half-decent music (no more Gwen Stefani),  and some people learn a bit about new media to boot. Everyone wins.

In one respect Pandora is beautifully elegant. It approaches ’social radio’ through the music and is almost uncanny in the way it brings up musical suggestions similar to those friends’ compilations made on chrome tapes in the 80s (yes, I am that old). In another, however, it is ugly. It relies on musically astute contributors to identify musical DNA in what I would describe as an extended exercise in folksonomy. So whereas you just kick-start Last.fm and let it chug away with its Amazon-like referential algorithms, Pandora will always involve considerable manual effort.

But where Pandora has really missed the trick is in its marketing data. Get this: its license only allows ‘broadcast’ in the US. Yes, you read that right. Pandora is only available to north Americans. And if a frog had wings, he wouldn’t bump his ass when he hopped.

So I imagine the Pandora marketing database is, to put it mildly, totally screwed. I daresay they have a fair proportion of subscribers based at the White House zipcode (20500), the Pentagon (20301) or even Beverley Hills 90210. I certainly cannot imagine how their potentially ‘priceless’ marketing data is worth a dime. Or a Euro, come to that. How sad.

Technorati tag: PR • Add to Google • Add to Bloglines • Add to Technorati • Subscribe by RSS • Subscribe by email

BlinkList | Blogmarks | Digg | Del.icio.us | Ekstreme Socializer | Feedmarker | Furl | Google Bookmarks | ma.gnolia | Netvouz | New PR | RawSugar | Reddit | Scuttle | Shadows | Simpy | Spurl | Technorati | Unalog | Wink | Yahoo MyWeb2