Steve Nelson recently sent me, and a few other people here at Clear Ink, an article from the New York Times. It tells about a new approach being tested to measure a marketing campaign's effectiveness. The company, IMMI, is providing cell phone service for it's test audience, and in return, the audience doesn't have to do anything. Well almost nothing - they are asked to carry the cell phone around like normal, as it replaces their existing phone. IMMI monitors what these cell phones can hear throughout the day and then match it with whatever marketing they are measuring. They say it isn't listening to your conversation, only the media around you. Very Big Brother-ish if you ask me, but how do you know that your *current* cell phone isn't already doing this already?

Scott Walker (assistant managing editor for Birmingham News and DIY, electronics, tinkerer) has hacked an old newspaper box to display the headlines and news stories from the internet. It's an awesome symbol of the old media/new media struggle. See video of it working, more photos, and a step by step description of how he set it up in his blog post: The digital newstand.

I recently posted a comment to Joe Jaffe's blog about Second Life as he is getting a lot of feedback about the pro's and con's of Second Life. From what I can tell, well-meaning marketers are still feeling it is something of a scam. I guess it is all in how one looks at it. We are quite bullish about 3D worlds in general, as long as one knows what they are getting in to at THIS STAGE OF THE GAME. That part is key:

I want to step in here. I work at a digital marketing agency that is spending quite a bit of time and internal capital on building a practice out of Second Life. It is just one of our practices, the others being more well established digital capabilities. Second Life is an early adopter experiment. It is a place to demonstrate the power of a 3D interface and content without being someone's beta product. If you are a client that needs to demonstrate complex visual models or ideas, it is a great space. If you are a client that wants to create an event but the constituents are narrow and worldwide, it is a great venue. If you want to demonstrate that you are exploring all forms of digital communication, then it is a low cost demonstration. Sun, Sony and others are also working on new 3D environments. But what they are missing is an audience. Second Life has the advantage of having real people constantly pushing the buttons and testing the limits. As far as ROI, the ROI lies in what would the difference be between building the kinds of things (an event, a model, a demo) in the real world vs. a 3D virtual version? Huge. And what is the impact when the right audience can now really "get" the complex idea? Really huge. So change your perspective. This is not a full mass market medium yet. It is a sandbox. A really cool, public sandbox. If you look at it this way (for now anyway), Second Life has all kinds of possibilities for the smart marketer.

I picked up a copy of the San Francisco Chronicle on Wednesday to read over lunch. When I read David Lazarus’s column "Pay-to-play is one way to help save newspapers" I had to check that the date was 2007, not 1997. The column lamented the lack of a good business model: “how newspapers can survive in an age of free online content.” His solution was for newspapers to start charging for online content.

I remember in 1997 when Slate decided to start charging $20/month to access its online magazine. I sent them email saying how much I enjoyed Slate, and would put it near the top of the list of sites I would pay for, once I had read all the free content on the Internet. It took them a year to succumb to my sarcasm, but reality forced them away from that model.

Reality is biting even harder now, and newspapers struggle to establish their true value. There was obviously 50 cents worth of value to me in exchange for a paper newspaper I could read over lunch. Will I pay $5 to download a single article from the New York Times? I don’t think I ever have.

What is the value? Maybe I am willing to pay in exchange for a system that itself pays for a level of journalistic excellence and quality. If so, what is the price point at which I consider that a fair exchange? That price point, that value exchange, is shifting for several reasons:

1. Enabling technologies that give voice to millions, along with reputation mechanisms and editing systems to filter and promote the content
2. Population hysteresis applied to institutions and models created centuries ago, disrupted by millions of voices with no vested interest in the legacy
3. The natural evolution of skills that enable these millions to more readily learn and build on the best practices of the past.

A thought experiment: how would you assemble an online version of today’s New York Times, substituting each story or column with the best user-contributed content you could find. How would it compare?