Watsonian Ramblings

Site down - this may take a while...

2008-05-12T08:26:00.000-07:00

It's bloody hard this digital marketing malarkey. Just found myself smirking when someone mentioned it's really easier to change stuff online. That's always been the "benefit" of online, the dynamism, the ability to change and react to your consumer - but it's balls. In fact, websites are actually a whole lot more permanent than any magazine - and harder to change.

If you want to launch a new magazine - buy some paper, print on it - flog it for £4 (give most of that to Tesco) and you're laughing. Next month, you start all over again and while, in theory, it's a permanent item you've sold - that's only to those who actually bought it and kept it. 90% of them have chucked it (sorry, recycled it) by the time you've thought of your next pithy headline

Meanwhile - your website's just there. Every second of every minute of every hour...there's never any let up. OK, so you could change a typo you made when you put the latest story up but want to change the layout? the colour scheme? the name? Site down this could take a while (am aware of the freudian typo - never worry).

Did I mention it's fragile too? - it'll fall over, go slow, drop out of existence and it can take hours and hours to figure out what the hell has gone wrong. People stop buying your magaizne - it's either (1) a rubbish product, (2) too expensive, (3) out of touch with the consumer (see "rubbish"), (4) not being marketed right so no-one's heard of it or (5) not getting to the shops (Tesco's of course). 5 reasons to look into - possibly there are others but in the 6 years of publishing experience I haven't heard one that was true. (Apart from when the warehouse burnt down that was selling them but that' s really number 5 anyway).

Websites?? WEBSITES??? millions, seriously - MILLIONS of reasons. You might get the product right - the price is free by the way unless you really are stuck in 1994 - have the best PPC strategy known to mankind - be loved by your consumers, perfectly optimised and then... you fall off a cliff. Thanks to a "glitch", or a "bug", or issuse with where your site is hosted...or the fact that Google altered one tiny weeny bit of an algorithm becuase they were bored...and the whole thing falls down.

The quote "once you have elimated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth"... Thanks. Unfortunately, elimating the aforementioned impossible, is - in itself - impossible. Just what you need at 8.30am Monday morning - a bloody digital paradox! Sometimes after 14 hours of pain staking analysis and theory - it may just fix itself and you're left with an empty feeling of being utterly superflouous to events. Sometimes some other sod gets there before you and you wonder at their mastery of all this technology (they're just lucky and we all know it).

There isn't an answer and in truth, the slighly masochistic side of me enjoys digging around in the endless KPIs and statistics that we are drowing in but when you just can't find the answer. Because soemtimes, rarely in my case, you get it. You figure it out - before the other geeks and developers and it's like reading a clever novel and guessing whodunnit...or even better, guessing correctly the price of the antique toby jug on a Sunday afternoon while watching Antiques Roadshow.

No, no - that's not me...

2008-05-09T09:20:00.000-07:00

Found myself flicking through my photos on Facebook today and cringing at the fact there are some there with me smoking. Not through any sense of it being a ridiculous habit (fully aware - 'tis simply neither the time nor the place for that debate) but because it's public.

Which is also ridiculous. Obviously, in fact - evidently, I smoke in public but why should it make me cringe that it's in the virtual public world. Add to that looking drunk, generally not doing sport or in reality, any none green/PC activity...

I'd put on any CV that I'm a highly socialable person who loves the pub and hanging out with mates but when presented with teh evidence of that in the virtual world - it makes me balk. Bizarre... I suspect it goes back to what the essential reason is for any profile page - it's a brand, it's the best of you, it's everything you wish you were - not the real you...but it should be.

Ewan Semple has talked about htis before - trust the people with the flaws publicly aired on Facebook. couldn't agree more - but bloody hell it's just hard. It's all very well me voicing the opinion and waving the flag of honesty but when I do it myself it's rather cringeworthy. It's like carrying your kiddy photo album around with you on a great big virtual sandwich board.

BUT - in order to be a truly trustworthy online type person I shall have to bite the bullet...but I shall be leaving pithy comments to assert the fact that it's always a bad shot...and never the real me...

The buck's gotta stop somewhere...

2008-03-20T08:03:00.000-07:00

Trying to get my head around this issue - buck passing. Why does it seem more relevant than ever before in my career? Why do I hear phrases like:

It's not your/my remit
That's up to A, B, C to decide, not you
We'll have to get a workshop/meeting in to discuss that
I can't do that without buy in from the entire human population of Papua New Guinea

It's two things - a depressing "silo" mentality that any professional should, frankly, be ashamed of these days (and one i won't go into) but it's also so far away from the real-virtual world the "consumer" lives in, that the negative effect on business is unavoidable.

Defining possession and ownership of anything in the digital world, is a waste of time. By the time you've organised the brainstorm to sort out the meeting to agree the plan of who should run the project for your latest brand extension - some bloke in Derby's already done it and got it bought by A. N. Other rich b*stard in the States. Too late - back to that drawing board.

Problem is that big old school companies just aren't set up to work as quickly as we'd like - and getting them to that place is going to take some time. But that's not to say we shouldn't try - those big old school companies are just as full of passion, innovation and talent as the small .com millionaire start-ups. I genuinely don't think the problem lies solely within the organisation - although, I fear, a lot of current thinking is that if you fix that, you'll fix everything. Just getting rid of the red tape is not going to make it better.

The issue is the mindset...the fear that lies within us mere mortals who don't really understand the 1s and the 0s behind all this and therefore don't like to shout too loud. Making the big, gutsy, hairy, balls-out changes to an online business that will catapault you into true success is harder because there is a fear of "getting it wrong" by people who are used to being experts. In short - it's a fear of failure. So the buck passes up...to more and more senior people who are further and further away from the consumer and much too busy trying to sort out the goddamn infrastructure to get involved with the guts of the business. The outcome? Without a maverick on your side who's prepared to get some backs up, cock up a bit and put thier neck on the line...you're stuck.

My advice, no - my order - go and grow some. Excuse the phrase but I do really believe in this, and not least because I've wasted time myself worrying and wibbling around. Don't wait for someone else to tell you that you're right, you might not be, and if you are - who's going to be able to tell you? Anyone worth their weight is WAY to busy making their own mistakes and loving it. And so what, if you really mess up - least you can blog about it...

Google never lies...

2008-03-11T10:21:00.000-07:00

A quote..."Google never lies"...purloined from a colleague, purloined from someone else...however, an interesting concept. The quote came up in a conversation about a picture of said colleague that had come back to haunt him - nothing sordid, just silly I might add. So, however much you change or try to eliminate your past, it's now simply not possible.

What I can't quite figure out if its that a good thing or a bad thing. To be totally purist about it, surely it's a good thing. It's a way round the paradox that history, by it's very nature, is utterly subjective and unreliable. Any story or information that is still in circulation is there because somewhere, somehow, someone won...wrote the story...and so the "truth" is born. But what if every story told, never went away? What if the losers and the winners had exactly the same chance of getting their version of the truth in black and white? What if...oh, yeah, it's not "if" anymore...it's utterly real.

Fantastic - a truly inspired way of telling and presenting history. Because "Google" sorts by relevance and not by power, persuasion or threats, we're closer to the truth of the matter. Must be a good thing, surely.

However, what if the story, really is better left forgotten? What if relevance simply isn't a human enough way to sort through information? I suppose the clearest example I can think of is the way in which news was basically propaganda throughout the world wars within Britain. Yes, it wasn't right, and it depicted the opposing forces as monsters but in a world where people were losing sons, husbands, brothers and fathers...isn't it just easier to see the bad guys as exactly that? Isn't the truth just that bit harder to swallow? Isn't it sometimes just kinder to filter some of it out?

Maybe not - and it's not an opinion I'd ever push hard but I just wonder if the fact that as "Google never lies" becomes a truth, as consumers being producers of information becomes the norm, maybe it's not such a good thing...

Not that I'm getting obsessed with Facebook but...

2008-03-03T06:06:00.000-08:00

Time was that a woman (I say woman merely because they are more likely to bother to investigate not less likely to stray) with suspicions would have to resort to some kind of under cover, eyeholes in the newspaper mission to know whether or not they were no longer the one and only. If the object of your affection is taking three buses, doubling back and changing trains while they are moving on the way to work...it's probably not a good sign. It's the stuff that old movies are made of and that makes any sane woman laugh now - what an awful lot of effort to have to go through.

So, "The Scorned" moved on. Check receipts, check credit card bills, check the phone bill...check every bit of a paper you can find and you'll get to the truth. The paper trail was the key. Not so much the old movies but defintely the odd story line in almost forgotten episodes of EastEnders or Corrie. Either way, if your other half was binning his litter out on the street, you'd be worried.

Then came the mobile phone. Get hold of it, check the sent items and the inbox and the last calls made... They might not think of it all and it would be evidence enough to either put your mind at rest or call the lawyer. I remember once being warned by a particularly faithless man "if your other half ever starts to take his phone into the shower, toilet or bath...you're f*cked". Nice to know.

Then the personal email accounts came under fire. Scary stories of people hacking into email accounts of other halves to see what was going on. Not one of these stories ended well I'll point out. I suspect if you're looking there, it's pretty definite already. This happened to male and female friends of mine and although the one that makes my blood run coldest is the one that seems to happen most often.

And now Facebook has touched this long running story of deception... It's the worst thing in the world for a cheat. Facebook - the devil in technology. You can't keep your profile secret from you other half to hide what you're up to (how suspicious is that?!) and even worse...you have no control over what other people write on your wall. Disaster is sure to ensue. Images of "great night last night, big boy" on the wall of some lothario - funny for us, not so the lothario. So, you have to get out all together if you want to get up to know good. Remove yourself from Facebook under some pretention that you don't want to be on there anymore. Problem is - what pretension? There isn't one I can think of, seriously, i've tried but isn't it just so much easier to stop going to the site than to close it down? It's suspicious and that's that.

So maybe next time a friend of yours tells you their worried, maybe the first thing you should do is check Facebook...

Beginning, middle or the end...?

2008-02-21T09:43:00.000-08:00

every story that holds interest follows a simple equation. Never more eloquently put than in Family Guy... (insert funny clip for once...check me)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8491896865632168074

Anyway, my somewhat tenous point is that this is only any good with hindsight. Relating this to the issues (still) facing marketeers today is impossible because i'm not convinced we know who the protagonists are, the antagonists, the twists in the tail. Jesus, we could still be at the foreward for all I know.

The point is that thinking you've finished the journey becuase you've finally stopped the mass media shotgun approach with every communication you do, just won't cut it. Figuring out there's a conversation going on that you need to be a part of is better but i'm still not convinced that's it either. Half of the job of a digital marketer is to be a subplot anyway - until the digital future is fully mapped out...which could be another few years at least yet - we're all in the dark.

Brian's book is further ahead than the one we're trying to get through in reality. So, I suppose the moral of this story is just keep the ego in check and remember there's a long bloody way to go yet. Even if you have been on a course and everything.

Working 9 to...

2008-01-23T09:10:00.000-08:00

24/7 working is more rife than ever before. Having completed a survey in the Sunday Times the other day, I scored pretty highly. I wasn't overly suprised but was more shocked at the negative attitude towards that way of living - I just can't see the problem.

OK, so the odd out of hours phone call, the fact I check website figures at a weekend, my personal phone and work phone are one and so on...could be a negative. But is it really? No-one complains when it's the other way round. All the personal worries that used to have to wait until the end of the day can now get sorted at the same time as you make that golden deal. For me, the fact I've got access to my friends at work via Facebook, makes my job easier too - I can use them to get things tested, become advocates or just to bounce ideas off. And lets not forget, half of them I met at work anyway.

SO, do I live to work...well, yes to some extent. But I'd certainly rather that than work to live...the thought of dreading every Monday, every 9am is just not the lifestyle I'd sign up to. The very nature of new technology means that the opportunites that are opend to us are huge so why not live to work if your work is something you love. It's tough for me to look at things without a slant to how that could work in my worklife because for me there's not a definte line between that life and real life.

So, 24/7 worklife - yes, 24/7 social life - yes, 24/7 home life -yes...fact is everyone lives a 24/7 life and chunking it up into sections of time just doesn't work anymore. And yes, I exist to make sure I get the most out of all of it, at the same time and if you're not doing the same, then just think what it could be like if you did...

The Final Word

2008-01-08T14:23:00.000-08:00

Dant pointed out the below link to me...

andrewolmsted.com/

A poignant reminder of why people write, not just blog, but actually find any form of inspiration to make their thoughts and opinions anything more than just a fleeting jumble of neuro-electronic impulses possibly culminating in some kind of noise.

This really is the easiest step to immortality. Blogging gives the author an absolute certain opportunity to get their head out there without having to try too hard. Put out there, see what happens but you don't have to ask anyone, or search people out...it all just sort of happens.

I believe that you either want to write or you don't. I'm still new to blogging but have written reams of poetry since I was very young. From the angst of the first broken heart to the utter despair of the worst, writing it down has always been the therapy that works best but it's so hard to share it. Giving someone the actual book of all that jumbled emotion just seems firstly too personal and secondly somewhat contrite..."look at me, look at me". Blogging is an easy step, you don't have to ASK anyone to read what you say, it's up to them, and there's nothing nicer than having someone say something, anything, about what you say. It's a sense of being part of something and of actually being listened to, maybe helping someone in a similar position...even when you don't think you are.

I have thought, on particularly morbid days, what would someone think of all that guff and gusto of mine post-humously? Stuck between wanting to have the chance to say "this is what I meant to say and do" and between just getting on with it without having to show everyone my poetry has in the most part remained for my eyes only. It's a shame, not because it's particularly brilliant, but because sharing it in the way I want to, could be.

Andrew Olmsted took the next level and had his say at a time when you never should be able to. His last post is touching, thought provoking, comforting but more importantly, it his him: his opinion on himself. It's the part of us that wants to write our own obituary and epitaph and to have a say at our very own funeral. It's the need in all of us to keep going...even when we know we can't. It's sad but it's hopeful and at the end of the day, which of us wouldn't want to have the final say on our favourite subject?

Facebook is making us crazy...

2007-12-28T07:43:00.000-08:00

Christmas and New Year and the general festivities therein mean one very special thing to me - it is the time when everyone gets the hell out of our beloved capital and comes back to where they grew up. All the presents in the world could make up for seeing old friends and, let's face it, scores of acquantainces who knew us back when we still strived to be older and not younger.

Anyway, what was creepily strange this year was that everyone knew what everyone else was doing already. Facebook had got rid of the necessary yet dull start of every conversation between old friends, school chums and colleagues. There was no need to ask "how's the career/lovelife/house" of the guy who sat next to me on the school bus becuase each day I get a very handy little alert to tell me.

So, that should be fantastic - no more dull small talk and inane questions to get past in order to get to the really juicy bits of someone elses life. Should be brilliant and enable witty banter from the off. But it doesn't - it actually makes things harder and leaves anyone with particularly British sensibilities in a very difficult place.

For example, being fully aware that the person standing opposite you has just come out of a rather messy engagement fully broadcast on Facebook, complete with public wall postings of humiliation is great for the inner gossip in us all but, when confronted with said unfortunate individual, you clam up. Where do you start? You either avoid at all lengths anything vaguely to do with the matters of the heart and leave a gaping rather dirty white elephant in the conversation, fully aware that both members of the conversation know exactly what you're NOT saying... Or you mention the affair, as tactfully and carefully as you can, and in doing so come across as a rather sinister stalker who is watching this poor persons every move with great entertainment then find yourself promptly, and unsuprisingly, removed from their "friends" list the following day.

Worse still, is those people you'd rather never see ever again, know things about you that you'd really rather they didn't. Not always big dirty secrets as of course we keep them off our virtual profiles but just the humdrum facts that you can't escape. Half forgotten blasts from the past that you absent mindedly added to your list of friends have the upper hand in the game of "who's doing best". They know that your Porsche is more a Mazda, your mansion more a cottage and that as much as you know he's the one, your Brad is more a Barry. They know it all already and however happy you genuinely are with your life, not being able to tell the one person who made your life a misery then tiny white lie that you're obscenely successful and great is frankly, no fun.

The caveat, of course, is that it is just this very kind of person that also has a perfect profile filled with images of them skiing and partying and meeting famous people so the reverse is not applicable. They are painfully aware that you will of course have had a good look for the flaws on their own profiles and found absolutely none (I swear there are professional Facebook Butlers out there for this).

Polite society does not have rules for this kind of situation because polite society was never intended to let the rather one-way, voyeuristic, social past-time of gossiping to become a two way or even subjectively voluntary relationship...and that is precisely what Facebook has done. However, it's definitely not something that I shall be giving up for New Year because the annual awkward acquaintance brag off is definitely worth losing every once in a while. I'd rather have a Mazda anyway...

Never mind the forums...

2007-12-13T09:18:00.000-08:00

Forums are the smokers' staff room of the virtual world where everyone "is an arsehole" and everthing "is frankly shit". Launch a new site and within seconds you will have every man and his dog telling you exactly what is wrong with it and why you should simply give up and go work in your local supermarket. Of course, I recognise that in time forums become a fantastic arena in which to generate advice, but in the first 2 months after experiencing change forums seem to suffer from post-natale depression.

What it leaves you with is a bitter paradox. As truly forward thinking professionals, we need to be entering into the communications as soon as possible and reacting to the feedback. However, your first few weeks are, from what I can gather, bound by some law out of our control, to be a hellish torrent or demoralising negativity...much of which may be based in truth but which does nothing to move the audience nor the business forward.

The trick therefore seems to be to develop a 6th sense of when to start listening, when to pay lip-service and when to simply delete the posts and inform someone they need help...well, I have been tempted! However, the danger is never getting back into the habit of listening and conversing to your consumers. Maybe we simply have to accept that, like in any relationship, there's going to be a big old row but to keep the faith that once they've "let it all out", the storm will blow over.

Stick to what you know...

2007-12-07T02:06:00.000-08:00

One of the biggest challenges that I face on a day to day basis is getting clarity and focus on what a website actually is. It's not just about deciding what it should be but about keeping a team on track to do that and only that.

The joy, and issue, with working in the online world is the ability to try so many different things, so quickly and relatively easily. Even specialising in one subject is not enough - the truly successful sites out there do one thing for one consumer group in one basic way and they do it bloody well. Being so single minded is tough and not always very fun, it requires real courage of conviction and belief and a team that all buy into one vision so that no matter how great the next idea is that comes along - you don't touch it unless it's 100% core to what you set out to do.

Getting this across to large teams can be tough - it requires time and patience and isn't always the easiest theory to explain nor what they might want to do. One of the arguments that comes back often is "what harm will it do if we do XXX as well"? I've often been at a loss to argue with that outlook...what harm could it do? My gut feel has always been "lots" but I have struggled to find the logic that supports that.

In the offline world, when you know what you want, let's say a new handbag, and are faced with a long row of shops you have never been into, you judge them on one thing - the shop window. You will walk down the street looking for a window filled with all sorts of handbags - not a clothes shop with one in the window, not a shoe shop that also does handbags, not a brand shop where you know they might do bags - but a handbag shop. Sounds dumb and obvious but it's true - you look for what a shop appears to be on the surface, a specialist in handbags will have lots of handbags in the window and nothing else. You might get it wrong and miss out on the shop that has the best bag at the lowest price in the back of the shop but to be honest, it's raining, you're tired and you're not about to go the hassle of dragging yourself in on the off chance so you pick the obvious shop window full of the one thing you want.

And so let it be with websites. The "harm" that adding extra non-core content and services does is that it takes away from what you are the expert in. The virtual shop window, the homepage, necessarily becomes cluttered with bits of everything you do instead of screaming at every visitor that you are, always have been, always be the true expert in your field. By sticking to what you set out to do and never swaying from that path you cannot help but convince the consumer you're the best.

What's in a name...

2007-11-29T02:17:00.000-08:00

Informed my mother this morning I was struggling for what to write in my blog today - a worry as it's only Day 3 but I'm sure I'll continue to find inspiration. Her eyes glaze over and she looks at me like I'm some kind of bizarre Star Wars loving, Buffy addicted, science fiction freak who has finally lost the plot and become a complete cyper recluse. Ok, so the majority is not that far off the mark but it did make me think about attitude towards "digital specialists" througout business and the reputation they are still yet to shake off.

For years, there has been a small but select group of people around me who know and love the brave new world online. They were the early adopters of social networking, all things gaming, Web 2.0...you name it, they've a buzzword for it. Throughout that time my naturally slightly mathemetical and scientific brain has meant my interest was more than a little piqued, hence my current career. It's been great, picking up bits of information, learning the words, sounding intelligent and foxing everyone else around me while deploring how little the rest of the world understands and how we'll always be in the minority. I'm not entirely sure we ever thought what would happen if everyone else did catch up or if our egos could handle it. Best bet was to keep learning away and talk in a slightly different language that no-one else could really understand and then they might just go away.

Fact is, they didn't and we don't - talk in a different language that is. More worrying than the maternal disappointment is the sheer fact that a retired English teacher who obsesses over Shakespeare is not only fully aware of what a "blog" is but has formed an opinion about those who maintain them. It was only a few months ago I was convincing the family in general that I didn't know how to fix the printer even though "yes, I do work with computers...".

So is that ok? How do the digital brethren (I might not have an I-Pod but digital's in my job title) feel about no longer holding all the knowledge now the geeks have inherited the Google Earth but everyone else has got in on the action too?

Personally, I believe, the world will always need the geek...sorry the "digital specialist" because the opportunites and possibilities are truly endless and without the obsessives finding their way we'll simply be lost in space. So I'm happy that everyone else is coming along because it's about time but I'll still be listening to my early adopters, my geeks, my obsessives because there's a bloody long way to go yet...

The Long Tail of Brands...

2007-11-28T02:33:00.001-08:00

I'm going to see "The Damned" in concert tonight - the original punk band that apparently had their lime light stolen by The Sex Pistols. I can't profess to hold an opinion on any of this as it was all way before my time but either way I'm off to re-live a youth I never had.

Thing is, as a teenager, growing up in the '60s, '70s or '80s gave you all sorts of groups you could subscribe to with pride - whether you were a mod, a rocker, a punk, a yuppie, disco or goth there were large groups of people similar to you that stood out from the norm and shaped your decade. The brand of every group was clear, for example, the punk stood for anarchy, rebellion and a freedom of spirit and whether or not you were a part of that group you knew the group values and had some level of respect (certainly with hindsight) for what they were doing.

Ever since the mid '90s all this has begun to fade. The half hearted attempt that was "grunge" stood for nothing in particular that I can remember and that was very much my era. You could be led to thinking the brands of youth culture and well and truly dead...

Bollocks. It isn't - or at least I think it isn't. It's just been dragged through the Long Tail Process along with everything else we ever held dear...and it's fantastic. Take a virtual stroll through MySpace, Bebo and the endless others and there are now millions of brands influcencing youth...they are their own. Web 2.0 has given young people the opportunity to create their own brand, to control the pictures, fashion, music and words that they want to be associated with. They no longer have to make do with the brand that "best fits" them because they create their own that is 100% right for them.

They directly network with the people they want to influence, with abrand they create and protect with as much ferocity as any FMCG Brand Manager. Don't believe me? We all do it... When was the last time you uploaded a picture of yourself on Facebook that made you look ugly,dull or stupid? Or changed your status to say "___ is insecure and desperate for your approval"? You just don't - you filter out the rubbish and make sure that the one time this month you did anything of any interest you put it on that profile page quick smart.

Fantastic - the only issue it raises is that we are on the cusp of a new consumer. No wonder brand marketing is a dying art - why would we now align ourselves to a poorly fitting product from a poorly fitting brand when a higher level of personalisation is ever present? I don't want a BMW that puts me in the old fashioned "BMW driver" category...I don't want to match myself to a car brand, I want a car brand that matches my brand.

Brands in business, unlike natural brands, haven't caught up yet - they are one of the last remaining areas of business that have not gone through the long tail yet. Maybe the invention of sub brands by some of the bigger brands shows a slow recognition - choose Tesco's, then choose Finest or Value...but it's a tiny step on the road. Response marketing and products have all adapted in response to the "evolve or die" concept...brand marketing is now faced with the same ugly choice.

Why it isn't working...

2007-11-27T05:12:00.000-08:00

Studying "Pyschology of Politics" back in 1999 never seemed more relevant than to satisfy a bizarre curiosity I may have had to find why exactly Hitler was such an arse. I never imagined that it would give me an insight into a particularly nasty paradox currently facing the publishing industry of the late 2000s.

The key learning that stayed with me - a miracle really considering the level of general abuse my brain underwent at Newcastle around the same time - is that the qualites that make someone able to become a leader (ambition, single mindedness, drive, arrogance, self belief) are the EXACT OPPOSITE to those which make some a good leader (a good listener, belief in the group). The more you think about the more true it is, the best leaders the world has ever seen were not born politically ambitious but were either born into it such as Queen Victoria, or thrust into it such as Churchill.

So, bringing this back to the media indutry we are faced with the same paradox. For decades, editors have been employed, lauded, rewarded and loved for being self-opinionated, arrogant, single minded mini-Caesars who believe that above and beyond anything - they are right. Of course, they have to be - if you sell opinion, your opinion, you've got to believe in it. However, in the new age of "Web 2.0", "UGC" and all the other associated buzzwords - a new image of a successful editor is born. One who believes their sole role is to aggregate and help the voice of the consumer, who puts the consumer's opinion first and equal only with that of other consumers. This is an editor who is unassuming, without the need to broadcase their opinion and possibly self-depracating.

The Successful Online Editor and the Successful Offline Editor are 2 ultimately different people and asking one person to be both, successfully is an impossible ask... The solution, whether it be separate people, separate teams, separate companies or a clear idea of offline versus online importance is still not clear