Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook, and the Future of News (Or, "Hurry Up! I Haven't Got All Ten Seconds.")

Years ago, when microwave ovens were new, I remember seeing a cartoon of a man standing in front of one with the caption: “Hurry up! I haven’t got all minute.”

Today, when trying to load a page on the Internet, that caption might read: “Hurry up! I haven’t got all ten seconds.”

That’s what Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook suggested in a recent online Q & A when asked about that platform’s role in news.

“People discover and read a lot of news content on Facebook, so we spend a lot of time making this experience as good as possible,” he replied.

“One of the biggest issues today is just that reading news is slow. If you’re using our mobile app and you tap on a photo, it typically loads immediately. But if you tap on a news link, since that content isn’t stored on Facebook and you have to download it from elsewhere, it can take 10+ seconds to load.

“People don’t want to wait that long, so a lot of people abandon news before it has loaded or just don’t even bother tapping on things in the first place, even if they wanted to read them.”

The way Facebook is solving the lengthy wait to get news is Instant Articles.

Says Zuckerberg: “When news is as fast as everything else on Facebook, people will naturally read a lot more news. That will be good for helping people be more informed about the world, and it will be good for the news ecosystem because it will deliver more traffic.”

Still with Facebook (and Twitter), a new Pew Study shows that users across all demographics are increasingly using them as sources of news.

According to the report, 63 percent of both Facebook and Twitter users say they get news on those social networks, up from 52 percent of Twitter users and 47 percent of Facebook in 2013.

Although the same percentage of users look to each platform for news, nearly twice as many use Twitter to follow breaking news: 59 percent of Twitter users versus 31 percent of Facebook users.

About half of people between the ages of 18 and 34 say Facebook and Twitter are “the most important” or “an important” way they get news, compared to 34 percent of Facebook users over 35 and 31 percent of Twitter users over 35.

The study also found that Facebook users are more likely to engage with political content than Twitter users: 32 percent of Facebookers post about politics and government, compared to 25 percent of tweeters.

That finding corresponds to an earlier Pew report  that showed that 61 percent of Americans born between 1981 and 1996 get their political news from Facebook in a given week.

Only 37 percent of Americans in the same age group get political news from local TV, compared to 60 percent of Americans born between 1946 and 1964.

Bottom line? Facebook and Twitter are becoming the channel of choice for news for growing numbers of people today. What this means for non-profit communicators is a big question; we normally don't have the heft to break into the news cycle, the urgency to command attention, or the ability to get our information into Facebook's Instant Articles.

Looks like we need to hope our supporters have at least ten seconds worth of patience for our web pages to load. 

When it Comes to Social Media, NASA has The Right Stuff

Remember the movie (or the book) The Right Stuff? It was about the men who flew in the first space flight program in the U.S.

Back then, only men who were strong, tough, macho and brave were seen by NASA to have “the right stuff.” 

Today, it’s a different story—people who have “the right stuff” know how to use social media.

That's the conclusion of a recent article in Quartz about how NASA conquered not just space, but the social media universe.

“In an era when the media whips itself into a frenzy over how to make things go viral, and marketers take their cues from big brands, a government entity has quickly and quietly become the darling of the internet,” writes author Adam Epstein.

Those searching for proof need look no further than this month’s mission to Pluto.

When NASA’s New Horizon’s spacecraft began to beam back photos of the former planet, after a 4.8 billion kilometre journey of over nine years, it took social media (and most other media) by storm.

“If you were connected to the internet around 9 AM U.S. eastern time on Tuesday, July 14, your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social platforms were all Pluto, all the time,” Epstein says.

How did NASA end up the darling of the Internet? And what can non-profit communicators learn from them?

First off, it helps to have access to some of the coolest photos in the universe, and the drama of exploration in space.

But even that is not enough. After all, there are no people on those spacecraft—they’re just machines, and machines have no personality.

Or do they?

That’s one of the first lessons. When the Mars lander touched down on that planet in 2008, Veronica McGregor, head of social media at NASA, decided to give it personality by Tweeting in the first person.

“Atmospheric entry has started,” she posted. “Time to get REALLY nervous. Now I'm in the ‘seven minutes of terror.’"

“Parachute must open next. my signal still getting to Earth which is AWESOME!”

“I've landed!!!!!!!!!!!!! Cheers! Tears!! I'm here!”

Today, @NASA is the 104th most popular Twitter account in the world, with over 11 million followers—more than the White House, with 6.5 million.

"I was a little worried that the space community would think that was silly,” says McGregor.

“But the minute I did a tweet in the first person, suddenly all these people started writing back. We have a voice now that we didn't before."

And the lesson? When communicating about programs, try to infuse them with personality. Don’t just re-hash press releases or share dry statistics.

As Epstein put it: “On social media, people share things that make them feel really big, crazy feelings. ‘Look at this awesome or amazing photo.’ ‘Watch this incredible video.’ ‘Read this astonishing essay.’”

This personal voice gets at the heart of how social media functions, says Epstein: “It makes people care. NASA's probes have (or rather, appear to have) wants and desires and goals, and that makes us invested in their successes.”

It’s not only machines that engage people through social media; NASA’s astronauts do, too.

One of the most successful was Canada's Chris Hadfield, with his singing and goofy antics aboard the International Space Station (ISS) in 2013. His rendition of David Bowie's "Space Oddity," has 26 million views on YouTube.

NASA also actively courts people who promote it on social media, providing them with special access through what are called NASA Socials. 

These people are invaluable allies to NASA's communications team.  "Some people aren't going to believe us as much as they're going to believe members of the general public," says McGregor said. 

"In some ways, I think they're able to convince the skeptics better than we ever could."

NASA is also careful to avoid jargon. 

"You'll never really see us use the term 'EVA', or extravehicular activity," says Jason Townsend, NASA’s Deputy Social Media Manager  said. "We're going to use the term 'spacewalk,' because that's what everybody knows."

You can read the full article here. 

More on What Non-Profit Communicators Can Learn from the Gay Marriage Movement

Earlier this year I wrote about how gay marriage activists had successfully used stories to influence public opinion in the U.S. in favour of gay marriage. 

In a recent article in the Atlantic, Molly Ball wrote the idea behind that strategy.

A major factor in winning over voters was to those four state wins “was an overhaul in the message used to win over voters—from an argument about the rights and benefits of marriage to one about the fundamental human desire for love and commitment.”

This, she writes, is another lesson Marc Solomon, the national campaign director for Freedom to Marry, believes other movements could learn: Make an emotional argument based on positive values. 

“For years, pollsters told gay-marriage advocates that attacking discrimination and invoking the Constitution were their most resonant arguments—but over and over, these cerebral ideas proved no match for the visceral appeal of the opposition’s messages about family and faith. And the emphasis on rights convinced many voters that what gay people wanted out of marriage was fundamentally different than what they thought marriage was about.

“It was by framing the issue in personal terms that campaigners started to win hearts and minds. This is something immigration reformers have recently tried to do by making young strivers—the “dreamers”—the human face of their movement.”

The other thing gay marriage campaigners did to spread their message was to use a sophisticated persuasion campaign—a tactical innovation that many others are now trying to emulate.

“Armies of canvassers—both paid workers and volunteers—set out to have in-depth conversations with thousands of voters using ideas developed with help from the liberal Analyst Institute, a quasi-academic campaign-tactic lab.

“Rather than parroting a script, the canvassers used a few open-ended prompts (“What does marriage mean to you?”) and drew on their own experiences to have long conversations about family and faith that often turned personal—and changed people’s minds.”

Promoting a positive, emotional, personal message wasn’t the only thing that helped them win the day—gay marriage campaigners also used some sophisticated and targeted political and legal strategies. 

But changing their message to emphasize personal stories of real people created the conditions where they could show public support for the political and legal arguments—a key element in the overall, and winning, strategy.

What Non-Profit Communicators can Learn from the World of Professonial Wrestling

 

OK, I didn’t see that coming—who would think that non-profit communicators could learn something from the world of professional wrestling?

No, really; I’m serious. (And I don't mean learning how to take a fall.)

Earlier this month secret notes prepared by Vince McMahon, owner of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), were leaked online.

The notes, for his on-air announcers, give ideas for how they can provide the best experience for the 39 million viewers in 150 countries who watch WWE’s over 300 events each year.

In the main, the ideas are pretty sensible; they are the kinds of things that will help anyone whose job it is to communicate with the public.

Here are some of the ideas Vince provides: 

Prepare!

Dress professionally.

Be aware of what’s happening in the world (e.g. an earthquake in China, floods, etc.).

“Fully understand the history and heritage” of the WWE.

Have fun—you’re a fan. If you don’t like it,  why should anyone else?

Be descriptive of the people you are talking about. “It gives them life and character.”

Quote the people involved—“it makes it mean more.”

Make sure your comments are believable and plausible. (Don’t exaggerate by saying someone is “the greatest of all time.”)

Don’t use passive words.

Less is more.

Don’t read notes prepared by others. “The audience can always tell when an announcer is reading and it is a total disconnect. Never read copy. Tell the story in your own words.”

Don’t yell. “Tone and inflection are more important than volume.”

Be conversational. “You are talking to a buddy in a bar!”

Slow down—there’s no rush!

Tell your stories succinctly and to the point.

It is not necessary to fill every moment with verbiage.

Avoid words like “obviously.”

Engage the audience. Ask provocative questions rather than telling them what to think.

Avoid clichés.

Talk in soundbites.

Be yourself.

+++++++++++++

All-in-all, it sounds like pretty good advice to me . . . .

See the entire leaked list here.  

The End of Online Advertising and the Future of News

Earlier this year I wrote about banner blindness, or why people don’t click on online ads. It was a cautionary tale for marketers and publishers thinking that online advertising might be a new savior.

Now comes more proof that online ads aren’t working.

In a column in the July 3 Globe and Mail, Carl Mortished writes about the alarming—for publishers—growth in the use of ad-blocking software.

According to a 2015 Reuters Digital News Survey, 47 per cent of American readers of news websites and 39 per cent of British readers are using software to block ads.

For publishers of news, this is a worrisome development. Most have moved away from paywalls, since readers have demonstrated over and over again that they won’t pay for news.

This was confirmed by the Reuters survey, which also found that three-quarters of Britons and two-thirds of Americans would never pay to watch or read news.

So if readers won’t pay for news, what are newspapers and other content providers to do? Try to sell more ads.

That’s the strategy being employed by a number of publications, including the Toronto Star, which recently dropped its 18-month experiment with a paywall. 

Instead, newspapers like the Star are going to a tablet version or using their websites to sell eyeballs to advertisers. 

The more eyeballs they can get, the more advertisers they can attract, and the more they can charge for advertising to stay alive.

But that strategy won't work if people are blocking ads. 

Says Mortished: “Web advertising revenues are falling and no one seems to have a solution that would keep readers happy while allowing advertisers and publishers to make a profit . . . readers have declared war on the publishers, a conflict in which neither side can gain long-term advantage.”

In exasperation, the Guardian (which is free online) has installed a message on its website that pops up when it detects ad blocking software, asking the reader to make a voluntary contribution. 

In Germany, media companies are taking a maker of ad-blocking software to court.

I have no answer to this problem. I don’t know how newspapers and other creators of news are going to stay in business if neither paywalls or advertising will generate revenue.

All I know is that buying ads on websites is not a magic bullet for catching reader attention—especially if readers are actively blocking them.

Are Non-Profits and NGOs Ready for Disintermediation?

The new word in the previous post was “precariat.”  The new word in this post is “disintermediation.”

And, yes, the two words are related, and should be of concern to non-profit fundraisers and marketers.

Disintermediation is what happens when a way of doing something that required the presence of a mediator is disrupted.

Through it, the need for a middleman, or a mediator, is eliminated.  

A good example is Kodak. For a long time, the only way to take a picture was to use film. Then along came digital cameras, and Kodak’s services were no longer required.

Later, we got cell phones that took pictures and the services of companies that made cameras become unnecessary.

Another example is Amazon. Once upon a time, people went to bookstores to get books. Then along came the Internet retailing giant and everything changed.

The most recent example is Uber, the ride sharing company that is disrupting the taxi industry in many cities. 

Through Uber, anyone can offer anyone a ride; no need to call a taxi.

In one sense, disintermediation is a good thing—it’s a sign of progress and innovation. Unless you worked for Kodak, a bookstore or own a taxi cab, in which case it is a terrible development.

The challenge of disintermediation is that it can disrupt whole industries, throwing people out of work. Which is why so many today are feeling a sense of precarity—they worry that their jobs are among the next to be "disintermediated," or rendered unnecessary.

Why should fundraisers and marketers who work for non-profits be concerned about disintermediation?

Foundational to their existence is the belief that a mediator—the non-profit—is required between the donor and the recipient to ensure that the best services are provided (and tax receipts provided for donations).

But what if the presence of a mediator is no longer required? What if recipients can raise their own funds for their own services through crowdfunding campaigns? 

And what if donors can help people who are poor—without resorting to a non-profit group to do it?

NGOs and Disintermediation

That’s a question that’s beginning to be raised about the industry I work in, international relief and development.

At first glance, it's hard to see how could this way of helping people could be disintermediated. There are so many factors that would seem to require a go-between—distance, language, culture, expertise.

But the gap between donors in the west and recipients in the developing is narrowing, in terms of fundraising, according to an article by Daphne Davies on Devex. 

Organizations at the forefront of this type of disintermediation include Kiva, which links lenders and loan recipients, and Give Directly, which identifies very poor households in Africa and invites people in North America and Europe to donate money directly to them.

For Tom Guiney, head of futures at Bond, an umbrella group for U.K. NGOs, this new way of connecting donors and recipients is positive since it gives donors “more choice, ownership and empowerment, enabling them to find the charity that fits their values.”

It especially appeals to people who want to be more engaged and have a closer relationship with a local project, he added.

(Church-related NGOs already have lots of experience with this, with many churches today bypassing NGOs to send members on service and missions trips to the developing world. My own church has established a direct relationship with an orphanage in the DRC.)

But the methods pioneered by Kiva and GiveDirectly still involves intermediaries to link donors and recipients. What if even they are no longer required?

What if the day comes when people in the developing world have enough access to technology to do their own crowd funding for a small business or a school, hospital or other serve that benefits their community?

Corruption and Fraud

An interesting idea, and maybe it could work. But what about corruption and fraud?

This is a legitimate concern. But if all that is needed is $1,000, a budding entrepreneur only needs 100 people to give $10, or 200 to give $5.

If it should turn out to be a fraud, or the project fails, so what? You only lost $5. People give $5 all the time to homeless people on the street or kids raising funds for band trips at the door or to help someone make a CD through Kickstarter.

I don’t think the big NGOs will go away. They will always have a role to play. Someone who wants to donate $1,000 a) wants a tax receipt and b) wants to be assured it is used properly—things only registered and expert charities can do.

But a niche could be developed for the smaller kind of person-to-person fundraising. And it might be driven by a younger donor demographic that places a higher value on experience and personal connections than on trusting large and slow-moving NGOs that want to mediate the experience for them.

Plus, they are already sophisticated users of technology; connecting with people around the world in this way is second-nature to them. Texting a few dollars to help someone in Africa would not feel like a big stretch. 

We are at a very early stage with this new way of thinking about charity. Many are already dismissing it; it will never work, they say. But what if it takes hold somewhere? What might happen? 

Maybe I will ask a taxi driver that question the next time I go to the airport.