26/06/2008

allmediascotland.com is about to change, in terms of design, functionality and style of editorial. That may lead to some disruption of normal services over the next few weeks, not least because there are holidays to be had. It does mean also the prospect of new voices, from a galaxy of bloggers. So far, Nick Clayton and David Calder. Now, it’s the turn of SHAUN MILNE. You’ll see his biog below. Feel free to become an AMS blogger yourself, by emailing us, here.

When I was invited to write an occasional blog for allmediascotland, I wondered why anyone would be remotely interested in the ramblings of a tabloid hack now whoring himself out to the corporate classes.

But turns out allmediascotland are among the poor, unfortunate souls who have stumbled across by own blog on occasion, lingered a little too long, and are now duped into believing I’m a bona fide 'Web 2.0 thinker'.

Truth is that I started a blog in 2004 as a home to my news cuttings on one of the many occasions I thought I was going to get the bullet from my paper, for another day without a by-line.

Yet instead of the firing squad, I landed a job on the newsdesk, instantly ending a life of jumping out helicopters, planes, and chipping away at the coal face of truth. Oh aye, and hours of fruitless stake-outs at wrong addresses.
 
From the comfort of my desk, each day would begin with coffee, a bacon roll and high hopes of putting the world to rights with our crack team of ever-decreasing news hounds, ending with a cheeky wee blog entry - and an obligatory trip to The Copycat pub.

As my waistline grew and grew - okay, and grew some more - so too my blog expanded. And from out of nowhere, more than 3500 page impressions a month. Bizarre. Suddenly, I had an audience, of sorts.

But then, that’s the crucial thing.

Anyone, even with he most basic of computer skills, can start their own blog. But in doing so, they also become an unexpected publisher and editor, whether they realise it or not.

What they write - be it recipe ideas, trends in digital media or simply some rant about their favourite football team - it becomes content that someone, somewhere, just might want to read.

Then it can develop.

Take Twitter, something else I’ve been using off and on for a while, only recently working out how to add it to my blog.

Now that it's up there, suddenly I find that I’ve got a new audience, with so called ‘followers’ from as far away as South Africa and the States; generally, people with their own blogs Tweeting about similar topics.

Thus information is shared, conversations begun, communities created in our strange online world which can be fun, but ultimately, we wonder if any real use can come from it.

In a professional context, yes. Not just through new knowledge or expanding contacts. But from the information yielded through statistics that can then be used to target the audience.

Something printed newspapers have never been able to supply.

Here we are in the summer of 2008, and in May, the sale of newspapers across Scotland was on average 1,249,307: healthy to the untrained eye, but a fraction of what it was even five, let alone ten years ago.

Yet, online, we see millions of page impressions every month for these very same titles.

The Mail Online some 18.7million, the new-look Daily Record website expecting to smash six million before too long.

Which proves that people still want to know what is going on in the world, be it about pop stars or natural disaster.

These same online readers leave a useful fingerprint of information. 

We can learn what they were reading, how long for, what links they clicked, where they were at the time. Hell, even their screen resolution.

My company, Planet Ink Ltd, designs and publishes digital newspapers and magazines - their pages turn onscreen like the real thing - which provide us with just such information.

And it is information that is sure to become king, allowing vendors to track reading habits, adapt editorial content accordingly, and build up a profile for advertisers never before available.

Or at least, not in such accurate, instant detail or in a way that is so appealing and interactive with associated video, audio, polls and so on that make static pages look, well, tired.

Coupled with personal information gleaned from social networking sites - like Facebook, Bebo and so on, or even music sites like iMeme and Last.Fm - the circle can be completed.

And the user, the reader, probably doesn’t even know.

For example, reading this article today, be you a friend or a stranger, you now know a little bit more about me than you did ten minutes ago. By blogging this content, that is an invitation I’ve 
extended.

But the question should perhaps be: what has been learned about you and your habits in the short time you have visited this website today? And what could be done with that new found knowledge as we wrestle with what the web means for the future of the media - not just here in Scotland, but all along the information superhighway.

--

Shaun Milne is a founding director of award-winning design, media and publishing company Planet Ink Ltd, specialising in digital, paperless publications and corporate newspapers and magazines.

Previously, he was associate news editor of the Daily Record, and also news editor then deputy editor of the Scottish Daily Mirror.

Visit his blog here and his company website here. Or view his firm’s digital brochure here.

* Send your Scottish media news and gossip, in the strictest confidence, to  info@allmediascotland.com