antti.vilpponen.net

Finnish citizens have had to cope with a tremendeous amount of low quality journalism this past week. Our foreign minister, Mr. Ilkka Kanerva, had sent some text messages to a female dancer who then ran off to the yellow press to release them to public scrutiny. Even the (normally) highly respected Helsingin Sanomat fell in and wrote numerous articles on this matter (then again they are the unofficial horn of the Social Democratic Party - Kanerva is from the National Coalition Party).

The down side of all this is, in my opinion, that this kind of journalism is here to stay. Why? Because of the internet and the media companies’ inability to renew their old, unsustainable business models. Iltalehti and Ilta-Sanomat are usually competing head to head for the highest ranking website in terms of online visitors and visits on the weekly TNS Metrix ranking.

They are constantly losing ground in the offline world as people are reading news online. Once online, you have to be quick and react immediately to the latest events to be the site that people pass around through e-mail and IM. If you’re slow you’re gone. Well, no you’re not - if you decide to compete on something more sustainable where people actually spend time and enjoy the content. Have you had a look at the Finnish yellow press websites? Their front pages are long as hell - that’s because you need as much coverage on as many items to grasp the interest of a wide, very fragmented audience.

The problem of losing advertising money is not something only the Finnish press is battling with. US saw the biggest plunge in advertising revenue in 50 years. Media companies’ business models are heavily outdated and if they cannot renew their way of thinking and creating value for the customer - we will see many more scandals covered in the hope of a few more eyes grabbed for attention.

Photo by diver227, licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC-SA.

South Park Studios has done something remarkable today. They have made all of South Park’s episodes availble on their website - to anyone in the world, not just the US. There have been numerous examples where movie studios and tv channels have given audiences the possibility to watch shows online, but they are usually limited to the national level, due to legal issues.

It will definitely be interesting to see how South Park’s success will pick up in the near future and what sort of traffic they will be reaching when all the pirate downloads are suddenly made obsolete.

I finally managed to read through Joseph Jaffe’s Join The Conversation during the Easter holidays. The book is yet another solid show of Joseph Jaffe’s understanding of the internet and how it changes companies’ business models and marketing. Numerous examples of excellent ways of marketing and at least equally bad examples enable the reader to understand the small important issues in working online.

However, I really would have wanted to see slightly more academic writing from the author, because “Join the Conversation” is another “life after the 30-second spot” from the online world. There are a lot of examples that prove the points Jaffe is trying to make, but they usually are very light in context and could ultimately, in some cases, be used to prove the point from another point of view. My favorite learning I received from the book was the combination of the Long Tail theory together with Roger’s Diffusion of Innovations graphs. I’m sure there is more there to explore and write about.

Despite all this I enjoyed the book, it’s a solid good read. With slightly more depth it would have been a 5/5-star goodie. Then again, this could be me to whom most of the examples were relatively familiar. To the the regular marketing person in a large multinational, this is definitely and eye-opener.

I had the pleasure of having lunch with the former supreme administrative court justice Lauri Tarasti last week. He is writing a suggestion on the governance of the Finnish copyright law to the government of Finland and he wanted to hear my opinions on the law based on my work during the renewal of the law in 2005.

What I found interesting about him was the casual manner in which he went about, but he could afford it due to the massive understanding of the governance of issues in the Finnish judicial system. We went about discussing the backgrounds of the law, as one needs to understand the law to some degree before you can suggest who should be in charge of it. I told him about Lessig’s work in the US and how this has affected my thinking of the law and the matter in total. To my surprise when we discussed about the lenght of the current copyright law, he already knew of the Mickey Mouse theory.

However, I must say that our work during the autumn of 2005 was not in vain. A group consisting of four ministers, MO Justice, MO Education, MO Communications, MO Trade and Industry, has been formed to broaden the base on which these important decisions are made. Before, in 2005 more precisely, the sole decision of the law was made by the minister of education, Tanja Karpela - which we can all remember was very one sided and poorly prepared. Therefore I could conclude that we did manage to get something done!

It was a very interesting lunch with Mr Tarasti and he promised me to send the results of his work in May once he gets them ready. I’ll try and post the results as soon as I can.

I did some tuning of my website to get it into a 3 column layout. I also re-installed my Wordpress through Dreamhost’s oneclick install, which will help me save a lot of time in the future when upgrading into new versions. I can say that all this went a lot smoother then 3 to 5 years ago when you had to really get your hands dirty with the code.

I wrote a column for Talouselämä, a finnish magazine read by thousands of people each week. In the column I argued that companies still do not realise the potential of the internet. They also lack understanding of the new medium and vision to see it as a viable place to do business. I will upload the story scanned tomorrow, but here is the column on their website. Feedback is always appreciated.

You seldom find good stuff. Tonight I’ve found it I reckon. It rocks :)

Update: As the sharpest have realised the time of the post - I wasn’t at my best after a long night out. :)

Apologies for the low blogging activity here. I’ve been lately blogging more at my startup blog. We also organised an event last week in Dubrovnik that gathered some 40+ people who were interested in entrepreneurship and Finnish startups to network and discuss issues. Had lots of fun there and we’re most likely going to continue the tradition on a monthly basis. I’ve also been reading quite a bit. I’ve been reading Jaffe’s Join the Conversation as well as some of Paulo Coelho’s to balance out this hectic life of mine. I’ve really got into reading again and ordered three more books from Book Depository (my absolute favorite online bookstore).

I’ve really noticed the fragmentation of media in my own internet use - I can imagine how it must be for companies trying to connect with their customers. As you can probably guess, I’ve been really busy at work. We’re currently recruiting more professionals to join our ranks to balance out the load a bit and also enable controlled growth. Although I’ve been very busy at work, it’s been great - lots to learn and master. Loving everyday of it.

I’m sure I’ll pick up my blogging again as the summer gets closer :)