It is great to see so much attention being paid to measurement of the Internet. In many respects life was much easier before multiple niche news sites, blogs and the rest blurred the channels of communication to the point where the most accurate form of internet measurement is referred to as ‘buzz’.
This barometer of Internet activity seeks (in a semi-scientific way) to isolate and highlight the key influencers, motive and message relevant to an industry sector, organisation or brand.
Take a step back… before the Internet finding out who the key influencers were in the media was relatively simple. This is changing and with more people aged under 25 sourcing their news online, as opposed to from the traditional press (source: Carnegie Foundation, 2005) this trend will continue to the point where we could start to regard the newspapers as a non-core source of coverage.
Hi Michael.
Dead right. In fact now the BBC is spending so much time with Second Life and will be offering a capability for people to mashup BBC content to create their own ‘Personal Radio Station’ life will be even more difficult for PR evaluation.
Uptake of digitally derived news distribution will come in a great rush – but not quite yet. It is already quite common among young people and some specific demographic groups.
I am not sure how long it will be for under 25’s (its my birthday on Friday and I need to trasnpose the number to come up with 16!). I guess most of my news now comes via the Internet or my cell phone and it is trend that will become mainstream.
What is interesting at present is how we find out if coverage in one medium prompts someone in another medium to ‘do something’ e.g. write about a press article in a blog. That takes us closer to finding out the extent to which an article was afective (I have some excellent student research in this area which worked out well).