Bradley Howard's Blog

Views of digital media, innovation, loyalty and business in the real world

Review of my 2010 predictions

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Back in January I made 10 predictions for Digital Media for 2010. Being open and transparent, how did these predictions fair over the year?

  1. Reinvestment in Digital Media.
    2010 was a great year for agencies. We have implemented a number of very large websites, both brand new brands and existing ones. In terms of reinvestment, clients are now looking into cloud computing and full disaster recovery.
    Prediction rating: 10/10
  2. Lack of new products due to R&D being slashed in 2009.
    Looking back at new applications and products - what was released that made a big impact? The iPad (at the beginning of the year before being launched it was referred to as the iSlate). I predicted that the end of the year would see some launches, and Kinect was released in November. Before you start commenting that 2010 was the year of 3D TV, they were in fact launched in 2009.
    Prediction rating: 10/10 

  3. A number of live events on YouTube.
    Well, in September they launched live streaming. However I doubt most people really noticed. I'll knock some points off because I said "live is where the value is".
    Prediction rating: 8/10

  4. More Flex applications, less Silverlight.
    Hmmm - more site are using Flex (BBC iPlayer download for example). HTML 5 changed the landscape significantly, and due to the ongoing spat between Apple and Adobe, agencies are nervous about any single vendor, and will move to the latest version of HTML instead.
    Prediction rating: 3/10 

  5. SecondLife to further decline.
    Graph-volume1
    Second-what? The LindenX has just flattened out for the last couple of years - which means no more money is coming into the platform.
    Prediction rating: 9/10

  6. The UK to start accepting blogging at the same status as the US.
    Absolutely. UK news programmes now interview blogging experts for their views and opinions. Blogs are quoted in the press (errr, but so is Twitter, so maybe it's just reporters' laziness).
    Prediction rating: 10/10

  7. Offline browsers make a comeback.
    Perhaps 12 months ahead of it's time, this prediction didn't materialise. Before you think there is a gap in the market, we have been approached by a number of vendors in this space.
    Prediction rating: 2/10

  8. The FIFA World Cup sees huge use of video over mobile & broadband.
    It's easy to forget the World Cup this year. If you were streaming it though, your view of the summer was probably very different to England supporters. Internet traffic reached a record peak (of almost 1Tb/sec) due to video over mobile and broadband. 
    Prediction rating: 10/10

  9. Expect ebooks to take off.
    Ebooks have exceeded all expectations for booksellers, so I was correct there. However magazines, sports programmes and other paper publications have been slow to move to ebooks, mainly because Amazon and other ebook retailers want such a high slice of the revenue. So if you're a football club that sells a programme for £3 or £4, you really don't want a new middleman taking 20-30% of your revenue to sell the book electronically.
    Prediction rating: 5/10

  10. 2010... the year of Web CRM
    There is still a major opportunity for a cloud based platform with efficient pricing. I do not understand why there isn't a white label SSO platform out there. Let me know if you can recommend one.
    Prediction rating: 0/10

Pretty good going overall. Any more accurate and I'd be an octopus.

I'll post an article on 2011 predictions next week.

Photo courtesy of Shine 2010 - 2010 World Cup good news.


 

England 2018 Sponsorship vs social networks

England_2018_logos
The latest newsletter from the England 2018 'Back the bid' campaign shows the power of social networks - see the screenshot above.

Brands such as Morrisons, PWC, Umbro, British Airways and BT have spent a small fortune sponsoring the bid so far, and rightly see their logos at the bottom of all communications.

Below their logos are links to the social network where supporters of the bid can track any progress - and some of these logos are larger than the brands above!

When Yahoo! sponsored a Formula 1 team, they had to pay for it, however the market has changed so much, so quickly, that sports brands now embrace social networks (rightly so IMHO as a key traffic driver - no pun intended).


 

iPlayer downtime last night

Bbc-iplayer-logo

Last night I sat down with the wife to watch Top Gear. We realised we hadn't recorded it, so we went to iPlayer to watch it. Unfortunately iPlayer was down last night, presenting a rather humble and plain looking '403 Error'.

We look after some rather large sites at Endava, and I can only imagine what the poor techies at the BBC were going through last night - undoubtedly trying to roll back the latest code or environment changes, or work out where the extra traffic was coming from (simultaneously trying to work out what to do with it).

At times like that, I think that I think differently to other users - I start feeling sorry for the service provider (and specifically, the individuals there) rather than a 'typical' consumer complaining about where the service has gone.

The infamous England goal during the World Cup was the same - as soon as the advert on ITV HD came on during matchplay, my stomach curled up and I thought "someone feels really bad for this" - despite me missing out on the England goal at the time... although I must add that the conspiracy theorist in me questions whether it was a publicity stunt or not.

A client (who came from a traditional TV background) once said to me that the difference between the web and TV is that TV never goes down. With iPlayer on my TV at home - is that still really true?


 

Feeling sorry for South Africa

I feel quite sorry for South African football. For the 12 months before the tournament, the international press were red flagging that the stadia wouldn't be ready, South African's living abroad were red flagging that the security situation would result in mugged and dead tourists, yet the stadia were delivered on time, and we've seen an excellently (is that a real word?) run tournament.

Yet now, the press are all highlighting that South Africa are the first host nation not to qualify in the group stages.

I know good news doesn't sell, but the press should credit South Africa for being the first African nation to host the World Cup, especially to such an excellent, and unexpected, level of quality.


 

2.5 times as many people in the US watch soccer than golf

Some interesting facts and figures from SportBusiness this morning:

Sports network ESPN said the USA's 1-1 draw with England in its opening game of the World Cup was the most-watched game for a national soccer team since 1994.

The match, shown on ABC, averaged 13 million viewers and attracted the biggest US audience for any game at the tournament in South Africa so far, according to Bloomberg. [1]

Compare this to golf, with:

The first round of this year's US Masters golf tournament drew the biggest audience for a golf event in US cable television history last Thursday as Tiger Woods returned to the sport after nearly five months.

Bloomberg reports that an average 4.94 million viewers watched on ESPN, beating the previous record of 4.76 million for the 2008 US Open playoff between Woods and Rocco Mediate. [2]

 

One would have thought that golf is a far bigger sport in the US than 'soccer', but apparently not - these figures show that 2.5 times as many people in the US watch soccer than golf.

 

Sources: 

[1] http://www.sportbusiness.com/news/177724/espn-usa-england-most-watched-soccer-game-since-1994

[2] http://www.sportbusiness.com/news/174892/first-round-of-masters-breaks-us-viewing-record

 


 

FIFA World Cup Calendar

Fifa

marca.com

This site has the best Information Architecture that I've seen for ages. On the single page you can see what group every country is in and when and where they play each match.

Thanks to Firen for sending me the link first - and then I received it several times from others!


 

Bradley Howard

Head of Digital Media at Endava, although all the views in this blog are purely mine and not necessarily those of Endava.

 

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