Is Social Media Just Another Goldmine?

Amongst all the banal guff you get on Twitter, I decided to pose a philosophical question. Has Social Media done anything to better the world or is it just another goldmine?

To date, I haven't had a single reply. Perish the thought of a retweet. It isn't that surprising really as the lack of answers sort of answers the question.

The fact is that you could present arguments for and against. Only a few days ago I saw great sportsmen like Freddie Flintoff, Michael Vaughan, Graeme McDowell and many more create a trend on Twitter for a young girl with terminal cancer which was part of her 'bucket list'. I see Marieme Jamme developing a narrative for Africa through her activities in Social Media, today her questions were on vaccination programs. I dare say we have plenty of examples of this kind of 'force for good' that some use Social Media for.

Equally, I could just say that most tweets are from attention-seeking wannabes who just like the sound of their own tweets.

Despite the incredible growth in Social Media and the massive usage, we still fight wars, people still starve and there is still incredible social injustice everywhere we look. Although Twitter can claim some small victory in helping debunk the idiot law on Super Injunctions, it has done little else to further social causes beyond the promotion of individual plights, though often for very worthy motives.

In reality, the biggest buzz about the whole phenomenon is about the valuations of each platform. Vast, astronomical amounts of money are being talked of and paid in some instances. It seems the ultimate motives behind Social Media are ones of greed and vast personal wealth.
Perhaps I am being idealistic but when I saw such powerful tools for interaction and networking come into being I did believe that at least one side effect would be that more people could communicate for the good. Perhaps we could find out that we have more in common with Muslims than we don't. Perhaps the same could be said of the Chinese. But when money's at stake, the only reason that we gripe about China's crackdown on Google and Facebook is because we cannot exploit the vast population there for 'monetisation' not because we really care about freedom of thought or speech.

Will Social Media be the biggest opportunity ever missed? Will we only really care about our personal standings in Klout and PeerIndex or measure our personal worth on our numbers of followers? Or will we ever care about changing an unfair world?

In no small way, Simon Cowell was blocked from his tasteless commercial hijacking of Christmas when an Internet wave made 'Rage against the machine' the Christmas No. 1 instead of it being the automatic right of the X Factor winner. That tiny, trivial rebellion illustrated the power we have at our fingertips.

It's just a fact that Tim Berners-Lee and all the originators of the information world we now exploit never made a bean out of it. Their vision was for an opportunity for us all to communicate and share ideas. Somewhere along the way, a bunch of people hijacked the concept and made fortunes.

Don't get me wrong, we all need to earn a living but are we missing the point on Social Networking?

The Man Who Hijacked Christmas

Call me a cynic. Simon Cowell has, as I am one of those who is just delighted that the Rock Band 'Rage Against The Machine' is challenging the single by the X Factor winner, Joe McThingie, for the No. 1 slot at Christmas.

I admit I know naff all about this band and their single, 'Killing In The Name', is about as Christmassy as 'God Save The Queen' by the Sex Pistols but this is one in the eye against the 'Formula' that makes Cowell and his backers millions each year. To boot, young Joe's voice is one I have heard many times before but cannot put names to it and the single, 'The Climb' is sugary claptrap, hastily put together to target the sales cycles that will get it into the charts for Christmas. If that is the standard of British music this year, then we have not progressed much. On the album side, Susan Boyle is dominating with historic high sales on Amazon.com - at least she has a profoundly different voice and helps light up old songs. McThingie, meanwhile, is all formula even though his voice is very good he brings little new life to existing songs as Will Young embarrassingly did not either.

The 'Formula' is cynically designed by Cowell & Co. The X Factor show serves up on a plate an audience participation melee which is carefully designed to build up to Christmas so that he delivers a package of around 30m viewers to his advertisers ensuring he gets top dollar on rates while a guarantee of a No. 1 single for the winner, regardless of what tripe they sing - it really does not matter as a big proportion of the audience who voted for the winner will buy the single even if they sang 'Bah, Bah Black Sheep' - frankly.

And that's how Simon Cowell has hijacked Christmas.

But two can play at that game. Cowell spends a good deal of his vast profit to ensure that the 'Formula' delivers the hit single at the right time via the prodigious viewing figures of the show. What is new is that the internet has the ability, through social networking, to take the germ of an idea of an individual and spread virally - for free - across the globe and get people to do things. The 'Formula' would not work if it cannot guarantee the Christmas No. 1 and Cowell will be a few pence poorer as a result.

But there is more than that at stake. Britain has always been the seeding ground of cutting edge music from Punk Rock to Glam Rock to Northern Soul - we have a history of innovation in music that comes from the grass roots. This whole Christmas affair is one strike back for the people who still fight to get on the bill of the local pub or club, who take their demo tapes around by hand to studios, who busk at Underground stations in the hope of being discovered. Talent endures and karaoke is just rehashing old songs with a slight difference and while that has a place, surely it is not at the top of the charts at Christmas.

While I am on the subject, I saw the dreadful video and song by Cheryl Cole the other day. She is beautiful, have no doubt, but dressed in stupid clothes and made up to look like some dominatrix took away all the good things about her. It's like the hair advert she does - all is fine until she opens her mouth and even some of that is dubbed. Talent does rise to the top - I am not that much of a cynic, but surely when we have grown bored with the 'Formula', as inevitably we will, the likes of Ms. Cole, as gorgeous as she is, will outlive their purpose.

I actually think it is Simon Cowell who has cynically used his 'Formula' to manipulate Christmas to fuel his personal wealth and excite the likes of Sir Philip Green to back the worldwide advance of the X Factor to make him even richer. Good luck to the guy - each to his own and he works hard for his success.

But let's make Christmas ours again. If Rage Against The Machine achieves that, then I am all for cynicism.

Predictions For 2010

As 2009 closes out and most of us want to close the door on it as fast as possible, still more bad news wallops us causing Lord Mandelson to shout that the loss of 1,700 jobs at the Corus plant as, 'Galling'.

So our thoughts start to turn to the year ahead - to a world of old rate VAT and the potential emergence, at last, from technical recession although verbally we have been assured the world is fine according to our leaders. I started to do my own bit of research on the subject of what we might expect ahead and I came a across a very helpful prediction site hosted by a bunch of psychics at http://www.psychics.co.uk/. But then again, some of you already knew I would do that.



Read them for yourselves but my favourites are:

• As commanded by Gordon Brown, Osama bin Ladin will die. No doubt Pakistan will be short of spin bowlers and select him, where he will be recognised as a famous terrorist leader and be shot by a sniper.


• An unspecified MP will be caught performing an indecent act in a public toilet. This is a safe bet as surely we have had one a year for a while or are we talking about indecent acts as 'flipping' now?


• A secret human cloning experiment attempts to clone a famous person - I can confirm the person in question will be Bruce Forsyth in order to extend the show beyond his years but wig makers are still dubious about being able to hide the join line.


• Barack Obama expresses an interest in holistic healing and it becomes a watchword in his speeches. He will be seen on live TV sipping his own urine while having his face covered in leeches.


• Britain and Germany make a green energy agreement and a huge new wind turbine farm will be constructed just outside the front doors of Parliament. Plenty of wind coming out of there.


• Quantum physicists will find a way to get electricity from water, and the MP caught in the act in the toilet will claim he was merely testing the theory.


• A celebrity is kidnapped and huge ransom is demanded, but the kidnappers got the name from Ant and Dec's list and so no one has ever heard of them.


• Britain will withdraw all troops from Afghanistan bar a few token ones from the 1st Battalion of Sitting Ducks. Straw prices go through the roof in anticipation of the draw for the short ones.


• A strike by Civil Servants will cause widespread disruption as the country struggles to find out why it has no effect on anything and no one misses them at work.

So here a few of my predictions in the same vain:

• Gordon Brown saves a baby from drowning and wins a landslide at the election as his popularity as a world superhero soars. An independent inquiry 30 years later reveals that not only Lord Mandelson threw the baby in but the real one did drown and Brown saved the plastic replica.


• Bankers agree to give up all rights to any bonuses for 50 years and most take their holidays working in parts of Africa worst affected by drought, starvation and disease.


• England come narrowly close to winning the World Cup when they are beaten in the first round by Algeria and drawing 0-0 with Slovenia after heroically beating USA. But due to a countback on non-qualifying dives, lack of unnecessary referee abuse and no hand balls they are tragically eliminated for lack of unfair play. David Beckham announces his retirement to pursue a career in banking and Wayne Rooney becomes a monk.


• Osama bin Ladin doesn't die but is actually found hiding out on the wing for Scotland's rugby team.


• MPs vote for abolishment of all expenses is a popular move, but go onto a lucrative bonus scheme in aiming to halve the budget deficit by 2014 - Brown earns £10m in 2010 as he hits the first milestone.


• X Factor is syndicated all over the world and Simon Cowell becomes the inaugural First World President by popular vote with Cheryl Cole narrowly missing out in s sing-off. Louis Walsh is condemned to death as a traitor to the cause in the first public decree while Sharon Osbourne is put under house arrest for life as a dissenter.

I'll work on a few more real ones in the coming weeks, but I am sure that unless you were part of the groups who won the £90m Euromillions last month, you just can't wait to see the back of 2009.

'Stinging' Attack

With a pretentious name like Sting, it's a tough call to say that the X Factor is 'TV Karaoke'.

He may have a few gold albums, Grammys and whatnot under his belt, but Sting doesn't seem to know his music after all. He has launched a pretty scathing attack on the X Factor branding it a 'soap opera with has nothing to do with music'.

He sort of gets it but he doesn't. The X factor, as everyone knows, has nothing to do with music but everything to do with a few people making a very great deal of money.

The fact that the public funds the entire contest plus the advertising over the endless monotony of each series, culminating with the play off between two acts guaranteed to get hit singles as the public has to maintain its loyalty, seems to elude him. The acts are just the fodder for the public and should any of them have an iota of talent, they signed away the rights to any real earnings at their applications for the first audition. None are expected to last - that's not the point as the next series provides the ongoing revenues. Why should Cowell care if anyone is actually any good?

Yes, it is about Simon Cowell self promotion and, no, it isn't about helping kids fulfil their dream. It is a rock solid formula to exploit the public's fascination with the sad spectacle of, and participation in, human competition, embarrassment and rejection. The cynical exploitation of Susan Boyle nearly ruined a genuinely sweet person's life but it has helped maintain a long forgotten career of a person who avoided the 'ugly stick' mainly thanks to the skills of a good plastic surgeon.

The formula is repeating in all formats from Strictly Come Dancing, to the ice skating version, and much more. But like it's forerunners of talent shows they all come to the end of their line - as even Big Brother did. By then, Simon Cowell will be very, very wealthy and, hopefully, forgotten. The one legacy will be that youngsters will think that success can come on a plate and last when it really doesn't. Will Young has shuffled away after his monotonous rendition of the classic soul song 'Come on baby light my fire' which was an embarrassment as well as an insult and it shows that while there is a voice, it does not mean you have talent. The lack of creativity is frightening as the performers even get told what to wear, steps to dance and how to behave. I somehow long for someone to bring back the days of wrecked hotel rooms, dead chickens and drug-laced blank interviews.

Sting needs to get a life and maybe prolong his career by doing a cover version of Jedward's first hit single. Which will probably be a cover version of one of his song's but only he will spot that.

Two Rules, Same Issue

Hot foot from his sleazy holiday on an expensive boat in Corfu, courtesy of David Geffen of Dreamworks, Lord Mandelson personally intervened to strengthen laws against those who download music or films illegally. He did not attack the real perpetrators of the crimes, those who steal the content, but the people who take advantage.

Think about this. Suppose you invent something really clever and you then patent it. Next step, you bring it to market somehow and you find it is serving a need and it becomes successful. The next thing you know, another company or individual steals the exact same idea, even though you have a patent, and starts to make and then sell an almost identical product at a slightly less price. You would have incurred all the development costs associated with bringing the real thing to market, the 'cloner' would have simply capitalised on all that expense and taken a slightly lower margin to whip you with the same idea.

In law, there is nothing stopping people buying the 'cloned' product. We are getting some pretty poor attempts to stop the illegal trading of designer label goods like clothes, but that's a brand protection issue not inventions. Realistically patents are swiped every day in the area of technology and there is huge money in it. If the owner of the patent wants to do anything about it, then they can only sue the violator of their patent and that is a long, expensive and nasty process. You only have to look at what happens when you see Apple's incredibly long running dispute with Microsoft over the infringement on their patent on an operating system using windows.

Notice how this long running sore and drain on people's ideas has never been tackled. Despite serial inventors like Trevor Baylis lobbying Mandelson, nothing will get done as he has no expensive yacht and he wields no power in the world of business and commerce. There are no plumb non-executive jobs at stake or any movements in the world of the rich and famous. Inventing can be the grubby domain of garage-based grease monkeys who have passion and commitment, for who the money is really a bonus - it is the invention that provides the stimulus.

Not so in the high octane world of David Geffen and his peers. The laboratories and offices are full of the latest hi-tech kit and littered with the brainiest of talent who work on taking other people's ideas and turning them into films. Often, unless you are people like JK Rowling, who have their own way of controlling their income by having the much needed sequels in their head, the writers get little return compared to the producers, actors and others who distribute the content in the digital world. The popstars have to be pretty hot and consistent to keep the mincing machine going which is why people like Geffen and Cowell deal in the numbers game - and are so incredibly rich.

In the new digital world, it is the creators and inventors who are preyed upon by the likes of Google who take their content like any old piece of junk and just distribute it. Today you can buy ebooks by any old duff author who couldn't sell an actual book alongside the classics. Google is strangling the life out of news too by making the value of the content almost worthless but the distribution is worth billions.

So in the new digital age, Mandelson rides roughshod over inventors who have genuine patents logged and waves two fingers at them by focusing laws only on the digital age. He has even made those laws geared toward the downloaders, the equivalent of nobbling those of us who by PCs with Windows, which was 'allegedly' invented by Apple. It's actually the wrong way around as you need to stop the actual thieves.

But no, life at the top is all about being smooched by rich people. Laws are crafted far more carefully if wealthy people directly gain as then you have some favours to call in later. The new Digital Britain Laws are absolutely barking up the wrong tree. If content, illegally replicated is made available on the web, the people who replicated it should be the ones prosecuted. There is so much free content made available on the web, it is crazy to implement laws which puts the onus on individual users to check the intellectual property rights of the source of their download - it is sheer lunacy and flies in the face of digital media and freedom to access content. This is a problem the software and media industry should solve, not users.

Mandelson has got it completely wrong. Should he now be attacking all of us for not checking whether Microsoft has infringed any IP before we buy their products? No, he doesn't ask us that but frankly, there is a fair bet they have in many cases judging by the amount of companies who sue them each year. Such companies are far too rich and nice in his eyes to bring a case against them. The same actually goes for David Geffen and his peer companies - have they observed the rights of all the individuals and companies they should have in producing their content?

Why should ISPs knowlingly allow illegal content to be made available via their portals to the web - why are they not prosecuted instead of their customers?

This is a huge blow to the individual freedom of any user of a PC and having access to the web. It has meant that we, the users, are responsible for checking the validity of the IP of all content, not the people who distribute it. Content aggregators like Google, ISPs, telecom companies, and all others who present content to us over the web just got off scot free. Should anybody who is prosecuted under these new laws have a case against their ISP for allowing the content to be downloaded in the first place?

The users have become the criminals, the people the furthest from the source of the alleged crimes. Welcome to Digital Britain, Mandelson style.