First up, popularity contests for websites! Experian Hitwise’s Top 10 Awards for the most popular UK websites in various categories include:
Entertainment – Arts: Guardian Culture, Tate, V&A, Royal Academy of Arts, National Gallery, Barbican, Easyart, Sky Arts, National Portrait Gallery, WorldGallery.
Entertainment – Performing Arts: Ambassador Theatres, What’s On Stage, National Theatre, The Stage, Royal Albert Hall, Royal Opera House, London Theatre Direct, Barbican, London Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company
Arts / digital links
This is an animated bubble chart the 270 most expensive artworks sold in auction since 2008 until the end 2011.
TED lost me a while back (a guy can only be shouted at so much in his free time) but I thought Wayne McGregor showing his creative process was very interesting.
I read things like this:
The biggest myth facing digital (and all the activities from social media, advertising, and marketing that fall under that title) is that it is still viewed as something that cannot fully track sales, being incorrectly lumped into the same categories as print, television, and radio.
from ARTSblog’s Digital Myths, Lies, and Three Steps to Recovery and despair for the arts sector. Is it really still a myth? It feels like many other sectors caught on to this a long time ago.
Remember the ‘everything will become a coffee shop’ theory? Add cultural venues to the list. There’s even the Coffee for Culture Awards. Dave Moutrey from the newly-named Home (pity any poor sod working with that keyword) has put in an early bid.
There are a couple of events coming up in London this month:
- A Culture Geek Meet on 16 October
- An Art of Digital London meet-up on cultural data on 16 October
Other links
I recognised a few things in Glenn Rogers’ 8 things I’ve learnt as an Interactive Producer / Project Manager. If anyone has any good suggestions for other blogs like this one then I’m all ears.
Thoughts on BitTorrent distribution for a public broadcaster:
If you want control of your content you need to lock it down in a vault and never show it to anyone. We gave up control of our content the day we started broadcasting. For years our most popular content have been available on BitTorrent and on sites like YouTube anyway. DRM doesn’t work. The only way to control your content is to be the best provider of it.
By way of background, Norwegian Broadcasting released one of their most popular shows via BitTorrent. As much as anything, you could see this as an attention-grab by a smaller player doing something the bigger boys wouldn’t or couldn’t. There might be lessons for other there.
Michael Lewis’s Vanity Fair article, Obama’s Way, was very good (Lewis is the guy who wrote Moneyball). I’d recommend reading Obama’s response to this:
Assume that in 30 minutes you will stop being president. I will take your place. Prepare me. Teach me how to be president.
Quick links:
- 55+ Google Analytics Custom Alerts includes alerts for such things as no data, site usage, goals, ecommerce, content, AdWords clicks and social media. Very handy.
- The Zooniverse describes itself as “home to the internet’s largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects”.
- Vimeo have introduced Creator Services including a tip jar and pay-to-view with more to come.
And yes, the video for the new Myspace was very impressive, although I’ve not come across anyone using it again. That’s a bit of a shame – for a while if you wanted to know more about a band that’s where you went. These days a band’s online presence is fractured across Twitter, Facebook, Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Bandpage, YouTube, their own website and whatever else.
Apps, services, etc
- Web: Google Tag Manager, Keek, Missing e, Page Monitor, Float, human.io, Clipboard
- WordPress: Liveblog