In day to day life not many people have seen a ‘real life’ magician, guessing worldwide there are 100,000 who practice this subject and far less who make a living from it which is quite a small number respectivly. Unless your a high flyer that attends banquets / hospitality suites or a regular at ‘corporate do’s’ chances are you have never experienced ‘good magician’ first hand.
As there are no guidelines for hiring a magician I thought I’d offer some professional advice. I love my craft and always ofen hear of horror stories and dissapointment from bookers at corporate events who have found someone off the web. Bad magic(ians) ultimately Impacts on our business as people tend to generalize and expect all magic to be the same.
Conjuring can really shine out when it’s performed to a high standard. There are many great performers who purvey there art you just need to know where to look and what to ask! A great magician can get your party talked about for years to come! Pound for pound magic / mind-reading acts are the best way to break-the-ice at your party, It’s fun, enthralling and above all entertaining (if performed well). Magic can involve the audience in a way no other entrainment comes close! It can be emloyed for audiences from 1 to 1000. It is perfect for any age group or social type from an 18th birthday to a golden wedding; From Shoredich in the East End (E5) of London to West End, (W1) Red Carpet and many places in-between.
Type in ‘Magician London’ you’ll be surprised how many names pop up, how do you pick the right man / woman for the job? Do you book on price, face value, page rank, ad words, recommendation or just take a pot luck guess!
Top 10 bits of advice to consider when hiring a magician for a party.
1. What Type of party are you holding?
So, you want to hire a magian for your corporate event or private bash. First question you have to ask is why exactly do I want to hire a magician? Ask yourself when will they perform, what will they bring to the party? Are you are holding a quiet intimate event for your closest friends and relatives or is it a huge lavish event, all signing and dancing? Where do you see the magician taking his place. Is it a Mix and mingle type party or a sit down dinner? Will they be on stage, pre-dinner, during the cocktail hour, during coffee? Will they be the main featured entertainer or just part of the background entertainment? 2 . How many guests are attending?
For numbers up to 80 / 100 normally 1 magician would be enough to circulate amongst guests for 2 hours or so, Sometimes if the number is under 30 an inexperienced performer will struggle with depth of ‘quality material’ if booked for a duration of more than an hour. Don’t forget anyone can call themselves a magician if they know 3 or more tricks and have a website. Make sure to ask how big there repertoire is! Also find out if they have worked in that type of situation before!
3. Not much is worse than watching a bad magician!
If you witness a ‘bad magician’ you feel sorry for them; then embarrassed for everyone watching! (Picture the initial rounds of X factor!) As a Craft / Art there is no room for error, you either have great magic effects that astound or not! Your booking a magician or mindreader to entertain and astound you guests with things they will possibly never experience again! Unless on TV!
You don’t want to hear this conversation!!!
Laughing audience member “Hey mister I can see that card hidden in your hand, call yourself a magician, don’t give up the day job will you”!
Magician “I don’t care as I’ve already been paid, well… I normally get away with it, but dot tell the booker”!
Think to yourself how you want to judge the performer at the event. Do you want riotous applause or prefer stunned silence. The former is great for a fun 18th Birthday but maybe not so suitable for a room full of CEO’s.
4. Have you received a personal recommendation?
If you’ve had a personal recommendation from a friend Is always a fantastic start all you just need then is to perhaps see a demo of what they do either live or on a showreel. Ask if they perform as a resident magician anywhere. Every magician will tell you they are the best thing since sliced bread, magicians can be a funny lot, they comprise of numerous types… egotists, wannabe playboys and others which the article cares to mention. Thankfully most of the others out there really care about there audience and put maximum time and effort ito there show.
5. Testimonials and Kudos that can be substantiated?
Most websites are filled with quotes from past events, some from ‘Joe public’ some from the ‘rich and famous’. How can you find out if they are real? Well you could ask for copies of letters of endorsement, or they could perhaps forward you an email. Maybe they could give you the backstory when or how they met ‘X’ famous person an then recount what happened, they can back it up with a photo. (Some magicians have photos on there site and have never performed for the star) Cheeky monkeys! Basically you will know if they feel genuine after an initial chat.
Your magician may be a member of the Magic Circle this is not a guarantee and will not tell you how suitable they are for you. Members comprise of, amateur, semi professional and professional. (Even at different ranks which are in the organisation / club)
Note : Some of the best magicians in the world are of an amateur nature, but lack real life performance hours, which are Invaluable.
6. Has the magician got a showreel, what type of website do they have.
Does the magician have a good professional website? Has it got current content perhaps a blog of all there latest shows? What about video content and / or Youtube links? Is there anything written outlining there past history? (articles / press cuttings) These will give an indication to the depth knowlege and to show how long they been performing in the entertainment business.
What ‘Image’ does there site and publicity give out? Good / Bad or Indifferent. Would they fit with your own Ideals or that of your corporation? Does the site offer simple advise for booking a magician as outlined in this document?
7. How confident are you in a relative stranger mix with your guests?
Foremost a magician should build an instant rapport with the audience. It is even more important than the tricks themselves as if the audience doesn’t like the ‘them’ then how are they going to enjoy the show? If you are a corporate booker reading it reflects on you! If it’s a corporate affair its essential to have at least spoken to you ‘Magic Man’ on the phone! Ideally they have great references of from other blue chips and can back up with articles written in the press. If you find someone you like Its worthwhile building a relationship with them and use them for all of your events.
Former head bartender Mr Peter Dorelli (Whom worked at the Savoy Hotel London for 40 years) answered the question “What makes a great bartender”! his answer was quite simple “Would I invite this person into my living room for a cup of tea and a biscuit….” A bartender like a magician is an entertainer just a different medium! “Its all about having a good character that you find confortable to be around”!
8. Vibe!
So, You’ve spoken to ‘Mr Magic’ on the phone, looked at there website, been given a recommendation. BUT remember this is your event, only you know who you are inviting and have your expectations. Is ‘Mr Magic’ up to it? Perhaps you feel that they’ve over sold themselves? Or conversly really don’t seem that interested. Hopefully they’ll they blend in and enhance the event and be a HUGE hit!
Think what type of manner do they have? Serious, comedy, cheesy, slick, avant-garde, old school, contemporary, mysterious, quick witted, middle of the road, fresh, funky, gritty, or silky-smooth?
Once again when speaking to ‘Mr Magic’ relate all relevant information themes and details about your event to get the most out of them at the party!
9. How much does a close-up magician cost direct?
Here is a rough guide on Price dated London, UK area 2008.
£0-100 – You might ask a friend that is a magician as a mate rate at a house party. (Token Gesture)
£100 – £350 – You would get a semi professional magician / amateur that is glad of the cash (and work) as an aside from his regular income. Don’t expect to much from this type of performer. But you could even strike lucky.
£450 – £550 – You could expect to get a fairly good magician for this type of money midweek in London and UK
£650 – £850 – You’ll get a top professional for this type of money but ask for guaranteed references. Maybe even go and see them if they have a show on or work at a residency. Get there vibe as each performer is different! Price for 1.5 / 2.5 hours Mix and mingle.
£850 – £1500 For this you should get a first rate act that could perform a set show for small amount of people for 45 min to an Hour or even for a mix and mingle price for 2 / 3 hours
£POA some performers do charge more if the show is of a High Caliber for celebrity clients due to the pressure and standing of the event. Make sure you are confident perhaps meet with them or they have representation by a proper agent.
10 – Sites to look at :-
Agencies will naturally add a percentage on top of the fee but have normally vetted all the acts to ensure the best quality.
On last tip when calling put them on the spot with this sneaky question “Who they would hire if it was there party”! Then go quiet and wait for an answer!
If you’re going to be visiting London for the first time, you’d be wise to maximize the use of your time in this amazingly vast, divers and historical metropolis by prioritizing. Following are five London attractions which should be must-sees on your list of things to do!
Piccadilly Circus
No, we’re not suggesting that you spend some of your precious hours in London under a bigtop. Piccadilly Circus, at the intersection of five of London’s major thoroughfares, is the British equivalent of New York’s Times Square, with neon-lit glitz to suit. If you want London nightlife, head for Piccadilly Circus, where your fun will be watched over by the roundabout’s fountain and statue of the archer now called simply “Eros.”
Piccadilly Circus is named for the piccadill collar so popular among gentlemen of the 17th century, and within a block or two of Piccadilly today are some of London’s most avant-garde fashion shops. Piccadilly Circus is also within walking distance of several London arcades, the precursors of today’s shopping malls.
Trafalgar Square and the London Brass Rubbing Centre
If your trip to London is a family affair, or you simply love to collect unique souvenirs of your travels, a trip to the Crypt at St.-Martin-in-the-Fields Church at Trafalgar Square will be well worth your time. At the Church’s Brass Rubbing Center, you can purchase a kit of papers and special waxes, and do your own rubbings of characters straight out of British history, from knights in armor and damsels in distress to Shakespeare himself. If you make a mistake with your rubbing technique, the staff at the Brass Rubbing Centre will be right there to undo the damage!
No matter the time of day, you can have a meal at the Brass Rubbing Centre’s café in the Crypt, where you’ll be treated to traditional British food at its best from a full English breakfast with a high tea or evening dinner. Your meal will be freshly prepared with ingredients from British suppliers.
The London Telecom Tower
Located on Howland Street in London’s West End, the London Telecom tower was formerly the Post Office Tower, and until 1981 was the tallest (at 620 feet) tower in London. It’s constructed of steel, concrete, and glass, with a design which is both stylish and highly wind-resistant. It’s the heart of Britain’s telecommunications network, with numerous enormous satellite dishes visible on its upper stories.
The Changing of the Guards
Christopher Robin and Alice were quite fond of the changing of the guards at Buckingham Palace, and they weren’t alone. The Changing of the Guards is one of London’s major tourist draws, seen by countless visitors each year. You should check in advance of your visit to Buckingham Palace to determine if there will be a Changing of the guards on that day. Bring along a camera, because you can have your picture take with a guard whose duty it is to have his photo snapped with visitors.
Big Ben
None of its other landmarks is more recognizable than London’s Big Ben. Visible from a distance of several miles, Big Ben looks down n the Houses of Parliament from a height of 316 feet, and was completed in 1859. Its hands are 14 feet in length, while its clock mechanism weighs over five tons. For security reason, however, only UK residents are allowed inside Big Ben’s tower.
Three of these attractions are on every London visitor’s must-see list, while two if them may be less well-known. But they are just a small sample of the wonders which await you on your London trip, and simply a place to begin!
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Blogging news stories as they unfold, in real-time, is one of the most exciting and controversial applications of blogging today.
Blogging news stories as they unfold, in real-time, is one of the most exciting and controversial applications of blogging today. One Blogging New Journalism thing that makes the blogosphere so active is the fact that it is possible to update a blog instantaneously, so the news on blogs tends to be more current than the news in the paper, or on television. Unlike traditional news media, news that appears on blogs does not have to travel through a maze of editors and administrators before it’s delivered to the general public. This “New Journalism” has some advantages, and some distinct disadvantages.
One of the most notable cases of news hitting a blog before appearing in traditional media took place in July 2005 when terrorism struck London. As passengers were evacuated from a subway car near an explosion, one man took several photographs of the scene with his cellular phone, and within an hour these images were posted online. First-person accounts of the catastrophe began appearing on blogs, soon after these photos appeared, and people all over the world learned about the events in London by reading the words and seeing the photos posted by bloggers.
The fact that these stories and images were being shared directly by individuals operating without the added filter of a reporter, made the crisis feel very immediate and personal to people across the globe.
Individuals sharing information across open, unfiltered communication channels, known as social networking, is a way of life in the Happy News Reporters blogosphere. When it comes to blogging news stories, individuals report in a very personal context, thus making the information that much more appealing to the mass blogging audience. This has the potential to be the beginning of an exciting new era of reporting, one that takes “New Journalism” to it’s logical next step by putting the power to shape how the news is written and read directly into the hands of the public.
Many bloggers and cultural commentators who are champions of the movement feel that this growing trend; of individuals sharing and receiving their news from blogs, is a good thing as it facilitates a more democratic flow of information. Neutralizing the control of information, by blogging news stories, allows more voices to be heard on important current events.
However, there are many that would, and do, disagree. Those that oppose “New Journalism” argue that unlike traditional media, blogs do not provide for a fact check and therefore there is no accountability measures in place. This can result in a very rapid and massive spread of misinformation. In fact, more than one such “falsehood” has taken the blogosphere by storm.
The debate over whether blogging news stories, as they happen and whether it is ethical or not, can become very complicated, but no matter which side of this debate you stand on relative to blogging news stories, you are almost sure to agree that this movement, “New Journalism”, IS revolutionizing how modern people get their news.
Blogging news stories as they unfold is one of the most exciting and controversial applications of technology that bloggers have discovered. One thing that makes the blogosphere so active is the fact that it is possible to update a blog instantaneously, so the news on blogs tends to be more current than the news in the paper, or on television. Unlike news delivered by these other media, news that appears on blogs does not have to travel through a series of editors and administrators before it reaches the public eye. This has some advantages, and some distinct disadvantages.
One of the most notable cases of news hitting a blog before appearing in other media took place in July 2005 when terrorism struck London. You can log on www.atoz-about-rss.com as passengers were evacuated from a subway car near an explosion, one man took several photographs of the scene with his cellular phone, and within an hour these images were posted online. First-person accounts of the catastrophe began appearing on blogs soon after these photos appeared, and people all over the world learned about the events in London by reading the words and seeing the photos posted by bloggers.
The fact that these stories and images were being spread directly by individuals operating without the added filter of a reporter helped to make the crisis feel very immediate to people across the globe. When it comes to blogging, news often appears in a very personal context. This has the potential to be the beginning of an exciting new era of reporting, one that takes “New Journalism” to it’s logical next step by putting the power to shape how the news is written and read directly into the hands of the public.
Many bloggers and cultural commentators who are champions of the weblog movement feel that this growing trend of individuals who getting their news from blogs is a good thing, because it makes the flow of information more democratic. By decentralizing the control of news, blogs allow more voices to enter the field of debate about important current events. Or go to www.your-own-blog.com However, many people are adamantly opposed to the use of blogs as news outlets, and there are plenty of good arguments on this side of the debate. Unlike newspapers or television stations, few blogs have fact- checkers, and there is little attention paid to journalistic accountability on many blogs. This can lead to the rapid spread of misinformation, and more than one falsehood has taken the blogosphere by storm.
The questions about whether blogging news as it happens is ethical or not are very complicated, but no matter where you stand on the topic of current events blogs you are almost sure to agree that this movement has the potential to revolutionize how modern people get their news.
Blogging news stories as they unfold is one of the most
exciting and controversial applications of technology
that bloggers have discovered. One thing that makes the
blogosphere so active is the fact that it is possible to
update a blog instantaneously, so the news on blogs
tends to be more current than the news in the paper, or
on television. Unlike news delivered by these other
media, news that appears on blogs does not have to
travel through a series of editors and administrators
before it reaches the public eye. This has some
advantages, and some distinct disadvantages.
One of the most notable cases of news hitting a blog
before appearing in other media took place in July 2005
when terrorism struck London. As passengers were
evacuated from a subway car near an explosion, one
man took several photographs of the scene with his
cellular phone, and within an hour these images were
posted online. First-person accounts of the catastrophe
began appearing on blogs soon after these photos
appeared, and people all over the world learned about
the events in London by reading the words and seeing
the photos posted by bloggers.
The fact that these stories and images were being spread
directly by individuals operating without the added
filter of a reporter helped to make the crisis feel very
immediate to people across the globe. When it comes to
blogging, news often appears in a very personal context.
This has the potential to be the beginning of an exciting
new era of reporting, one that takes “New Journalism”
to it’s logical next step by putting the power to shape
how the news is written and read directly into the hands
of the public.
Many bloggers and cultural commentators who are champions
of the weblog movement feel that this growing trend of ind-
ividuals who are getting their news from blogs is a good thing, because it makes the flow of information more democratic. By decentralizing the control of news, blogs allow more voices to enter the field of debate about important current events.
However, many people are adamantly opposed to the use of
blogs as news outlets, and there are plenty of good arguments
on this side of the debate. Unlike newspapers or tv stations,
few blogs have fact-checkers, and there is little attention paid
to journalistic accountability on many blogs. This can lead to
the rapid spread of misinformation, and more than one false
report has taken the blogosphere by storm. The questions
about whether blogging news as it happens is ethical or not
are very complicated, but no matter where you stand on the
topic of current events blogs you are almost sure to agree
that this movement has the potential to revolutionize how
modern people get their news.
Blogging for Profit Begins With a Long Term Plan
Many people dream of blogging for profit, and this goal is not far beyond the reach of someone with average intelligence, a willingness to work hard, and a basic grasp of blogging tech. However, very few people manage to reap the profits they want from their own blogs. Most people who attempt to make money with their blogs do not succeed for two reasons.
Often, bloggers have unrealistic expectations of how fast their
readership will grow and how much money they will make, and when these expectations are not met the disappointment can crush the desire to continue blogging. The other trap that many bloggers fall into has to do with lack of planning. If you want to turn a profit as a blogger, the key to success is to make a real
life plan and stick with it.
To succeed at blogging for profit, the main thing that you will
need is a large readership. The higher your traffic, the more advertisers will agree to pay you.
However, cultivating the regular visitors that you will need in
order to make a profit isn’t easy. As more and more blogs
each day, having a great idea or a wonderful writing style is
no longer enough to get attention. You need to be able to
market your blog effectively.
Too many bloggers spend all of their time writing posts and
almost no time marketing their project. To be certain, updating
as often as you can is a great way to keep your blog high on
blogrolls and high in blog search engines like technorati,
and once your readers know that you update frequently they
will return to your site on a regular basis.
However, it does not matter how often you update if nobody
is reading your page, so don’t skimp on the time that you
spend drawing visitors to your site. To make your dreams
of blogging for profit a reality, try decreasing your number
of posts and using some of that time to draw new visitors
by setting up link exchanges with other bloggers, making
contacts in the blog community, and following other
established modes of winning traffic.
Of course, even if you are a marketing genius or have a really
great idea for a blog, success is not going to happen overnight.
Building the kind of readership that blogging for profit requires
takes a lot of time, and in all likelihood it will be at least several
months before you are able to turn much of a profit. Try to stay
committed to your blogging project during this initial rough
period. To stay motivated, set goals for how often you will update and how many readers you want to attract, and then reward yourself for sticking with your plan.
Blogging for news stories as they unfold is one of the most exciting and controversial applications of technology that bloggers have discovered. One thing that makes your blogging so active is the fact that it is possible to update instantaneously, so the news tends to be more current than the news in the paper, or on television. Unlike news delivered by these other media, news that appears on blogs does not have to travel through a series of editors and administrators before it reaches the public eye. This has some advantages, and some distinct disadvantages.
One of the most notable cases of news hitting blogs before appearing in other media took place in July 2005 when terrorism struck London. As passengers were evacuated from a subway car near an explosion, one man took several photographs of the scene with his cellular phone, and within an hour these images were posted online. For more help go to www.greatblogbox.com. First person accounts of the catastrophe began appearing on blogs soon after these photos appeared, and people all over the world learned about the events in London by reading the words and seeing the photos posted by bloggers.
Video blogs has a lot of advantages over text based, and it is little wonder that this new technology is catching on all over the globe. Video blogs very effectively grab the attention of web surfers, and people are much more likely to become excited about the dynamic content of a video blogging than they are likely to find a written posting very thrilling. The more enthusiastic viewers are about a site, the quicker the word of mouth spreads, and the more traffic the site will get.
Of course, there are plenty of disadvantages to video bloggers as well. Hosting a video blog requires quite a bit of server space, which can make it difficult to get started. It takes more time to process and upload a video file than it does to dash off a quick bit of text, which means that running and updating a video blog can be quite a bit of work. In addition, web surfers sometimes grow frustrated with the slow loading times of the files on many video blogs. Whether you opt for a video blog or not depends on what kind of subject matter you want to cover, and before you decide to pursue a video blog, consider if there is an easier way for you to get your message across.
If you are blogging with the goal of selling advertising, there are two basic ways that you can go about recruiting sponsors who want to put ads on your site; you can let someone else do all of the legwork, or you can do the work yourself and keep all of the revenue. Within the first group, many people make money blogging by selling space through Google Adsense program. The advantages of this program are numerous, as it requires very little effort on the part of the bloggers or webmaster to begin raking in profits. For more information login to www.blog-link-generator.com. However, most people discover that they make less money through this method than they had hoped.
If you already spend a fair amount of time on your computer, money may come to you literally as soon as you ask for it. Once you have an established blog with a regular readership, it is easy to turn a profit through advertising. By hosting sponsored links or banners, you can see income from your hobby almost overnight. Even if you did not start your blog intending to turn a profit, making supplementary income it may be easier than you think.
Take one New York woman send her to London to work, make her go cold turkey to remove the last trace of Little Debbies and hot dogs. Then re-invent her as a fully certified food enthusiast and then get her to start a successful London restaurant review.
Over the last four years Londonelicious has become the quintessential light hearted guide to everything foodie in the great smogopolis. The blogs logo reads like an advertisement in the lonely hearts column of the Evening Standard “American girl, loves food, and London, but not cooking”
The about me section of the blog includes a confession that she started visiting London’s restaurants as a way to get out and explore the real London, and meet the locals, and discover the food.
She was over-powered with enthusiasm for the great and awful London restaurant’s she found on her travels around the corners of the capital. Eventually she decided to let others find out about her discoveries, she started up her own London restaurant guide to delicious London and Londonelicious was born.
The momentous task of telling the world about every last little eating place in London was obviously too much for one stomach and two typing fingers so other London Restaurant enthusiasts began to join her online world.
Before long there were many food-nuts writing their own opinionated opinions of all things eating out with a fun, clear and concise London Restaurant Guide that goes where others fear to tread.
There are page after page of wonderful London restaurant reviews that step outside of the usual way of looking at the cities eating places. Anywhere that has a table and food may be included, ok they don’t all have tables.
Reviewers have visited hundreds of establishments from the very trendiest Sunday Times must eat places to little London restaurants and café’s that other critics have never heard of.
Sometimes the intrepid bloggers wish they had never “discovered” some of these dubious food backwaters. But all the disappointment is worth the effort when real undiscovered London restaurant gold is struck.
The team are all of the same view, they like food and love searching for new food experiences. They are all amateurs, but they are accomplished amateurs, people who just like eating out and enjoying an evening of food delights.
You can join in their travels though the cobbled back alleyways and hip reception areas of the London’s most exiting and interesting foodie haunts. They leave no stone unturned or bottle of wine uncorked in their efforts to share the excitement that is London eating.
In the United States, online financial information and investing media has exploded in recent years. Where once there were just online replicas of offline newspaper/TV commentary and anonymous spam-ridden bulletin boards, there is now a proliferation of stimulating and diverse financial content written by both professional and amateur investors. These include professional blog sites (like Bill Cara, Big Picture, and The Kirk Report), aggregator sites like SeekingAlpha (who handpick articles from the world’s top market blogs and investment newsletters), expert investment communities like Covestor and Social Picks, crowd-sourcing sites like piqqem, to name just a few…
In contrast, despite London’s status as a financial hub, the online financial information and commentary scene in the United Kingdom still seems like a barren wasteland. There has been little apparent new development in recent years. Financial commentary is dominated by offline publishers like Bloomberg, Reuters and the Financial Times. To date, blogging has yet to become a big part of the UK investor scene. Most private investor discussion seems to be taking place on bulletin boards that would not have been out of place in the late 1990s and which don’t appear to have progressed much in terms of functionality in at least the last five years. Strangely, the web’s social networking phenomenon has barely touched the UK’s online financial sector.
This is surprising given that the data suggests that demand for alternative content in general is there – according to Hitwise, the market share of blogs is now greater in the UK than in the US: 1.09% vs. 0.73% of all traffic respectively as of May 2008. Over the last 3 years, UK Internet traffic to the Blogs and Personal Websites category increased by 208%, compared to 70% for News and Media generally. The recent success of political blog sites like Guido Fawkes suggests that there is interest amongst the British public in alternative media. The issue seems more to be around the supply of alternative finance content – there just do not seem to be many finance bloggers out there. This is paradoxical given the strength of UK financial services. The City of London has some of the smartest investors and analysts globally. However, their views remain directed through institutional channels (e.g. equity research) and their voices are apparently not being heard more broadly by the public on the Web.
To an extent, this reflects an apparent general reticence by the British to blog. In the States, the last five years have seen an explosion in alternative media, with vast numbers of independent commercial blogs, the most famous such examples being The Huffington Post, Engadget and Gawker Media. In contrast, the UK has been slower to adopt blogging with the same fervor – in the Guardian’s recent list of the top 50 global blogs, the UK performance was surprisingly weak given the bias towards English language content. The main UK appearances were Holy Moly (a celebrity blog – no. 27), the Offside (a football blog – no. 35) and the F word (a feminist blog – no. 41). A number of explanations have been offered for this dismal show. In a recent article, Shiny Media’s co-founder, Ashley Norris attributed the lack of UK blogs to a number of factors: 1) the limited number of UK online eyeballs (and related difficulties in monetising non-UK ad inventory); 2) Lack of imagination in the ad industry (who prefer to work with established media brands or mega portals), 3) Lack of UK media entrepreneurs; 4) Lack of VC support (European VCs apparently don’t tend to be too interested in media unless it is supported by a technological innovation); and 5) Too much competition from established media (including the chilling influence of the omnipotent BBC).
In the UK financial information space, the most notable exception to this dearth of innovation has been the Financial Times’ Alphaville which launched as a live financial blog for market professionals in 2006. This has been a huge success but it is interesting that it took a traditional media outlet to really popularize blogging. Whether that says something about the British respect for authority is debatable but indeed, the other finance blogs with significant readership are all based around traditional media (The Economist’s blog, Interactive Investor’s blog, Robert Peston). There are of course some exceptions to this – Cash and Burn springs to mind or specialist media focused finance blogs like Media Money.
Even the Ft’s Alphaville has remained a phenomenon largely contained within the confines of traditional media, given that professional FT journalists have been driving the content. Interestingly, in October, the FT launched a new forums feature on Alphaville called “The Long Room” – named after a bar in Throgmorton Street that was once a notorious hub of financial chatter. The Long Room is designed to allow finance professionals to set up their own discussions. This part of the site is however something of a “closed shop” for the City of London, because the Long Room registration process requires users to demonstrate their finance credentials and then be invited into the Room in order to view and/or contribute to the discussions. It is hard to ascertain whether creating a kind of Morton’s members club for the UK online financial community was intended to: a) wall off the content to prevent it cannibalizing the main site, or b) introduce a quality filter to prevent the conversation deteriorating to the level of the UK private investor bulletin boards. While one can sympathize with the second objective, it does seem a shame given that the US experience is increasingly showing that, if the right filters are applied, then investors outside of the traditional financial community can be as, or even more, insightful than professional investors or market commentators.
Nevertheless, that gripe about exclusivity needs to be coveted with a recognition that, in terms of functionality, the Long Room is cutting edge in the UK scene and the Financial Times are to be applauded for innovating. It remains to be seen to what extent the Long Room represents the tip of the iceberg for UK financial blogging. Will the site lead to spin-offs as individual commentators develop their own online identities and followers?
