Twitter, it’s more than just tweets. That’s the message the microblogging website issued today with the launch of a new homepage, aimed at snaring first time users into its web, while clearing up any misconception about what Twitter can offer users.

Well, it’s all about content: the photos and videos, comments and quips. First time visitors will now be greeted with links showing brands and celebrities presently using the website as well as a ‘top tweets’ section, which shouldn’t be confused with ‘trending topics’. Read More »

Talk about bad news for Yahoo. Silicon Valley Insider claims that traffic and revenue growth at Yahoo! is “flat” and the internet-giant turned media-company needs to resolve “a fundamental innovator’s dilemma” before it can move ahead.

Silicon Alley Insider is reporting that flat traffic, flat revenues, and increasingly limited growth opportunities at Yahoo! could present a problem, especially if the company is unable fund innovation to help it steer through the constantly changing digital landscape.

Display advertising on Yahoo.com and its other media websites remains the company’s bread and butter revenue source, but that may not always be the case. The Silicon Valley source sees the internet “on a verge of tectonic shift” and that “the [web] page as a dominant paradigm is going away”. Read More »

Ratings at CNN are down. Way down, as prominent news hosts Larry King and Anderson Cooper saw their viewership figures nearly halved from the same time last year, according the New York Times.

First quarter television ratings found that CNN was trumped by its right-wing rivals at Fox News, which is actually boasting its best quarter ever (building on its best year ever in 2009), as viewers and advertising dollars flow towards political pundits Glenn Beck, which doubled it’s viewers from last year, and Bill O’Reilly, who remains Fox News’ biggest draw with 3.65m tuning in during prime time.

CNN finished 2009 behind MSNBC in prime-time ratings as well, the first time CNN has ever trailed a competitor other than the Fox News over a full calendar year.

But do the numbers tell the whole story? CNN remains the out and out leader online as the 18^th most trafficked website in the US, compared to Fox News at 38. CNN has nearly 3m followers on Twitter, while Fox News has just 150,000.

MSNBC, whose website ranks far behind both CNN and Fox News at number 722 in the US has more than 1.6m followers on it’s @breakingnews Twitter feed.

The online numbers show an opportunity for both CNN and MSNBC to expand their audiences through non-traditional means, but the question remains, as always, whether advertisers will follow or not.

Both gaming and Twitter are massive growth areas in the media sphere, so the idea of games within Twitter is media gold-dust. To get an insight into what’s being done and what’s possible, I wrote up some notes from a SXSW panel talk on the subject, and provided a list of examples of what’s possible (and what’s not!)

Twitter addiction takes time, according to new user data, which claims the most active tweeters are those who joined more than nine months ago, whose activity accounts for more than 40% of tweets.

Data from social media analytics company Sysomos found a discrepancy between new users and Twitter ‘veterans’, or those who have been on the website for more than nine months, based on the analysis of over one billion tweets.

Twitter newbies (0-3 months) were found to contribute about 22% of all tweets, before dropping to 16% for the 3 to 6 month old users. Between 6 and 9 months, the figures rise slightly to 21% before doubling for Twitter vets.

The data also shows Twitter uptake is growing faster internationally than locally in the United States. Sysomos found an 8% growth rate for Twitter internationally in March, compared to 5% in the US. These figures are down from 13% growth internationally in January and 10% locally.

Sysomos estimates there are more than 50m tweets a day, a 30% jump since December, as new users, young people in particular, flock to the website.

Will advertisers “like” Facebook’s decision to dump the ‘Become a Fan’ button for its branded pages? It’s very, uh, likely, given the social network’s claims that users hit ‘Like’ twice as many times as they do ‘Fan’.

In an effort to increase user engagement, Facebook revealed in a letter to advertisers it will phase-out its ‘Become a Fan’ function in favour of an across-the-board thumbs up, which users hit regularly to ‘Like’ their friends photos and status updates.

The average user ‘Like’s’ nine things a month, compared to four ‘Become a Fan’s’. This “light-weight” action and language consistency will mean more connections, Facebook said in a letter to advertisers.

“This lighter-weight action for connecting to a page on Facebook means that users will be making more connections across the site, including your Facebook page.

“The core functionality of page s remains unchanged. For instance, your page will still have distribution into news feed . The purpose of this change is to maintain pages’ powerful communications channels, while making it easier for users to connnect with pages,” Facebook said.

For the record, more than 1.5m businesses have active Pages on Facebook and more than 20m million users become fans of brand pages each day. So far, these pages have created more than 5.3bn fans.

And if Facebook users aren’t busy enough liking everything under the sun, new partnerships with Yahoo! and YouTube will provide a boon to content sharing.

This week, Yahoo and YouTube gave an endorsement for the nascent Facebook Connect web-passport.

YouTube users have been able to connect their accounts to Facebook since December, yet now the YouTube homepage will show the YouTube videos their friends are sharing on Facebook.

Yahoo is also stepping up its Facebook integration, announcing today that Yahoo Mail users will be able to update their status from their inboxes. Users can also see friends’ Facebook profile photos in their inboxes. This follows the Yahoo Mail’s ability for to add Facebook friends’ e-mail addresses to their e-mail contacts.

And for some more downright unfathomable Facebook figures, the website’s recent milestone of 400m users (half of which log-on everyday) to be a small footnote on its path towards a membership base of only-God-knows type levels.

Can Facebook conceivably crack the one billion user mark? The inaptly named Facebook Zero could be the key. Not to be confused with Facebook Lite, a different, yet similarly stripped-down Facebook network.

Zero, a text-only, mobile Facebook has the potential to push  user growth even further, as mobile internet use becomes the access-style of choice (or not by choice) for internet users around the world, especially for the millions in developing countries.

Last month it was reported that more than 100m users are now accessing the social network via their mobiles, doubling the user base in six months.

When I heard the news this morning that Rupert Murdoch has unveiled his plans to charge for The Times my reaction was two fold: 1. Finally; 2. At £2 a week that’s a cup of coffee. Good pitch.

Okay so the deal is you can buy The Times and Sunday Times for £1 a day or £2 a week. The daily £1 charge is what the paper costs on a week day and I don’t think they’re expecting the majority of people who pay to vote for that option. I mean why would you? Instead for the price of one cup of coffee, give or take, you can have access to the paper for an entire week. That’s £2 online versus £8.50 offline.

That strikes me as a good deal. I understand the reaction that some people had that £2 is too much, but I think there was a danger for News International in charging too little. If it did that there was I think a chance that people would not take it seriously and would say that it didn’t value its own product highly enough.

The £1 daily charge is almost a red herring. Its only job is to direct you to the £2 option, which I think is high enough to deliver some kind of return and show the value placed on the content of The Times while at the same time not being prohibitive. The subscription charges are also adding value. There are no details as yet but News International says the “weekly subscription will also give access to the epaper and certain new applications”. Maybe it has a

There are few readers who could not afford £2. What would be nice and what is perhaps a surprise is that it has not offered a monthly option as well. Something in the region of £5-£6 a month would make perfect sense. As does some kind of bundle package either tying up with other newspapers or with other News Corporation services like Sky? Maybe later.

Former Sun editor Rebekah Brooks, now chief executive, News International, called the move a “defining moment for journalism” and “a crucial step” towards making the business of news “an economically exciting proposition”.

She is right in all of that and everyone will be watching. Not just in newspaper offices in London, but in New York and Paris and in other cities across the world as owners, publishers and editors face conundrum of how to stay in business and how to keep the news flowing and working out if they too can charge.

The New York Times will make its move next year, but in the meantime others will announce plans. There are a lot of questions. Clearly some readers will desert The Times for free content rivals feeling that £2 is too much a price. They can turn to The Guardian which has said over and over it will not charge. There is the BBC to contend as well. This morning I heard the news on R4′s Today programme before flicking to the story on BBC News on my Blackberry. Always hard to beat. There is Alexander Lebedev as well. What will he do now he has control of the Independent? Does he have some radical plan up his sleeve? Is he thinking about a free national newspaper?

At the prices pitched Murdoch has a good chance of success. There is clear evidence at the top end of the market that people pay. The question everyone wants an answer to is are there enough paying customers to make it work?

There is an expression in baseball about players that don’t make it in the majors they are said to only have “a cup of coffee” before heading back to the minors. Murdoch is going to be hoping that readers people stick around for a little more than that and buy more than one cup of coffee otherwise this is going to be a very short ride. Personally I’m a little optimistic about their chances. I really think people will pay. They do, after all, for just about everything else.

 Welcome
to eModeration’s round-up of all that is intriguing, alarming or odd in
the world of social media, compiled by Kate Williams. For more social
media snippets, follow her on @emodkate – or for general twittery,
@KateVWilliams. 

This
week: This week: judges can Google; the Conservative’s Great Social
Media Adventure; and marketing on Chatroulette… in Lycra. Plus: we’d
still love your feedback on these updates: tweet Yay! or Boo! to
@emodkate. It’ll take ten seconds, promise. 

THE HEADLINES …

So: after months of tossing and turning; of agonized grimaces and broken
nights, Google has finally pulled the tooth that was ailing it, and quit
China: an April 10 pullout is mooted. In an effort to continue
offering uncensored results to its Chinese users (and not at all to
cling on to the revenue potential attached to 800 million Chinese
internet users – don’t be ridiculous), Google began redirecting
users to their uncensored Hong Kong site, announcing that they’d be
‘carefully monitoring access issues’.

Sure enough, the Chinese government began
disabling certain search results, and China’s national mobile
provider dropped
Google as its default search engine. Chinese netizens found
themselves back where they first began: censored. But to be perfectly
frank, they don’t seem all
that fussed. China’s increasingly affluent middle class have, till
now, been avid Googlers; but even amongst this key constituency there
was little sympathy for Google’s position, with many, according to the
Telegraph, feeling that the company had been disrespectful of local
mores, a feeling even
more pronounced amongst ‘mainstream’ Chinese. So when, for a short
while on Tuesday morning, Google’s corporate pages were displayed in
Chinese, many
cried ‘hack’ – despite Google’s protestations.

Meanwhile, Dell and Go Daddy want to join the
Leavin’ Train, with the latter telling a US Congress committee
hearing that the company no longer had the stomach for
domain-registrations in China, where new regulations now demand photo ID
from anyone registering a .cn domain.

But Westside, Google’s self-penned profile as ‘stout defender of
internet freedoms’ is increasingly under scrutiny. Co-founder Sergey
Brin’s Guardian interview, in which he positioned Google as Poster Corp.
for digital liberation whilst berating Microsoft for working within
China’s rules, got backs
a-bristling: several commentators pointed out that this was
Google’s own strategy until – ooh, three months ago?

Fred Teng in the
Huffington Post, meanwhile, calls for tolerance for China, whose
journey from feudal island to globally-connected digital nation has, he
points out, been laudably swift.

There’s not many matters in this world upon which we can all agree – but
the proposition ‘Nestle’s week has been a bit …meh’ might, I suspect,
be
one of them. Item: their Facebook page was targeted by Greenpeace.
Item: their response went from ‘placatory’ to ‘I’m deleting yo’
account’, then dashed back to ‘I never meant to hurt you’ – in what felt
like moments, with bystanders gazing on in open-mouthed horror. At
the time of going to press, Nestle’s Facebook page was best described as
a
sit-in – and this painful episode can’t fail to spotlight the huge
variation in the quality of brands’ moderation policies. Jake McKee has
some useful thoughts here
– upon which we were delighted to comment.

Brace yourselves – Facebook’s latest
privacy battle could have huge implications for all UGC platforms,
potentially shifting the responsibility for protecting personal privacy
away from users, and onto social networks. European regulators are
investigating whether the privacy of people whose photos and videos are
posted on social networks is being habitually breached.

There’s been a deal of huffing
and puffing about the upcoming ‘Social Media Election’, with BBC
journalists explaining Twitter to social slowpokes, and expounding
on how both parties are utilizing it to sway voters. Facebook launched a
new page called Democracy
UK, where its posting news of a political nature for all and
sundry to comment upon);
ITN hosted live
online debate during their budget special; and new
tools for tracking party-political
sentiment – like Yomego‘s,
pictured here – are being launched Left, Right and Centre.

The Tories were first out of the gate: it emerged
that they were outpacing Labour on Facebook by a ‘connection’ ratio
of two to one. Alas, their social success went straight to their
heads and, minded to build upon their initial victory, they launched a rather
snazzy Facebook campaign which incorporated a Twitter feed of the
hashtag #cashgordon. Alas, opponents discovered that the feed was entirely
unmoderated, and took the opportunity to bombard the site with an
awful lot of – how to put it? – brand-negative comments. Worse still,
they discovered that the site didn’t strip html, allowing those
less-than-positive reviews to really, you know, shine
out. The website was removed later that day.

Meanwhile, Gordon Brown has described ‘superfast’
broadband as the “electricity of the digital age”. Outlining
Labour’s plans, he promised ziptastic speeds for every citizen, as well
as a webpage through which to manage their interactions with local
government – a proposal which, according to the government, could slash
billions from the public service budget, and generate a quarter of a
million jobs. 

Best not to mention, then, the ongoing
brouhaha over the government’s plans for our digital future which,
it must be said, are not meeting with unqualified support.  

THE LOWDOWN … 

Following a tip-off from the FBI, French police
arrested the man responsible for hacking Barack
Obama’s Twitter account late last year – then released him, after
he claimed that, far from being a master-criminal, he’d simply guessed the
President’s password (His birthday? “ThePrezz”? or [gulp].. “password?”). All rather embarrassing
for the man they’re calling the first president of the digital age. 

Then, in an intriguing instance of plot-thickening, ReadWriteWeb
revealed unconfirmed reports that the hacker was the very same
bounder who leaked Twitter’s confidential business plans to TechCrunch,
who chose to publish them, despite a flurry of controversy. 

Truth is, there’s not much in digital life that can
truthfully be called ‘secure’ – this was the takeaway from the annual
Pwn2Own contest at the CanSecWest security show, which challenges
hackers (sorry, ‘security experts’) to break into a roster of everyday
devices and software. This year, the scallywags succeeded in hacking
into nearly every major browser (Safari, Firefox and IE8), as well as
stealing the entire SMS database of a non-jailbroken iPhone.


Eew. Director of Public Health Peter Kelly this
week claimed that the rise of social networking has produced an
alarming spike in reported cases of syphilis. Sites like Facebook,
he said, were “making it easier for people to meet up for casual sex,”
and several of the syphilis cases he’d seen “had met sexual partners
through these sites.” Facebook, understandably keen to quash the ‘ridiculous’
idea, pointed out that correlation is not quite the same as causation. Nevertheless – yikes. 

Ah, hindsight is always 20:20; foresight – not so
much. All the more impressive, then, is the
inspired guess made by Nik Tyler, who a year ago registered three
domain names: ipaddownload.com, ipaddownloads.com and ipaddownloads.net.
They are now on the market; a million bucks will snag all three. 

You have your lycra tiger-suit ready? And your scary
clown-mask? Good, then we’ll begin our ‘Marketing on Chatroulette’ 101,
as taught by Stage
Two Consulting. They advise marketing execs wishing to explore the
potential of the latest social craze to “have several masks/outfits
available in case the occasion arises.” Bless.

Facebook’s Gross
National Happiness Index has landed in the UK, revealing the
emotional ineptitude of the average Brit in all its glory – we are, it
seems, only really free with our emotions in the matter of family, TV
and the Weather. Disappointingly, the Index focuses on extremes of
emotion – happiness, or sadness – and so fails to track those
sentiments which, in my experience, are most frequently demonstrated by
we Brits: ‘mild annoyance’, ‘qualified enthusiasm’, and
‘schadenfreude’. 

This is genuinely rather impressive – Franklin Page, a
fleet-of-thumb employee of text-software company Swype, has beaten the
World Record for texting at speed: you can watch and marvel here.
Huzzah – the astonishing and bizarre viral clip of a Russian
lounge singer warbling something called ‘Trololo’ has been given
it’s own iPhone app! If you’ve not yet had the pleasure, do take a look:
you will be tickled pink, or horribly disturbed – one or t’other.  

NEWSBYTES … 

Online dating is now so mainstream an activity that
it’s now bigger than the online adult industry, and is worth a humungous
one billion dollars per year, according to this new
infographic from Online Schools.

A US federal appeals court has ruled
that a judge who is unsure about a matter of common knowledge may use
Google. Never again will a member of the bench be flummoxed by the name
of a popular beat combo.  

Analysts
are predicting that Apple will bite 40% of the tablet and e-reader
market this year, sending shares zooming. And the iPad is already
attracting high-end and big-name
advertisers to its apps, causing ripples of relief to bloom
throughout an anxious ad industry. The New York Times reporting that the
going rate is anywhere between $75,000 and $300,000, and adds that it’s already sold its first two
months of post-launch inventory. 

Schoolkids
in Japan will be using Nintendo DS’s in class before the end of the
year, the education authorities there having spotted the platforms
wealth of educational titles. 

Global web use continues its relentless
upward trajectory, with users on average spending 5.5 hours on
social networks last month – up more than two hours on the previous
year’s figures. 

New data
from Hitwise suggests that users who come to news sites via
Facebook are more loyal than those who are directed by Google news.

And finally, stop counting those Twitter stats. New
research finds very little correlation between Twitter counts and
actual influence – so there.  

That’s all folks!

Planning is now in works for the annual European Mobility Week 2010 to take place September 16-22, and this year’s campaign will see an increasing promotional use of social media by cities across Europe who are embracing digital media to tell stories about how they are reducing use of motorized transport.

This week I visited Brussels, to present ideas to the public relations campaign managers for the cities involved with European Mobility Week about how they can increase presence online through social media tools. Joined by other trainers from Pinnacle PR, we helped 80 representatives better understand how to use online tools to engage people and encourage them to bike or walk rather than use a car. Many cities across Europe participating in the campaign host car-free days in city centres, celebrating with pedestrian-friendly events that draw crowds of thousands.

As part of the 2010 campaign, the organizers are busy planning events and promotions that will increasingly see encouragement and use of Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube, and blogging, to showcase what happens during the week, and increase resident’s participation. Andrew Manasseh, Managing Director of Pinnacle PR’s Brussels office, talked about how the online media landscape has changed the rules of how government engages with people, and presents opportunity to embrace new practices that involve and help two-way conversations happen. He talked about how using online tools show that an organisation is transparent and open to listening to what people have to say.

Incredible examples demonstrate how powerful online communication tools can be, with the recent events of the earthquake in Haiti illustrating how social media helped raise funds, quickly. Other examples presented are the efforts of the World Health Organization’s World Health Day 2010′s campaign of 1000 Cities, 1000 Lives, that is using digital media to tell stories from urban health champions. In one example, a young boy from Japan started a campaign to stop people smoking in public places, to combat asthma problems. His story is posted in YouTube videos.

While the tools are available, free, and relatively easy to use, participants did express concern about how to manage and provide enough time to orchestrate an online campaign, in addition to running traditional media promotions. This is an increasing question private and public companies have, and many are now assigning new roles in communication departments of Social Media Managers, to focus on the many elements an online campaign requires. In some cases, marketing and communication departments are increasingly assigning members of staff, or even teams, to manage social media. Some companies are hiring in specialty social media agencies to manage the effort. To run a successful campaign, it does take planning and dedicated professional staff to be given authority and time to manage all the elements of online communications. Running an online communications campaign can also require a change in organizational culture, transforming the internal process for how messages are shared from just talking at people, to inviting people to talk back by sharing opinions through tweeting, leaving comments on blog posts and uploading videos to YouTube.

European Mobility Week is a terrific opportunity for municipalities across Europe to embrace online communication tools, and already you can see photos on Flickr, connect on Facebook, watch videos on YouTube, and see people tweeting about the campaign on Twitter. It will be interesting to see how this campaign grows momentum online, and to look for the pictures of people smiling as they enjoy their home city on car-free days.

Glad to share digital media knowledge with people from throughout Europe,

-Lisa

… but Facebook reporting procedures need improvement.

I was just having a little think about Facebook’s news
yesterday  that it won’t be putting a CEOP
panic button on all of its pages. Instead Facebook says it will have
links to organisations including the Child Exploitation and Online
Protection (CEOP) centre on its reporting pages.

Although I’m a huge supporter of CEOP’s marvellous work, I have to say I
can see Facebook’s point.  Grooming activity is not the only reason why people may want to report a post – think of bullying, copyright, hate crime, terrorist activity,
inappropriate language or imagery – there are a multitude of reasons why
one user may wish to report another.  If a CEOP panic button were
prominent on each post, the danger would be that all these issues would
be reported to CEOP and not Facebook.  This would potentially be
extremely counterproductive.  CEOP would be drowning in issues it cannot
directly act on and potentially missing time-crucial grooming
complaints. 

There would probably be a significant delay in take-down time and user
accounts being blocked if the wrong route was taken to report
inappropriate material. (Interestingly though, the CEOP report button
does take you to a page where children can get help with dealing with
cyberbullying: it’s top of their list actually, well above sexual
behaviour).

Although it’s part of the Virtual Global Taskforce, CEOP is a UK police
organisation (though obviously with links to international forces). 
Facebook cannot offer the same facility on all its sites, but it could
offer tailored local links to help centres on each national site.

If my understanding of the recent tragic murder of Ashleigh Hall is
correct, (a seventeen year old girl who was lured by a man using a false
identity on Facebook), then a CEOP reporting button would probably not
have helped.  She didn’t think she was being groomed by a much older
paedophile.  She thought she was starting a relationship with a handsome
young man her own age.  And we have to be realistic about this:
research shows that there are some vulnerable teenagers who welcome the
attention, even when they know the relationship is not appropriate, and
are unlikely to report it.  What they don’t realise is the huge danger
of emotional and physical damage they are courting, and it is education
(both of the user and their parents/carers) which will be the key here.

I think therefore that the linking of the Ashleigh Hall case to the CEOP
button is a bit of a false one.  What is true is that a lot of
approaches made by adults to children online are actually very direct. 
This is in contrast to what I think is the general perception, that it’s
mostly about long drawn out relationship/trust building before
eventually turning conversations towards sex (i.e. creating a situation
where the child wouldn’t want to make a report). Where the button would
make an impact is with kids who are approached with an overt sexual
proposition straight away. Having a quick/easy way to report that
behaviour (by whatever system) may result in more convictions of
predators trying the direct approach.

Certainly, Facebook’s reporting systems need to be far more prominent. 
Personally, I’d like to see ‘report’ offered alongside ‘like’ and
‘comment’ against posts, or at least to be much more visible.  Currently
the path to report is this: Click through on the profile of the
offending poster, then scroll right down (under their friends, photos
etc.) on the left hand column, to find this rather recessive link:

If you didn’t know it was there, you’d have a hard time finding it.  Why
don’t they run a page from the main navigation telling you how to
report someone?  Run a ‘Report It to Facebook ‘ button on every page?  
It may not be the most efficient reporting system either, since it’s the
user profile which is reported rather than the offending post and so it
may be hard for Facebook moderators to locate the offending material
and view it in context.

When making a report there is a choice of 1. blocking this person from
communicating with you, or 2. reporting the user to Facebook.   The
dropdown under reporting offers categories of offence: Nudity or
pornography / Fake profile / Racist or hate speech / Cyberbullying /
Threatens me or others / Unwanted contact.  I’m assuming Facebook is
proposing help links based upon the choice at this point.

Update 22 Mar 10:  Malcom
Coles’ critique
of Facebook reporting procedures reminded me that I hadn’t looked
at the separate reporting procedure in Facebook for Fan Pages and Groups
(versus personal profiles).   Many thanks to Malcom and to Blaise Grimes Viort for the link. 
(Malcom, I’ve reproduced your screengrabs, for which thanks).

Entire Fan Pages: It is possible to report the whole
Fan Page (in the left hand column of these pages is a “Report page”
link), but the options offered as to why you may be reporting it are
very limited, and there is no free text option.

 Note
that you won’t get any communication from Faecbook about their
actions.

 Fan Page Posts: It is not
possible to report individual pieces of content created by the Fan Page
owner (you’d have to report the whole page, see above).  However, a
‘report’ link exists on each comment posted by  Fan to that content. 
Again though, the reasons why you may report are very limited – there is
no free text option to explain anything not completely obvious – for
example, that a case is sub judice or an image copyright.  You’d have to
rely on Facebook moderators being very well informed about – well,
pretty much everything.

Fan Page Discussions: As
Macolm Coles points out, there’s no way to  report an entire discussion
thread in Fan Pages in one go: you would either have to flag each
comment or report the Fan Page (and have no way of telling the
moderators what it is you are objecting to).

Groups:  The reporting
system for a group is a big improvement: here you are invited to
categorise the nature of your objection and say where it was you found
it.

So what do you think?  Facebook are due to meet
with CEOP again in Washington on 12th April to ‘discuss it further’.  I
hope the network can put some really good plans on the table which will
satisfy CEOP that they really are doing all they can to make the site as
safe a place as it can be.  At the moment it seems sorely lacking.