For the digitally excluded, the route to the world wide web is via the heart, not the brainbox. We just need to work out what they love. Then show them how to find it
Broomeshtick — FirstPlaces. A prototype thing for digital inclusion.
(via patrickrhone)
what he said.
There’s too much news on the web; and way too little explanation.
What people want is opinions, analysis, techniques, experiences, and insights. The best of all these come as a bi-product from actually doing stuff. The closer you are to the topics, the more natural you’ll be able to extract the goodies.
boom goes the dynamite.
That’s precisely the problem: the sheer volume of words has overwhelmed a business model that was once based on scarcity and limited choice.
andrew does a great job of breaking down the business predicament surrounding digital journalism. the greater publishing industry of yesterday didn’t understand the value of their content in relation to the new technology driving advertising’s evolution. so, set that aside for a minute.
his piece goes on to imply that tomorrow will look just like we think it will look. sites like gawker essentially playing “red rover” with revenue and profit until something shakes out and sticks. the issue i have with all of this is that everyone, both traditional publishing & mr. denton, are showing their hand. the majority of the revenue might sit within a common denominator of audience but what happens when we reach the point of scraping the bottom of a big barrel for 1/80th of a cent? i don’t even want to imagine what kind of stuff you’ll be reading then.
denton is right, the delivery mechanism (“blog posts”) are a commodity - the money is made in building empires based on attention. oh man, wait a minute, attention? that - to me - is the golden ticket. it’s the end game and is best captured not by vague click-through traps, rapid-fire posts within a 24hr period but by the stuff that sticks to the wall long after you’ve walked away from it.
the stuff that gets you to read the entire article, entice a desire to share publicly and even offer my own point of view on. think about where you find stuff like that and who is producing it (more so, who is capable). at the end of the day, you have to eat the food that is going to satisfy you the most and focusing on delivery mechanisms might keep you afloat for now, but what happens when someone does it better?
sustainability in our society’s intellectual culture isn’t built on the traps we set but instead the meals we make. i’m convinced the day will come when people turn and walk back towards whence they came - the thirst not for “scarcity” or “limited choice” but a thirst for quality and concise editorial.
I do like it when people intelligently pick apart an argument that gets passed around the echo chamber. Over at his blog Whimsley, Tom Slee was kind enough to do just that to Clay Shirkey’s “Collapse of Complex Business Models” essay. The money quote comes towards the end, “Complexity is not going away. It’s just moving to a different spot in the production chain, and as it moves so does the balance of power.”
Also, interestingly, the essay kills an argument I’ve made myself: Pointing out that the “Charlie bit me” video no longer tops the YouTube all-time most watched list. That spot is now held by none other than Lady Gaga. “The most watched video made in the last five years shows Lady Gaga and a group of hired models dancing on an elaborate set in a video that embodies complex production methods, that is part of the Vevo channel (a joint venture between Google and major record labels) and that features product placements by Nemiroff Vodka, Parrot by Starck, Carerra sunglasses, and HP Envy.” So there’s that.
The Lady Gaga example isn’t meaningful unless it’s part of a larger trend. The larger trend at the moment is towards simplicity, as Shirky points out. But nothing is ever as clear cut as pundits would have us believe. Articles that acknowledge the complexity of the real world are uninteresting, droll and unconvincing. So Shirky’s article on simplicity must make it all seem so simple. Which it is not. But overall I think he’s generally correct.
trying to figure out where i fall on this.
pleaseshowmehowtolive:kissdistinctlyamerican:jasencomstock:savingpaper:
Kevin Drum on “one of the great under-told media success stories of the past decade,” the growth of NPR in contrast to the decline of other traditional media outlets:
NPR’s listenership has nearly doubled since 1999, even as newspaper circulation dropped off a cliff. Its programming now reaches 26.4 million listeners weekly — far more than USA Today’s 2.3 million daily circ or Fox News’ 2.8 million prime-time audience. When newspapers were closing bureaus, NPR was opening them, and now runs 38 around the world, better than CNN. It has 860 member stations — “boots on the ground in every town” that no newspaper or TV network can claim.
NPR FTW. i’m a huge public radio advocate. i was raised on it but there was a distinct switch from listening on circumstance (it being the channel on in my mom’s car) to seeking it out on my dial. score one for staying the course and producing solid, engaging, valuable and in-depth programming. see what happens when you’re not chasing ads?
If you create (or market) should you be chasing the people who click and leave? Or is it like trying to turn a cheetah into a house pet? Is manipulating the high-voltage attention stream of millions of caffeinated web surfers a viable long-term strategy?
Seth’s Blog: Driveby culture and the endless search for wow (via fred-wilson)
NO. IT IS NOT. PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.
These terms I’ve been using – “intellectual framework,” “systemic information,” etc. – this is what I mean when I say “context.” I’ve pitched you on the consumer benefits of context, but information creators are also slowly beginning to come around to the long-term ROI of delivering context as well, for several reasons. For one thing, our information becomes much more valuable and much more desirable to you as your framework for understanding it becomes better. Jay Rosen has astutely noted the uptick in attention to financial crisis stories after This American Life’s Giant Pool of Money episode laid out the context of the crisis. For another thing, the success of Wikipedia and the enduring popularity of items like “The Ultimate Guide to Everything You Need to Know About Social Media” has taught us there’s a real market for context. There are also significant advertising benefits to having more sophisticated structures for information than “latest updates.” We could dwell on the “why” for a long time.
if you’re in austin - put down your phone, stop stalking that girl you saw at the bar and go to matt’s panel.
$3.42 vs 10 cents. The Times is monetizing its time on site 34 times better than Facebook.
definitely click-through to this. social networks are blowing news sites out of the water in terms of time spent on site but, it seems, aren’t doing a fantastic job monetizing it.
Interesting post about lack of creativity in digital pricing from Albert Wenger.
…
Yet despite such clear examples, Amazon, Apple, the New York Times, book publishers, etc all seem stuck on essentially the one price model. Can we please have some more imagination in pricing? It is time to start creating offers that let readers self select based on how much they value specific content. How would this work? In the case of the New York Times here is just one of many possible examples. Put on a weekly series speaker series and make priority access to limited tickets / limited realtime online viewing spots part of a higher priced subscription.
please click-through and read the whole piece. i highlighted the portion that rang true.
the web in general is struggling with the economics behind its real currency - original thoughts, ideas and content. i’m interested to see how boxee’s plans pan-out. they’re letting it ride vs. the establishment and i’m sort of glad about that. the “establishment” has been making subtle attempts like this for years but now is the time to just make the gross change. move forward and innovate, let everyone else catch-up. fear is big right now (understandable). you don’t want to piss off the “audience” or lose them. fine. but while they’re looking to you for content they’re also trusting in you to move the needle. it’s an unspoken thread that rumbles across the web - if you’re in the position to “do it” and you’re not, what’s the point?
for generations, content pricing had the luxury of it’s delivery factoring into cost. now it doesn’t. advancing technology has allowed us to fully focus on the actual value of something and it’s why everyone is freaking out. paying too much for stuff that doesn’t deserve it while paying too little for the stuff that does.
i’m a proponent of on-demand streaming access. sure, “downloading” as an act that keeps a local copy of content available is predominant but that’s only b/c - in the USA - our peer-to-peer tech and bandwidth lags severely. i’m convinced apple bought lala because of their biz model and tech combo. it’s a service that saw the media future and had creative, scaled pricing. i can spend to purchase/own something all-out but i’d also adopt the cost of caring for it (which I don’t want anymore - I have no need to be a slave to external hard drives). OR, i can pay to simply have access to it. it stays in one place. i can use it and leave it there when i want.
that’s just enough.
