My friend and mentor Vin Crosbie, a digital media consultant, writes those amusing words over at his blog explaining why he is bothering to do a "brain dump" and tell the world what he thinks even though he's a consultant and could presumably charge for the knowledge. And his knowledge on this day goes to how newspapers can double their digital revenue percentage from 5% to 10%: by cutting their print intake in half. Ouch.
Vin's preparing an essay that's turned into a 20,000 word "treatise" on the state of the newspaper industry. Notwistanding my previous post, I think he'll say something that's a little bit more glum than the E&P article saying print isn't dead.
OK, Print's Not Dead -- But What're the Financials
E&P does a looooong piece expounding on the multiple launches of free print dailies. It's true, there are lots. I'm sure I'm not the only one who's wondered why average folk (as opposed to media junkies) would buy a tabloid when they're handed one or two of them for free as they board the Metro or subway or El or underground.
So, yes, it's a time of foment and ferment and it's kind of exciting to watch the dailies sprout and the big newspapers try to eat their own lunch with free dailies before it's eaten for them.
But the Editor and Publisher story doesn't address the economics in any meaningful way. What timelines are these papers on? What are their metrics for financial success? How many ads do they need to sustain their operations? Can an individual daily hope to compete with a multi-city player like Metro? Can Metro compete with more localized publications like Newsday's AM-NY? (Can Newsday continue to sustain AM-NY without the Newsday infrastructure behind it?)
And what of the Web? The economics there are just as stark as for paid pubs. Ads just don't command the same rates, and the push to heavier apps -- video, Flash, etc. -- is costing more money per user. E&P, if you get this, would like a little more info from the "P" side of your name.
So, yes, it's a time of foment and ferment and it's kind of exciting to watch the dailies sprout and the big newspapers try to eat their own lunch with free dailies before it's eaten for them.
But the Editor and Publisher story doesn't address the economics in any meaningful way. What timelines are these papers on? What are their metrics for financial success? How many ads do they need to sustain their operations? Can an individual daily hope to compete with a multi-city player like Metro? Can Metro compete with more localized publications like Newsday's AM-NY? (Can Newsday continue to sustain AM-NY without the Newsday infrastructure behind it?)
And what of the Web? The economics there are just as stark as for paid pubs. Ads just don't command the same rates, and the push to heavier apps -- video, Flash, etc. -- is costing more money per user. E&P, if you get this, would like a little more info from the "P" side of your name.
Future of Business Media Conference
I'll be helping Rafat Ali and Staci Kramer of ContentNext, parent of PaidContent.org and other blog dynamos, program the Future of Business Media conference Oct. 30 in New York. It's all about the turmoil and change in business-oriented media (Dow Jones, Rupert Murdoch, Fox's new business channel, business blogs, Yahoo Finance and Google Finance, etc, etc), the ventures and deals, the ad models, tech business media, and more. Consumer and B2B. Some big names lined up already (it's on the conference site), and we'll try to get the best info we can from everyone.
I'd expect there'll also be a fair amount of interesting info and conversation coming not just from the stages and the sessions, but also in hallways at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, where it's being held.
I'd expect there'll also be a fair amount of interesting info and conversation coming not just from the stages and the sessions, but also in hallways at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, where it's being held.
Congdon Mainstreams Herself (to Oblivion?)
Amanda Congdon's "schtick" at RocketBoom was fun and offbeat and made you feel like you'd "discovered" her even if you were the 275,000th person to have viewed her video. Moving to ABC News, and then becoming a spokesperson for DuPont and American Express she's becoming, to my eye, just another "talent." She may do well. But what's different or original? Does she have a sustainable "brand"? How long can she last as someone doing the typical loud-voiced, mic-in-hand schilling for paying customers with no real personality or verve or anything that's uniquely her?
And this doesn't even confront the ethical issues Jeff Jarvis and Radar have explored, of being a journalist and a schill at the same time.
And this doesn't even confront the ethical issues Jeff Jarvis and Radar have explored, of being a journalist and a schill at the same time.
Twitter Is, Isn't, Funding. Spam
The real power of Twitter, it seems, is not that it lets us tell everyone when we're going to pick up the groceries or what happens to be on our minds at some random moment, but rather that it's an application that easily, and mobile-ly, hooks up to everything else. Many of the Twitter applications touted as top ones are mashups that either let us Twitter ourselves with useful info -- say inform our Calendar or iGoogle page of something we dont want to forget -- or have us sent things we want on the go, such as BBC headlines. I suppose the application possibilities are the reason they just got money from Union Square Ventures, even if Union Square says they don't see what the business model is, yet.
One other possibility I see when we get fancier about mapping and remapping and re-configuring data, in multiple dimensions and with overlays and semantic parsing: We'll see not just the most popular "twits" but also get a real cloud-formed look at what our zeitgeist is, where our consciousness is going that may be richer than any Yahoo "buzz index". (It's kind of a 21st-Century Megatrends that's a more real read of society than indexing newspaper headlines can ever be, because it indexes real-time data from lots and lots of people -- even if the sample is skewed toward whatever demographic or type would use the technology and share on it.)
This is all predicated, of course, on the assumption that those trying to Twitter with automated twits, and so on, will not end up killing the system by overloading it with spam.
One other possibility I see when we get fancier about mapping and remapping and re-configuring data, in multiple dimensions and with overlays and semantic parsing: We'll see not just the most popular "twits" but also get a real cloud-formed look at what our zeitgeist is, where our consciousness is going that may be richer than any Yahoo "buzz index". (It's kind of a 21st-Century Megatrends that's a more real read of society than indexing newspaper headlines can ever be, because it indexes real-time data from lots and lots of people -- even if the sample is skewed toward whatever demographic or type would use the technology and share on it.)
This is all predicated, of course, on the assumption that those trying to Twitter with automated twits, and so on, will not end up killing the system by overloading it with spam.
Search Changes Will Rock the Content World
At the iBreakfast this morning in New York
Gone, he said, will be the days of typical search engine optimization via not only key words but also headlines, image tags and so on, and instead will be a requirement that you feed .xml into the Google algorithm in a way it demands. Wil Reynolds of ThinkSEER seemed more firmly rooted in the present but said something we should know: If you do what you're supposed to, make your page as relevant as possible to your core audience, you'll get better results. It's spoofing and faking and all that that will get you into trouble. Whatever hold you find in the search engine capability will eventually get plugged, and you'll be bumped waaaay to the bottom of results.
Was also an intriguing presentation from a company called Hakia doing "semantic search" -- which they claim is much more intelligent and natural than the indexing methods of Google, Yahoo, Ask and others. More on them next week.Heavy, Medium and Light Users
Comscore will be measuring "heavy, medium, and light" users separately, which means we'll get a better read of data than an average where one or the other extreme of user can skew the average.
Hard to see how this can be a bad thing. Not sure that's true of Nielsen's move to go to "time spent on site" though objections over people keeping browsers open for hours without viewing will be taken care of. For example, they can stop counting (and already do) if a page has been open for more than an hour, and say they'll also soon only count whatever page is on top. So if you hide something, or minimize it, it's not counted as being consumed.
Hard to see how this can be a bad thing. Not sure that's true of Nielsen's move to go to "time spent on site" though objections over people keeping browsers open for hours without viewing will be taken care of. For example, they can stop counting (and already do) if a page has been open for more than an hour, and say they'll also soon only count whatever page is on top. So if you hide something, or minimize it, it's not counted as being consumed.
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