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| Friday, September 29, 2006 |
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:56 AM |
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| Thursday, September 28, 2006 |
 There's quite a storm brewing over at YouTube these days centering on the recent interview of former U.S. President Bill Clinton by correspondent Chris Wallace on Fox News. A number of people on YouTube posted the entire interview on the user-generated video service, many copies of which have turned out to be quite popular - popular enough that Fox News has apparently asked for these full-length clips to be removed. Although this is a fairly common confrontation when copyrighted content gets posted in full on online video services this time it seems to have been perceived by some YouTube posters as censorship based on building rumors that News Corp. is preparing to buy YouTube ( interesting rumor clip from YouTube covering a Fox executive speaking at a conference). Judging by the attitudes of some of the YouTube posters such a takeover by NewsCorp may wind up leaving the cupboard bare of the community-builders that are at the heart of this video service. It highlights the ongoing struggle between traditional distribution schemes based on content licensing and the power of user-enabled distribution to enable content to meet audiences in the contexts that they find to be most valuable. Unlike other media, Web-based content services based on users in control of production and distribution vote with their clicks when services don't play by the rapidly developing unwritten Constitution of this online Content Nation. In the long run these confrontations are going to push premium content away from the most influential user-distributors that can help to build online brands. As in the earlier confrontation between NBC and video sharing networks ( our earlier coverage) Fox News is in bunker mode with its own video clip access: yet again, I cannot provide you with a link to the full-length clip on their site, it's wrapped up in layers of software that make it impossible to do this effectively. So if I can't send a link to someone else easily it only stands to reason that a service that makes this easier to do would be a popular alternative (NBC has learned since February, they're now much more aggressive in enabling their own clips for bookmarking and sharing). In the highly democratic environment of Content Nation it's difficult to work against an audience that is willing to create content as aggressively as traditionally copyrighted sources. Many publishers and producers of premium content would love it if user-generated content resided in its own little ghetto, safely segregated from mainstream media content. But every indication that the Web has given us in more than a decade of use is that mainstream content benefits greatly from a well-designed program that allows it to rub shoulders with user-generated content - and that allows users to dictate its most valuable contexts. Publishers and media companies need to listen to these new online publishers and begin to negotiate a seat at the table that draws up the Constitution of Content Nation - before it's written without them.
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By John Blossom - posted at 5:00 PM |
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The Newsvine social news-gathering and authoring portal notes in a recent posting that they are beginning to pay out some reasonably serious money to its authors. Newsvine aggregates wire stories from AP with stories bookmarked and tagged by its community of news enthusiasts, who in turn post their own articles and comment and vote on what their peers produce. The site is booming these days to the point that the top poster-author in August earned USD 414 for their efforts. Not bad, and fairly close to fees paid out to some docents at About.com and not all that far away from Jason Calacanis' USD 1,000 payouts for top bookmarkers to support the new Netscape portal. Unlike About.com or Netscape, though, the Newsvine payouts are based on ad revenues associated with their content, with Newsvine paying out 90 percent of the revenues in this sharing scheme to the authors. If authors don't want to be bothered with the payouts they can donate them to a major charity. As the site's ads were only about 35 percent sold out in August and as they are targeting 70 percent sellout rates the payouts will in time be very much in line with emerging industry standards. The bottom line is that it pays all around to enable authors to focus on their work in ways that give them independence in their work and the ability to get rewarded in direct proportion to the quality of that work. This is something that magazines and news organizations have not been adept at managing to date: most writers live on meager incomes regardless of the quality of their work with a handful of superstars being paid handsomely regardless of whether they've produced revenue-worthy content or not. In theory this new meritocracy of authorship can help to grow far superior content as time goes on - probably the most significant aspect of the emergence of weblogs and social publishing tools such as Newsvine. The systems aren't perfect - clicks may equate to good search engine placement as much as to an article's inherent quality - but it's likely to favor original content producers who are respected for their work as time goes on. Four hundred bucks may not sound like a lot for starters, but think of it as 400 dollars that a mainstream outlet did not fork out - and that much worthy content that's escaped their revenue streams.
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By John Blossom - posted at 12:23 PM |
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By John Blossom - posted at 12:08 PM |
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| Wednesday, September 27, 2006 |
A good article by Web Pro News covers the aftermath of a Belgian court's judgment against Google's use of content from Belgian news sources, a decision that required Google not only to pull the content from their Google News search engine but as well to post details of the decision on Google's Belgian home page. This apparently set off some sparks specific to Belgium but also seems to have triggered a new PR campaign by the search giant to bolster its image as a "good guy" player in online content. A manifesto of sorts has been posted by David Eun, Google's VP of Content Partnerships, on the corporate Google Blog. The piece outlines how Google respects copyrights, lets content owners choose their stance on Google's service and how Google's approach benefits publishers. On other fronts Google is trying to emphasize that it's role is not focused on generating original content but to make others' content more useful, as underscored by Google VP of Advertisting Sales Tim Armstrong in a Reuters article. One hopes for the sake of a vibrant online content marketplace that the Belgian judgment turns out to be a backwater decision that fails to reset the hands of the clock to a pre-web concept of copyright. Indexing and cacheing content for search purposes based on fair use doctrines inherent in most all international copyright law is the backbone of the productivity gains that have benefitted publishers of all kinds in the online environment. Fair use is also under threat from digital rights management packaging systems, a development that the British Library is pushing to have addressed more clearly in today's copyright laws ( CNET News coverage). Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, put forward the case for clarification of copyright laws most succinctly in the CNET article: "Unless there is a serious updating of copyright law to recognize the changing technological environment, the law becomes an ass," she notes. While Google is trying to mend fences with publishers uncertain about their motives the rhetoric becomes strained when one looks at products such as AdSense, Google Local, Google Earth and Google Base that are built on open but proprietary platforms and designed to aggregate a world of unique content for its own purposes. Google is most definitely in the publishing business, whether or not it has traditional media operations, and needs to adjust its rhetoric to reflect that reality more objectively. In doing so it may find itself more able to have its core mission statement resonate more clearly in the courts and in the court of public opinion. The mission is sound and the wording may be true but without further adjustments to its communications Google is in danger of it becoming rather the ass that the copyright law itself is in danger of becoming. Here's to better communications between all parties in this matter.
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By John Blossom - posted at 10:25 AM |
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By John Blossom - posted at 10:21 AM |
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| Tuesday, September 26, 2006 |
When LexisNexis launches a new product line these days it takes a bit of patience to troll through all of the press releases to get the full picture of their full-featured and complex product offerings. This week's announcement of their new Client Development solutions portfolio is no exception. "Client Development" means the focus is on establishing and growing accounts for legal firms and other professional services companies with a suite of familiar (but now integrated) content and technology products. The Client Development portfolio includes the LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell database of legal professionals and legal services buyers but focuses especially on their InterAction CRM solution that provides relationship intelligence for business development. Now integrated into the InterAction platform is content from their core subscription database via LexisNexis Corporate Intelligence Subscription package and the new LexisNexis AtVantage tool that provides access to prospect lists and filtering tools to help professionals develop marketing campaigns. This is the most advanced marketing-oriented workflow integration to date from LexisNexis and demonstrates what a challenge it can be to steer a product line traditionally oriented towards subscription database sales to a true productivity tool. There are a lot of moving parts available and it may take a while for clients and their staffs to focus on how all of this works together. But once they can step back and see the sum of the parts it's a pretty impressive array of services that brings together best-of-breed content sources with both workflow tools and access to familiar LexisNexis databases to make productivity gains a reality for aggressive services marketers. As with the other LexisNexis Total Practice offerings it's about making content services of all kinds pay off for the customer in concrete and measurable ways. While rival Thomson West challenges LexisNexis strongly in the integration of legal content into internal workflows for bottom-line functions, LexisNexis Client Development focuses on developing the top line for their clients in professional services markets with highly specialized content and CRM functions that competitors both horizontal and vertical are lacking in such an integrated form. It bodes well for other content services companies seeking growth opportunities that will come out of looking at content from the perspective of helping clients in specific verticals succeed in their markets as much as in their operations. Now if only they can wrestle these press releases to the ground...
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By John Blossom - posted at 2:06 PM |
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There are "media pundits" and then there are REAL media pundits - folks who feel specially ordained to speak about and for the general media industry. I don't put our own observations in the latter category - we're just glad to have some insights now and again - but Vanity Fair columnist Michael Wolff's observations on media and publishing put him in the real pundit arena by his own measure at least. paidContent.org's Executive Editor Staci Kramer caught up with a Wolff-moderated panel at this week's Online Media, Marketing and Advertising Conference and Expo in New York this week. In Staci's summary Wolff laments that the current levels or revenues and earnings that mainstream media companies are making online just aren't going to be enough for his foreseeable bar tabs. "What if what we are doing right now is creating a kind of ghetto of cheap content?" Wolff howls. "There will never be this golden era of online media?" A timely retort came from Jim Bankoff, EVP, product and programming at AOL: "If you're just a consumer, there's never been a more golden age than now." And there's the point. Most media hit their peak in consumer value before they've been packaged and channeled to death by marketing execs and other agents of profitability that whittle out the fun but unsustainable options. While this golden age of content choice may be only in its very early days its profitability is not likely to focus on just a few original producers of branded content in the ways that it used to ever again. This is probably in part because of the way that business models are approached. As Bankoff noted later on how to use a media company's content online, "It has to make economic sense as a whole. If there is no business model then it doesn't make sense." By contrast, many of the most successful online content companies started out with only a glimmer of how to monetize their offerings but a strong idea as to how to build an audience. They built it and indeed they came in many instances, at which point the audience was there to cash in on readily. And there is probably the key difference that traditional publishing companies stumble on again and again in online venues: they look at monetizing content from the product on out rather than from the audience on in. For all of the weaknesses of VC-backed content plays this technique opened up the door to radically different ideas as to how to conceive of a content product that had little to do with traditional media marketing and distribution methods and everything to do with servicing audiences where their interests lay. It's an outlook that may discourage many publishers today, but there's still plenty of time in this golden age to develop and position high-quality content in audience-friendly venues. They may not look like your typical content products of yesteryear, but after they've been chugging out profits for a few years that probably won't be of much concern to you anyway. So thanks again, Michael, for reminding that this evolving world of online content doesn't look anything like the old watering hole. Let us know when you're ready to have a round with the new crew...
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By John Blossom - posted at 12:49 PM |
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By John Blossom - posted at 12:11 PM |
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| Monday, September 25, 2006 |
While many publishers focus on search engines to get their content in the most valuable context possible that's not where issues of context begin and end for online content. A new generation of micro-context services are bringing valuable content sources down to the level of words and phrases in destination content. These new and evolving services enable publishers to expose their own content and content from high-quality content partners to give audiences a high-value experience whenever they decide to shift their focus. Think of every bit of content in your services as the potential starting point for an enhanced relationship that can keep audiences coming back for more. Click here to read the full News Analysis
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By John Blossom - posted at 7:06 PM |
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Trends Young Internet Producers, Bankrolled, Are Seeking Act II The New York Times* Publishers aim for some control of search results Reuters The Future of the Internet II: Internet leaders, activists, and analysts see opportunities in a “flattening” world Pew Internet & American Life Microsoft May Offer Free Ad-Supported Office Reuters via Publish Web 2.0 Companies Garner $262.3 Million in First Half of 2006, Gaining Ground in U.S. VC Investing PrimeZone OMMA East: Ross Levinsohn, President, Fox Interactive Media paidContent.org Google plans product search upgrade for search engine Web2.Ohhh TechMeme Invents New Kind of Advertisment TechCrunch BuzzLogic calculates social media influence ZDNet Craig Newmark reflects on the power of the Web CNET News How to Get Attention In a New-Media World WSJ Online* Best Practices 3 Reasons Why Delicious Bookmarks Beat Digg Traffic Hands Down Performancing The 8 Free Things Every Site Should Do Squidoo It feels relevant: biological tactility in news media USC Annenberg OJR Cool Tools Add Me Unveils 'AddThis Button', Announces Public Beta PR Newswire NewsGator Partners With Directory Xpress to Help School Communications to Parents and Students MarketWire New DRM Add-on for Google Writley, Spreadsheets, Cash, Maps and Picasa Web Albums PR Web
Deals, Partnerships & Sales LexisNexis Launches Corporate Intelligence Subscription for the InterAction CRM Solution BusinessWire Products, Markets & People LexisNexis Launches Client Development Solutions, Aligning with Professional Services Firms’ Strategies LexisNexis LexisNexis Announces Launch of atVantage Business Development Tool BusinessWire Ancestry.com Adds Major U.S. Newspaper Birth, Marriage and Death Announcements, 1851 to 2003 PR Newswire Knows.jongo.com, the leading English language information tool for China-related subjects on the web Jongo Knows
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By John Blossom - posted at 12:04 PM |
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Want to catch up on last week's headlines? Try our weekly categorized summary with embedded commentary on the latest trends. Click here to view last week's headlines in review
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By John Blossom - posted at 9:31 AM |
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| Friday, September 22, 2006 |
TechCrunch notes the debut of Socialtext 2.0, a long-needed overhaul to the enterprise-oriented Wiki publishing package. This new version provides a cleaner look, enhanced usability for non-techie page editors and an application programming interface that will enable content from Socialtext-enabled sites to be extracted for other content applications such as mashups. Our colleague Robin Good notes in comments on the TechCrunch posting that the TechCrunch review is a bit of a soft treatment and that they should acknowledge that many packages have come along in the last year that provide more streamlined functionality and features that will widen the appeal of Wiki packages to users. With packages such as Wetpaint providing very user-friendly interfaces and features tuned to make Wikis far more accessible to the users on whose contributions the success of a Wiki rises or falls Socialtext is indeed a little late to the party. But it's hard to have your cake and eat it too. With a focus on making Wiki software acceptable in behind-the-firewall environments Socialtext has had its hands full with early successes that haven't necessarily allowed them to focus on the explosion of online Wikis that are beginning to bloom thanks to more easily licensed open source packages and the new wave of less geekish Wiki products. A body of code can move only so fast, oftentimes not as fast as a content marketplace demands of its evolution. This seems to be especially true of most software supporting social media. We're in the process of vetting a number of social software packages which, while all useful, are clearly early-stage systems that are having a hard time managing the addition of enough features to provide robust publishing environments that capture the many facets of effective social media. Major publishers are not any better off with more mature content management packages that are for the most part oriented towards a more rigid view of content production and sharing. It's a bit like the early days of content management systems about ten years ago - with the notable exception of open source packages making it far easier for publishing Everymans to get in the game. In the meantime publishers impatient to have social publishing software that's both enterprise-ready to satisfy their I.T. staffs and robust enough with features to satisfy online media clients are having a hard time closing the gap this year. This tends to favor destination sites such as Wikipedia and Gather that have built up publishing communities around their own technology platforms, gaining valuable insights into how to make these packages work from their diverse and broadening audiences. The Wikimedia Foundation that sponsors Wikipedia has also spun off its Mediawiki platform as a public-license Wiki software package that's popular in its own right, though falling behind the times in user-friendly features. Where does this leave publishers? I leave the details of when these packages mature to the code hounds, but my sense is that we're less than a year away from Wiki software creating a new wave of social publishing similar to the recent weblog explosion. Some in the thick of Wikis may view that as a very conservative forecast given the stellar growth of Wikipedia but I think that the real growth has not yet arrived for the medium as a whole. Wikis need to act more like databases and less like scratch pads for them to gain full acceptance. In the meantime the rough edges of the technology are being worked out as best practices are still forming for managing the sometimes free-for-all environments that can erupt in the medium. Wikis are far from perfect database publishing tools, but then again weblogs are pretty puny content management systems - yet they have already changed the publishing world. Welcome to Wiki 2.0 - social publishing meeting the demands of both enterprise and media publishers on a common ground that attracts user-publishers far more effectively than ever before.
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By John Blossom - posted at 3:01 PM |
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By John Blossom - posted at 11:59 AM |
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| Thursday, September 21, 2006 |
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