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The innovation in Q&A sites (Hunch, Quora, Mahalo Answers, and now Explain This), says something interesting about the future of media. Reporting and information consumption will become more targeted to demand and more niche.
I think Explain This looks really interesting because it has vetted source providers, something Quora, Hunch, and others lack. The other ideas are better for-profit ventures, because they offer greater scale and distribution, but ET can more easily become a “trusted source.”
caro:
Studio 20 Director Jay Rosen proposes ExplainThis.org as a way for journalists to answer the public’s questions. From the Poynter Institute:
Rosen has developed an idea that could make journalism better by allowing more people to participate in the process: ExplainThis.
ExplainThis has two parts. One is an open system through which anyone can ask and answer questions and vote on them. The second part involves “journalists standing by.” Journalists would monitor questions, looking for ones that meet three conditions:
- Many people are asking the same thing.
- The question can’t be answered well via search.
- Answering the question would require the work of journalism: investigation and explanation.
Read more here.
This is very exciting. And much more relevant than shot-in-the-dark evening news stories that claim to be of public interest, like “IS YOUR TANNING BED MAKING YOU FAT???”
"Facebook easily has the brand equity to launch their own phone (most likely with a partner at first) and marry it to your address book, photos, videos and events in ways that Google can never match because they are more social. Facebook gets connections and how to use the data to make your life better."
Sooner or Later, Facebook Will Launch Its Own Phone - The Steve Rubel Lifestream
"The ads only appear when the pages are printed, with the theory that users who print the page are inherently committed to the content."
Of course, this arrangement could only work if visitors are actually printing pages at a worthwhile rate. Not to worry, said Chuck Corday, Hearst Digital Media’s SVP and GM: “Printing from our magazines’ Web properties is a behavior that already has scale.” (via ryanbrown)
"A lot of the people who read a bestselling novel, for example, do not read much other fiction. By contrast, the audience for an obscure novel is largely composed of people who read a lot. That means the least popular books are judged by people who have the highest standards, while the most popular are judged by people who literally do not know any better. An American who read just one book this year was disproportionately likely to have read ‘The Lost Symbol’, by Dan Brown. He almost certainly liked it."
This is really a huge insight that has repercussions in all sorts of other areas, from digital advertising to iphone apps to search engines. And it’s all based on the age old principle of people being afraid of missing things out. Hence the blockbusters.
Maybe one person’s attention span is composed on one hand of following others (blockbusters) and on the other, finding your own (niches).
My hunch has always been that advertising needs social proof — proof that there are other people that dig an offer or an ad. That ultimately creates curiosity stemming from not wanting to miss out on something that a lot of others are getting. -(via everythingismedia)
(via mudd up, peterwknox, marco)
"What is success? To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived; that is to have succeeded."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
via revolvver / dayofthedreamweavers
(via waxandmilk) (via mikehudack) (via abeshafi) (via hiten)
"1. Perpetually Free with a Paid Upgrade Option – Under this model, you build a product that has a perpetually free version that is a degraded version of the paid product. The onus is on the company to properly delineate the free and paid offering such that the basic offering is sufficiently useful to the free audience and the premium offering is sufficiently valuable to those who choose to pay."
Thoughts on Free Powered Business Models and Why Time Beats Features | Charles Hudson’s Weblog
Rafer sez:
Content people and commerce people see freemium opportunities in entirely different ways. Both can work great, but Charles’ post made the contrasts more obvious than normal for me.
Charles sees the free version as the bastardized, “degraded” version” of the real, “paid product.”
Instead, I want to support users for Love or Money. I see the premium version as a tax on the 2% to 5% of the user base that abuses the free service. Any freemium I work on is free first and premium after because I want volume. The broadest adoption net is one that offers value for participation and attention and values the free users beyond their likelihood of conversion.
It’s not just an attitudinal shift. The two groups design their services and organizations differently. Most importantly, the 80/20 focus on earned media versus advertising is reversed. Earned media isn’t free, and it requires just as much forethought — and a completely different set of testing — as a great CPA plan.
It also obviates this problem the Hiten reblogged:
It is very difficult to properly segment users and features such that you provide enough value to both paid and free audiences.
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(via rafer)
Comparing Ad-Clickthru’s and sharing rates. (An Ad Clicker Analysis)
"The media business, either on the national or local level, is losing its grip on audiences as they fragment and disperse all over the digital realm (including of course mobile). But they do not need to lose their grip on the relationships they have built up with local merchants since the days of Mad Men. What they need to do, and what they are increasingly doing, is reselling the inventory of others to their customers."
Local Media’s Hidden Asset: Their Salesforces (via brooksjordan)
This is how Yahoo! has forumalate their Publisher Network model. Yahoo displays the content from local papers and those same local papers can sell the against against the pages served on Yahoo. The existing sales teams with long local relationships gets a much bigger inventory and they revenue is split with yahoo. Clever.
(via tedr)
