February 13, 2006
The value of the content?
From the MediaGuardian.co.uk |-Opinion section, commenting on the rise in video content on the web.
Its an interesting leader on the whys and wherefores of charging for content. Whereas in the past (i.e. last week :) ), the model seemed to be about the content, now it seems to be about where and how you consume it, or as Emily Bell suggests: "the price of ease".
Then there is also this other tasty little throw away line:
not really so much about extracting value as creating freedom and therefore causing disruption.
Convergence, communities and brand are all impacting in subtle ways to change the landscape in monumental ones. I guess its why I so love the Communities Dominate Brands book (and ongoing blog) and you can also see Hugh's 'marketing as disrtuption' meme poking through.
We live in interesting times.
My charge for this content? Well intelligent conversation would be good... failing that you could offer me a job :)
Posted by Paul Goodison at 11:09 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
June 29, 2005
BARC, BARC and Buzz, Buzz
Following up on some thoughts from last night.
I notice Suw has published her mindmap notes from last nights talk and her own notes on the event at Strange Attractor.
Suw takes issue with Johnnie's view on speakers:
I disagree, however, with Johnnie's dislike of having speakers. Yes, having speakers stand up in front of an audience does create an us-them dichotomy which is especially false when you are in a room full of your peers, but in an ideal world that's because the speaker knows something the audience doesn't, and the audience wants to find out what. As a speaker, I don't feel that I seize the authority to stand up in front of people talk about the stuff I talk about, I feel that I am granted grace to do so by the audience and that I had better damn well say something interesting.
On this point I agree with Suw that a speaker doesn't seize authority and I also agree with Johnnie that engagement and involvement are what more speakers should try and do. Its difficult when you are brought up on a diet on lectures and yet move into a world of blogging. Perhaps when I get up next to do a talk I should remind myself of this.
The aspect of authority itself though is most telling. The different definitions of authority being traded with both Johnnie and Adriana using the same dictionary.com reference to multiple meanings of the same word - just like blogging offers you multiple views of the world. Authority comes when we allow it to, whether internally from being the author of your own life to giving legitimacy to speakers, bowing to greater experience.
The emergence of this authority in blogging and of etiquette and behaviour modes is fascinating - at one point someone (apologies as to who) said that we have a means of dealing with other people, its called politeness. Well yes but then as James pointed out subversion is fun too.
So is questioning and so is storytelling. Right now blogging is interesting and fun and cool and disrupting and as Alastair Shrimpton and others suggested, going to be so not cool when it hits the real mainstream and yet still full of authority because we will give it to ourselves as affirmation and to others as little dances, with passion and with enthusiaism.
The blogtrain is running, some have seats, some will stand, but we are all going to get there, because the network and linkages are king.
It reminds me of the old adage 'content is king' - is it more so now that personality with content and linkages are king? Or is it interativity - the ability to have somenthing to do when you get to the endof that link i.e. post comments in a blogging context?
This is one conference that actually has me thinking more after the event than during it and that's good. Maybe it engaged me more than I thought, maybe it affirmed and empowered me more than I thought.
The one thing i wanted to say last night and didn't manage to get it out was that people long to make connections, and last night I made some relationship connects and some intellectual connections.
If I had a moodometer on the blog it would say VBG.
Posted by Paul Goodison at 04:30 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 14, 2004
Google digitises Libraries
BBC NEWS | Technology | Google to scan famous libraries
Wow! Not sure about others but I certainly view this as a coup by Google. Putting content of academic libraries online especially (in fact most importantly) the out of print, out of copyright material is fantastic.
Google never cease to amaze me with their innovation.
In the meantime (apparently it will take six years for everything to be online), take a look at the Google Beta site. Via Seth Godin
Posted by Paul Goodison at 11:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
November 13, 2003
ntl's Broadband Plus
I think I'm allowed to talk about this now...
ntl has a new product, based around aggregating (or collecting together) several premium (subscription) content services. Its called simply Broadband plus, and requires customers to be on the 600k or 1mb tiers of service.
I think its a great product offering content from Freeloader, Music 365, Tweenies (not available elsewhere), Vidplayer etc. And I know a great deal of hard work went into its development by a number of my colleagues.
Its currently only being promoted to ntl Broadband customers in the NE but due to go nationwide to ntl Broadband customers in the next few weeks. Even better news is that its free for the first 3 months!
I think its an extremely exciting product one which will grow and expand into other areas.
I would highly recommend you give it a try (I would say that wouldn't I?) what have you got to lose?
Posted by Paul Goodison at 10:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 08, 2003
Digital Lifestyle aggregator
Marc picks up on a post from Nick Gaydos about Digital Lifestyle Aggregators:
- take pictures and have them automatically posted into online albums
- jabber a thought into my mobile phone and have it recorded and archived into an mp3, posted on my weblog
- record what sites I visit, and keep them tabulated in a calendar
- nab the titles of the songs that I’m currently listening to embed events into a syndicated feed
- track my location over time with the gps in my phone and pda
To Nick's list, I'd add:
- record a song in the car, and download it onto my home system
- coordinate my pick-up and drop-off schedule with my wife, via cell phones
- connect on-line social networks together with my family
- have a central media library - for ALL my music, photos and videos - accessible anywhere in my digital lifestyle
- collect my RSS feeds, reviews, recipes, conversations and topics - in one place
Imagine if this piece of software existed, it would be fantastic! I would, as I have said before, buy one (or maybe more :) )
Marc's view is that until we have true broadband (above 25Mb) we won't see true digital lifestyles and I can see his point however as he suggests, there must be a market for this type of product. Linksys and Netgear both have products to try and aggregate types of content via a piece of hardware.
Posted by Paul Goodison at 11:33 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 05, 2003
UK film becomes first to launch on the Internet
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Film | Internet launch for film thriller
I was thrilled (no pun intended) to see this. Last year I plugged endlessly that we would start to see full length films avaialbe on the Internet in the UK. Despite some US sites starting this type of rent a film over the web, nothing has materialised in the UK. Until now:
The new film by Full Monty writer Simon Beaufoy has become the first to be launched officially over the internet.
This is Not a Love Song, which stars Harry Potter actor David Bradley, begun streaming at 1800 BST on Friday. The film runs for 93 minutes.
The film is available for streaming or for download from the film's website at a cost of between £2 to £3.
Unfortunately not everything seems to have gone to plan.
But soon after, overwhelming demand from the public to see the movie caused the site's streaming facility to crash.
A message was posted on the site apologising to people trying to download the movie.
"This is not working. We are currently experiencing a temporary technical problem in the delivery of the film," said the message.
"Our team is working on the delay and the film will be back online as soon as possible.
"This is a world first - thank you for bearing with us."
When it does start working again, I urge you to go view it. British films are usually pretty watchable and well worth the effort. I'd like to see more UK based films but so often they get pushed aside by dross from the US (not all films from Hollywood are dross but quite a lot :o )
Anyway I hope to watch it next wekk when the servers come back up and the rush has abated. Give it a go!
Posted by Paul Goodison at 11:14 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
September 01, 2003
Live theatre at home
BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Arts | Live theatre comes to digital TV
I went to London on Saturday for my daughter's birthday to see the Lion King (this is probably copyright Disney or something). great show well worth seeing simply for the costumes / puppets alone. Anyway, I started thinking about how perhaps, like sport, you could broadcast theatre performances live on the web. Obviously it would have to be paid for content but nevetheless i thought it would be an interesting venture then I saw today:
Digital TV channel BBC Four is to make the first live broadcast of a theatre performance for years.
Shakespeare's Richard II will be screened live from the Globe theatre in London - with viewers even able to listen to a commentary by a theatre critic.
The event, to be aired on 7 September, will be "a very risky, very exciting project for us", the channel's controller Roly Keating said.
The station was not sure if it was a television first - but it has not been attempted for many years.
The suggestion from this is that it would be quite difficult to deliver, although quite why its very risky is beyond me. After all the BBC reguarly broadcasts live events from sports, to Royal occasions and concerts.
Still I'm going to keep the idea and see whether it could be done another time.
Posted by Paul Goodison at 10:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 23, 2003
Gender based text analysis
Apparently I write like a girl...
I tried this 5 times to see whether it was only certain posts or all my writing. All suggested that I was female.
Now according to the feedback results the algorithm only gets it right about 50% of the time, either that or my writing is based on my feminine side :)
Not sure my wife would agree...
[Edit] Actually she did agree. On the basis that i was articulate, witty, and passionate. I'm not sure whether that was a compliment or not...
Posted by Paul Goodison at 10:06 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 22, 2003
Micro-content
AS mentioned in yesterday's post regarding Home Networking, its not just about the hardware, but also the applications, the software that runs over the network (your home network and the Internet).
Marc is very passionate about this and is commenting here on others whom are re-discovering some of the ideas that he wants to develop.
Basically (and forgive me if I get this wrong) Micor content is about small chunks (hence micro) and content, i.e. text, audio, video, images. But the key thing is its about what you as an individaul create not big media organisations.
So a fairly simple example is using the pictures you have taken with your digital camera and creating online photo galleries. Or blogs (yes even this one!) and then distributing the conent with other micro-content creators to create a sum greater than the parts.
Perhaps more simply it could be about showing your photos (stored on your PC) on the lounge TV, backed by your favourite music tracks which you have edited together with some explantory text. Maybe its an audio file ecorded about the first steps of your child, or their first words. Maybe its developing an idea into a business proposition with people across the globe... There are lots of different ways of viewing this and lots of different applications that could be built.
Marc's vision is outlined (no pun intended) here, where the People's Mesh is discussed. This fires my imagination.This isn't about being a killer app, this is about ubiquity; embedding technology and content into an homogenous and yet diverse whole.
This stuff isn't quite here yet, but I can't wait until it is...
(I think I pushing the meme again!)
Posted by Paul Goodison at 11:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 13, 2003
Fotoblog
New picture of me at my Fotoblog. Just thought I'd mention it. Well worth playing around at Fotoblog
Posted by Paul Goodison at 10:08 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Mobile Content & The Semantic Web
Mobitopia - Tuesday, August 12, 2003
There's an interesting article on The Failure and Future of Mobile Content in Brighthand by Ted Ladd, in which he describes four popular myths about why he thinks it's failed so far, and where it's going in the future -
The "myths" are:
1. It's a technical problem
2. It's a management problem
3. It's an economics problem, or no cash post-crash
4. It's a bad experience
Now I'd argue with calling most of those myths, but the second half of the article is more interesting. Here he discusses the future of mobile content and describes four generations of mobile content
- First generation: Same but smaller
- Second generation: Alerts
- Third generation: Exclusively mobile
- Fourth generation: The Disappearance of Mobile Content
A breakdown of these generations is reasonably straightforward; the first generation was about trying to reproduce existing web information in a more managable format for smaller screens and limited input capabilities; the second is about using mobile devices as glorified pagers to alert people to content that could only easily be accessible from a desktop; the third is generating mobile specific information, things that are only really relevant to a mobile environment; and the fourth being where the difference between mobile and other environments has for the most part dissappeared.
What's going to help moving to the next generation?
One way that this conundrum might be resolved is to use proper semantic markup, XHTML and RDF for the content and CSS for the presentation layer. Danny Ayers has an example of how this approach would be useful for complex queries here, his example is "has anyone Dan Brickley knows blogged about IM recently?" This is the sort of query that'd be possible to evaluate manually but a nightmare programatically unless one had decent semantic data to work with.
And that Ladies and Gnetlemen is the magic of links. This being a human one that I kind of knew but hadn't made. Although RDF could be used by machines, it can also be used by other devices to communicate more effectively with humans...
Posted by Paul Goodison at 09:18 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 12, 2003
Blogging Fridge!
f r e e g o r i f e r o | weblog
Connected appliances.
A bit of a buzz around the old idea of a screen fridge, possibly because there's a camera now that points inwards and posts pictures of what is in your fridge, so that you can check them while at the supermarket and stock accordingly.
It used to be all about magnets, now it's pixelated postcards from your refrigerator.
Leaving all other Cooltown scenarios aside I just wonder: why the surprise?
A few years ago the hot thing was "your appliances will be able to talk to one another", now your fridge has got its own weblog.
If you ask me that's simply evolution of the species.
Sergio made me smile with this little post. it reminded me of a scene from the Young Ones (UK alternative sitcom from the 1980's) where the fridge starts to eat someone. It may even talk, but I suspect it only burps... loudly!
I do kind of see the point about seeing the inside of fridges when you are out shopping but I would rather I had something that could audit what's in the fridge or indeed all my household shopping and based on my usage patterns actually do the shopping for me with my Internet Shjopping facility. My only concern I think then is that in order to do this would I actually be destroying any privacy I had left?
Imagine if the fridge did start blogging - "Well I'm still in a mess from when he dropped the milk all over me and the tomato rotted on the bottom shelf..' Privacy would efinitely be gone then :)
Posted by Paul Goodison at 09:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 08, 2003
Broadband Users Don't want extras...
PaidContent.org: August 07, 2003 Archives
The subscription-revenue potential of premium content sales to broadband consumers continues to hold more promise than profit, according to a survey by research firm Strategy Analytics. While music services tested highest among premium categories in terms of consumer interest, networked gaming may be the area most likely to generate revenue.
The best bet for providers seeking to build a subscription base is to target specific market segments, Penhune said. "Look for audiences such as online gaming, and NASCAR and other specialized sports, where people are willing to pay for a service they perceive as valuable," he said.
For a chart on the survey, see the company release
Hmmm... US report on paid for content on broadband. Targeting market segments. Now there's an idea that a certain company should consider...
Posted by Paul Goodison at 09:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 07, 2003
Making the Web Pay
Guardian Unlimited | Online | Making the web pay
The internet is coming close to answering the question creative people have been asking for years. Can an individual with a talent for writing, drawing, photography or music use the internet, not to create millions, but to make enough to live comfortably and do what they want to do professionally?
Ben Hammersley writing in the Guardian, offers up a basic but nonetheless useful overview of personal publishing and micro-payments. Scott McCloud is used as a prime user of the latter. A veteran comic writer and artist who has written two books on the comic genre (Understanding Comics and Re-inventing Comics), and famously suggests in both that the way forward for artists is the Internet and micropayments. A man who truely walks the talk.
BTW - I'm not proposing anyone starts paying me anything to read this but all comments are gratefully received and are the payment I would appreciate most :). Of course anyone wanting to pay me considerable sums, please email me immediately...if not sooner!
Posted by Paul Goodison at 10:16 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
7 web sins
Seven deadly sins of web writing: July 28, 2003 issue of New Thinking by Gerry McGovern
I'm applying them now. Er... does this mean I should shut up for good? :) no 2.
I'm definitely breaking no 1 - see blog chalk in the links section right.
Posted by Paul Goodison at 10:51 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
August 04, 2003
Weblogs and Content Management
Doc has a different angle on this but here's my take:
It has never been to no-one enjoyment to have to go through through lengthy, and not intuitive procedures to simply make some new text appear on a certain page of your site. Though the Frontpages and Tripods have attempted to come to our rescue we have further understood that Microsoft didn't have a clue about what we needed and how it should have been built and that advertising banners are really the most obnoxius partner of an information page.
I built ntl's intranet, the original from scratch. I developed an online information system for people (read those who talk to customer, those at the coal face to use). I had a great team who assisted who also had lots of good ideas (and some not so good). In all of this though, they and I were governed by FrontPage (early ish version) and the inability to get rid of headaches like page design and layout.
What I would have given for a Content Management system or blog tool. It would have revolutionised the way we worked and have freed up so much. It still would.
I even tried (in a different role) to implement a company wide Corporate tool, to no evail.
Perhaps its worth another go from a different angle.
Posted by Paul Goodison at 09:47 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 25, 2003
Got something to sell?
BBC NEWS | Business | EBay profits shoot higher
EBay profits shoot higher
EBay offers millions of items for sale every day
Online auction site eBay has enjoyed a surge in profits, making more than $100m (£61.9m) in just three months.
Ebay, which sells anything from stuffed animals to antique cocktail shakers, has become an internet phenomenon and is one of the few really profitable dot.com firms.
It sold goods worth $509.3m in the three months between April and June, a rise of 91% compared to its sales in the same period a year earlier.
Ebay goes from strength to strength. Could the success of Ebay be repeated today. Yep. Keep going, keep trying and you'll get there.
Posted by Paul Goodison at 04:28 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 22, 2003
Micro Content thoughts
Joi Ito's Web: Thoughts on micro-content, metadata and trends
Thought provoking article by Joi which illustrates a lot of key points about the technology trends within the blogging community right now.
Perhaps even more interesting are the comments on this posting from people such as Marc Canter.
Those building blocks imply innovation, but in fact - the marketplace doesn't pay for innovation and those key technologies is a part of a unified, digital lifestyle kind of product - that no one company or product can deliver. Only Apple and Microsoft can fund, develop and deliver products with that scope. And each of the key technologies Joi mentions can't stand alone as viable models
Does it always take the organisation the size of Microsoft to succeed? I don't think it does but then I'm speaking from observation not experience like Marc.
Probably the most important thing about ALL of what Joi says is that digital identity has to have CONTEXT? Who's gonna pay for JUST their Digital Identity?
Indeed. One of the factors I often get accused of (and rightly so) is that just because the technology is cool doesn't mean people are going to want to use it, or that there is a viable way to make money out of it. I am very interested in trying to understand more about this stuff, partly cos that who I am (an identity and a context), partly because of what I do (another identitiy and context) and partly because I think its an opportunity to make an extremely exciting product(s) that can make people (maybe me) money (another context and identity).
The technologies are the building block; who can come up with the product (note not tool or even idea) that will make this a must have in mainstream markets worldwide?
Posted by Paul Goodison at 02:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
GPS and the Web
When Will We See Geeplogs? from "The Merging of GPS and the Web"
Cagle also talks about a new language to be submitted to the W3C, the GPSml markup language, which would be used to describe, routes between two locations. For more information about GPSml, you can visit this Chaeron Corporation webpage.
One means to encode routes is the GPSml markup language, to be submitted as a note to the W3C later this year. In this XML-based system, a GPSml document consists of one or more collections of three principal types: a waypoint, a route (a named collection of waypoints), or a track (which combines locations with a time coordinate).
One component of this waypoint would be an identifier which could be associated with a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI).
With such a URI, you could effectively assign to that location an application that will run when the location is referenced in some manner (you get within five feet of that node, for instance). This application could be a Web service, retrieving contextual information about the location.
Of course, this kind of information and services could potentially be used by marketers.
Even without knowing anything about you, a marketer could read the identifier being transmitted to Web services giving GPS information for the device and develop a profile showing [your shopping habits.]
Finally, Cagle thinks that we'll soon see geeplogs (short for GPS-logs) through the use of the RSS specification."
[These geeplogs will contain] public GPS contexts that can be queried about a given area. [They] will be the GPS equivalents to blogs, in which a person could narrate a specific tour with his or her relevant commentary, possibly with photographs or video feeds.
This sounds really cool. Being able to provide information tailored to a location or provide information on a route via mark up language.
From a marketing perspective it gives all sorts of possibilities to offer goods and services relevant to that space and person within that space. If you tie this into other web services perhaps you could suggest nearby stores which sell woolly hats when its snowing?
My personal desire for this idea is to be able to provide more detailled information about a locality especially its history (and to a lesser extent tourist type info). It would make some experiences much richer for me. (Not all - real life doesn't always need augmenting!) It could also provide interesting service when you are travelling too.
Posted by Paul Goodison at 02:26 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 18, 2003
Identity - US Government Hack stopped
BBC NEWS | Technology | US snooping plan blocked
Data-mining tool
The widely criticised programme, which was previous known as Total Information Awareness, was the brainchild of John Poindexter.
He is a key figure from the Iran-Contra scandal, who is now at the military research institute, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, (Darpa).
Critics said the plan would create a Big Brother state
The TIA project would collect as much information about every single aspect of everyone in America as possible, from doctor's records to bank deposits, e-mail to travel tickets, phone conversations to magazine subscriptions.
The aim was to used advanced data-mining tools to look for patterns of terrorist activities in the electronic data trails left behind by everyone.
How can a country be at one time so pro-freedom and yet so paranoid about its own citizens? I'm glad that the Senate actually took a stand against this, it feels exactly like Big Brother and all that Orwell meant by that. Maybe I'm being alarmist but doesn't this feel almost totalitarian in its intent?
Posted by Paul Goodison at 10:27 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 17, 2003
Web designers have no idea..
Guardian Unlimited | Online | Decorators with keyboards
I would love to see a few web designers thrown in jail. Sadly, the best we can hope for is some small fines and a few marginal improvements to the rubbish that currently masquerades as good web design. It is not enough, but it would be better than nothing.
The reason for optimism is that the Royal National Institute of the Blind (RNIB) is backing a number of individuals in taking legal action against various as yet unnamed websites that they say do not comply with the Disability Discrimination Act 1995.
Very few government and commercial websites are adequately usable by the partially sighted and blind, or offer an equivalent service to disabled users. That is simply not acceptable on social grounds. It is also, as a matter of fact, a betrayal of the principles of the web.
Can't guarantee that this site complies, however I am slowly attempting to put together the full website for betaroad, so maybe I should look at the RNIB site to get an idea of what is needed.
Posted by Paul Goodison at 12:31 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Open Identity Useage Scenarios
The idea of the OpenIdentity standard is to maintain our own, protected database of people ‘pointers’ – which will in turn point to specific locations throughout the web – which may house an end-user’s resume, medical records or blog/web site. All access to these pointers and information will be strictly controlled, allowing each individual to decide who gets access to what.
So this is not about setting up some centralized database. This is about creating a ‘proxy’ server for people – a redirect server, which will keep track of the smallest amount of information possible about you – and simply point to where all the real data is…. The end-user/human can then completely control who sees what. New kinds of tools, services and applications can be built around this sort of standard.
Having conversed with Marc about tools I know how passionate he is about things and Identity is no exception. I love the ideas being presented here and wish I could help out more, however I'm in one of those big Comps (well not that big), don't have any money and am not technically savvy enough to code to this level.
However sign me up for an account :0
Posted by Paul Goodison at 10:03 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 16, 2003
The Search Market Cometh
Feedster now can index your entire weblog if you have an RSS archive of it. I have one for much of 2002, and all of 2003.
Isn't it obvious that either Google or Yahoo will buy Feedster so their search engine can understand RSS. Then the other guy is going to wonder why they missed the boat. After that, they can make their search engines understand OPML and throw out the antiquated centralized directories and let the amateurs compete to create the best directory for a given topic, the same way we compete for page rank. No more one guy controlling a category. That just doesn't work. It's cool that Google has competition from a highly regarded company like Yahoo. Now search is a market. Before it was a company town.
Dave Winer on the new search market. Will Feedster become a target. Part of me hopes so, at least if not in name then at least the development of alternative technology to do the same job. After all are we ever going to get to this semantic web stuff?
Probably but I don't really understand it well enough. Another action to me - understand Semantic web.
Posted by Paul Goodison at 09:33 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
July 11, 2003
Global organising
Paul Resnick's Sabbatical Musings
More on Global Organizing of Local Activity
what are the success criteria for attempts to use the Internet to connect people who live near other and are interested in some topic?
First, there needs to be a critical mass of interest before people will want to sign up. There's no value added if you go to a site and find you're the only one near you interested in the topic. So there are strong network effects: the more people are interested, the more likely you are to have a local match
That's true but it does depend on context and topic. Interests such as blogging can of course be global but someone to play squsah with necessitates proximity. The GeoUrl idea is great for this as it shows blogs from people within a set distance and direction of me. I suppose therefore I could set out to meet them.
Second, because of the need for critical mass, there has to be a focal point; most people need to guess the same web site to go. For some topics, such as a presidential campaign, there is an official site that is the natural focal point. For others, it's not so clear.There may be strong network effects here, yielding a winner-take-all market. If meetup or someone else (YahooGroups if it wanted to get in the game?) gains enough attention, it could become the place that everyone would think to go on any topic. Once that happens, it would be hard for anyone else to get in the game, much as it's hard for any auction site to compete with eBay at this point.
Hmmm... Yes and no. Ebay has localised sites and so in that sense it works on location but there is no guarantee that any given site could necessarily win out globally. I believe the 'laws' (and I use that term loosely) of networking (I probably got this from Linked) suggest that although network effects can produce a dominant player, it can also lead to massive upset in a market place, for example Google based on the fitness of the node (or website).
Posted by Paul Goodison at 01:36 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Online Profitability
A six-point plan for online profitability
An excellent article on how to make money online through content - don't think i will be doing so anytime soon but it is worth thinking about. After all Paidcontent shows it can be done!
1 Understand your audience
2 Develop online content
3 Use free content to attract payment
4 Intelligent advertising
5 Market and develop your brand
6 Make the most of online tools
1 Understand your audience
The internet provides a wealth of tools to help you understand more about your audience - use them. Profiles can be built from registration details and a viewer's online history, and incentives such as prizes or fun questionnaires can encourage readers to submit information.
Organisations like Nielsen/NetRatings provide detailed information on user groups. The average time spent online by 18 to 24 year-olds in the UK, for example, is 39.01 hours for men and 6.15 hours for women. Understanding your readership is key to developing appropriate content - and advertising.
2 Develop online content
But be aware of the economics - do you really need a completely separate online team? If you already have a team working on a print version, utilise their specialist areas to produce online columns, for example.
Both quality - unique, compelling and engaging content - and quantity - a diverse range of material to satisfy as many niche interests as possible - are key to a successful site.
Give your readers a greater role. Salon.com offers readers their own blog, and the BBC invites readers to submit photographs.
3 Use free content to attract payment
"Free content is the river on which paid subscriptions arrive," according to Vin Crosbie, managing partner of Digital Deliverance. Take details of readers when they sign up for free and you will be able to provide a better, tailored service when they begin to pay.
The premium provider - the recognised brand leader - can always charge more for content.
When the subscriptions arrive, use automatic payment renewal systems to cut the drop-out rate.
4 Intelligent advertising
Move adverts around a page so that readers do not get used to seeing them in one place and screen them out. Develop tailored advertising so that the right viewer sees the right advert.
Do not use adverts that automatically pop-up when you load a page; they are intrusive. Instead, try using text-sells on the page that open an advert in a new window - that way you can even use traditional graphic adverts similar to those that appear in your print edition.
5 Market and develop your brand
Think how another publisher might plan a competing site. What are you doing? What are you not doing?
Promote your web site address across different media. Encourage print readers to follow through to your web site by including three web teasers on the front page of the print edition.
Existing brand leaders have been the most successful in charging for content - so aim to be the future brand leader online.
6 Make the most of online tools
Use technology to ease the experience of your readers. Concentrate on navigability, and develop pages in a format to read as well as a format to print.
Take advantage of multimedia reporting and publishing tools: digital cameras, video, SMS, mailing lists, audio and web writing formats such as blogs.
Keep up to date with software and new tools. RSS - or Rich Site Summary - will be the next step in the format of the web and many sites, including the BBC, are already using it.
Posted by Paul Goodison at 01:08 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack