Posts Tagged ‘Chris Anderson’

For Some, A World Wide Web That Never Was

Broadband, Internet, Mobile, Music, Online Video, Radio | Posted by Larry Greenberg
Aug 24 2010

Chris Anderson, Wired’s Editor-In-Chief, and Michael Wolff, Vanity Fair columnist and Rupert Murdoch biographer, recently wrote dueling columns in a special Wired feature called “The Web is Dead.”   For his part, Anderson described the World Wide Web’s diminishing role as the all-purpose gateway to the Internet.  Other Internet platforms and devices, including mobile, have become the preferred means of online access.

The piece speaks for the United States and probably reflects trends in many other developed countries.  A decade ago, especially in the United States, the Web was synonymous with the Internet future.  Today the terms “Web” and “Internet” are used interchangeably, although the web is just one way to get on the Internet.  As Anderson points out, thanks to iPhones, iPads, Blackberries and other smart mobile devices,  a majority of users’ online time is spent outside the confines of web browsers.  If the Internet is the Super Information Highway (sorry about the hackneyed metaphor), then the Web is becoming more like Route 66, a historic road that has since been bypassed by quicker and better ways of reaching their destinations.

The success of non-Web platforms has to do with an improved user experience, that is, the ability to get desired content more easily.   “Every time you pick an iPhone app instead of a Web site, you are voting with your finger,” Anderson wrote.  “A better experience is worth paying for, either in cash or in implicit acceptance of a non-Web standard.”

Of course, “The Web is Dead” title was likely meant to be more provocative than literal.  Perhaps it’s more accurate to say the Web is waning, evolving into just another useful means of Internet access.

So if the Web really is ebbing in the United States and other developed countries, what about emerging nations such as India?

In a July 30, 2009 post, “India’s Flourishing Newspaper Industry and Its Internet Future,” I discussed how India may well follow its own path to the online world.  In India, where landline penetration is low, the mobile subscriber base was nearly 525 million in 2009, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, up from 234 million connections at the end of 2007.  In May 2010, the government auctioned off its 3G broadband spectrum, creating opportunities for carriers and content providers to offer an infinite array of revenue-generating Value Added Services (VAS), including music streaming, radio, videos and online games.

In July 2010, the GSMA announced that the number of global mobile connections has surpassed the 5 billion mark. As 3G is adopted around the world, there could be hundreds of millions of people enjoying their first taste of advanced Internet connectivity without ever having surfed the Web. For these users, perhaps the Wired article might aptly be re-titled, “The Web: You Can’t Die If You Never Lived.”

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Is Technology the Answer to Bad PR?

Journalism, Public Relations | Posted by Larry Greenberg
Aug 12 2010

For quite some time there has been a love/hate relationship between journalists and those who would have them write stories about their clients.

Three years ago Wired’s editor-in-chief Chris Anderson caused a stir when he published his blacklist containing the email addresses of more than 300 PR folks he said had been spamming his inbox with irrelevant pitches.  Other writers followed with their own lists, sending waves of recriminations throughout the public relations industry that continue to this day.

Poor training and laziness are often cited as the primary culprits behind the indiscriminate pitching of reporters.  What about technology?  Is technology an accomplice in turning media relations into a simple numbers game in which anyone can email blast the entire journalistic universe with a way off-target pitch?  Or could it be a corrective?

Darryl Siry just launched NewsBasis as “a platform for better media relations.”   Siry, CEO and founder of the new company, has worked both as a journalist and public relations executive. In a recent blog post Siry gave his rationale for starting NewsBasis:  “I concluded that the disconnect between PR and the media is really a design problem – and I believe that a lot of value can be generated by a platform that addresses this from a technology and design perspective.”

NewsBasis’ goal is to align “interests and timing in the ‘pitch process.’”   Public relations representatives or individual subject experts can create profiles detailing their focus areas.  They can then insert their opinions into relevant articles which journalists can then find as they’re searching for information and sources.  Journalists can also post queries for experts.   In addition, NewsBasis has algorithms to match reporters with sources based on profiles and behavioral analysis of past usage on the system.

Services like ProNet and HARO have already helped improve pitch relevancy, although Siry believes Aardvark and Quora are better comparisons “in that we want to focus on connecting requests to authoritative responders and develop a searchable knowledgebase over time. “

NewsBasis is brand new, and I haven’t had the chance to use it.  The strength of any platform like this, however, is in the network effect – that is, how many reporters are actually using it.  NewsBasis will need time to grow.

Nothing can replace training, creativity and relationship-building.  That fact is that NewsBasis, a technology platform, is constructed to force public relations representatives to research, understand and contribute contextually appropriate information to a particular story, thereby encouraging them to become better media relations pros – and a truly useful resource for journalists.  That can only be a good thing.

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Desperation is the Mother of Invention: Papers Trying New Revenue Models

Free Content, Internet, Journalism, Media, Newspapers, Paid Content | Posted by Larry Greenberg
Jul 20 2009

You’ve heard the cliché: ‘necessity is the mother of invention.’  When it comes to the newspaper business, one might also substitute ‘desperation’ for necessity.

In Chris Anderson’ new book, Free: A Future of a Radical Price,  the Wired Editor-in-Chief talks about the psychological barrier that free represents for consumers.  Once the ‘free’ line is crossed, at least when it involves digital content, it’s very hard to convert consumers of free into paying customers.  While representing an existential threat to the traditional media model, Anderson also relates how free could drive media companies to innovate. Such innovation might entail the creation of new profit-making models based on free, as well as alternate sources of funding that match supply and demand with long-tail precision.

Needless to say, many publishers are not giving up on paid content, at least not yet.

News Corporation’s The Wall Street Journal (subscription) and the Financial Times (freemium) are two examples of publishers who already charge for online access. Not surprisingly, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Financial Times editor Lionel Barber predict that most papers will go from digital free to digital fee in the not-so-distant future.

It’s important to note, however, that The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times both serve a business audience that places a great value on the timely delivery of financial and market data (not to mention it’s covered as a business expense).  What about publications catering to a general interest readership, such as The New York Times?

The New York Times, which has already switched from paid to free, seems less sure about its plans. After having discarded its online pay plan in 2008, The Times recently floated a trial balloon to gauge how readers would feel about paying a $5 monthly online access fee, with a discount for print subscribers. (Considering that an annual subscription is around $600, offering print subscribers an online discount might seem more like an insult than a deal.)

Uncertain about the prospects of a paid model, The Times is also exploring other options.  Craig Whitney, an assistant managing editor at The Times, recently told Poynter’s Bill Mitchell that the paper was weighing the possibility of seeking funding from foundations, a la National Public Radio.

Mitchell’s piece also alluded to a pending collaboration between The Times and freelancer Lindsey Hoshaw, who is using Spot.Us, a crowd-funding start-up, to raise $10,000 in expense money to write about a massive garbage blob –  twice the size of Texas – that’s currently floating in the North Pacific. Given the concept’s newness, the paper finds itself deliberating both the financial and ethical considerations of such an arrangement.

Finally, Journalism Online is presenting itself as a potential savior of paid online content. According to Daily Finance, the Journalism Online’s partners – author and media entrepreneur Steve Brill, former Wall Street Journal publisher L. Gordon Crovitz and telecom executive Leo Hindery Jr.  – will soon announce the names of popular newspaper and magazine brands that will be selling their content via Journalism Online using a variety of bundled pay schemes.

A year from now we may have a lot clearer picture as to how all of these initiatives have faired, how inevitable free – at least when it comes to digital media – really is.

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Anderson and Gladwell: A Healthy Debate about the Inevitability of Free

Free Content, Internet, Journalism, Media, Paid Content | Posted by Larry Greenberg
Jul 02 2009

The term “thought leader” is sometimes used rather freely, especially in the world of business.

For an example of genuine thought leaders, one need only follow the recent public controversy stirred by Malcolm Gladwell’s review of Chris Anderson’s new book, Free: The Future of a Radical Price.  Anderson, the editor-in-chief of Wired, and Gladwell, a contributor to The New Yorker, are perhaps two of the best-known commentators on societal and business trends.  Both have authored books whose titles (Anderson’s Long Tail; Gladwell’s Tipping Point) have become reference points for a wide range of discussions about the emerging global economy.

Although I have read Gladwell’s critique – and the subsequent critiques of his critique – I have not yet read Free, so I can’t comment on the substance of Anderson’s book.  The resulting debate, however, highlights the tensions between the traditional purveyors of content — the multi-billion dollar publishing, television, motion picture and music industries – and the businesses and customers who have wholeheartedly embraced digital media — that is, just about anyone who regularly goes online.

(To get into the particulars of the Anderson-Gladwell debate, be sure to read this TechDirt piece by Mike Masnick and associated comments.)

Naturally, the creators and distributors of professionally-produced content want to gain some measure of control, recognition and recompense for their efforts.  Is free, as some worry, a destructive force that must be contained lest professional producers lose incentive to stay in the content business and, therefore, we all lose? Or is free already leading to a reinvention of the professional media industry, in which customers become producing partners or where the product, which used to be sold at a price, becomes a valuable loss-leading marketing tool for an entirely new type of profit-making model?

These are both scary and exciting times for the industry.  The debate between these two thought leaders provides a useful framework for trying to understand this most fundamental development in the media world.

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