The Publisher Audience

For years I've been meaning to write this post, but it seemed so obvious that I kept neglecting to write this thought down.

I am the publisher. You are the publisher. Anyone with a screen is the publisher.

That changes everything. It moves institutions that are publishers on paper or on the air one step further away from the audience. It means newspapers and broadcasters have to find ways to market their wares to the new publishers.

Engagement and Convergence

The tablet should be a device that does everything. I've said this before on these pages. But now I suppose I have to admit, on the day of the launch of the Apple iPad, that tablets are here, and they're also getting there.

"There" is a place where convergence happens and engagement results. And we're not there because convergence presents problems for media and device producers.

Convergence for media producers:

Convergence is something that happens at the device level. So: I can surf the Web on my kids' Playstation. Or I can do anything I like on my iPhone, or my HP Linux Mini. That's convergence.

Media producers don't understand this. They think convergence happens at the level of their sites and apps. If the New York Times adds video to its Web site, is that convergence? No, it isn't.

Convergence means the people who used to call themselves, for example, radio producers, get their audio, video and text to seamlessly join the flow of content that runs across a consumer's device. (Remembering the consumer is the publisher, not the old media company.)

Old media companies have yet to get beyond their own properties. They are still thinking about their Web sites and their apps. They are still too attached to old media models to understand what convergence is. They are in a condition of unenlightened ignorance. (Apologies for this generalization. I know there are enlightened old media staff out there. But ask yourself; isn't that right?)

Old media producers need to jump out of bed this morning, the morning of the launch of the iPad, and shout out into the street "convergence doesn't happen on my Web site, it happens on the device." The sound of enlightenment.

Convergence for device producers:

The trouble is convergence is perhaps harder to achieve on the device and anyone anticipated.

It's harder because of the variety of standards involved and harder because of competition between devices.

So there are now a number of electronic books and pad-like devices, but some don't play audio or video, others are tethered or they're just plain slow.

And now there's the iPad, which hits the streets today but which apparently only runs one app at a time, like its older, smaller cousin, the iPhone. So when I listen to a radio station on the station's app I immobilize the device. That's not convergence. And it's not engagement.

Engagement is the ultimate goal, and the place where convergence happens, the device, is the place where engagement happens. That's because the device is the point of physical engagement.

But media producers, and now device producers both want to restrict or control what the publisher, that is the user, wants to publish on his/her device.

That limits convergence and engagement. We're not "there" yet.

Christensen on Christensen

Clay Christensen, a leading author on innovation, talks on the Harvard Business School Ideacast Episode 122: Reinventing Your Business Model. (It's not on the page yet, but you can subscribe to the feed, or the file is here.)

Christensen has an amazing ability to encapsulate his ideas in fairly short sentences, and the podcast is worth hearing just for that. He goes over the core ideas of his writing on innovation and draws examples from business today, including the plight of newspapers.

The Power of Unintentional Data

There's a line of travel advice that travels round my family now and again. It says, when you're traveling in France, stop for lunch where you see all the trucks have stopped. That's where you'll find the best food.

The intention of the truck drivers is to get a good meal. But their trucks send an unintentional message to anyone who happens to be passing down the road: "the food's good here."

The same is true on the Internet. Anyone who has the power to look at traffic data, has the ability read that data unintentionally created by people trying to get things done. That is why people looks at their traffic in their sites. It tells them what people want on their sites. But the more data you have, the more accurate and interesting your information is going to be.

Miguel Helft wrote and article in the New York Times today looking at how Google beleives it can map the progress of a flu epidemic by analyzing searched for words associated with flu.

This raises a conundrum for Web entrepreneurs. The greatest successes on the Web seem to come from unintentional behavior. But most Web builders are trying to encourage intentional behavior. In this case companies have set up sites which encourage users to report their illnesses online. The sites get no traffic compared to the number of people who go to Google and search for relief from flu symptoms. And anyone who thinks about their own behavior knows why.

So the question is: how do companies who aren't Google or Yahoo harness the useful but unintentional actions of Web users?

Measuring Engagement

We've all had discussions over the years about what our site statistics really mean and how measuring quality is equally or perhaps more important than measuring quantity.

Social media bring a new nuance to the qualitative vs. quantitative conversation which is: how do you measure engagement?

There are obvious qualitative measures such as length of visit on a site, and bounce rate, number of comments per article, number of emails to a friend, number of Diggs and so on.

Setting a target of increasing length of visit by a certain amount over a period of time seems like a logical place to start. Media organizations can take various routes to achieve that goal. Information might be higher quality, and more original. Stories need to have genuinely original material and links to related information that are useful to the visitor, not just more stuff a media company wants to promote.

Engagement is the way to increase the length of your site visits, whether by making material more engaging, or engaging visitors in some sort of interaction. So focus on engagement and you could improve your length of visit, a measurable parameter, and increase your audience's appreciation of your work. That's harder to measure but will pay dividends in the long run.

Here's an article from DJ Francis, who outlines five reasons for investing in social media in a post on ReadWriteWeb.com.

But we're still missing coherent ways to measure engagement success.

Radio in the Amphitheatre

Not long ago many public radio stations in the United States had what amounted to a monopoly in their markets. In many markets there was only one public radio station on the FM dial, and the audience had little or no choice if they wanted to hear Morning Edition.

Hybrid Digital radio has eroded that monopoly a little. But since very few of the audience have HD radios it's had very little impact.

But the Internet is a different story. On the Internet a public radio station in any market is just a tiny whisper in a huge cacophony of noise.

Searching for an analogy to describe this to a group of j-school students the other day, it struck me that the old days were like standing in an ancient amphitheatre. In the days of FM radio, it was as if the listener was standing on the stage and her public radio station was like a person standing half way up the auditorium, in very middle of row L, shouting down to the listener on the stage. Since the public radio station was the only person in the auditorium the listener, though a little way off, had no trouble locating the station, or listening to it.

But on the Web the public radio station is not alone. Every seat in the audiorium is filled with stations, newspapers and blogs trying to get the listener's attention. And in all that noise it's almost impossible for her to hear the public radio station.

In this situation, there's no point telling the same story as everyone else. Then it just becomes unidentifyable in the noise the listener, still standing on the stage, now hears.

The only way to stand out is to be different. To be distinct. To be original. The only way to be heard in all that noise is to tell a different story. To cover something that only public radio's special reporting skills and relationship with its audience allows it to cover.

It will still be hard to find, but the listener will at least have a reason to keep looking.

Time to Act

Don't miss David Carr's article in the New York Times, All of Us, The Arbiters Of News. It's worth a read as a reminder that we've known that media organization in the U.S. and around the world need to change, and that we still face amazing resistance to that change.

He also notes the opening day of the Olympic games as an example of how new media can help old media. Apparently, according to the article, NBC was doing its best to stop leaks of the opening ceremony. But those leaks served to increase interest in the ceremony which resulted in good numbers for NBC in the evening.

I remember reports in the early days of the Web that said initial fears from bookstores that the Web would eat their sales, were wrong. That the Web had increased interest in books in general and consequently increased bookstore sales. It would be interesting to know if this is still true. But this report about NBC's Olympic coverage reminded me of that story.

Less happy is Carr's mention of The Philadelphia Inquirer's plan to hold any significant content off the Web until it has appeared in the paper. Carr says "If the future of our business is online, then why set up a firewall, delaying the best content to protect a legacy product?"

It is sad that after ten years anyone thinks this is still an issue for discussion. And it's so much more depressing that a decade after this discussion began serious news organizations are still reaching the wrong conclusion.

From Long Tail to Zero

This is not the future of news, but the history of news.

Chris Anderson's article in Wired Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business

Andreessen NY Times Strategy

Fortune's Josh Quittner wrote this article about a conversation with Marc Andreessen.

Andressen said he thought that the New York Times should shut down its paper newspaper immediately and build on its online edition with social networking features.

Andressen also writes about this in his blog.

The Fastest Path

David Glazer, Engineering Director, Google, was quoted in the March 2008 edition of Fast Company saying:

"When in doubt, do something. If you have two paths and you're not sure which is right, take the fastest path. What's true in physics about objects in motion is true when you're creating a product. It's easier to keep moving and change course than when when you're sitting and thinking and thinking."

Complexity

Complexity can kill a project. It can come from:

a) Too Much Red Tape: Needs no explaining. Too many managers will kill any project, just as too many cooks used to spoil the broth, or a camel is a horse made by a committee. (So committees survive better in deserts? Send them there!)

b) Too Many Good Ideas at once: Everyone has to set priorities. Often in new media departments the ideas come thick and fast, from all over management. And because the the general misunderstanding about how hard it is to do things well on the Web, they come with an assumption that they can be executed immediately. Good ideas need to be prioritized like anything else.

c) Over-reaching: Good ideas are only good ideas if they have context and are appropriate for your company. In a company with one designer, a project that would require five designers isn't helpful (unless it comes with a plan to hire four designers). A good idea in a company with one designer, is an idea that only requires one designer. This sounds obvious, but it is often overlooked.

d) Poor team management: enough said.

e) A thousand other complex issues (too complex to go into here).

Keep it simple. Get stuff done.