thinking: relating- celebrating :-)

The search for a new business model or new version which makes more sense today is a recurring background story or theme in many business sectors.

A truly great business is one that re-invents itself and especially the business model like Shai Agassi is doing with the Electric car.

Local debate on whether or not paid content models can work has prompted some discussion but in my view we need to dig a bit deeper.

Media businesses who previously were gatekeepers of scarce information could ration out their product or service and earn a very good rate of return. For well over a decade now newspapers and all forms of media are at various levels waiting for a new business model to rescue them.

Classified advertising has left the building, ad blockers, ad blindness and general abundance of news sources means that readers follow the path of least resistance and that is away from mainstream formats.

“Vivian Mercier – famous for describing Waiting for Godot as a play which “has achieved a theoretical impossibility—a play in which nothing happens, that yet keeps audiences glued to their seats.

What’s more, since the second act is a subtly different reprise of the first, he has written a play in which nothing happens, twice.” from Wikipedia

I saw that play a very long time ago and while no- one can really agree on what is happening it seems to be universally relevant and pushes the right emotional and/or idea buttons in the audience who engage enough of the time to connect with themes and archetypes in the play.

At the risk of glossing over the play (go and see it some time) one of the key ideas I took from it was that we often think that if events / people arrived we would recognise them even though we have no real idea of exactly what or whom they might be or when.

It becomes a kind of “we’ll know it when we see it” continuing cycle of hopefulness and disappointment as different outcomes are explored.

This is pretty much the state of play in many publishing businesses now.

When your business model gets turned upside down and news is a commodity it becomes much harder to justify investment in resources to write, collect, edit and compile all of the content into some form of media offering – especially online.

Spinning in the Grave – The three biggest reasons music magazines are dying. By Jonah Weiner (hat tip to @mrinternet (Nigel Horrocks) for pointing this story out.)

“One of the most important historical functions of music magazines has been precisely to speak in a semisecret language that separates in-the-know us from square them.”

reason 3 – Music magazines were an early version of social networking. But now there’s this thing called “social networking” …

Jonah has enough of a story to keep our attention for a few minutes but Godot never turns up.

That is the writing does explore some of the reasons why music magazines in particular are dying but I’d rather read about where they are succeeding and I suspect I am not alone in that thought.

My belief is that successful future publishing business models will be more narrow-casting than broadcasting. They will offer huge depth of compelling content rather than trying to be all things to all people.

The music website that is closest to this model now is Rocks Back Pages which has something like 15,000 articles for a subscription fee. There is a whole lot more community that RBP could leverage off the content but its a steps closer to a viable model.

Last weeks post came out before the Media 7 version where Bernard Hickey and Barry Colman went into the studio with Russell Brown to talk through some of these ideas. (see clip below)

Another view on the NBR model is by Bill Bennett over here.

There will be more than one model that will work and the balance of workable formats will change.

Will we know when the right business model turns up?

Will we ever get to meet Godot?

Your comments / thoughts please.

Note: Now that I’ve finished this post I just found out that Alan Rooks wrote about the Paper Industry in 2003 and made some similar comparisons.

I’m just waiting for someone to describe Twitter as the “Godot Syndrome” which turns out to be an actual type of anxiety condition “repeatedly asking questions on a forthcoming event” just like what are you doing? seems to me.

Watching the tweet stream slip by in a tangle of half connections and random combinations at at once comforting and disconcerting – just like waiting for a new business model.

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Bernard Hickey has a fine debate going over at his blog on Interest.co.nz since last Friday

Opinion: How to profitably publish financial news online for free

July 17th, 2009

By Bernard Hickey

“Earlier today NBR publisher Barry Colman announced he was going to charge a discounted NZ$89 for a six month subscription to see about 20% of the news and commentary at NBR’s website. He argued it was only a matter of time before the business model of free news online collapsed and media generally was at a ‘tipping point in The Great New Journalism Adventure.’

I agree that we are at or near a tipping point for a great new journalism adventure and I’m having a ball embarking on that adventure. But I think Barry has tipped the wrong way and I’d like to suggest another better and more profitable way.”

Read the rest of the over  at: Opinion: How to profitably publish financial news online for free and feel free to make comments there as well.

Very good to see references to Clay Shirky and some of the others thinking about business models and the future of online publishing. See( Rise of Social Capital and Media Activism)

I wrote the following comment on that post:

The best thing about this is the debate. First off NBR & Barry Colman have done well for a very long time – but to a certain extent they are trapped by their own history and cost structures.

Now – hands up everyone here who makes more $ than Barry Colman out of media publishing. Respect for that – but there will be even greater respect for publishers who take the model forward and continue to create value for everyone which is a different paradigm entirely.

Crap bloggers don’t really last while I can think of more than a few reactionary columnists in MSM who don’t deserve reading but who are piggybacking off the back of a larger brand which tolerates them.

When Murdoch bought Dow Jones there was a lot of debate on print vs online. Some of which we covered in 2007 media-meltdown-or-new-era-dow-jones/ (Thanks Raf for mentioning that.)

There is one subscription model variation that has been tried a few times and I think it certainly seems to work. It is sponsored access to a members only space.

Not sure who is doing this now but it works by giving short term access based on a sponsor paying some / all of the costs. So when I try to click through to one of the featured articles I see a message which says XYZ sponsor will give me a free pass of for x number of days/accesses.

From a publishers viewpoint you can then put sponsorship messages in front of the “hot traffic” flows and everyone wins. (FT does something like this.)

Also in terms of membership style access there are systems which apply micro payment charges to each different unit of measure but typically this is easier to manage by more of a flat fee access a zone or multiple zones.

Rethinking business models is not easy – witness the music industry who are still largely in denial over this – but it will come.

If you haven’t already have a look at The news business- Tossed by a gale from May ‘09 at Economist.

P.S – Go over to the post and add your comments there or here is good too.

Helping clients plan to get the best out of their WordPress sites is something that I really enjoy.

Having a theme library loaded and switching between them for instant changes to “the look and feel” is a fun moment in the discovery planning process.

For non – WordPress users a Theme is effectively a website design “skin” that overlays the content. It works by providing a filtered view of the text (XML) content.

For more technical users we are talking about combination of stylesheet (CSS) and some core function code (pages, posts, comments) which is written in PHP.

At the visual level this is fairly easy. For example if the client has an existing site structure we would look to match the colours, and general look and feel with a similar theme that has 1 , 2 or 3 columns. We may be also looking for menu layouts, header functions, plus sidebar and footer configurations.

Part of this is to understand the branding context and also if there is an existing format whether that should be kept if if there is a more optimal layout.

What we would then do is match fonts, include branded headers and other brand ID assets on a theme that was as close as possible but sometimes it can be quicker to build a new theme that to find one that matches up.

Way back in ’97 there was programme called Net Objects which did something similar in packaging various components together with a set of styles and saved all of the information into an object called a NOD probably some kind of early XML file.

The great thing about that programme was the user interface for applying “styles” really simplified the menu and navigation processes by including all the image icons and button type files along with it.  I used that for many years for fast prototyping of sites and to replace PowerPoint for presentations as it was faster and easier.

Fast forward 9 years to 2006 – WordPress was coming of age with newer more visual releases although from memory I think that Joomla had a bigger range of theme like styles at the time.

But by late 2006 when I started this blog there were some great themes around for WordPress and having used lots of content management systems before I was ready to try something a bit more open ended.

Where to Search for WordPress Themes?

The best place to start is WordPress.org theme library. This is because the 800+ themes there have been sorted into some kind of taxonomy and at least partly vetted by WordPress developers and enthusiasts. This is important for two reasons.

1. Some themes have hidden code in them which might be advertising or worse. See the theme authors guidelines which aims to prevent  “hidden, paid or sponsored links in the theme. Links back to the author’s site are fine.”
2. More importantly this library provides a structure for searching where you can filter searches by types such as fixed or variable width, number of columns, main colour, features and subject which are called theme tags.

This generally provides a  range of visual templates and ideas for a wider search in other theme libraries.

In the past the searches haven’t been very precise possibly because some of these tag and taxonomy rules haven’t been fully applied and because some theme authors game the system by loading up on the equivalent of all possible keywords.

Frameworks and Coding Considerations

Having worked with dozens of themes now it is clear that under the skin many of them can be traced back to earlier building block models or frameworks.

Every install of WordPress comes with a default theme sometimes called Kubrick and that one along with K2 and others. More recent core themes are Carrington, Thematic and Sandbox.

Thematic  describes its Theme as

“a free, open-source, highly extensible, search-engine optimized WordPress Theme Framework featuring 13 widget-ready areas, grid-based layout samples, styling for popular plugins, and a whole community behind it.”

Another excellent theme  is Thesis. One of the first serious themes that I learned from was Chris Peasons Cutline series.

As Chris puts it- here are 5 more reasons to look deeper into the code and overall framework of each theme to save hassle later on.

“As a serial site developer and blogger, I’ve found that the most valuable tool one can have is a refined template system that solves fundamental development, design, and publishing problems, including:

1. SEO and careful attention to in-site link equity
2. an “em” -based approach to element sizing (pixels are nice, but “ems” are by far the most accessible – and therefore the best – choice)
3. polished typography with finely-tuned geometrics for maximum legibility
4. an aesthetically pleasing layout that favors usability and clarity over extravagant presentation
5. forward-compatibility (I like to call it futureproofing)”

Put more simply – picking a great theme now which has “good bones”and optimal features can save a lot of time later on. Some themes come paired with a series of plugins for say featured content and a number of themes come as a kind of half-way house with extensive theme options for those not so comfortable with stylesheets.

Theme options allow user to make changes to a style at a higher level by ticking an options or using other present menu re-combinations to make changes without needing to ever see the CSS code.

An example of this approach would be something like the Atahualpa which come with something like 300 “theme options” and personally a style sheet looks easy after that.

It is described as follows and the links below are tags that can be used for searching.

“Version 3.4 – Atahualpa is a WordPress/PHP/CSS Framework that lets you build your own unique, professional and browser-safe WordPress theme: 1-5 columns, fluid or fixed width, rotating header images and over 200 theme options. Tutorials, downloads and support at the BFA WP Forum

Tags: threaded-comments, theme-options, custom-header, custom-colors, flexible-width, white, sticky-post, translation-ready ”

StudioPress Themes offer another approach where a set of plugins have been pre bundled with a theme and page templates are somewhere closer to a magazine style format.

Magazine syle themes generally have a larger number of columns like a newspaper and would tend to have a category menu as well as featured content sections and even special video or audio panels.

In summary most clients start out looking for a particular look and feel but there are other more practical considerations which could benefit them by saving time and money if the selection criteria is deepened.

As a WordPress practitioner I would steer clients towards some of the other functional considerations like “does it play nice with key plugins ?” and is the structure fully transparent and robust for scaling up and working with other applications which will be the next frontier.

There are other considerations but perhaps you can write in with your comments and questions on what you think are most important when choosing a great WordPress Theme.