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.

Until very recently the trade-off between richness and reach with media and communications tools on the internet has seen mixed results but we are very close to some exciting breakthroughs.

This means news is old when it gets through the media process as savvy consumers have already engaged to some extent in a myriad of ways (mostly online) and this alters the secondary ripples and impacts as well.

The difference between a one to many message and a conversation will continue to be endlessly debated across a range of media and platforms.  It has become much clearer that the overlap between micro-blogging (clogging ?) tools, mobile phones, other user generated content and mainstream media is now producing social dividends and all kinds of unintended and positive consequences.

Social capital has its own momentum and we see everything from instant tweets on earthquakes and elections to a scary washing machine with 15 thousand fans on facebook. Most mainstream media is filtered by the editorial process to become more of a news product. This is good for manicured medium but for a real-time news ticker social media tools are raising the stakes and in a very good way.

Twitter, Facebook blogs and other instant commentary now allows real time crowdsourcing for the equivalent of a live cross on camera – only better online for the most part. I was reminded of some of this when I heard a news item on radio about how Twitter had delayed a crucial update so as not to interrupt the flow of news from Iran.

That this was a news item is interesting in itself but ironically the Twitter maintenance had been and gone by the time the news got on the radio and that was very stale news to the Twitterati who had all moved on hours before.

There were three insightful perspectives I took notice of this week regarding the rise of social capital in these ways.

David MacGregor captured some of these dimensions reproduced below: (Thanks David)

“The social media phenomenon really does change my perception of the way forward. I have less and less regard for brand messages that are virtuoso – you know the kind I mean – the spectacular set pieces of yesteryear, film making fetishism in microcosm. Today I am more like to be receptive to messages that have far greater relevance and, oftentimes, utility – which might be expressed by the facility for me to understand more or engage more with the message personally.

The scale of my engagement is relative. The simple facility to comment or offer and opinion is sometimes sufficient and demonstrates the thought that I, like other people, want to be heard and acknowledged, rather than simply being yelled at or sung a silky siren song by spruikers.”

David writes very well on this an many other related topics. He also notes that all of this discussion is much less compartmentalized than it used to be. And that is a good thing in my view.

“I find it difficult to separate marketing, advertising and brands from society as whole. A challenge for business is surely to overcome the ‘them and us’ model of mass communications to really open the way for more inclusive dialogues.”

Nat Torkington on National Radio caught my ears with his comments on the role of Twitter and other micro-blogging formats in Iran. What was particularly good was the way he managed to make “secure open web proxies” sound interesting and also kept the listeners from being distracted by the mechanics in that wonderful mellifluous mode of his.

Less mediation is also highly attractive to celebrities. Micro blogging of tweets via re-tweeting has helped make a difference and we will continue to hear about the ramifications of all this.

TN: Technology with Nat Torkington from Thursday Technology expert and  Nat Torkington discusses online dating scams as well as Twitter’s role in the Iranian election protests.(duration:14mins 28secs)

The impact of these new technologies on groups and individuals is sounding a bit more like the second wave of alternative media as foreshadowed all those years ago by Noam Chomsky. In a sense we have now the tools to manufacture dissent.

Clay Shirky manages to summarise many of these key points about the rise of social capital and media activism over at TED Talks.

Clay says:

“New technologies are enabling new kinds of cooperative structures to flourish as a way of getting things done in business, science, the arts and elsewhere, as an alternative to centralized and institutional structures, which he sees as self-limiting.

In his writings and speeches he has argued that “a group is its own worst enemy.”
Shirky is author of Here Comes Everybody.

One point Clay makes is the increase in professional amateurs – something we wrote about some time back and was a topic for another great TED talk by Charles Leadbeater which was  called “The rise of the amateur professional” see the 19minute video on TED. Charles said

“Passionate amateurs, using new tools, are creating products and paradigms that companies can’t.”

If the video embed doesn’t display on your device try this TED link for Clay Shirky.

As Clay notes we are watching “The end of top-down control of news is changing the nature of politics.” How to cross pollinate conversations and mass media in real time. We now have a “many to many”  communications channel.

Note: Local TV stations has all improved their websites recently as they finally begin to understand they are less TV and multi-channel amplicasting is bigger ironically just as viewership on their broadcasts drop – their website traffic is going up and changing the business.

Amplification of tweets gives rise to far more authentic news sources than we have seen – ever!  Citizen reporting has flow on effects and when those stories follow the news we begin to see social transformation.

Asynchronous media and the amplification of all the surrounding content eco-systems is a big deal and we should be using this for good connections. Consumers are producers are consumers. The network itself is ubiquitous and omnipresent.

There are no single messages any more and media participation is higher than ever. Media revolution is here.

What do you think ? My twitter ID is @dialogCRM feel free to tweetback.

As always you can tweet this below and leave a comment or reply to the tweet for this post on Twitter. You can also engage directly with the three / four sources I have used today.

• To follow and engage with David on Twitter go to @joegreenz
• To follow and engage with Nat on Twitter go to @gnat
• To follow and engage Nat on Twitter go to @CShirky
• To follow and engage withTED on Twitter @TEDchris

I was on Twitter a couple of years ago and terminated my account after a few days as there was no one the network. I should have kept my account but who could have foreseen what has happened.

Twitter has had a huge rise in popularity in the past 6 months as celebrities and wannabes flock to jump on the bandwagon.

Despite the usual reservations that go with engaging in another layer of communications it is worthwhile setting up a twitter account to keep an eye on some of the players in your patch.

In a business context having access to a partially qualified SMS style list of “followers” which are like subscribers certainly has some attractions.

I’m told by some Vodafone customers that twittering via their phones is possible / I thought that was an SMS function but might be a different way.

I use Twitterrific which is a mini application on an iTouch and that keeps it all away from the desktop.

From my experiences the real time aspect works best when there is instant feedback on an idea or a question. There is always crossover between business and personal and many of the best tweeters can mix both.

Especially after work hours it becomes more of a social water cooler and can be an instant alert if for example something is on teev that is amusing or there are some good guests on Jon Stewart for example.

Updates or “tweets” that I hate the most are ones which are “something interesting here go to the link. ” Yeah right you’re off my list buddy.

Originally there was a reciprocity concept – if someone follows you you follow them back but now there are so many time wasters on the system that it is better not to “follow” them.

Note: If you don’t follow someone you won’t see their updates.

Because of the 140 character limit it is mostly impossible to know what that link is and also it it way better if the tweet offers some instant information such as “a status” which is what it was designed for.

One person who has written two very useful summaries on the topic is Lance Wiggs so here they are:

How NOT to Twitter if you are a corporation
(VodafoneNZ account got hijacked by an idiot for a project)
and
How to twitter if you are a corporation
Lance is on the money with both posts but check the comments also as this is a fast moving river.

How to take advantage of Twitter

The real power of Twitter is the 1-1 interactions, and yet there are only so many people that sit in corporate relations units. Moreover their job should not be to look after every tech nerd’s customer complaint, nor to understand every bizarre happening on the internet”

Some NZ related tweets you may want to check out are

@lawgeeknz / Rick Shera

@TeamXero / Team Xero

@VodafoneNZ Vodafone – could be safe again if Paul Brislen has that account back but see How not to link first.

@lancewiggs / Lance Wiggs

@bernardchickey Finance – Interest rates

@gnat / Nat Torkington – conference maestro

@dialogCRM Jason Kemp which is me by way of comparison. As a media watcher my tweets are fairly random and wide ranging whereas most of the others on this list are more business focussed.

Many people operate corporate and private twitter accounts. Best to read the Lance Wiggs posts and comments to find out if that works.

Thanks for comments by Piero – check his stream out below.

@piero_ / Piero – strategic planner http://www.thewhispershop.co.nz/