WATCH THIS NOW. (Thanks to Andy S. for the link.)

New Media Speech Video

In 2004 I gave a speech on new media to the annual meeting of the Associated Press Managing Editors. I've had the prepared remarks online for some time, but this past weekend I came across a DVD of my comments. New Mac-enabled powers in hand, I've put the address online here, and it runs about 30 minutes.

If you choose to watch the video note that it should stream from the site, meaning you shouldn't need to download it prior to viewing (although it might take a minute for the first bit to download and for an image to show on your screen). You might, however, need Quicktime viewer -- which is free, powerful, and something you should have anyway. You can get it here.

It's always a strange thing, watching yourself. Seeing this I take away three things from my 2004 self: Lose weight (in progress), get more sleep (doing much better), and speak more slowly (perhaps a lost cause).

The WSJ Rides The Cluetrain

LOOK CLOSELY at this screen capture I made of this morning's Wall Street Journal online edition front page (click the pic for a bigger view). Notice anything? I did: Three podcasts and a blog on the law. Of course, the content has to be good -- I've not yet listened to the podcasts, although the law blog (subscription may be required) is substantive and appropriately "bloggy" -- but this is great to see from the Journal.

Last year I gave a speech to the Associated Press Managing Editors (full text here). The theme of the day was "The Newsroom of the Future," and I spoke about how the Internet was changing journalism (with blogs as a case in point). One point I tried to make was that in a connected world newspapers needed to focus on truly being editors -- professionals that (1) know their audience better than anyone else, (2) know the news (and more likely, some element of the news) better than anyone else, and (3) connect those two things by scanning the world and surfacing issues relevant to their audience. This is not how most news sources typically act: They're much more like brokers, treating news as a commodity that they simply pass from source to consumer. As I said then:

I think that in the newsroom of the future the role of the editor will change from someone who works primarily as a gatekeeper of the facts with an interest in quality, to someone who “serves” the reader as a consumer based on an understanding of what readers will consider relevant ... and on an understanding that readers will judge the veracity of the content based on comparisons to a much larger and transparent flow of information and ideas.

I also asked ...

So where is the value for the newsroom of the future?

It might be in doing little to no national or international coverage ... coverage that’s highly commoditized and democratized ... and instead offering a deep, detailed level of local coverage that’s unrivaled and that readers value highly.

Or it might be that the writing in the newspaper of the future looks more like news magazine writing ... a level of detail and analysis that the wire services don’t provide.

Or it might be that ... like stock brokers ... you become more of a consultant, and less of an information broker ... offering not just news to your readers but expertise and counsel in how to deal with that news.

Regardless, you’re absolutely going to have to find a new way to add new value.

My performance was well-received, but the reaction to the content was (as I'd expect) mixed: Some enthusiasm, some energy, some suspicion. A year later, when you review how many papers are using the connectivity the web affords, most still aren't getting it right. While many certainly have said "We gotta do this blog thing," many made an equally superficial attempt, usually launching blogs that were simply web-based versions of traditional print features, or blogs that were simply links to items in non-newspaper blogs (there's nothing wrong with link-based blogs, but there are many other choices that do a better job).

I think the Journal's got it right. They seem to appreciate that blogs and podcasts are unique mediums adept at communicating specific types of content, and rather than fitting existing content in to a new channel, they've made an appropriate match (admittedly, I judge the podcasts by their titles).

That content appears to be specific expertise, even counsel, that plays well to where the Journal would be credible as an editor of the world -- specific financial topics -- and that is relevant to its readers. Finally, the blog seems a "real" blog: Full entries, first person, comments (not essential, but nice if we're trying to engage readers), frequent updates, permalinks, and trackbacks.

So, good for the Journal. They continue to lead the way online. Let's remember that the Journal was one of the first papers to have a "pay-for-full-access" online version, which many derided at the time. They're now in the black. In the Q&A of the APME speech I suggested that it would be strategic for papers to charge not only for the full online version, but to charge significantly more for the full print version. This was taken by several folks as heresy, but in keeping with the logic of the experience economy, "you are what you charge." Start charging three bucks a paper and it forces the question: What are we doing to make the paper worth three bucks?

A final note: While the law blog is the only WSJ blog to date, it sits in the "blogs.wsj.com" domain -- here's hoping there are more Journal blogs to follow.

Tags: journalism, newsblogs, newspapers, citizen journalism, apme, wall street journal

Mindstorms

FOR SOME REASON I want this for my birthday (reading this, Kate?). Read more background here; it's a pretty amazing story of a company creating and engaging with an online community (and benefiting as a result). Via The Long Tail.

Technorati Tags: lego, mindstorms, long tail

* Scheduled post, written earlier.
 

On Google

I'M INCREASINGLY CONVINCED that Google is one of the best-managed, highest-potential companies in the United States. I have no proof other than heuristics, the most powerful of which is my impression that everything the company does leaves me satisfied and impressed.

The search is just what I would want, and more. Gmail is just what I would want, and more. Google Maps is just what I would want, and more. Google Earth is just what I would want, and more ... and on it goes (although, admittedly, I outgrew Blogger pretty quickly, but it's right for its intended market). And these services get better all the time.

Other things I like: Their long-standing approach to employing knowledge workers, which takes some spot-on management wisdom Druker started writing about in 1959 and uses it to grow a dot com that works. More: Google's non-pretentious way of talking about itself. Simple without being simplistic; clear without being superficial ... it's probably the best on-line representation of a company's "About" facts in the world. Finally, their pervasive sense of intelligent fun. Take as examples this collection of Google holiday logos, and this collection of "inside Google" photos.

It's tough to make money in the dot com world, but I think Google's going to do just fine.

Full disclosures: Google isn't a client, but I do own the stock. And even at its outrageous price, I plan to buy more.

* Scheduled post, written earlier.

The Probalisitic Age

CHRIS ANDERSON has a very nice post on "the probabilistic age":

Q: Why are people so uncomfortable with Wikipedia? And Google? And, well, that whole blog thing?

A: Because these systems operate on the alien logic of probabilistic statistics, which sacrifices perfection at the microscale for optimization at the macroscale.

Q: Huh?

A: Exactly. Our brains aren't wired to think in terms of statistics and probability. We want to know whether an encyclopedia entry is right or wrong. We want to know that there's a wise hand (ideally human) guiding Google's results. We want to trust what we read.

When professionals--editors, academics, journalists--are running the show, we at least know that it's someone's job to look out for such things as accuracy. But now we're depending more and more on systems where nobody's in charge; the intelligence is simply emergent. These probabilistic systems aren't perfect, but they are statistically optimized to excel over time and large numbers. They're designed to scale, and to improve with size. And a little slop at the microscale is the price of such efficiency at the macroscale.

The comments are worth reading, too.

* Scheduled post, written earlier.

The Future of Book Publishing

BOOK PUBLISHING CEO Michael Hyatt looks into the future and describes the perfect device for reading books in digital format and considers its consequences for the publishing industry ...

But don’t get hung up on the particulars. I’m not a hardware engineer, and I’m sure the details could be picked apart. I’m simply trying to provide a vision for what could happen. The point I’m trying to make is that some type of device is coming. It may be five years away or it could be next year. For all I know, it is in development now. Regardless, when it arrives, the publishing world as you and I know it will change dramatically.

I think he's right. That said, the "high touch" nature of books will always keep them in demand, for it's part of what makes a book a book. Michael draws some comparisons to what iPods have done to music, but prior to the iPod the delivery mechanism wasn't part of the passion: nobody equated their Beatles music with the turntable on which it played. (If anything, the iPod has reversed the field: now the iPod, with it's wonderful tactile qualities, is part of the thing to which people are loyal, and the high touch nature of the thing has brought balance to the high tech qualities of digital music.)

There are many other high touch, tactile qualities of books that people love: How they look on a shelf; the ability to look at a set of books and make a casual choice to pick one over another, thumb through it, and replace it; the ease with which you may pass the book on to another person; and not least of all, the ability to shove them in bags, pockets, briefcases ... nearly anywhere without much concern for their well-being. (John Naisbitt of Megatrends fame is here I first read about high tech / high touch; there's a nice interview with him about the topic here. A great example: we've been able to have digital readouts in cars for years, but most still have analog dials. Why? We love the high touch experience of watching them sweep as we accelerate.)

Digital books are going to happen, but I think they'll be more focused as a Google-able research base. For every-day reading, most of us will still favor paper.

* This is a scheduled post, written a day or two ago.

Lego Online

LEGO HAS A WONDERFUL WEBSITE, worth clicking around, especially if you devoted a large portion of your childhood to building with them, as did I. For the truly geeky there's even a software program you can download, use to design your own LEGO models, upload them to LEGO, and then have them ship you the pieces.

Chris Anderson has also used LEGO as a case study of the long tail of markets in action. Well worth reading if you want to better understand how the Internet is reshaping the interplay of Hit and Niche markets.

NOW THIS would be wonderful. Via Kurzweil.

LEE LEFEVER HAS SOME ADVICE on integrating business ops with an online community:

Here are three major ingredients that can enable community mobilization to work:

1. A connected group of dedicated customers interacting on a company's web site
   
2. An organizational commitment to be involved in the online community and act on the community's input
   
3. Incentives -- a way to recognize and reward those members that contribute meaningfully to the goal.

His post presents more of a model, really, but it strikes me as parsimonious (and as such, a good one). Worth reading.

The Right Way And The Wrong Way

ONE REASON TO LIKE CONTINENTAL AIRLINES: They offer free wifi in many of their frequent flier clubs. Unfortunately I don't often fly Continental, but they share a number of clubs with Northwest, which I frequently fly, and as a result I get to surf for free from time to time.

It's a great example of the right way to leverage a technology: take a killer-app and satisfy a customer longing for free. Of course, Continental's practice has also prompted a response: Boston Logan's attempting to pull the plug under the auspices of safety.

Continental's free service poses an "unacceptable potential risk" to communications gear used by the state police and the Transportation Security Administration.

And that's the wrong way to leverage technology: to take a killer-app that satisfies a customer longing for free and replace it with a (slower, weaker) fee-based alternative. Want to make it worse: do so for reasons that, frankly, lack narrative fidelity.

At stake is a sizable chunk of revenue that Massport receives from its pay-per-use Wi-Fi service, which is operated by a commercial provider called Advanced Wireless Group. Massport did not respond to queries about the current sum, but the Boston Globe reported two years ago that the contract gives Massport "up to a maximum of 20 percent of annual gross revenues, which could exceed $1 million annually."

Hmmm. Wonder if that has anything to do with it.

Talk about the spin zone. I mean, here I sit, typing this in a Continental club at O'Hare international, one of the busiest airports on Earth. If there's a place anywhere on the planet with more wifi-enabled security, safety, and logistical equipment than O'Hare, I'd be shocked.

And yet here I type, happily, with the infrastructure streaming past me, not a "boo" about safety or an "unacceptable potential risk."

I hope Boston loses this one and the native wifi of Logan continue to roam free ...

The Long Tail And Brands

Interesting post by Chris Anderson on how brands are changing in the Web-enabled world. Read it all, but for my purposes there are two key sections:

Brands, if they're doing their job right, stand for qualities we understand, such as reliability or value, and they make it easier to chose in categories where we otherwise would find choice difficult. Brands help us order a chaotic world of variety. When in doubt, we buy what we know.

But we're entering a new era where the number of available products is exploding thanks to the infinite shelf space effect. That chaotic world is getting more chaotic by the day as our choices expand with Amazon's inventory and Google's reach. The problem is we can only recall so many brands, and down there in the niches the Nikes and Apples may not be of much help.

This would lead to a classic "tyranny of choice" problem were it not for the fact that at the same time there's been a parallel explosion of information about those abundant products. That information, ranging from product reviews to "rank by bestselling", also helps us choose wisely. In a sense, information is increasingly serving the same role as a brand, bringing order and structure to a chaotic marketplace. More importantly, information can scale with massive variety in the way that brands can't. So what does this mean for brands?

The short answer is radical change.

A quick headline for that change: "brands are shifting from being about things to being about customer experience."

That's part one. Part two:

I suspect that tomorrow's most powerful brands probably won't be companies at all. They'll be the customers themselves. 

I've written a lot here about the importance of filters in driving demand down the Long Tail. Some of those filters are trusted aggregators, from Amazon to Google, which use smart software to help you find the good stuff. But others are individual tastemakers, from celebrities to critics to editors to simple mavens with influential blogs.

As product brand proliferation leads to brand dilution (following Surowiecki's argument), brand power will shift downstream from the producers to the consumers. So the fact that Jessica Simpson is wearing something becomes more important that what she's wearing. Likewise for the fact that Instapundit bought that camera. Or that Jon Stewart praised that book (like Oprah did before him).

It's the Martha Stewart effect, multiplied by a million niches.

So, in a Long Tail market, the brands that matter most are the tastemakers. These are the filters you trust, who point you to the niche (or mainstream) stuff you wouldn't have found on your own.

OK--two things here. First, I agree with both points. That said, brands have not just (or even primarily) served a function of easing consumer choice by helping us categorize and understand product qualities and benefits. Rather, very strong brands draw their strength forging a para-social relationship between the consumer and the brand in which the consumer projects the qualities of the brand onto him or herself.

Great brands are strong because consumers believe that using that brand's products shapes their own identity in a favorable way. Here's an exercise to illustrate: think of comparisons of "brand people" rather than comparisons of "brand products." Pay attention to why types of images and feelings pop into your head as you do:

• "Mac people" vs. "Wintel people"
• "Coke people" vs. "Pepsi people"
• "VW people" vs. "BMW people"
• "Stanford people" vs. "Harvard people"
• "PS2 people" vs. "X-Box people"
• "Palm people" vs. "Pocket PC people"
• "Neiman Marcus people" vs. "Nordstrom people"
• "iPod people" vs. "Every other type of MP3 player people"
• "Nike people" vs. "Reebok people"

The world's strongest brands are strong not primarily because they say something about the nature of their products, but primarily because they say something about the people who buy their products. In that, brands don't ease consumer choice by helping us categorize and understand product qualities and benefits as much as they ease choice by helping us categorize and understand ourselves (even helping us shape and define ourselves).

Second point: on filters -- yes. The "tastemaker" shapes the brand. But this is nothing new: it's the dynamic behind product endorsement, and has been around since the first really popular caveman endorsed his buddy's brand of wall paint ("Grog paint only with Brog's paints!"). Brands in England have been using Royal Warrants to pimp their wares since 1155--almost a thousand years. But the right tastemaker using your product helps your brand not just because I trust that tastemaker, but because the tastemaker feeds into and strengthens the identity attributes I want to project upon myself. Nobody's wearing what Jessica Simpson is wearing because they think she has great taste or a critical eye for quality clothing: they're wearing it because they want to be like Jessica Simpson.

The Internet is absolutely commoditizing products and services, and the vast array of information about brands is tossing nearly every brand out there in a sea of sameness. And they're all facing the same challenge: differentiate, or be forced to compete solely (and nearly impossibly) on price. But doing so successfully isn't just about becoming more customer centric, nor is it just about having tastemakers endorsing the brand -- it's also (and in many cases primarily) about creating a sense of identity for the buyer that's clear, palatable, and affirming of the view they want of themselves and their world.

In this the ability to shape intangible benefits and experiences as part of a branding strategy will be more important than ever. iPods are iPods not just because they work well, but because they make the user look and feel cool. And for that, they're willing to pay.

The Cracking Wall Of Disagreeable Fear

I've been reviewing Cluetrain recently, and along the way was struck by this passage (written by David Weinberger):

A couple of months later, we hired a Chief Operating Officer to manage our growth. On purpose he was a counter-cultural figure in the company: a hard-bitten, ultra-realistic guy with a relentlessly positive attitude applied as a fresco to mask a cracking wall of disagreeable fear.

"A hard-bitten, ultra-realistic guy with a relentlessly positive attitude applied as a fresco to mask a cracking wall of disagreeable fear." That's gotta be one of the best personality descriptions written.

That passage comes from a section David pens about deadlines, and how they do and don't motivate people in the Internet economy. It's worth reading, too (scroll about a third of the way down the page, or just do a "find" for "cracking wall").

Wired Transparency

Wired's Chris Anderson provides a nice example of a leader using (in this case) his blog to offer an authentic and candid response to a customer problem / potential corp. reputation issue. Read the whole post, but here's a snippet:

We're not going to eliminate the option of an automatically-renewing subscription, because many subscriber prefer those, especially with credit card billing (the only checks I write these days are to renew magazine subscriptions, which always seems like an anachronistic hassle), but what's important is that we ensure that the unsubscribing procedure be quick, simple and painless. No AO-Hell run-arounds.

Right now, it's not nearly clear enough how to do that (or even to find out if you have an automatically-renewing subscription or not). This week, I'll start working with the Conde Nast circulation department on improving that. Transparency is the key.

Yep.

The New Critics

Fascinating example of blogs enabling a community of practice to critique itself over at Constantin Basturea's PR Meets The WWW. He's taking Ketchum to task for not living their message on their personalized media practice, and it's a back-and-forth well worth reading.

AO/Technorati Open Media 100

I (along with my Command Post cohort Michele Catalano) was recently named an honorable mention on the Always On & Technorati Open Media 100 list. It's always nice to be recognized, especially for something that's fun (and even if I personally don't know that I qualify to be called one of the "key players who are influencing the adoption of open media and proving the impact it is already having on the technology industry, journalism, and marketing"). So thanks to the folks at Always On, and to the brilliant (because he is, not because he recognized us) David Sifry at Technorati.

And if you're not using Technorati, you're behind the curve. Go there, type your company's name into the search field, and see what comes up ...

Speech To The APME

Last October I gave a speech about weblogs and journalism to the Associated Press Managing Editors. It seems that recently I've been raising for people in business many of the themes I raised for the editors then, so I've posted the speech (and my slides) in the extended entry.

Note that I didn't read the speech -- I delivered from memory, with a PowerPoint presentation as speaker support -- so what I said is not verbatim what's posted below. That said, the text closely reflects my comments. [The speech was also originally posted here.]

Flattened

Tom Barnett on Friedman's The World Is Flat:

[T]his was all about selling his op-eds as a compilation. He needed something—what did he call it? Oh yeah, a "literary license" to draw attention to the fact that he's completely out of new ideas. No Lexus here. No Olive tree here. No Golden Straightjacket or Electronic Herd or Super-Empowered Individual. Just Flat. Just 469 pages of Flat. Thank God he was smart enough not to put "flat" in his index, because his publisher would have been forced to list every frickin' page in the book! And in doing so, the company only would have revealed what a pathetic effort this volume really is.

I wonder how he really feels. And if you're not familiar with Tom Barnett, you should be. After all, "disconnectedness defines danger":

Show me where globalization is thick with network connectivity, financial transactions, liberal media flows, and collective security, and I will show you regions featuring stable governments, rising standards of living, and more deaths by suicide than murder.  These parts of the world I call the Functioning Core, or Core.  But show me where globalization is thinning or just plain absent, and I will show you regions plagued by politically repressive regimes, widespread poverty and disease, routine mass murder, and—most important—the chronic conflicts that incubate the next generation of global terrorists.  These parts of the world I call the Non-Integrating Gap, or Gap.

Read the rest.

Chinese Censorship

Rebecca McKinnon does a great job of illustrating -- using screen shots -- Chinese censorship of the web via Microsoft's MSN Spaces. I was having a conversation about this just the other night. My view: Economic prosperity won't placate the Chinese populace, it will instead elevate their discontent to more sophisticated needs ... from, say, "food would be nice" to "freedom would be nice." Question is: Is the Chinese system flexible enough to respond to escalating expectations? [Link via Weinberger]

Know Your Rights

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published an on-line legal guide for bloggers.

Go See

Chris Anderson has another must read post on the long tail.

Listening Paradise

David Lidsky comments on "Jack" radio at WCBS-FM in Boston, a format where:

The station expands the playlist from about 400-500 songs to 1,200, goes from one format to having elements of about 10 formats, cuts down the chatter--the new Jack-FM has no DJs--and hopes to fend off you turning off your car radio in favor of whatever podcast you just downloaded.

He also notes:

It was okay, but if I was supposed to be getting the feeling of listening to someone's iPod, it was probably the iPod of a friend with incredibly obvious, middle-of-the-road taste. It also inspired an idea.

If commercial FM radio really wants to become relevant again, maybe it needs to take a page out of its past as well as a page from what AM did 20 years ago when it faced extinction because of FM. Personality ... Not celebrity DJs like XM and Sirius are hiring, but real people who love music, have eclectic taste and have the ability to find and break new bands and songs, the way DJs used to.

While David notes that the move by WCBS is meant to market against iPods and satellite radio, I'd also toss in streaming radio ... and it's here that David can find the personality he's searching for. In particular, I'll offer two words that should be music to your ears if you love eclectic, contemporary music and the type of personality David describes above: Radio Paradise. 

Free, streaming, high-quality ... simply the best there is.

PR Seminar

There's Jon!

Update: A little context here -- this past weekend I participated on and moderated a panel about blogs for the PR Seminar, an annual gathering of the business world's leading PR and corporate communication professionals. I'll likely post more about the event later, but I'll note now that the other panel members were Rebecca Blood, David Weinberger, and John Hinderaker, all of whom were extremely thoughtful, provocative, and engaging.

As the panel began, we were introduced by our host, Jon Iwata, who heads corporate communication for IBM (and, not incidentally, is one of the most intelligent and apparently talented corp comm leads I've come across). As Jon made his introduction, I snapped this shot with my Treo phone, and posted it via email to Seat 1A. Then, later in the panel, as John Hinderaker was telling his story of Pepsi's recent experiences with blogs at Power Line, I made the point that PR leads need to appreciate that their constituency is no longer just editors and journalists: it's the populace at large.

The question isn't whether bloggers are journalists ... it's whether journalists are journalists, because in the Internet age, every person with a computer (or in my case, cell phone), in every audience and on every street, is now a point of distribution for a story. And if you're in the business of building and protecting corporate reputation, the job gets significantly more complex and broad-based as a result (which is why, in this world, transparency is always the best policy).

As I made that point, Dave Weinberger pulled Seat 1A up on the projection screen, and the audience was able to see that I was, in essence, "reporting" from the stage of the event, while participating in the panel, in real time, with a phone, for the entire connected world to see.

They grasped the point.

Update 2: Glenn Reynolds makes the same point here:

Already we're seeing a lot of reporting from nonjournalists, in which the "reporter" is just whoever happens to be on the scene, and online, when news happens. Given the ubiquity of digital cameras, cell phones, and wireless Internet access, that's likely to become more common, making the kind of distributed newsgathering seen during the Indian Ocean tsunami the norm, not the exception.

Quite a few bloggers are moving beyond opinion journalism into firsthand reporting. On my own InstaPundit.com blog, I feature firsthand reports, often with photos, from places like Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. My "correspondents" are correspondents in the original sense--people who correspond--rather than in the modern sense of people with good hair and a microphone.

The Gift Of Flix

NetFlix has a nice gift promotion going: give the gift of a limited membership--1 to 12 months--online. If you're not yet familiar with NetFlix, it's a service Kate and I have come to love. Unlimited DVD rentals per month for a small fee, delivered right to your door via the US Mail.

We don't watch an enormous number of movies, but we do like being able to kick back on a Saturday afternoon or Wednesday night and watch something compelling ... and with NetFlix you always have something compelling on hand. There are no late fees, and you may watch as many flix as you like (but may only have three at a time). When you're done with a film, you pop the DVD in it's return envelope and drop it in the mail, postage pre-paid, and another film you've ordered will show up within two days.

Between NetFlix and TiVo, we've managed to nearly eliminate traditional commercial television (and its  advertising) from our lives. We also spend less time, but more quality time, in front of the tube ... all in all, good things, both.

We currently have 30 titles in our NetFlix queue (the list of movies you want to rent from which NetFlix sends you titles as you return films you've seen). We have When We Were Kings, The Doors, and Raging Bull in the house now; the next 5:

1. The Bourne Supremacy
2. The Stepford Wives
3. Made
4. Dogma
5. Dazed and Confused

Powerlaw Primer

Chris Andersen has posted a brief but clear primer on powerlaws at The Long Tail. If you've not been exposed to powerlaws and their long tails as yet, now is the time: the variety, inequality, and network effects brought on by an Internet-enabled economy are putting powerlaws and long tails at the center of many emerging markets.

They're also one reason WalMart decided to shutter their online DVD business and send all those customers to one of my favorite new-economy shops: NetFlix. Thanks to the long tail of video preferences, NetFlix has a cost-efficient market for nearly every DVD produced in the history of mankind.