Monkchips On..
James hits on a key point that I keep debating with others (but mainly with myself). Starting with the premise that radio will die (it might not but bear with me) you ask what killed it… What killed it was the device with 20,000 tunes on it in my pocket – and soon – my jukebox pf tunes and podcasts streaming to my phone. And the dozens and dozens of podcasts on that iPod that are as rich in diversity as they are shallow in content. But they are mine. I don’t have to listen to the same XM tracks over and over again. I don’t have to put up with lousy reception. I don’t have to listen to another predictable news story giving me the news I don’t want and that was generally printed yesterday. I simply subscribe to the Long Tail.
Here’s what James had to say…
The biggest problem for News Corporation may be Long Tail competition. The company’s approach is avowedly mainstream, which often means pandering to lowest common denominators, and certainly means building mass markets. In the TivoSkypoGoogleosphere sphere though, views tend to be fractured, diverse, legion. Perhaps i am mistaken but i feel the future will be about diversity. It will be about lots and lots and lots of niches. It will be about the nouveau niche (via Doc, his stuff rocks of course, even if i do have to drive over a bump in the road to get it).
TechDirt Case Study…
Interesting little case study on the use of blogs to share information internally. Reflecting on prior gigs I can see how this would be enormously valuable. As competitive intel filtered down through the company inevitably folks had other info and intel to add. This would all then need to be updated and resent – generally going unread. Now, you get input, clarity, and change in real-time. Call it Participatory Intelligence.
Thanks to Ross for the pointer…
BusinessWeek Gets Blogging…
BusinessWeek’s Tech beat ports to a blog format. Take a look at this posting from Justin. This is great. If all tech stories posted over here it would be even better. The posts are also under-hyperlinked. I guess to keep us in the site – which is Ok given they ahve to earn money doing this.
Winsor on Leica…
John’s got an interesting post on Leica over at Brandshift. The FT carried a story in the April 16 edition on their continuing woes (annoying subscription required):
"The crisis at Leica, whose cameras were used by star photographers
such as Henri Cartier-Bresson and David Bailey, has deepened in recent
months as sales have slumped and banks have started to terminate credit
lines."
Even 100 year old brands need to evolve.
Look at what The Times did in London by moving to a new format – they
reversed a serious circulation slide. As they say, it’s not what you’ve got,
it’s what you do with it. And in Leica’s case, that would appear to be
not much at all.
The Race Of Races
For all you yachties be sure to tune into the Rolex Transatlantic Challenge. Imagine two, hundred foot plus racing machines cutting across the top of the planet. These are two of the biggest, fastest yachts ever built. Charlie Brown says it all:
Designed by Greg Elliott, who was also part of Mari-Cha IV’s design team, Maximus may be 40 feet shorter than her rival but benefits from state-of-the-art technology, maintains Charles Brown. He too is enthusiastic about the race celebrating the anniversary of Charlie Barr and Atlantic’s record-breaking voyage. “It is the greatest challenge, a 100-year-old record, what better could you do? Charlie Barr was the most famous yachtsman in the world. It has everything to do with why we built the boat. And it is extreme stuff. You go north, near the ice, and it is 3,200 miles – a really fantastic race.”
I wish these guys would RSS enable their sites though… The troubles we bloggers face….
