Archive for the ‘Web 2.0’ Category

I have a ridiculous number of channels available to me on DirectTV. And I pay a pretty price for them. Most I could care less about. The only thing I care about is rugby – which, to get, I need to subscribe to every petty, worthless piece of crap TV programming created in the last decade.

This weekend there is a really big game – the New Zealand All Blacks, the #1 ranked team in the world take on Ireland – who have never beaten them. There are normally two options for viewing. First, Pay Per View. Having paid a just ludicrous amount for the privilege of all that programming, I need to pay even more to watch the game under this scenario. The other option is Setanta Sports – an Irish sports channel way down the line-up at 617. Being an Irish-based channel you would think they’d cover the game. But no, instead we are going to get France vs. Canada – what is likely to be a boring and sad whitewash. What were they thinking?

Broadcasters don’t get the long tail. Moreover, they don’t get what customers want. They play to the masses, not to the long tail. But they have the bandwidth and technology to do it. What they are doing is driving people – like me – to companies that get the long tail. Companies like NetFlix and MediaZone.

So, instead of paying for DirectTV and Setanta Sports I’m going to subscribe to MediaZone and get the games in all their 60’s Godzilla movie style. It’ll suck. I’ll listen to the games live on the radio at the same time to account for the buffering issues and shakes and jitters. But what I won’t do is pay for lousy programming decisions and a complete lack of understanding of what the consumer wants. I don’t want to pay for an entire season of sports but only get a fraction of the games being played. I want to get the season and the games.

This is the power afforded to me by the Web. Those that get the Long Tail will survive. Those that don’t will die – slowly for sure, but eventually technology and smart marketers will catch them.

Interesting seeing how different corporates are entering into the Blogosphere. BusinessPundit has an interesting post on how AMEX paid them to blog on a speech by Richard Branson and continue the conversation in the Blogosphere. I like the idea which falls into a category of blogging which I see as sponsored citizen journalism.

Visa is about to launch a really smart initiative also (disclosure: I’ve been involved in counseling them on it). Thier approach is different and is something I put in the category of sponsored community activation. They will host, sponsor and manage a blog on which Olympic athletes can journal their journey to the Winter Games in Torino. It’s a really cool idea from my POV. First, for those of us keen on following the athletes we get to hear from them unfiltered and directly as they head towards their respective tournaments. Second, it will be rich content: words, photos, podcasts, v/casts. Third, it will add a whole new dimension to the way we look at athletes (I think). It’s the stuff we might read about well after the games in, say, Outside Magazine.

Both add to the richness of the blogosphere. Watch for more on Visa’s initiative in the coming week.

Dan points to the new Tech section over at Memeorandum – worth RSSing. Richard has a good review:

I’ve been one of the beta testers of a brilliant new blog news service over the past 2-3 months – and today it’s gone live. tech.memeorandum is the brainchild of Gabe Rivera. It basically aggregates all the latest news from blogs on one page – but it’s more than that. It’s an automated, constantly-updated, finger on the pulse of the tech blogosphere.

How it works: the more people that link to a blog post, the bigger the headline. The biggest and most recent headlines are at the top of the page, but move down as newer popular stories emerge to take their place. Below the original source of each story are links to other bloggers who have linked to it. But the beauty of it is, only posts with a decent amount of writing in them make the memeorandum page. A simple link and a sentence won’t do.

All in all, it’s like a hybrid of populicio.us and the New York Times!

This is a great example of the Web 2.0 that communicators are going to have to deal with going forward. Gabe has a terrific explanation of this:

What are my goals for this site? I want it to address some unfulfilled needs in online news. They are:

1. Recognize the web as editor: There’s this notion that blogs collectively function as news editor. No, not every last blog on Earth. Tapping the thoughts of all of humanity uniformly would predictably lead to trivial, even spammy "news". But today there are rather large communities of knowledgeable, sophisticated commentators, (and yes) even reporters writing on the web, signaling in real time what’s worthy of wider discussion. I want memeorandum to tap this signal.
2. Rapidly uncover new sources: Sometimes breaking news is posted to a blog created just to relate that news. Sometimes the author of the most insightful analysis piece at 2PM was a relative unknown at 1PM. It happens. I want memeorandum to highlight such work, without delay.
3. Relate the conversation: Communication on the web naturally tends toward conversation. It follows from human nature plus the Internet’s immediacy. Blog posts react to news articles, essays reference editorials. And links abound. Yet most news sites do very little to relate the form of conversations unfolding in real time. Some seem to deny that a conversation is even occurring. I want memeorandum to be a clear exception.

InformationWeek reports that traditional publishers are hurting in the face of the ascension of content from blogs and other sources.

While the segment should continue to expand, Outsell’s Market View report finds that individual user spending on B-to-B content between 2001 and 2005 fell 15%. "Users are finding alternatives to paid N&T [news and trade] sources: mostly ad-supported content and user-created content from blogs."

The Alternate Content Movement is on us… I don’t like the characterization that blog content is popular just cause it is free. InfoWeek, eWeek, C/Net, Computerworld… they are all free to me as well. This is about something very different.

The Alternate Content Movement has very different characteristics – implied (but not necessarily real) transparency, authenticity, brevity, timeliness… plus much more…

So, traditional publishers get caught in a pincer as their high cost models come under pressure from the declining an highly competitive world of online advertising. The winners look like C/Net and The Register – organizations that can blend e-economics, quality reporting, and Participatory Communications…