Netizen

Monday, February 02, 2009

Onto Digital Publishing

I don't know a whole lot about publishing but I have an Internet enthusiast's feel for some of what is going on. There is a tectonic shift underway.

"......so I'm interested in your thougts on the matter. I'm a magazine publisher, and we're transitioning from print into digital media...so I'm trying to figure it all out...like everybody else in print and TV....."

That is such a huge topic. A paradigm shift is under way. And there will be winners and there will be losers. The winners will be those who choose to ride the wave. The losers will be those who stay stubborn and get washed away.

Murdoch said while buying the WSJ, people don't want to pay. As in, he was thinking of turning the WSJ into something entirely ad supported, give everything out for free. No subscription, nothing. Print will not go away completely, and subscriptions will not go away completely, but that top dog just might have a point.

(1) Focus like crazy on serving ads. Have a good ad team. Gawker Media asked for and got premium prices. They did not exactly do AdSense.
(2) Your site should be a multi media experience.
(3) There should be the latest web functionalities. Which these days seems to mean the web experience should feel social.
(4) Remember, you are serving content, but you are also building community. But never forget content, your number one offering.
(5) Keep an open mind. Change should be not a decision for today, it should be a lifestyle, or rather, workstyle.

"I felt like I was previewing the future of media." (on the CNN Facebook collaboration for January 20)

Case in study. Plum. Comes out once a year. Has a niche market that I am going to call prime real estate, beachfront property. Some of what might apply to Plum would also apply to the New York Times. When the New York Times goes completely online, it gets read globally. Its readership expands like huge. But the revenue per reader is less than it was with print circulation. You lower the price and you make money on volume. Check out the 99 cent pizza place on 41st and Ninth.

There are pregnant women above 35 in America. Well, they also exist in Europe, and Japan, and India, and elsewhere. In going digital a media property like Plum could go global with no additional cost in terms of content creation. And if you manage to build community, many users create content for you for free.

You are looking at becoming a global brand name, and a media powerhouse. From coming out once a year, it becomes a web destination that people visit every day. It already has a great ad base, it looks like.

What makes Plum cutting edge is it has a very sharply defined niche, this collection of rich women, to put it mildly. So Plum is digital edge cutting edge. The new medium is all about niches. And the niche you find can be global. Plum got there in terms of concept before it got there in terms of technology.

http://upendra.shardanand.com My friend Upendra seems to be doing some cutting edge, insane quality work, right at the edge.
Daylife Select a game-changer for online publishing: the mind-bending Daylife Select. ...... gorgeous new pages of constantly updating content ...... lets publishers launch instant content portals containing thousands or millions of pages, with stories, topics, photo galleries, search (much like you see on our showcase, daylife.com), all in their own brand, voice, look, and feel. And without developer resources. It all happens through a simple point-and-click interface, not unlike launching a social network on Ning or a blog on WordPress. ........ through our integration tools, it can blend seamlessly with (or around) your existing property. ...... a content cloud computer ...... not only Daylife-collected content, but a huge range social media sources ...... videos from YouTube, photos from Flickr, topical streams from Twitter, search results from Yahoo!, comments from Disqus, and entries from Wikipedia. ....... ANY Google Gadget. .... not only do you have millions of pages – but every piece of every page is embeddable and shareable – so you now have millions of widgets ........ Smart Context automatically inserts hyperlinks into topical keywords ....... increase your URLs exponentially, which have huge downstream impacts on SEO and, of course, organic traffic acquisition. ...... let’s you curate the world around your content – do what you do best and outsource the rest.
The New Architecture of News news consumption is, if anything, increasing – it remains one of the top three activities on the web ...... news organizations are just now turning from self-preservation to re-invention ...... all about offering superior navigation to the content ...... do what you do best and link to the rest. ........ More than ever, publishers need something unique - in voice, brand, content - around which to build. ...... even more need for differentiation. ...... unique, differentiated content & products can see increasing returns. ....... intelligent, malleable technology platform for organizing news from thousands of content-creators ...... News will do more than survive. It will flourish.
Ethic of the link, revisited « The Future of Journalism

MediaTalk; A Journal for Women Pregnant Later in Life - New York Times
Plum, the first pregnancy magazine aimed at women over 35 .....
produced by Groundbreak Publishing, is described as a joint effort
with the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecologists. ........
Rebekah Meola, Groundbreak's principal ..... The 200-page glossy, to
appear annually ...... 400,000 readers who are typically well-educated
and affluent.
http://www.plummagazine.com/content/story_65.php award-winning
title's creative team. ..... Plum magazine, the award-winning
publication for pregnant women 35 and older .... world-renowned
publication designers ...... "We immediately recognized in Plum the
spirit of a great magazine," says Milton Glaser. ...... Plum's
commitment to continued excellence in both editorial and design. In
just its second year, the magazine is building on the successes of its
landmark debut by aligning itself not only with the leading
practitioners in the fields of obstetrics and gynecology, but with the
best the design industry has to offer. ....... wide range of
editorial subjects, including health, fashion, child care, personal
memoir, celebrity and personality profiles ......... text,
photography, illustration, and exclusive graphic elements .......
educated, sophisticated, established women facing motherhood at a
critical phase of their lives. .........
www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/25364.php New York-based publisher
Rebekah Meola ...... scheduled to be published only once per year and
distributed exclusively through doctors' offices, is "a cross between
a woman's beauty and lifestyle magazine and a health/pregnancy manual
...... "one of the country's fastest growing demographics" -- older
pregnant women. ....... between 1990 and 2002, the birth rate among
women ages 35 to 39 increased 30%, while the birth rate among women
ages 40 to 44 increased 51%
www.telegraphindia.com/1040905/asp/look/story_3715336.asp women who
do not know what to expect while expecting .... Plum, the first
pregnancy magazine aimed at women over 35 ...... Rebekah Meola,
Groundbreak's principal, said older, expectant mothers shared many of
the same concerns as younger ones, but often had greater anxiety about
medical complications, infertility and return to work.
www.spoke.com/info/c5x1RHN/GroundBreakPublishingInc
http://www.newsweek.com/id/150312 Many of these women put kids on
hold as they climbed career ladders. Translation: they're smart,
they've got money to spare and they want the absolute best for their
babies. As a result, advertiser interest in the magazine--which will
be distributed free to patients by the American College of
Obstetricians and Gynecologists--has been "exceptional," says Plum
publisher Rebekah Meola, with heavy hitters like Volvo,
Hewlett-Packard and Johnson & Johnson signed on.

Friday, January 30, 2009

Mitch Kapor Now Following Me On Twitter

43 is my lucky number. Mitch Kapor, a legend in the industry, is now following me on Twitter. This is not like Guy Kawasaki following me. That guy is officially the number one Twitterer in the world, but then he follows as many people as follow him, which is about 50,000. Which means he does not follow anybody. He just makes them feel good. It is like when you first signed up on MySpace, you automatically got one friend, I believe some guy called Tom, a MySpace staffer. Tom was everybody's friend at MySpace. Guy Kawasaki, great guy, a legend in his own right, Guy Kawasaki the Rich Dad Poor Dad guy, is the Tom of Twitter.

But Mitch Kapor. He is not trying to become a celebrity. He was a celebrity before anyone knew who Bill Gates was.

So when I saw he was my follower number 43, I immediately sent him a direct message. I am honored to have you follow me here on Twitter. He is only following 331 people. What that means is that once in a while he will read your twit.

The Hare Rama Hare Krishna people aspire for a Krishna consciousness. I think today on Twitter I have come to acquire a Kapor consciousness. Now on when I twit, I am going to ask a question, not What Would Jesus Do, but How Would Kapor React?

I don't believe this. I kept Twitter at arm's length for the longest time. Then I came in kicking and screaming. Within days I became an addict. (I Get Twitter) I mean, I want to snatch Guy Kawasaki's title away from him, but not by fraud following as many people as might be genuinely following me, but by becoming a genuine celebrity, someone who people want to follow, because they are interested in knowing what you do, what are you thinking about, what you are reading.

I almost want to lock up my account. As in I already got Mitch Kapor, I don't want any more people following me. But instead I decided to immortalize the moment with a blog post.

I do want more followers, more than most. This is PR at its best. If you think about it, this is Reverse Paparazzi. The paparazzi follow you e-v-e-r-y-w-h-e-r-e. Twits follow themselves everywhere.

We have become our own paparazzi. But this is fun. In a way this is the ultimate mindfood. Suddenly all my news browsing has become a social activity. I am not some loner reading a ton of news. Almost every news item I read these days, I feel the urge to share. I feel the urge to comment and share. I don't have enough followers yet to spark conversations, but I will get there.

I have met so many amazing people here already. For the longest time I thought the tech world was all male and boring. Then I saw all innonate was following. And I found all sorts of outrageously gorgeous women on the New York tech scene who I also decided to follow, one of whom I have kind of sort of become friends with. She has an exciting YouTube channel. By the way innonate is the Organizer of the New York Tech MeetUp, the top tech event in town. He was voted into that position. Used to be my friend the MeetUp CEO Scott was the Oragnizer.

I am honored you are following me now on Twitter, I said. Promptly I pitched. I thought I was done with round 1 fundraising back in June 2008. But I will save the details of the story. I am still a little short. I pitched the Plenty Of Fish: Online Dating King Markus Frind yesterday, but now I believe it that his company is a one person operation. I have not heard from him.

I mean, I could not resist. Mitch and I have exchanged a few emails since. At Twitter those emails are called DMs. They are Direct Messages. They also have that 140 character limit. Whoever came up with that random number? It feels scientific to me. Good enough for one unit of expression, especially if links are allowed.