The Black Liszt

Tag: Federated Media

  • Everything is Media!

    We think that "media" is a small part of "everything." But that's changing. Everything is turning into media: the world is becoming "media-ized."

    Here's a framework for understanding what's happening:

    First, we have broadcast media, the "original" media

        The information flow is one to many

        Examples: newspapers, TV

    Second, we have communications, one person interacts with another

        The information flow is one to one

        Examples: face to face, phone, individuals talk

    Third, we have transactions, a person goes to a merchant to get or do something

        The information flow is many to one

        Example: go to a store and check out
     

    If you think about life in the distant past, that is in the pre-internet era (if you are old enough to remember that long ago), you can recall how very different those three categories were. 

    Sitting down and talking with someone is clearly communications (one to one). While you're sitting down, you may agree to listen to the radio or watch TV. Then the two of you are consuming media (the media source is the one, the two of you are part of the many). You may see or hear an advertisement on the media. Later, you go to a store and buy the item (you are one of many people who go to the store).

    These categories are clear and distinct; no one could possibly confuse (1) talking with a friend, (2) watching TV, and (3) buying something.

    But on the internet, things have changed! These three categories, once so clearly separate from each other, are merging into minor variations of a single thing. They are now the variegated media-transaction-communications complex, a complicated single thing which has the characteristics of all three.

    It's easier, and closer to the facts, just to say that the formerly distinct activities of communicating and buying things have become subsumed under "media." Why? The "place" where this activity happens is on screens that you can touch or have keyboards and/or have a mouse, the same kind of screen we use for watching TV, which is clearly a media experience. When communicating and transacting are brought into the world of screens, they adapt to their new world, and become media-like. That's why I say, the world is becoming "media."

    I think about this a lot, partly because of personal experience, but also because I'm involved with companies that have to adapt to this new world.

    The companies that "get" this convergence of everything to media are the ones who succeed in the new "everything is media" world.

    Here are some of my favorite companies and a little sample of what they're doing that shows how they "get" it.

    • Huffington Post is a "media" company. But they are clearly stretching the definition of what "media" is way beyond anything the media dinosaurs can fully comprehend, much less keep up with. The easiest way to see this is the way they are going beyond the classic "elite" media one-to-many model with thousands of bloggers, citizen journalism and an extremely committed and robust community of reader/collaborators who communicate with each other using the site's comments and connections to Facebook and Twitter.
    • Demand Media is making progress on many fronts, with a full-fledged research operation to help guide their efforts. Some of their sites look a lot like on-line versions of classic niche media, for example www.cracked.com. Others are breaking the tyranny of one-to-many media by pioneering the use of professionally generated content to achieve something closer to many-to-many media, for example www.ehow.com. Finally, they are evolving the many-to-one merchant model in media-savvy ways, for example in the Daily Plate section of the Livestrong.com site.
    • Federated Media is all about the shift from broadcast-style media to what they call conversational media. The whole premise of the company is that there is a new kind of media emerging that transcends traditional broadcast models, and this new media naturally calls for a new kind of advertising for merchants to interact with consumers. In fact, Federated Media is right in the middle of a kind of media that incorporates strong elements of conversation and makes a bridge to transactions.
    • FirstRain is not a media company at all, in the old sense. Their roots are in providing search services to financial professionals. But now, like any new media company, you can search for something relevant and find their pages, for example this report on Yahoo. The harsh rule of media is that consumers will glance at your page; if they like it, they'll stay for awhile and explore; if they don't understand it or like it, they'll navigate away, and you've lost them. FirstRain is already a generation ahead of their peer group in understanding and implementing this.

    You may think you're a media company — have you really gotten all the factors that are now part of succeeding in media? You may think you're an e-commerce company — have you really gotten how being an on-line version of a store isn't even in the right ball park, how you're now a media company? You may be a completely different kind of company, like FirstRain — do you get that success means becoming (at least in part) a media company?

    That's because … in the new world we live in, everything is media!

  • Federated Media’s Approach to New Media

    Federated Media's angle on new media is to invite UGC-style bloggers who have attracted an audience into similar-subject Federations, and to provide those authors the vetting, channel and money they need to become highly valued professional content creators. Many of the authors at Federated had already enjoyed some success and money, but without the shared infrastructure and unique approach of FM, it wouldn't amount to much. As
    my earlier post
    points out, this is a new path to success. In the traditional,
    mainstream media, the bureaucracy controls who can join the elite and who can win. FM provides the endorsement, safety in numbers and true path to professionalism for those who have earned an audience with user-generated content.

    Is the approach working? Let's look at the results:

    Comscore

    Just building the Federations and the shared infrastructure would be a substantial contribution to paving a new path to media success that isn't bureaucracy-ridden EGC or thankless UGC. But FM has gone beyond that achievement, adding a new way for sellers to reach potential buyers that is culturally compatible with the new media type: "Conversational Media."

    Advertising in the traditional media world is part of the culture of that world: smug elites telling the rest of us what to think and do. Advertising in the world of elites has an attitude, and the attitude is "sit down, shut up, listen and watch, and then do what I tell you to do!" A one-way broadcast of information fits right in.

    I'm not about to claim that big advertisers with products to sell suddenly are truly interested in what you and I think. But if you spend some time in the world of blogs, you hear new kinds of voices — voices that are creative, credible and authentic, but not elite. Pioneer Woman is a great example. You notice another thing: readers are active and engaged, something you'll see right away by looking at a typical post and the comments on it. Surely there is a kind of promotion that is similarly active and invites engagement — that's FM's Conversational Media. A surprising number of big names are catching on to this.

    Conversational Media takes more time and effort (and costs more money) than just putting together some copy and images and blasting it out broadcast-style. But you get what you pay for. The beauty of Conversational Media is that it fits into the blogs more smoothly than old-style stuff, and it pays the way for people like Pioneer Woman to be appropriately rewarded for her creative PGC. This is a path to success that simply did not exist in the old world of EGC, and we're all better off for it.

  • Media for a New Era, Demanded and Federated

    There is a new kind of media. We all know the old media produced by the elites, and we've all heard of user-generated content. There is a new kind of media shepherded by new kinds of companies. It combines the best of the old media, and is generating value for the people who create it and the people who consume it.

    Among other reasons, I'm paying attention to this because a couple of companies I know are in the heart of enabling this new kind of content. That’s partly why I like Demand Media so much. It’s also one of the reasons I’m a fan of
    Federated Media.

    The vast majority of the media we consume is generated by an elite, largely
    full-time, generally well-compensated, tiny group of people, usually working in
    large organizations. Let's call it EGC, Elite Generated Content. EGC is generally a pyramid, with a tiny number of highly
    visible people at the top, a large supporting cast, and often a very large
    number of under-compensated people in support, many of whom aspire to climb up
    the pyramid. Katie Couric, sitting at the top of the CBS News pyramid with her
    $15M annual salary    , is a great example. She can do her job only because of her
    supporting cast of hundreds (thousands?), the vast majority of whom will never
    have the camera focused on them except while saying “testing, testing.” They do the work and she takes the credit. While
    the example I’ve used is broadcast news, there is a similar structure in
    newspapers, magazines, books, music, movies, theater, etc.

    The internet has brought us a new kind of media: UGC, user
    generated content. UGC is generated by essentially anyone who wants to. There
    are a vast number of UGC-er’s (millions!), who do what they do mostly on their
    own, mostly for free. Examples include blogs, comments, everything on Facebook,
    product ratings, Wikipedia, etc.

    Some of the people who create UGC are every bit as talented,
    hard-working and effective as the elite producers of EGC, sometimes more so.
    Some UGC creators produce content for which they know there’s a market, but the
    existing rigid structure and cruel, anti-democratic hierarchy of EGC provides no mechanism for them to tap that
    market.

    Some members of the old media have recognized and
    capitalized on the fact that there is a huge pool of frustrated, under-valued
    and ambitious UGC-er’s out there, and have created mainstream media vehicles
    for tapping into this vast labor pool. Perhaps the best examples are TV shows like
    American Idol. For every Susan Boyle who leaps from complete obscurity to fame
    and fortune, there are tens of thousands of applicants who either waste their
    time, or worse, become the on-air fodder for the laughter and cruelty of the
    wealthy, self-appointed judges. In typical old-media fashion, it dangles the
    hope of success to millions and convinces tens of thousands to donate
    their time and effort to the success of the elite handful at the top, for
    example the well-named Simon Cowell, who is surely the Simon Legree of
    show business aspirants.

    Is there an alternative to old-media EGC and
    chaotic, unstructured and unpaid UGC? Simply put, yes. Demand Media and
    Federated Media each are pioneering new paths to enable UGC-er’s to advance to
    professional success. There is no accepted name for this new category (alert!
    naming opportunity!), so until a better name shows up, I’ll just call it PGC,
    professional-generated content.

    What is PGC? Simple: it combines many of the most desirable characteristics of EGC and UGC. Here are the highlights:

    • Like EGC, the content is vetted, it is good quality.
    • Like EGC, there is a market for the content, and a way to reach that market.
    • Like EGC, the participants in the process actually get money for their efforts.
    • Like UGC, the participants in the process actually get credit for their efforts.
    • Like UGC, there is no hierarchy barring the door to aspirants.
    • Like UGC, the process is highly distributed and democratic.

    Sometime soon, I'll show how DM and FM are each, in their own ways, leading the way to developing the market for PGC, professionally generated content, and thus providing opportunities for people and filling previously unmet needs.

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