July, 2009

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Relevance is mandatory, so pick a niche

Friday, July 31st, 2009

First in a series.

Here’s one of my four core principles for today’s media market: these days, relevance is mandatory.

I’m not talking about some of your content. I’m talking about all of your content.

If you’re not scared yet, you should be.

Yesterday, distribution costs were high, which made information scarce. The only way to distribute information was to spend lots of capital on a printing press or a broadcast tower. The only way to make this investment pay off was to make everyone interested in your content.

Click to continue »

Posted in commandments, general-audience-die-die, pick-a-niche, principles, relevance-is-mandatory | 2 Responses »

Four principles, four commandments

Friday, July 31st, 2009

Preview of a series.

Your startup will only thrive if things are changing; if nothing’s been changing, somebody already tried it. So, how is today’s news market different from yesterday’s?

Here are four principles for today’s media market, each of them with a commandment for aspiring entrepreneurs to keep in mind. They’re the guiding assumptions of this blog.

I’ll discuss each in a coming series of posts, and each of these will eventually get a landing page of its own that includes the latest news on the subject.

Posted in bigthink, commandments, principles, startups | 2 Responses »

The four kinds of non-catastrophic breaking news, and why social media aren’t changing them

Monday, July 27th, 2009

floodI’m a city boy. I love crowds. I believe in crowds.

But let’s get serious about the usefulness of crowdsourced hard-news reporting at the local level.

Every example of how Twitter, etc., is theoretically changing journalism seems to rely on extremely unusual tragedies, disasters or sensations.

I don’t know about your hometown paper, but in the one I work for, almost all of what you’d call “breaking news” (aside from the sports and arts coverage) falls into one of four areas:

Click to continue »

Posted in be-useful, crowds, curmudge, reax, twitter | 19 Responses »

Two kinds of products that rely on people's flaws

Sunday, July 5th, 2009

Here’s a distinction worth understanding:

a) Products that rely on the idea that people will simply be too dumb to figure out an alternative. These products rely only on informational barriers: once you know the better way to do things, it’s no trouble to do things the better way.

Like a car mechanic who preys on ignorance in order to sell more air filters, these products breed resentment.

and

b) Products that rely on the idea that people don’t have the time or effort to pursue an alternative. These products rely on procedural barriers: even if you spent the time to figure out an alternative, you’d need to alter your behavior to take advantage of it.

Like a car mechanic who pokes around in earnest for possible mechanical problems you haven’t yet noticed, these products breed loyalty.

Posted in be-useful, examples | No Responses »