Posts tagged with 'clay shirky'
Radical New Ways of Meaning-Making and Filtering
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The next phase of filtering will center on the evolution of the “Semantic Web,” which Ashish Soni, who directs the Information Technology Program at the University of Southern California, describes as an interactivity evolution a step beyond aggregation that aims to makes information more meaningful and useful. According to an article co-authored by Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited with founding the web, the semantic evolution “lets users engage in the sort of serendipitous reuse and discovery of related information that’s been a hallmark of viral web uptake.”
“Meta tagging” as we know it today is just the beginning. The Semantic Web builds upon any metadata (e.g. hyperlinks, location, time, movement or categories) to infer greater meaning from information. (more…)
The Future?
The Big Thaw began with David Weinberger’s question: “How much more of the game needs to change, really?” In some ways, this is the future we have been waiting for. Independent media has successfully amplified independent voices and empower communities for many years. The online world has made this more possible than ever before. But in other ways, it might not be the future we had expected.
While people interviewed for The Big Thaw were optimistic about online journalism, they were uncertain regarding how it would affect quality and availability of investigative journalism, how consumers will behave, how the biggest players in the game will act, and which new strategies and business models succeed. (more…)
Emerging Operation Models and Cost Structures
While many prophets of the new era preach about the great potential of online technology for creating media more efficiently, original investigative reporting still takes time, resources and a little shoe leather to do well. “What’s worth saving, as a critical function, is investigative journalism. We need someone, many someones, to do long, deep, boring research, for stories that may not even pan out,” Clay Shirky wrote in a blog post.
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New Business Models
How to structure media organizations to capture value?
As the sources of value and the competitive landscape have changed, so have the business models that are mostly likely to succeed. Underpinning the dissonance between old and new media is a imbalance between traditional revenue models and their ability to cover the high costs of original content production—particularly for investigative reporting. The financial crisis accelerated this shift, forcing quicker adaptation and shortening the runway for new models to prove themselves.
Organizations cannot merely create value; they must eventually capture enough value to sustain themselves, whether it is directly from those who benefit or from third parties such as philanthropists. Ventures that make a play for audience first, such as Twitter and YouTube, must eventually capture value. In fact, YouTube is still far short of making enough money: Its costs are nearly three times more than its revenue, as one analyst reported in April 2009. Furthermore, the collapse of the print industry and economic crisis cannot be blamed as the sole cause of magazines’ troubles. Some have continued to grow due to their ability to capture value. Of the 100 magazines with the highest circulations in 2005, 21 were able to increase their print advertising pages from 2005 to 2008. (more…)
Solving Filter Failure
Publishers are increasingly concerned about “information overload,” and some believe that technology has made this worse. In an Economist.com debate, Richard Szafranski argued that technology has created “over-choice,” which he described as a “human response to alternatives and variations so numerous, so potentially satisfying and so complex that humans can no longer decide easily.” Our time is limited and the more choices we have, the more time it takes to choose.
However, Clay Shirky claims that information overload has been a problem long before the digital age, as anyone has experienced entering a library or bookshop. Ever since the amount of available books exceeded a person’s ability to read them, the central problem has been filter failure. “We had a set of filters that we were used to, but are now broken,” Shirky points out. The media organizations that help solve filter failure by making information more relevant will control the new decentralized online distribution channels. Independent media has more power to solve this problem by sharing data and working together. (more…)
Strategic Technology
Taking community seriously requires a greater allocation of resources toward both technology and the personnel who can use it effectively. “Many organizations only see one piece of the puzzle and want to do small experiments—hire an intern and a few people here and there—without seeing how that impacts the rest of the media,” says Ashish Soni, who directs the Information Technology Program at the University of Southern California. “People who do have knowledge of the other pieces of the puzzle can do real systemic innovation, and this is the highest area to impact.” (more…)
Getting Serious About Community
Many people in the media industry talk about building community, but what does that really look like?
“It’s not enough to have a place where readers talk back—or the classic letters-to-the-editors pattern,” Clay Shirky says. “Rather it’s about providing a platform for readers to coordinate with one another. That’s a really radical shift because in part because it means you have to take community seriously.” In the past, journalism organizations had a deep bench with all the pieces under one roof, but a key competency for the new environment is deeply engaging with users and communities in a way that is also scalable. Independent media could build large-scale communities by building a shared platform across publishers. (more…)
Cyber-cascades and Superdistribution
Historically, media outlets manufactured popularity by pushing content on consumers by taking advantage of their lock on power law. Now there are many fast-changing dynamics that constantly create new opportunities. As we have seen with YouTube and Twitter, new platforms create new stars, usually those who are first on the scene. Industry volatility and lower competitive barriers mean that new players can establish a beachhead on a new platform and leave incumbents behind. Yet today, more than ever, independent media has the chance to break through since dominant companies no longer have this advantage. If independent media can strategically innovate, they can leverage their existing audience to become first movers of new technologies and platforms that will inevitably emerge. (more…)
New Abundances and Their Effects
As physical limitations for how media is distributed and consumed decline, the competitive landscape changes fundamentally. In short, new abundances have turned the economics of distribution on its head.
For example, “loss-leader strategies” are inverted. (For more information about “loss-leaders,” a product sold below costs to create other sales, download Vol. 2, Chapter 4 of The Big Thaw.) Companies used to give away 1% of a product, such as perfume, to get the samplers to buy the other 99%. Now, companies such as Flickr or Skype give away 99% (often called a “freemium”) to sell 1% in the form of premium purchases. For example, Flickr Pro costs $25 per year. This flip has generated new abundances of products. (more…)
Journalism’s Old Paradigm: Are We Facing a Glacier or a Flood?
“If no paradigm is right,” Donella Meadows, a pioneering environmental scientist and respected systems thinker, pointed out, “you can choose whatever one will help to achieve your purpose.” The best strategy will stem from asking: “So, what? What will media do for people?” says Amy Gahran of the Poynter Institute. By strengthening the collective agreement about independent media’s ultimate aim, The Media Consortium (TMC) can help its members shift paradigms more easily, choose the most effective game changers and better weather any industry shifts to come.
While changes to the news industry advanced at a glacial pace for many years, as Clay Shirky claimed, transition often comes as quickly as the levees that broke in New Orleans. Trigger events can cause sudden floods before new a system is in place to prevent it. (more…)