Men Explain Lolita to Me | Literary Hub. Publit Helps Publishers Sell Direct To Consumers. Dodging the Middleman: Insights on Disintermediation in the Independent Music Sector. What happened to disintermediation? With the rise of the web in the 1990s came predictions of disintermediation. In a world where the upstream players (the makers of products and services) could reach end customers directly through the internet, there was no longer a raison d’être for intermediaries.
This was particularly true for information industries – banking no longer needed branches, music artists no longer needed CD stores or even record labels, writers no longer needed publishers or bookstores. We were looking out at a world of empowered small producers who could finally reach the end customer as easily and inexpensively as the massive marketing and distribution machines of the large intermediaries.
Stephen King, the most popular novelist in recent history, self-published an electronically downloadable novel; As recently as 2007, Radiohead, the music band went one step farther and offered an album for download on a “pay what you want” basis. Neither model has caught on. What has caught on are iTunes and Amazon. The Downside of Disintermediation. Skeptics of copyright are generally not too fond of “gatekeepers.” Prior to the widescale adoption of the internet, these “gatekeepers”, the typical narrative goes, controlled what the masses read, watched, and listened to, reinforcing a dominant culture and creating the concept of media “consumers.”
But the networked, one-to-one nature of the internet challenged this one-to-many model. It allowed creators to bypass “gatekeepers” and connect directly with fans, supporting more diverse and decentralized culture. To many proponents of this view, current copyright law facilitates the former, broadcast model. Legal professor Guy Pessach thinks this is wrong. In his forthcoming article, Deconstructing Disintermediation — A Skeptical Copyright Perspective, Pessach examines the effects that disintermediation has had in the copyright realm and comes to the conclusion that it has decreased cultural diversity, decentralization, and artist welfare. Deconstructing Disintermediation Money for Nothing. The Disintermediation of Media: What's Your Value Proposition? I work from home, which, in many ways, is "living the dream. " I roll out of bed, I put the kettle on, I boot up the computer, and I get to work. Sometime around midday, I put on some jeans, I grab a leash, and I take the dog for a nice long walk to break up the day.
But working at home has some drawbacks. You don't get up and walk over to the water cooler or coffeepot and chat with your co-workers. No one stops by your desk to talk about so-and-so and what just happened at the big meeting. To stave off the cabin-fever that can come with a home office, I tend to listen to a lot of NPR and podcasts. All that chatter has a way of making you feel like you're part of a conversation. Lately, I've been listening to a lot of Marc Maron's WTF. It makes for fascinating conversations, but it's also interesting from an econtent perspective. Louis CK and Aziz Ansari (aka Tom Haverford) have both released stand-up specials via the web.
Apple TV Is The Latest Step In The Disintermediation Of Media. The trend toward direct connections between video content creators and their audiences is well underway, but the new Apple TV could finally push that trend into the living room. Although direct-to-viewer relationships are the norm on the web, most premium TV content in the living room still passes through a cable television gatekeeper. Does Apple finally have enough momentum to break the grip of the content middlemen for good? The Great TV Unbundling Two months ago, Apple executives got on stage and proclaimed that “The Future of TV is Apps.” Millennial viewers barely distinguish between YouTube, TV, social networks and video messaging.
Achieving Content Parity App-based TV is no longer a technology problem; it’s a business problem. Apple wants tvOS, and its app-based marketplace, to become the default user interface for the living room. A year ago, brands like MLB, which offers a compelling streaming service, were the exceptions. The cable TV experience seems downright prehistoric. The Three Trends Driving Digital Business. Amazon Is Ripe For Disruption. Who's Crazy Enough To Start A Record Label Today? Ed Sheeran, Miley Cyrus, And Others...Here's Why. How the Times-Picayune Got the Internet Right and Still Lost the Battle of New Orleans. August 30, 2005 edition (Photo credit: Wikipedia) There is no absence of tragedy in the demise of a fine daily newspaper in a great American city like New Orleans.
But the diminishment of the Times-Picayune is also flavored with deep irony in an this era of digital disintermediation and newspaper defeat: the New Orleans daily heroically and effectively moved to the Internet to tell the story of Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath, providing an early model for online excellence. The publisher of the Times-Picayune, Ashton Phelps Jr., announced in a memo today that the newspaper will cease daily publication and go to three days a week this fall, a move that will accompanied by cutbacks to the staff. This makes New Orleans the largest U.S. city without a daily newspaper. The memo followed a post by David Carr in The Times predicting the paper’s daily demise. What now, asks fellow Forbes contributor John McQuaid, a former Times-Picayune journalist:
The Long-Term Corrosive Effect Of Digital Disintermediation. Disintermediation. Singer says that talent retaining the creative & distribution rights to content is critical to success @BroadwayVideo. #StoryTeching. "I knew it's about the instant click & a short attention span." @quintabrunson on making successful comedy on Instagram #StoryTeching. You can have the most advanced tech in the world, but if you don’t know your business, you’re going to run into trouble #AtlanticSmallBiz. .@gstrompolos on types of creators and what's next for Fullscreen #storyteching. The Battle Is For The Customer Interface. Editor’s note: Tom Goodwin is senior vice president of strategy and innovation at Havas Media. Uber, the world’s largest taxi company, owns no vehicles.
Facebook, the world’s most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world’s largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate. Something interesting is happening. Since the Industrial Revolution, the world has developed complex supply chains, from designers to manufacturers, from distributors to importers, wholesalers and retailers, it’s what allowed billions of products to be made, shipped, bought and enjoyed in all corners of the world. In recent times the power of the Internet, especially the mobile phone, has unleashed a movement that’s rapidly destroying these layers and moving power to new places. The Internet is the most powerful mechanism we can imagine to match perfectly individuals that need something, and people with something to offer.
Yes, There Is a War on Advertising. Now What? Apple has been scaring up apocalyptic predictions for the future of advertising ever since it said its forthcoming mobile operating system would make it easier for apps to block ads in Safari browsers on the iPhone. Encouraged by the company, the scenario goes, consumers will shut marketers out to surf a perceived faster, cleaner, less-invasive web -- until the free internet collapses for lack of ad revenue.
But the truth is the horsemen were in the saddle well before the new operating system, which arrives on Wednesday. Consider: IPhone owners could already easily erase marketers' messages from mobile web pages and apps. As an experiment, Ad Age reporters did it with marquee publishers such as The New York Times using the app AdBlock Mobile. The number of people actively blocking ads in the U.S. rose to 45 million in the second quarter, up 48% from the period a year earlier, according to one widely cited report. Is it too much to call it a war on advertising? Advertisement. Digital pitchforks: Turning social media complaints into brand wins. Your brand is on trial in the court of public opinion. There are 2.1 million negative social mentions about brands in the U.S. alone ... every single day.
We polled over 11,000 U.S. consumers and surveyed 1,003 that recently complained to brands over social media, so that you'll have the tools and techniques you need to keep your brand sentiment clean. What you'll get from this report: How to select the right customer service strategiesWho complains, what age are they, what do they really complain about, and how they lodge issuesThe seven best-performing brand (and what they do right)The seven worst-performing brands (and what they do wrong)38 technologies that can assist, and processes to avoidDeadly social: processes to avoid5 key business lessons to learn10 take-away action items This report includes survey results, insights, examples, case studies and expert advice from customer service leaders; Tim Hughes (Oracle), Al Hopper (#CustServ) and Greg Ortbach (webAssist.ca). Social media: We complain 879 million times/year (and Facebook is our top target) | VentureBeat | Social | by John Koetsier.
We complain about brands an astonishing 879 million times a year on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media networks. A full 10 percent of us find something to be angry about publicly every single day. The most-targeted brand? Facebook. That’s just one of the results of a new study by VB Insight on social media, complaints, and how brands can turn social vinegar into the sweet wine of a cash register’s ring. Quick hint: it’s not easy. In fact, it’s a gargantuan task, often made worse by being completely ignored by brands, which happens 32.8 percent of the time. “It shocked me how many brands don’t respond to social media complaints,” report author Stewart Rogers told me. While traditional brands such as Walmart, Verizon, Target, and Comcast rank high on the list of companies consumers complain about, one name stands out above all: Facebook.
Interestingly, however, it’s not always the brand being targeted that is causing the anger. From VentureBeat Only teens complain more, Rogers says. More than 50% of Instagram's biggest fans hate ad increase | VentureBeat | Marketing | by Stewart Rogers. There is no doubt that Instagram is a phenomenon. The social network has grown from nothing in 2010 to a user base that now boasts 400 million people worldwide, 77 million of whom are in the U.S. 80 million photos are shared daily on the image-centric social network, providing constant joy to those of us who love a good plane wing, hot dogs/legs paradox, or a cat wearing glasses.
But something changed on September 27th, 2015 that has left a bitter taste in the mouth of many a budding Trey Ratcliff. That something was no doubt driven by Facebook’s need to monetize the network it acquired for $1 billion in 2012. The frequency of advertisements — or “sponsored images” if you prefer — seen in the average stream appeared to dramatically increase. This change in cadence was — probably not coincidentally — followed by the expansion of Instagram ads to 30 new countries. I first noticed it in my own Instagram stream. But a sample size of one Instagram user is not statistically significant. Instagram Just Stepped Up Its Advertising Game. Instagram officially debuted its advertising API this week as part of a major push to turn the app into a major mobile advertising platform. Using the API, advertisers will be able to automate Instagram marketing campaigns and buy ads in a similar manner to what they currently do for Twitter and corporate parent Facebook; until now, marketers had to manually purchase ads.
This considerably simplifies the process for major brands of operating an Instagram presence. Earlier this summer, Fast Company reported on Instagram’s efforts to attract advertisers to the platform. "The Instagram Ads API will help us make ads more relevant to the community, serve more diverse business objectives, and make buying on the platform easier for advertisers," an Instagram spokesperson told Fast Company. "We started working with a group of Facebook Marketing Partners a few weeks ago and they’ve brought great experience and technological savvy onto the platform.
[via Business Insider] Instagram Testing 3D Touch Ads. Instagram is experimenting with new advertisements that use the iPhone’s 3D Touch functionality. The advertisements, which are believed to be still in the testing and development phase, let customers apply added force to their clicks in order to browse between multiple photos. Digiday’s Garett Sloane, who broke the story while citing unnamed advertising industry sources, says the move by Instagram is part of an ongoing initiative to add more e-commerce features to the platform, as well as more ways to display and interact with products.
One of the main uses of the 3D Touch functionality is to quickly toggle between multiple shopping offers inside Instagram ads. In a statement, an Instagram spokesperson told Digiday, "Mobile commerce is definitely a space we are looking at closely. Over the past two quarters, Instagram has become increasingly more interested in advertising and has deployed a variety of new products and ad formats for advertisers. An IRL place to buy the Internet's most popular makeup. Die-hard beauty fans can now test and purchase products from their Instagram feeds in one IRL location.
Ricky’s NYC, a chain beauty store with a mix of indie and established brands, opened a concept cosmetic store called “#” (pronounced "Hashtag"), which sells 20 beauty brands made famous by Instagram. The store features eclectic brands like Cocoa Brown, LASplash, Makeup Eraser and Sugar Pill. The idea for # was developed in response to consumers who were interested in obtaining social media-famous brands outside their online community. "Ricky’s NYC has been carrying many of these brands for almost a year but with the rest of the merchandise in the store, these special brands can sometimes get lost in the crowd," Richard Parrott, president of Ricky's NYC, tells Mashable.
"I did some analysis on the cumulative sales for all the 'Insta-brands' and the numbers made sense to try and aggregate them in one location. Ricky’s NYC is using # to test brands with strong social media presence. When YouTube Stars Make a Movie, Superfan Marketing Is Baked In. A straight-to-DVD or video-on-demand movie might raise suspicion. But in the maturing world of digital-first talent and production, it's the only logical way. YouTube stars Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart and Mamrie Hart just made the leap from small screen to slightly less-small screen in Camp Takota, a feature film released on Feb. 14.
For $10, fans can download or stream the movie, with extras including a behind-the-scenes documentary, movie posters and t-shirts packaged at incremental price tiers. And like many in the music, comedy and gaming worlds before them, its producers felt empowered to bypass traditional studio distribution because legions of rabid fans were already baked into the balance sheet. "Our entire idea going into this project was that we wanted to respect our digital audience and give them the full look at what it's like to make a film," Helbig tells Mashable. After shooting 12 hours a day, Helbig and her co-stars brought that experience back to their vlogs. 4 social media lessons brands can learn from media companies. This article is part of SWOT Team, a series on Mashable that features insights from leaders in marketing, brand-building and public relations.
Of all the content creators on social media, it can seem like brands are the red-headed stepchild. They don't get as much attention as YouTube stars or Instagram celebrities, they aren't followed as closely as news and media organizations and they get low reach without paying. It doesn't have to be this way. In fact, the best-performing brands on social reach a huge audience and don't spend much in promoting their posts. The reason? These brands emulate publishers when it comes to their content strategy. Here's what brands can learn from digital media companies about creating content. Stop faking "storytelling" The term "storytelling" has been used and abused by the marketing industry.
When it comes to real storytelling, brands are way too short-sighted. Certain brands, like Red Bull, get this and are nailing social storytelling. Jan Rezab. Facebook will let you buy products from retailers' Pages. Why Barneys New York is acting like a publisher. Publishers Cool on Facebook. Three magazine publishers winning at Instagram.
Facebook's traffic to top publishers fell 32 percent since January. Toshiba’s new humanoid will give Tokyo mall visitors information in three languages. It’s time to stop asking “creatives” to work for free. My Paradoxical Quest to Build a Personal Brand. Here's What Happens When Ad Blockers, Publishers and Agencies Get Together to Talk About You-Know-What. OracleVoice: Why Generational Theory Makes No Sense. OracleVoice: Mobile UX: We're No Longer Slaves To The System. Are Ad Blockers an Invasive Species or a Catalyst for Innovation? National Geographic Is Reportedly No. 1 in Social Media Among Publishers. 7 Tips On Making Your Social Media Campaign Effective. 9 Facebook Marketing Tips That Every Socially Awkward Penguin Should Know.
Trying to keep up with the kids. NatGeo Is King of the Social Media Jungle in New List of Top 25 Brands. Captain Morgan stance is tough for posers. McDonald's Fabricates Awkward Internet Meme With #Shamrocking. Uk.businessinsider. OracleVoice: The Keys To Surviving Digital Disruption. OracleVoice: Digital Disruption: It's Not What You Think. The most popular chat apps of 2015. OracleVoice: (Apologies To Marshall McLuhan But) The Message Is The Medium. OracleVoice: Miley Cyrus And The Future Of Disintermediation.
A New Netflix Study Reveals When Viewers Get "Hooked" On Their TV Shows. Creating a Market for Diverse Books: An Interview With First Book CEO Kyle Zimmer.