Smartr - The best way to get your news on twitter. Kirkus Releases Discovery Engine For Children’s Book Apps - eBookNewser. Kristine Lowe: Are newspapers content farms? With all the hullabaloo over content farms, Google, and whether Huffington Post really is a content farm, as of late, two contrary perspectives struck me last week. First, I attended Robert Picard's talk on media business models, as mentioned here.
What I didn't mention was some points he also raised the last time I heard him on this issue: "Media is also in trouble today because they produce very little original content, most of what they publish is just edited content from the wire services. Most newspapers only produce about 20 per cent of their content themseleves. The rest stems from photo- or wire agencies or is copied from other newspapers," he said. He argued that to survive newspapers need better news and information than our competitors, different news and information than our comptetitors and news people value, saying: "You don't win this competition by just copying everyone else".
That spurred this post: "How much original content is there in newspapers? " He concludes: Are newspapers content farms? Graeme’s You can get new post notifications through RSS, email, Twitter or Facebook Posted by Graeme in Internet,Media at 2:37 pm on Wednesday, 9 February 2011 I disagreed with a recent blog post by Alan Patrick which described the Huffington Post as a content farm. I do not think that the alleged lack of original content at the Huffpo is any worse than at many newspapers: so I concluded that it is not a content farm.
How much original content is there in newspapers. North and South Korea military talks collapse: this refers to Reuters and South Korean media, and mostly appears to be a rewrite of the Reuters article.Next comes UK trade deficit hits record £9.2bn. The Guardian contains both good and original content, but the articles that are good are not original, and those that are original are not good, with the possible exception of Aufa Hirsch’s article. What value comes from a newspaper? Comments (4) Comment by alan p at 3:31 pm on 9 February 2011 at I see we’re in agreement :) Why HuffPo had to sell now. Following on from our previous article about the Huffington Post valuation and why, to believe it, you had to believe "6 impossible things before breakfast" I thought it might interest a few people if we went into what those impossible things are. In essence, from the previous article, you have to believe some totally amazing growth statistics for HuffPo to believe it is worth the money paid for it.
These are unlikely as: (i) The model says you need to grow at c 50% PA to break even on a 10% (ie low) cost of capital, and that was assuming a very generous Year 1 post merger $100m turnover and 20% margin. In other words, I think we are nearing the high water mark of the Content Farm AdSpam business model, and in a few months it will be drastically curtailed as search engines start to select for the original authors and content spam blockers start to just cut out certain sites - which is why Demand Media, HuffPo et al's backers have to rake in the cash now.
Kristine Lowe: The Media industry: stuck in a rut of daily chaos. What if it's that endless routine of trying to create some sort of order out chaos, minute by minute, day by day, that's to blame for the media's challenges in coping with change? I've been listening to Robert Picard, currently director of research at the Reuters Institute, again.
He was in Oslo today giving a talk on Business Models and why the media is having a hard time grappling with change. If you're a regular reader of this blog you may remember that when I interviewed him last year he talked about of how deadline pressure was negatively affecting the media's ability to innovate. Today he talked a lot about path dependencies, and how your structures make you vulnerable. On the one hand he referred to many historical examples on how path dependencies make it difficult to see the opportunities along the way: From an early stage railway companies saw themselves as railway, not transportation, companies. Among media's inertia problems he listed: Original vs. curated content: What’s the right balance? I recently returned from spending a couple of hours with IABC’s staff talking about content curation as a new skill and responsibility of communications professionals.
I tweeted that I was headed to San Francisco for the lunchtime meeting, prompting a reply from Web consultant Ramsey Mosen asking my view of the ideal balance between curated and original content. It’ll come as no surprise to regular readers that I replied, “It depends,” which is both accurate and a cop-out. On what does it depend? And based on those factors, what is the appropriate mix? One of the best laughs I’ve had recently (at someone else’s expense) came from a blog post that advised Twitter users to apply an exact division of categories of tweets: x percent for links to your own content, x percent for links to other content, x percent for personal observations, x for retweets, x for participation in conversation, and so on. IBM curates content related to its “smarter planet” initiative. From Innovation to Revolution. AN ABSENCE OF EVIDENCEMalcolm Gladwell While reading Clay Shirky's "The Political Power of Social Media" (January/February 2011), I was reminded of a trip I took just over ten years ago, during the dot-com bubble.
I went to the catalog clothier Lands' End in Wisconsin, determined to write about how the rise of the Internet and e-commerce was transforming retail. What I learned was that it was not. Having a Web site, I was told, was definitely an improvement over being dependent entirely on a paper catalog and a phone bank. But it was not a life-changing event. The lesson here is that just because innovations in communications technology happen does not mean that they matter; or, to put it another way, in order for an innovation to make a real difference, it has to solve a problem that was actually a problem in the first place. MALCOLM GLADWELL is a Staff Writer for The New Yorker. To continue reading, please log in. Don't have an account? Register Register for free to continue reading. Are Likes Poised to Replace Links as the Web's Primary Signal? - Steve Rubel.
The Clip Report: An eBook on the Future of Media In the early 1990s when I began my career in PR there were clip reports. These were physical books that contained press clips. It seems downright archaic now but that’s how I learned about the press - by cutting, pasting up and photocopying clippings. My fascination with the media never abated. Today my role is to form insights into how the entire overlapped media landscape - the pros, social channels, and corporate content - is rapidly evolving and to help Edelman clients turn these learnings into actionable strategies. Today I am re-launching my Tumblr site with a new name, a new focus and a new format. It all kicks off today with a 15-page installment of The Clip Report.
The link economy v. the content economy « BuzzMachine. In media, we are moving from a content economy to a link economy. The AP Affair is the best illustration of the clash between these two worldviews. Let’s turn the discussion on its head. Let’s say that the real value in this equation is not content and information — both of which are now quickly commodified — but links, which are the new currency of media.
Links can be exploited and monetized; get links and you can grab audience and show ads and make money. Content is becoming a cost burden, what you have to have to get the links, but in and of itself, content can’t draw value without an audience, without links. So now let’s turn this fight on its head. Step away from that ‘comment’ link. Still, there is value in our links and the AP, if it understood this new economy would understand that it is a gift economy and links are presents that can be given or earned but not bought.
HubPages: A Different Kind Of Content Farm - Empowering Writers. Posted by Tom Foremski - February 9, 2011 The second largest privately held web site next to the Huffington Post is San Francisco based HubPages where "Hubbers" publish articles on a wide variety of topics and get paid through Google AdSense. Some of the more popular Hubbers can earn more than a thousand dollars a month and they own their own content -- a different model from Demand Media, which commissions articles from more than 17,000 writers. I recently met with HubPages' CEO Paul Edmondson. Here are some notes from our conversation: - We set up HubPages in 2006 to help writers publish online and monetize their content. . - The founders are from Microsoft. - We have more than 42 million unique visitors every month. - We have had to be very patient.
. - We have a ranking system for writers that examines how engaged they are with their readers and on the quality of their work. . - Content has to be original, we check that it hasn't been copied from somewhere else. - No adult content is allowed. Why The Future Of Travel & Destination Marketing Is All About Curation. February 15, 2011 | 4 Comments Life is good for the traveller who knows where they are going.
There are dozens of great and useful sites online where you can see everything from reviews of hotels to side by side comparisons of airfares from one destination to another. Planning a trip to San Francisco was never so easy … but what if you haven't answered the first and most important question of where you want to go? All of a sudden, life is a lot more difficult. Finding out about destinations is a labrynth of government sponsored tourism sites, linkbaiting sites promising information about a destination but only delivering a long list of pay-per-click links, and individual attractions within a destination. For a traveler still trying to decide where to go, life isn't so simple … but curation can help. 1. 2. 3.
A site that has been around for a few years, Offbeat Guides specializes in letting you create and print your own guides to destinations on demand. Why The Future Of Travel & Destination Marketing Is All About Curation. Digitale mirakler i London « Edda Sandkasse. Edda Media var i helgen representert på The Guardians store SXSW-datahack i London. Christoph Schmitz fra Østlendingen og Erik Modal fra Drammens Tidende deltok sammen med nesten 120 nettutviklerne, digitaljournalistene og nettdesignere fra flere europeiske land. Opplegget med datahacket var å samle noen av de beste datahodene i Europa for å se hva som var mulig å lage i løpet av cirka 30 timer. I løpet av disse timene klarte over 80 utviklere å levere nesten 30 prosjekter, noen av dem nesten gryteferdige. Premien for beste utvikler var en flybillett, opphold og platinumpass til den store musikkfestivalen SouthBySouthWest i Texas. Her kan du se flere av prosjektene beskrevet Flere av prosjektene som ble presentert, holdt svært høy kvalitet, og kommer til å bli tatt i bruk av teamet til Guardian under musikkfestivalen i Texas.
Prosjektet som hevet flest øyebryn under presentasjonen søndag ettermiddag, var publiseringsløsningen Articlr. Beslektede poster: Trove from The Washington Post: the personalization trend continues. Is the future all about personalization? As Mashable reported, The Washington Post announced it is to launch Trove, an aggregator news site which enables users to get personalized news streams based on their personal choice and interests.
The site is currently in private beta and is expected to be launched in March, the article said. The Washington Post is only the latest in a growing list of news organizations who have created a personalised news consumption channel. Yahoo! And AOL has also revealed its plan to launch an iPad app called Editions which gathers personalized aggregated news from around the web. iPad app that provide comfortable ways to read news on tablets, such as Pulse and Flipboard, are proving popular. Trove - the Mashable article reported - combines aggregated stories picked by editors, along with the ability for users to select from "channels" they are interested in, through a simple process that asks the reader, "What do you care about?
" Source: Mashable. It's Crunch Time for Google's Battle Against Content Spam. Over the past few weeks some high-profile web personalities have vented their wrath at Google (GOOG) for what they claim were extremely spammy search results, particularly related to research on anything that can be purchased. For the most part, I agreed with them. Like Paul Kedrosky, I had thrown up my hands and paid to get access to Consumer Reports when I needed to research a washer-dryer combo after finding the top pages and results in Google and other search engines awash in content that provided no insights.
I also started using Blekko, Rich Skrenta's upstart search engine for some topics that I knew would be spammed out on the mainstream search engines. I was also somewhat disappointed in Google's response to these concerns. The Evolution of Google Search But I guess that's why Cutts is more of an engineer while Don Dodge, another top Google manager, is considered an evangelist. Dodge's contention? It's an interesting argument, and he tells a fine tale. A Huge, Hairy Problem. Curation: A Dead Idea Of Dead Thinking « The eBook Test.
Source: NY Public Library Digital Gallery. “Curation” and “curator” are the new buzzwords the dying dinosaurs of oldthink print publishing are clinging to just like overboarded Titanic passengers clung to skimpy lifebuoys in the freezing waters of the North Atlantic. It’s their last gasp at trying to remain alive — and relevant.
I got news for you kids: Ain’t gonna happen. No how no way. “Curation” is just another term for what was buzzing in the early days of the Internet: Portal. “Oh, look,” the Suits schemed, “If we aggregate all this material in one place, millions will have to come to us — and only us!! And where is Time Inc.’s Pathfinder today? Gone, gone, gone. Time Warner to shutter Pathfinder The decision to take it down was “based on the fact that 98 percent of the traffic doesn’t go to Pathfinder’s home page, but to the individual sites,” said a spokesman for Time Incorporated New Media.Said Coomes, “There was more power in the individual brands than the Pathfinder brand.
Like this: Have we always been curators? (Do we actually create anything anyway?!) « Whirledgital. My pal Jonathan wrote an interesting post in his MSC Sustainability and Responsibility course scrapbook/ blog over the weekend about our relationship with brands. In it he concluded; …the majority of our identity is a result of curating the brands we buy, rather than creating and projecting our own identity from within I’d pretty much agree with this.
In terms of our relationship with brands, that’s exactly what we do; we select, organise and in some case nurture and look after our relationship with brands. He then went on to challenge who was in charge of this process – i.e. how much control do you have in creating and shaping your own identity because we largely “sub-contract part of our identity” out to brands. Again, from Jonathan, this is because; …in our (western) society our ‘subsistence’ needs (i.e. food, warmth, shelter) are easily met. I buy this too but I’m not sure if this is as bad thing as the subtext of his post suggests. Brands are also rarely ‘creators’. Like this: Master Curators. Let’s stop this ‘Curation is King’ crap right now. Let the Google v. Content Farm Games Begin! Gutenberg of Arabia « BuzzMachine. #IN 2011 Great Content Curators will OWN Social Media Networks « SpeedSynch.
How to Leverage Comments for Greater Success. Internet Market: Curation Nation : How to Win in a World Where Consumers are Creators | 2-the-top-now.com. Le curator, rédacteur en chef de la veille 2.0. BackType. Is curation king? USA Today places mobile bar codes in newspaper to engage readers. Washington Post to Launch Free Personalized News Site. ArticlesBase: The Profitable Content Farm With 20M Monthly Visitors You Don’t Know. Twitter Restricts Use Of Its API, Could It Charge Next? Content Aggregation for News Content: Tools and Tactics. The Art of Immersion - Hollywood will never be the same. How much information is there in the world? Scientists calculate the world's total technological capacity.
News Radars: Target Practice for Web Curators « ututilis. How newsrooms and journalists are using Storify.