On pandas, lobsters and apps that rock both.
Posted on | July 16, 2010
If you can get through the panda and lobster analogies for how we interact with Google and Facebook (it took me a little time, but I’m onboard now: pandas are searching, eating machines; lobsters find a trap and get stuck), Adam Rifkin has an interesting post about corporate culture at Google and how the company’s focus on search makes them less suited to building killer social applications.
Rifkin’s got good points and if Buzz was any indication, Google’s probably not the company to build the next super-wow social app. Rifkin’s concerned because of a list of stats about ad traffic on Facebook and Twitter as a growing force in search. It’s true that the online market is more diverse than it was even a couple of years ago. But while Google would be crazy to sit idly by while others slide into the driver’s seat, especially in the search market, I think it’s most critical to understand whether you’re creating for pandas or lobsters and embrace that completely.
I’d be interested to compare traffic across all of Google — especially their API — with Twitter and Facebook. I’m not sure what you’d find, but my experience is that I’m searching on google.com much less but their applications (especially on my Android phone) are so much more a part of my daily life than ever before. So I’m an even more efficient panda thanks to Google’s ability to put leaves right where I need them. I’m also pretty protective of the relationships I’ve made on Facebook and Twitter and very aware that the three don’t often cross very naturally.
My point in this, really, is threefold:
- Rifkin assumes that success for Google must include a beatdown of Facebook and/or Twitter. I disagree. Understanding the kind of service you provide and (better yet) knowing the type of audience you’re serving is more important than trying to beat someone else at their own game. Today’s news of Google acquiring semantic search company Metaweb is more exciting to me than yet another social app.
- If the Internet has taught me anything, it’s that there’s room enough for more than one big player, especially when each completely rocks their specific niche. The days of “one ring to rule them all” are over. Thanks to Frodo. And networked computers.
- The message of “Knowing Thine Audience” is hyper relevant to content strategists as well; it’s what keeps getting newspapers into trouble because it’s so easy to bounce between the first and best sources. General interest is as bland and unattractive as it sounds. Find a niche and rock it.
With quality information, everything else falls into place
Posted on | June 28, 2010
More than anything, the real shift in the practice of providing information, whether it be about an organization or a product or a community, has been the demand for quality information. There’s an interesting post over at the Nieman Journalism Lab today that captures the cause of real angst into a real simple statement:
Worry less about journalism and more about quality information, however it gets gathered and distributed.
There’s more history and philosophy about the Knight News Challenge, and it’s worth a read. But for a tweet-worthy synopsis of what every 21st century information worker’s primary goal should be, there’s the take away.
App is the new Web. Yeah, but whose app?
Posted on | June 24, 2010
“App is the new Web.” What happens when the 25-year-old Internet meme “Information wants to be free” bangs up against the power, ease and financial promise of the app?
I’m usually pretty skeptical of claims of “x is the new y,” but the phrase came from a trusted source and linked to an interesting piece from On the Media featuring Michael Hirschorn talking more about his recent article in Atlantic about the future (end?) of information freedom.
IWTBF is credited to Stewart Brand, who made the observation at the first Hackers Conference in 1984:
On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.
The notion of information wanting to be free also changes depending on how you define “free.” Free as in “no cost,” or free as in “no boundaries?” Most of the Internet world chose the former definition on the way to the latter. Now, it seems, apps might offer a way for those companies to get paid for content again. Says Hirschhorn of the New York Times:
I think that The Times will be able to offer what is more a reading than a browsing experience through their apps. It’ll be a more organic multimedia experience. It’s something that feels like you should pay for it. And they will stop putting that content on the Web. They haven’t said that yet, but it’s pretty inevitable because otherwise what’s the point?
There is no point, if you’re the Times. Or any number of media companies that start salivating at the notion that readers will pony up cash for news and information. And Hirschorn more than hints at the image of Apple’s Steve Jobs and his squeaky-clean version of the Internet (in partnership with content producers) battling it out with Google’s approach to wrangling the Web’s chaos.
That’s a fine image, and it probably fairly describes the current landscape. But let’s take a bit longer view, say, 2012, and look at the vision laid out by Robert Scoble in TechCrunch, in which information silos break down into a seamless integration of location-awareness, consumer patters, social connections and spontaneity, an idea that highlights the middle of Brand’s statement and, in my opinion, the most important one: “The right information in the right place just changes your life.”
I’m not sure my life has been changed by an app yet, but I’m incredibly pleased with the idea that I can find nearby restaurants and know how they’re rated. Or make note of places that I want or need to visit and have a reminder in my pocket. None of this continues to get better, however, if information remains in proprietary silos. Maybe you’d get one app-reality on the iPhone and another in Android, each with their own officially-licensed database and user interface. Blah.
All of this may be more true of “produced” content than of We’re only beginning to address the potential of millions of tweets per hour, the 72 percent of bloggers who write for fun and the 24 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute.
The fact is that much of the really interesting and powerful information being leveraged in apps is created by users: Yelp reviews, Tweets, Facebook updates, blog posts (and recommendations) and more. I’d add that the issue of ownership of that data remains to play out.
I think the specific note here is that shared information wants to be shared. I don’t care whether my sister has a Blackberry, my friend an iPhone and myself an Android. If I click to share, I’d like all of them to be aware of it. If not, I (and most others) will look for some way to make it happen. Because one thing we all should have learned about disruptive technologies by now is that they, by definition, won’t favor the status quo.
Tags: Android > Apple Inc. > Cloud clients > Computing > Facebook > Information wants to be free > IPhone > ITunes > Michael Hirschorn > Smartphones > Technology/Internet > Web 2.0 > World Wide Web
The end of publishing? Not exactly…
Posted on | March 22, 2010
Here’s a great video that highlights a key point in the real disruptive power that the Web has had on publishing of all stripes. Stick with it until the end.
Apparently created by Penguin Group USA for a sales conference of Dorling Kindersley Books, it’s really a clever look at how off-base curmudgeons’ laments really are. Bravo!
Thanks to Lost Remote for the tip.
An iPad strategy is only as good as the information flow
Posted on | March 8, 2010
I’m not going to point any fingers because I think everyone has the best of intentions, but I fear that calls for community newspapers to have a strategy for the iPad are misguided — with one caveat, which I’ll get to.
Apple’s new touchscreen device kind of looks like an e-reader and, chances are, it’ll excel at that function. But to expect that old print-centric information architecture and design will be rescued by an e-reader in everyone’s bag is like tilting at windmills. That train left the station a long time ago, folks.
The iPad, rather, is an extension of the mobile ethos of information delivery based on locality and specificity:
What information do I need to know about where I am, on topics of interest, from people I trust.
Now, if an iPad strategy is a wholesale reinvention of the newsroom and means development of a brand new content strategy, I’m all for it. Because in reality (maybe more than Steve Jobs wants to admit), the iPad is just a big mobile phone that doesn’t make phone calls.
My concern is that newsrooms — especially small community newsrooms — aren’t prepared to provide information in an always-on mobile world anyway. And to focus on one aspect of a product (the e-reader) but miss the real power in its connectivity is going to be devastating.
I remain cautiously optimistic.
Attention as a resource
Posted on | March 5, 2010
Chew on this bit of full RSS feed philosphy from John Gruber (@daringfireball) when you’re doing whatever you do on the weekend:
Subscribers to a full-content RSS feed are among the readers paying the most attention, but generate among the least web page views.
A reader asking for a full-content RSS feed is a reader who wants to pay more attention to what you publish. There have to be ways to thrive financially from that.
Thanks to @danielbachhuber for the tip-off.
Revamp: Making home improvement easier
Posted on | February 8, 2010
After four months of planning and hacking and testing, I’m proud to announce Revamp, a niche vertical aimed at the homebuilding, renovation and repair industry
After launching a self-contained social network about a year ago that was half community, half business directory, we learned that the product lacked consistent reader activity and was difficult for non-blogger business owners to use.
So I and a colleague regrouped and tried to distill the essence of what businesses might want from the Web. Our answer? Personal contact with potential customers. It’s why they join Facebook and do branding advertising and buy a listing on a newspaper social network.
The problem? These are plumbers and designers and landscapers, not writers. So we trimmed down the options to three categories: news, events and offers. We integrated an “Ask a Pro” feature as a way to put experience front-and-center to start the conversation with primed customers. And we always have a way for people to contact our pros to ask in person or schedule a bid.
We can also work with networks like Facebook, Twitter or existing products like a company Website or blog. We want to be the hub for our advertiser’s various work on the Web. We want to bend like the reed and help local businesses understand the social Web.
What it isn’t
Seems like a funny thing to explain, but it’s important:
- Revamp is not a business directory. Why reinvent the wheel? Get into the stream where people are looking for information.
- It also uses some newsroom content to provide relevant local information for people who search the network, but is not driven by editorial material.
- Revamp is also not the most important part of the network. Yes, we want people to find our network aggregator useful, but if we can teach local businesspeople to tag and categorize regular postings correctly in order to maximize their exposure to local search traffic and a local customer’s first stop is their profile, we’re successful.
Take a look and see if it meets your needs. I’ll be following up with the kind of feedback we get from the pros who join the network.
Got multiple calendars in print? Make a go-and-do column instead.
Posted on | January 6, 2010
A lot of posts about doing modern journalism are surrounded by technological solutions. That’s fine, since there are so many new and pervasive tools to choose from. But sometimes making a connection with a networked, busy reader involves simply tweaking the process of news to fit a modern lifestyle.
One reader recently suggested that our local news organization would do readers a much better service if we focused more on events that were upcoming rather than on what happened at the event.
“Instead of covering what happened in the news, which people are seeing all over on facebook, Twitter and online, for a small town, cover what will be … All too often we miss events from not seeing them and increasing publicity might be a good thing all around.”
About half the work of covering a beat is preparing advance stories that tell people what to expect from meetings and forums and entertainment events. But they’re not always written as regularly as they could be (they’re not very sexy) and they aren’t given any real prominence (no news is broken in them).
What this reader suggests is that the only thing that’s really important with some items is when, where and who. Online calendars (when they’re updated religiously) can put events, meetings and shows front-and-center. But in print, that information gets scattered all over the place.
Long-time readers might know to cruise through the fine-print notices for local land-use hearings or understand that a cute name for calendar like “News and Notes” holds relevant information, too. But for people who adhere to the mantra “if news is important, it’ll find me,” it’s not enough.
I’m in favor of a standing column in print that pulls out events and other go-and-do items. And maybe while we’re at it, we can start calling calendars by their rightful name.
Video: So now you’ve overthrown the tyranny of reporters. Now what?
Posted on | December 21, 2009
Thanks to the folks at IGNITE Corvallis 2 for taking video and posting my presentation from the event.
So I submit to you my mini-manifesto for why I think the best times for journalism are right now:
Hey newspapers, quit worrying about what Google’s buying and serve your customers
Posted on | December 19, 2009
News that Google is considering gobbling up Yelp has everyone twittering about how nothing’s safe from the search-blog-mail-chat-office-data giant. I generally avoid leaping into this kind of fray since I don’t really have a dog in the fight and don’t care to add to the hype.
But when I saw this tweet Friday afternoon, I had to come out swinging:
http://twitter.com/pachecod/statuses/6807927866
Newspaper business directories are losers. First off, I speak from experience that newspaper community-based business directories are impossibly unwieldy to manage (you never get everyone included, so you’re not really the authority) and are about 10 laps behind the big-dog search industry that is always innovating ahead of your game.
And tying a directory to a walled community is a non-starter. Think you can compete with the draw and activity of a 350-million-and-growing active community? Come down off your high horse. Now try again.
Actually, newspapers should be concerned if their advertisers aren’t calling them to ask what the news means for their business locally and how they should respond.
For years, newspapers ad reps were the captains of a local business’ strategy to reach customers, for obvious reasons. While the Web disrupted, expanded and democratized the channels, we panicked and threw stuff at both readers and advertisers with the hope that we’d get the water back behind the dam.
Meanwhile, local advertisers were bombarded with SEO snake oil and social media hype and left out in the cold by their long-time allies if they weren’t convinced by confusing print ad pricing or iffy online banner campaigns.
Seth Godin wrote this morning about how effective it is to fight the natural flow of market forces, especially in a disrupted market like newspapers:
Competition and the market are like water. They go where they want.
Google owns search; it’s a habit. Hell, it’s a verb. No local directory is going to touch that kind of reach. Instead, a complete strategy for a local business should include a Google business listing, a Facebook fan page and a branding campaign in the paper and online.
Like the proverbial reed that bends in the breeze but survives the typhoon, the local news organization’s best bet is to be the conduit for that work — the first call an advertiser makes when they hear of a new method to reach customers.
And, because technologies change, merge and shift, our advice and platforms must be flexible enough to adapt. Local business doesn’t need another business directory, they need a partner and a media hub. (I’ve been working on one version. More to come on that soon.)
So if Google buys Yelp, fine. Go out to your restaurant clients and teach them how social media works. Get them into the data stream, help them understand why it’s a good thing that people are talking about them and be available when the landscape changes. Because it will.
But you’ll be there. If you build relationships, that is.
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