SIIA Information Industry Summit 2010: Content Creating Conversations - Liberty Carras, CNNMoney.com
Liberty Carras, SVP for CNNMoney.com, focused on how they are merging social media and traditional reporting as they develop engaging online content. In their "Assignment Detroit" sub-portal, CNNMoney.com is building what is in essence an evergreen in-depth documentary, filled with both breaking news and investigative reporting as well as social media input. CNNMoney.com's stimulus tracker provide interactive graphic analysis of how government expenditures have been telling a story that engages people both through their using the tool and the more than 1,200 user comments that the tool has generated. The essence of story-telling, then, is in some ways what it has been always, but with the interactivity of the Web and its ability to collect content from anyone at any location or time is turning story-telling into more of a group around a campfire than a "sage on the stage" dictation. Clean graphics are also a key, making it easier to digest information easily, shown in a redesign of one of CNNMoney.com's company information page. Amazing design also helps CNNMoney.com's advertisers to provide more enveloping and engaging messages, attracting larger online ad units.
Liberty showed the following Charles Schwab video available on YouTube, originally produced as an in-house video for their employees but that became an online ad campaign, turning compelling corporate content rapidly into high-value ad units. Finding how to put the assets together with amazing creative and compelling experiences, with great metrics, yields great results. Great examples of great Content from CNNMoney.com's "Best Places to Live" and their now-integrated Fortune "100 Best Companies" list, which integrates with Time print properties, is also an important part of a great content strategy, starting with a story and then thinking about how to execute it in great media. Having great metrics that drive your sales team and managing them with commitment is also key, Liberty noted. She provided a video demo of some Apple tablet features, what impressed me most was the alleged integration for education. Education is where Apple got its early market strength, perhaps the tablet will be where it rediscovers new mojo for educational content.
This was a great keynote; sometimes the picture of how to look like a success online is worth a thousand words.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2010: Information Wants to Be Expensive
Moderator: Henry Blodget, CEO & Editor-in-Chief, The Business Insider Panelists: Gaby Darbyshire, COO, Gawker Media Cheryl Milone, CEO, Article One Partners, LLC Jim Fowler, CEO, Jigsaw Data Corporation
Gaby Darbyshire kicked off the panel with a great summary of the shifting role of blogs and traditional news outlets, emphasizing that in a world in which facts can be collected so easily many traditional media organizations are going to have to focus on more in-depth analysis and commentary, a trend already underway in some ways. Cheryl Milone's Article One Partners helps patent holders increase quality and avoid disputes through a global research community. Jim Fowler runs Jigsaw's crowdsourced database of company and contact information, building "data as a service" capabilities for both enterprises and individuals, piping real-time updates to them as their sources provide validated information.
"Nobody cares about privacy," Jim notes, meaning that in an era in which basic facts on people are so widely available, the fact that people are contributing information about other people who they have in their contacts is an accepted practice these days. This allows Jigsaw to deliver content updates more rapidly through disruptive a business model than incumbents such as Dun and Bradstreet, Henry Blodget noted. Henry emphasized the importance of "good enough" information from disruptors such as Gawker, but often in business information "good enough" that's more up-to-date and accurate in domains that traditional sources simply don't collect is more than good enough - it's better, at least for a limited range of content.
What happens to companies like The New York Times in this mix? Gaby noted that it will be more towards 2011 before the Times implements this approach, perhaps allowing the idea to percolate through people's minds, much in the way that politicians sometimes leak ideas of what they may be doing to gauge public reaction to the idea and others' implementations before committing to a new model. This is probably especially important, given their semi-retreat from a hybrid paid model. Henry noted a newspaper that had spend $4 million on implementing a paywall system that elicited only 35 signups, which may be part of the reason for this gun-shyness, but my assumption is that NYT and others will be implementing this new service on a phased rollout basis, trying via an A/B testing regimen where the value points may be.
Why don't traditional firms do more of what the disruptors? Cheryl notes that they incentivize their community, with seven-figure payouts in some instances for providing research, so it's a model that may be foreign to their competitors. Jim noted that the real-time update nature of their content's change is the real value point; instead of selling data per se, they focus on selling freshness within their domain. 40 percent of Jigsaw's enterprise clients share their data, presumably in most instances from their "golden source" master files. Knowing that having this information provides limited competitive advantage on a proprietary basis, Jigsaw clients gladly trade breadth of older data with freshness from whatever source it comes from. This creates, Jim believes, "why would I go anywhere else" types of business models.
It turns out, Henry believes, that it can be very hard for a company to fight off a disruptor that is using technologies that aren't scaled to take advantage of their traditional strengths. Gaby sees publishers such as the NYT "hide-bound" by their attachment to their traditional image of well-established success, whereas sites like Gawker focus more on site metrics to understand what content is successful in the moment. The way to build a sustained audience via these metrics is to do more in-depth content in ways that print journalism can't do effectively. Traditional "credibility" and "brilliance" aren't similar metrics and harder to monetize, ultimately, in the moment-by-moment world of Web publishing. Henry suggests that the NYT should consider looking at the 20 percent of their writers that produce 80 percent of their revenues and to either teach the others to do what they do - and, presumably, to suggest alternatives for them if they can't.
"Be impatient for profit, but patient for growth," Jim observes, pointing out that it's important for disruptors to work hard to find winning formulas that will scale, rather than scaling before you understand what really works. It's good business sense, but a concept that was neglected in the Blodget-driven dot-com era's focus on clicks rather than sustainable business models. Jim notes that late entrants can go out and buy players to help them catch up with the disruptors, but Gaby notes that "you can milk the cash cow, but eventually the cow will die." As traditional media shrinks, buying or killing your competitors will become harder for established media companies.
In the short run, large companies looking at disruptors may try to minimize them, but since many of these companies are small private companies that can innovate and change plans without as much scrutiny and legal overhead, it's hard to ignore them. On the other hand, sometimes disruptors can be "frenemies," as in Jigsaw's successful business relationship with Dun and Bradstreet that supplies D&B with Jigsaw content. "They've been a great partner for us, they've taught us a ton about how to sell our data and it gives it credibility," he notes. Win-win partnerships can work out often, and I agree with Ken Doctor that many media companies will be seeking these kinds of partnerships as they see key capabilities being developed by others that they cannot replicate effectively.
Great panel, I have to get ready for my presentation, now, thanks to Henry for doing a great job of leading a great discussion.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2010: Economic Impact Research, published by FreePint
Robin Neidorf, General Manager of Free Pint, Limited, highlighted research into the buying habits based on a survey of FreePint subscribers fielded in mid-2009. About 49 percent of respondents had centralized information centers, with 32 percent having multiple locations throughout their organisations. Most respondents reported no increases in staffing, a third reported decreases, and about ten percent reported staffing increases. Increased staffs staffs were most common in companies with high-budget profiles. Many of the respondents were indicating that automation and technology solutions are key to filling staffing gaps and using content resources to fill staffing gaps, presumably in the automated and online services provided by content vendors. Some indicated budgets would be going up, but apparently free substitutes are increasing. "We've moved the cost of premium services to the end party," Robin noted. A la carte sales are becoming the order of the day in many instances. an opportunity for vendors to understand how to maximize their relationships with individual content consumers before, during and after purchases.
In sum, things weren't as bloody last year as people feared, but as we're seeing in Shore's New Rules of Engagement research fielded over the past few weeks, this doesn't mean that there aren't major change underway. Sounds like a good traditional report on FreePint's subscription base.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2010: Ken Doctor on the Tablet Era of News
News expert Ken Doctor of Content Bridges focused initially in his talk on the debuting Apple tablet and its promise, which is, in a nutshell, its big advertising potential with its better reading experience. Ken sees some potential for the Apple tablet to support news operations better, but he also noted that there is 40 percent less newsprint than there was a year ago and 20 percent less newsroom staff. The tablet looks great, but where is the content going to come from? A lot of it has, of course, migrated to the Web, oftentimes to startup operations founded by journalists laid off by traditional news operations. Scrappy operations such as these with highly affordable publishing infrastructure and simply implemented ad revenues will be the focus of may eyeballs that major news organizations would like to capture. Ken noted Outsell research shows that 57 percent of consumers go to the Web already in the U.S. for news, with 25 percent using the Web sites of broadcast news sites daily. Ten percent say that they would pay for news - which correlates nicely with Gordon Crovitz' seat-of-the-pants number that he's been using to promote his Journalism Online initiative with Steve Brill. I think that this is a good industry heuristic for consumer-oriented online content at this point, presuming that you have a strong online brand.
But Ken also pointed out that many companies are spending heavily on self-marketeing; in other words, what is traditional media when your advertisers know how to "do" media themselves? Ken noted that he believes that 12 or 15 large news companies will continue to dominate, but with due respect, I think that in five years we will see far closer to five large news players worldwide, with the remaining properties being either gone or relaunched by people who care about their local news markets as independent brands that are web-scaled, lean and mean, and able to gain good audiences through search engines and social media links instead of having to rely on services such as AP and large media companies to broaden the appeal of their content. I agree with Ken that major companies can become virtual aggregators themselves via licensing to use other outlets' content to build the reach of other content properties, but this is a technique that any publisher of any scale can use. Automated content licensing will accelerate this process to the most effective outlets, which may or may not be Ken's "digital dozen."
At the same time, Ken notes that News Corporation is an example of a diversified media company that is using revenues from entertainment properties such as the $2-billion hit movie "Avatar" to fuel their operations. That will work for some time as a scaling issue, but Ken noted that the cost structure for many of these conglomerates' operations will not sustain them on a reliable basis. Beats me how this math will work for long, especially when, as Ken points out, the Bit.ly link referral is processing two billion link referrals a month. Value each of those links at a dollar, which is not too far off the mark given online ad rates, then you have an "Avatar"'s worth of ad revenues being generated by Content Nation every day via social media.
Will the tablet be the convergence of social, mobile and video that many in the media industry hope that it will be? Well, I am sure that the tablet will be impressive, but given that we've had color screens staring us in our living rooms for fifty years and PC screens for thirty years, I am not sure what it is about Steve Jobs that will overcome decades of media company failure to learn how to tailor mass media to interactive content markets. The gains of online video services such as Hulu are impressive, but are dwarfed by Content Nation's production on services such as YouTube. Aggregating social media and traditional media will be the key to the emerging model of success in this environment, as Ken highlighted in a Seattle effort to aggregate area blogs and other content sources.
I do think that local aggregation efforts such as Ken's Seattle example are now feasible on a cost-effective scale and will represent one of the most exciting stories for news production in 2010. For a great example of this, I refer you to the emerging Patch local news service sponsored by AOL, which resembles a business plan that I floated for local news about ten years ago just prior to the dot-com crash in 2000. Ten years later, technologies, ad networks and pervasive social media are combining to make a combination of professional and citizen-generated content economically viable.
The other side of the news equation that Ken touched on is the transformation of advertising into contextual content placement, in which journalists find themselves increasingly working for the advertisers to generate content instead of the news outlets. It's cheap content, often, and far from high quality at times, but thinking of newspapers filled with lightly retouched press releases passed off as journalism and the fawning of media for leads and coverage that throws objectivity under the bus too often, it's a matter of the name of the master sometimes and not the evil.
At the end of the day, the issue is revenues. "There's not enough revenue to do what we used to do," notes Ken, and chasing what Ken calls "interim technology." There are no magic technology bullets that will return an era that no longer exists, but there are strategies to move forward. Ken suggests:
Make it social
Approach the "digital dozen"
Gather other people's content
Drive your publishing business with data
All good recommendations, though ones that any Web publishers can apply also, including enterprises reaching their markets directly via the Web. News is a great business, perhaps closer to its original roots today than it's been in many years, but it's not the "Mad Men" business that some yearn for even today. Great presentation, Ken, enjoyed it.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2010: eBooks: Will They Endure or are They Just a Steppingstone?
Moderator: Jan Palmen, SVP, Publishing Services, Innodata Isogen Panelists: Nick Bogaty, Senior Business Development Manager, Adobe Systems, Inc. Christopher Brown, Director, Pearson Larry Schwartz, President, Newstex, LLC
What is an ebook? The panel offered various opinions, I liked Larry Schwartz's perspective, noting that he is distributing blogs in the same format as ebooks in some instance. Larry noted that 47 percent of ebook readers had viewed them on computers, with only a small percentage of these on ebook readers, and the ebook market overall still being a small percentage of the book market overall. The big issue for ebooks today, though, is not so much it total audience as it is how to get the market as a whole to grow across platforms. Nick Bogaty of Adobe still sees Amazon's Kindle as the leading platform, even as others enter the fray (it will be interesting to see what happens on the 27th with Apple's expected tablet announcement, rumors of a tie-up between Barnes & Noble and Apple are flying about). Chris Brown of Pearson noted that they are trying to balance focusing on users as authors along with working with traditional publishers.
Larry noted that this period of ebooks as one that is still very early days with non-color displays, he sees Apple's iPhone and soon Apple's tablet may help markets for ebooks to grow rapidly. He notes that everyone want the "holy grail" device, they don't want to travel with just another device. If you're on your couch, that's one thing, but for a business person it's different. Nick noted that customers have demonstrated that much demand for ebooks in trade, but in higher education and education in general there is much stronger demand. Christopher underscored this point, though he points out that the ebook reading devices are quite limited today for educational purposes. Asked later in the session if he thought that Apple's tablet would be an effective platform, he said simply, "I don't know."
Multimedia offers new opportunities for book publishers in this environment, he notes. However, when you are trying to distribute syndicated content through the day onto an ebook reader, though, Larry noted that the limited bandwidth available on Kindle's wireless network for downloads makes multimedia and blog distribution on Kindle and other devices that package in "free" wireless access impractical. However, there is a gadget "blip" in the short term for ebooks, Larry said, where new ebook reader releases tend to be followed by bursts of downloads of paid content onto the devices. However, this isn't really going to lead to long-term success if people aren't engaged with the content once it's downloaded. Christoper observed, rightly, I believe, that the people who said "content is king" and failed to adapt their products to mobile platforms effectively are now having to think differently.
Nick Bogaty noted that this is likely to be the year of the iSlate, but then interestingly noted that there would be many tablets will be coming out this year, emphasizing the importance of content portability. This means Adobe as a solution to Nick, but Jan Palmen noted that perhaps the issue is not so much portability but what a book really is at this time. Perhaps content aggregation is no longer going to be defined by publishers but consumer-based, at some point. Eleanor Haas noted in a comment that she advises customers to refer to their books as "titles" for their books, so that they can find them as products, but to lose the term "book" as a marketing tool. I think that this is a good approach. The "title" may be user-defined, but my sense is that the book publishing industry as we know it today will split into those who will enable user-defined collections of content from any number of sources, including self-published ebooks that have gained an online publishing, and on the other hand those who will look at the "best of the best" opportunities arising from online content packaging that can be given packaging for more permanent and broad distribution, be it through print or online models. The latter business will have great revenues, but the online model will be the one with better margins.
Color content is a promised new frontier from Apple's iSlate for ebook and emagazine content, but I think that this is another false hope for traditional publishers. We have had a color ebook reader for years; it's called a personal computer. What about an iSlate that is going to persuade publishers to commit to packaging on this new platform other than the obvious one: an online store with proprietary rights. As Larry Schwartz notes, Apple's announcement may be important as a catalyst to move publishers into ebook-style models, but unfortunately for these publishers their customers have been spending most of their time with other forms of online content for decades. Kudos to Apple for devising a seductive way to allow media companies to feel that they have surrendered to online markets with dignity, but ultimately that battle was lost long ago when HTML started forming readable content on millions of PCs around the world. It's great to see the market for ebooks developing rapidly, I hope that it grows based on Web standards that allow traditional editorial staffs to do what they do best while enabling premium packaging specialists to do what they do best as well.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2010 Previews: HearPlanet, ORLive, Snac Inc.
Steven Echtman, Founder & CEO, HearPlanet
iPhone app that provides text-to-audio for reference and services. Multimedia content "that enriches your experience in the moment." Aggregates content from different sources such as tour guides, Wikipedia, enabling different voices. Integrates with map functions, coming out on Android shortly. Looking to aggregate and distribute broadly. Nokia, RIM, feature phones targeted also, looking to target navigation companies. In top 50 iPhone apps in 2009. Content is personalized, an "army" of voice artists. Monetizes through freemium downloads, ads, sponsors, partners such as Starbucks, OpenTable, CitySearch. Not an unusual model overall, but the audio is an interesting angle, audio is hot right now and others are lagging in services and content technologies (my Nexus One excluded, natch :-). If you're developing mobile apps, here's a content partner that can help you to enrich your tool rapidly.
Ross Joel, CEO & Co-founder, ORLive, Inc.
Physicians are videotaping their medical procedures, they provide a community that collects and organizes this content, partners such as Elsevier, some content is developed by ORLive, others are submitting directly. Audiovisual-equipped operating rooms, branded channels available. Not a high-volume model, very targeted distribution, but still 2.5 million uniques and 85,000 registrants. Helps to drive patient volumes (equals sales), increases procedure adoption rates, improves training on new equipment. Claims ROI exceeds 1000% regularly. An excellent, focused product that makes the best of content, community and online distribution models for professional markets. "Operationally funded." Kudos.
Mark Caron, CEO, Snac Inc.
Mobile apps services, ex-OmniPoint/T-Mobile networks, average movile site gets only average 2 uniques per month (this is a key point, search and social media not available to expose these apps effectively, can't "tweet" them easily). Carriers "lock down" users, similar to aggregators locking out publishers from database discovery stats. Snac offers a customizable dashboard for mobile discovery. Downloadable app, alternative home screen, integrated search use environment. Has won awards. There's some potential on the top end of the market, especially since there's still a lot of platform and carrier balkanization, but I'd say that feature phones are the most likely target. "Walled Garden" approach offers promise for content producers trying to devise their own strategy for telco networks that's more consistent across carriers and platforms. Not on iPhone, they exclude, of course. Cross-platform approaches are key, interesting tool towards that goal.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2010: Where is the Money in Custom Publishing
Moderator: Gregory Brown, Senior Director, Strategic Development, DataStream Content Solutions (DSCS) Panelists: David Prichard, President & CEO, Ingram Content Group, Inc. Matt Turner, Senior Consultant, Mark Logic Corporation Steven Alperin, Entrepreneur in Residence, MyWire, Consultant ABC , MyWire, Week's Best
Skip Prichard highlighted some of the tailored publications that they produce, one unit at a time. Their average run is 1.8 books. They find customers from both major players like Amazon and major bookstores but also small local retailers. Either way they're making money. Matt Turner was asked by Gregory about custom publishing beyond print. They can feed single-unit print cycles, but they have done far more with partners such as Wiley enables publishers to replace back-end operations that are used to create books more cost-effectively. Mark Logic sees custom publishing as pervasive, moving into workflow products also on electronic platforms. Steven Alperin came from a mass media background, but now focuses at MyWire on how to access audiences in ways that help them be more engaged with content on a personal basis.
What does it take to enable technology to get content to work effectively in a custom publishing environment? Matt noted success needs to be hinged around a company invested in the idea of custom content, the technology is there, but there's a mind shift that needs to occur. In terms of what needs to be invested in, Skip noted that you can't invest in everything, but tools like VitalSource can help publishers not only to package content but to offer feedback on usage and, via social networking tools, feedback on the content itself to refine the product constantly. Matt noted that the investments are largely there, now, with the trend towards customizing being driven by the opportunities being revealed by platforms that are already good at repurposing. "Content that wants to be expensive tends to be really, really narrow sets of content that custom publishing can reveal," Matt noted. Investigating your usage data is one of the key opportunities to understand custom publishing opportunities and to define them, noted Steven.
I agree with the panelists that custom publishing needs to be elevated radically from a sideline to a core rationale for premium publishing. Recently I received a post card invitation to an upcoming publishers' conference. Not only was the card tailored to me personally but the conference organizers had created a custom Web address personalized for me to explore the content that was printed on the card. That's highly targeted marketing that's a cross between the capabilities of custom print and online technologies. This is the key to driving publishing today, be it in print or online.
I do think especially that print-oriented publishers are missing many opportunities to develop custom markets for print as they fret about how to protect existing mass distribution models. Why focus on dwindling margins on rights-protected content when you can help people to add value to printable materials by opening up printable content to customization by partners and individuals? People can talk about eInk, tablets and other electronic display all they want, but cost-effective custom print is going to be a key factor in the renaissance of print publishing over the next several years. This rebirth may not result in an industry as we know it today, but it will still offer a very powerful value-add channel for most publishers.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2010: The Post-Search World
Moderator: Fernando Pereira, Research Director, Google Panelists:
Amiad Solomon, CEO, Peer39 Chris Lamb, SVP Alliances, the OpenCalais Initiative, Thomson Reuters Nancy Harvey, Executive Director, Wolfram Research Inc. Paul Martino , CEO and Co-founder, Aggregate Knowledge
Pereira kicked off the panel by asking panelists to give a very brief statement of the problem with search as it stands today and how it can or should be "fixed" for users and enterprises. Chris Lamb of Thomson Reuters gave an OpenCalais perspective, seeing the "bounce" effect of people completing one search and then returning to initiate another search, resulting in getting data but not necessarily a lot of information. The OpenCalais linked data cloud of links will help people to traverse content more easily than in typical search engine-driven information retrieval. Amiad Solomon of Pier39 focuses on search applications sees the post-search world focusing a lot more on monetizing content once people land on pages, providing different data layers for specific types of people engaging content. Nancy Harvey of Wolfram Research focuses on eliminating search inefficiencies by making fact retrieval more accurate and natural. A "clean" database of information has a natural language query interface on top of it that returns results "in a visually stunning way." She sees them co-existing with traditional search, providing specific answers to specific questions. Paul Martino of Aggregate Knowledge gave the analogy of seeing an ad for a television show that he watches appearing in Times Square alerting him to a new season of episodes. Being able to deliver information focused on interests without having to express those interests explicitly is key to the post-search world in his mind.
FP: Search does not have to be very good because users are very good filters, which makes search a fairly "forgiving" tool. But how do you deal with the risk of mistakes when people get the wrong results?
PM: Not a semantic person, Google AdSense gets it wrong a lot of the time, does a passive read of the page, meaning oftentimes inappropriate results. But it can be mitigated with whitelists, blacklists and so on, but ultimately the user doesn't get mad typically. The question from his perspective is how to deal with brand safety issues.
NH: Have to watch out for "artificial stupidity" in search results. For example, a search "what was the weather on Valentine's Day last year" may return different results for different locations or try to disambiguate before answering (for example, "Did you mean San Francisco in California"). They also manage this by steering away from domains that they don't understand. But the number of times that they need to do this is declining.
AS: Look at it from the advertising perspective, all major brands are saying that they don't want to be next to the wrong message, have to know how ad servers work, but takes sophistication. If there's an airline disaster, you need to be sensitive to avoid mismatches.
CL: Dealing with a more constrained group of users, optimized for business content, enables them to do a better job for that domain. But there are still domain issues, such as the term "The Fed" meaning the federal government in Australia and referring to the Federal Reserve in the U.S.
PM: Histograms of information on why an ad was displayed - nobody was clicking on them. Most people didn't even know that it was there. Sites with recommendations may be more important to them, people, content and ads are all of the same type, what's the best match across these lines, the user sees it all as potentially useful content.
CL: OpenCalais does disambiguation, offers a way to get into the linked data world, disambiguating offers a way to match content to content in meaningful ways. For example a press release may offers an Apple story and links to company information, not the fruit. This means a fundamental change to the surfing experience, over time there will be an increasing demand to match content to content.
AS: Need to understand the creative itself, look at the description (I would add, also look at the graphics for familiar patterns)
FP: With this melding of ads and content and content-to-content matching, it becomes a blurred editorial experience for users. How can this be managed?
PM: If ads are scored higher than content for a particular user, but sometimes when the best content is the ad the social contract is difficult to implement only with "sponsored content" labels.
FP: One school of thought tends to go for a statistical approach to infer relevance for content and ads. Some come from a semantic approach.
CL: They do use both natural language processing tools powered by a tech staff of about 40 people developing rules and coding.
AS: Mostly machine learning
NH: W/A is "intensely hand-crafted," engage world-class experts (comment: not scalable, not sure what business model this gives them ultimately)
PM: A semantic approach overall, used OpenCalais to build semantic maps internally to determine and test their weighting, try to treat all data sets the same and adjust weights objectively.
A good panel, was a little frustrating trying to blog this, as it covered a lot of ground, but I found it interesting. What seemed to be brushed over were the full impact of search on editorial operations as well as ad operations. I think that Paul Martino tuned in to one of the key "post-search" issues, namely the ability of search tools to build content that will have both editorial and sponsored "slots" that may appeal to different audiences on different levels. This sponsorship is thought of today mostly in terms of traditional media ads, but it is going to work its way into the enterprise space as well. How do suppliers and clients gain the attention of organizations, and how do publishers enable companies to provide factual content through their channels to enterprises on a sponsored basis? These are opportunities for search technologies to ponder. Ultimately search tools may frustrate traditional publishers, as it seems like a different language that's creating content value, but these technologies are creating opportunities for relationships between audiences and content producers that are becoming increasingly sophisticated.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2010: Ken Auletta on Googled: The End Of The World As We Know It
Author Ken Auletta recounted a discussion with Bill Gates back in the 1990s when the former Microsoft CEO noted that his greatest fear was someone in a garage developing a new technology that could surprise him. Many years later, here we are, Googled around the world. The global aspect of Google is perhaps one of the key factors in its disruption, enabling people to use their Google searches as their default textbooks on the world. But Ken's focus on Google as not just a world changer but a media-changer is a key factor in his outlook on the company. In an interview with Larry Page and Sergei Brin, he noted that he thought that he would like Google to become the first $100 billion media company - twice as large as the largest one today. Their banknote down on this bet? The trust of its worldwide users, which they provide with accuracy, neutrality and speed - attributes that are not strangers to publishers through the years, but reframed through the profitability of its ad networks tailored to cost-competitive ads. Most importantly, the $20-plus billion that Google makes in ad revenues, more than all TV ads in the U.S., has been forged in 11 years based on democratic access to these services. The democratization of content, you might say, has been build on a platform of democratizing marketing.
Auletta noted that Google's approach to solving problems is key to their success. Early on, they recognized that what my people were calling "information" was in fact a media business. They rather denied that early on in their investor and media statements, of course, but as they have had more of an indisputable position in media they are less shy about using the "M" word. Auletta related a story of an ad salesperson trying to sell SuperBowl TV ads to Google, and Google couldn't figure out why they would want to buy something that had such poor metrics. Google may be "messing with the magic" of advertising, but in an online world based on trusted relationships rather than seduction, the mascara running off of the face of the old magic was inevitable.
Google's strength, Auletta noted, was also in the "why not" factor in looking at opportunities in the content industry, such as with its news search engine and book scanning project, concepts that came out of Google's commitment to allowing employees to spend 20 percent of their time working on new "why not" ideas for content products and services. Why not cloud computing services, why not Android, why not...well, you get the picture. In the meantime, Auletta notes, media companies were "blind," investing lightly in digital technologies early on. In an interview with Intel's Andy Grove, Grove noted that a company has to plant their flag on the moon and stay there, assuming that you'll get some benefits. He believes that media companies also erred by placing engineers were down in the belly of most media companies, not near the top of typical media organizations. Instead, they farmed out technologies to companies like IBM and Microsoft.
Do you sacrifice your existing business for a "may be" business? Often, Auletta said, media companies were unwilling to take the big risk on new opportunities. In the short run, he sees that Google is doing great things for people, lowering the cost of advertising and information access for the average person. In the long run, though, he notes that if news becomes a free or very cheap commodity, the question becomes how talent rises to the top through the recognition offered by major media organizations. Thinking about the great expense of a typical TV episode, usually around $6-8 million, user-generated content from outlets such as YouTube is not anywhere near that level. Even Google recognizes that they need more professionally-produced content, knowing in part that ads cannot be their only major source of revenues from content. This came to light fairly recently in Auletta's interviews with Google's executives, coming in part in light of the economic downturn. Auletta sees more of a push by Google to enable paid content, with metered approaches, "firewalls" and so on.
Even Google has to fight the commoditization battle, Auletta observes. A stat he mentions; the average reader on nytimes.com spends 30 minutes a month on the site, versus the average reader of the paper edition spending 30 minutes a day engaged with their content. The battle is necessary, but not easy. Auletta sees the Googles of the world and traditional media companies coming together to try to build ways that can "save" them. But in his interviews with Google's leaders they revealed that they knew that it was important for Google to allow traditional media outlets to be independent, a factor highlighted by recent issues with government involvement with content distribution in China.
When will the unique leaders of Google move on to other things? Auletta observes that Schmidt and Brin have sold off some stock lately, perhaps to enjoy life, but it does raise the question of what happens to Google in the long run. Thinking of the inefficiencies of search engines and the personal efficiencies of social media, Auletta wonders whether there may be a connection here. "They don't know how to manage emotional intelligence," he said, relaying a story about Brin asking why he wouldn't publish the book for free on the Web. Auletta responded, would you ask a teacher to work for nothing? Who would pay him to come out to speak to them? Who would edit it and market it? Brin changed the subject quickly. Auletta saw this as an instinctual attitude towards copyright. I am not sure that I agree with him on this point, I think that it's more of an instance of what happens when that "engineer in the boiler room" makes it to the C-suite. Technical people have different attitudes, and that's generally neither right or wrong, good or evil.
If, as Auletta notes, even people in Silicon Valley see the Internet as the most disruptive technology the world has ever seen, then you have to confront the speed of change. It took 70 years for electricity to reach half of the U.S. people; it took the Web 9 years to reach half of the people in the U.S., and only five years for Facebook. "It should scare the s**t out of you," says Auletta. From my own perspective as the author of Content Nation, I am not scared at all. I say this from the perspective of someone who used to work at Bell Laboratories in an era in which major corporations invested heavily in new technologies to feed their futures. Companies that invest in the future help economies; companies that milk the present steal from our futures. While the winners in today's publishing world may not benefit from everything that Google has done, the average person in a village or in a flat in a major city in a developing nation has far more to gain from Google's right-brain approach to publishing. Thinking back to comments on Galileo from Elsevier's Hansen at the opening of this conference, I can't think of a time when scroll publishers were wanting to burn printing press developers at the stake. Technology is a medium, not a social or economic threat in and of itself.
I think that Auletta is a great journalist, and he's done an excellent job of helping us to gain insights into Google's inner thinking. However, there is ultimately in his outlook the elitism that has lead to the publishing industry's very vulnerability to Google's strengths. In a Q&A I asked him about the concept he raised about having an engineer at the right hand of a media company's CEO as a desirable idea. But he couldn't quite accept the idea of it being okay for that engineer to be the head of that company. There is a "they" aspect to Auletta's outlook that is, ultimately, not shared by the 3-plus billion people using the Web and mobile services to consume and publish content via Google and other services. Should people be afraid when the world becomes a nation of publishers? Perhaps so, in the sense that the changes put in motion by Content Nation are definitely shifting bases of power globally. But if the world as a whole gains more power through more people being more efficient and effective publishers, then the ultimate shift in publishing's power base to a wide global base of empowered publishers, including professional publishers, then the world as a whole is going to benefit doubtlessly. The media houses of New York nearby this conference are not likely to resemble the empty factories of my New England childhood any time soon, but understanding what being "Googled" is all about will be necessary to prevent that from happening. Thanks, Ken, a great presentation.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2010: Google's View on Ad Technologies In The Content Mix
When Google acquired DoubleClick, one of the assets that came over was Ari Paparo, who now serves as a Product Management Director focused on ad services. Ari was introduced and interviewed by David Sidman, Founder & Chairman of Linkstorm. Ari noted that 100 percent of ad agency holding companies are developing demand-side platforms, with 72 percent of Ad Exchange volume leveraging retargeting and 24 percent now regularly using behavioral targeting. Ari also noted that today's ad model is like a mutual fund, but that we're moving towards a "day trading" like model for ad buys, with more precise tactical acquisitions.l Research from Google is indicating that digital media is 50 percent less efficient versus other media in terms of overhead dollar spent, with 28 percent of video buyers noting that workflow efficiency a key issue holding back online video ad spends and 43 percent of U.S. marketing execs agreeing that brand measurement is holding back the growth of online marketing. So although the eyes are all turning to online content, the ad industry is still in its infancy in understanding how to compel audiences in online environments efficiently, even though online portals are getting to be more efficient in tracing an audience's footpaths.
The question becomes, though, when is an ad slot something more than a pork belly-like commodity? The premium value comes in when you can show that you can do something special in online environments. Sometimes that's "wow factor" via videos and online animated graphics, but Ari notes that in general the high-end creative approach works best when it's intense and impactful. Ari provided an example of a Harley Davidson campaign keyed to Veterans Day that enabled people to send tributes to troops overseas - combining altruism with sex appeal as a path to branding via a different approach. He notes that video is expected to be 15 percent of online spend in the next few years, but the efficiency factor is not encouraging. Getting overnight delivery of creative material and other basic logistics need to be overcome to make video a cost-effective choice, but in the meantime it's good groundwork that's needed to build expertise.
Data enrichment is key for effective ads also, such as data on specific real estate listings instead of just a generic ad for a realtor. Packaging for categories of users instead of categories of content is key also, enabling advertisers to target effectively to people who may be looking at more cost-effective ad inventory available in sections such a religion-oriented portion of a newspaper site. This can enable an ad sales force to raise their inventory up from "remnant" status to inventory that can be packaged more effectively for specific marketing targets.
David keyed off his questioning with a probe on paywalls; is paid content or ad-supported content going to pay the bills? Ari sees no one answer, but he sees it vitally important to segment effectively before you make decisions on what gets thrown behind a paywall. David notes that the ad side has the granular data, which can help publishers to make these kinds of decisions. However, Ari notes that publishers have lots of data that shows how site visitors move through a site. "There are gray areas," he notes, such as who is allowed to use cookie-derived data. Or, when someone buys something, would that site be allowed to advertise sporting goods based on what they have learned from inbound data? He recommends that publishers monitor their data and metadata rights carefully to control these kinds of opportunities carefully. The big mistake is to divide up inventories and missing the opportunity for in-depth understanding and analysis of data related to users. Publishers are now starting to monetize their on-site data off-site, renting lists to marketing and online services - an old business made new.
David and the audience probed on a few fronts in his questions for Ari:
The benefits of content management and categorization tools to improve ad revenues, but Ari notes that much of the potential for these types of technologies has been realized already.
On premium ad units, the cost-benefits of rich media are focused mostly now on super-premium brand advertisers, who do get some value as they connect to consumers. But down the value chain to typical retailers, Ari notes that it's not clear that rich media makes the cash registers ring.
On semantic processing in ad placement, Ari was not forthcoming in detail, but he noted that some smaller vendors are working with focusing terminology. He hasn't seen that semantic technologies have brought that much to the table yet.
On the ComScore panel/cookie hybrid measurement model, in which publishers are being charged for being ranked, he thinks that the panel approach is useful
Agencies are having to step up their technology commitments in a big way, they are trying to adapt rapidly, he things that they are adaptable and will be around in the excxhange-oriented future of ads
Mobile markets: advertisers are frustrated but very excited about mobile, formats and measurement still in its early days
Ari gave a great presentation, but the larger question does seem to be what marketers need to do in general to extract the most efficiency out of online advertising. Certainly improved data, audience analysis and measurement and better ad production techniques can be important advances. However, to some degree marketing itself is changing in the face of a Web that finds people spending a huge amount of time online in social media services that encourage one-to-one exchanges. Managing millions of individual personal selling relationships online is a far cry from managing CPMs. So although there is more efficiency coming in ad networks, the broader question of how companies like Google can help companies to measure success with online marketing is still a work in its early progress.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2010 Previews: Parse.ly, Automatically Recommended Content
Parsely, a semantic tool that recommends content, steers users towards content towards personalization and recommendation through their licensed content. When and how personalization really happen? A WSJ editor thought that it wouldn't be available until 2015, but Sachin Kamdar, Chief Executive Officer of Parse.ly, claims that it's here today. Parse.ly collects a little personal interest information from users, "listens" to their content habits and provides recommendations that can be embedded in any number of content applications. Market segmentation data and other demographics fall out of this information naturally. Parse.ly is available to publishers now for integration via their new P3 platform. I can't say that I haven't seen a few of these types of these plays, but it's a type of technology that seems well positioned to be just that - a technology play that is not trying to out-do publishers that can benefit from its capabilities.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2010 Previews: DeepDyve, A NetFlix for Research
DeepDyve's clients are typically non-traditional research users in small to medium businesses as well as non-institutional users, a market that DeepDyve CEO William Park sees as a $2-4 billion industry. Instead of chasing these users to "pirated" research content, non-institutional users and users in major institutions without access to specific collections can get a read-only view of scientific and technical research for 24 hours on a "rent-to-own" basis if it's premium content, or longer use models, including links for unlimited use and publication subscriptions. Revenues are split 50-50 with their partners, who see it mostly as found money, since it's going for a community not typically targeted by their institutional sales forces. "It's better to get half of something than all of nothing," a DeepDyve partner noted, the "something" in this case being about an 8 percent conversion rate into sales from initial exposure in search views via DeepDyve. This is a model that readily extended to content beyond the scientific, technical and medical community, of course, which is an opportunity that is likely to be a focus of DeepDyve moving forward. This is a good model for publishers that need to market their content effectively to Web-honed users not attached to enterprise subscriptions. I expect it to do well.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2010 Preview: Boardroom Insiders
Boardroom Insiders' Principal and Founder's Sharon Gillenwater, highlighted this new service that is a database of corporate boardroom biographies and backgrounds, built around people who are not your typical high-profile CEOs. What these people do, however, is publish content on the Web, and Boardroom Insiders goes through social media sources and other sources to glean information about who they are personally and professionally. There are about 100,000 records in teh Boardroom Insiders database, and with a lot of human input to make these more than inch-deep records it will limit the overall scope of this product. She sees the competition not as Hoover's, Jigsaw and other online information providers but the people who are trying to find this information on their own via the Web. Sales are both on the per-profile and enterprise basis, so it's a good mix of revenues to support this specialized service. This seems like a potential strong offering, similar to the original Reuters business of closing a telegraph line gap with carrier pigeons carrying messages. Human input and insight can apply semantics for hard-to-mine information very well at this scale, but it will be an ongoing race to apply those resources ahead of improving semantic technologies and social media services. The response will be, hopefully, that Boardroom Insiders keeps ahead of that curve continually by incorporating these types of capabilities.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2010: Elsevier's Hansen Lays Out How to Take On Risks in SciTech Markets
Elsevier Health Sciences CEO Michael Hansen laid out an argument for major enterprise publishers surviving and thriving in tough economic times by starting with a parable about Elsevier's roots as the publisher that helped Galileo to get his then-controversial scientific works in print. At a time when many of the status quo gatekeepers were dead set against Galileo's theories, a publisher helped to change the world as we know it today. Flash forward to today, in a world in which people are often paralyzed by the pace of change in scientific publishing and trying to understand where to bring their organizations to deliver both profits and growing markets. For Hansen, this means in the short term helping clients to cut costs by consolidating services through Elsevier's content integration capabilities, as well as being more bold in delivering services to clinical settings.
The clinical opportunity is particularly important, given the inefficiencies that exist in the delivery of medical services and the limited resources that the typical patient has at their disposal. Hansen highlighted that the typical doctor in the U.S. has about six minutes of contact with a patient in a typical visit - an almost real-time window in which to make decisions about health care. No small surprise, then, that Hansen underscored the fact that only about 30 percent of people in the U.S. are actually getting proscribed treatments for their medical problems. This means, of course, that you're dealing with a type of content user that has not been the target of Elsevier services typically, one that has risks that your typical publisher's legal department will be wary to take on. As a questioner noted after Hansen's speech, there is also the question of who will be willing to pay for clinically-oriented services. But when you think of the number of questions that need to be answered on a given day, there are more potential points of interaction in clinical settings than typical research environments overall.
Hansen noted that the sales force incentives at Elsevier has been tuned to meet with some of this shift, but it's also a major shift to get products and strategy in line with what is in essence a real-time content integration strategy. For example, Elsevier has launched PageBurst, a platform that helps nurses and others in clinical settings to get access to critical medical information, a platform that Elsevier uses for their own content but is open to all kinds of content, including content from competitors. This underscores an emerging theme in enterprise content of many sectors embracing the content integration strategies that Wall Street publishers embraced decades ago to fight the commoditization of their content. It's a strategy that's not without its risks and revenue exposures, but necessary if scientific publishers are to improve their long-term outlook. Thanks to Michael for a great kickoff talk, getting to the heart of what major enterprise publishers must embrace to succeed in a time when "heresies" in STM publishing are becoming the new order of things quite rapidly.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009 - End Keynote: Stephanie George, EVP, Time, Inc.
Up-front editorial comment: I am familiar with a number of things that Time, Inc. is doing, they're really aggressive on many fronts to leverage their brands to the max online. Does that mean that these efforts will support their current valuation, management and cost structure? That's a different question. Look at Time within the framework of major media companies trying to find a path to the future by being all about brands from the bottom up. It's the right approach.
In every dark cloud there's a silver lining, continuing to evolve the business. Pages down 11.7 percent 2008, 2009 is looking worse, that's good news for us, because we're more than a magazine. Mergers such as CNN Money, one of the world's largest content companies, live in mags, books, online, mobile and more. Our trusted brand content is world-renowned. Strong multi-platform brands, RealSimple was conceived as a brand, not a magazine, promise is a life made easier. Product lines at Target stores. SI.com, the Vault with SI classic photos. Essence, with Warner Brothers launched the new Essence.com, the weekend of July 4th will have Beyonce at the Essence music festival. Nobody is better at telling multiplatform storytelling than Time. Created Life in 1936, photojournalism was that era's storytelling with technology. Words "plane crash in the Hudson," images of passengers on the wing, Luce's original concept remains the same. There's still a beginning, a middle and and end, but not always in order. When we text votes to American Idol the platform changes the experience. Can the new media platforms change the story? Yes.
Look at the Life brand, in continuous publication since 1936. Weekly issues, special books, one of the most iconic brands. If you're Time, how do you leverage ten million photos that you own? More than 73 million people search images, growing faster than any other type of search. In the middle of a digital image revolution. For the most iconic brand, they launched the Life archive search engine on Google. More and more are being scanned, example of Marilyn Monroe is a benchmark of scanning progress. New Life.com is a joint venture with Getty Images, millions of images from the annals of history.
Remember how magazine sites used to look, everything repurposed from print? No more. Content lives differently on each platform. Instyle knows how people feel about their hair, people can "try on" celebrity hair, upload your photo and try away. Editors have become great short format storytellers. Fifty percent of all finance videos are viewed on CNN Money.com. Editoral specials have become huge live online events. The People brand is growing, the "power of People" has become multi-touch-point, interactive community. When J-Lo's twins were born, broke news on People.com, interviews with their editors on TV, mag did 2 million copies, stories on People Espanol. One story equalled 133 million media impressions. Surround the story. Mia Farrow special issue is now a megabrand in its own way. People digital has several brands and skins. People Digital grew bottom line 48 percent. 2007 was 18 percent. Company overall bottom line now represents 10 percent of revenues of Time Inc., many of most profitable titles are online. (COMMENT: Yes, it's low compared to some B2B brands, but think of how quickly they've gotten back into the game). Users spend average 19 minutes on their sites.
We're a content company that makes great magazines. People who had their mags taken away for two weeks really wanted them back. Asked if they wanted them without ads, they said no, they wanted the experience (COMMENT: Lesson for online advertisers, you need to take more care to make your content a part of a person's online experience). Cosmopolitan, brand is getting hotter with younger people. Time's commemorative election issue sold five times more than normal issue. Mags overall up four percent for Time.
How to weather the storm? 1. Thow away your five-year plans. Look out two years at most, be nimble, stratgegy can be successful only when conditions are well understood. What worked today is not necessarily going to work tomorrow. Re-strategized, made three business units. Going to market more strategically, have bigger strategic discussions with clients. 2. Become true partners with your clients. Need to understand their businesses inside and out, have to come with full solutions (COMMENT: This is a long-term trend, ad shops are being trumped oftentimes by well-positioned brands such as Time, Inc.). Clients will remember who was in the foxhole with them when times were bad. 3. Collaborate. Take advantage of collaborative opportunities inside company. Lehman Brothers, a tenant in their building, came crashing down, Fortune magazine writers were chosen to cover it for Time. 4. Don't sweat the small stuff. Focus on mission-critical business issues, focus on what will win business and build the brand. 5. Trusted branded content matters. Branded journalism will take on an increasingly important role (COMMENT: True, but don't underestimate the power of personal social media brands. 6. Be optimistic. Bring a "can-do" spirit to the challenges.
Excellent address, great case studies, fun presentation. Good stuff, but darn, do big media companies need micropayments.
Question from audience - how do you handle much lower online ad rates? A: If anyone thinks online digital revenues are going to make up falling print revenues, they're not getting it. Need to say to clients that they need each other, they need to keep each other from going out of business, going with collaborative solutions to clients, sometimes even basic merchandizing and bundling assets for them. We're helping them now and come back when times are better with fresh new ideas and new economic models.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009: CTO to the Stars! The Shifting Role of CTOs
Moderator: Patrick J. Spain, Chairman & CEO, Newser LLC
Panelists: Michael Angle, Co-Founder, President and CTO, Alacra, Inc. Christos Moschiovitis, CEO, tmg-emedia.com Martin Howard, Executive Directors, Transaction Advisory Services, Ernst & Young LLP
Martin: Traditionally CTO was part of management team, CTO would report to CIO. CIO was more business-oriented, but now it's strategic, responsible for I.T. function, more and more has that CTO function, more heads. Still see some confusion in those roles, one may be called the other, titles in flux. Michael: In my case a COO, my CEO introduces me as the person in charge of everything that plugs in. For our business is incredibly important to the success of our business, not just about accounting and back-office big iron. Unlike top sales person, etc., they have their own domains of expertise, what I do spans all of those functions in the company, help to develop new products, influence how sales does there job, influence how we do social media Christos: Looking at a transformation in the media industry, CEOs and visionaries trying to figure out the appopriate roles, the marriage between CEOs and the technology function being worked out. Starting to see the ascention at the CEO level that have substantial ownership and understanding of the technology function (COMMENT: Hmm, just like Silicon Valley has done for decades. Amazing. We're finally getting past the post World War II MBA management phenomenon and back to people who want to make products and services work).
Patrick: "Insurmountable Opportunities," what are you embracing willingly and unwillingly.
Michael: Cutbacks with "X" in the double digits, how can we help clients do that. I need to be a part of that charge, leading it if possible instead of following it. Have to have statistics on the ROI of content and services within client organizations. Unglamorous stuff, but you have to build cost control and measurement into the product. Martin: ROI has to be on a business strategy basis as well as a cost basis. Organizations are asking CTOs and CIOs to be more strategic. Where are the very best places to spend to mitigate risk. Christos: You bring to the table more than just technology but innovation as well, may not be an apparent savings at first. As technology has increased the size of organizations, more focus on profits and what it all means. We are seeing tremendous growth in our practice because of this reason, looking at what is most cost-effective way to bring in expertise. In each different are there are different value points. ROI is the governing driver. Martin: Execution is also incredibly important.
Patrick: Issue of "fair use," has technology made the issue of fair use more challenging, are you more aware of what your technology can and should use? Michael: Monitor for "bots" and scrapers, have automatic shutoff mechanisms. Sometimes you want to get scraped for business opportunities, but not every opportunity is helpful. Have to look at how it's being used. Martin: It's a key factor for due diligence, for integration and acquisition intellectual property protection comes in very strongly. The law hasn't caught up in a neat way yet, but investors are struggling with the issues when they look at acquiring content companies. Deals can fall apart when internal protections were seen as inadequate or when the threat of its inventors walking away from the company scared off investors.
Patrick: More people contributing content, how does this impact I.T.? Christos: First on copyright. Obviously the issue of copyright is very complex, involves legislation. If you look at it over the period of the last fifteen years, people have been running for the hills. Content has enormous value. People are doing extremely bizarre things to monetize content, yet people put it up for free to get the eyeballs. How do you think that we're going to protect it? NYT was wrong, if I go to a newsstand with the NYT, all I can do is to read the headlines (COMMENT: again, micropayments can help with this). The issue of IP protection is linked to this problem. Martin: Content is still king, but that doesn't mean that content has to be turned by professionals. Bloggers have had a huge impact, most bloggers make money indirectly. Wikipedia hasn't put Britannica out of business but they've had to change. People aren't buying papers because they're reading Google News, good enough and free. For news, maybe that's better, reporters can be controlled. Some times people want to pay for access to the analyst for expertise. Christos: We need to talk about the problems of the business models in a very fundamental way, the pink elephant is that the model is changing, we're going to face the came changes as the music industry has faced. Verizon is in a sweet spot, they own the last mile of connectivity, how do you translate that into the media business? Verizon "owns" Manhattan (COMMENT: well, not on an enterprise level), how does that translate into a media level? "It will go away after I am no longer president". It will always be the next generation's problem; well the next generation is here. Martin: There is no problem with content, more than ever before, reading more than ever before, a simple problem of companies trying to make money the old-fashioned way.
Patrick: At HighBeam we created a mobile application, didn't make a penny off of it. Mobile has had such great promise, is mobile the new CD-ROM that will be surpassed, are we waiting for a good way to deliver ads? Michael: In finance mobile is very real, many professionals have given up their desktop, how do I deliver information on a screen three inches square, how do you pull out the meaningful chunks. Need to get content on Facebook, have to look if it's appropriate to get messages on Twitter. Martin: The technologies and methods of delivery is coming along, coming to a world where each person will have their own intranet (COMMENT: One of the more interesting comments at the conference. Compelling). Christos: Technology offers something that was not available a year or so ago: location awareness. Can provide very specific content. The world of science fiction is becoming fact rapidly. Happened earlier with instant messaging, it's not that it can deliver quick messages, it is that you aware that you are available. It knows when you've signed in. Your phone tells me where you are and when you are available. Mobile is very real and will dominate the space. Michael: Technologies solve the filtering and context problem, geolocation helps with that, but what if I am making a pitch to Xerox and want to close the deal? It's not so good for that specifically. For the user it's all about the filtering, for the provider it's about getting the right stuff to filter. Christos: Now we have technology where we can sell words (hover technologies) for advertising, when you have content that's sellable to the word, how does that affect editorial and sales? The two groups need to collaborate much more closely as a result. Editorial can no longer be in an ivory tower, they are now responsible for creating community around content.
Patrick: Video is entirely new to some in the audience, if you're a content creator and distributor, do you need video or can you live without it? Michael: Many sites include a video on the outside, more than a teaser, the thought of the day, accomodates how people see core information. Martin: Video's best for some things, words for others, as aggregators piece them together, not sure that providers have to be all things to all people. Christos: At the end of the day it's all about relevance, video is straightforward to produce. Can never be ignored, need to talk specifics, though.
Good panel, operational views are a challenge to present in a conference of this sort, I think that Patrick handled it very well and brought some really interesting contributors to the discussion. In Q&A, Michael Angle suggested in a tongue-in-cheek way that perhaps we need to fire everyone in I.T. over thirty. That sounds like a familiar refrain from my own youth, but with online media there's a strong ring of truth to it. The technology landscape is changing so quickly, you cannot afford to rest on your laurels on older views of how I.T. should be done and to hold back your organization. But in defense of more mature technologists, there are plenty of forward thinkers of all ages who are ready to rock with new publishing technologies.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009: Profiting from Video
Moderator: Nicholas Ascheim, VP, Product Management, NYTimes.com
Panelists: Sandy Malcolm, Executive Producer Video, CNN.com Andy Plesser, Producer and Founder, Beet.tv Kathy Yates, CEO, AllBusiness.com
Forecast was for a 1.35 billion market, was actually $587 million (eMarketer). Goalposts keep moving out but trends are promising. Number of people going up, Hulu up to 1.7 percent of all streams (COMMENT: that's better, but good..?).
Malcolm: Representing the content owner, cringe at Blodgett's comment about TiVos recording content. Our streaming service runs 24x7, podcasts, doing pretty well in video, in spite of tough times. Plesser: Been doing a video blog for three years, help decision-makers in digital industry, a virtual meeting for "snacking" on conversations of authoritative voices. Small staff, low costs, small degree of profitability, going well. Yates: For business owners, evergreen content, customers come to get smart quickly on topics outside of their domain expertise, 18 million of podcasts, webinars, video segments, video about 3,000 segments, also license content from other sources, including other video production units. Have invested quarter million dollars in video assets, operate on break-even with ads and sponsorhips.
Aschiem: What drove the decision to focus on video.
Plesser: Was in PR and ads for 20 years, clients want to get in video, took video camera and taped people and put it on the Web, on the blog. Evolving into a business slowly in a B2B model, Adobe and Akamai want to reach their audience. Niche publishing, lots of opportunities. Yates: Very nuts-and-bolts, like how to set up a LAN, handy if you don't have a CTO. Scaled video quickly based on feedback from customers, operate on a testing environment, look at which kind of segments drive the most usage. Malcolm: In video for years, 2002 started a subscription service, started us really thinking about the business, tried a pay firewall, tough to integrate, a perfect storm of events helped us to see that we could do a pay service for live video, upped the clips, built a digital ad sales team that could sell cross-platform. Took the free live service online last year, phenomenal growth.
Ascheim: How much does it cost really to produce video?
Malcolm: We can pick and choose what comes in to Atlanta, few restrictions, look at what works best for the Web, not everything that works for TV works for the Web. Have an editor pool, can pick from the best. Plesser: The cost of news gathering has changed, reporters send their videos from webcams to be edited, may edit Skype feed. It's not so much the cost as the access to the content. The cost structure has dropped for news gathering and production. Where you had to get big editing systems, now you can get final cut for a thousand dollars and you're good to go. This has become apparent to bigger news organizations. With High-Def, cost of streaming has dropped. We have an editor who works 20 hours a week, an assistant blogger any myself, sometimes ten original videos a week, 800 in archive, grab videos from CNN, again, costs are very low. Malcolm: Looking at Skype, we understand the value of keeping costs low. Moving away from bigger systems, taking advantage of easier, nimbler and cheaper systems. Yates: We benchmark production costs at about $250 per segment for 3-5 minute segments. Keep the same cost benchmark, have worked with providers who have developed video for long format, not really focused on what the Web needs, so in-house works better and helps to control costs.
Ascheim: I it mostly the size of your own library that drives traffic?
Yates: We're a long-tail site, so the more content that we have, the larger our audience. We've looked at this, the activity is driven by promotion, sensitive to how it's promoted to people landing on our site. Plesser: The whole notion of video search is very important, if you have a service about a video or product, put the metadata around it, or use blogging to get the data in the search engines, there's a huge opportinity to get videos in search engines in a big way. People aren't necessarily going to get into your show. Google is making video more discoverable via universal search. Malcolm: Opening more bureaus, we want to own as much original content as possible. We are not an open platform, you're concerned about where your content is going to end up, but you need to be smart about it, we have an embed player now. Plesser: If your content is of value and you want to make money from syndication, our ad travels in an embeddable player, so it's possible to play on a much larger field with an advertisting component. What's happening with the Web is that it's becoming more and more a television medium. We're watching video clips, video has to be a part of a site, demand is skyrocketing. Content creators are going to be in a position to get revenues from a licensing fee or revenue share. There's going to be a big demand. Malcolm: Our ad sales team is working on that now, you can stay on your site, get a high CPM, have to get out there in the marketplace, look closely at revshares.
Ascheim: Is the Web becoming a television medium
Yates: Not so much about what the editor wants as what the audience wants, ability to deliver video content is there now on broadband, the quality of the production is less important to the user than the producer. Obviously very low quality doesn't work, but the greatest value comes from the relevance of the information.
Ascheim: Longer form content, seems to be more demand today, perhaps because the experience is better, but most is in entertaiment. Is there a future for more as the format matures?
Malcolm: News is more disposable, shorter shelf life, long form is a little trickier, can do well, spots for that, live service has taken off, the amount of time that people spend increases, even if it is "snacking," you can get what you want, where you want it. Internet can also harvest live events. Plesser: It's about snacking now, can't do video online too long, as it becomes integrated into living rooms it will grow. Yates: For entertainment long form is growing, they watch all of their shows on the Web, annoying to find a second segment on Hulu and YouTube. A growing appetite for Webinars, people cutting back on business expenses, people watching them on the Web.
Ascheim: What models will sustain video? Yates: Will go to 2-3 percent, perhaps larger, as an audience, today all ad-based but we'll see other models and higher production quality at lower costs. Plesser: Watching video on PC will be irrelevant, a lot we'll see on mobile and in the living room, the notion of learning from and meeting people will be key, where video becomes a more interactive experience. Broadband and high bandwidth will allow video communication will become two-way. Will comfort people in the know to be in touch. Malcolm: Program for various mediums, community involvement is key, Facebook was successful beyond measure, 26 million live streams, complements TV. TV is that lean-back experience, you can do that and lots can do that, but the online experience was more intimate, Facebook comments were running as the videos were running, people were commenting all night, created a new community around live. Interaction and the ability to get involved is key, have to plan for all of them. Plesser: Live streaming is so easy now, not like in the old days where you needed a big professional crew. Bandwidth is really bad in the U.S. compared to other nations.
Excellent session, tightly managed, lots of key best practices. Can't ask for much more. The stats on the inauguration are compelling, that's a mass-scale audience for the feed and mass interaction at a community level. Models are still being worked out, but they follow logically from other social media/Web content.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009: Henry Blodgett, CEO, Business Insider
Silicon Alley Insider becoming Business Insider, TechCrunch model, 2 million readers, but facing same ad challenges as everyone else. Not a "lifecaster," but real journaism. Still, a new form of journalism is evolving. Old style is to take existing content and to throw it online, reading it online is great, but that's not the real form of online journalism looks like, with strengths and weaknesses.
Aggregation is the key to the new journalism, the very act of aggregation can be valuable. High-velocity production, more similar to broadcasting, like a "text broadcast" (COMMENT: read, "real-time." Again, Wall Street's real-time legacy comes into the online news world). Some say it's garbage, that it will all fail, but if you hear that Steve Jobs is sick you're going to check it out and see if it's credible. There are plenty of people who know that it's true, and it helps to get the truth out more quickly. A source said that there's going to be a massive layoff, in short order we got a lot more information that this was indeed going to happen. Access is great, but on the other hand, when employees contact you with information and emails, access is less important. A lot of the readers will know a lot more than a journalist will know.
People want "snackable" content, see what's happened in the last hour. He wrote an article for the Atlantic magazine, good topic, lots of readership, but nothing like the first Twitter of the video of the rescue of the plane that went down in the Hudson. Online journalism is taking sound, text, video, it's not one medium or another. Gawker pushes this furthest, has eight TiVos capturing shows where someone might say something interesting, then clipping it for online. It's different from MarketWatch and TheStreet.com, which were more online newspaper models.
Huffington Post bigger than the Boston Globe, they find the most interesting stories on the Web, it's cost-effective, which the Boston Globe is not. Gawker Media blog network was twice that of the LA Times. Total team: 80 people, LAT 800. Can't support that kind of newsroom with that kind of traffic, Nick Denton is way ahead. But still big problems, online readers think that everthing should be free. That has got to change, just not enough advertising. Ads haven't evolved, same little box ads, shouldn't have to mimic a newspaper (COMMENT: or a television). People complain nobody clicks on the ads, but we have done almost nothing to innovate. Advertisers only care about clicks, a great ad without a click is viewed as a failure, yet in print nobody clicks and people consider those ads successful.
But the problems are far worse for traditional media. Newspapers have had a great 200 year run, but now it's over. Disruptive technologies are not necessarily better, many products created with it are miles short of The New York Times, but it's cheaper and gradually it gets better. In the meantime the old technology pushes towards premium users with more expensive technology, pretty soon they're pushed out of the mass markets. Google is pushing Microsoft to the high end, won't stop Google's onslaught. The cost of producing online journalism is so much lower, HuffPo 20 editorial staff, Gawker only $15 million while NYT is $1+ billion, profits from lower costs are working. Craigslist is free, unlimited real estate, a lot of traditional publishing companies are hosed. But some do well, like Bloomberg, Dow Jones doing well, the NYT can be saved but will have to cut 40 percent of the cost and re-explore charging for online (COMMENT: yes, but not through the old models. Micropayments will be the way, we can pick up the New York Post for a quarter at the newsstand, micropayments will work if done neutrally).
Journalism is in great shape, will look different but it will be in great shape. There are vastly more journalists than ever before, experts can express their opinion online. Editors need to co through this, some are paid to be editors, others comment on others (COMMENT: or link to it in blogs, what Robin Good calls "Newsmasters." In today's world "Deep Throat" would have sent documents to "The Smoking Gun" and it would have all been online. Papers will continue to get hammered, some will adapt, many are already writing real-time, but they will survive (COMMENT: Maybe). Online journalism will continue to grow, some will build sustainable models, will develop more professional talent, will hire credible journalists, the only thing that will change is that the shareholders of existing companies will get hammered. Creating destruction will bring us to the better future.
COMMENT: Overall, completely spot on. This is the new role of media today, though I think that he underplays the role of on-site expertise, which is a definition that varies with events. For example, sometimes a lawyer or a stock analyst with a blog will be an on-site expert about events in their profession, other times a laborer in China who happens to be near the epicenter of a major earthquake who is equipped with Twitter will be the expert. Expertise is becoming more contextual, but the truth is always larger than a journalist. I do think that CQ's Bob Merry's outlook is closer to the greater truth - we've had journalism in its current form only for about two hundred years, it will continue to be a good profession in its own way but the aggregation of news is taking its place in many aspects, making insight from on-site facts more important.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009: Thriving on Chaos: Profiting from the New New Era of Political, Economic and Technology Change
Moderator: Jim Kolleger, CEO, Genesys Partners, Inc.
Panelists: Dan'l Lewin, Corporate VP, Microsoft, and Head, Strategic and Emerging Business Development Neal Lipschutz, SVP and Managing Editor, Dow Jones Newswires Steve Lohr, Senior Writer and Technology Reporter, The New York Times Jon Miller, Founding Partner, Velocity Interactive Group, former CEO, AOL
Jim: Economy?
Steve: Federal Reserve was the lender of last resort, now the Federal government will be the spender of last resort, but it will be a targeted approach, not just shoveling potholes. Anti-trust needs to be watched, new appointee, worked on Netscape/MSFT deal, anti-competitive practices will be scrutinized.
Jon: Our consumer business means impact, as seen in our recent financials, as enterprises cut back economic impact is in the long run optimistic, scaling out of seamless computing is good, very powerful smart devices, blending content that's user-created is key.
Neal: As long as this downturn is going to be, it's hard to go back to what we had before boom times, technology growth and disruption will make some sectors like finance risk-averse, jobs creation is going to be key but it's easier said than done. Free enterprise will be less so than recently. Dan'l: EBITDAs aren't right, Ballmer's "reset" does not mean that they are going to go back to having companies trade at old levels.
(COMMENT: It's a shame that easy money propped up the valuation of fundamentally weak publishing properties for the past several years. This kept smart money from being spent more effectively on needed transformation in the industry. That doesn't mean that a good part of that transformation hasn't happened, it's just that so much investment was thrown at failing models.)
Neal: America is going to be less important now, opportunities may be greater outside of the U.S.
Steve Lohr: Isn't it amazing how the world fell off the cliff September 15th?
Jim: Money velocity has driven information velocity, will old media dollars be even digital dimes? "A new normal."
Steve: NYT approach is to double down, selling off portion of building, hope is that you can swim to the other shore. Online model that was supposed to help change from print is changing radically.
Neal: Business models will have to rely on quality content and subscription revenues.
Steve: Can the genie go back in the bottle once everyone decided to give it away?
Dan'l: Big believer in news business, not necessarily the newsPAPER business. News is proliferating, consumption never higher, I use 20-30 sources, many do. What model to get from there to there is not known, not supporting things now. The genie does not go back in the bottle.
Jim: Political change, were you suprised about going from X-Box to Atari in White House technology?
Dan'l: They think that digital can have a big impact on recovery plan, it's a question of how you go about it.
Jim: The tools of the teenager are now in the White House (COMMENT: Gentle jab, Jim, the teenagers grew up. It's young adults, now, that are driving social media growth). Organization for America, can be a force for good, but can ricochet, microscripts may embed themselves.
Steve: Obama admin message has been top-down and consistent, stuck with message, no panic when Hillary won in PA primary, in that sense very elitist. (COMMENT: It's different in social media, not a mater of polling strangers but of listening to people with whom you have relationship).
Jon: The polling methods of McCain who was going with where the wind blew showed through.
Jim: 37 billion of stimulus coming.
Steve: Health IT was 20 billion, broadband was 6, broadband will increase. Will not just throw money at things, pay per performance with metrics will rule. We've done this on a small scale so far, will be interesting to see where it goes.
(COMMENT: Interesting to see how this year's panel is really not about gadgets, as has been Jim's usual focus. It's now about what the technologies have done to change society. See "Content Nation" for more).
Jon: Now a matter of public discussion and policy to make more open and avialable content happening.
Jim: Other technology trends impacted by these issues?
Jon: Broadband is a big deal, more recent countries coming online have more, we're falling behind.
Neal: Some major cities will not have major newspapers in print, the trend will accelerate. If the downturn is longer, the trends will accelerate.
Dan'l: Fundamental trends, end of Moore's law, virtualization is starting to happen, lot of infrastrucutre going on, action in conversations at this conference is at the application level, but the data is where there's a lot of action. CIOs looking at where they will balance their infrastructure, where will the storage be, where will the backup be. New markets forming in education, global markets where infrastructure is growing. Won't see a pause. Robotics is hot, vision, spatial, voice interfaces, all of these are evolving rapidly.
Neal: The value of content will be there no matter what the technology, delivery mechanisms will change, but targeted content still valuable, though it may not include general news.
Jim: Always a new wrinkle, what's the new wrinkle?
Jon: Most recent is video and social networking on Web, before that Yahoo and AOL, goes in four-year waves, things do change. But the stuff that rises to the top isn't every day. The industry will continue to re-create itself over time, it's not the thousand little things. (COMMENT: Disagree. Reference the Museum of Modern Betas, where there are more than 4,000 new social media tools in four years. It's the little and the big and the little that become huge).
Jim: Huge changes for the industry?
Jon: iPhone was a huge change, most revolutionary was inclusion of Safari browser in iPhone (COMMENT: Agreed, the platform will be forgotten eventually, the Web will not be forgotten).
Jim: Where does workflow fit in?
Dan'l: Where you are is becoming increasingly important, your location and context is key, what comes to you is key, location-based services are growing, those kinds of services will surface soon. Notion of location in the cloud that's yours that synchronizes with friends' devices is being investigated at Microsoft, social networking is a little out of control, is it mostly noise.
Jon: Speaking up for consumer side, at end of 2008, consumer usage of Internet surpassed enterprise usage for first time (COMMENT: The world is indeed a nation of publishers!). Consumer applications are driving much of the Web use, that will work its way back.
Steve: Where would you invest?
Jon: As a consumer-oriented business, my whole thing is what the consumer is doing. Closed on sale of Expedia from Microsoft, over 3 billion, bad week, dot-com crash ended travel, no precedents, Barry Diller said will consumers continue to travel in the future, and if so will they do more of it using online tools. Video consumption is taking off, makes perfect sense as it is. On a worldwide basis, video consumption is still early days.
Jim: Jon, you ran AOL, how do you see online game playing out?
Jon: Two big trends, consolidation and breakups, content and distribution breaking up (COMMENT: Agreed, but depends in some sectors on availability of monetization tools).
Jim: If you're a company, what do you keep your eyes on, where are the opportunities?
Dan'l: Paying attention to lots of stuff, my particualr interest is to look at entrepreneurial activity and where the money goes to support them. Pragmatic answer as to how they help them. A pretty good bead on that side of global innovation. Larger concerns are there for acquisition, too. You'll see more of the same.
Jon: Mentioned video earlier, what are people doing in mobile environments, need to understand usage contours. iPhone apps, haven't yet understood behaviors, will be profound in a lot of ways.
Steve: iPhone was not an original idea, why couldn't Microsoft do it?
Dan'l: We should have, we'll play catch up. Microsoft is a "hundred flowers bloom" approach to platform, not the tight store and service integration of Apple, historically.
Great panel as always, high-level discussions like this are not always productive but Jim manages to keep them well-focused.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009: What's the Value of Value-Add?
Moderator: Lee Greenhouse, President, Greenhouse Associates, Inc.
Panelists: Diane Corrado, Vice President, Sales, Wolters Kluwer Health Tom Brown, Vice President, Financial Services Solutions, LexisNexis Risk and Information Analytics Group Joe Jaksha, Vice President of New Product Development, Thomson West
My former Quotron colleague Lee Greenhouse kicked off a panel of major enterprise information services providers from legal, credit and medical sectors. Lee's kickoff question: Michael Wolff said that the value of content is declining. Is that so?
Tom: For public records, applications built on them can quantify value. Maintaining a certain value proposition requires the ability to add to it constantly. Diane: Clients say content is king, if the right data isn't there, then it's not worth it. Lee: But they won't pay a king's ransom for it. Diane: They don't want twelve million hits, they want one hit. Joe: Raw aggregated content is less valuable, but you have to have that and layer on more value. Unfiltered, unannotated content is less valuable but clients expect it to be there. Lee: How has West added value to content? Tom: Classification of laws, the legal code, was the first step. Now focus on specific customers and wrap it in a package with sophisticated technologies and a services model (COMMENT: Again, it comes back to the Wall Street model. Lou Eccleston from S&P didn't come - again - but it would be nice for a financial person to nail this concept home). Adding value to the public record so that it's the authoritative record. Deploy analytics to make it more actionable in high-volume enterprise environments. In banking, help them to prevent money laundering, help them to know the individuals with whom they are doing business. Also focus on identity theft, will get worse as economy deteriorates and people from the inside help crime. Help customers evaluate companies that are not covered by the credit agencies, on terms that are acceptable to the consumer. Diane: In legal and medical, years ago you had to bear a gift to get information from a corprorate librarian. Now it's in the hands and the pockets on portable devices of users. Books in a big room have to exist now on an iPod and be fast. Google is fast, but you don't want five million hits, you want the information that you're looking for, with as little librarian intervention as possible. Use contextual design process, work with clients in non-standard way. Usual client interviews give usual answers, contextual design watches how people actually do their work. (COMMENT: This is a key, key factor in product research, I've learned more in interviews just being quiet and watching how a subject responds to a phone call or works at their desk). Helps to reduce fatigue from information use - sometimes as much as 65 percent. We are a publisher, but also integrators, integrate from Thomson and other sources, new tools manage these sources side-by-side. Has revolutionized our industry (COMMENT: Again, done decades ago in finance, corprorate world is just starting to have the technology for more general content sources to catch up). We carry both peer reviewed content and clinical use information, so people can see both the theory and the practice side by side.
Joe: Focused on smaller information bites, could be just a piece of metadata that's monetizable, as a publisher you can take that same piece of information and present it in many different contexts. Contract attorneys get what they need at the point of need. Have to understand what target customers need. Lee: Do you really get more money from customers or is it treading water? Joe: Definitely a mix of the two, bigger part is making it a sustainable business model, contextual content changes how our clients do business, the "sticky, viral" way of doing business becomes part of what they do. Tom: Depends on how much it's a pain point for customers, adding coverage, that's where the pain point is, clients are required to vett each client they do business with, if it's just redundant information, less valuable. Also new applications are key, in some ways we're in a nascent market sector, what we're doing is providing information about the "underbanked" to help people understand them. Diane: It's also helping our customers' customers, our clients have to do more with less, if you have a relationship with their clients you can command higher prices, you can get a larger share that enhance client relationships, puts us in a unique position. Many are clinicians, scientists, drug manufacturers, defending legal cases, customer's customers could be doctors, consumers, product developers, important to prove value to them. Providing better materials that explain what the product does is valuable, getting the buyer to understand the value is key. Tom: That's the essence of what we do, we try to be more relevant to the client.
Lee: What's the hard stuff? Joe: Combining unique combinations of content that cannot be replicated by the next hot technology play. Customers are more and more specialized, means that where they get a question outside of their area of expertise, they need help. (COMMENT: Good point, and a very interesting one). People on the end of a phone line can help, too.
Lee: Lessons from failures? Joe: Shoehorning content in a product or space where it doesn't belong, looks good on a drawing boards but doesn't work in real like. In contract law, we tested and re-tested things, but if you guess wrong with the customer, you may as well start over. Tom: If you assume that the need is greater than it is, you can wind up over-engineering products. Diane: We were working on a high-end product, someone released a similar thing as freeware that wasn't too bad. Have to make sure that it's a unique need.
A good panel, danced around some of the key challenges such as clients and third-party technology platforms eating up the same value proposition, but showed the typical best practices of today's enterprise publishing services.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009: Frictionless Information - Adding Value in the Age of Google
Kristian J. Hammond, Co-Director, Intelligent Information Laboratory, Department of Computer Science, Northwestern University
You have incredibly valuable content but nobody can tell the difference between it and something that someone has hacked up and thrown on the Internet. People get what they can from it and go away, driving up the bounce rate. Why should anyone in the world get it for money? People can wait it out, and it will be free. NYT will say, "Just take it, at least show up some time."
People think that they can defeat Google on its own turf with search. Like a new soda trying to go head-to-head with Coca-Cola. Unless there is a serious cultural change, the last battle that you fought is going to be fought over and over again. There's an arms race going on, someone out there is trying to bust into your information. We'll crawl the Web and have a parallel information repository to make "one-stop" shopping for our vertical. Nice idea, but still head-to-head with Google. Or, make a deal with Google, but that's just getting your information out more efficiently, doesn't address monetization.
"We suggest leapfrogging the problems altogether..." In cellular telephony, adoption in developing nations surged where land lines were mediocre at best. Leapfrogged rather than trying to make technology work in old environments. We work on frictionless information systems, or intelligent information systems. "Whatever you're thinking, we'll get to your heart's desire." We want to get rid of the search box, so that you don't interact with it directly. Need information systems that are aware of the context of your behavior. Knowing your customer at this second and using it as a driver of information. We're a lab, we don't care where information comes from.
Examples: the desktop relevance engine and "beyond broadcast," for online video, and "make my page," for machine-generated content. Pulls information on the Web based on the document being read (COMMENT: not really so different from "more like this" feature or training data for semantic searches). Really on-point, finds docs first on own Web site, then other sites. Also pulls up discussions, experts, methods, learning, Web and desktop collections. (COMMENT: good idea. Not done often enough). Integrated with desktop activity (COMMENT: like Watson, kind of), can pull from any searchable source. Kind of like doing enterprise portal services for the world).
Then looked at server-side versions of this. Chicago Sun-Times example, other blogs, videos, Web, other S-T news, S-T blogs (COMMENT: This is a lot like Sphere in a sense, all fine and good, but Sphere is not really helping publishers to generate engagement or revenues to any significant degree). In video, main context is watching television. Build a small piece of code for TiVo box, "beyond broadcast," watches television with you, notices what channel you're on, look at closed caption text, feed that information to server, hijack a TiVo remote button, would build a microsite based on the content and the context. Different for cooking show, how-to show, dramas, etc. (COMMENT: This has strong potential as a concept, contextual content and ads for television). Were elated with this, people will come to us, but then YouTube happened and convergence happened anyway without television. Took same system, moved it online. Works pretty much the same, change banner ads based on what' being discussed in the video.
Looked at a few examples, "good eats" on the Food Network, links to Wikipedia entry on corn dogs. Look at other version of recipes, etc. (COMMENT: Again, not much new on one level, but doing it in real-time is a fantastic tool, equivalent to AdWords on Google search). Give them everything that they might be interested in (COMMENT: But do publishers really want more distractions from their content? I agree with the "real-time portal" based on content of interest, but again, Sphere experience raises questions).
"Make my page" function, pulls together new document, primarily links to other document, open to social media editing. Highly relevant, will percolate up to the top and stay there. (COMMENT: Now, that works better. Make the associations of content more enduring, even when they are assembled in real-time. If the aggregation works for one person, it may work for others, and it will be improved for others. Similar to my old concept of distributable objects that grow in value as they are passed from person to person contextually). "We will get you to your heart's desire."
Great stuff, I like the idea of the persistent contextual objects that grow over time, that's the real winning ingredient. Many of the other ideas have been done before, but if you can create content that becomes more popular over time automatically as it expands and transforms over time through contextual use, it will be self-optimizing for engagement.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009: Licensing Digital Information: Satisfying Customers While Protecting Assets
Moderator: Dan Duncan, Senior Director, Government Affairs, The McGraw-Hill Companies
Panel: Ed Collaran, Senior Director, International Relations, Copyright Clearance Center Dominic Young, Director of Group Publishing Services, News International Caitlin Grusauskas, 3rd year student, Columbia University School of Law Mindy Pennington, Manager, External Content, Library Services, Pfizer Global Research and Development
Duncan: Apple taking DRM block off of music, France suits, law would have mandated taking off DRM, effort was abandoned. Apple got together with industry, no restrictions on reuse at a higher price. Today, new users all the time, new solutions as well. What works?
Caitlin: People have expectations that it's all going to be free, quick answers from things like Google Toolbar. The idea of copyright is foreign, you assume that you can share it, has serious implications for content owners.
Pennington: People want to make it easier to share, things like CCC Rightsphere work but take time to set up, content is desired on mobile devices, how or whether it works can be problematic, as is who you can share it with. Taking something from your digital library and giving it to partners is a problem, need for more flexible relationships.
Colleran: From the user's standpoint, they're busy people, make it easy as possible, but offering broader rights is key. Pharma industry initiative to broaden contract terms, looking to share content that they license as a key contract factor.
Young: Part of ACAP, news initiative for managing access. To actually manage and control it without licensing is needed in some way, licensing not well adapted for all circumstances, ACAP allows end-users to take control more easily when it's legal and reasonable to do so.
Duncan: Many users don't look at terms and conditions, if they do access it they don't access it or understand it. From the perspective of users, where do they fit in today?
Young: Doing it in a way that's highly automated is key, tools don't exist to do that, so people do things because there's no reasonable alternative. Business models aren't there, either (COMMENT: Micropayments is underutilized, technologies are there that COULD support it, but there is resistance. That resistance is a key factor in today's media revenue gap.)
Pennington: We get questions about usage even with Rightsphere, most people are aware of what they're allowed to do, internal news stories and other communications about what's allowed.
Duncan: Pfizer has its own valuable intellectual property as well. Caitlin, in your experience, are students aware of terms and conditions?
Caitlin: In law school it's different, they rely on Westlaw and LexisNexis, people understand that there are terms and conditions with their accounts. In the broader university community, I can access materials from the university library seamlessly. In some ways there's a problem because there's so much out there.
Pennington: In the last couple of years new programs provide text mining, automated systems may pull thousands of articles in a couple of hours, users may notice first when content is blocked. Work with publishers, understand what's allowed, text mining system will be programmed to obey terms. (COMMENT: But what if an agreement could be executed automatically? Huge under-explored opportunities, let people get a taste for free, when throttles are reached then an ecommerce opportunity can be activated, either through online human agents or an auto-execution micropayment system. Works for mobile carriers, folks, it's not rocket science).
Young: Search engine access works well for some publishers, not for others, ACAP helps search engines to discover terms and conditions. Can be done machine to machine. But scaling up the capability of the network is a challenge. (COMMENT: ACAP still has potential, but, no offense to my European friends, it's being pursued in a lethargic manner, needs to go open source, with multiple serving agents, akin to DNS services).
Collaeran: With social media tools, publishers find it to be an incredible branding tool, FT gives first five articles away, then second five with registration, then you have to pay. Don't have to pay for each article.
Duncan: Caitlin, what's your reaction?
Caitlin: Depends how easy it is to use, didn't sign up for NYT premium, but if price is right, it's worth it. Some kids want to "stick it to the man," but if it's pretty easy to do the right thing, then they comply. HuLu, good quality, people want it fast and quick, people will pay.
Pennington: A lot easier for people not to worry about it when the corproation licenses it, but more flexible arrangement for doing the right thing would be important. When the physician sees the advertising and is measurable, that's important. So, why not make a version of the online product that looks like the magazine? Why won't publishers make another version? We have devices like Kindle now. With copiers sharing was harder, would be nice to have technology advances for today's needs.
Caitlin: People doing online research are used to putting in all sorts of search terms to see what pops up. Topical search would be nice, to see what pops up, more like an index than a traditional book (COMMENT: Works on relatively discrete content sets with tools such as taxonomies).
Young: Things like ACAP are a step in the right direction, we have gloom and doom about old business models, innovation can help. In a world that's well functioning, rewards will be linked to access.
Colleran: Not just about text content, any type of media could be involved, need to license those different kinds of content. Not just publishers, authors are taking a far more prominent role with self-publishing.
Duncan: How will authors be paid for content, major publishing companies have marketing department, sells into an area where the customer understands the value.
Collaran: Creative Commons-style authors may want some content out there for free, but others may want payment (COMMENT: CC does have hooks in its licensing for payment, early days still, remarkably, on activating that capability.)
Pennington: Make licensing more relevant for the specific people using content, critical going forward, especially as organizations divide into global business units, granular licensing needed.
Caitlin: People may use terms and conditions, the ability to share music is there, but I haven't tried it, don't want to be restricted by DRM. Rhapsody is one model, could work for other types of content.
Colleran: Ease of use and compliance are key "microscripts" coming out of this. Education is not sexy but it can help. Users need to be educated what they can and cannot do with copyrighted content.
Young: Micropayments would be wonderful, need the best innovators to help the best content to win out, that may be authors as well.
Pennington: People are willing to pay for what they need.
Question: Agreement between Gatehouse Media and NYT on Boston.com?
Duncan: Not that familiar with it, but not settled law. IP community on the publishing side were happy, but also scratching heads.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009 - Mark Walsh with Lessons from Politics
Views from the "evidence-free" zone.
J. Robert Oppenheimer was the father of the atomic bomb, as they were getting ready to test it in New Mexico for the 6AM detonation, Oppenheimer noticed that the mathematician was not there, when to get him, he said, "If I got the math wrong, none of you are coming back."
We got the math wrong on a lot of things in the past several years, but certainly since September 15th.
2005 dinner with new senator Obama, Walsh concerned that Democrats aren't prepared for a knife fight. You're the savior of the Democratic party? Where's the bench strength? You're it? "Who knew?"
Politics is an odd business, it's Hollywood for unattractive people, like Junior High, one-day sale with 100 percent market share. Political marketing: how does it work and how does it affect consumer marketing?
When a sound bite takes hold it's hard to get rid of, we still attribute the "Al Gore invented the Internet" to him, but he never said it. Sound bites become micro-scripts, help your constituents to attack your opponents. "They work." 24 months ago, "Lipstick, Nowhere, Maverick, Change" were not microscripts, the campaign made them so. Candidate doesn't have to defend records with microscripts. When they work, they're powerful. Became the branding tactic for the whole campaign, gave us permission to validate Obama's aspiration and forgive a light background and plan details. "Change we can Believe In" - two microscripts together.
Marketers must have shorter ways to define their brands. Unique selling proposition - USP - the one thing that you can say about your brand that nobody else can. These are the future mantras in our markets. It will leak into our world. "It's not an elevator speech any more, it's a bumper sticker." Kids say "whatever," it's kind of a sub-microscript. How do we increase the bandwidth of customers and citizens? "Are we screwed?" This administration is the "reboot", Obama speaks deliberately and slowly, has thoughtful approaches, "the anti-microscript, human Ritalin." People will shun the easy label, the bon mot. Everybody knows when promises are kept and not kept, political marketers know it, other marketers have to catch up. Some proportion will not get it, they will continue to use microscripts to process things. "Playing to the base" is off to the left or right, they get microscripts such as "God, guns and gays," still useful. Try to bring the bell curve to where the microscripts don't work. "We're better than that." But my microscript: "Shift happens." Shifting away from patent phrases (COMMENT: great points, but I think that history shows that simple concepts are important for communication. They help to build consensus broadly. He acknowledges this in the Q&A when he acknowledges that brands like Apple do microscripting well. I think that the key point today is that social media allows us to discuss, spin and position microscripting very rapidly in a broader conversation).
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2009: Interview with Glenn Goldberg of McGraw Hill
Hal Espo, President of Contextual Connections, LLC interviews Glenn S. Goldberg, President Information & Media, The McGraw-Hill Companies. McGraw-Hill has a global footprint in which it delivers both traditional media and enterprise information products. "Content really matters," Notes Goldberg, looking at the energy markets Platt's is doing very well as an example, also helping OEMs build their network in China.
Espo: Content matters more in some markets and less in others. What does McGraw-Hill do to stay ahead? Goldberg: B2B is key, construction marketplace is a good example, trading and energy also, people make big bets. B2C is more dubious, but in BWeek, traffic has returned to trusted brands. Espo: Tell us about recent content investments. Goldberg: Organized around principles, made the McGraw-Hill Construction Network, not just about advertising but also about solutions, not all efforts succeed. Need to understand how leverageable your brand is in specific spaces. We get some plaudits, but the customers need to respond, some customers are slow to pick up in some sectors. Espo: Layered applications, how do you see content and technology interplay? Goldberg: Believe deeply in it, but we're not there yet, some do wonderful things around code, still suspicion around motives. Most startups challenge large companies to think different about customers, then they hit a ceiling and look away. There are demarcations that need to be broken down in our own company to be as nimble. Espo: Tell us about JD Power Goldberg: Syndicated model focused on customer satisfaction, well-known by auto marketers, helped Toyota get into the marketplace. Were getting paid for surveys and access to surveys, saw that they were missing underlying value, went further in their research into other corporate roles, took a generation or two to move up the value chain. Sweets can now sell lead generation and other extensions of the core value proposition. Espo: Is the overall strategy a portfolio play? Goldberg: JD Power is a marketing services company, in autos but also in financial services. We view industries that have benchmarks and standards that can be embedded in the workflow of customers. Each of our properties are the standard in their industry in their own ways. Platt's is the benchmark in oil prices, construction - those are the standards that we look at, don't want to be all things to all people. Espo: McGraw-Hill purchased Umbria, what does it do so extend the brand? Goldberg: PhD/Math guys, every year we do syndicated studies, get paid a nice fee to sell studies, but in Web 2.0 once-a-year studies aren't going to cut it. They scrape the web for information on products and brands, can pull comments about brands, e.g. Honda is launching a new Accord, organize in "tribes"/market segmentation, can organize it in ways as to who's saying what by demographics, can complement once-a-year reports. Espo: Web 2.0, in customer 3.0 model customers are going to dictate model. Shopzilla, Pricegrabber, etc.? Goldberg: Good point, if you're building a billion-dollar brand, you'll need more than Shopzilla. People still care about quality information, quality content. It's a balance, don't turn our cheek to Shopzilla, but there are other angles. Espo: Platt's - tell us about this. Goldberg: 60 percent of revenues are from out of U.S., our oil prices are the industry benchmark. Hard not to see that with globalization trading in commodities is going to be the future. In industries where there's a benchmark, we do it well. Espo: New energy sources, is that's where Platt's headed? Goldberg: If it's commodity-related, that's where Platt's is headed. Espo: What do you think about the new administration's impact on Platt's? Goldberg: Hopefully they will get the economy in better shape, that will help Platt's, but "shovel-ready" projects will help construction, bailouts of Detriot OEMs will help, investment in education will help. Espo: What role do ads play. Goldberg: In aviation and construction it was all advertising, much more broad-based. Major constraint is not hurting brands. Trust is built up in aviation for initiatives for conferences, for example, but you need to be respectful for brand. Espo: BizWeek, forecast? Goldberg: Slower years recently, news is commoditized but content matters. We serve a business news audience, last 4-5 months traffic is better, the editorial model needs to evolve, need to create content as they always have, but will also curate content, not just a gatherer and interpreter of news and creating communities. Another way to think about content, helps editorial and helps advertisers, since advertisers want to see their ads in context. Espo: Television, let's overlay print with TV changes, insufficiently local, what makes it different? Goldberg: Needs to change as well, hard to envision the longer-term, but people are still going to it in some demographics, kids still put on ESPN, it's not about the medium, it's about the value proposition. When an avalance occurs people still turn to the television. The challenge is to respond to both localization and broader markets. TV still has a longer role to play in markets, but the balance is still to be figured out. Espo: People turned to CNN.com, not television, for the revent airplane crash landing. Goldberg: Some of our Web sites have more traffic than local Web sites. The economic model is a balance. We're not an enormous media player, being smaller gives us the opportunity to figure out. Espo: You're a senior officer in a well-known company. What are the major challenges that you and your peers face? Goldberg: Sounds trite, but the reality is we have people who really understand what the custoemr needs, I think that I have the right people to solve the next 25 years, but the barriers between content and technology people are hard to break down. Can you get it done, can you keep things simple and communicate with your audience and give them a stake in the future. Espo: "Digital Immigrants" in our generation, what do you see in the digital native generation that makes you worry? Goldberg: If my kids who have mid-terms today don't do well as they were multitasking the night before...democratization is a wonderful thing, they're curious, do things on Google immediately that are remarkable. The world truly is borderless now, great for business, thinking about where to place bets. Our kids need to build relationships, devices will be different, but they still need to conduct themselves holistically to be better people down the road.
Standard & Poor's role is under question now, need to evolve steps to transparency, welcome the opportunity to take uncertainty out of the marketplace, will work with regulators to make that happen.
Question: In efforts to trim costs, in a large public company what are the risks that you'll over-react and discover that you should have been more selective?
Goldberg: That's the reality, Platt's is doing very well, large Washington presence, regulatory presence, in business we've made a decision to downsize Washington a bit and deploy elsewhere, it's no longer the only very important place. New tools also allow people to deliver services more quickly. We can use third parties to cover less newsworthy hearing and events. Many of the Platt's investments were done three to four years ago, have to make tough calls sometimes.
Question: Old model was collecting information and selling by the pound, tell us about applications.
Goldberg: Example I use in contruction is forecasting, if you're about to bid on a major job, Autodesk will use our applications to help them to see what's different in a building design with different materials. Take some time, but we're getting there as investments mature.
Espo: Innovation is everywhere, right or wrong, there's a perception that McGraw-Hill is slow, doesn't get it. How do you respond to that?
Goldberg: The reality is that we've done as good a job as we can to be on the cutting edge. (COMMENT: Big problem at McGraw-Hill is culture, I.T. is very traditionally oriented, internally oriented, sales teams have their own resistance also. Heritage does matter, but in some divisions walls do need to be broken down. Heritage isn't always about the past, but about how you apply its lessons to new challenges.)
SIIA Information Industry Summit: Sink or Swim: How can you Grow an Information Company Now?
Moderator: Kevin English, SVP - M&E, Satayam
Michael Wolff: NYT not the future of publishing, traditional print organizations are "over", 18 months at the outside. A fascinating historical moment, general interest print is done. Model has to move "all the way," Google has established an absolutely new model. First, they don't create their own content. They don't "do" it. They have monopolized the primary revenue stream - advertising. Everyone here is looking at this and saying, "The game is changed. How do we look at this new model and mimic it or adapt to it?" How can we pay nothing at all for content is the primary strategic question. Just about using everyone's else's content (COMMENT: Not. It's about people creating their own content and putting it in the most valuable contexts. It's about the "printing press" being everywhere. Print is NOT dead, just waiting for new models to exploit it, even as electronic services expand.
Vivek Shah, Time, Inc - Fundamentals the same, you need a great product still. Way too many people knocking on marketers' doors waiting for them to help them. Voice, personality matter in successful brands, points of view matter, a change for parts of American journalism. Scale matters, need to address audiences. Google changes the scale of audiences that can be addressed effectively via advertising. As you go from PC-based web to mobile, real estate for ads is relatively small and revenue potential disappears. (COMMENT: Agreed. The fundamental experience of advertising online is deficient in comparison in many ways to the print experience. Part of the answer is new technologies, but part of the answer is also recognizing that what you do in a space where you used to do advertising has changed fundamentally online. It's about personal transactions as much as Vance Packard's "hidden persuaders.")
English: What do publishers provide now?
Shah: Looking at Time.com, you have to build the content around the formats, smaller audience for long form content. Just because you can write stuff doesn't mean that you have an online "metabolism." Wolff: Hard to make the case that traditional print outlets know what they're supposed to be doing. Used to be the covers of Time and Newsweek changed national conversations, doesn't happen in the same way today. Shah: People aren't racing for screen grabs. Time was launched when there were 28 dailies in Chicago alone. They responded to a glut.
English: Environment is changing, customers are changing, newest generation expects it all for free.
Bob Merrym CQ: 70 percent subscription/circ revs and high-margin ad revenues for focused audience. Shouldn't cede circulation revs. Shah: Marketers. Google satisfies advertising ROI, rest is branding ads, which are hard to measure for success. CTRs are low. (COMMENT: The Web is not about seduction - unless you're looking for a "good time." It's about real relationships and real social transactions). The consumer movements can be overdone, there's lots of media. Wolff: Direct model has much lower margins, direct marketers give "the piece" in the mail or the advertorial (Disagree, look at sponsorship and private media such as captive magazines, corporate blogs and forums.). Value of content has gone down consistently. Content costs less and less and less. Technology can create cheaper content, and technology itself can give functionality as well. People go to the web for technology AND function. Oakliegh Thorne, Thorne Information Partners: People go to local papers for information, especially in local outlets. The Chicago Tribune has always been a lousy paper, so slow that they have to do features on the front page. Merry: Community newspapers struggling, type of news is commoditized, available for free. Web practically killed my business, did kill my competitor, because it was commoditized, so we increased the value of the content. Editorial effort, extremely functional and efficient platforms to distribute. That's what you're going to have to grapple with. (COMMENT: Agreed, the basic formula, CQ bit the bullet at a great time and is reaping the rewards.) Question: Who pays for foreign correspondents if everything's free? (Ken Wasch, President, SIIA) Wolff: Probably no one, the "foreign bureau" goes away, and in fact in some ways HAS gone away. You can make the argument that we have more information from foreign markets than ever before. Where once we were dependent on Time magazine for foreign news, we're dependent on new sources and other sources that are on site - e.g., if the Guardian is on site, do you really need your own correspondent? Difficult to argue that we don't know more as a result. Shah: If you look at Nielsen, sports, etc., all top ten brands are established brands (hmm, guess he's looking at different stats, but I would agree that established brands have capital and unique value as long as there's unique content.) Need voice, personality. (Didn't help NYT with columns, new voices compete.) Merry: One of the factors is a clinging to the editorial model. (Dang, Bob gets it.) 19th century, papers were going to be objective. That's what we grew up with it, that's dead, technology destroyed it, and people in the news business don't get that. 1840's papers were highly partisan but had great coverage. (Agreed, we're getting a higher quality conversation overall, as long as it's not propaganda dominating the bandwidth). Times-Picayune used to dominate news from Mexico, made its way up and down the east coast. What we had is over, they were small businesses then, will be so again.
English: Who's the winner in this new environment?
Merry: I am! I am in Washington, where billions of dolars are being spent (CQ is indeed a very model for success, not always easy to replicate, but in the right niches it can be done well.)
OnCopyright 2008: Remixes - Art, Creativity and Ownership
Paul Holdengräber Director, Public Programs, The New York Public Library Jonathan Lethem. Author Mark Tribe, Assistant Professor of Modern Culture & Media Studies, Brown University Suzanne Vega, Singer-songwriter
PH: Is this conversation about copyright or about the dangers if pilfery? Plays a song "Tom's Diner," first by Suzanne Vega, then by numerous remixes of her works, including one in German and one with their own saucy lyrics.
TO SV: How does it feel to hear it? SV: Manager said that they were going to sue someone for a remix, she liked it, thought that they had added value, they didn't have any money anyway, why not release it as a single and perhaps it would help sales. Bought it in 1990 for a flat fee, every times they sold a version of that song they would make money. Then people started remixing it like crazy and sending it to her. Orignal money to the original remixer was low, then had to ask new remixers for their permissions in Denmark, Germany and elsewhere. Now there are 34-40 remixes of "Tom's Diner." Usually says yes to buying them unless they're too slick for for uses like a porn channel. Does it express something cool is the key. But she has the right. Listened to Dangermouse version. MT: The song has become an anthem of sorts, perhaps because people knew that it was a use and ask later tradition. SV: Dangermouse decided to use and "tried" to contact record company, worked it out later.
JL: Appreciated previous panel, by being articulate about legal matters it brought it up to the limit of what artists can do to express themselves. Made me think about incentivizing people to consider copyright. Really wanted to write books, discovered that he had to pay the New Yorker to get published. Gradually turned his writing into a middle class living, very few are incentivized by that prospect, a hundred better ways to make money. Most who go on doing it still have day jobs and the incentive never disappears. When you examine how artists create a work it takes enormous acts of imitation and appropriation and recombination, because nothing comes from nowhere. A baby acquires language by imitation, everything's an enormous mosaic of materials from previous experiences. Some of those works will be protected, and artists can express what it is about it that needs to be protected. Hemingway, Beckett, you encounter them and it seems totally original, but Hemingway's first collection was very derivative, as was Beckett. Everyone arrives by this same process.
PH: Does it belittle you that things were appropriated? MT: Doesn't belittle me at all, the concept of originality is suspect, but originality is different from how things are made. It's not just about the pleasures of pilfering for us, crucial for artists to have access to previous cultural works. Have to balance needs of previous artists and artists who need access to them to create new works. Culture about culture is what helps us to understand the society we live in.
SV: If you're a good artist, you can create something that's really your own, that's authentic. Bob Dylan was always appropriating things. JL: Dylan is sourced everywhere, yet he's unmistakably original. His songs wouldn't have existed without him. SV: Helps to make a living, especially if you're a single mother, that's why these things are called into question. JL: But the minute that you start generalizing you find yourself on shaky ground. Almost always immaculately specific.
PH: We all steal but it matters who we stole from and what we did with it. MT: Difference between sourcing and plagiarism? Need to pay the rent as an artist, need to be multiple motivations, cash is king in our society, helps to get paid. Lots of things contributing to free software projects, helps to get paid as consultants, there are other economic models. Grateful Dead allowed fans to come to record their concerts, even reserved them a special section, because they most of their money from touring. Lots of artists give it away for free and make money selling authentic or special packaged versions, lots of people paid for Radiohead album, even though they had it available for free online. SV: 9-Inch Nails artist tried a free release, disappointed that so many took it for free instead of paying, for a new release 26 songs were bundled many different ways, made USD 1.9 million dollars in a few days.
JL: When someone more powerful takes something from someone less powerful we notice (COMMENT: Chiffons' "She's So Fine" copied by George Harrison to produce "My Sweet Lord"). You have to follow the implications, trace it down into the tribal digital culture, seemingly effortless and half-baked YouTube videos. But like Beckett imitating Joyce, out of these humble or pathetic beginnings come other gestures. These gestures need to be validated by noticing the connections.
PH: But some regulation is necessary. JL: Sure, but if no damage is done, why pursue. Stealing a song is not like stealing a wallet. MT: Franfurt School of 1930s, works of art have an aura in which we hold it precious, when we have copies of the Mona Lisa everywhere, is the aura of the Mona Lisa diminished? Seems like appropriation will become more important and more ridiculous.
PH: How do artists survive? SV: I'm interested in that, thinking about the Mona Lisa aura issue, I don't think that it has, the actual painting when you go and look at it has its own presence. Hasn't happened with food, for example, heard one teenager compare the cost of a song to a Happy Meal, won't spend our money on songs. If we could press a button and get eggs, it would be rampant. The music industry is falling apart because of the ease of reproducing the quality of the original work. JL: Hyde's book The Gift, gift culture nests inside commercial culture, it's not either/or, but while you dont' question gifts you don't do that in your career oftentimes and in art experiences. If I buy a book for $20 no amount can match how it might change your life. Artists dwell in a gift economy, he charges universities handsomely, but other venues he does for free. Gift transactions inform everything, doesn't take me out of the mercantile economy, but it does mean that my actions are in a sense impure, they're an impure conflation.
SV: You have that option, you can choose. JL: Don't want to suggest that you should be giving your money away involuntarily. SV: If someone came into your house and took something as a gift you'd be angry. PH: Amazed that in the U.S. there were things that were "gift stores." JL: A totally impure case, 14 year-old punches on your remix and then goes to your next concert. SV: Dangermouse attended at least one legal class to understand the boundaries. JL: Author is alive for only a limited amount of time, yet now copyright easily outstrips their life. How can you incentivize a dead person to make more art?
Interesting panel, a real pleasure to hear Suzanne Vega talk about her challenges in trying to work with remixers, the others provided some insight into the gifts and what is reasonable from an artist's perspective. But at the end of the day it's not clear to me that artists are really grasping fully the opportunities for monetizing their content online. For music specifically, the suppression of radio on the Web has greatly reduced opportunities for licensed content in new contexts through social media. File sharing gets content there to some degree, as does iPods, but there's an inadequate mixture of business models. Commercial radio on traditional airwaves is utterly inadequate, it promotes a tiny sliver of content, makes it nearly impossible to build a fan base effectively and therefore makes it of little benefit from the vast majority of artists. By contrast online and mobile venues excel at these capabilities but are not well suited to channel revenues to artists in many instances because media companies are more concerned about making large sums of money off of the sliver rather than the rest of their catalog. Copyright is treated as the barrier, but the barrier is the lack of inventiveness about business models that copyright prevents. If distribution is now largely free to consumers and inexpensive or free for distibutors, then the value of a system based on the difficulty of distribution.
In the meantime a whole new generation growing up outside of this traditional system is creating a lot of value through their own original works of authorship and are begging for a system that will enable them to benefit from their works. There's a gap here which will be filled in the next few years, and it's a gap that major publishers may or may not benefit from directly.
OnCopyright 2008: The Lawyers Probe the Enduring Search for Balance
Michael Carroll, Professora of Law, Villanova School of Law (moderator) Allan Adler, VP, Legal and Government Affairs, Association of American Publishers Pail Fakler, Partner, Moses & Singer, LLP Stanley Pierre=Louis, VP and Associate General Counsel, Viacom, Inc. [DISCLAIMER: These are notes of a fast-paced conversation on a "best efforts basis, actual details of the conversations may have varied.]
Michael starts by pointing out that we have a culture to support in a market based society so we need to find ways to get people paid. As soon as some form of coded creativity is created there will be competitors who will get a chance to take profits. Copyright is a temporary monopoly, a form of exclusion. Exclusive rights apply only to those with sufficient capital to invest in being a competitor. This form of law, because of the way that it's written, applies to this all, and its one-size-fits-all form poses problems today. To panel: what are the top 3 issues?
SP-L: Discussions of how to reform copyright is a discussion among elites and academics, but real threat is how innovators are innovating the payment scheme. Some exciting technologies don't really include an infrastructure and not the content, others bring the content. MC: Apple was able to go to market with iPod without getting a license, maybe they should be required to have a license. SP-L: Seeing people resolve this through business relationships (COMMENT: This is key, copyright is about defining terms for a relationship). PF: Need to avoid confusion between iPod and iTunes. Labels wanted to get paid on iPod, the hardware - a really bad policy. Wouldn't see a whole lot of products going to market. AA: That would also inhibit innovation in the content creation arena as well. PF: Oftentimes the problem resolves itself over time.
MC: So copyright has some value, where's the need for reform? AA: For the first time ever, copyright has become a civil rights issue, I would disagree, the way that it's been written by Congress and enforced by courts it prevents that, but digital technology brings more people in contact with copyrighted materials than ever before. AP-L: Grokster case, people camping out on court steps for days. People came by bus, by air. AA: Can be traced to advent of digital technology, when we were kids you had contact with movies if you snuck in to the theatre or paid to get in, no real TV contact, except for Million Dollar Movie. Now movie makers can sell the same movie six times - theatre, rental, purchase, on cable, on broadcast, etc. Now can see two versions in a DVD. Has dramatically changed relationship with consumer, so now they feel that they have more of a vested interest.
PF: There are aspects that need to be reviewed, current copyright act long in the tooth, initially a 20-year project, since then changes are by and large industry driven kludges when business models are threatened, not always with a lot of thought as to how it will affect the rest of copyright law. Needs to balance competing interests, can't rewrite it every five years. A fundamental change to how law changes happened, in 1990s with Republican Congress most copyright legislation drafted by lobbyists, which was not so much the case in the past. Who's going to do it nowadays? The tone of the debate used to be calm, now it's polemic, talking about piracy, theft, these rhetorical devices make it hard to get to a real discussion. On the other side of the debate reaching out to human rights rhetoric, that may not help either.
MC: RIAA seeks statutory damages, If they're in it for the money you may be able to determine profits, statutory damages based on number of items. The legitimacy of these claims are called into question when everyday individuals are claimed to owe millions of dollars. AA: You can't point to too many of these verdicts. MC: College kids know that it's USD 5-10,000 to settle, but then the headlines give copyright a bad rap. AA: Statutory awards were supposed to be a deterrant, but largely they haven't acted as a deterrant.
MC: Mom puts up a cute video dancing to a Prince song, Prince's record company sends a take-down order, is that appropriate? AA: Why aren't fair use advocates more aggressive about challenging movie producers, students stopped from using 10-15 seconds of film in a school project, knowing that a Federal judge will rule for fair use. Now advocates from Stanford who will deploy themselves to expand incrementally fair use via cases. Reality is that fair use remains alive and healthy. PF: Fair use is area in which the other side of the equation has the upper hand. Transforming for new uses is being embraced by the courts to short-circuit the work that juries have to do for fair use. SP-L: Soldja Boy video on YouTube, used commerical cartoon characters, not one take-down notice. Fair use is seeing a lot of shift on both sides of the equation. All companies are beginning to see that significance, that's why you're not seeing significant fair use cases going to the Supreme Court. PF: Fees awarded in fair use are rare because damages are difficult to determine. When you mount a successful case, it's rare to get attorney's fees and hard to bond appeals. AA: Cases are really the exception for fair use, fair use is alive and well in large part because there is so much that occurs without challenge. SP-L: Usually happens when there's monetization.
MC: That's what Google is doing to build their search engine. AA: Not all true, as a policy and as a practical matter they operate under a doctrine of implied consent. Clearly they're not the same, fair use implies that you don't need consent. PF: Shouldn't be mutually exclusive. AA: Judges are aware of doctrine, know how to apply it.
MC: Congress seems to say that we need more tax dollars spent on enforcement of existing laws on copyright. AA: Criminal enterprises figured out that there's big money to be had in piracy, idea of having Federal government to protect a part of the U.S. economy that exports heavily shouldn't be surprising. SP-L: If you put together all industries using copyright it's still significant, it's not as if people stopped pressing albums. MC: Sounds like you're doing OK, maybe the government shouldn't be involved. AA: Most owners do get involved, but it's still an appropriate role for government. PF: Legislation proposed would compel the government to spend a particular amount. Industry brought this to Congress, said we want this. Wouldn't say that Congress is crying out for this. Sometimes that's legitimate, but it's not like that the Justice Department cannot decide to take this on themselves.
MC: If copyright really broken? AA: Not hearing it from here. SP-L: In many businesses, new devices are invented by three guys in a garage, an enormous demand for copyrighted products and so a big demand for new devices, but enforcing copyright is not on the product checklist. MC: RedLasso, takes video content, clips it, lets clips get propagated. Doesn't have the money to take care of that. AA; A responsible technologist will assess the risks and will evaluate if it creates legal liability. PF: All you have to do is to get a secondary liability case to Supreme Court directly they're not going to help map old law on new technology. Would help if both sides would be along at the same table.
MC: You write a doodle, you're a copyright owner. Do YouTube video owners belong in the room? AA: Consumer manufacturers belong in room, networks, nobody belongs out of the room now. Now question is whether we can still write general rules that are technologically neutral. MC: Other knock is that it lasts too long. Economic value expires, orphan works crop up, don't know how to do the right thing so culture is stifled. New bill, would have allowed limits on damages, do a good faith search, was killed because one particular interest felt it would affect photographs. Maybe a nice case study of sector specific deals. On orphan works, if you can't fix term, can we do sector by sector deal? AA: Most people don't realize that book industry didn't take a position, publishers of Hemingway might look at this, but others looking at educational markets can't wait for it to go to public domain. Difficult to generalize, photographers will be affected differently, etc. How much that's going to continue different to say. SP-L: Not much new since DMCA, now Time Warner spinning off Time Warner Cable, changes what their position will be, angles change. AA: Most people identified as copyright owners are also extensive users of copyrighted content.
MC: Most people are users and producers, new angle: is there a vision baked in to copyright of the "good society" that's at odds with what the digital technology says it should be? I may not be at the top of the 1 percent who can write Harry Potter, but if I engage in slash fiction and make the characters gay, should author be able to control my product? Technologies invite people in. Dangermouse mashups, does copyright have it right? AA: Difficult to put culture on a pedestal when Paris Hilton is on a pedestal, original author may deserve recognition, but derivative authors are owed recognition as well. Have to remind people that facts and ideas are not copyrightable, this allows genre dramas and so on. Plenty of room to acknowledge creativity, but probably would be hard to draw a clear conclusion. SP-L: Many cases flip every time that they're heard. PF: Can't take transformative aspects out of copyright law. AA: What' sufficient transformative use? It's never been about Google's snippets, it's been about creating the largest digital library when they could have just as easily gone to copyright owners.
Have to wrap this up, my concern out of this panel is that copyright law has been trying to define so many gray angles on copyright law that we really are losing any sense of a coherent law. Copyright holders are pursuing cases against all aspects of copyright law fairly arbitrarily, without a sense of the broader issues outside of their narrow interests. In the process of doing so, people's productivity through copyrighted materials is reduced and the productivity of copyright holders to make money from their works clearly and effectively is reduced. To some degree this is why DRM software was so appealing: it's like a stone-walled castle in a realm of arbitrary forces outside their gates. All we have are the opinions of a wide array of judges in a wide array of cases in a wide array of jurisdictions, none of which makes commerce more clear. This makes it harder for people to make use of copyrighted content for derivative works and fair use - and society's overall productivity suffers as a result. Specific to Google, Google enables people to do things that original works usually don't allow one to do - they're creating and index for a database that enables people to see new patterns from existing content. The question isn't whether copyright holders should be paid when they're supposed to be paid, the question is what type of publishing is creating more value for society? In general, most new value in publishing over the past ten years has been created by derivative works. So why enable a less productive end of the economy have leverage, even if they are owed some rights? This is not to say that works with rights to them cannot provide and reap more value if given the right technology, but by tying that value to distribution instead of rights to value at the point of consumption then original works holders are working the thinner end of the value equation overall.
OnCopyright 2008: Shifting Perceptions of How You Can Use Copyrighted Materials
Tim Wu, Professor, Columbia Law School kicked off with a discussion of fan content. Pulls up a fan page on Wikipedia for a fictional character in the television show "Lost" which includes copyrighted materials from the show, along with complete copies of screenplays from the show on Lostpedia. The question is, is this marketing or a copyright infringement? This is for copyright holders to decide, of course, in the instance of these materials fans are creating lots of value-add conent. The Harry Potter Lexicon was considered to be the most authoritative reference source for the many tiny details that make up the fictional world of Harry Potter and his friends. The site has not only content but opportunities to buy merchandise, so it was not entirely a work or charity. Unfortunately, his rock-star status of site creator Steve Vander Ark in the Potter groupie set has been stymied because of a copyright suit against him when he decided to pursue the publication of a print version of the reference. The fans decided to take author J.K. Rowling's side in the matter and, according to Wu, expelling him from events and online venues. This in and of itself has created a whole new stream of content discussing the case and its legalilties and social issues. Ironically, the fan site carries its own restrictive copyright statement.
Does this put a pall over fan sites in general? Author Douglas Rushkoff points out the "wink-wink, nudge-nudge" aspect of copyright holders' relationships with such products. Gigi Sohn, President and Co-Founder of Public Knowledge, points out that copyright holders for Potter are not being sincere in their intent to create an alternative work, but it's different she thinks in Europe where artists have "moral rights." Ironically she has allowed other books to be created by fans, but Wu notes that the problem was that it was useless, that it was just her work resorted. Yet Wu points out that it's largely an index of where particular terms are referenced. Matt Mason, author of The Pirate's Dilemma, notes that this is not so different from a remix of a video online. To Matt it's not about the legal decision because the author has been ostracized.
Wu sees this as a verdict by the leaders of fandom, because fans get so much from their relationship with Rowling. It becomes, if you will, a social issue as much as a copyright issue. Are authors co-opting fans, as opposed to Vander Ark's advocacy for fans? Doug points out that this forces original authors to consider what it is that they can do that's valuable. If you're still the best at what you do, then that's great, but if amateurs respect your work enough to create original works in homage to you, doesn't that need to be respected, Matt notes.
Wu returns to the Vander Ark site, he points out that Rowling and her media companies didn't care about this site until they wanted to put it online. When it was going to be a physical instantiation she got involved. In the court case, when the judge asked why she didn't do anything before, she said that it wasn't a book so she wasn't concerned. GiGi points out that nobody is going to print out a 400-page book from online materials, books have a special status because they haven't been replicated easily. Matt notes that some books that were pirated in electronic copies created a market for millions of copies in print when they were introduced in foreign markets. Yet print is a different authority, Matt argues.
Gigi notes that in some ways people still consider the Web to be the realm of amateurs, Douglas notes that books and money are both products of the printing press era. The money that we use now was invented in the Renaissance, before that there were many local currencies. (COMMENT: this is a real key point, value exchange in Web content becomes far more pesonalized and localized. Media could be called content that's fungible via central value recognition vehicles - money.). Gigi notes that at a conference Michael Eisner was caustic with Ariana Huffington because she was giving content from others for free.
Wu asks if the online world, seen as a sandbox where anything goes and things like posted transcripts are infringements, as soon as you exit it are you in the "real world" of copyright? Douglas notes that copyright is used primarily to serve corporations who can put up toll booths, the Web is where we stand a chance of restoring a non-extractive model for human production. Gigi notes that it's not an anything goes model, Google gets thousands of take-down orders from copyright holders. Matt notes that all of these online materials don't replace the experience of watching an episode of Lost on television. It depends, he notes, on whose ecosystem will be shut down. Wu notes that at the trial it was revealed that the site made USD 6,500 over serveral years. Is it really about the money? (COMMENT: Social media creates different kinds of value that can be leveraged in different contexts).
I raised the point that in many ways the online Potter lexicon would seem to be making an original work of authorship by reorganizing the content into a unique index. I think that this is the key point for such issues, is there original value being created that does not replicate an original work of authorship? Wu pointed out that at the trial on the lexicon the defendant's lawyer argued that fair use applied to protect the original work, but I think that it's really not so much fair use as taking an original work and creating something with unique value. Vander Ark completely reorganized Rowling's content: you can't read his lexicon and say that you've had the experience of reading her book, even though you may have read the large bulk of the words that were in the book. It's simply not the same experience. It is, as Matt suggested, a huge remix.
Good comment from Douglas Q&A: he was at Sony Records and people were crying because they were working for people who didn't give a hoot about music. It's not a matter of making money but rather do you care about what you're doing? Matt notes that people thinking about how we can make USD 40 billion for our shareholders instead of thinking about how they can create value. He notes that in Silicon Valley people are getting worried because you really don't need the capital that one used to need to make an idea happen. (COMMENT: this goes to the issue of what is it do you own and why? Is copyright supposed to exist to serve corporate business models or does copyright exist to ensure the distribution of valuable information and experiences? Altruism is not about doing things for free but about creating different types of value.) Douglas later noted how corporations are struggling with the concept of death, that business cycles come to an end and that this creates problems for our economies. I loved the rant, it fits in directly with what I'm writing about in Content Nation, it is necessary for publisher to recognize that how people consume value moves on and that they need to adapt to that reality.
This was a really good panel that raised really good questions, but at the end of the day it would seem that the key problem is that Rowling and her publishers didn't address the use of materials online first. The print version is of little consequence if the essential value of the content reorganization isn't addressed first. Authors need to recognize that unless their original works are really being hurt directly by direct replication, then copyright is not the tool that they should be using to further their well-being as a source of creativity.
OnCopyright 2008: Technology Confronting the Tools of Disruption
Chris Sprigman, Associate Professor, University of Virginia School of Law Kevin O'Kane, President and CEO, RedLasso Clay Shirky, Author, Here Comes Everybody
Kevin O'Kane of RedLasso, kicked off with a demo of their tool that makes it easier for bloggers to embed copyrighted content into blogs. Not so different in some ways from Voxant. Clay Shirky framed the real issue about today's publishing environment when he explained to his young daughter that you cannot get anything that you want on the television. She said, "You mean it's broken?" This to me points out one of the key issues with copyright: distribution control is not necessarily getting the right content to the right audiences at the right time.
Chris: Is the fundamental issue copying or who gets paid? Clay: where you see the word "technology," replace it with "reality." What you really mean is what's possible in the world has changed. Laws that can't be enforced aren't he notes, and when you give people a piece of equipment that enables then to do something law cannot always catch up in a democratic society. As a practical question, when everyone has a copying machine, what's the challenge to the law.
Chris: We didn't get copyright randomly, we got it for a reason, the way that the world was it seemed good to have property rights. What do we do now? Kevin: A third of media companies say 'right on,' a third say you're the antichrist, a third say they're going to retire now. As a "recovering broadcaster" innovation cannot be stifled. Clay: With RIAA, the predator/prey game create extreme evolutionary pressures, file sharing challenged with a network that couldn't be shut down easily. Was shutdown a failure of law or technology? Chris: A bit of each. Kelp in the ocean bends. Napster could have bent, RIAA could have bent, they didn't. RIAA "beat" Napster, but new networks evolved that couldn't be beat. Nobody to make a deal with now. Music business imploding, maybe not a failure of law verus a failure of ethics. Kevin: We believe that there's a value chain, we believe that we're in that chain, people should be compensated for their work.
Chris: Other Napster upsets in the making? Clay: New challenge is to the A&R department, harder to break new artists, no longer have to send out people to clubs to find the one person you want to monetize. Publishing was expensive and it was risky to create distribution. Pushing copies to end points is free, judgment is in play, editorial judgment no longer at the source. Collective filtering, such as in Wikipedia, determines what's important. Groups of people can make judgment without touching the means of production.
Chris: Look at RedLasso, I see democracy, in campaign debates a flourishing of discussions from the discussions, Madison's vision of democracy is taking on new forms. Copyright creates scarcity (COMMENT: that wasn't the original intent of copyright, the original intent was to create abundant access by protecting the ability of new technology to make a profit.) How do you make a living doing creative work? Clay: Open source software licsensing increases rights rather than decreases, most serious Linux contributors are paid by IBM, Novell or Sun to maintain it, they don't make money on Linux per se but participation makes money through services. People have started to calcualate ecosystem values in different ways, they see that they can ship more units of hardware and other software that is more valuable and make more money. IBM kept Microsoft from penetrating the mainframe market as a result with lower costs.
Chris: Music business having trouble collecting money from discs, well-known artists being signed by non-traditional deals, 260 degrees view of the person's value. MusicToday bought old factory, now a merchandising depot for band to create merchandising for their bands. If IP is not the value, how does the business change? Kevin: I play music, it's all about live, it's all about the sum of the parts. Clay: Depends on what you think is the critical piece, linotype operators laughed at the Mac when it debuted with nine fonts, twenty years later most are gone. Not a coherent unit of the industry per se. No society never existed that didn't reward artists. Kevin: Napster was putting out garbage, marketplace was demanding variety, choice. That fueled Napster. Chris: Hard to explain how different the music industry used to be, fandom is different, fans who "unearthed" nuggets really identified with them.
Chris: Newspapers are uniquely out of touch. Materials and equipment are very expensive, classifieds are far more effective online. Craigslist is a knife to the heart of newspapers. IP law says nothing about the value produced in Craigslist. Craigslist can do what it wants, newspapers will drown. Nobody talks about rights. IP is about who owns what, who can be paid, and so on, what should drive the conversation on who can use television footage? Kevin: Local papers are suffering, but online is thriving, have to look for values in distribution channels. Have to put the product where people are and capitalize on new distribution channels.
Chris: Why didn't the networks do this? In theory copyright centralizes ownership and makes investment easier, why is RedLasso in this business and not networks? Kevin: Hulu is a good example of where the networks are trying to do something, RedLasso is about extending the shelf life of content. Clay: If American Airlines was run by travel agents, Travelocity would have lost. Novelty comes mostly from the outside. (COMMENT: In Content Nation, marketing is not about defining markets so much as being the context in which markets evolve. It's a bazaar in tents, not a shopping mall). Theories based on property rights create maximum efficiency for resources. But economic theory will look towards maximum value realization. Clay: People who will create quality and defend it with enforced scarcity. Past a certain level, people care more about convenience than more quality (COMMENT: correlates to the Hawthorne plant, where brighter lights weren't as important about people caring about what they wanted).
Question: In institutions, they benefit differently from a teenager, what about people who profit from information rather than entertainment consumers. Clay: heading towards train wreck in genomics, people patenting genomes, will be harder to work on syndromic changes because it's going to be harder to assemble genomics rights owners. Will see much more movement towards open source model. Chris: Very important: process of figuring out the genome, this is where patenting should focus, now producing this information is relatively easy, the hard work is figuring out how mutations interact. Downstream reasearch more difficult and intensive, so patents put the cost on the part that doesn't yield market rewards, it's a tax.
Clay: Principle role of librarians in academic settings has gone from being facilitators to gatekeepers for access to licensed content. People with tenure in universities will not perish, get some to publish to open search engines and put the papers on LuLu. Chris: there's an investment to killing trees that tenure committees believe in. Put the best stuff up for people to see.
Good panel, pointed out strongly that the value of being able to facilitate collaboration is becoming more valuable than the distribution of content that facilitates collaborative value. We see this in our practice where B2B database publishers are increasingly offering one level of access to all of their basic content and value-add pricing for specific features that add value to specific groups in specific contexts. Copyright is still valuable as a way to identify value, but I think that increasingly what we're seeing is value in intellectual property moving to the coffee house from the printing press, to bring it to my Thomas Paine example in Content Nation. Licensing provides value in contexts that distribution facilitates but the value is what happens once a work gets into that context. It's not so much a matter of morality as a matter of asserting the real value of a work to its audience.
SIIA Information Industry 2008: David Eun, VP Content Partnerships, Google, Inc.
Eun quote from Patrick Spain: value now comes from ubiquity, not scarcity. Patrick: David, show us the love
Eun: Incredibly busy year at Google, share the landscape from our perspective, explain what we do with regard to content and how we partner with content companies.
1.2 billion people online, every subject available to create communities. Rural schoolhouse, have access to very fast Ethernet router, top researchers have same access to same information. Market is now worldwide. Internet has grown faster than any previous medium, TV took 45 years to reach a billion in revenue, Internet 3 years. An exabyte of new content every year. Would fill 150,000 Library of Congresses. Kids are consuming, trading, it's the way that people now look at the world.
Model was false scarcity, distribution windows thought out carefully, still compelling businesses, was delivering content to where they were. Today it's really about ubiquity, companies succeeding embrace ubiquity. Kid in hotel room wanted to watch a TV show an hour from when he wanted it, not used to not having home DVR. Instead of bringing eyeballs to content, bring content to eyeballs. No secret sauce or magic formula, we're not quite sure.
First thing is to focus on user, doesn't start on technology, back into whatever applications are interesting. The practice of this is remarkable. Bottom-up innovation, not one product comes from a senior executive, always a small group of people. We always say don't present me with a problem, present me with a problem with a possible answer. Googlers thought "wouldn't this be great"
Perfection is the tyranny of good enough, last 10 percent requires 90 percent of the time. Expectation is that it won't blow things away immediately. YouTube is new every six weeks. Media is used to making perfect products, now it's about keeping a good product fresh.
Mission is well known and used on a daily basis. Make information accessible and useful. Less than 15 percent of world's information is digitized. Content partnerships works with media companies, work with Web companies making sure that they get indexed. A few years ago if I had questions on Martin Luther King, Jr., I would find fantastic Web pages. Now I can also find news sites, books, buildings and sites in Google Earth, videos. Future - not quite sure, but a long list. We think broadly, this is all opportunity.
Long tail - media focuses on the head, the hits. See long tail in all products. 65 percent of all YouTube videos were visited at least once by someone in the world. Can now potentially monetize library content, other forms that would not normally get "hit" packaging. Also the "torso," the "sweet spot" where there are niche companies, professional companies with specific commercial objectives. Professional Bullrider's Association will not get a cable channel but in torso they will get a slot.
Traditional is large advertisers attaching to highly popular content. But smaller advertisers, local pizzerias, etc., who don't have access to content owners. Now match users to both content and advertisers. Today it's AdWords, more relevant ads may not have bid as much but they may get better placement. People pay thousands sometimes to get the right click. Apply same technology to partner sites via AdSense.
YouTube - contineus to grow, hundreds of millions of videos watched daily, hundreds of thousands of videos watched daily. Ten hours of video uploaded every minute on YouTube, 19 local versions launched worldwide. Isn't just YouTube cut the power of video. Get video, sports, news, howto. Google is the platform, buys tools and services to help peple capture and upload content. Casio has YouTube branded portal for uploading videos. Can zoom in on Eiffel Tower in Google Earth, can click on it to receive video from YouTube relating to it. Panasonic TVs now have feature to watch YouTube through TV. iPhone has huge YouTube video audience.
In-video ads monetization - money very small compared to businesses built up over decades. Users around the world will sample via online video. 300x250 ads on side, translucent bar embedded in video, can close it and video resumes. Easy money in pre-rolls, don't know how much money you're losing to irritated users=. In-video makes it easy to help users onpass ads virally, many see them as part of the content.
For print, video is a whole new frontier. Consumers can get what they want, NYT is YouTube branded channel, people can sign up, a town hall, pages are controlled by partners. Forbes - different types of videos, shot differently, have a different response.
We are a technology platform, don't own content or produce it, want to work with people who do produce content. At steady state in AdSense, a billion dollars go to partners.
Consumers pay with time, I invest in putting in new video responses, attention is what advertisers want. Don't have to be smarter, just execute faster. Need to set expectations such that when we say it's in beta that we mean it, but it also means that you'll get an realy lead on data and have had tremendous benefit from exposure. Risks but also rewards.
Question: How does someone with a traditional background work in an engineering oriented company? Eun: Is an engineering company run by engineers, shocking experience, people put a premium on efficiency, taking care of action items, who is going to do what by when, the antibodies may reject the virus, might be a few tidbits from outside that will help but it's radically different. Also a very young culture, lots of enthusiasm, not jaded, not cynical, cross between Red Cross and investment banking. On the other hand, you're working with a lot of young people, haven't seen a lot of ups and downs. Remind people that it's really not about them and their inabilities, you're privileged to work at Google. Very mission centered, don't talk about stock work. Money ideas have to pass through the filter of how this helps the user.
Contexutal model is promotional, stimulates interest. Draws people closer to the front door, in constant dialog with content owners, partners have paid models, happy to take content that will stimulate interest. NYT went from paid to free model, amount of traffic from Google increased large, not exact numbers but ten or twenty times maybe. Not always the case, not right for everyone, but on balance the way the web works seems to suggest that you focus on stimulating interest, use different interests.
QUICK TAKE: Interesting to listen to David, it's kind of the accepted Revised Standard Version of the world from my perspecive, central but no longer radical. It's also interesting that it's still early days for making money off of contextualized content. When I asked about helping people used to having people pay for access, the short version of the answer is that they're mostly doing not much beyond text ads. The key opportunity that will draw this all together for greater value if a broader approach. Instead of the softwar saying "Now that we're here, this is the right ad for you" the software should be able to say, "Now that I am here, what is the most valuable thing for me to do next that is acceptable to me, the content producer and the person renting space or action priority?" A simple algorithm with complex implications, implications that tools such as Attributor only hint at.
Great conference, well managed, way too much good food, and many, many valued colleagues who I thank so very deeply for their personal and professional support.
SIIA Information Industry 2008: Daniel Sullivan, U.S. Department of State
Speaker: Daniel Sullivan, Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Economic, Energy and Business Affairs, U.S. Dept. of State
Innovation in software and communications helps to drive U.S. economic growth, high-paying jobs. State department knows how important your work is, 30 people dedicated to information industry policy and helping to create market oppotunities and social improvement, and yes, political freedom. Finally we recognize the continuing development of U.S. information industry is in jeopardy. 200 billion counterfeit content sold overseas. What is the state department doing? Answer is, a lot, it's a big focus.
Millions spent on IP enforcement on developing nations, embassises active in advocacy and education, Canada criminalizing camcording in theatres. Need to upgrade legal infrastructure, working on an anti-counterfeiting trade agreement, working with E.U., Japan, Canada, spread it to other countries. OECD, get their leadership statements to reference IP protection. Almost always spearheaded by U.S. government. Also when necessary not adverse to bringing WTO action for IP, two WTO cases against China. Facilitating market entry through trade organizations.
Free trade agreement agenda, will level playing field, included chapters in all FTAs - over 12 since 2001 - that go beyond global rights protection. Australian FTA, combating Internet piracy, Singapore, number of FTA agreements exceed all previous administrations combined. Since 2000, sales to countries with FTA have grown as trade agreements with the rest of the world. Focusing now on passing three more FTAs, with Columbia, Panama, Korea, all of which have strong IP protection and transparency regulations that are important to U.S. companies.
Columbia FTA - will lead to significant benefits, huge tariff differential, ours 0.1 percent, theirs 13 percent, agriculture much higher. Going to zero on both sides will increase U.S. exports. To fail to do so will be false populism.
One of our broader goals is to work to integrate parts of the world that are disconnected from the world as a whole and with one another, FTAs help also national security interests. Secy Rice - half the world lives on the edge of survival, greatest threats come from poorly governed states not integrated into global economy. Post-9/11, threats now come often from countries that are weak and disconnected from the global economic system. Private sector is far from a bystander. Our best ambassadors are oftentimes not ambassadors but business people traveling abroad reflecting American values. Salute this sector, your impact domestically and globally is important.
QUICK TAKE: Notable that most FTAs that help IP are with developed nations where global media companies already have strong interests, there's a strong desire by many to extend U.S. copyright length to other nations by these companies, at the end of the day I believe that this will slow down countries most threatened by the growth of nations less particular about IP.
SIIA Information Industry 2008: Case Studies - Information Industry Innovators
Moderator: Lisa Bodell, CEO, futurethink Panelists: Jim Brock,CEO and Co-founder, Attributor Steve Goldstein, Chairman and CEO, Alacra Darrell W. Gunter, Executive Vice President/CMO, Collexis Holdings, Inc.ein
[A little challenged with technology in the short transition to this panel, apologies to early speakers] Brock: We harvest and help publishers to turn lemons into lemonade Goldstein: We package and focus on customers Gunter: Can show key concepts on a topic, shine a bright light on topics such as science, can show seconds who's the experts in your field. Also provide hypothesis generation. Make scientists happy, improve their critical path.
Bodell: How to make innovation happen. Goldstein: Many publishing have enormous assets and they don't apply innovation to the raw materials. We have something that's worth x, how can we make it 2x or 3x. Brock: Blogs and mashups are laboratories, you can understand how to do it in your own organization. We'll tell you which articles got the most play in the blogosphere. Gunter: Researchers set up a coffee shop, we can show you in ten seconds who's really connecting with one another.
Bodell: How you can add value to content? Brock: Thinks may be copied, if it's not linked to where you want it to go it doesn't have value [comment: key concept - hearkening back to Google presentation, copyright is really about controlling behavior]. Gunter: STM publishers have all this data, Elsevier putting reference works online, 10 billion industry, how do we extract value? A window of science, shows you what you know and what you don't know.
Bodell: How do you get aha moments? Goldstein: We listen to customers, not necessarily an immediate thing, takes some synthesis. Bodell: In our business it's a series of aha moments, with billions of things happening over and over again in algorithms, things can add up to a P&L, but engineers can see opportunities to reduce unit costs. A series of aha moments. Gunter: When the customer confirms the aha moment is key. Some customers have great blogs, will let us know when we're on track. Brock: Customers say "we did this with it," gives you great ideas. Goldstein: Web 2.0 Summit useful, problem isn't ideas but how to make ideas real. Could be too much resource or a distraction.
Bodell: Which ideas to you execute upon? Brock: We're a small company, usually it's a vetting and prioritizing and re-prioritizing process. Sometimes something interesting comes up you have to figure out how to slot it in. Have to trust your instinct and the instinct of the team. Goldstein: Give summer interns an opportunity, industry wiki lead to internal wiki, site redesign, blog recaps. Trial and error with low investment.
Bodell: How do you do innovate? Gunter: Simple things can be great things, deciding to do it could be the biggest step. Goldstein: Know it when you see it, you see an opportunity for something marketable. How are you going to solve particular problems. Brock: In team meeting saw that we need to recognize innovation, has to be a non-obvious way to do something new, could be a process, administrative.
Bodell: You get a great idea, how do you get it out the door? Gunter: Need budget and stakes in the ground, set expectations, need design group to work with you to make sure that you're on track. Brock: People and machines, leave facilities in the budget, leave unstructured time.
Bodell: Not easy to get people to be innovative, how do you get people to take risks? Goldstein: Get as many employees out of the office to customers, trade shows and conferences. Gunter: Main problem is to find which of the many ideas are the best ideas, opposite problem Brock: Bring on people who have passion for the non-obvious problem Goldstein: Be flexible, maybe Google's 20 percent rule is hard to emulate, don't look over shoulders too much, encourage people to learn on the job.
Bodell: Part of innovation is failure, what failures helped you? Gunter: Early at Elsevier, tried to apply process from Wall Street to academic marketplace, fell on deaf ears, audience had other concerns on their minds. Had to understand traditional issues first and was successful afterwards, moving from one industry to another you have to adapt to new expectations. Brock: Sometimes processes fail or are inefficient, learn from it. Hope that employees know that he's OK with failures, great employees always want to succeed the first time.
Bodell: Mindsets in innovators? How do you hire? Brock: Ability to think of things in different ways. Gunter: Someone well-read in the industry you're in.
Bodell: Emulative companies? Goldstein: Twitter as smaller blogs, Facebook as MySpace for college kids. Brock: LinkedIn, every few weeks there's some new ways to do things. Gunter: Biomedexperts.com new site, life scientists are using it.
QUICK TAKE: Good panel, a great reminder that innovation can thrive in many publishing environments, it's not all about Silicon Valley but applying their lessons and the tried and true lessons - speak to your customers is Steve Goldstein's mantra, and it's an important one - is possible in any content company.
SIIA Information Insustry Summit 2008 - Fair Use or Foul? William Patry, Sr. Copyright Counsel, Google Inc.
We may be asking too much for fair use. Any legal doctrine needs to be coherent to be practical. Once we say it's x then we know that it's not y. Fair use is incapable of definition in some ways. If Google scans a million books under copyright we really don't know what follows. If a judge says something is fair use each case is ad hoc in general. Once fair use or any other doctrine is stretched to fit many new issues it usefulness gets stretched as a doctrine. The issue is really far broader than fair use, one doesn't discuss it dispassionately. Distressing to see an inability to discuss these things constructively. Given that state of affairs, why? Epistomology of copyright, how did one come to believe in your view, what did you bring to it initially?
Moast people assume what we assume that copyright is about is what others think. But if people come out in different places, what then? One bill in Congress is a "pro-copyright" bill. We can agree that copyright is a good thing in someplaces, not in others. You wouldn't say you're pro-medicine or anti-medicine. How does one become pro-copyright or anti-copyright? People see videos on YouTube and it's my property, that's mine, well, that's one way of looking at this. If you see copyright as a mark of property you're in one camp, but you could look at it as a regulation enacted by Congress. The word "property" has certain connotations. Usually when we say copyright is property we say that it's intangible property. So what makes intangible property versus tangible property? What does it mean that I own property?
Generally ownership means that one has dominion over things and to exclude people from doing stuff with your things. You can just say no, it's your property, it's your right. All that matters is that it's yours, end of discussion. Valente: If you can't protect what you own, you don't own anything. Well, do you own it, and if so, what do you own. Unlike Valente, not being able to stop each and every use doesn't mean that you don't own it. 1898, writer Augstine Berell, Western culture venerates property. Rights were supposed to be outside law, natural rights, without which society would not be possible. He who interferes with it is a thief or a tresspasser.
To describe someone as a thief or tresspasser you need an owner. Robinson Crusoe, cannibals in a cave, do the cannibals really care if Crusoe care about his property, no, they see him as food. To say that copyright it property over things, is problematic. What I assert is that it's a system for ordering social relationships. If Rowling has copyright over Potter it means company A can make a book, company B make a movie, and so on. It means that we can say who can do what, it's not a right over the thing itself. It's a social judgment. Courts choose between conflicting interests.
How do you order these social relationships and why does it matter? If you think that copyright is a property right, than any use is offensive and any one who does it is a heathen. It's not healthy or accurate. If instead you see copyright as a social system set up for really good reasons, you start thinking of what the goal is of copyright - namely furthering learning. A social system designed to encourage learning, if it is, then it's a good thing. You will stop people from interfering with people learning things. Not productive to say that people who use copyrighted works without permission are bad, just not true.
If copyright is to help people learn, how to we implement this? Learning requires a generosity of spirit, you can't have it both ways, you can't say you want innovation but not for your business model. Has to work that way for everybody. However the copyright system works it has to encorage innovation, don't want tenth goose to cut off all other golden eggs.
Question: A cursory reading of copyright law asserts temporary rights. Intent was built at a time when the commons were a common concept. How do you see the law evolving when the mass no longer attends to the intent of the law. Patry: The constitution is a living thing, has to be adopted to current needs. Any law should be adapted to where people are. I don't think that most people abhor laws that don't really apply. There's an awful lot in copyright law to abhor, the legal system has enabled rights extraordinary, many people have evolved to see copyright as oppressive, I believe in copyright and found that problematic. Original term of copyright was 14 years, with one renewal possible -28 maximum. Now since 1998 everything can be copyrighted up to 70 years (Disney). There's no way in the world that we needed that extra twenty years. No living author says life plus seventy or nothing. It was for old works. Every single use has to be with permission, like a male dog walking down the street, you think everything was yours. Was no performance rights until 1909. The way that people are using stuff is in a collective way, a fanstasic thing, could not have come about if one central person said we need this and this and this. A long way to say that we have evolved in unproductive ways.
Question: Has to be that way, but how do we protect and encorage the creators? Patry: In DC, pro-copright bill, everyone believed that anyone harmed by infringement should get all they deserve. Existing law is extremely favorable to copyright law. I do worry about people not respecting copyright law because it's too strong, that's a complete rationalization. As a practical matter would like to see change in public perception that people respect it. Follow-up: Contradictory? Patry: Speaking of copyright as a property right isn't productive, saying everything else is theft is bad for them, they need certain rights. Fair use is given as unpaid use, they shouldn't have to stop all uses. trick is to find the balance.
Quick Take: A well-constructed argument overall, if with some potential gaps, the question is how the ability of publishers to help people learn via enabling valuable to reach people who need it has to be addressed more specifically. To some degree it's mostly a matter of publishers recognizing that protecting the creation of copies is not the real issue, it's the rights associated with that copy that are at issue. In this sense we really need to think of copyright as context rights and to accept that online technologies need to evolve for authors and publishers to express their desires more effectively. We're going to see strong innovation on these lines over the next few years, I expect copyright issues to diminish and publishers who can adapt their models to making the enforcement of context rights the priority more successful
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2008: Video Panel
Moderator: Ken Doctor, Analyst, Outsell, Inc.
Panelists: Ian Blaine, CEO, thePlatform, Inc. Danny Fishman, President, Broadband Enterprises Sean Morgan, Founder & CEO, Critical Mention Shoba Purushothaman, CEO & Co-founder, The NewsMarket
Ken started off with a great compilation of videos seen by millions online that were cultural icons in 2007. Mainstream video still matters, obviously, but user-generated videos are creating their own cultural icons quickly, inexpensively and with a different kind of focus.
Ken: Tell us about your space. Fishman: Started as a rep firm, struggled with scalability, built a pre-roll network, moving into brands and brand syndication. As opposed as to wanting to broadcast on a site or a channel advertisers wanted much more granularity. Started pushing out beyond sites like Warner, in syndication we're seeing people looking for specific programming and scale, need multiple distribution channels, have evolved syndication platform to provide contexutal syndication, mostly repurposed programming now, but now original online programming is hot, still a lot of iffy ideas being pitched, working with Hollywood production companies so that brands will enter. Long-form brand entterainment is now looking at online.
Shoba: On one side it's the news business, on the other side is the marketing industry, started knowing that text world was moving online and would need to integrate video content, created more effective distribution mechanism, free marketing videos available to media for free. Enabled news industry to buy and sell video content. Traditionally built around buying services from traditional video outlets like Reuters, news industry is searching for more efficient ways to get content. Also government, rollout of new 5-dollar bills. Launched 5 years ago, all of the news media were television stations then, over last 18 months 50 percent are print titles, niche trade publications, half of base but consuming 2/3 of content. Pfizer increased video for news by 80 percent. Still a lot of intimidation about technology, need to know what they need, do a lot of business in auto sector, all-time most popular ocntent was the launch of the world's cheapest car by Tata.
Blaine: There's a transition from this being a toy to a tool. Serve both media companies and B2B companies, one has a choice one doesn't consumer media has to do this, enterprise doesn't have to do this but it's a choice. On media side my 5-year-old has no idea about linear programming, that's a telling thing, its influence on television is huge. How to take the best of the Internet world and to make them both more available. Matching interests to inventory is key, as is the power of the crowd, people add value to content, cannot overestimate the importance of this. Some examples are things tagged as political debate but humorous, but advertisers will have a far different attitude towards humor clips. Working on learning more about the content, what it does when it goes places, info in the package makes it easier to put meaningful advertising in it.
Morgan: Two business lines, Critical Mention, focused on aggregating content for business intelligence, desktop subscription, Lexis/Nexis of TV, thousands of desktops licensed, infrastructure today is ingesting 13,000 hours of TV. Make it searchable by spoken word. B2B intelligence marketplace is very large but mostly driven by text. ClipSyndicate a but like ScreamingMedia, publishing tools, log into it, capture highly authoritative, respected news. ClipSyndicate does same for video, 300 providers, 240 network affiliates. Also emerging Web video brands, ExpertVillage, NYT, others providing online-only video. Video out to 20,000 URLs. Networks - McGraw-Hill, Penwell, Reed, Need a video news component. Close to 8,000 hours of broadcast news in U.S. alone every day. What is authoritative, what works in B2B, what provides value to end subscribers. Do we want to think about single search providing co-mingled text and video results, ClipSyndicate content is all licensed hours after it's been aired, newspaper industry was trained by Lexis/Nexis as to what a content royalty, video people say "what," video is not a revenue share business. ClipSyndicate brings in 50,000 discrete video assets from partners.
Ken: Basics, metrics are kind of a joke, what to we know about who's viewing videos, earlier viewing was younger and male, what kinds of programming, news vs. non-news, breaking news or orther verticals?
Shoba: Primary viewing is still happening with news video, in entertainment news video gets high marks, what is interesting is studies show that news video will continue to grow in influience, far from watching the evening news when we get home, most of the time my own news comes from the Web.
Fishman: So many types of news properties, has hit a critical mass, niche programming, news based audience is a very hungry audience. Lots of stats from research, my 100 year-old grandma knows how to do online video.
Ken: In terms of monetization it's mostly ads, little subscription. Fishman: Has to be pretty niche for subscription to work. Blaine: If you can access online for free you will, the more niche the more likely premium works. Subscription dwarfed by advertising. Belief is that studios are not going to go to an ad model ever. Morgan: ClipSyndicate it's segmented into ad and subscription clearly, s..yndicating content into verticals with robust ad sales model. 80 dollar CPMs in niche sites, video changing ad dynamic, prosumer chosen video. Should be able to leverage video more effectively than banners deliver.
Ken: Half a billion dollars ads last year, what are CPMs this year, business high, 100 dollar CPMs, where's growth. Fishman: Demand rising strongly, CPMs somewhat stable. Blaine: Depends on the spectrum, known TV content will be high
Ken: Are we dealing with brands in a different way now? Shoba: Brands more active earlieron, new model emerging, they have the ability to be a media company, Studio Dell enormous success, one of top ten sites, captivating content. Two years ago BudTV failed, but more brands are going to grow, setup costs are low and then they don't have to pay CPMs, this will eat into existing ad revenues. Blaine: Works for a narrow range of brands. Shoba: But if you're a niche B2B brand almost by definition you're a targeted audience, you're not trying to reach 50,000 people, you can drive people to you, a lot of trade publications have narrow topic areas, Morgan: Real opportunity to take CPC advertisers and put them in flash panel players. When really relevant ad in players, click throughs can be in mid single digits. Blaine: Not good for a tire ad next to why tires fail article. Fishman: Banking future on contextualizaion, brands want to go to long format, too infomercially, let brand mangers work on this. Morgan: Video's only in a browsable format, just text titles. A lot of focus needs to be not just browsable but via full-text services. Shoba: Strong storytelling by may brands, Dell, many you can watch and feel that it's honest, will be blurring of lines, many stories will be told on their own Web site but more will be packaged for wider use in more conversational packaging.
Question: Video is passive, will it be more interactive? Blaine: Not passive now, kids ineracts with friends while watching video, big cultural shift, for advertisers that's something that you can touch and learn something, yes, interactivity is coming. Morgan: Lots of startup technology allows this now. Fishman: We do overlays, hot-spotting on product placements, active integration, we're there now.
Question: Destination sites are they a dying business model, is it all about aggregation? Blaine: For very few companies sites are enough, think about superdistribution, you're going to win if you meet them on the sites that they want to be in. Fishman: Some organizations protective of content, in trouble, won't cannibalize their own brands, have to reach out. Morgan: Learn from "walled gardens" of early online newspapers, will come a time that their content will go willy-nilly with some controls to protect it from shoing up on porn sites.
Ken: Age of multimedia is arriving!
Quick Take: Great panel, a lot more opportunity for brands to get conversational online, so sevices like TheNewsMarket will become more important as potential ad inventory once there's both long-form and teaser-form industrial footage.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2008: Morning Keynote - Gordon Crovitz - Embracing Change in the Digital Age
Waves of change, sometimes continuous sometimes terrifying, sometimes they seem to die out altogether, but there are relentless and unavoidable. Reflecting on waves of change, comes from three key sources, new technologies, new business models driven by technologies, unpredictable change of pace.
First rule of technology's impact on consumer behavior: we always tend to overestimate impact in short term, underestimate in long run. When Queen Victoria in 1858 sent first trans-Atlantic cable telegram there were riots in U.S., people said "The Atlantic is dried up." Victorian novel "Wired Love" about two telegraph operators who fall in love. In 1850s Rothschild complained that everyone could get the news. Newspapers had to start filtering news. WSJ founded in 1889 to democratize access to financial news when there were only about 200,000 shareholders. Rothschild might be amused to know that Western Union is now a financial services company.
Digital media delivers great choice, consumers have fragmented, content commoditized. In my experience consumer behavior has changed more in B2C than B2B. Silicon Valley focused on consumer-focused products, leading to advanced interfaces. Many finance professionals use Yahoo! Finance along with professional services. As Tom Glocer noted yesterday, business models have been more impacted in B2C. The tsunami that's impacted broadcasters and other media channels, new media waste far less in advertising dollars. Google is of course the great disrupter in consumer, but TechTarget and paidContent.org disrupt in B2B media.
WSJ will retain hybrid model, works very well, unfortunate that others abandoned paid model. 10 million uniques each month, 1.2 million subs, now as many paying for online as for the print New York Times. Online journal's segmenting for different products at different prices not new to B2B, new to B2C. A time of fast change in a slow-changing industry can offer great opportunities. Many companies are still transferring their structure to adapt to these changes. DJ had a real crisis a few years ago, most leading properties were losing money in 2005, reorged, no longer organized around distribution, reorged to focus on markets. Results encouraging, subscription acquisition dropped by 40 percent, print subs grew. More aggressive price segmentation yielded more money from long-term subscribers. On the way to double-digit margins. Margins are better than in most industries. "Change is a lot easier to make when you have no choice."
So there are steps to be taken to respond to new consumer behavior, but any one approach is not sufficient. Software drives many changes, great waves of computing power, now content industry influences software industry, consumers now get the best of both approaches. Google's a software/technology company but delivers massive amounts of content and monetizes in a media model. Who knew that millions of people would blog if only they could.
Harder question, what comes next? Five trends. First, who's in charge? Which is king, content or distribution? Bad news is neither, consumers are in charge and unpredictable. Second, all media are new media or will be. Technology is low-cost for all information companies. Third, medium is not the message, oftentimes it blocks it. Newspapers grew up in an era reporting on what happened yesterday, now people knew about yesterday yesterday. Trade publishers miss an opportunity by focusing on just print. Fourth, content brands still matter. Decline in legacy brands can obscure the fact that many franchises as a whole remain valuable. Finally, software and information together are more valuable than either alone. Computers became easier to use, newer media platform like mobile designed with content built in.
Great reasons for optimism, what worked to great success in the past may not work in the future. but good reason for optimism. Having better information is key to success. Pioneering work on consumer content innovation can be embraced by B2B companies. Information companies can reach wider audiences and highly specialized segments more easily. Waves of change affect all consumers, your challenges are shared by everyone. Good luck in catching the next wave.
Question: Brands matter, certain brands will rise to the top, assuming that WSJ rises to the top, what do you do now? Crovitz: Journal's responsibility now, will be well received by readers.
Question: You've been the advocate for hybrid model, does that confuse consumers, does segmenting audience for advertisers meet the real goal? Crovitz: At this point there's a lot of free content available for readers and bloggers, evidence is that it's not confusing to have people pay for some content, on the other hand, WSJ has relationships with portals to get access to content. More confusing to analysts trying to understand the economics of the model.
Question: Hybrid model has worked for WSJ, may work for other national brands, if you were a CEO of a local market paper, losing money, recognizing that young people don't read papers, will by 2015 or 2020 will secondary markets disappear in print? Crovitz: Up to editors to think about what the role of a newspaper really is. Old model is broken. Days can go by when I don't read the local paper. Young people are wired, print version has different value, wonderful value in print if designed right. Reasons for optimism if editors are willing to make fundamental changes.
Question: As newspaper person, you put out a broad message, as we're in a phase where people get the daily me with smaller slivers, people will not have the shared experiences, how will that play out in society when shared experiences like the SuperBowl aren't there as much? Crovitz: Opporunity to define communities of interest, broader than current hypersegmentation model, room for broader agenda focus, in case of WSJ a large percentage of lawyers subscribe to journal, there is a legal version of WSJ with a law blog, different style, more intimate, more specialized. Days of mass media being dominant waning,
Question: Forbes.com now considered more valuable than Forbes magazine. What did they do right, wrong. Crovitz: Never Coke and Pepsi, they did a good job of converting a print brand into 24/7 brand, DJ had print and DJ newswires. Hats off to them.
Question: We tend to think of career paths, if you were talking to someone who wanted to be an executive editor in chief, what would be the learnings that they need in their career? Crovitz: When I speak at business schools or journalism school, people still eager to enter. Like a lot of people the best way to learn about something is to do it. In small orgs you learn a lot about a lot, but big can be good. Don't focus on theory of media, time to do that between jobs, focus on doing it. So may more media companies, so many more opportunities to contribute even if posting to one's own blog site, in long term will result in higher.
Question: Newsmasters in newsrooms? Crovitz: Hard for journalists to acknowledge what others do well. WSJ all things "D" blog, lists top ten stories from others that will be of interest, I for one find it to be extremely useful, moderated, curated by very smart editors, brands can deliver filtering, falls more to publishes and senior editors, will inceasingly include drawing attention to news from other sources.
Question: You became Publisher in '06, you were streamlining, that progress got Murdoch's attention, if you look at DJ acquisitions, which ones were good or missed? Crovitz: Couldn't acquire Pat Spain's company, without going into all companies like Marketwatch, were a lot of opportunities where the prices are reasonable now, this is going to be a very good year for transactions in spite of credit markets.
QUICK TAKE: Gordon is always a careful speaker, and in his new transition role he continues that tradition of highly considered wisdom, I appreciated his insights as always.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2008: CEOs Outlook - The Tipping Point for Old and New Media
Moderator: Jim G. Kollegger, CEO, Genesys Partners, Inc. Panelists: Ken Auletta, Author and Annals of Communications Columnist, The New Yorker Michael Barrett, EVP and Chief Revenue Officer, Fox Interactive Media Jim Kelly, Managing Editor, Time Inc. Alan Patricof, Founder and Managing Director, Greycroft LLC
Jim: This is the seventh summit of the merged Software and Informaiton Industry Association, it's like surfing, the industry has to catch the wave, need to skate to where the puck is going to be. Last summer watched YouTube presidential debate, on Meet the Press Ariana Huffington is there as an equal because of Huffington Post. A tipping point is developing, there's a slow building up and then a dramatic increase. Newspapers are in free fall, magazines are getting thinner, new media doesn't kill old media but repositions things. [To Kelley] How do you position yourself in this era?
Kelly: Has 125 media properties, most are in Britain as a part of IPC, much different model over there, here it's the familiar brands, some of those titles make a considerable amount of money from print advertisers and subscribers. People magazine has 2 million people who are willing to subscribe for USD 109 per year. Another 1.5 million will buy it as the newsstand. Makes hundreds of millions a year. Each magazine has been tasked to find their own digital future, some have a bigger opportunity than others, Sports Illustrated doing well, acquired FanNation, Face of the Crowd (Greycroft company). People has StyleWatch online, we're an increasingly mobile society, using devices that are not friendly to a 2,000 word narrative. Advertisers are finding more effective ways to reach consumers, Johnson & Johnson's Baby Center is making parenting magazines ask what they can do to counter. The younger you are, the more likely you're likely to see everything on the Web as content, whether YouTube, an alert from WaPo, to define models around topics is harder as communities create their own power.
Barrett: Every challenge creates a business opportunity, allowing time-shifting, old distribution under assault, look at MySpace, 70,000 vidos posted every day, all this consumption and creation, none of this takes away the value of major TV shows. MySpace communities can create a place for media brands to build audience rather than erode it. If you stream video content you erode TV but if they're people who don't want to miss an episode you can keep them captured, will be a constructve model, not destructive. Haven't closed the gap in economics, but getting there.
Jim: Would you invest in a magazine property today? Patricof: If just print, no, but now there are new channels from old media. Video to magazine Web sites, Tackle sports network for football, synergistic aspects of print publication that can help to power online content. Every has adapted to new media, we're in venture capital business, corporate investors come and go, now major media brands are the major investors, now right on the front line of making investments.
Jim: Why the investment in HuffPost, Ariana? Patricof: Started as political blog, now entertainment, finance, unique visitors are climbing dramatically, have invested in blog site - paidContent.org, lot lower investment to get into that than to get into magazine industry. Huffington left a fund-raiser to be at blog conference.
Kelly: When willl HuffPost make money? Patricof: Let me ask you about some of your publications. Took years to build many print titles. Kelly: Sports Illustrated took at least a decade.
Jim: Are newspapers in free-fall? Auletta: If you interview people who are in news you meet people who are terrified. Online newspapers are exciting, but how do you monetize is not the same as paper, haven't figured it out. FT is profitable, WSJ, but they are closed universe, limited shelf space for advertisers. Are they open to new media, are the open to breaking out of old patterns?
Jim: Tribune sold for about half a million, how do you make a small fortune in the news business? Start with a large fortune. Murdoch bought MySpace when daughter brought it to his attention.
Barrett: News Corp driven from the top, not a lot of analysis, not sophmoric but where other companies can spend months in analysis for boards, private companies can react quickly, deals done in 24-hour windows. They can afford to wait years to make investments pay off.
Jim: WSJ over-weekend advertiser, but makes sense. Patricof: Flies in the face of terrified print. Auletta:Synergy is an overused word, but Murdoch can move fast and create synergies. Kelly: Murdoch making paper broader. Patricof: What about books, Eisner putting out webisodes, book based on webisodes being released in their wake.
Jim: Behind every great media company is a mogul [comment: Brin and Paige as moguls? Close enough.]. Kelly: Luce sold Time mag twice over at first, was able to turn it into a real investment eventally. Auletta: Old and new media, new media dominated by engineers, Google's had palpable success, engineering culture is driving these companies, represent different value systems, different cultures. If you said the engineer is no longer king at Google it wouldn't work, Terry Semel took over Yahoo, didn't work, don't understand half of the words that engineers were saying. John Scully didn't understand Apple.
Jim: What are your driver, what do you lose sleep over? Kelly: Spend a lot of time with video, monetization is still a work in progress. Look at reviews on Amazon.com, look at all those reviews, why not sell them to NYTimes.com? Auletta: It's a way of looking at things. Barrett: Everything's going digital, mobile, whatever, we have a stake in all, what concerns us is the race to who has the most data on people. Google will be 10x as they learn more about end users. Advertisers are going to demand that information, won't settle for household demographics. Don't get disintermediated with your own consumers.
Jim: Yahoo in China? Barrett: Have to play by the rules, privacy is a huge concern, however people get the fact that they're not paying for a social network, why send me ads for singles when you know that I am married? Have to stop somewhere, but would you rather have an ad that means something to yo or not? Patricof: Relevance is part of it, localization is a bigger part. Down to zip codes, neighborhoods, addresses, television is moving in that direction. Auletta: 4 billion cell phones, but do I want to be interrupted on the phone with an ad? Facebook related ads had to be pulled, users didn't want them.
QUICK TAKE: A really good panel, senior media players but people who really understand the issues. Long story short, old media is hosed in terms of the old platforms with old models but new platforms and old platforms with new models are going to do quite well. I think the largest issue that's lurking at the edges is the rise of video as a factor in devaluing the written word as monetizable content whilst at the same time we have a hard time monetizing video online. There are huge gaps in revenue development that aren't easy to address in the short term. But the good news is that major media companies are indeed begining to learn how to invest in new plays, hopefully with the patience that old "moguls" had. They are becoming the exit strategy for many plays, but there's only so many immature media plays that you can absorb before owners and shareholders get itchy. We're going to see an impatience gap soon enough: angel-level investors who are more content for the long haul hanging on, higher levels of equity providing mostly an acceleration path for spinoff to media holding companies. You can't innovate in media as a fully public company effectively - Google was wise to move cautiously into public shares. The economic models are not mature, but economies follow value. The economies may not look like old models, but they will come indeed.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2008: Search as an Editorial Tool - New Forms of High-Value Content Aggregation
Moderator: Peter Jackson, Chief Scientist, Thomson Corporation Panelists: Tom Aley, President and CEO, Generate Inc. Robin Johnson, CEO, Financial Times Search Bruce Molloy, CEO, Connotate Technologies, Inc. Patrick Spain, CEO, Highbeam Research, Inc.
Peter: Focus is going beyond the portal to applications that can allow alerts, summarization.
Johnson: Moving to contexts in workflow, in businesses but also in consumer markets. Some queries are impossible to do in Google, so we need to develop facets, disambiguate things like Ford Modeling Agency from Ford Motor Company. No summarizations of information on Internet, nothing that says on balance this much is positive and negative, just some high-end tools providing this for business. Have to focus consumer on the nature of the question, can't always be translated into keywords.
Patrick: Free reference site, subscription HighBeam site, Newser, graphic content highlighting. Started to figure out if Web 2.0 is applicable for our business. Concluded that most people aren't good writers but many are good collectors and recommenders, can vote for content and use search tools to find things elsewhere in product. In Newser we write all story summaries, now users will be able to write about stories that they're enthusiastic about.
Peter: How do you make sources of information more active? Molloy: Intelligent software agents monitor a site for changes and create alert streams, can make these sources much more useful. Search can go only far, what do you do with the documents? You'll cut, paste and compile. Need a search component but also need an automation component to aggregate content more effectively. Aley: I don't want to get out of an article to find related information, our tooolbar widget enables people to find rich data in contcxt. We've all been saying for years that users need content in their workflow, to be able to embed that information in any page is a way to turn any page into a contextual portal.
Peter: What are the real-world scenarios for workflow that these products help.
Johnson: Imagine a tool that can help a journalist to prepare for an interview, if you have a tool that you could use to rearrange content is difficult. You can't just do it with keyword search, experimenting with semantic navigation, keeping track of content relationships. We think that this is the way to make workflow come alive.
Peter: What's feasible right now? Molloy: Our technology enables end-users to identify data elements in a page rapidly, in terms of workflow, AI mining technology combined with this end-user interface can empower the end-user and bypass I.T. to get their sophisticated needs met. They can go a step further and put their mining agents in a common library that other people in their organization can use and modify to create even more value.
Peter: The "m" word, metadata? Aley: Technology has come so far in past 5-10 years, intelligent crawling of 70 million domains to extract unstructured content into a structured format. Many publishers and enterprises have terabytes of their own unstructured content, we can extract and integrate it all. "Keyword search is so yesterday." With robust metadata the query to be interpreted more effectively. Johnson: You don't have metadata, you won't get there. "Customers like you asked these questions" can be created with metadata, hard to do without it. Aley: More sophisticated, now seeing that an entity is an automotive ad agency instead of an automobile manufacturer.
Peter: What kinds of tools do you create to help users? Spain: Looked at how we could use data exhaust to help user experience. All stories tagged on scale of hard or soft news, an interface control lets them choose ratio. Interesting - 10:1 people set the controls for hard news but 3:1 look at soft news. Looking at controls that will help people understand what other people are looking at.
Peter: Standards? [comment: have heard too many questions about standards today.] Johnson: IBM's open standard may allow some data exchange, but not much adoption. Molloy: Hard to get people to agree to metadata standards, but with that being said it's possible to impose metadata standards, but we don't believe that a grand taxonomy will emerge, we allow industries or companies to create their own standards or map to your consortium's standards.
Peter: What would you do in the future if the technology was there, how close are we? Johnson: Annotate on the fly, managing copyright can make this tricky Spain: Amazed at how different every Web site is, many different ways that archives are managed, Aley: Looking at dynamic "version of you" and put it in the system, if I have a LinkedIn page, Facebook page, several Zoominfo profiles, can we integrate this. Being able to integrate on the fly, slamming together software and data has been the dream, as the Web world evolves we're seeing that it's achievable. Molloy: See a move from search to business intelligence tools. [Slide of antique "computing division" with dozens of people entering data into mechanical calculators] we see agents extracting but also providing value add processing for alerts and other functions.
Question: How truly aspirational is this? Aley: Many publishers have legacy platforms, can overlay infrastructure that they have, can work with Generate to free that informatoin without interrupting underlying operations. When we dynamically understand what's on the page we can match entities and match it with behind the firewall content. Molloy: We see a real eagerness from publishers to understand this, see need to catch up with search engines, the idea of monitoring and aggregate components on the Web is one model, or create your own kind of an alerting system. Editorial awareness and situational awareness, being able to monitor everything and choose what needs to be seen. Not only a cost reduction factor but also for new revenue streams, new products, new inventory. Johnson: All leveraging off of creating engagement, make things more sticky, have to invest in what will make them do this, this is what will make C-levels invest.
Question: Proprietary metadata as a competitive value? Spain: At the end of the day all you may have is metadata. Aley: Extremely valuable to our clients, DMOZ helps to accelerate. Molloy: Metadata important, tagging and folksonomies may add value also.
Question: Copyright presents issues, to what extent does copyright and licensing agreements present barriers? Aley: We process data that's either proprietary or public domain, very black and white in U.S., privacy laws overseas make it harder to expose this information. Big focus is to maintain copyright.
Peter: Publishers and vendors are cozy right now, but vendors are creating content and content value. Is it always going to be as cozy as this? Johnson: Isn't always entirely cozy when there's intellectual property involved. Software companies survive on reselling ideas gained from working with clients. FT survives with technology, coopetition has required non-competes and to lay out how we dance when a new idea is discovered. Molloy: A blurred line. Aley: Reed Elsevier with scientific journals, owned market share for 80 years, Reuters buys ClearForest buys software companies, publishers thinking about whether they want to buy technology from a publishing competitor. Spain: Web has changed fundamentally what fair use is. It's all about chunks of data, chunks are hard to protect with copyright. The smaller it is the more valuable it is oftentimes.
Great panel, search is transforming editorial operations radically, the database is now, the metadata and other contextual content features are key to proprietary advantage, own the context and you own the publishing relationship.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2008: B2B Social Networking - Content Provider Strategies
Moderator: Steve Sieck, President, SKS Advisors, Inc. Panelists: Bob Carrigan, CEO, IDG Communications, Inc. David Mather, President, Hoover's Michael Dunn, VP , Hearst Interactive Media Clara Shih, AppExchange Product Line Manager, Salesforce.com
[Technical difficulties at the beginning at this panel, apologies to early speakers] Steve framed the discussion by referring to his research for the SIIA showing the gap between social media's payback versus focus. Steve: Why focus on social media?
Carrigan: Have to focus on it, need more editorial impressionsy Dunn: Focus on it intensely Mather: Provide tools to make more actionable informaiton, how to give value when you're entering into conversations in your professional activities. Hoover's Connect, purchased technology from VisiblePath Shih: AppExchange investment but also online community IdeaExchange, Salesforce to Salesforce, entity nodes can be your sales partners, exchange information. FaceForce integration, pull up contact info but also Facebook profile information real-time into SFDC. Carrigan: TheHub, generates thousands of visits and page views, all comments from users, very high monetization. Direct advertising benefits. Dunn: Small teams can do a lot, low-cost efforts can yield high benefits with a lot of feedback from the community. Mather: People want to be tethered to their workflow, were making so many changes to incorporate privacy that they needed absolute control over platform to manage these issues. Shih: Keeps people from having to log into multiple sites, keeps them productive.
Steve: Social media communities don't happen by themselves, what do you need to do?
Carrigan: Don't hold on too much, can't be too regulated. Didn't hire a community manager initially, hired a CIO. Need to put in people that community members will relate to. Dunn: On the boards of several companies, including Internet Capital Group, if you're considering moving into social media technologies first you should be getting on B2C networks, people want to interact constantly. Lots of evil things out there but that's an educational issue. Facebook is a good platform, Twitter good group chat, Seesmic is video chat in alpha. Lots of people involved in these sites, bring this back into your work environment. Mather: Once people have the sense that it's a secure environment they play a little bit and start to get confidence. People begin to tap into your own organization's knowledge network for business-like goals. People will use it in the right context. Shih: Trust is key, openness also, engagement. The content and services have to provide ongoing value, or they won't log in again.
Steve: Google OpenSocial, implications? Shih: A set of open standards that publishers can use to build applications on social networking platforms, implementers can implement once and have data shared on many sites, remains to be seen whether people will go for it and whether publishers will be implementing it on their end. Mather: As a publisher of insight, need to provide a 360 view of the world, if you are learning about a person you may want to know that Hoover's says versus LinkedIn versus MySpace. Standards can help us to unleash the power of these platforms. Carrigan: From a user point of view there's OpenID, too many logins for social media, OpenID can help. Dunn: Blogosphere is the largest social network today, you control the data, you're responsible for comments and trackbacks. In a Facebook environment you can't eliminate yourself and put it elsewhere, that's a challenge, data portability can address that. Every environment requires a profile, redundant, quite a bit of fragmentation, everyone has a little different feature set, everyone should have an about page, not worry about companies managing that. Shih: Standardization is good, but sometimes profiles need to be separate, what if you're a musician on the weekends and want a separate identity. Mather: Standards are good, but need to be careful about having too many controls.
Steve: 99 percent of SM applications are amusement oriented so far, what are some of the business widgets that may turn out to be killer apps.
Carrigan: We're working on lots of widgets, now career widgets, content related to career events, review widgets, looking at many cool business widgets.
Question: To what extent are lawyers getting involved on specific terms for social media. Dunn: On same floor as lawyers, go to lunch with them, get advised on absolutely everything that we do. Launched a magazine completely in a blog format, lawyers help a lot. Mather: Attorneys needed for Web tool world, how reliable are we when a blogger that says something in detriment to another company, they want us to filter everything, but hard to do in a community environment. Lots of rules in place, but sometimes we have to push the envelope.
Question: Looking at demographics, are there are demographics that resonate most? Tech or other industry? Carrigan: Skews to younger audience, try to get the same quality, don't qualify as much as we do for print format. Shih: Two phenomena, grown from Silicon Valley, which is young, but the audience is aging, as college students. mature they become the business consumers of the next generation. Dunn: If your B2B footprint is global, social media can help you to break down social and time barriers. China is a bit rougher, tech community is an early adopter. Mather: Much older audience than typical internet company, C-Level exec at D&B, do you know anyone, not a Silicon Valley type, intuitively jumped to use the tool.
Question: ROI? Shih: Can calculate spend for partners, can close the data when deal is done, SFDC needs to do that to maximize value. Carrigan: Journey of buying behavior, score provided to marketers in reporting, so if signed up for a program they can see that not all of the leads are created equally, new program. Market Fusion site. Mather: Hoover's Connect is a free network, ROI in value of relationships, can manage private networks and provide economic benefit. Add value, make product actionable.
QUICK TAKE: Excellent panel, I thought that it was a great mix of core B2B people, representing publishers, enterprise platforms and new models that are spanning the world outside of and inside of the corporate firewall. Clearly it's very early days for social media in B2B, many of these initiatives have emerged fully only in the past few months. But the trend is to empower people in business to harvest value from their core professional relationships as well as to pull in their more multidimensional selves from social media online portals to help relationships become deeper more quickly and more effectively. The next generation of applications is likely to start mining social media content more effectively to provide alerts, trends, behaviors and other key indicators that can effect both relationships and transactions. If there's anything that can refute the question of social media's value it's what's happening in business.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2008: Luncheon Keynote - Andrew Keen, Author, The Cult of the Amateur
Andrew's view of the Internet and the media was changed by writing his book The Cult of the Amateur, still in favor of authority, likes standing on a podium above the crowd, this isn't the Internet.
Was a mid-90's Internet entrepreneur after being a music journalist, classic old-fashioned writers, paid them a lot of money to write about jazz and classical music, but were right in the middle of the Web action. Was greedy, founded his own company, was exciting then for media people to put high-quality content on the Web quickly and efficiently. Wasn't disintermediation of existing outlets or empowering individuals, was exciting to distribute as an entrepreneur. VideoCafe failed, but remained an evangelist, continued to drink the Kool-Aid. In 2004, in Sebastapol north of San Francisco, Tim O'Reilly was the leading evangelist of Web 2.0, "FooCamp," Friends of O'Reilly, FooCamp is an unconference, no heirarchy, no formal structure, everyone spends the weekend with sleeping bags and a vision of a new world. Represented a sneak preview of Web 2.0 anarchy. Went from being a digital believer to a digital skeptic.
We weren't just talking about the new media, we were the new media, everyone was simultaneously broadcasting themselves but nobody was listening. Digital Darwinism was dawning, no authority, everyone talking simultaneously. First book to attack Web 2.0, not a professional journalist, professional journalists say they're glad to hear it. Author wanted the subtitle "How Today's Internet is Killing our Culture," he doesn't think it now. But the more user-generated content there is, the less they read a paper and go to the movies. People invest less in high-quality and professional content. MySpace, YouTube, Wikipedia replacing high-quality professional content.
But the Internet can't kill anything, the Internet is not a person, doesn't have a mind of its own, it's just technology. Not surprising that you get a countercultural movement out of San Francisco via this technology, was an outgrowth of 1970s culture. More people think that they have something to say, it's an authority issue. It's a premonition of something more profound, the people are rising up, they want to be the author, they want to be the source, you can't blame the Internet for that, it was already in place, the Web simply unleashed it. Now traditional media has to cope with the rising of the people. Left and right bash The New York Times, it's actually the 1960s 2.0.
Put myself in the most dystopian mood possible, future could be both "Brave New World" and "1984". I think that I was wrong to be deeply dystopian, but it's just a moment, a moment that will pass away. People are already bored with this stuff, the Lessigs and other crazy people in Silicon Valley still talk but most people are realizing the dangers in user-generated content. People are coming to their senses, entrepreneurs are coming to their senses also. The Web 2.0 revolution has ended in Silicon Valley, met Jason Calacanis, he expressed same sentiment, said that Web 2.0 wasn't going anywhere, can't monetize, too much content with dark forces behind it, he founded Mahalo, a curated search engine, employees are real people putting good content into search engines. You need hierarchy, you need authority. Citizendium takes on Wikipedia, e.g.
The new, new thing is professionalism, no value economically in amateur content, it's a scam, Facebook's a scam, 15 billion valuation is a scam, this year is the year of the professional, the year in which authority will make a comeback. Don't get swept up by the Silicon Valley garbage, when the Lessigs come argue back. The probem in this country is that authority is afraid of the people's revolution. Professional media needs to unapologetically take charge. Colbert said he is an elitist, he said yeah. Without that media we're in the deepest s**t imaginable. Things may not be as bad as they may seem. Need to fight anonymity, the ability for old to become young, to deny our physicality. . QUICK TAKE: Well...where to begin. I agree that the ability to curate user-generated content is a key growth area this year, but it's clear that user-generated content is becoming authoritative in more ways than we can imagine. Professional authors need to come to terms with this more deeply. The ability of content to collect an affirming and trusted community is as important in many instances as the ability for people in an hierarchical structure to declare content to be authoritative. Social media underscores the need for authority to flow from people who have to live with the consequences of authority - democracy, in other words. Democracies have designated, trusted representatives, administrators and leaders, and this will continue, but inherently it's the market's responsibility to seek out its own view of what is authoritative content if we are to have the efficiences to cope and thrive in a rapidly changing global economy. More at Content Nation and in my upcoming book. I am not saying that Andrew's view is all tosh, but I do find it interesting that he sidestepped all of the highly positive, high-quality and monetizable initiatives that publishers have taken on in social media. It's an appealing position for traditionalists, but the money is not in the traditionalists' models any more. They need to redeploy their editorial staffs to manage quality user-generated content more effectively.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2008: Interview - Caroline H. Little, CEO and Publisher, Washingtonpost, Newsweek Interactive
Interviewer: Hal Espo, President, Contextual Connections, LLC
Runs interactive division, both WaPo and Newsweek, Slate, The Root for African-Americans, Sprig. Most all sites are news and opinion, 250 million page views at WaPo, 9 million unique visitors/mo. Sites are very standalone from an editorial standpoint but back end is largely shared. Six years ago WaPo was distributed only in DC, discovered national and international audience via online. Slate online-only. Lots of content is shared in large part. On editorial side people recogninize advantages of Internet, Monica Lewinsky story was broken on WaPo.com, online paper is starting to look like a blog. Hard sometimes to focus on smaller businesses when larger businesses are changing so much.
Hal: What have you done to break down barriers between divisions and platforms.
Little: Lots of training, reporters on a beat know can do video, lots of time spent on helping management that fears shifting rewards. Sales feeds across print and online, content feeds both ways, content is also going back the other way, with online content making into print. Big challenges for local papers like WaPo is that there used to be little or no competition for ads or content, that doesn't transfer online, lots of sources for both content and ad placements for local markets. Not clear that newspapers will get same advantages as national brands. WaPo online audience bigger than paper, but already have 15 to 18 percent of revenues coming from online.
Hal: Locally you compete for advertising with Craigslist for online, are you competing with print for ads?
Little: We've seen people migrate already, top newspapers are Gazettes, Express operated by Post, people are going to pick what they want to pick, newspapers are not going to go away but the trend is towards less print reading, kids aren't picking it up, daughter sent a NYT article to her and apologized.
Hal: New site, why, why now?
Little: Have a high local audience for African-Americans, Skip Gates, professor, founded it with her boss, news, views and ancestry. Skip is involved in helping people trace their roots. One audience that's been underrepresented. Live three days, too early to tell overall, need to build audience organically, hard to do.
Hal: Where will consumer media look like three years from now?
Little: Disaggregation is taking off, not going to one place to get information. Google is taking market share away, but also partners, and a good partner, Google Maps are really good.
Hal: WaPo used to be a big player, not a big player anymore, what does that mean?
Little: Way more audience than ten years ago, story like issues at Walter Reed hospital matter nationally not just locally, but the hold on ad dollars isn't there.
Hal: Where do people really come from.
Little: Local audiences tend to use home page, check weather, national comes from blogger links and search, different proposition.
Hal: If you were in the midwest, how would you see things differently?
Little: Yahoo efforts helping local papers to build content, it's tough for them. As Craigslist grows we still have much larger auto and jobs listings, looking at Monster, career-building. Not going to outrun them overall, but we monitor effectiveness in selected verticals and go for it.
Hal: Facebook, friend or foe?
Little: Adults don't live on Facebook the way that kids do, have done a few widgets, tried to invest. Yields a fair amount of traffic, but did it a lot just to let people know that you're out there.
Hal: How do you exploit your natural advantages.
Little: Haven't really refined home pages, real redesign, looking at if you only had a local audience how did it look like, if you only had a national audience what would it look like. National audience really interested in opinions, so that will go "above the fold" in online edition.
Hal: What are your peers doing that you'd like to emulate?
Little: NYT does a great job with search engine optimization the past few months, Guardian.uk innovative, beta tests across site, opened up a lot to users.
Hal: WSJ - impact of subscription barriers changing?
Little: Murdoch says subscriptions stay, but NYT raised barriers successfully.
Hal: User-Generated Content?
Little: First site with comments, relationship with Pluck, in March you'll be able to upload photos, videos coming.
Hal: You're a lawyer, what's the state of IP law?
Little: Fair use is becoming broader than anyone anticipated, like to see proper attribution.
Question: Disaggregation of news, but RSS readers aggregate things again.
Little: More opportunity for news organizations to aggregate content from others, more ad networks.
Question: Licensing multimedia?
Little: More people watching multimedia, got a national Emmy award. Even with that said, we can't compete with a network [comment: But you don't have to, just choose the right channels].
Question: What is your financial model, will you be a Murdoch?
Little: Working for someone invested in the long haul, profitable for fourth year, biggest challenge is to keep investing in rapidly changing technology. Management breathes internet, the Kaplan group does a lot of online universities, they taught us about pay per lead and metrics, historically content has not been metrics driven. Inform is terrific, builds pages and topics on the fly, but needs to be more friendly for SEO purposes. Helps to drive people to site.
Good interview, Hal keeps the questions coming and coming and there were good audience questions. It's a good example of a strong local news organization with national impact that is still struggling to find growth in spite of being profitable. Caroline touched on one of the key issues when she mentioned the rise of ad networks. They have broken papers' lockhold on local ads and created far more competition for national and global ads. They are reluctant to move into virtual aggregation of local content and becoming ad networks in their own rights, yet that's where the money is going. Newsrooms are great resources, but I think that they'd do better to have those desks spend more time on virtual aggregation and focus in-depth on content that's most valuable in the moment.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2008: After the Froth - How the Financial Markets Will Affect Information Companies
Moderator: Lee Greenhouse, President, Greenhouse Associates, Inc.
Panelists: Dr. Howard Lee Morgan, Partner, First Round Capital Mike Tansey, CEO, Jobson Medical Information LLC Tim Weller, Group Chief Executive, Incisive Media John S. Suhler, Founding General Partner and President of Veronis Suhler Stevens
Greenhouse: Is there really a post-froth period?
Suhler: In last five non-consumer transaction amount of credit and cost of credit not so much different from January of last year, more covenants rather than covenant-free, more take-private deals than IPOs.
Tansey: John's right in that cost of debt is up a bit but availability of debt is not there, no syndication to speak of, more mezzanine financiing.
Weller: Lots of froth, bank syndicated our first tranch of debt, but harder for new tranches. Market goes through peaks and troughs, more points, more creative in how they're accessing capital.
Morgan: Raised a lot of capital last year for deals, did 36 acquisitions, smaller companies can be rolled up and acquired, fewer exit outlets so rollups are attractive. We did well.
Suhler: Two times in last 25 years where markets were stuck, we're not in that situation today, froth doesn't invite or stop deals, still a market to invest in great managers and great products, you'll ride right through that. Deal attractiveness is not a froth or lack of froth factor, buy companies through cycles. If you do it right management teams will blow right through trends. We don't buy based on froth coming or going, doesn't determine long-term investment value.
Greenhouse: What is it about information businesses that have made them attractive?
Suhler: Business information companies have growth rates aren't greatly accelerated or decelerated by consumer markets EBITDA tends to be at a premium to consumer media, high teens, low twenties, sometimes certain areas have had peak prices, but long term slightly better growth for their portfolio.
Greenhouse: Is it less expensive to start an information company today?
Morgan: Absolutely, some initial investments were 300K, some down to 200K, an enormous you can do with a lot less money.
Weller: Thirteen years needed half a million in capital, floated for 150 million a few years ago, spend far too much time at what we don't do well, we're a very creative industry, can adapt fast, have evolved a lot, monetizing effectively, little to no capex, lots of cash comes back.
Greenhouse: Differences between consumer and professional?
Tansey: Less expensive to create consumer products, but cost of acquiring audiences can be high, have to create both audience and community.
Morgan: You can use Google AdSense to create a business for your content overnight, then you can build a sales force to skim off the cream. Have to do more work on the ad side to create a business that's monetizable.
Greenhouse: Audiences want data in workflows, lots of individualized workflows, core technology may be cheaper but adapting it is a greater burden. Is there some counterbalancing effect?
Morgan: Not really, web services lowers costs, easy to adapt and implement, on Wall Street high-speed hedge funds use low-latency feeds, information is quickly repurposed.
Suhler: in 1980s you packaged information, sold it and you were done. Didn't hear about workflow integration. Glocer's presentation was combining information and services always. Costs money to build applications and services for users to interact with, cost of building audience doesn't change, building services that will keep renewal rates high is tough duty. In B2B trade world ads can float some of that cost, but harder to integrate advertising and sponsorship into workflow applications.
Weller: Our advantage is skillset for online piece, takes time and resources and intellectual capital, we've bought very good people at right rate. But we're not enough in the workflow [comment: B2B trade media is in big trouble, not sure that this is really the year that it will turn the corner but they're start]ing to get it].
Greenhouse: Changing technology, sometimes disruptive, is that a driver?
Morgan: In shrinking markets, can offer sustainable margins.
Weller: Content should drive strategy, not technology [comment: see our definition of content].
Tansey: The disruptive thing is understanding your customer better.
Suhler: Management teams that don't "get it" can be disruptive. Our greatest concerns have been where the management team get it right, didn't have the sensitivity to get the right technology in place at the right time.
Morgan: Companies like Google are disruptive as they surface information faster and oftentimes good enough free information. Knowing what customers need is very critical, have to think like customers, what would they find on Yahoo or Google.
Greenhouse: Thomsons and Reed Eleviers have built empires, where are the empire builders of the future?
Weller: Into making money for myself and management team. Google frightens, but startups that live and breathe their customers are a bigger threat. Apax have incredible aspirations to build a sizeable B2B company. Looking at Outsell numbers, we'll be number 3 B2B soon.
Suhler: Have added 300 acquisitions to our initial 50. Empire building is making sensible acquisitions that provide benefits through mergers, to use existing scale and presence and skillsets. "Empire building" is senseless in and of itself, it's about building margin and revenues. 25 percent of our return has come from add-on benefits of acquisitions.
This as a good session, seemed to run a little long on too few real topics, but the panelists had a lot of great insights. Investors are managing still to find good value in the marketplace that fits the best strategies and that will continue, especially as young companies listen carefully to their clients. Unaddressed: how to continue margins as older media revenue streams dry up and newer ones yield less on an ad/subscription model based on older methods. I am not sure that the investors have the 3-5 year models in place to predict basic benchmarks such as cash flow and earnings effectively as these transitions take place. I think that there were a lot of important points raised by John Suhler about emphasizing the quality of management teams, but I wonder whether those teams are always going to be able to turn these new corners quickly enough. There's enough "give" in these portfolios to weather the transition overall, and already a fair amount of revenue stream adaptation, but it's going to be an interesting 3-5 years for B2B media. I think that M&A will continue to have a pretty good year but it's going to get harder as the purchasing companies see their fundamentals impacted by slowing traditional revenues.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2008: Opening Keynote - Tom Glocer, CEO, Reuters
How does a company founded in 1851 based on delivering stock ticker data by carrier pigeons stay relevant in the 21st century? By keeping in the thick of changes in content technology every step of the way. Bill Burger of Copyright Clearance Center noted in his introduction that Reuters CEO Tom Glocer's blog is insightful, genuine and pointing out that CEOs need to be very plugged into trends themselves rather than waiting for a Harvard Business Review article to catch up with them three years after publishers can make money with them.
Tom's chat: Last year he said that he as busy with the merger, but then he realized that the SIIA IIS was the perfect forum to get out his vision to the industry. Will focus in his chat on the media company of the 21st century. In his blog he pursues a conversation on topics that really interest him, this presentation is in a sense a summation of his posts. He talks about the two-way pipe, social networking, today he wants to move the debate forward.
Tom's "strawman" revolves around the new economics of publishing. Consumer media companies are ill-suited to be public companies, payback periods long, investments to transform significant. Traditional media companies replaced dollar-monetization of eyeballs with eyeballs that are going to be monetized in pennies. Newspapers in a negative arbitrage with online services, music companies also. BSkyB, the satellite TV service in the UK. almost sank NewsCorp but now is a dominant behemoth. Early days spent building audience and reach, investment dwarfs payback. Notably family-owned. Dow Jones/News Corp a deal with families on both sides, made it easier for Murdoch to manage the multiple. Bancrofts were no longer underwriting a long-term goal for Dow Jones, then the markets did their job.
The pressure of being publicly listed exerts a positive force on managers such as himself, but professionally-oriented publishers are more suited to be public companies. New consumer model works well for startups, but in professional publishing businesses are differe.nt. First, they provide must-have information to do your job. Seconly, your reputation and millions are at stake. Third, the business pays the bills or a third party, Fourth, delivers information in a format that fits your work flow. Imagine you're a lawyer preparing for a case, all precedents are available online, would you risk your professional reputation on not having the one in a hundred presedent that proves or disproves his case [Comment: Good example, professional services that can bill through have and advantage that ]way, but it doesn't necessarily point to how mining technologies can yield these kinds of inputs from virtually any source].
NewsScope - new product that senses sentiment on stories to provide new buy-sell signals. Not only human beings but machines are important consumers for decision-making functions. [Comment: fits our "inverted curve" model of the content marketplace]. Platform across verticals, mash up content from different fields to create new services. For example, investors in the pharma industry will get both financial and scientific information when merger starts in 2nd quarter.
Turns over the floor for comments: Question - what to do with merging consumer and professional markets. Tom: Depends on your strategy and customers. Need to be quite experimental, professional space needs to watch the canary in the coal mine in the consumer space, could happen to their industry as well.
Question - Your reputation is based on rich, well organized information, how to resolve with fast-moving markets. Tom - Reuters invented UGC in the 1970s with conversational dealing systems for foreign exchange, post your rates, they agggregated, sold it back to same institutions. used to charge them for giving content. Nothing new, consulting businesses work on that model. Reuters has 2,500 journalists doing news under Reuters brand, 2,000 stringers, the extension to citizen journalism is the next concentric ring of this content, the questions becomes do you apply to your brand to it or not, but not an excuse to crawl back and say "We're the professionals, your stuff is not."
Question from me: How do publishers respond to needs of institutions that need to get more value in individual transactions? Tom - Keep on top of the technology curve is the short answer. [Comment: Difficult to maintain eye contact and type at the same time, my take was that it's one of the softer spots in all of the financial information company's strategies, they're good at delivering information but they're lacking the ability to drive the understanding of potential transactions enough to help professionals build margins in their transactions. These services have to ramp up to a whole new level of analysis to make that happen as it happens in structured finance and hedge fund investments to some degree already.]
Question from Gordon Crovitz: How to manage the transformation through the transaction? Missed some of the answers, but in general the answer is that you have to give people concrete expectations about concrete plans and how they reflect the long-term interest of shareholders, but then investors are put off because they're measured by quarterly portfolio results using - ironically - benchmarks such as Reuters' Lipper averages.
Question: How to support non-profit journalism, does Reuters support ACAP initiative Tom - Supporting ACAP, but not exclusively, will still provide feeds on a private basis. A place for ad-supported content, content from government-supported channels such as BBC lots of interesting watchdog groups, now everyone can have a voice.
Question: Like your perspective on building a global economy. Tom - Reuters is"effortlessly global," bigger question is how to serve a market like the United States which is in some ways harder to crack. Thinking about it more purposefully, with Thomson the opportunity is to tap the growth of global markets instead of just U.S.-driven markets that drive Thomson revenues. Email may have English as the standard language, local meetings are in local languages, hard to start, glad it is.
Question: W here are the most unexpected opportunties and challenges in the merger? Tom - Thought that I knew about Thomson from using WestLaw and other Thomson products that he knows from Reuters' competitive profile, but Thomson doesn't beat its chest about a lot of its assets and its opportunities. Trying to keep things simple, Reuters is more complex than it ever needed to be, getting out of businesses, reducing product lines. Priorities are around integration of Reuters and Thomson Financial, tempting to look at other standing units at Thomson but they're doing fine right now. The financial businesses were always highly complementary, don't overlook the size of the prize in terms of cost reduction and revenue opportunities. Internationalization of entire company is also key, fantastic time to have buy-side assets in Asia, keep a light touch on centralization, focus on central resources for data mining, reasearch, will keep it simple.
Question: What are some of the interesting verticals in paid content space? Tom - Would you include financing, accounting, legal? [crowd chuckles - sometimes the West Coast folks just don't get it from this perspective.]. We'll see a lot more convergence, weather, commodities, water availability will become important. Plenty of runway, can build leadership positions in new verticals and strengthen ties.
Good session, Tom's on top of a lot of key trends, his ability to make Reuters more lean and responsive has been quite admirable, especially in his ability to reinvent the culture of a 150-year-old institution. I think that the merger will go fairly well, they're focusing on the financial integration short-term, obviously, but the hoped-for synergies with other sectors is bound to evolve fairly rapidly using Thomson's approach to cross-silo product development.
SIIA Information Industry Summit 2008: Survey Research Results
Presenter: Ed Keating, VP, Content Division, SIIA
Survey of SIIA members
Social networking - only 20 percent don't have plans for it Facebook ekes out LinkedIn for networking, most use "other" plaforms Social networking: 81 percent doing to reach new audiences, 41 percent realizing that now
Open issues: Relevance, Control, Copyright/Privacy, Internal Issues, Strategy, Choosing a Platform, Technology Issues, ROI
User-Generated Content: Objectives - 93 percent expect to increase engagement and loyalty
UGC Challenges: Collection/Moderation/Review, Participation
Blogging: 65 percent see blogs having a mixed effect, 75 percent see impact as very critical or somewhat critical - "makes my I.T. staff and corporate staff very nervous"
I'll come back and review this later, Ed went through things very quickly, my first take is that the data reflects our own experiences in our research and consulting practice and in our own professional lives. Publishers are beginning to try to embrace social media with much of the same confusion, fear and skills gap that existed ten years ago when the Web first became a strong emerging factor for mainstream publishers. The difficult thing for publishers to accept is that social media takes them much further from their core editorial, marketing and technology strengths than ever before. They will continue to be relevant but with many of the gains moving towards those who were most aggressive in deploying social media technologies that enable content to reside wherever audiences want it there may be unfolding another chapter of disintermediation for publishers. Having been "Googled" for a decade they now must face being "Facebooked." But the good news is that quality content always rises to the top in time, so although publishers will be strongly challenged to keep up with social media trends they'll be an important part of its success for a long time.
