thoughtsignals

Online Journalism Review has a great Q&A with John Battelle (the guy behind Federated Media and Searchblog) about online journalism, blogging, and (most interesting to me) the business model for online journalism.

There’s no doubt that traditional media can and will continue, but it has a hard hump to get over. Traditional media is in the business of sort of corralling talent. [As a newspaper reporter], you don’t talk to readers. Your job is to talk to your sources. Institutionally, these organizations have grown up managing reporters, not talent. When I was editing at Wired, my job was to produce writers and manage 50-150 talented, half-crazy freelance writers, and I think it really got me ready to do what I’m doing now. People with influential blogs are talent and they don’t want to be told what to write about.

There’s an interesting dynamic going on in new media right now.

The big old media companies (newspapers, TV stations, etc.) are losing their audiences and their share of advertising money; they’re trying to figure out how to integrate new media (Internet, mobile, etc.) into a new business model to make up for the business they’re losing. If they’re not successful at this, then we’ll have a lot of big companies that will eventually go out of business — with all the attendent economic and social chaos that causes.

At the same time, we have scads of small new online media companies, like Federated Media and Gawker Media, trying to figure out an online-only (or online-mostly) business model. (For example, consider the issues PodTech is facing trying to balance production and bandwidth costs with advertising revenue.) The small new media companies don’t have much to lose, in a way — it’s not an industry with hundreds of thousands, or millions, of employees, investors counting on their success for their retirement investment, etc. But they have a lot to gain, obviously. (The individuals working in those small media companies are risking a lot, but it’s mostly their individual risk.)

Will the big media and little media meet in the middle? Maybe.

Will all the little new media startups get bought out by Yahoo, Google, AOL, etc. and essentially become small pieces of giant media/tech companies? Maybe. (And if that happens, do we risk losing the valuable diversity that lots of small companies bring to the ‘Net?)

Will the big media companies eventually wake up and figure it out and win the battle for the fast-growing online advertising pie? Maybe.

Will the little companies outmaneuver the big companies and make lots of individual bloggers and techies, if not rich, at least as well off as they would have been if they’d worked for a big traditional company? Maybe.

Will several of the above choices happen simultaneously? Are there other possibilities?

I don’t know the answer, but I think that making a living in the media right now is, existentially speaking, both scary and exciting because of the transition we’re seeing. And I think John Battelle and Robert Scoble, among others, are both likely to be among the first people to figure all this stuff out.

Since my earlier post (written at 11:27 a.m. but not posted ’til 11:41 a.m.; guess I don’t need to say when I actually write these things), I’ve also met these folks, who I hadn’t met before: Fec Stench, Diane Davis, David Allen, Billy Ingram, Mathew Gross and others whose names I’ve forgotten (I’m very sorry; if you know who you are, please feel free to leave comments).
What struck me most about this whole event (this is the second conference of this type) is how smart the conversations can be when you get folks together in a room. Everybody gets smarter when they’re talking together.

That said, I left the afternoon session on “NORGS” (please find another term; this is an abominable abuse of the English language :-)) feeling that the surface had barely been scratched. I also felt there wasn’t really enough time for the journalists and nonjournalists in the room to meet together on some kind of common intellectual ground. It just seemed like the group never got far enough into the issues so that the newspaper people could see where some folks, particular the blogger/activists in the room, were coming from, and those folks never quite understood what the newspaper folks face. If everybody left the conference wanting more, though, that’s a good thing.

I could be wrong; I’m open to alternative interpretations. Anyone care to comment?

I’ll be at ConvergeSouth today. I wasn’t at the famous Dave Hoggard barbecue last night, but there’s a set of photos up on Flickr.

Goodbye, FeedDemon, hello Google Reader.

Like lots of folks, I’ve been trying out Google Reader over the past week or so. My verdict: It’s my new default feed reader.

For a long time I’ve been using FeedDemon on my home PC, synched to Newsgator for Web-only access. Before that it was FeedDemon synched to Bloglines, and before that FeedDemon by itself. But Google Reader is the first feed reader I’ve tried that seems to almost match the speed and feel of a desktop reader.

The product is still in Google Labs, which is Google’s real beta stage, so it does have occasional hiccups. Overall, though, it’s been working quite well. One feature I especially like is the ability to give individual feeds multiple tags (or folders, which are the same thing). In Newsgator, etc., a feed belonged to just one folder, unless you wanted to subscribe to it more than once. In Google Reader, though, I can tag a feed “personal” and “work,” for example. Since I want to read some stuff only at work, some only at home and some in both places, that’s a nice feature.

SEOmoz.org has a list of sites that provide all sorts of information about Web sites. Interesting for nosy people like me.

Link.

Web-usability guru Jakob Nielsen has some thoughts about how to increase the number of people participating online in forums ranging from blog comments to Amazon book reviews.

• Make it easier to contribute.
• Make participation a side effect.
• Edit, don’t create.
• Reward — but don’t overreward — participants.
• Promote quality contributors.

He’s got some interesting stats and more details about how to carry out those suggestions. Give it a read. Link.

Google’s convtroversial Book Search is helping publishers sell more books, according to Reuters.

“Google Book Search has helped us turn searchers into consumers,” said Colleen Scollans, the director of online sales for Oxford University Press.

She declined to provide specific figures, but said that sales growth has been “significant”. Scollans estimated that 1 million customers have viewed 12,000 Oxford titles using the Google program.

This is unsurprising. There are lots and lots of books out there, most of which sell only small numbers of copies. For publishers and authors the biggest problem is simply connecting with people who are potentially interested in their books. Google, Amazon and similar services help do that. Writer and blogger Cory Doctorow has a longer, more eloquent explanation of this here.
Link to Reuters story.

Ad Age lists “10 of the best marketers in the business” for it Innovators Report. Among those cited are Jeremy Allaire, CEO of the broadband video play Brightcove, and John Battelle, founder and chairman of Federated Media.

Link.

Google’s Blog Search now allows you to ping it to get your blog indexed. Darren has more details at Problogger.

Blog network b5media has scored a VC investment. Venture capitalist Rick Segal explains why his firm, JL Albright, and Brightspark decided to invest.

First, he says, a blogging network provides a way to take advantage of take advantage of the opportunities posed by information overload:

There are opportunities for new authorities on topics of all kinds to emerge and b5 is a great platform to bring those authorities to market.

Second, the blogging network provides a way to take advantage of what Doc Searl has called the “intention economy.”

All of this translates into an opportunity to grow a business that is about the intention economy.  While many will dismiss this as just blather about making money with ads, I believe there is more to it and b5 represents a good opportunity (and great team) to test out/play out some of these ideas.

And third, he mentions the “passionate team of young entrepreneurs” at b5, plus the presence of Shel Israel.

Shel’s general expertise (and passion) about blogging combined with decades of experience in media, offer b5 a unique perspective and valuable cache of wisdom that we can apply while building the global neighborhoods.

Segal’s post is worth reading in its entirety. Link.
On a related subject, if Greensboro is such a hub of blogging and online community building, why haven’t we seen some kind of successful company in that space in the Gate City? By successful, I mean a firm that has gotten VC capital or started generating serious revenue or that has been considered for possible acquisition by another company. Have I missed something?