Online media
Posts focusing on the technology and business of online media and publishing. Related subjects include:
Where I think the information ecosystem is headed
The debate about the future of the information ecosystem rages on. As you might surmise from my choice of words, I’m on the side that says something new will rapidly evolve to fill niches vacated by the demise of a teetering economic model. To a first approximation, there are two major reasons to believe this:
- People have deep-seating cravings to opine, educate, and otherwise expostulate. Many will gladly do it for free. And labor represents the lion’s share of information-industry costs.
- What’s more, a significant fraction of news is something large organizations have a vested interest in releasing. To the extent that’s true — and there certainly are major exceptions in areas such as debunking and investigatory journalism — ordinary enterprises can be and indeed already are a major source of resources for the information ecosystem.
Here are some of the species I believe will thrive or at least survive in the part of the ecosystem focused on enterprise IT news: Read more
| Categories: Blogosphere, Online media, Social software and online media | 18 Comments |
The grand discussion on the future of journalism
The past few weeks have seen a huge outburst of commentary about the perilous states of the newspaper business in particular and journalism in general. Having been a little busy, I haven’t found the time to chime in seriously. That said, my views include:
- People are increasingly unwilling to pay money for news or commentary.
- People are increasingly resistant to conventional advertising.
- Therefore, traditional journalistic business models are indeed fried, both in their original media and online.
- However, lots of people are willing to provide some of the functions of traditional news media — whether news, commentary, or both — with very different economics. For example, my blogs are a classic “freemium” operation: I don’t get paid for writing them, pittances from Network World and Intelligent Enterprise excepted. However, they drive a huge fraction of both the credibility and leads for my real businesses.
- To the extent there ever was one, the wall between news and commentary is crumbling. This is true in print, broadcast, and online media alike, and indeed was happening before the internet became a big part of most people’s lives.
- But the blurring of news and commentary can be and is overdone. E.g., press releases get mixed into news headline feeds all the time, and that isn’t necessary.
- The old graph, in which events passed from fact to reporting to mass dissemination, in a fairly linear and simple manner, is becoming much more complex. Not coincidentally, the technology to handle that complexity is evolving rapidly.
Highlights of the recent discussion include (but in no way are limited to): Read more
| Categories: Online media, Social software and online media | 4 Comments |