Robb Montgomery

Microsoft and the NYT’s future news reader made news at a meeting of U.S. editors recently in Seattle but let’s please first concede that it is vaporware - it doesn’t exist for real users. In contrast a few weeks earlier at INMA in Chicago the folks at Press Display were quietly showing some serious upgrades to their press display technology that can help editors and publishers today. The most stunning to my eye was the real-time user feedback that publishers can collect and analyze for free. (See attached screen shot)

Using sophisticated tracking techniques, we are able to monitor the exact amount of time each reader spends reading their chosen newspaper, down to a space roughly the size of a postage stamp.

For the consumer there are some nice upgrades too: Instant translation of the text into 10+ languages plus it can create podcasts on the fly and also serve to mobile. But the fact that reader/viewer feedback reports can be instant, non-disruptive and generated at no cost make many current types of data gathering, focus grouping and generic ‘trac’ results much less specific. That you can watch and learn how your customers use your newspaper is dynamite stuff and best of all it is not vaporware.

Many types of businesses are relearning how to focus first on the user experience

Media consumption habits and new media behavior is disrupting the assumptions held in other industries too. The realization that the customer is the most important value in a technology equation seems to be just dawning on the IT professional. Here’s a citation from Dion Hinchcliffe, the Editor-in-Chief of SYS-CON Media’s new AjaxWorld Magazine.

“In the end, the Web gets out ahead and shows us where IT is heading; that powered by network effects, people have become by far the most important factor in software. They are the source of the majority of content, information, revenue, traffic, and just about anything else you might care about. By taking advantage of this massive power on the edge of the network (both people and their computing/network power), we can build self-organizing communities that will dynamically form their own information ecosystems using the raw infrastructure they are provided. That is, if you embrace the possibilities rather than try to constrain them.” » Web 2.0 Blog

‘People have become the most important factor?

Stunning to hear that from other smart leaders in this consumer-driven age. This, of course, translates to conceding that the reader must come first. Why is that focus so hard to accept? I believe his analysis has great cross-over appeal to other industries facing a breakdown of their traditional control over their customers and their habits.

What is Web 2.0 and why should we care?

Again I have seen many definitions in the last year but I like Mr. Hinchcliffe’s proxy:

“Web 2.0 is about collaboration, information sharing, ad hoc enrichment, participation mechanisms, and open and loosely coupled connections between services and people.”

This he wrote back in October 2005 when the mere mention of Ajax could get people excited about the future of the internet. Web 2.0 allows for new social systems to rise and evolve, Ajax is merely a technology enabler.

So what does it mean?

While some execs see the future of newspapers as clunky electronic slabs of e-ink (at least the New York Times and Microsoft do . . ) Rupert Murdoch has been buying companies that capitalize on Web 2.0 technologies and the media consumers they attract. His latest purchases of Web 2.0 social networking sites include kSolo - a do-it-yourself karaoke web site that allows users to instantly record and share their own karaoke versions of pop songs with their friends. In a Web. 2.0 world the creators are the consumers. Murdoch’s investments directly support the new digital town squares where youth-media creators and consumers are congregating. And where’s there’s a meeting - there’s a market.

‘Me’ media not ‘we’ media

My Space and kSolo and other social network sites have been labeled ‘we media’ but I would argue that the heart of the Web 2.0 disruption is really more personal driven - ‘Me media.’ No longer constrained by cost or license individuals who grew up learning HTML in grade school and have for their entire lives been producing highly edited video are tapping into open source forums or other free social networks to create and distribute their own media. Some like Rocketboom’s Amanda Congdon are attracting large followings and huge advertiser interest but have zero to no employees, shareholders, low production costs, no debt or pension benefits or legal departments overhead to consider. And these Web 2.0 habits apply to the youth consumer’s purchasing patterns.

“Newspapers are now the number two advertising source for online consumers, but online newspaper classifieds are far behind, even among those who use print classifieds.” » http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story1838.shtml

If you haven’t had your classified revenue swept from under you yet by Craigslist consider yourself lucky because Google wants to make the Craigslist-like success a global phenomenon.

“The fledgling Google Base service is the biggest single threat to the international classified advertising industry.” » http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/story1636.shtml