Comments on C-Change Media Inc.: Why Ads on the iPad & Other Tablets Won't Make a D...

HI, John (trying again - if there are two, please ...

2010-02-15T01:48:18.483-08:00

HI, John (trying again - if there are two, please delete one!).

Belated thanks for the shout-out. I'm trying to finish our UW Twitter book and I'm not paying as much attention to the outside world as I should.

Hi John, My name is Erik Hansen and I work with T...

2010-02-09T15:28:32.914-08:00

Hi John,

My name is Erik Hansen and I work with Tom Peters. We'd like to send you a copy of his latest book, "The Little BIG Things: 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence." Would you be willing to send along your address? Email: erikhansen@tompeters.com

Thanks, and best of luck in your new venture.

Yours,

Erik Hansen

Hi, John: It was great meeting you when you and C...

2010-02-04T23:19:00.782-08:00

Hi, John:

It was great meeting you when you and Charles visited MSN from BusinessWeek. I only now found out about the career change. Shows how much I pay attention to the machinations of the media industry outside of Redmond.

Best wishes in Marin County with your next venture. One of my freelancers from the SF area just clued me in.

Best,
Jerry

John, I agree with some of what you say, but I bel...

2010-02-04T09:32:21.774-08:00

John, I agree with some of what you say, but I believe the trouble with media's adapting to a new digital world is that everyone wants to lump the entire industry into one strategy. You mention the few successful paid content sites. They are all niche or enthusiast resources, which is why people are willing to pay. Although the NYTimes could make a paid site work, they will have a harder time since they are more geared toward general news.

The web era has allowed consumers to be much more focused. Fortunately, the analytics have followed suit. Media companies need to embrace this and take on a strategy that fits their audience and mission. People will pay for content, but it has to be better and more trusted than the competitors.

John, A candidate for the deanship at the...

2010-02-04T06:05:00.378-08:00

John,
A candidate for the deanship at the Nebraska J School believes mobile-device journalism is the future. And he's hot to put our school in the forefront. I'd be curious to know whether you agree.
If you have some time, check out the details on Gary Kebbel's view in the "Bright Shiny Thing" post at www.joyousjoes.blogspot.com

Love the quote. Totally true. Hope you don't m...

2010-02-03T07:38:39.125-08:00

Love the quote. Totally true. Hope you don't mind if I tweet that and link back here. Time Inc. is a highly metrics-based publishing enterprise (i.e. well suited temperamentally to pick up on digital and leverage the metrics). I can understand that they were nervous about taking the eye off their profitable print franchises. What I didn't understand was that they didn't fund more pure-play digital tools around key categories like food or home. The focus was more on digital replication of existing brands vs. building digital franchises for the future. Sports Illustrated had it right when they bought, incorporated and nurtured the high school sports site fannation. It perfectly extended the brand and served the niche in a more relevant way than the main brand ever could on it's own. But that model wasn't been used as much for People, Real Simple etc. When I left in 2000 to go to a dotcom it was total culture shock -- bright people working crazy hours embracing technology in all aspects (cell phone and laptop mandatory, web-based request systems, VoIP phone, a copy of Jacbo Nielsen's Web Usability guide for every new employee).

Peter, not to pick up a cliche here as a response,...

2010-02-02T12:45:17.730-08:00

Peter, not to pick up a cliche here as a response, but it's damn true: Change is hard. All of us were stuck in the plodding routines of day-to-day operations. We enjoyed the prestige of print, the influence of it, and how it commanded the bulk of the resources. Performance reviews emphasized your contributions to print, not digital. This is still true in media circles. Virtually all the attention remains directed to a dying medium. Far too much energy and money is spent on print when everyone agrees the future is digital. I don't expect this to change because the industry hasn't suffered enough to get it. To paraphrase one of my favorite authors and thinkers, John Gardner, the publishing industry has built its own prison and its editors serve as their own jailkeepers.

John, since you were on the inside, why were media...

2010-02-02T12:26:56.189-08:00

John, since you were on the inside, why were media companies slow to adjust? I guess that in Time Inc.'s case they did the deal (or got taken along via TWX) that they thought would position them for the future with AOL. But even forward-thinking pubs like Fast Company were "talking" about the future while operating a business along legacy structures. And to be fair I think pub execs did feel that they were adapting and changing -- but as is usually the case the amount of change was never as big as the situation required.

Anyway, thanks for the post. For the brave new world of publishing/journalism this post summed up the new maxims prett well [uh hhmmmm can't paste into comment, perhaps some anti-spam feature]

David, very good point. In the old media world, we...

2010-02-02T12:09:49.905-08:00

David, very good point. In the old media world, we called it lead generation. Those ads led to significantly higher revenue and largely exist in the trades--not general media. Digital tracking make it far more likely for ads to result in higher revenues for smart publishers, though only Google has figured out how to really make money from this so far.

John- No device makes the difference- the database...

2010-02-02T11:40:16.874-08:00

John-
No device makes the difference- the database does.
There are only a few companies that have the trust and knowledge of their customers well enough to generate revenue from it:
Amazon, Apple, Netflix, OKcupid (yep a free dating site) and Google.
It's knowing who is looking at the screen- that generates the ability to monetize- not what they are looking at.
These companies can serve up the advertisers what they desire- relevant consumers for their campaigns- if the middle men will share the revenue stream depends on how long the content providers keep dishing it out for nothing.