NBC Once Again Overvaluing Content, Undervaluing Community

from the their-own-loss dept

NBC Universal, like so many big media companies, seems to view everything through a top-down broadcast media lens. For example, while it may seem like a good idea that the company is finally (finally!) recognizing that people may be craving local content that is sometimes difficult to find, there's something missing in its announcement of plans to create "locals only" websites targeted at specific geographic regions. You can read the entire press release and see if you notice what's missing.

Every single part of the description of the site is about delivering content to people. Nowhere is there any sense of actually building a community around that content. The only time "community" is mentioned is as a "target." The press release claims that these sites are aimed at "social capitalists" who are the leading influencers in their communities, but the company seems to have missed out on the fact that the reason those folks are influencers isn't because they sit back and just consume the content shoveled to them, but because they take part in the process. They share the news, they comment on it, they write it, they annotate it, they build on it and they help create it. But all that NBC Universal is talking about is taking the same old, old model of simply shoveling content to people.

Filed Under: community, content, influencers, local, news, social capitalists
Companies: nbc universal

Apple Finally Realizes That NDAs For Developers Are A Bad Idea

from the took-'em-long-enough dept

It was definitely surprising to see Apple trying to enforce an NDA to stop iPhone developers from talking about their applications, so it's nice to see Apple (for once!) respond to the backlash by dropping the NDA. However, the company's explanation for why it had the NDA in the first place doesn't make much sense:

We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don't steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.

It's unclear what "inventions and innovations" would be "stolen" (the company probably means infringed, not stolen, obviously) without such an NDA in place. Also, the patents are a separate issue. The whole explanation, frankly, is misleading. The NDA and the patents protect entirely different things in very different ways, and it's difficult to see how the lack of an NDA allows anything to be "ripped off."

Either way, it's good that Apple has recognized that such NDA's significantly limit its developers. It's tough to have much of a developer "community" when said developers are barred from communicating.

Filed Under: community, developers, iphone, ndas
Companies: apple

Is Firefox Missing The Point In Its Response To Google Chrome?

from the not-so-fast dept

Seth Godin thinks Firefox is missing the point by launching new features in response to Google Chrome. He says the problem now is that "when your friends switch to Firefox, your life doesn't get better." Firefox needs to provide people with an incentive to spread it, so that the more people use it, the better it gets for users (think of a social networking site -- you have a better experience if more of your friends join). He suggests new communication and collaboration features that only work if you have Firefox.

I think he's missing the point.

He ignores the Firefox community. The life of a Firefox user does improve as the user base grows. A more vibrant community means better add-ons, bug fixes, security patches, phishing reports, translations/dictionaries, etc. -- all members benefit. Mozilla is already providing the sort of incentive he describes. Sure, there may be ways to improve, but I don't think they're missing the point.

Plus, "only for Firefox users" isn't the Mozilla approach. Mozilla wants to improve the web for everyone -- not just Firefox users. Mozilla thinks your browser should be like your phone or your car; it shouldn't matter if your friends or co-workers are using the same product. You don't need to consider which phone carrier your friend uses before making a call, or which car your co-worker has before providing directions; you shouldn't have to think about what browser someone uses before communicating with them online. People don't need special browser-specific features in order to communicate browser-to-browser, that's what web services (or add-ons) are for. Those kinds of features would make life on the web more difficult for everyone if they were Firefox specific, and if they weren't, Google could just implement them in Chrome.

The community is one thing Firefox has that Chrome can't copy overnight.

If you read some responses to Chrome from people at Mozilla, it doesn't seem like they're missing the point. Competition in the browser market is validation of Mozilla's mission for Firefox, and Mozilla plans to compete by continuing to innovate and to involve the community. Seth Godin makes a great observation about giving people an incentive to spread your product -- "people will recommend something if adoption improves their lives" -- but he doesn't mention the ways in which Mozilla has already taken that to heart. How do you think Firefox became popular in the first place?

Filed Under: chrome, community, competition, firefox
Companies: google, mozilla

Another Author Shows JK Rowling How To Embrace Fans

from the don't-sue-them,-for-starters dept

We covered the ridiculous lawsuit that JK Rowling had filed against a fan who created a reference book, The Harry Potter Lexicon to supplement her massively popular novels. At the actual trial, it appeared that Rowling didn't have much of a legal argument against the publication, so she went for an emotional argument that can be summed up as: she just didn't like it.

Contrast that to situation around author Stephenie Meyer and her Twilight Vampire books (as pointed out by Against Monopoly). Meyer actively embraced the fan community as much as impossible -- including encouraging fans to create a comparable Twilight Lexicon reference guide, Meyer not only was thrilled, she helped fill in some characters' back stories. And, it's worked. The community has responded to her and become huge evangelists for the series and everything associated with it. These days, if your fans want to help advertise your works for you, it seems pretty backwards to then sue them for it. Nice to see that other successful authors aren't following Rowling's awful lead.

Filed Under: authors, community, fan fiction, jk rowling, stephenie meyer, twilight vampire

Do Newspapers Need Comments?

from the probably-not dept

A few weeks back, we wrote about the question of whether or not newspapers should be getting into the community business by noting that you don't build communities, you enable them. But, the question still remains how you enable those communities. Gawker had an interesting post recently along those lines arguing that newspapers shouldn't allow comments on articles. The argument is, basically, that a lot of the comments are really dumb, and don't add very much. That may be true, but in many cases, that's because the newspaper doesn't give anyone incentive to add smart comments. There's no indication that anyone at most newspapers read the comments. The authors of the articles rarely, if ever, respond to people in the comments. There's little to no engagement or discussion. So, instead, the comments just become a way for readers to vent. Just tossing up comments and thinking you've created a community is a mistake -- but that doesn't mean newspapers shouldn't enable comments. It just means they should do so in a more intelligent manner.

Filed Under: comments, community, newspapers

Why Should The Government Force Local Restrictions On Media?

from the not-needed dept

Ed Felten has a great post questioning various government regulations forcing "local" ownership, advisory committees and content for certain types of broadcast media. Felten points out that local content makes sense for local communities, but communities aren't just defined by locality anymore. In fact, he points out how such "local" broadcasting rules made it more difficult for him to keep in touch with his "local" community back in Princeton, New Jersey, when he spent a year on sabbatical in California. Due to those local restrictions, he couldn't get the local television stations from back in Princeton that he enjoyed.

But, perhaps an even bigger question (which Felten doesn't touch on) is why there need to be regulatory mandates for local content in the first place. As we were just pointing out, in the newspaper business, newspaper chains that have aggressively focused on producing local content have found that it's quite profitable while the newspapers that focus on more national news are struggling. In other words, the market itself seems to reward local content without any government mandate. So why is a government mandate necessary at all?

Filed Under: community, local, mandates, regulations

You Don't Build Communities, You Enable Them

from the enable-people;-don't-define-them dept

There's an interesting debate going on among some newspaper industry watchers, concerning how newspapers should approach the question of "community." Paul Gillin has written that the concept of newspapers building communities is a fallacy and that newspapers shouldn't even try. He notes that the idea of a community around newspaper content usually just doesn't make much sense, and newspapers are simply hopping on the buzzword bandwagon in yelling "community" without any real sense of how to build one. As he notes, a newspaper's strength isn't in building community, but in creating content.

Steve Yelvington blasts back that Gillin is quite mistaken and that community is the most important thing that newspapers should be focusing on: "Failure to build community is one of the many reasons so many newspapers are in so much trouble right now."

To some extent, both Steve and Paul are correct -- and I don't think they actually disagree as much as Steve makes it out in his post. The traditional newspaper business model worked because the readership was a community of sorts. They were a community of "local" readers who could be advertised to. The problem for newspapers is that they didn't necessarily understand this, focusing solely on the content creation side. But they didn't realize that other sources of information were creating other places where similar (and different) communities could form and be advertised to. That started eating into that "community" of newspaper readers, because there was no plenty of competition providing a much better community experience.

So, yes, Steve is correct that newspapers do need to get back to cultivating a community -- but Paul is correct that simply yelling "community!" and thinking you can throw some "community features" on a site aren't going to do very much. What the rest of the internet has shown is that you build community not by building a community, but by enabling a group of people to do what they want. And that can include commenting on the news, creating the news or sharing the news among many other things. There isn't a magic bullet to create a community -- but newspapers should look to see what they can do to enable a community to form and then get out of the way.

Filed Under: community, newspapers

The User Generated Font Community

from the challenging-business-models dept

It's often amazing to see the larger struggles of one industry reflected in a very similar situation in a much more narrowly focused industry. Obviously, we've had tons of stories about major media operations, from television to radio to newspapers have suddenly struggled to compete in a world where there's also user-generated content to compete with on all levels. Certainly, most of that user-generated content is not very good, but that's missing the point. Some of it is quite good -- and the good work tends to get noticed and float to the top. Basically, the old guard no longer has a monopoly, and that can require a major adjustment in terms of both product and business model. And the same thing is happening in much more narrowly focused markets -- such as fonts.

A few months back, we wrote about how one font company got so upset that one of its fonts was found on a file sharing network that it sent a huge bill to the guy it believed was responsible, and then increased the price on the font, along with a huge rant about people "stealing" their fonts. This is like the RIAA flipping out over file sharing -- and rather than recognizing that the unauthorized file sharing was actually a sign of people wanting a more efficient market -- trying to resist that market.

Then, compare that to this wonderful story in Slate about an online service called FontStruct that lets anyone create and share their own fonts. Suddenly, a large group of folks who didn't even have the means before can now make their own fonts. They're certainly not as good as professional fonts in most cases, but for many people they are good enough (and some of them are quite good). As the article notes: "FontStruct is the Casiotone keyboard of font-making. Maybe you can use it to bang out a credible pop song. Beethoven? No way."

But just as user generated content has changed other businesses, it also impacts these smaller businesses. Now some (and I'm sure the font company we discussed earlier would agree) will bemoan this situation, complain about the "amateurs," insult the crappy fonts and insist that it will hurt the overall market. But that's the wrong way to look at this. What we're seeing is more fonts available, and more people even being aware of font possibilities. The best work bubbles to the top, thanks to a rating system. A good font designer can use a program like this to highlight and promote his or her works -- and then sell the ability to do custom work as well, or additional design work. It becomes a win-win across the board. More fonts are available, it's easier for the best designers to promote themselves, and more people who would never consider paying for a font learn about what's possible and available.

Filed Under: community, fonts, user generated content

Time For Warner Music To Fire The Lawyers And Promote Ethan Kaplan

from the just-a-suggestion dept

I'm at the Mesh Conference in Toronto this week, where I'm scheduled to give a talk on the economics of abundance tomorrow. The keynote today was an interview of Ethan Kaplan by Mathew Ingram. Kaplan, as many of you probably know, is the VP of technology for Warner Bros. Music. He's a smart guy, whose blog has been worth following for years. If you've followed his writings, it's been clear for quite some time that he deeply understands what's going on in the music industry, and how that relates to the changing marketplace. It seems so rare to hear a recording industry exec say things that make sense and that don't seem anti-consumer, that it really stands out when one does so. Specifically, he talked a lot about how a modern record label really should be focused on how to help use modern technologies to better let musicians connect with fans in useful and meaningful ways. And a record label has the resources and (should have) the skills to do that while allowing the musicians to focus on the music. As he noted, it really is all about cultivating the community of fans and helping that community come together and connect with both each other and the band. From that, multiple (lucrative) business models easily follow.

This fits in with a variety of themes we've touched on, from the role that is clearly still available for a smart record label, to the importance of concept of better connecting with your true fans. Kaplan seems to be very focused on positioning Warner Music to be able to enable that for every band the company works with. That's fantastic and very exciting (though, it's years later than it should have happened).

Unfortunately, though, it appears (at least in practice) that Warner Music focuses on using Kaplan's expertise solely on the technology side, rather than on the business side. Warner has been one of the more aggressive record labels in suing fans and suing any service out there that does help fans better connect with each other and the musicians. Warner still seems to be of the mindset that it absolutely needs to get a cut from any such service, even if allowing the service to promote its artists would help everyone long term. Warner is also run by Edgar Bronfman Jr., who (when he was head of Universal Music) kicked off the industry's plan to sue everyone, though he's since rewritten history to say that the industry went into a mistaken "inadvertent war" with consumers (it wasn't inadvertent at all -- Bronfman himself talked specifically about "armies of lawyers").

If Warner Music really wanted to shift its position, it should rein in its lawyers, stop worrying about "protecting" everything and focus on adding value and enabling new business models to flow from its stable of top musicians. Give Kaplan more control over the business side as well and see what radical new ideas come forth. Unfortunately, that seems unlikely to happen any time soon. It reminds me, tragically, of the story we wrote a few years back about MTV. The company had been lauded in the press for hiring a "chief digital officer," as if that showed that the company "got" new media. The problem is that thinking digitally isn't a separate job function. It needs to pervade the entire company. It needs to inform the thinking of everyone in the entertainment industry these days. And, indeed, just a few months after the press talked up the "CDO" of MTV, the guy was out of the job. It's great that Kaplan is inside Warner Music, helping to inform their overall strategy -- but he shouldn't be just a "tech geek" (even at the VP level). The digital marketplace is the marketplace for music these days, and Kaplan's insights into that overall space shouldn't be pigeonholed as "the tech stuff." It should be part of any music label's overall business strategy.

Filed Under: community, customers, ethan kaplan, record labels, technology
Companies: warner music group

Is NBC Built For Failure In The Digital Age?

from the can't-retrofit-a-community-model dept

If you haven't yet read John Hockenberry's fascinating piece in the current issue of Technology Review, you ought to. Hockenberry was a longtime correspondent for Dateline NBC and went from there to the MIT Media Lab. It's hard to think of anyone more qualified to assess the news industry's relationship to new technology. And although the article does eventually devolve into (juicy) carping about his former employer, prior to that point Hockenberry's analysis of the media's failure to meaningfully embrace online technology is incisive.

But Hockenberry also makes this more general point:

Networks are built on the assumption that audience size is what matters most. Content is secondary; it exists to attract passive viewers who will sit still for advertisements. For a while, that assumption served the industry well. But the TV news business has been blind to the revolution that made the viewer blink: the digital organization of communities that are anything but passive. Traditional market-driven media always attempt to treat devices, audiences, and content as bulk commodities, while users instead view all three as ways of creating and maintaining smaller-scale communities. As users acquire the means of producing and distributing content, the authority and profit potential of large traditional networks are directly challenged.

By now everyone is familiar with the "Long Tail" concept, which, among other things, points out that information technology makes niche communities and products viable at a much more specialized scale than was previously possible. It's fairly well accepted that this focus on niche products may decrease the profitability of the mainstream hits found to the left of the long tail (see here for a good example).

But Hockenberry's observation makes obvious a point that's often neglected: that the shift in cultural attention that comes with the long tail may be closer to zero sum than we might imagine. It's not just that the network allows niche communities to proliferate; people also value those precisely-targeted communities more than they value media experiences designed for a general audience.

With this in mind it's a little easier to excuse the lame online efforts cited by Hockenberry. A broadcast network like NBC is fundamentally designed to produce at most a handful of signals, each as broadly appealing as possible. There's just no way to retrofit such a system into something that can compete with the endlessly precise intimacy of online communities. Sure, NBC may have missed some opportunities. But it's hard to believe that any of them would have stopped the inevitable diminution of mass media's importance to the average person.

Filed Under: community, john hockenberry, long tail, mass audiences
Companies: nbc