Media is dead
Something has been bothering me since Adam Curry talked about media vs. technology on the Gillmor Gang.
And I’m also left wondering why Jason Calacanis pumps up AdSense and yet gets labeled a “media guy”, or even calls himself such.
I think it’s a dis-credit to himself. He’s much more than that.
He’s an “Attention” guy.
You see, media by it’s very nature can be disintermediated, and I don’t think any strategy that could fall prey to that is a good one.
Is Google a media company?
No.
Media companies aggregate content makers and act as mediaries between the advertisers and the media consumers. (sorry to Doc, i don’t like the word consumer either)
Google is doing more than that.
They are an Attention clearing house.
It’s what Jason might call an enabler, and it’s why the successful new companies we adore all seem to be doing just that. (del.icio.us, grazr, edgio, top ten sources etc.)
They are enabling an attention transaction to occur. Think eBay or Craigslist. OPML, not HTML. Tom Morris, not Morris, the Cat.
There is no enabling happening here, just intermediation.
Jason’s latest venture is about enablement, so I think he’s on the right track. Paying people doesn’t change that, as long as a service is open.
Attention enablers can’t be disintermediated. They can be replaced, but not disintermediated.
I don’t come from the software industry. I much more relate to what Dave Winer calls a himself, a “media hacker”. And that’s what he calls Scoble too.
It’s not really about technology. That is a means, not an end.
Technology itself can be disintermediated or commodified. Soon, we will plug into technology like we do into electrical outlets. It’s happening now.
So I say that the winning companies are not media companies or technology companies, but Attention companies.
And if PodShow is a media company, it may succeed in the short run. But to last and grow, it will have to transform to an Attention company. So will Tribune, New York Times, Microsoft, Podosphere.com and the whole lot.
Hi Matt, nice post. Your classification of Attention is spot on. Attention as a concept is still generally poorly understood. I think a lot of the “attention implementors” (those companies trying to create or understand “attention” as a discrete technology) are going to have a steep hill to climb. Things like attention.xml are a means to an end, and not the end itself. Attention is a broad and powerful concept and not necessarily a single technology.
I think you’re right, that the Googles, Netscapes, top-ten sources, (and yes Grazrs) of the world are enabling this new attention space by understanding and providing people what they want. Content will always be king, but the difference between media and attention is the right content to the right people at the right time.
I thought you were at classyfeeds, are you back to blogging here?
[…] Matt Terenzio has some interesting words about being a media company versus an “attention company”. (He lists Grazr as an attention enabler in his post.) Explore posts in the same categories: Uncategorized […]
Yeah, I agree that newspapers now become quite useless and they need to ameliorate their papers. For example, for changing to the Web 2.0, as user powered content, such as submission and voting.
I guess News 2 (www.news2.ca) is a perfect example of new media generation.
I’m just keeping you on your toes Mike. Yes, I’ll be posting here from now on, I think.
[…] Well, yes those sites have become media themselves and we all know that media is dead. […]