jeffjarvis
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.
I’m hoping part two of the latest Gillmor Gang will prove more interesting.
If you remember the Jason and the Argonauts tale, you might know how Jason succeeded in conquest over the Seed men by casting a stone at one, who thought it was his neighbor, and letting them all kill each other.
That’s what Steve Gillmor seems to do by letting the fellas discuss the importance of Google algorithms and whether site owners can get a cut by having search engines bid for their site search.
If Steve would have put the “knockoff” Cheerios down for a sec I know what he would have said.
It’s not whether Google’s algorithms hold up, it’s whether they can garner more stock in the conversation with all their attention data.
The winners of the future are not the best technologies. We’ll all be able to plug into those the same way we plug into an electrical outlet.
The winners are the services which add value to the conversations happening throughout distributed web networks.
These networks and conversations are fluid and changing constantly in response to our gestures.
Those who don’t get this are either thinking too hard or just not enough.
In a similar way that facial and hand gestures are a meaningful supplement to spoken conversations, the gestures which we talk about with attention are the metadata of the conversations happening on the web.
That equates to economic power because markets are conversations.
I agree with Jason Calacanis that many in the SEO business are trying to game this system, but I disagree when he says the system works. People are trying to game the system because it does not work. It just works better than the previous systems.
I can prove it Jason. I’ll write a better piece on a new cell phone than Engadget and see which shows up higher on Google.
No. Those dynamics are only part of the game.
The richer system envelops us with answers using our data and our network’s data in a chameleon like fashion, never static like Google. That’s child’s play.
Jason(Argonaut) succeeded in getting the Golden Fleece but was fickle and left Medea for another Princess.
Likewise, in the shorter term companies may succeed by amassing link attention.
The true winners won’t be seeking the Golden Fleece at all. They will be removing the barriers and letting the crystal waters flow in, filtered and clean, Pure Conversation.
I work for Tribune. I really see some positive changes happening in the Interactive product development area. For the first time since Tribune acquired Times Mirror, my former employer, I ‘m actually seeing some bright minds and positive movement in the online space. Still a ways to go.
That said, it still amazes me how clueless many mid-level managers in newspaper industry are as far as web strategy.
The main confusion comes from one concept that’s hard to grasp, though it seems simple once you’ve understood it.
We are not in the news business.
What?
Yes.
We never were.
The value of owning a press was the distribution channel it created.
That valuable channel is not available online and the value of bundled original content is not enough to float a long term business, however good that content is.
In fact, even PR firms are no longer beholden to us.
What’s left?
I’m not sure, but that old value is gone. We need a new way to contribute to new distribution channel, the conversation marketplace.
A new concept is sprouting in the OPML landscape.
The allusion to flora is not accidental, even if banal.
Consider these two unrelated posts, the first from Lisa Williams,
OPML’s biggest impact will be in making it as simple to add a record to a self-assembling worldwide directory as it is today to write a blog post. (Did that make any sense at all? I hope so.)
Yes, that makes sense Lisa.
It sounds like an “organically” created web directory, seeded and fed by the natural actions of an ecological-like community.
Next we move on to James Corbett, commenting on one of my posts,
I’ve been wondering if we should label these multimedia Reading List as…. SEEDs = Sensory Feeds. Seeing as SEEDs are the fruit at the leaf nodes in a tree I think this will tie in nicely with the direction some feed grazers are going. And as a SEED meme accumulates momementum it can actually spawn a whole other OPML tree, just like a real SEED.
Before we get lost in this placid garden imagery, we must also note one of Corbett’s posts that indicates there is also a food chain, or feed chain, if you will, that is in intense competition for our ravenous attention.
He concludes,
Of course the fleet footed Feed Aggregators won’t die out, they’ll just evolve Feed Grazing capabilities.
Our current crop of aggregators are likened to reptilian eating machines. The next generation of consumers, the mammals, will use adaptability to flourish where the reptiles could not.
Man, however, is the only creature in history to have conquered agriculture. Thus, the information consumption tool that wins will not only hunt and forage, but harvest.
This, I think, is a key conceptual transition that must be made to address the growing attention inundation issue.
To consume what is available naturally will not be enough. Social structures must be built to enhance the bounty which abounds.
Adam Green’s River of Feeds is certainly pointing us in the right direction. Annotated lists turn that river into a mill. Lisa Williams hints that we are at the dawn of a new type of information economy, one built upon the small actions of the masses. And so we stand at the launch of a new era, similar in many respects to the industrial revolution.
Large economies of scale, mediation and complex societal structures were produced by the historical industrial revolution.
In this metaphorical one, we will produce some of the same, but moreso, an ecosystem. Both economy and ecosystem, stem from latin for household or habitat.
It seems to be largely held that these social communities can be sown out of the metadata that exists like tagging, linking and subscribing.
I’m going to conclude this post by contending that a more definitive gesture will arise that will create smaller communities among the larger ones that we conceptually know of today.
In fact, I’m going to borrow a concept from the science of ecology called the metacommunity [PDF].
{End of Part I}
It seems that the Newspaper industry is constantly singing that old sixties tune.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the flowers gone?
Long time ago?
When will they ever learn. . .
Have we learned nothing from the music business?
Phillipe Janet, an online executive with French newspaper Les Echos, said internet aggregators should be prevented from “stealing” content and revenues from newspapers.
As far as I understand, stealing content is still covered under the existing copyright laws.
Stealing revenue has never been a crime, except at gunpoint.
Aggregating information for easy retrieval is fair use according to many judicial systems, at least so far.
That just about covers business use on the web.
As far as individuals that share content? Again I refer you to the RIAA.
Jeff Jarvis points out some other humorous quotes.
Update: I see the hand on the Old Media Doomsday Clock ticking . . .
Jeff? C’mon! Jarvis gets it right so often that it becomes a worthwhile link for me when I disagree.
What a conclusion he comes to when he says a study finds,
TV is not bad for kids
First of all, few have ever said TV was all bad, but that “too much” TV could be bad.
Second, the study shows that TV was not bad for student’s test scores. Does this mean TV is not bad for you?
Suppose the test scores are up and so is the number of pounds overweight from a sedentary lifestyle.
Suppose the test scores are up but so is violent crime.
There is more to life than test scores.
In all fairness, it is a blog post and not an essay, so perhaps he was generalizing and being succinct, realizing that we understood these caveats.
That said, I probably agree. I don’t think TV is bad. Newspapers on the other hand. . .
Gotta go, F-Troop is on.
Update: I was just wondering if a day will come when they say “too much RSS may be bad for you.”
I write about a lot of things here, but the original concept of this blog was to follow the disintermediation process to it’s furthest conclusions, which is that “all transactions will eventually be person to person”, a world of pure conversation and pure competition. I’m sure you’ve read ClueTrain as well here
I was revisiting that thought when I read Jeff Jarvis mentioning that Craigslist is just as likely to get disintermediated as the Old Media it is ousting from the transaction.
This will occur with completely distributed services working with open protocols. Check out structured blogging for a start in that direction.
Jeff says,
I’ve long argued that Craigslist and Monster, et al, will, in turn, be overtaken by distributed models that no longer require us to use centralized marketplaces.
So, does this mean that companies in future do not exist in the sense that they do now . Will every person be their own company and collaboration on larger projects merely be tightly coupled partnerships?
I think so.
Perhaps the Old Media Doomsday Clock could be the Old Business Doomsday Clock
And maybe that is what Dave Winer is saying when he says that RSS is the ad, because the only thing to advertise in the future is ourselves.
And maybe that is what Steve Gillmor is saying when he says that Advertising is built upon the Attention platform. We won’t take out ads in the future, we will vie for others Attention.
And despite Alex Barnett thinking this is extreme, this will be a way of life, since business and personal will have merged to become “life as usual.”
We won’t be paid to try get people’s Attention for a company, but for ourselves. And the more Attention we bring to the table, the more valuable we are to these future partnerships we take part in.
I’m starting to get this thing.
My only question is, “How long?”
Are we talking 5, 10, 20 or 100 years here.
My guess is that it will creep in, not arrive at once. We are in for a long decline of the company centric view of business, and the dawn of the Individual Age.
« Previous Page —
