I’m listening to Dave Winer and Jay Rosen “reboot the news.” Jay is a journalism professor and Dave is a geek that helped either birth or bootstrap all sorts of publishing technologies including blogging, RSS, OPML, XML-RPC, and more. So, hearing the two of them do an audio podcast every Sunday is very interesting.
I’ve been pretending in my head that I’m a newspaper exec. When I do that I keep beating myself around the face. Why? Because the newspaper industry keeps giving the geeks free meals. Let’s study the free meals:
Free meal #1. Giving away classified advertising to Craig’s List.
Free meal #2. Giving away photography to Flickr (look at the photos from the Chinese Earthquake, why didn’t this happen on a newspaper branded site?).
Free meal #3. Giving away front page news to blogs like Huffington Post.
Free meal #4. Giving away “small” community news like births, deaths, birthdays, etc to Facebook.
Free meal #5. Giving away real-time news to Twitter.
Free meal #6. Giving away news distribution to Google News and Amazon Kindle, among others. With new sites like Kosmix coming on strong (hundreds of percent of growth month over month).
Free meal #7. Giving away restaurant reviews to Yelp.
Free meal #8. Giving away traffic information to Google Maps.
Free meal #9. Giving away celebrity news to Facebook and Twitter. (Why is Oprah on both of those, and why didn’t the newspaper industry lock up Oprah and keep her on a newspaper brand?)
Free meal #10. Giving away local news to Topix (at least that was funded by a newspaper brand).
Free meal #11. Giving away business news to Yahoo Finance and Google Finance (and something new that will get announced tomorrow).
Free meal #12. Giving away news ranking to Memeorandum.
Free meal #13. Giving away astrology to Astrology.com.
Free meal #14. Giving away comics to Comics.com.
What is their latest giveaway? Crowd-sourced news. I visit Twitter Search every day to find out what is “hot news.” That’s something I used to look at newspapers and older media for (radio, TV) but Twitter is just plain better at telling me what is trending.
OK, so now my face is bloody because I’m seeing all the things the newspaper industry gave away. Do they have anything left to give away?
YES!
“OK, Scoble, you’ve lost it now, there isn’t anything left.”
Oh, you are wrong. There are still some tasty meals left. The rest of this post will be a plea to the newspaper industry to NOT give away the last things they have left.
Meal left #1: their distribution. About half of the houses in Washington D.C., for instance, still receive the Washington Post.
Meal left #2 (partially eaten): their understanding of the local community, although this is disappearing very quickly in many communities. I’d still rather read a New York Times review of Broadway Plays or restaurants than a Yelp review, but that is changing fast too.
Meal left #3: they still have journalists who can be paid to chew on something for a while (like go to Iraq to cover the war), although this is disappearing too. Sorry, I’ve watched the blog world and we aren’t willing to self fund longer term projects. We chase the fun short stories, or things that will get a quick hit on Memeorandum or Techmeme, but doing the longer stories that require doing real reporting with hundreds of sources, say, about what a politician is doing, just isn’t there.
Meal left #4: objectivity and accountability. I can argue that lots of journalists aren’t objective, but the truth is they are part of a system that adds objectivity and accountability as a system BEFORE publishing. Blogging and Twittering, I have noticed, can be objective and accountable, but it sometimes takes time to figure that out, especially when bloggers and twitterers don’t disclose their conflicts of interests up front.
Meal left #5: Systems for aggregating and archiving information. Far beyond what I’ve seen on most blogs or on Twitter. Here, find quickly the first four Tweets about the Chinese Earthquake. Now, why does the New York Times make it easier to find the front page of the paper the day they reported the Titanic sank?. Hint: they have this figured out in a way that Twitter and others just don’t.
Meal left #6 (partially eaten): they have brands that many people who are older, and therefore understand politics, business, sports, news, influence, wealth, and many other topics, love a lot more than Facebook or Twitter.
Meal left #7: They have news systems that are very robust. Do you have the Associated Press warning you about news events coming up? Newspaper editors do. Do you have a scanner and a team of people listening to the police full time? Newspapers do (or did).
Meal left #8: They have a room of curators. People who understand the news. Understand their communities. Who pick the top stories and who add understanding onto them with photos, graphics, headlines, etc. Believe me, I’ve been watching most bloggers and most of them suck at packaging their stories.
Meal left #9: Sources. The San Jose Mercury News can get into the Mayor’s Office. I can’t. Well, I probably could, but it would take a while to figure out who to call, what the stories are, who the gatekeepers are, etc. When I visited the Capital I had a journalist as a guide. If I didn’t have someone who was familiar with the Capital I would never have gotten past all the gatekeepers and I would not have been as effective.
Meal left #10: Relationships and an understanding of same. Most of us haven’t really thought about how the Mayor of our town is related to other people. Journalists study that in depth.
Meal left #11: a newsroom. I’ve been in a few newsrooms, including the New York Times. Being there gives you access to other people who care about the news. People who’ve been around a long time and understand how to get to the bottom of a story and how to tell it in the best possible way. You also have access to all the machinery of creating news. Can you afford a 300 mm F2.8 lens? I can’t. That costs $8,000, but the local newsroom probably has several. The New York Times even has a TV studio to shoot HD interviews that I can’t yet do.
Meal left #12: great opinion writers who understand the news system a lot better than most Twitter users. The New York Times even ran a post about that today, which is causing interesting conversation.
So, what is the next meal to be given away and, how could I, as self-appointed head of journalism, keep our industry from giving it away to yet another San Francisco geek with his or her hand out?
We are in the middle of moving to a real-time system for EVERYTHING. Tomorrow afternoon at about 4 p.m. Pacific Time a company called SkyGrid will show off just how this is true. But you already have plenty of taste in Twitter, Facebook, and especially, friendfeed. But those systems are still VERY UNSATISFYING.
That is where we could work together. Why don’t the geeks and the last remaining news organizations create something new?
Let’s start with Facebook and Twitter. They are onto something, but they have NOT nailed the monetization system. Mark Zuckerberg and his team at Facebook knows they are very close. Let me explain a little of how close they are.
To do that, first let’s go back to how people buy things. I’m in the middle of buying a mountain bike, so am studying this process very closely. Here’s the buying process:
1. Something created the need in my head to buy a mountain bike. In this case it was a doctor who told me I should exercise more. I have a great trail near my house. I don’t like swimming. I don’t like running anymore (did too much running in high school when I ran four marathons). I don’t like going to the gym. So, I’ve been looking for something more fun that will help me in my goal. My friend Luke wants me to surf, and that might play into it, but I like riding a bike and I like photography, so I want to carry a camera while mountain biking.
2. Now I’m researching. That means visiting stores. That means asking my friends. Talking about it on Twitter and friendfeed. Just a few minutes ago (while writing this post) I did just that and already have dozens of replies, all in live time!
3. Soon, this week, I’ll be buying. That’ll be the only time you can really monetize me.
So, let’s look at Facebook, Twitter, friendfeed.
Can they create the need? Absolutely!
Can they help you research? Yes!
But can they monetize? No!
That’s the opportunity Mark Zuckerberg has left open and it’s only open for a little while.
So, what can we do?
How about we create our own social network? One that is a meritocracy. Best participants get recommended. Not like Twitter where celebrities get recommended above people who are actually participating. Oprah, for instance, already is on Twitter’s recommended follower list despite only being on Twitter for three days. Huh? Twitter will come to understand why that’s a pretty stupid idea. Celebrities rarely will tell you where to buy a great mountain bike and even rarer will they answer your questions in live time. Come on, do you really hold delusions that Oprah will answer your questions? I don’t.
First, let’s start with cloning Twitter. It’s the simplest to clone. Heck, there’s already an open source system that did just that. It’s called Laconica.
But remember, what we really need is a search engine to pull interesting things out.
Here’s some use cases we’ll need to design that search engine to do:
1. Local establishments. When I am walking down University Ave (or any ave) I want to be able to say “show me sushi restaurants within walking distance.” Now, imagine if Facebook did that? Well, it could tell you “four sushi restaurants have been liked by 10 or more of your friends.” But it doesn’t store location information. Friendfeed? It can give you the real time metadata, but we need more to be able to really pull back just restaurants. Relying on comments and titles, the way its engine does now, will lead to lots of noise. And Twitter? Twitter doesn’t give us enough metadata to do much of anything except to know that a few sushi restaurants were retweeted a lot or that there’s one with a popular metatag.
2. Movie feedback in real time. I remember seeing movies with my team at 7 a.m. on release day when I worked at Microsoft (they bought tickets for lots of us and made us go early in the morning so that we’d be at work on time). The email lists would tell everyone else whether the movie was any good or not. So, why can’t we do that? And rate theaters at the same time?
3. News sharing. Already Twitter does THAT pretty well. I knew about the Chinese Earthquake while it was happening thanks to just watching Twitter. But months later? Try to pull out the important Tweets. I can’t. Over on friendfeed I can. Over on Facebook? Nope, because my friends started yelling at me when I pulled Tweets in there. They like baby photos and personal information, meant for close friends, but not a lot of news. Facebook is going to have a tough time getting over that.
4. Product feedback. I need a way to look for good feedback about all sorts of stuff. Dave Winer just bought a toaster oven that he has been raving about. Now go to Twitter Search and tell me about his toaster oven. I couldn’t find his info. Over on friendfeed I was able to find his info, but it’s unstatisfying, because I can’t see who else liked that particular toaster oven.
So, how do we build what I need?
I have some ideas. First, let’s assume we can match friendfeed. That’s already a tall order. That company was started by four superstars from Google. I’m not a superstar from Google.
But, I know that there are a few technology superstars at, say, the New York Times. I’ve met a few of them on my travels and there are a few others out there, too, and if we pool our efforts we could convince others to join us. There’s lots of engineers on the streets right now.
How about making a platform that would enable everyone to build their own little Twitter? You know, have a community of people that they could draw out of Twitter and over to your private community? Friendfeed is very close to that. Watch how I’m using Twitter to get my Twitter followers to answer questions over on friendfeed. But that means you’ve gotta have something that adds functionality onto Twitter over on our own site.
Look at my question on Twitter and friendfeed about mountain bikes again. What do you notice is missing?
1. Price data.
2. Comparison charts.
3. Separation of very credible and uncredible answers. Let’s say someone from Nike’s adventure team, who I believe is the winningest mountain bike team, comes over and answers my question. Why is his or her answer the same as everyone else’s? Doesn’t he or she have more credibility and authority?
4. Other metadata that shouldn’t be visible, like metatags. Maybe someone wants to connect my answers to another answer on, say, bike components. But why should that connection be visible? Today building such a connection in Twitter, Facebook, and friendfeed is not possible. So, how would we do it? Invisible comments and a command line interface. More on that in a minute.
5. My ability to mark different people as credible for different reasons. Let’s say the CEO of Specialized came over and commented on that thread. He would be credible, but he would be biased toward pushing Specialized. So, he’s not as credible as, say, someone from the Nike adventure team, at least when it came to bikes. He might be VERY credible when it comes to other biking topics, though, and even in bikes he’s more credible, than, say, me, who has no expertise in the industry.
6. Connection with existing resources. I like how Mahalo does this. If they don’t have a human-built connection they add algorithmic ones from Google.
7. Links to places to buy. Anytime I mention “mountain bikes” why doesn’t Twitter and friendfeed bring up a link to different mountain bike stores? Heck, even Amazon ships Mountain Bikes and if I included my affiliate link (I have not here) I would get paid some cash everytime someone bought a bike.
8. Comprehensive links to all the reviews that already have been done about the products that are getting mentioned in there. I have to manually put each one of them into Google to find more info. Why is that?
Here’s what I meant by “invisible comments.” Look at friendfeed. Each comment is a piece of metadata that can be used by the search engine. For instance, I can put “greattoasteroven” into a comment, like I did underneath Dave Winer’s toaster oven post, and now you can use friendfeed’s search engine to find it. But why does that “metatag” have to be visible? Here, let’s design an invisible commenting engine.
First, let’s invoke the invisible commenting engine. We could pick something like %%0, which is a string that would never get used. So, let’s design an invisble comment:
%%0 metatag=”greattoasteroven” This one could do metatags.
%%0 location=”25 Pinehurst Lane, Half Moon Bay, CA 94019″ This one could do location.
%%0 price=”$1,499″ This one could do price.
%%0 language=”german” this could tell the search engine to pull this entry up only if the speaker wanted german results
%%0 invisible=”Dave Winer is a nice guy.” This could be used to leave a comment for you, or for the search engine, but that wouldn’t be visible for the outside world. You could even use that to make things only visible to certain people, so you could have private conversations INSIDE the comment thread.
%%0 administrator=davew This one could make Dave Winer an administrator of the item, which would give his comments a different color, and would enable him to delete or edit comments on that thread.
%%0 post comment at 12:01 p.m. Pacific Time April 29, 2009: “this comment will appear on April 29th at 12:01”
%%0 credibility=10:davew This would mark Dave Winer as “highly credible” on this topic, and because everyone else has a default credibility of 5, would give him a different color and a star icon. You could then do the next invisible comment:
%%0 display credibility of >8 only (this would make only comments of people with credibility of 8 or above visible, once the user had invoked this).
Anyway, I could keep going all night long. In the real-time web having such a console would be important to be able to talk to the search engine. We could brainstorm such things all night long.
Now, isn’t that “geeky?” Yes. Would the celebrities that now are moving into Twitter get it? No AND yes!
See, while the geeks might be stuck with such a command-line interface, I expect that very quickly developers of applications like Tweetie, Twhirl, and TweetDeck would add on UIs to take advantage of the invisible functionality. You could click a “price” button in TweetDeck, for instance, which would show you the price of the bike you are now looking at (or allow you to input it as a Tweet-like message, if you knew the price).
This would build a very rich microblogging service and I think everyone else would want to build invisible comments into their system and interroperate with the ones we designed.
But, no, I suspect this whole post is for naught. I suspect that the newspaper industry will give away their last few meals to the geeks in San Francisco yet again.
Why is that?
Scobleizer 
You’re getting right to the point here Robert. This is what I’ve been suggesting for a few weeks now. I’ve also suggested that you could simply build this protocol to ride in a regular tweet, encrypted (if you want to keep that data “invisible”) or unencrypted. If that were done you could implement this Right Now, and it would be portable between several microblogging platforms. The functionality is simply placed in the client software and the transporting service (twitter, identi.ca, blellow, and OMB platform, etc) need know nothing whatsoever about it. It’s trivially easy to search and use and if the protocol is designed correctly it could and would have additional metadata, including links, pictures, and so on (this is why you use an encrypted protocol that compresses the data). There is no reason why services couldn’t expand the data and feed it to public and/or private search engines. Private search engines could search the compressed form of the data and be lightning fast.
I put the basis of this idea forth here: http://guruvan.gurus.net/techbiz/hello-world which is a reprint of a comment I wrote on your blog.
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You’re getting right to the point here Robert. This is what I’ve been suggesting for a few weeks now. I’ve also suggested that you could simply build this protocol to ride in a regular tweet, encrypted (if you want to keep that data “invisible”) or unencrypted. If that were done you could implement this Right Now, and it would be portable between several microblogging platforms. The functionality is simply placed in the client software and the transporting service (twitter, identi.ca, blellow, and OMB platform, etc) need know nothing whatsoever about it. It’s trivially easy to search and use and if the protocol is designed correctly it could and would have additional metadata, including links, pictures, and so on (this is why you use an encrypted protocol that compresses the data). There is no reason why services couldn’t expand the data and feed it to public and/or private search engines. Private search engines could search the compressed form of the data and be lightning fast.
I put the basis of this idea forth here: http://guruvan.gurus.net/techbiz/hello-world which is a reprint of a comment I wrote on your blog.
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I wonder if the newspapers want to be Twitter With Tags (if I’m summarising accurately and which in any case is by no means a bad idea). Everything I see in the UK print news world suggests to me that they’re hell-bent on going down as News Papers, although I don’t really look at the tabloid end, which seems (from sidelong glances on the train) to be less and less about hard news in any case.
Anyway, it’s not the death of the printed newspaper industry that’s really important, at least, not unless you still mourn the demise of buggy whip manufacturing and other superseded industries. My concern is that meals #3 and 4 in particular may not be meals that anyone wants to eat – can you monetize hard news in isolation, and if not, how can it be preserved when all the supporting revenue streams have been extracted?
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I wonder if the newspapers want to be Twitter With Tags (if I’m summarising accurately and which in any case is by no means a bad idea). Everything I see in the UK print news world suggests to me that they’re hell-bent on going down as News Papers, although I don’t really look at the tabloid end, which seems (from sidelong glances on the train) to be less and less about hard news in any case.
Anyway, it’s not the death of the printed newspaper industry that’s really important, at least, not unless you still mourn the demise of buggy whip manufacturing and other superseded industries. My concern is that meals #3 and 4 in particular may not be meals that anyone wants to eat – can you monetize hard news in isolation, and if not, how can it be preserved when all the supporting revenue streams have been extracted?
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Robert,
Did you see the CEO of AP on Charlie Rose?
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10208
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Robert,
Did you see the CEO of AP on Charlie Rose?
http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10208
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I think there is one great cook in the web industry. He is taking all the free meals you are talking about and put them together to serve a big meal to his guests. This guy is Adrian Holovaty and his service is everyblock.com.
There are some part of the meal that are still missing, but it is getting better and better everyday.
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I think there is one great cook in the web industry. He is taking all the free meals you are talking about and put them together to serve a big meal to his guests. This guy is Adrian Holovaty and his service is everyblock.com.
There are some part of the meal that are still missing, but it is getting better and better everyday.
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Matt: no, I didn’t see that, I will watch that tomorrow. frederic: thanks for letting me know about everyblock.com. That is most cool!
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Matt: no, I didn’t see that, I will watch that tomorrow. frederic: thanks for letting me know about everyblock.com. That is most cool!
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One of those inspiring moments for me if I’d to put myself like you in any newspaper exec posit.
But taking it forward I think what you say is lacking in twitter, FB or FF is something which many budding entrepreneurs can look into and build something for us. Then it would be #fab for sure.
Also I think newspaper industry execs are still ruminating over their problems inside out rather than shedding their hapless and hopeless condition and coming up with some truly valuable which will beat the time. But my two cents on that too!
So future is still without newspaper industry, IMHO!
—
@Sampad
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One of those inspiring moments for me if I’d to put myself like you in any newspaper exec posit.
But taking it forward I think what you say is lacking in twitter, FB or FF is something which many budding entrepreneurs can look into and build something for us. Then it would be #fab for sure.
Also I think newspaper industry execs are still ruminating over their problems inside out rather than shedding their hapless and hopeless condition and coming up with some truly valuable which will beat the time. But my two cents on that too!
So future is still without newspaper industry, IMHO!
—
@Sampad
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This is an interesting idea. Tagging meets meta-tagging meets microformats. Why limit it to microbloggers, either? It seems that any of the social services would benefit from such a rich form of tagging.
example:
Last.fm
for bands
%%0 currentmembers=””
%%0 pastmembers=””
%%0 awards=””
for songs
%%0 covered=””
etc.
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This is an interesting idea. Tagging meets meta-tagging meets microformats. Why limit it to microbloggers, either? It seems that any of the social services would benefit from such a rich form of tagging.
example:
Last.fm
for bands
%%0 currentmembers=””
%%0 pastmembers=””
%%0 awards=””
for songs
%%0 covered=””
etc.
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Regarding the “hidden comment”, flickr implements exactly that system with their “machine tags” and you are right it is a very useful system (and as you expected mostly used by other software such as flickr’s own geolocation system).
Here’s the description of their system: http://www.flickr.com/groups/api/discuss/72157594497877875/
(I wouldn’t get my hopes up about a newspaper being the first to implement something like this in a useful way though… it would have the most impact in the context of a service like twitter or friendfeed after all…)
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Regarding the “hidden comment”, flickr implements exactly that system with their “machine tags” and you are right it is a very useful system (and as you expected mostly used by other software such as flickr’s own geolocation system).
Here’s the description of their system: http://www.flickr.com/groups/api/discuss/72157594497877875/
(I wouldn’t get my hopes up about a newspaper being the first to implement something like this in a useful way though… it would have the most impact in the context of a service like twitter or friendfeed after all…)
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I’v been thinking recently about ways to using twitter to generate more useful information using a systems of tags (weather updates, film, book, restaraunt reviews etc) but have come to a few conclusions.
This type of system only becomes useful when you have a critical mass of users which i’m not sure how to generate. I can’t even get above 10 followers on twitter
If we separte the world into the geek minority and the rest of the people who have recently jumped on twitter, do most people want to be able to get more info out of twitter. Msot people seem happy to listen to what celebs are saying and tell everyone what they had for breakfast.
Is twitter the right system to use for this or does it limit you too much. With all these tags it would porbably be best to move to a new (but similar) system with more flexibilty but it from the start as you suggest.
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I’v been thinking recently about ways to using twitter to generate more useful information using a systems of tags (weather updates, film, book, restaraunt reviews etc) but have come to a few conclusions.
This type of system only becomes useful when you have a critical mass of users which i’m not sure how to generate. I can’t even get above 10 followers on twitter
If we separte the world into the geek minority and the rest of the people who have recently jumped on twitter, do most people want to be able to get more info out of twitter. Msot people seem happy to listen to what celebs are saying and tell everyone what they had for breakfast.
Is twitter the right system to use for this or does it limit you too much. With all these tags it would porbably be best to move to a new (but similar) system with more flexibilty but it from the start as you suggest.
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On bloggers and long term coverage – I think you need to look into what Michael Totten and Michael Yon have been doing. Their coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan has been better than that of any of the mainstream shops with budgets.
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On bloggers and long term coverage – I think you need to look into what Michael Totten and Michael Yon have been doing. Their coverage of Iraq and Afghanistan has been better than that of any of the mainstream shops with budgets.
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Robert,
Have you checked out Scott Karp at Publish2.com? He’s built some pretty cool news/social software/link economy stuff over there, aimed at “journalists” (very broad definition)
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Robert,
Have you checked out Scott Karp at Publish2.com? He’s built some pretty cool news/social software/link economy stuff over there, aimed at “journalists” (very broad definition)
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Robert, Absolutely – a great post. Truly… In the last few weeks – I can’t stop reading your blog. Congrats you are running on all cylinders. I would love to get your feedback in regards to http://www.tiseme.com. Take Care and let the conversation continue…
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Robert, Absolutely – a great post. Truly… In the last few weeks – I can’t stop reading your blog. Congrats you are running on all cylinders. I would love to get your feedback in regards to http://www.tiseme.com. Take Care and let the conversation continue…
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Great post! I’ve been slowly building up a platform to address this very issue, namely using Social Media to connect people and small businesses in new ways. With YouPage we have built a hybrid local business search and microblogging platform. That way you can search for businesses that supply what you are looking for but also have live information from the business itself andother contributors. For example see how local listings and live microblogs are combined in search results.
http://www.youpage.co.uk/results.aspx?Search=wedding
http://www.youpage.co.uk/results.aspx?Search=photo
The invisible commenting idea is a good one which I will look into further. Another solution that we have implemented to achieve the same thing is real-time search. Right now real-time search is understood by many to mean being able to see what people are blogging about as it happens. But, howabout being able to see what people are looking for as it happens.
http://www.youpage.co.uk/Searches.aspx
Using your bike example lets say you did a search for “mountain bikes”.With YouPage, as well as receiving a list of businesses (and addresses)that have stated in their listing that they sell mountain bikes, Anyone using YouPage real-time search can see that you are looking for a mountain bike, be it a business or enthusiast and reply immediately by way of a microblog. This will make for a much more social search experience. I think where it will really get interesting is if say you searched for aspecific type of mountain bike a conventional search would not know what you mean however the business using real-time search would and thus reply appropriately.
We are UK based for now but plan to release a US specific version in the future. Please do give the site a look, any feedback is more than welcome. I will certainly take on board some of the points from this post.
Thanks,
Nigel
YouPage Ltd
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Great post! I’ve been slowly building up a platform to address this very issue, namely using Social Media to connect people and small businesses in new ways. With YouPage we have built a hybrid local business search and microblogging platform. That way you can search for businesses that supply what you are looking for but also have live information from the business itself andother contributors. For example see how local listings and live microblogs are combined in search results.
http://www.youpage.co.uk/results.aspx?Search=wedding
http://www.youpage.co.uk/results.aspx?Search=photo
The invisible commenting idea is a good one which I will look into further. Another solution that we have implemented to achieve the same thing is real-time search. Right now real-time search is understood by many to mean being able to see what people are blogging about as it happens. But, howabout being able to see what people are looking for as it happens.
http://www.youpage.co.uk/Searches.aspx
Using your bike example lets say you did a search for “mountain bikes”.With YouPage, as well as receiving a list of businesses (and addresses)that have stated in their listing that they sell mountain bikes, Anyone using YouPage real-time search can see that you are looking for a mountain bike, be it a business or enthusiast and reply immediately by way of a microblog. This will make for a much more social search experience. I think where it will really get interesting is if say you searched for aspecific type of mountain bike a conventional search would not know what you mean however the business using real-time search would and thus reply appropriately.
We are UK based for now but plan to release a US specific version in the future. Please do give the site a look, any feedback is more than welcome. I will certainly take on board some of the points from this post.
Thanks,
Nigel
YouPage Ltd
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Robert, you are making the model more complicated than it need be.
What Facebook needs to do is offer it’s users a way to create a robust “My Stuff” section where they organize the products (vendors) and services (vendors) in their lives. The vendors would pay Facebook to be listed in a category. There would be different add-on services for which vendors could pay.
Any Facebook user could choose those vendors whom they wanted for different categories in their My Stuff section. It would be opt-in and completely controllable by the user. Some vendors would remain private and others public.
The model is one of “peer endorsement.” The key would be that you could do multi-variable searches to find a peer sub-group whose opinion you valued for a particular category.
Regular Facebook users would derive value because
1. They could be robustly and more precisely create their “public persona” through association with brands, groups, associations, etc. facebook users could also use this tool to manage the communication channel with those vendors they wanted
2. When they needed to see which products and services are respected by a peer group, they could turn to Facebook to do the leg-work
Vendors would derive value because they would have the opportunity to:
1. Connect directly with their customer base
2. Organically get ranked in an organic word-of-mouth list
Facebook would benefit by
1. Giving its users one more tool to manage “relationships” (both personal and commercial) in their lives
2. Generate revenue
Simply imagine if you could quickly do a search within your Facebook connections on what are the top 10 mountains bikes owned by college educated men, over 30 years old, and living in California.
Then you could go into your “My Stuff” section and put out a request for information to three mountain bike companies. Finally, once you’ve narrowed your search down to 3 bikes you could put out a RFP. Ironically, this is where we originally thought the internet would boom 10 years ago. Now with Facebook, it might just happen.
Happy biking!!
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Robert, you are making the model more complicated than it need be.
What Facebook needs to do is offer it’s users a way to create a robust “My Stuff” section where they organize the products (vendors) and services (vendors) in their lives. The vendors would pay Facebook to be listed in a category. There would be different add-on services for which vendors could pay.
Any Facebook user could choose those vendors whom they wanted for different categories in their My Stuff section. It would be opt-in and completely controllable by the user. Some vendors would remain private and others public.
The model is one of “peer endorsement.” The key would be that you could do multi-variable searches to find a peer sub-group whose opinion you valued for a particular category.
Regular Facebook users would derive value because
1. They could be robustly and more precisely create their “public persona” through association with brands, groups, associations, etc. facebook users could also use this tool to manage the communication channel with those vendors they wanted
2. When they needed to see which products and services are respected by a peer group, they could turn to Facebook to do the leg-work
Vendors would derive value because they would have the opportunity to:
1. Connect directly with their customer base
2. Organically get ranked in an organic word-of-mouth list
Facebook would benefit by
1. Giving its users one more tool to manage “relationships” (both personal and commercial) in their lives
2. Generate revenue
Simply imagine if you could quickly do a search within your Facebook connections on what are the top 10 mountains bikes owned by college educated men, over 30 years old, and living in California.
Then you could go into your “My Stuff” section and put out a request for information to three mountain bike companies. Finally, once you’ve narrowed your search down to 3 bikes you could put out a RFP. Ironically, this is where we originally thought the internet would boom 10 years ago. Now with Facebook, it might just happen.
Happy biking!!
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Opps, sorry. Posted comment to wrong blog entry. Should be for the Facebook mountain bike post.
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Opps, sorry. Posted comment to wrong blog entry. Should be for the Facebook mountain bike post.
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It’s an interesting theory – that the newspapers “gave away” so much. But in reality, barring monopolisitic lock downs of ideas, things will always end up in the medium that we would like to digest them in – the most efficient medium. So locking Oprah to newspapers would not have kept them more relevant – it might have delayed the inevitable, but it would not have prevented the shift to Facebook, Twitter etc. Sure, they might have had the insight to create their own Craigslist – but then they’d have tried to charge for it and as we all know it’s just a matter of time before someone comes along with an equally good product but at no cost (save perhaps ads) to the consumer.
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It’s an interesting theory – that the newspapers “gave away” so much. But in reality, barring monopolisitic lock downs of ideas, things will always end up in the medium that we would like to digest them in – the most efficient medium. So locking Oprah to newspapers would not have kept them more relevant – it might have delayed the inevitable, but it would not have prevented the shift to Facebook, Twitter etc. Sure, they might have had the insight to create their own Craigslist – but then they’d have tried to charge for it and as we all know it’s just a matter of time before someone comes along with an equally good product but at no cost (save perhaps ads) to the consumer.
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Those are wonderful lists.
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Those are wonderful lists.
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What a great way to explain this! I think you have a good point. right now, newspapers have the wrong focus, but they have potential to up their relevancy with an innovative, open approach. It will certainly be interesting to see what happens in the next few months!
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What a great way to explain this! I think you have a good point. right now, newspapers have the wrong focus, but they have potential to up their relevancy with an innovative, open approach. It will certainly be interesting to see what happens in the next few months!
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Great read. Oddly enough, I received a free web alert from Google about your blog post. 😀
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Great read. Oddly enough, I received a free web alert from Google about your blog post. 😀
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I would love to see this blog post as Robert Scoble’s resume to Facebook, twitter or friendfeed. Or even better yet the core of his pitch to angel investors or to venture capitalists. These are the type of ideas that need more than saying, they need implementing and Robert is just the right guy
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I would love to see this blog post as Robert Scoble’s resume to Facebook, twitter or friendfeed. Or even better yet the core of his pitch to angel investors or to venture capitalists. These are the type of ideas that need more than saying, they need implementing and Robert is just the right guy
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Anybody here ever worked at a newspaper? In general they are too slow and managed by people too stupid to pull of anything involving technology past the printing press.
To think a newspaper could have pulled off a Facebook, Flickr, Twitter or CraigsList is pure folly. From where was the money to come? Stock prices and dividends had to be met to keep Wall Street happy. Newspaper have silo views.
A few years back when KR still existed Hilary Schneider at Knight Ridder New Media was placing her bet on Friendster, thinking it was The Next Big Thing.
Go back more then ten years and you had the New Century Network. Anyone remember that? http://www.businessweek.com/1998/12/b3570103.htm
Newspapers FUBAR’d that one too.
There is no hope for “newspapers.” They are going to continue to decline in circulation, staffing will continue to be cut. Reporting will get worse.
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Anybody here ever worked at a newspaper? In general they are too slow and managed by people too stupid to pull of anything involving technology past the printing press.
To think a newspaper could have pulled off a Facebook, Flickr, Twitter or CraigsList is pure folly. From where was the money to come? Stock prices and dividends had to be met to keep Wall Street happy. Newspaper have silo views.
A few years back when KR still existed Hilary Schneider at Knight Ridder New Media was placing her bet on Friendster, thinking it was The Next Big Thing.
Go back more then ten years and you had the New Century Network. Anyone remember that? http://www.businessweek.com/1998/12/b3570103.htm
Newspapers FUBAR’d that one too.
There is no hope for “newspapers.” They are going to continue to decline in circulation, staffing will continue to be cut. Reporting will get worse.
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Hi Robert,
Great blog but what happened to your stylesheet?
Rob
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forget the mountain bike, buy a euro style bike like these and ride in normal clothes every day somewhere far better to do 1-10km every day than 50km on a sat or sun, I do 10km a day on my swiss bike and am in the best shape ever:
http://usa.batavus.com/
http://www.civiacycles.com/civiacompletebike_hyland.php
text me if you need further euro bike buying advice 🙂 !
…Roland +1 604 729 7924
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forget the mountain bike, buy a euro style bike like these and ride in normal clothes every day somewhere far better to do 1-10km every day than 50km on a sat or sun, I do 10km a day on my swiss bike and am in the best shape ever:
http://usa.batavus.com/
http://www.civiacycles.com/civiacompletebike_hyland.php
text me if you need further euro bike buying advice 🙂 !
…Roland +1 604 729 7924
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It’s easy to say NOW that the newspapers were giving away meals THEN. It’s just not that easy. Flickr and Huffington Post didn’t emerge as independent sites just because news sites failed on providing such platforms, but because they are independent. Would Flickr users really have been willing to store their photos on a platform beloning to, let’s say, Times magazine then (-> giving it into the hands of Times)? Independence from news sites was also an important issue for bloggers, when blogging started. These things are only changing in recent times (Flickr users seeing the potential of their material being sold by Getty)
Also: It took a lot of geeks to invent things like flickr, twitter and so on. It’s natural that those geeks didn’t work in news corporations then. We had mainly journalists in our news corporation.
We started a photo community quite early (which is running well), but we never had the chance to beat Flickr, naturally.
We also experimented with distribution of our print-ads via an online platform before here in Germany anybody knew of craigslist, but we can’t compete with services such a craigslist that give almost everything away for free and need virtually no manpower.
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It’s easy to say NOW that the newspapers were giving away meals THEN. It’s just not that easy. Flickr and Huffington Post didn’t emerge as independent sites just because news sites failed on providing such platforms, but because they are independent. Would Flickr users really have been willing to store their photos on a platform beloning to, let’s say, Times magazine then (-> giving it into the hands of Times)? Independence from news sites was also an important issue for bloggers, when blogging started. These things are only changing in recent times (Flickr users seeing the potential of their material being sold by Getty)
Also: It took a lot of geeks to invent things like flickr, twitter and so on. It’s natural that those geeks didn’t work in news corporations then. We had mainly journalists in our news corporation.
We started a photo community quite early (which is running well), but we never had the chance to beat Flickr, naturally.
We also experimented with distribution of our print-ads via an online platform before here in Germany anybody knew of craigslist, but we can’t compete with services such a craigslist that give almost everything away for free and need virtually no manpower.
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Brilliant post, and excellently put.
However on invisible commenting I wonder how many people would bother to do it, even if friendlier interfaces are designed?
While many invisible comments would contain extra information above and beyond what’s in the visible comments, automatically extracting accurate, truly useful and properly searchable metadata from existing information is one of the biggest remaining challenges, and whoever can crack that and sell it will make a fortune.
Assessing credibility/authority is also one of the biggest biggies. As an aside, while of course I’d say this, I really don’t think “real names” or banning anonymity is the right way to go there. If only there was a widely-used trustworthy secure identity authentication system which worked with pseudonyms as well as real names…
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Brilliant post, and excellently put.
However on invisible commenting I wonder how many people would bother to do it, even if friendlier interfaces are designed?
While many invisible comments would contain extra information above and beyond what’s in the visible comments, automatically extracting accurate, truly useful and properly searchable metadata from existing information is one of the biggest remaining challenges, and whoever can crack that and sell it will make a fortune.
Assessing credibility/authority is also one of the biggest biggies. As an aside, while of course I’d say this, I really don’t think “real names” or banning anonymity is the right way to go there. If only there was a widely-used trustworthy secure identity authentication system which worked with pseudonyms as well as real names…
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Everything you say here is well-thought-out, as usual, but it misses the main issue real users (people who have less than an hour a day to spend on this kind of stuff). The problem today is USABILITY. Everything is fragmented. FF tries to fix this problem, but frankly, doesn’t do it very well. Twitter has one of the most obvious usability problems, with 100% of serious users are using a client and/or ff rather than the twitter site.
People want to find out where there’s a nearby sushi shop, or what cycle to buy, and it’s practically impossible for them to do so today. You personally might not notice this, because you have upwards of 10K friends. But for someone with just an above-average number of contacts, say 500 or 1000 (like me), the chance of getting even one recommendation for anything by updating a status message or microblogging is quite low indeed.
No matter how good the ideas are here, until there is a slick app on your iPhone or built into Google to do what you propose, it isn’t going to help. IOW, it doesn’t need to be one service as much as it needs to be one interface/client: one that doesn’t require you to watch a 10-minute video with Scoble to figure out the main features of the thing.
It should gather your location data, all the info from friends/connections, googlemaps, yelp, etc., in one place and really be capable of answering the query “Where is there a good restaurant nearby for less than $20 per person?” It would know, either with or without your telling it (if you entered the destination in your GPS), that you’d actually gone to the restaurant and give you a short questionnaire regarding the restaurant.
It would be able to calculate authority on its own, because it would see that Robert recommended 40 restaurants, but most of the time his friends rated them totally differently than he did, and it would start to rank him lower as a food connoisseur. OTOH, it would see that people follow and like his tweets a lot, so he would be ranked high as a www guru.
RPR
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Everything you say here is well-thought-out, as usual, but it misses the main issue real users (people who have less than an hour a day to spend on this kind of stuff). The problem today is USABILITY. Everything is fragmented. FF tries to fix this problem, but frankly, doesn’t do it very well. Twitter has one of the most obvious usability problems, with 100% of serious users are using a client and/or ff rather than the twitter site.
People want to find out where there’s a nearby sushi shop, or what cycle to buy, and it’s practically impossible for them to do so today. You personally might not notice this, because you have upwards of 10K friends. But for someone with just an above-average number of contacts, say 500 or 1000 (like me), the chance of getting even one recommendation for anything by updating a status message or microblogging is quite low indeed.
No matter how good the ideas are here, until there is a slick app on your iPhone or built into Google to do what you propose, it isn’t going to help. IOW, it doesn’t need to be one service as much as it needs to be one interface/client: one that doesn’t require you to watch a 10-minute video with Scoble to figure out the main features of the thing.
It should gather your location data, all the info from friends/connections, googlemaps, yelp, etc., in one place and really be capable of answering the query “Where is there a good restaurant nearby for less than $20 per person?” It would know, either with or without your telling it (if you entered the destination in your GPS), that you’d actually gone to the restaurant and give you a short questionnaire regarding the restaurant.
It would be able to calculate authority on its own, because it would see that Robert recommended 40 restaurants, but most of the time his friends rated them totally differently than he did, and it would start to rank him lower as a food connoisseur. OTOH, it would see that people follow and like his tweets a lot, so he would be ranked high as a www guru.
RPR
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Such a brilliant post. Thank You!
Finally someone has seen that the pen maybe mightier than the sword but mightier than the net – I think not. It seems as though the newspaper industry has been cursed – a black (and white) magic if you will – and will now probably need a spiritual healer, or witch doctor to help them out. Naturally I will be visiting this blog again to see what other insight you can offer.
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Such a brilliant post. Thank You!
Finally someone has seen that the pen maybe mightier than the sword but mightier than the net – I think not. It seems as though the newspaper industry has been cursed – a black (and white) magic if you will – and will now probably need a spiritual healer, or witch doctor to help them out. Naturally I will be visiting this blog again to see what other insight you can offer.
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Everyone who uses any of these “free” services should be required to received no paycheck from the companies they work for. This generation expects things for free. I should have the same right to expect to use their services for free as well.
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Everyone who uses any of these “free” services should be required to received no paycheck from the companies they work for. This generation expects things for free. I should have the same right to expect to use their services for free as well.
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Great article. Newspapers fall deeper into the abyss every day. Unless they take a major action, they’re likely to fail. Your article is interesting, but neglects to mention one free meal they gave away was convenience. The convenience of having the paper delivered to your door is no longer convenient. You have to walk outside and get the paper. Now, technology is the real convenience with people rarely having to move. Also, you forgot the free meal of journalists now taking freelance jobs. These writers are opting out for more opportunities and stability with writing sites like Helium.com. These writers share knowledge, network with other writers, open themselves up for more opportunities, and make money.
On a quick positive, newspapers do still have one major demand, news.
I can’t wait to see how this all works out.
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Great article. Newspapers fall deeper into the abyss every day. Unless they take a major action, they’re likely to fail. Your article is interesting, but neglects to mention one free meal they gave away was convenience. The convenience of having the paper delivered to your door is no longer convenient. You have to walk outside and get the paper. Now, technology is the real convenience with people rarely having to move. Also, you forgot the free meal of journalists now taking freelance jobs. These writers are opting out for more opportunities and stability with writing sites like Helium.com. These writers share knowledge, network with other writers, open themselves up for more opportunities, and make money.
On a quick positive, newspapers do still have one major demand, news.
I can’t wait to see how this all works out.
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Goodbye newspapers…?
Traditional newspapers can’t compete against new media for informing readers about the latest news. In Italy the first signals of an incoming crisis can be traced in the recent problems which invested “Il Manifesto” and “La Repubblica” (La crisi dell’editoria che viene da lontano). Just yesterday La repubblica reported thet in year 2008 newspaper industry in our country lost + 100%.Thanks to the diffusion of more and more fast connections and the wide spread of internet all web users can access instantly every kind of news and informations. And moreover this can be done for free, at least from the user’s point of view. The real market is behind the scenes: the huge and intricated world of advertising which is migrating from paper press to its web equivalent. The reader can get informations without paying anything and, at least apparently, the choice and availability of news is much greater. Moreover internet offers an interactive approach not available through standard newspaper.
The advantages seem many….which are the drawbacks?
One possible drawback could be found in the web organization itself maybe, intrinsic in all internet facilities. While reading an article the reader finds (almost stubs its toe on) a great amount of links one after the other. This is the web with its hypertext structure. It offers new hints and open one’s own point of view but can also divert from a complete, relaxing and focused reading.
The new freedom offered by the web always depends on our own intelligent usage. For the standard reader the kind of fruition offered by the web is more difficult than the one offered earlier on the traditional papers. Maybe…
The interactiveness may indicate more freedom of expression but also more ways to be deceived.
Who is now the warrantor of the news?
The users can’t make directly the questions to all degrees of people at all levels. This is the task of professional journalists and reporters and this is the reason why I hope a way of cohabitation of classical and new media will be reached. Maybe traditional media should focus their attention to specific characteristic peculiar to professional journalism: investigation, questioning and interpretation.
http://italianopinionist.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/goodbye-newspaper/
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Goodbye newspapers…?
Traditional newspapers can’t compete against new media for informing readers about the latest news. In Italy the first signals of an incoming crisis can be traced in the recent problems which invested “Il Manifesto” and “La Repubblica” (La crisi dell’editoria che viene da lontano). Just yesterday La repubblica reported thet in year 2008 newspaper industry in our country lost + 100%.Thanks to the diffusion of more and more fast connections and the wide spread of internet all web users can access instantly every kind of news and informations. And moreover this can be done for free, at least from the user’s point of view. The real market is behind the scenes: the huge and intricated world of advertising which is migrating from paper press to its web equivalent. The reader can get informations without paying anything and, at least apparently, the choice and availability of news is much greater. Moreover internet offers an interactive approach not available through standard newspaper.
The advantages seem many….which are the drawbacks?
One possible drawback could be found in the web organization itself maybe, intrinsic in all internet facilities. While reading an article the reader finds (almost stubs its toe on) a great amount of links one after the other. This is the web with its hypertext structure. It offers new hints and open one’s own point of view but can also divert from a complete, relaxing and focused reading.
The new freedom offered by the web always depends on our own intelligent usage. For the standard reader the kind of fruition offered by the web is more difficult than the one offered earlier on the traditional papers. Maybe…
The interactiveness may indicate more freedom of expression but also more ways to be deceived.
Who is now the warrantor of the news?
The users can’t make directly the questions to all degrees of people at all levels. This is the task of professional journalists and reporters and this is the reason why I hope a way of cohabitation of classical and new media will be reached. Maybe traditional media should focus their attention to specific characteristic peculiar to professional journalism: investigation, questioning and interpretation.
http://italianopinionist.wordpress.com/2009/03/23/goodbye-newspaper/
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Robert, it is too bad that (a) your arrogance, and (b) your total lack of empathy ruin your insightful ideas. Ray Appen
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Robert, it is too bad that (a) your arrogance, and (b) your total lack of empathy ruin your insightful ideas. Ray Appen
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Sigh. Counterpoints.
Free meal #1 – (Craigs) Not all of Craigslisters would automatically even use newspaper classifieds. Craigs more created a new market, but rather too easy to turn around and post place blame. And Craigs works better in some areas over others, as in lots of markets, its spam city all over.
Free meal #2 – (Flickr) Did the family snapshots and digital cam ‘take-150-pictures-a-day’ types ever had any place in newspapers? No meal here, newsworthy photos only.
Free meal #3 – (Drudge and such) – All a draw, but city front-page news is still covered in local stories, stuff Drudge and Huff never touch, online is too national, too big, too political.
Free meal #4 – (Facebook) Local shoppers and community newspapers cover births, deaths, weddings, high school football, way way better than Facebook. Crazy logic there.
Free meal #5 – (Twitterisms) Real time? Newspapers are not about real time, rather post analysis, deeper sourcing, story formulation. Cable News is all real time. Not a meal newspapers ever had to give away.
Free meal #6 – (Google News) They didn’t give it away, insomuch as it was stolen, big company splog style.
Free meal #7 – (Yelp) A newspaper review of a restaurant (if good) gets plastered and hung up on a wall for all eternity, and all get widely read. Yelp is noise-filled smear-city waste. And those that really frequent dining, go professional Zagat and ilk.
Free meal #8 – (Google Maps) Traffic information? Newspapers never had that, radio does. And mapping is not even applicable to newspapers at all. You are not thinking rationally here. And Rand McNally’s still sell by the boatloads at Wally World.
Free meal #9 – (Celebrity) Celebrity news is MAGAZINES and TV SHOWS. EW, People, US. Newspapers never much bothered. Online is natural habitat for celebrity gossip, (not news). Finke be the only newsperson worthy of the name.
Free meal #10 – (Topix) It’s a rare (and mostly seemingly crazy) person that actually goes to Topix. Local papers still cover the local news like locals. Besides the Wysteria Lanes are where things really juice. Plus tons of other local outlets, zines, 4 sheets, community and college newsletters…etc.
Free meal #11 (News Ranking) – What? Newspapers don’t even care about that, never had. They care about THEIR news ranking.
Free meal #12 (Astrology) – That market dried up, online sources sure, but this is a stale meal they dropped long ago.
Free meal #13 – (Comics) The average casual person is not going to goto comics.com, they will read the comics, when all on one page. Of course, the Geeks will download 50 gig boatloads of comic scans.
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Sigh. Counterpoints.
Free meal #1 – (Craigs) Not all of Craigslisters would automatically even use newspaper classifieds. Craigs more created a new market, but rather too easy to turn around and post place blame. And Craigs works better in some areas over others, as in lots of markets, its spam city all over.
Free meal #2 – (Flickr) Did the family snapshots and digital cam ‘take-150-pictures-a-day’ types ever had any place in newspapers? No meal here, newsworthy photos only.
Free meal #3 – (Drudge and such) – All a draw, but city front-page news is still covered in local stories, stuff Drudge and Huff never touch, online is too national, too big, too political.
Free meal #4 – (Facebook) Local shoppers and community newspapers cover births, deaths, weddings, high school football, way way better than Facebook. Crazy logic there.
Free meal #5 – (Twitterisms) Real time? Newspapers are not about real time, rather post analysis, deeper sourcing, story formulation. Cable News is all real time. Not a meal newspapers ever had to give away.
Free meal #6 – (Google News) They didn’t give it away, insomuch as it was stolen, big company splog style.
Free meal #7 – (Yelp) A newspaper review of a restaurant (if good) gets plastered and hung up on a wall for all eternity, and all get widely read. Yelp is noise-filled smear-city waste. And those that really frequent dining, go professional Zagat and ilk.
Free meal #8 – (Google Maps) Traffic information? Newspapers never had that, radio does. And mapping is not even applicable to newspapers at all. You are not thinking rationally here. And Rand McNally’s still sell by the boatloads at Wally World.
Free meal #9 – (Celebrity) Celebrity news is MAGAZINES and TV SHOWS. EW, People, US. Newspapers never much bothered. Online is natural habitat for celebrity gossip, (not news). Finke be the only newsperson worthy of the name.
Free meal #10 – (Topix) It’s a rare (and mostly seemingly crazy) person that actually goes to Topix. Local papers still cover the local news like locals. Besides the Wysteria Lanes are where things really juice. Plus tons of other local outlets, zines, 4 sheets, community and college newsletters…etc.
Free meal #11 (News Ranking) – What? Newspapers don’t even care about that, never had. They care about THEIR news ranking.
Free meal #12 (Astrology) – That market dried up, online sources sure, but this is a stale meal they dropped long ago.
Free meal #13 – (Comics) The average casual person is not going to goto comics.com, they will read the comics, when all on one page. Of course, the Geeks will download 50 gig boatloads of comic scans.
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Err, missed one, reorder numbering…and could do the “left meals” but enough pointless spag already.
Free meal #11 – Finance News has always been a specialized thing, but Barron’s, WSJ and ilk still hold own. Other newspapers have just covered the local companies, nothing new here. They didn’t give any meals away. The finance apps just went more democratic, instead of handing zillions to trader news companies, search engines and portals went Finance. But the locals know the beat and feel the hum, before the nationals. If sniffing Caterpillar, Peoria news is better than the national press release mush. The closer to the ground, the better understanding of the troops.
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Err, missed one, reorder numbering…and could do the “left meals” but enough pointless spag already.
Free meal #11 – Finance News has always been a specialized thing, but Barron’s, WSJ and ilk still hold own. Other newspapers have just covered the local companies, nothing new here. They didn’t give any meals away. The finance apps just went more democratic, instead of handing zillions to trader news companies, search engines and portals went Finance. But the locals know the beat and feel the hum, before the nationals. If sniffing Caterpillar, Peoria news is better than the national press release mush. The closer to the ground, the better understanding of the troops.
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ask @lancearmstrong
Why on earth would you go with a Nike persons recomendations they dont do Bikes ? a bike is such a pysical thing you need to get off your tush and go down to coupel of decent bike stores and try them.
id say a front suspention dont bother with disk brakes for say £400-500 which is say $800-950
I prefer proper sti thumbshifters SLX or LX
If your traveling a lot look into bromptons (folding bikes) if I commuted to london again id be wanting one of the TI SL speced babys a shade over a grand.
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ask @lancearmstrong
Why on earth would you go with a Nike persons recomendations they dont do Bikes ? a bike is such a pysical thing you need to get off your tush and go down to coupel of decent bike stores and try them.
id say a front suspention dont bother with disk brakes for say £400-500 which is say $800-950
I prefer proper sti thumbshifters SLX or LX
If your traveling a lot look into bromptons (folding bikes) if I commuted to london again id be wanting one of the TI SL speced babys a shade over a grand.
LikeLike
The problem for newspapers is that they have lost the means that they use to pay for themselves, so all else is at risk.
I don’t know that they gave all these things away. These things were taken by other media channels in the media proliferation.
Newspapers can be read in a manner that reinforces the beliefs of the reader. We can think in a human timeframe. The same cannot be said of other media. TV can address our limbic system and result in thoughlessness. Without newspapers our freedoms die.
We desperately need to find a way to pay for the services only newspaper can provide. Some of this was caused by those of us in the web world overstating the new and failing to redesign the old. When designers say that print is dead, its really a failure of print designers to design a process that keeps print alive.
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The problem for newspapers is that they have lost the means that they use to pay for themselves, so all else is at risk.
I don’t know that they gave all these things away. These things were taken by other media channels in the media proliferation.
Newspapers can be read in a manner that reinforces the beliefs of the reader. We can think in a human timeframe. The same cannot be said of other media. TV can address our limbic system and result in thoughlessness. Without newspapers our freedoms die.
We desperately need to find a way to pay for the services only newspaper can provide. Some of this was caused by those of us in the web world overstating the new and failing to redesign the old. When designers say that print is dead, its really a failure of print designers to design a process that keeps print alive.
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Newspaper people are so arrogant that they think they have the answers. Why wouldn’t they have hired a couple of geeks a while ago to figure this thing out?
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Newspaper people are so arrogant that they think they have the answers. Why wouldn’t they have hired a couple of geeks a while ago to figure this thing out?
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Hi Robert
I saw this very late. FluidDB can do quite a bit of what you’re describing here – including the invisible comments, arbitrary metadata, build your own twitter, etc.
We’re moving steadily towards an Alpha release. I promise.
Terry
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Hi Robert
I saw this very late. FluidDB can do quite a bit of what you’re describing here – including the invisible comments, arbitrary metadata, build your own twitter, etc.
We’re moving steadily towards an Alpha release. I promise.
Terry
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“They have great topics like this one on http://www.energytalkradio.com and donate 30% to charity! Check them out.”
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Simply by the answers to these two questions, you will know the the newspaper industry is phasing out of the history:1. Do you read news online or by the newspaper?2. Do you browse classifieds online or by the newspaper?Newspaper industry is just another industry wiped out by new technology.AbacinAbacin.com: Coupons and Deals | Free Classifieds | Free Web Tools
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It seems like nostalgia is one of the primary reasons for keeping newspapers in business. I like the thought of riding in a hot air balloon, but I wouldn't want it to be my primary mode of transportation. Jack Welch said it best: “If the pace of change outside your organization is faster than the pace of change inside, the end is near.”
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Thanks for an inspiring post. I am not at all tech savvy and I can't say that I understand all of the discussion, but your article put the image of an affiliated world in my head. A world where all individuals are connected through affiliate programs. And you can actually track every sale back to the first recommendation that led to an action. Probably not a new thought for many – but new to me – and it was an great experience.
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