Generative Media: A model for growth through networks of activity

GENERATIVE MEDIA Fueling growth through networks of activity

http://www.flickr.com/photos/heliopaz/2007012694/

TOPICS 1. Market context 4. Commercial framework 2. Impacts on journalism 5. Future trajectory 3. Practical examples 6. Conclusion

TECHTONIC SHIFTS • More people online, increasing usage, connecting • Client software, tools for creation, standards battles • Distribution methods, points of control, platforms • Connecting the real world, devices, location • Following the cashﬂow, new revenue streams, companies • Changing behavior, new norms, rules, regulation

Competing on audience is very hard

Distributed platforms are bigger than ‘properties’

1 Billion Internet Users! (15% of all people)

“the notion of the Web as the ultimate marketplace for digital delivery is now in doubt.”

actually, total Internet activity is exploding Video P2P Web

HAVE WE CHANGED, TOO? • What have we done to be a part of that growth? • What’s different about what we do today compared to 2-3 years ago? • Who has beneﬁtted from these changes?

1T Google’s Search Index 26M 1B 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-knew-web-was-big.html

Twitter Facebook Tumblr

“An application that doesn’t leverage the power of the cloud is not interesting. It’s going to be too narrowly deﬁned. Why the mobile phone? Because it’s the high volume endpoint. It’s more human. It’s more interactive. It’s more dynamic. It’s more personal. It’s a principle of Mobile First. Now our top engineers are developing products for devices ﬁrst.” - Eric Schmidt, February 2010 @ MWC

WHAT’S DIFFERENT ABOUT TODAY?

Go to where the users are “In the new distributed world you want to be where the people are. The media brand is less a destination and a magnet to draw people there than a label once you’ve found the content, wherever and however you found it.” - Jeff Jarvis, Buzzmachine, “APIs: The new distribution”

“Our most interesting experiments lie in combining what we know with the experience, opinions and expertise of the people who want to participate rather than passively receive.” Alan Rusbridger, Cudlipp Lecture 2010

By Andrzej Krauze

Photo by D.C.Atty

“Journalism without effect does not deserve the special place in democracy that it tries to claim” Jonathan Stray

THE M-U-S-E FRAMEWORK An operational model with practical examples

Things Make Use Evaluate Share Ideas Internal External

Things that Things that we make people use Ideas that Ideas that we evaluate people share

Core Apps Web servers App Proxy App server App Memcached (20Gb) App App rdbms App M/Q App CMS external hosting app engine etc

WE KNOW WE’RE DOING WELL WHEN... • We make things quickly and cheaply • The things we make perform well, have acceptable errors • We make interesting, creative, groundbreaking things • Our work is of a high standard, considered better than most competitors • The amount of what we produce is sufﬁcient for demand

Core Api Web servers Solr App server Solr Memcached (20Gb) Solr Mashery rdbms Solr Solr M/Q Solr CMS Cloud, EC2

WE KNOW WE’RE DOING WELL WHEN... • People buy our paid-for products and see our free products • We receive a high value subsidy for what we offer • People dive into our products and spend time with them • Partners use our stuff, and they are making money as a result • Partnerspay for access to our people, processes, platforms, other partners • Our market share in all the things we offer is strong

WE KNOW WE’RE DOING WELL WHEN... • People both implicitly and explicitly indicate interests in things • They spread our work through their social nets. Their social actions result in more actions from those connections. • They participate in conversations we trigger and add to them with their ideas, both within and away from our products. • They actively contribute by giving or selling us material to evaluate and then make things • Thingschange in the world as a result of our work and the impact of our readers, users, and partners acting on it

Evaluate

The cost of flying the British (and other) flags: £95,506, as reader Sam Keir points out. A spokesperson for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport said it was responsible for providing and managing the flag-flying services for ceremonial state occasions, including state visits, trooping of the colour and special flag days, for example Commonwealth Day, UN Day and Europe Day.

“It's going to be about poring over data and equipping yourself with the tools to analyse it and picking out what's interesting. And keeping it in perspective, helping people out by really seeing where it all fits together, and what's going on in the country.” - Sir Tim Berners Lee

WE KNOW WE’RE DOING WELL WHEN... • We see important trends early, generally before the competition • People with important information share it with us directly • We are good at verifying information, recognizing it’s value and knowing what to do with it • We are honest and fair in our assessments, and the market validates that view • We are accurate and truthful by most objective standards

Make Use Evaluate Share

SOME USEFUL METRICS MAKE SHARE • Time to develop, number of people involved • Implicit interests collected from end-users • Real cost of development • Explicit interests collected from end-users • Ease-of-use, performance and errors • Number of shares (tweets, RT’s, likes, mailto’s, etc.) • Aesthetic appeal • Number of referral URLs posted • Strengths against competition • Number of clicks from shares and referrals • Weaknesses against competition • Number of comments within our stuff • Number of comments elsewhere as a result of our stuff USE • Quality of insights from comments • Number or amount of things produced • Number of people using each thing EVALUATE • Number of repeat uses • Number of articles/posts/pictures/video pitched to us • Amount of time spent • Cost of acquiring articles/posts/pictures/video, etc. • Breadth and depth of usage • Amount of information intake • Supply vs capacity ratio • Cost of data analysis on external inputs • Number of things purchased • Success rate in surfacing strong signals in the data • Amount received from buyers • Low failure rate: verifying information • End-user response to promotions • Low failure rate: accuracy • End-user conversion rate on promotions • Amount received from advertising promotions • Number of partners using our stuff in their stuff • Revenue partners are earning from using our stuff • Amount partners are spending to use our stuff • Market share: end-users • Market share: partners

Decisions based on value

THE COMMERCIAL MODEL OF NETWORK GRAPHS

User Tag URL

Ad User Tag URL

HOW IT COULD WORK • target ads to users based using proﬁles data • adjust messaging to match content of page • make it happen in real time

Media orgs are complicated

By Nimages DR

Generative networks build value for all those who participate

• Our information technology ecosystem functions best with generative technology at its core. • Generativity instigates a pattern both within and beyond the technological layers of information technology ecosystem (generative devices can actually lead to generative content-productions systems, like Wikipedia, for instance). • Proponents of generative systems ignore the drawbacks that attend generativity's success at their peril

PATTERNS TO THE FUTURE

complexity Excitement activity Frustration ?

SUCCESS PATTERN 1. create a new layer of activity that simpliﬁes the complexity in the network 2. commercialize access to or on top of that activity

activity le sab y ow or br ect dir complexity

activity h arc se ex ind le sab y ow or br ect dir complexity

l cia so ers ﬁlt activity h arc se ex ind le sab y ow or br ect dir complexity

? l cia so h arc activity se ry to ec dir complexity

Photo by maddito

WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN? • New languages form. Learn to communicate in greater detail and with more abstraction simultaneously. • Thephysical world gets reinterpreted. A new “the world is ﬂat” moment occurs. • Gettingoff the grid becomes very hard. The new haves-v-havenots is about being untraceable.

complexity ? activity

“Today, after more than a century of electric technology, we have extended our central nervous system itself in a global embrace, abolishing both space and time as far as our planet is concerned.” - Marshall McLuhan, 1964

THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS • Visual language: Report the experience of a live event without using either words or photography. • Working off-grid: Get a quote remotely from a source in a way that is 100% untraceable by anyone ever. • P2P distribution: Find 1,000 readers for a story without publishing it through any kind of commercial entity.

CONCLUSION

“We are still learning how to deal with a medium that is more than uni- directional and thrives on collaboration more than it does on competition.” - Jon Paton, CEO Journal Register

These changes show the emergence of a new information environment, one in which individuals are free to take a more active role than was possible in the industrial information economy of the twentieth century. Photo by Joi Ito

“In order to take territory you have to be taking territory from someone else. But I think one of the best things is, we’re building real value in the world, not just taking value from other companies.”

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Generative Media: A model for growth through networks of activity

by mattmcalister on Jan 10, 2011

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Generative Media: A model for growth through networks of activity — Presentation Transcript