Web X.0

"Journalism"

Globes published today an obnoxious article (Hebrew) about Better Place - Shai Agassi's electric car venture. From the first word through the last, it was clearly setup as a hit-job by a clueless nobody "journalist" who has obviously never tried to accomplish anything meaningful in her life. 

Disclosures: I'm not an expert on the subject matter. I'm not very familiar with the company. I've never met or spoken with Shai Agassi, and have no other connections I'm aware of with his company. 

The "article" attacks Better Place for failing to deliver on a variety of milestones that the "journalist" had apparently expected them to. For example, they did not yet start manufacturing cars or employing 50,000 people in Israel after less than two years since the company was founded. The writer of course has started multiple successful companies, and has extensive experience in building factories within months.... 

This seems to have been going on for a while now - On the one hand Better Place has gotten some incredible press, and on the other hand "journalists" ripping apart Shai and the company, as if they owed them or the public anything (they don't...). It's sad to see this kind of hit-job journalism which is designed to do nothing more than sell a few more copies of the newspapers. The cost of hit-jobs by mediocre writers is much cheaper than actual journalistic work by journalists. And unfortunately, tabloid crap like this sells newspapers...

 

So as an FYI to Ms. Shlomit Lan - startups in general, and specifically one as ambitious as Better Place, take years or decades to build. During those years, as long as it's a law-abiding, private company, it owes *nothing* to the public as it relates to timelines, milestones, business models, pricing, etc, etc. Building a great company is never as simple or quick as it seems, and if they figure out half of the challenges they currently face in say 5 years, that will be an incredible achievement. Passing this kind of judgment on the company so early in the game proves you're either clueless, or jealous, or you've intentionally setup a hit-job. 

A couple of years ago I attended a conference where Yossi Vardi was part of a panel judging startups. After passing criticism to a couple of the entrepreneurs, Yossi stopped the conference, took the microphone, and said he has something critically important to remind all the judges, journalists and investors dealing with entrepreneurs. He quoted Theodore Roosevelt's 1910 speech (also covered by TechCrunch here):

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

Shai Aggasi is the man in the arena. He might fail miserably, but he will do so while daring to make great things happen. 

I know too little to determine whether Better Place is good for the environment or bad (I suspect it's a pretty good alternative to buying oil to fund the bad guys and burn it to destroy the world...). I simply dread the day that "journalists" kill innovation and innovators by abusing their power to run hit jobs like this on the men in the arena. Therefore I had to respond. 

Finally - to anyone who is genuinely interested in this project, I highly recommend this hugely inspiring talk that Shai Agassi recently gave at TED:

Publishing - the only metric that matters

Publishers (and bloggers specifically) tend to measure their business on two parameters:

1. Page views
2. Ad revenues

These are fine metrics, but I believe that they are derivatives of a much more fundamental metric which, if ignored, could be devastating to a publisher's business. Lets call this metric the "Reader's Goodwill Pot".

Lets assume an imaginary pot into which imaginary goodwill points can be deposited, and from which imaginary goodwill points can be depleted. Sort of like a bank account for goodwill. Now, as a publisher/blogger, imagine you are running this kind of 'goodwill account' with your audience of readers.

When you post great content you are adding points into the pot. When you provide your reader with a great user experience you are adding points to this pot.

If you build a big enough goodwill pot, with a big enough audience, then you can dip into that pot occasionally, take some points away and put them in your pocket. That is also usually known as advertising.

As a publisher, with every pixel you put on your site (or ink on paper, or frame on screen, etc), with every piece of content you produce, with every ad you take on your site - this is the single most important metric you should obsess over. Am I putting goodwill points into my piggy bank, or am I taking some away?

Great publishers understand that the need to keep this balance is far more important than the need to track any of the other metrics - PV's and revenues, for example - in isolation.

As we hit a recession, I suspect many more bloggers and traditional publishers are going to ignore this metric and will try squeezing the lemon as much as possible by cutting on the content and the user experience, and at the same time trying to maximize the number of ads that interrupt the readers. Publishers ignoring the 'Reader's Goodwill Pot' will not survive, not because of the bad macro economy, but rather because they failed to understand the micro economy of publishing.   

{Image CC by: Nieve44/La Luz . Thanks!}

Yahoo, Newspapers and Quigo

Finally some good news for Yahoo... Today it announced a partnership with 176 newspapers. Coverage on TechCrunch, NY Times, PaidContent, and others.

From the NY Times:

A consortium of seven newspaper chains representing 176 daily papers across the country is announcing a broad partnership with Yahoo to share content, advertising and technology...

This sounds to me a little like the beginning of the "Switzerland Inc." that Tom Mohr (ex-President of Knight Ridder) described in his manifesto a few months ago (this very important doc is behind a password on Editor&Publisher... urrggghhh! No link love here!... see Greg Sterling's blog for some snippets).

From it:

To win, industry leaders must adopt a Marshall Plan embodying two key objectives: the migration to common platforms, and the acquisition of the ability to sell top-quality online product to our advertisers. To fulfill these objectives, the independent companies of a proud industry must aggregate into an industry-wide network. In this network, each company must cede some control over its digital future into a “Switzerland” organization that manages the network.

Seems like Yahoo is now tackling some of the pieces of the first part - offering common technology platforms for classifieds, maps, etc.

On the second part, Quigo (full disclosure: which I founded, and am employed at) is the undisputed leader. As the NAA recently pointed out in a research called "Online Newspapers' Response to Google":

"...Quigo easily took the category, having affiliations with half the respondents."

With Yahoo handling the classifieds/syndication/maps areas, and Quigo handling the performance-based advertising, it seems like the newspapers are starting to put together those building blocks for creating a Switzerland Inc. that will survive (and hopefully thrive!) through the Google storm.

Permanews

[note: this is a slightly edited version of a post I published on Quigo's blog, so if you read both, go ahead and skip this]

Yesterday I posted about the newspaper industry being in it's 'horseless carriage era'. The first newspaper-related idea I want to discuss is one I call Permanews:

Historically, news articles were good for roughly 24 hours, after which a fresh news*paper* was delivered to the reader. But the events reported as news aren't usually confined to that 24 hour cycle - they can go on for weeks or months sometimes (a recent example of this is the war going on in Israel and Lebanon which has been going on for over 3 weeks now).

However, it seems that the short news cycle paradigm, originally dictated by the fact that news was printed on paper and was fully replaced after a day by a new paper, should be revisited when the news is being consumed online. When I read the latest news item about the war on Hizbollah, it's assumed that I have perspective of all the information that preceded it. But that is a false assumption in 99% of the cases. Online publishing therefore shouldn't be confined to the limits imposed by the print side of the business.

The idea of Permanews is to evolve the way rolling news events are covered using the tools and publishing capabilities that online publishing provides us with. A Permanews article would be in a way similar to a Wikipedia entry - constantly evolving and being updated. The Permanews item for a given subject will become the anchor for all new breaking news associated to that topic.

In the example above, the Permanews article may give some historic background about the history of the past Lebanon-Israel conflicts, maps of the region, the timeline of the war, related events, photo gallery, related videos, etc. The breaking news articles will continue covering specific events and developments, but only the ones that are significant on a broader level will be updated on the Permanews article.

A Permanews section can easily be maintained using one of the many wiki apps available with multiple contributors constantly editing it as needed. The cost of doing this is practically zero.

The advantages of Permanews items may be great for a news organization:
- First of all, content that has long life expectancy tends to attract many incoming links, and therefore much traffic. Just like mostly all mentions of books on the web point to their respective Amazon page, and most “referencable” mentions point to the correlating Wikipedia entry, a newspaper can attract incoming links from other websites to its Permanews articles. This is difficult to achieve on small articles with a life expectancy of several hours.

- Permanews can also be great for getting indexed on search engines for the same reasons (long life span, lots of incoming links). Wikipedia would not have been among the top-20 sites in the world had it not been for all the natural search engine traffic it attracts. Newspapers should be the similar traffic attractors for developing news events.

- Permanews can also serve as a great differentiator from other news sources and aggregators. With more of the articles being syndicated from AP and Reuters (=same articles appear on many news sources), having a Permanews section can growingly becoming a useful differentiator in the eyes of the readers.

- Permanews, like op-ed, can provide the added value the users cannot get when they consume their news via news aggregators like Google News.

- Lastly, Permanews can be an easier sell for advertisers who are normally concerned about advertising alongside future news of unknown nature. An article that is more permanent (even if frequently updated and tweaked) is a much easier and safer sell.

Like the idea? - go ahead and Permanews it!

                           

Yesterday I posted about the newspaper industry being in it's 'horseless carriage era'. The first newspaper-related idea I want to discuss is one I call Permanews:

Historically, news articles were good for roughly 24 hours, after which a fresh news*paper* was delivered to the reader. But the events reported as news aren't usually confined to that 24 hour cycle - they can go on for weeks or months sometimes (a recent example of this is the war going on in Israel and Lebanon which has been going on for over 3 weeks now).

However, it seems that the short news cycle paradigm, originally dictated by the fact that news was printed on paper and was fully replaced after a day by a new paper, should be revisited when the news is being consumed online. When I read the latest news item about the war on Hizbollah, it's assumed that I have perspective of all the information that preceded it. But that is a false assumption in 99% of the cases. Online publishing therefore shouldn't be confined to the limits imposed by the print side of the business.

The idea of Permanews is to evolve the way rolling news events are covered using the tools and publishing capabilities that online publishing provides us with. A Permanews article would be in a way similar to a Wikipedia entry - constantly evolving and being updated. The Permanews item for a given subject will become the anchor for all new breaking news associated to that topic.

In the example above, the Permanews article may give some historic background about the history of the past Lebanon-Israel conflicts, maps of the region, the timeline of the war, related events, photo gallery, related videos, etc. The breaking news articles will continue covering specific events and developments, but only the ones that are significant on a broader level will be updated on the Permanews article.

A Permanews section can easily be maintained using one of the many wiki apps available with multiple contributors constantly editing it as needed. The cost of doing this is practically zero.

The advantages of Permanews items may be great for a news organization:
- First of all, content that has long life expectancy tends to attract many incoming links, and therefore much traffic. Just like mostly all mentions of books on the web point to their respective Amazon page, and most “referencable” mentions point to the correlating Wikipedia entry, a newspaper can attract incoming links from other websites to its Permanews articles. This is difficult to achieve on small articles with a life expectancy of several hours.

- Permanews can also be great for getting indexed on search engines for the same reasons (long life span, lots of incoming links). Wikipedia would not have been among the top-20 sites in the world had it not been for all the natural search engine traffic it attracts. Newspapers should be the similar traffic attractors for developing news events.

- Permanews can also serve as a great differentiator from other news sources and aggregators. With more of the articles being syndicated from AP and Reuters (=same articles appear on many news sources), having a Permanews section can growingly becoming a useful differentiator in the eyes of the readers.

- Permanews, like op-ed, can provide the added value the users cannot get when they consume their news via news aggregators like Google News.

- Lastly, Permanews can be an easier sell for advertisers who are normally concerned about advertising alongside future news of unknown nature. An article that is more permanent (even if frequently updated and tweaked) is a much easier and safer sell.

Like the idea? - go ahead and Permanews it!

                           

The future of newspapers

When the first automobiles were introduced, they were considered by both manufacturers and consumers to be "horseless carriages", or - a product extension of the main product which was of course - a carriage with a horse. These early automobiles were designed as a carriage, looked like a carriage, operated like a carriage and even sold as such. It took some time for everyone to figure out that, hey - this car thing might actually be the real thing, so lets start designing it as a car, not as a horseless carriage.

It seems to me like the newspaper industry is now it's horseless carriage era. The industry is obviously going through a huge transition to the online world, but online newspapers still look and behave too much like a "paperless newspaper" rather than being "online news".

Newspapers have to understand that in the not too distant future, the newspapers (and I mean the actual printed paper things), will sound as strange as driving a horseless carriage sounds to us today. This is not to say that reading news off paper necessarily goes away (it probably won't, though it will definitely evolve... for example - why not let each reader print their own newspaper on their home printer and save the huge infrastructure going into the daily distribution of lots of wasted paper?).   

It seems like the earlier newspapers start thinking of themselves as online news publishers, the higher their chances of surviving this huge paradigm shift. To do that, newspapers must start re-thinking their whole product and design it as if none of their existing operations and assets actually exist. In times of disruption, those assets become a huge drag on an organization's ability to re-invent itself.

As Clayton Christensen pointed out in the Innovator's Dilemma, disrupting your own business is extremely difficult (if not impossible...), but it will happen whether or not the newspapers like it (Craigslist ring a bell?...).

There are many things the news publishers should do ASAP, ranging from small to huge (kill the old flat-fee classifieds model, and go for a PPC auction, for example).

I'll try to cover some ideas bouncing in my head on this blog.