Jon DiPietro is Domesticating IT

The Who 1308720059 by Heinrich Klaffs on Flickr

In an article titled, “Meet the new boss” on Magellan Media’s blog, Brian O’Leary expresses skepticism about the characterization of a “new crop of chiefs” profiled by the New York Times as really being very new. O’Leary says:

First, these guys – all middle-aged white men – reflect experience in the old order, not necessarily an embrace of a new one. They aren’t part of a “born-digital” generation; they are on the other side of that divide.

This article caught my eye because I wrote a blog article earlier this year about this same group of companies called “Print Publishing’s Public Pity Party.”

The publishing industry has embarked on a quixotic journey.  A recent  Adweek article announces that “Close to 100 titles are planning to sacrifice prominent placements in their issues for an industry campaign.”  Their tilted windmill is a sense that we have all simply forgotten how wonderful their product is, and that by running ads they can remind us.  I can’t help but picture a group of buggy whip salesmen on the side of the road laughing at a car with a flat tire, secure in the knowledge that a horse would never succumb to such embarrassment.

I commented on O’Leary’s post, agreeing with him that it seemed that this new group would simply be tinkering with a model that needs to be blown up. Or as he quotes, “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” And then it occurred to me to offer these titans of publishing some unsolicited advice: they could learn a lot from ESPN.

Inbound marketing is fueled by compelling content. The magazine publishing industry doesn’t have a content quality problem; they have a content packaging, promotion and delivery problem. As it turns out, there are two things that ESPN does exceedingly well in this regard, and I think any organization following a content marketing strategy can learn from them as well.

Repurposing

I’m a fairly avid sports fan and have been consuming sporting news in all its various forms for a long time. I’ve watched television programs, read newspapers, subscribed to magazines, listened to sports radio, and read blogs. ESPN has invaded all of those media channels and more with Napoleonic fervor. One thing I’ve noticed in particular is how effectively they’ve modularized their content and then squeeze every last drop of value out of it.

Take a simple 20 second sound bite from a post-game interview, for example. You’ll see this snippet embedded in a Sports Center broadcast, embedded in multiple ESPN.com articles, played throughout the day on ESPN Radio broadcasts, incorporated into relevant Podcasts, embedded in blog opinion pieces, uploaded to YouTube, posted on the Sports Nation fan page, Tweeted by one of their anchors, etc… And even that list doesn’t really do justice to the number of different places from which that singular chunk of content will be consumed.

Instead of embracing reuse and extracting the maximum value from their content, what are newspaper and magazine publishers doing? Erecting pay walls on the web and creating tablet applications (that are pretty terrible, by the way). But efficiently re-purposing content by itself isn’t enough…

Demand Publishing

Richard Nash is an independent publishing entrepreneur, having previously run the iconic indie Soft Skull Press for which work he was awarded the Association of American Publishers’ Miriam Bass Award for Creativity in Independent Publishing in 2005. I watched a 35 minute video of Nash at BookNet Canada’s Technology Forum 2010 in a session entitled “Publishing 3.0: Moving from Gatekeeping to Partnerships.” It connected a whole bunch of dots for me and blew my mind (the video is embedded at the end of this post).

In this presentation, Nash describes how the publishing industry must evolve from a supply model to a demand model. Under an economic model of scarcity, companies manage supply. From the invention of movable type until the proliferation of Web 2.0, information was – relatively speaking – scarce. Publishers would, in the words of Clay Shirky, “filter, then publish.” In other words, they would decide what books deserved to be published and then deliver them to the market. In an economic landscape where information is abundant, Nash argues that publishers must manage demand instead.

Mike Reiss began as a New England Patriots beat writer for the Boston Globe and is now ubiquitous across ESPN's many media channels.

How do you manage demand? You need to provide products and services along the entire demand curve; abundant but inexpensive (or free) as well as scarce but expensive experiences. ESPN does this by turning their content creators (formerly known as journalists) into experiences. Instead of writing one or two weekly columns, their correspondents deliver a constant stream of bit-sized content from short videos to blog posts and Tweets. This forms a sort of experiential pyramid, where we can consume lower value products (i.e. facts) at a greater volume and higher value products (i.e. video and opinion) at a lower volume.

Instead of embracing demand publishing, newspaper and magazine publishers are implementing draconian social media policies that attempt to keep their journalists as faceless as possible.

Here is Richard Nash’s 35 minute presentation. If you’re interested in the future of publishing, this is well worth the time.

Inbound Marketing Takewaways

Many organizations and individuals could do a better job at re-purposing and leveraging their content. Recall my social media strategy advice: Be authentic, relentless and everywhere. You can achieve better results by promoting your content relentlessly and everywhere, and by having your content creators engage with the audience in order to create enhanced, value-added experiences.

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Weekly High Five lists the most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links of each week.

Weekly High Five lists the most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links of each week.  This week’s theme is “The Changing Face of Facebook,” but I’ve also included a bonus link from Chris Brogan.

#5: Federal Board Says Employees Shouldn’t Get Fired Over Facebook Posts

The National Labor Relations Board has filed suit against a Connecticut company for firing a worker who complained about her supervisor on Facebook. This will be an important case study to watch and will have implications for how wide or narrow employer social media policies can be.

Link: AllFacebook

#4: Livestream For Facebook Lets You DIY Live Stream Video On Fan Pages

More and more small businesses and sole proprietorships are using Facebook fan pages as free surrogates for a website. Depending on the business, they may or may not be able to get away with this. Either way, Facebook is continuing to chip away at the reasons why you can’t do this (see #3 below).

Link: TechCrunch

#3: Microsoft’s Docs Now Supports Facebook Groups

One of my web pet peeves is the lack of decent group collaboration tools available. Google Wave had promise, but was too complex and “weird” to catch on. With Ning euthanizing its free product, there is a rather large opening that Facebook seems to be moving toward. In addition to providing a means for communication and discussion, Facebook groups has now made it easier to share documents. Now all they need to do is add audio and/or video chat and they’ll really have something.

Link: AllFacebook

#2: Facebook’s Gmail Killer, Project Titan, Is Coming On Monday

This entire week has been abuzz with rumors that Facebook will be announcing its Gmail Killer on Monday. There have been lots of clues, leaks, reading between the lines, and it’s obvious some sort of email solution is on its way. But not everybody is on the same page about what they’ll be announcing (see #1 below).

Link: TechCrunch

#1: Why Facebook Probably Isn’t Launching an Email Service

This is a pretty thought-provoking article. It’s predominately a semantics argument about what exactly constitutes an “email” solution. The important aspect of this article is the discussion about the future of electronic communications. Many of us are aware of the fact that only about 11 percent of teenagers use email and many colleges have halted the practice of providing freshmen with “edu” email addresses. From my own anecdotal experience, I’ve watched my two teenage daughters shift much of their communication away from text messaging and toward Facebook instant messaging. My guess is that Facebook is grabbing onto that trend with both hands and rather than trying to kill Gmail, it’s looking to serve the users who aren’t using email at all.

Link: Fast Company

Bonus: Don’t Do This – Speaking

I think most speakers are guilty of this until they learn otherwise. But it’s still far too common, so I’m doing my part to wipe out this scourge by sharing this brilliantly simple doodle from Chris Brogan:

Don't Do This, from ChrisBrogan on Flickr

Link: Chris Brogan

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OK, I will admit it – I may have a slight man-crush on Clay Shirky. I quote him often, watch any video he’s in, and read everything he writes. The term “thought leader” is overused in our hyperactive blogosphere, but the term truly applies to Shirky. His first book, “Here Comes Everybody – The Power of Organizing Without Organizations,” looked past the obvious points everyone else was making about social media and unveiled the long term effects it would have on organizations. Put another way, he was thought-leading.

His encore book is “Cognitive Surplus – Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age,” and it is vintage Shirky. Every page is dense with original ideas about how social media is going to affect society. The very title of the book suggests that there is a surplus of brain power up for grabs. But since cognitive capacity is a zero sum game, the surplus has to come from somewhere. This begs the question, “Where do people find the time?”

The Essence

Shirky tells a story about a conversation he had with a television producer who was trying to determine whether or not to have him on her show. He talked about the controversy of Pluto’s “delisting” as a planet and the sudden spike in activity on its Wikipedia page. Shirky waited for her to follow up with questions about the social implications of this phenomenon, but “Instead, she sighed and said, ‘Where do people find the time?” Hearing this, I snapped, and said, ‘No one who works in television gets to ask that question. You know where the time comes from.’”

The 1970's television show "Gilligan's Island" had many pondering the eternal question, "Ginger or Mary Ann?"

He estimates that there are roughly a trillion hours spent watching television worldwide each year. The advent of the industrial age and, with it, the 40 hours work week meant that the post World War II industrialized societies had an abundance of free time and television swooped in and soaked up most of it. We laughed at ourselves for spending so much time contemplating the such mysteries of the universe as, “Ginger or Mary Ann?“.

Social media represents competition for our free time. The big difference between it and television is that our every use of social media is, by definition, a creative act. Whether it’s uploading vacation photos to Flickr or sharing pearls of wisdom on Twitter, we have made something that didn’t previously exist. We can debate the value and merit of this content until the cows come home, but what is not debatable is that watching television creates nothing.

The question now becomes, what will come from the creative activities of “The People Formerly Known as the Audience” as he calls them?

Means, Motive and Opportunity

In three of the book’s chapters, presents the implications of the Cognitive Surplus in the framework of a legal argument; means, motive and opportunity. “The harnessing of our cognitive surplus allows people to behave in increasingly generous, public, and social ways, relative to their old status as consumers and couch potatoes.” They payoff in the book comes from the motive and opportunity topics, where the rubber truly meets the road.

The Skinny

Why it rocks:

The book is fruitcake-dense with ideas, evidence, and challenges. It looks well beyond the horizon of such comparatively insignificant questions as “Google versus Facebook”, or “How much is a follower worth?” Cognitive Surplus is a book about how human beings will harness each others’ brains in order to work together at changing the world.

Why it doesn’t:

It’s not the easiest read in the world. Not because of his writing style, but simply because you spend so much time contemplating the implications of the machine gun pace of ideas he unleashes.

The Verdict

This is an important book. It may not necessarily be important to you, but the concepts are far reaching and somewhat mind boggling. If you’re wondering what role LOL Cats may play in the future of mankind, Shirky goes a long way toward putting all things social media into context.

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The human brain uses 20% of the body’s energy while accounting for just 2% of its mass – a whopping 900% premium.  It generates 25 watts of power each day and demands 15% of the heart’s output.  The average reader can comprehend 120 words per minute,  taking nearly fourteen hours to read a typical novel (100k words) at a cost of almost 1,000 calories (or 4.2 kJ), 164 gallons of blood (or 622 liters) and nearly $300 in lost wages (theoretically for average U.S. wage earner at $21/hour).

In terms of energy, blood flow, and time, reading is very slow, expensive, and inefficient.

I think this raises some interesting questions, such as:

• As an author,
  what is the return on brain-investment for reading my article, novel, or blog post?
• As a publisher,
  how do I convince the reader to invest in my product(s)?
• As a device manufacturer,
  how can I make the reading experience most brain-efficient and enjoyable?

Reading for Effect Versus Purpose

It seems to me that there are two reasons for reading; effect or purpose.  Reading for effect is essentially fulfilling some internal, emotional need like escapism, voyeurism, arousal, etc…  Put simply, it’s entertainment and entertainment plays by different rules than other products.  We are, generally speaking, much more willing to give up two hours of our lives to have a good cry or watch a bunch of explosions than to read chapter 12 of our favorite physics textbook.  Reading for enjoyment is an activity that not everyone enjoys, but those who do are willing to invest for the pleasure and emotional fulfillment it brings; they are not necessarily calculating an ROI.

Reading for purpose means doing so specifically for achieving some goal or outcome, or put another way, because one needs to and not necessarily because one wants to.  Reading for educational purposes, staying informed, or as part of one’s job are examples of reading for purpose.  This category is far more sensitive to the high cost of reading than the former.  For example, most people who read newspapers will skim the articles looking for interesting stories, and then skim the story to see if it is worth the investment.  One does not skim War and Peace, The Catcher in the Rye, or The Lord of the Rings.

Pacific Coast Highway (Creative Commons license via Frank Kehren's Flckr stream)

I would liken these to the difference between a pleasure ride down the Pacific Coast Highway and commuting to work.  You are performing the same task (driving), using the same tool (car), perhaps for the same amount of time, and maybe even with the same person(s).  Yet everything about the drive is different.  In the case of the former, it’s about enjoying the journey, whereas in the latter it is all about reaching your destination as quickly, efficiently, and painlessly as possible.

Implications

There are obvious implications to looking at reading in these two contexts.  Obviously, it behooves the content producers and consumers to understand whether their writing is intended to be a journey or a destination.  Once this is understood, certain strategies and tactics become clear.

For Authors

When writers intend to take their readers on a journey, the style and tempo must be a cognitive banquet.  The experience itself is the return on the reader’s investment.  Efficiency gives way to pace and style takes precedence over not burying the lead.  When writing for purpose, however, the author must understand that from the first word of the title onward, the reader is calculating the return on her investment and may cancel at any time it seems like the deal isn’t profitable enough.  As such, it is important to introduce the value proposition early on (i.e. don’t bury the lead) and get to the point quickly.  Of course, sprinkling in some color so that the reader enjoys the journey won’t hurt a bit either.

For Publishers

Nothing says "romance" like a black and white printout taped to a light pole (Creative Commons license via sixes & sevens Flickr stream)

Readers interested in going on a journey will evaluate content much like shopping for a vacation.  Cost is always a factor, but so is scenery, adventure, luxury, relaxation, romance, etc…  Therefore, packaging and marketing are going to mean a lot.  It must appeal to the prospective reader on an emotional level and promise to fulfill not only their needs, but desires as well.  Purpose readers, on the other hand, are hunters scrutinizing the landscape for prey.  They will be intent on getting to their destination as quickly and efficiently as possible; a pleasant journey is a fringe benefit and not a primary concern.

Newspapers are perched precariously between both of these paradigms, and so they have a tough job balancing them.  There are news reports, stock quotes, classified advertisements, and other assorted facts and items people want to quickly scan and read if they perceive some return on investment.  Other sections, like essays, travel, or editorials are much more about journey and need to be packaged and delivered differently.

Business to business publications are by and large firmly entrenched in the purpose-reading camp.  Their mission is to deliver industry-relevant information in a non-biased and convenient format.  They face issues of timeliness, relevancy, and ubiquity.  Timeliness is an issue in the age of real time search, self-publication, and social networking.  Answers are frequently a few mouse clicks and moments away, so a weekly or monthly publication is at a disadvantage.  Relevancy is an issue for similar reasons.  Readers are able to find very specific information on obscure subjects relatively easily, while publications are always trying to balance completeness against overload.  Ubiquity is a reference to the fact that publishers can’t always be in the right place at the right time.  Publish your information on your web site, and the reader may not have it available during that lunch meeting with a vendor.  Publish your information in print, and the reader no doubt will have thrown it out before realizing they needed it.  The challenge in B2B publishing is not as much marketing or style as it is timeliness, relevancy, and ubiquity.  They need to have the information the reader wants at the time he wants it, where he wants it.  But just as importantly, it must be in at an acceptable brain-cost.

For Device Manufacturers

I recently wrote that the iPad is heralding the age of content.  There has been much discussion about the impact it will have on print media and other existing content consumption devices.  If you accept the argument that reading for effect is much less sensitive to cost factors and substitute forms, then the likely conclusion is that the iPad (and subsequent tablet products) will have a different effect on different types of content.  If the key to reading for effect is the experience, then I submit that appliances like the iPad and other color readers deliver a superior experience to books.  Content of this type is also inoculated against infection from other forms of media like video.  When reading for purpose, however, it remains to be seen whether the efficiency and usability can be improved when compared to a computer.  But with the (assumed) increased availability of high quality video, which is a more efficient means for acquiring information, reading for purpose is going to be marginalized to some degree.  The key for the device manufacturers is to understand the features that will address each of these types of reading.

The Bottom Line

As Clay Shirky brilliantly observed, we don’t live in a world of information overload but a world with filter failure.  Part of the price of that failure is shorter attention spans and greater sensitivity to the expense of reading.  As more solutions evolve and improve our ability to filter, it would be easy to conclude that it will be more difficult for authors and publishers to get their content “through the walls” and to their audience.  But I rather believe that the filters won’t simply get stronger, they will get better.  This means that it will actually be easier for readers to find the content they are truly interested in and be more willing to pay the brain-price.  However, I think this also spells doom for purveyors of broad swaths of content like newspapers and magazines.  Once these filters get sophisticated enough, readers will be able to find the very best of the content they want with laser precision.  Rather than subscribing to a sports magazine like Sports Illustrated, readers can subscribe to “stories about the New England Patriots, Boston Red Sox, any player named Horatio, or cricket matches played in the southern hemisphere on a Monday.”  Publishers of “reading for purpose” content are going to have to find a way to deal with this paradigm.

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Weekly High Five lists the most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links of each week.

This week’s High Five is about crowd power; for better or worse.

#5: Microsoft’s Creative Destruction

Categorizing this article as “crowd power” is a little bit of a stretch, but it had to be included in the High Five nonetheless.  In the wake of the iPad product announcement, this fascinating article describes in great detail how the mob-like corporate culture of Microsoft didn’t simple stifle innovation; it barbarically tore it limb from limb and left the pieces scattered across lobbies and conference rooms as a warning to the next group of would-be world changers.

Link: New York Times (Op-Ed)

#4: NFL.com aggregates Super Bowl tweets and pics

The National Football League has jumped into the social media gauntlet with both feet for Superbowl XLIV.  They’ve announced an “official” (doesn’t everything need to be the official “x” of event “y”?) Twitter hash tag (#SB44) and Flickr photo stream, both of which will be aggregated to a dedicated page on their site.

Link: Pro Football Talk on NBC Sports

#3: We’re turning comments off for a bit

This unfortunate announcement was made on the Engadget web site early this week because the environment “has become mean, ugly, pointless, and frankly threatening in some situations… and that’s just not acceptable.”  The situation illustrates one of the darker sides of social media and the tough decisions that must sometimes be made.  It’s a manageable task to moderate these forums unless and until they become a victim of their own success and simply grow too large.  I see this as the new job role for public relations professionals in the future – once they finally come to the realization that their current role of shaping messages is gone forever.

Link: Engadget

#2: Facebook COO: 175 Million People Log Into Facebook Every Day

While the total number of registered Facebook users (over 350 million) gets lots of press, this number is eye-popping for a couple of reasons.  First of all, the sheer size is obviously impressive.  That’s a lot of eyeballs.  Second, the adoption rate of 50% is astounding.  We heard just a few weeks ago that 70% of Twitter users are active more than once a week and 30% never post a single update.  This number is evidence that Facebook is not just growing at a break neck pace, it is retaining users and providing compelling reasons for them to log in every day.

Link: TechCrunch

#1: 20+ mind-blowing social media statistics revisited

Well, I’d certainly say “impressive” but can’t say that my mind was blown.  Notwithstanding the sensationalized and overstated title, this is a valuable page to bookmark for your next blog post or sales pitch for social media.

Link: Econsultancy

Feel free to provide your thoughts and/or contributions…

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