Entries tagged with “digital platforms” from Tools of Change for Publishing
App Mashes Up Digital Text on Facebook Platform
Peter Brantley
July 31, 2008
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Digital Texts 2.0 is an interesting application for Facebook that lets you group and share digital material. It's intriguing to see cutting edge development occurring in this space. From the Digital Texts 2.0 about page:
Digital Texts 2.0 was undertaken by Dr. Stéfan Sinclair as an initiative to experiment with applying the principles of Web 2.0 to the realm of electronic texts. We intend to preserve and expose all of the existing qualities of digital texts (rich hypertextual associations, refined encoding practices, analytic affordances, etc.), while enhancing them with additional characteristics provided by Web 2.0 and social networking. Thus, it is a preliminary attempt to better understand the phenomenon of social networking and how it might be adapted to benefit the ways in which humanities scholars interact with electronic texts.
New "Libraries" Bring New Privacy Implications
Peter Brantley
July 9, 2008
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As Google, Amazon and others become de facto digital libraries -- and lawsuits emerge -- Jeff Jarvis wonders what this means for users' privacy. From BuzzMachine:
Any site with content -- Google, Amazon, a newspaper, a blog, an ISP -- is now the moral equivalent of a library or bookstore, two institutions that try hard not to hand over information on what content we seek and consume arguing that that would violate our First Amendment rights. The controversy in the telco immunity legislation is that those searches were made without warrants. In this case [Viacom/YouTube], there is a warrant. When I ran sites, we got subpoenas all the time and handed over IP addresses when ordered; that was company policy. I always found it troubling and as a result ordered that we would change our data retention policy and get rid of IP addresses as soon as possible. Should Google and other sites erase IPs and rely only on cookies without personally identifiable information?
Analyst: Digital Disruption Has TV and Film in Crosshairs
Mac Slocum
July 8, 2008
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In the wake of Lehman analyst Anthony DiClemente downgrading a wide swath of the entertainment industry, paidContent.org provides some blunt analysis:
Boiled down, the core argument is basically: You saw what happened to the music industry and the dramatic fall-off in CD prices. You've seen what's happened to the broadcast TV and newspaper industries. Now it's time for it to happen to TV and filmed entertainment. Hopes that digital revenue might somehow make up for lost physical sales are misguided, he [DiClemente] says, and again, you just have to look back at the music industry.
During a conference call, DiClemente also touched on the growing issue of rentals vs. purchases. From CNBC:
"Owning a collection of movies in this new digital world is really just not that cool for young adults in the target demographic that we look to for the future of the business," DiClemente said.
Lamenting the Digital Decline is a Dangerous Path
Mac Slocum
June 26, 2008
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One of the biggest fallacies in the early years of the digital age was the assumption that digital content revenue would replace traditional content income on a 1:1 basis. That thinking has proven incorrect time and again, yet marketers, journalists and other pundits seem legitimately surprised anytime the 1:1 ratio fails to materialize. From eMarketer:
It was not supposed to be like this. The [music] industry had staked its future on the hope that the legitimate download business would make up for falling CD sales ...
... More people than ever before are buying music, and the balance is shifting decidedly toward downloads and away from physical formats. Despite the audience in the downloading sector, the revenue math has not added up for the music industry. Per-capita music spending in the US is trending downward, offsetting the increases in the number of music buyers ...
The methodology and conclusions in this eMarketer report are reasonable, but I do take issue with the need for this type of research. Seems to me we're all well aware that digital revenue isn't where anyone wants it to be, yet reports confirming and reconfirming this conclusion continue to materialize. If digital content was a closed experiment that could be pulled back and erased from public consciousness, I could understand the utility of research reports harping on disappointing digital revenue (i.e. "Avoid this path! Turn back!"). But the digital genie is out of the bottle -- way, way out -- and these days there's no discernible upside to digital vs. traditional conclusions because traditional as we formerly knew it is not coming back.
Rather than reading the same results from yet another report, I'd rather see a broader conversation that addresses the hard-to-stomach questions:
- Have we (insert content industry title) fully accepted the fact that the old models are gone?
- Will digital revenue ever equal or surpass traditional revenue?
- If yes, how do we create those revenue streams? (Note: to its credit, the eMarketer report does offer alternative revenue examples from the music industry.)
- If no, what can we do to create sustainable businesses with less profit?
You'll notice that none of these questions ask How can we get the old model back?. At best, that's a futile thought experiment. At worst, it's a dangerous diversion from the real issues at play.
Calling Google a Publisher Underestimates its Platform
Mac Slocum
June 19, 2008
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Google has never positioned itself as a publisher, but a recent News.com piece looking at Google's role in Web advertising says the company's 2006 YouTube acquisition moved Google into the publishing space:
Google itself is a publisher, at least in one sense: it offers countless videos through [its] YouTube service. So Google has more incentive than just its DoubleClick division to improve display advertising.
YouTube is certainly content-centric, but Google didn't pay $1.65 billion for all those videos. It shelled out big bucks for YouTube's audience and, more importantly, its platform.
Publishers tend to see the world through singular products -- books, newspapers, magazines, Web sites -- but platform companies, like Google, see these same products as an aggregated stream of general content that needs to be delivered. If you control the delivery mechanism, you can mine it for revenue -- something Google has already done through its AdSense and AdWords programs, which piggyback on Google's search tools to deliver contextual advertising. Now that Google has monetized and claimed the Web search market, the company is expanding its platform into harder-to-crack content spheres: books, TV, and radio. This is why Google Book Search isn't just an archive. It's a content pipe that plugs into Google's overall architecture.
Google clearly recognizes that its platform is only effective if it serves up useful material, as illustrated in this passage from the same News.com piece:
People are consuming more and more media on the Internet but paying less and less, [Google Chief Exec Eric] Schmidt said. "That's bad for Google. We are critically dependent on high-quality content," he said.
Publishers are experts at producing the content Google needs, but incorrectly labeling Google a publisher -- and, ostensibly, a competitor -- obscures the essential relationship between Google and actual publishers.
So, in an effort to keep publishers on target in the platform discussion, here are a few top-level items to consider:
Identify the platforms -- Platform companies are focused on distribution, both through their own Web properties and via underlying delivery technologies. They may own popular Web sites that generate revenue through some forms of content (e.g. YouTube), but their real interest lies in aggregating and disseminating material. Google is the big platform provider, but Facebook and Amazon are both making moves into the platform arena. Even if you ultimately dismiss a particular company, it's still important to competitively -- and correctly -- identify its platform moves.
Consider how your content can be delivered through available platforms -- Look at user patterns. Ask yourself: How do people use these platforms to find and consume content? How are other companies effectively delivering their material? The newspaper industry offers an important case study for this point: It initially relied on subscription models for its Web content, but in recent years many papers have removed subscription restrictions so each article can be discovered -- and mined for ad revenue -- through Google and other search platforms. The industry is finally working with user behavior, not against it.
Look for revenue streams -- We've recently harped on the importance of tie-backs and analytics in digital experiments, and those same warnings apply here as well. If you're going to distribute your material through a platform, you need to have revenue streams in mind. This could take the form of advertising, affiliate relationships, trialware, or links/call-outs to upsell products. It could also be part of a larger branding campaign.
Add open formats to the production process -- Google is a massive platform player, but the Internet's open and distributed infrastructure allows other companies to develop their own platforms. Publishers looking for platform-friendly positioning can take advantage of future platforms -- including those not yet envisioned -- by incorporating open formats (XML, HTML, RSS, EPUB, etc.) into their production processes. There's no reason to gamble on proprietary formats and exclusivity because the big platforms, and the smart platform companies, will use methods that have already been adopted by the widest possible audience. And if a closed format does reach critical mass (iTunes and AAC, for example), commonly used open formats will be incorporated into conversion tools and projects.
These general points require deeper contextualization for particular companies and initiatives, and the business threats presented by large platform companies need to be rationally examined and acknowledged (particularly, centralization and lock-in). Nonetheless, publishers need to recognize that misrepresentations are where the real threat lies. Incorrect platform assumptions limit the significant opportunities.
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