Entries tagged with “platform” from Tools of Change for Publishing
Newspapers Pursued New Tech with Wrong Intentions
Mac Slocum
January 6, 2009
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In a column at Slate, Jack Schafer says newspapers' overcommitment to form and content lock-in led to the industry missing Web opportunities:
From the beginning, newspapers sought to invent the Web in their own image by repurposing the copy, values, and temperament found in their ink-and-paper editions. Despite being early arrivals, despite having spent millions on manpower and hardware, despite all the animations, links, videos, databases, and other software tricks found on their sites, every newspaper Web site is instantly identifiable as a newspaper Web site. By succeeding, they failed to invent the Web.
Google Book Search Listings Now Embeddable
Mac Slocum
September 22, 2008
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Titles from from Google's Book Search index can now be embedded in non-Google Web pages. From Inside Google Book Search:
We're launching a set of free tools that allow retailers, publishers, and anyone with a web site to embed books from the Google Book Search index. We are also providing new ways for these sites to display full-text search results from Book Search, and even integrate with social features such as ratings, reviews, and readers' book collections.
Google's Preview tool is already being used by publishers (including O'Reilly), retailers, libraries and other sites.
Basic Book Search previews are generated through Google's preview wizard (example below). Customized results can be built with the Book Search APIs.
Embedded Book Search example:
Tim O'Reilly: Social Networks as Infrastructure, Not Apps
Mac Slocum
August 27, 2008
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Using Amazon's acquisition of Shelfari as a jumping-off point, Tim O'Reilly stresses the need for social network interoperability. From Radar:
Some of my friends prefer LibraryThing. Others may prefer Shelfari. But I only network with those on Goodreads because that's the service I ended up using first. What a shame that I can't see what my friends on LibraryThing and Shelfari might be reading! I'd love to see a firm commitment to cross-application connectivity, with the social network as infrastructure rather than application.
What if Ebooks Were the Dominant Platform?
Mac Slocum
August 5, 2008
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I recently came across an old blog post from Harvard Business School professor Andrew McAfee that discusses the utility of the "technology flip test". McAfee writes:
At a conference years back I was sitting on a panel that was asked to talk about future of the book. As the discussion was heating up about the inevitability of the electric media, someone on the panel (I wish it had been me) proposed a flip test. He said "Let's say the world has only e-books, then someone introduces this technology called 'paper.' It's cheap, portable, lasts essentially forever, and requires no batteries. You can't write over it once it's been written on, but you buy more very cheaply. Wouldn't that technology come to dominate the market?" It's fair to say that comment changed the direction of the panel.
The ebook vs paper flip test is intriguing for a number of reasons:
- It inverts the offense and defense: Ebook advocates become defenders and paper-book supporters become disruptors. Shaking off the vestiges of a default argument is always a good idea -- think of it as a "debate cleanser."
- It amplifies the strengths of each format ... initially: When I ran through the flip test on my own, I at first honed in on the cost savings of ebooks (no paper, no printing, no shipping) and the sensory aspects of print books. But further review revealed deeper complexities to this debate. And that led me to ...
- It upends assumptions: Print's dominant position in the real world causes me to challenge pro-print arguments, most notably the tactile experience overreaction that often derails discussions. But placing ebooks in the hot seat gave me a new perspective on ebook defenses. For example, if my default reading environment was electronic and networked, would I want (or need) a disconnected outlet? Would I crave solitude and a languid pace? Does the upside of ebook economics supersede the other reading/storytelling experiences I'm looking for, or would I welcome a print alternative the way I now welcome an electronic option?
What's your take on the flip test? Does inverting the argument open the discussion, or is this a diversionary trick that detracts from the issues at hand? Please share your thoughts in the comments area.
(Original idea and McAfee link via Reading 2.0 list.)
TOC Recommended Reading
Mac Slocum
July 31, 2008
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This is Not a Comment (Derek Powazek, Powazek.com)
Chastising all internet commenters for the actions of the loudest, craziest ones is no different that swearing off all newspapers because of Jason Blair.
Silicon Valley's benevolent dictatorship (Rebecca MacKinnon, RConversation)
The guys running Google, Apple, Microsoft, and many other companies represented at the Fortune Brainstorm are the benevolent dictators of the global information and communications system. But can we assume they will always be benevolent? What happens when they roll out services in not-so-benevolent authoritarian regimes?
Once More With Feeling: The LATBR Publishes Its Last (Kassia Krozser, Booksquare)
... I still maintain that a book review section in a major newspaper should be reflective of the subscriber base, even if it's trying to maintain a certain level of discourse; you have to bring the larger audience in, even a little bit, if you want to expose your conversation beyond the choir.
Why I Joined the POD People (Richard Grayson, Quarterly Conversation)
Eventually, as print-on-demand technology improves in quality and costs shrink, trade publishers will probably rely on POD for all their books, just as some academic publishers have begun to do. Trade publishers waste a lot of money (and trees) by publishing copies of books, even bestsellers in fourth or fifth editions, that never get sold; no matter how many print runs, publishers always seem to have books left over. After my first book was remaindered I bought 400 copies of my first book for a nickel a copy, then discovered the cost of storing them was so expensive that I ended up throwing dozens of copies into a Miami dumpster.
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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