One or maybe two random thoughts on content and distribution
Each newspaper in Sweden produce two maybe three unique articles per day that I find interesting. But since I have no time nor interest in visiting all of them just to search for a couple of articles that might be worth reading I use my RSS reader instead as my distribution mechanism, which I can tune however I like. Most people though, don’t and never will use RSS readers (or?).
I think, hopefully my only prediction for 2008, that larger media companies in Sweden will begin to embrace distribution next year. Rather than focusing on being a destination, they will realize that they no longer will be able to “own” their readers.
There seems to be a growing mainstream attraction for distribution in an RSS kind of way judging from for example iGoogle massive growth this year (268% growth). NY Times is one of the few larger newspapers that have embraced distribution and integrated they’re acquisition of Blogrunner into their Technology section. Picking up the most interesting news from blogs and competing newspapers, thus trying to bring the most attractive content to their readers, even if they didn’t produce it they provide a guide to find more information and better articles around current topics.
The bottom line is that most newspapers provide a very average product, basically I’ll find the same articles in all newspapers, just with different nuances. The erosion of media brands is probably the largest challenge and something neither their readers or technology can be blamed for. This is the reason why NRC Next, a dutch morning newspaper, is the most interesting media product of 2007. Managing to charge 1 euro per issue while competing with free newspapers is remarkable and they’ve found a new position creating unique content on an otherwise bland market, where content is the same in every paper.
News is free, but information is not — we tell people the news but do more with it.
- Jan Paul van der Wijk, Chief of design, NRC Next
However great content is not enough, other sources will also produce great content. So taking the hype of Open from 2007 into 2008 and embracing distribution is key for media companies. No matter what they do, they’re competitors will not only be other newspapers but maybe foremostly personal startpages like iGoogle or Netvibes, packaging news and information in a nontraditional way but compelling and time saving for the user.
iTunes (and even more so Spotify) is doing it with music, YouTube with video and it might be the personal startpages that are able to do it for information in general. Maybe already in 2008.
2008, tidningar, personliga startsidor, funderingar, nyheter
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