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Drowning in a rising tide
Writing in this week's InfoWorld, Ephraim Schwartz says:
Google and its competitors are fighting for market share because, now, market share in and of itself means success. From now on, "the next big thing" will not mean great technology; it will mean whichever online entity can come up with the most "viewers."
If that means the content is at the bottom of the intelligence barrel,
you won't hear investors complaining and you will see a lot of
copycats. But what you won't see are inventive twenty-somethings
putting their skills toward coming up with innovative technology to
change our lives.
Of course the same dynamic applies to all modes of sausage
content production, including Ephraim's and mine and, according
to Dave Winer, our Business 2.0 colleagues:
IWM: Are you offering staffers any incentives to blog?
Quittner: We're doing something that is novel for Time Inc. Our
bloggers will be directly remunerated on the basis of their
traffic. They'll be paid a modest CPM. Time Inc. will sell advertising
on the individual blogs. So the bloggers will get to participate in
the revenue they generate. [I Want
Media: Josh Quittner: 'Everybody Wants to Be a Blogger']
Sounds great, right? Yes and no. The meritocratic impulse is
terrific. But when dollars are attached only to the quantity of readers,
listeners, and viewers, with no consideration given to their quality,
the outcomes are predictable. Sensationalism will trump
reason. "Content producers" will lie awake at night inventing new forms of
astroturfing. We will race to the bottom.
The excruciating irony is that we are now, for the first time, in a
position to do what media have always aspired to do. We can create
durable relationships with subscribers (remember them?); we can
progressively find out about our readers, listeners, and viewers;
we can describe them to advertisers in ways that will support better
"content" and better advertising. But that would require innovation
which, as Ephraim quite rightly points out, is drowning in the rising tide.
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