Broadcasting Brain

I’ve been working on a little eBook project for the past couple of months and now it’s ready!  Members of my mailing list saw a preview of this eBook a few weeks ago.  Based on some feedback, I tweaked it a bit, including a title change.

Social Destinations of the Web is now available for download.  Click on the title to bring up a copy OR right click on the link and download it to your computer prior to reading.  It’s 37 pages long, in Adobe Acrobat Reader .PDF format, and it’s just under 10 MB.

In short, this eBook was compiled from a number of newspaper columns that I wrote in 2007 - 2008 and has a number of short write-ups about some of my favorite Web 2.0 sites.

It’s more of an overview for people who aren’t very familiar with Web 2.0 and the range of possibilities it provides.  If you’re an expert, or even an intermediate user of Web 2.0 sites, you probably won’t find anything new.  However, if you have a friend, co-worker, or family member who just doesn’t get things like Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, RSS Readers, maybe this document will help them out.

Happy New Year (in advance!)

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A lot of people would like to know how to create a hit because of the perks and rewards that accrue from commercial success. Wouldn’t a lot of people love to replicate the commercial success of the Beatles, Stephen King or Steven Spielberg? If only there was a surefire formula to achieving success in the public eye, or at least your target audience…

Image by RecoilRick

Let’s be clear on the definition, though: a hit is some people of piece or cultural output that not only receives popular acclaim with an audience, but it is also something that lots of people are willing to pay money for. Popular songs, TV shows, and movies are often called hits when they meet the twin criteria of popular and financial success.

Hits don’t always meet with critical acclaim, at least not at first. Critical acclaim is usually a sign of high quality content: content that’s well planned, created, and delivered with skill. Some hits are panned by the critics, but they still attract an audience. There’s no guarantee that a well-made, quality product will be a hit, and vice versa.

What makes something great and something else crap? What is quality? Why do we love some things and hate others? And does that have any bearing on something becoming a hit?

Some things that seem to make content a hit include: authenticity, familiarity, flattery, aesthetic/pleasure, honesty, cleverness, craft, hard work, love, humor, surprise, uniqueness… Yes, sometimes good craft does produce a hit, e.g. most Beatles albums and singles.

However, the successful combinations of hit-making attributes vary, just like the idea that some people are more influential than others when the conditions are right (which is one of the takeaways from Duncan Watt’s research which seemed to poke holes in The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell)

Is this why so much product is produced, most of which fails?

Yes, because we can rarely forecast what will be a hit, nor do we always know the correct combination of factors that contribute to making a hit.

Here’s a short anecdote to illustrate this further:

Years ago, a writer of my acquaintance was talking about the creative industries in general: film, TV, movies, books, comic books, etc. and the massive amounts of product that are flung out to the world each year. There’s good content, bad content, mediocre content, content that should have been left to marinate for awhile and other content that is released past its expiry date. And yet it all gets released by the ton.

Similarly, thousands of tons of new physical products are released each year: cars, clothes, electronics, sports gear, food products, investments, etc. Very few of them are successful and establish a foothold in the hearts, minds, and wallets of the average consumer. Yet it all floods out, accompanied by barrages of advertising, free samples, product placement, and pricing.

Why does all of this content of varying quality get inflicted upon the world?

My writer friend’s answer: because no one knows what will be a hit. Public tastes are fickle and also subject to many different influences and factors. And so content creators bombard the general public with content and, if they are lucky, some of those things become popular and financially successful. That is how hits are generated: you create and release new products until you find out which ones are successful.

Seinfeld, Friends, the X-Files, Star Trek, and many other popular franchises did not start out as hits. Nor did they all have unambiguous success in creating “hit” sequels. Fortunately, they were all given enough time and energy to continue on until they became hits.

Content creators truly, truly can’t determine what will be popular or not unless they have supernatural instincts or tons of experience from which to infer conclusions. Neither of which are foolproof.

Forecasting is a tough, tough business - you never get it 100% right, especially if you repeat the last thing that was successful.

So you want to have a hit?

First, create content.

Second, keep creating content until you create something that your intended audience likes, trying to do a better job each time. And don’t stop trying.

Third, repeat.

I don’t think that anything else has as good of a chance at being successful.

What do you think?

My variation of a meme that Adam Singer tagged me with.

Five words to help you succeed at content creation:

Read

Think

Practice

Analyze

Improve

I’m going for brevity in today’s post.

Image by Bird Eye

One of the posts that really caught my eye recently was by Jay Cruz of Tape Noise Diary. In wrote an interesting post called The Death of the Album, Jay quotes music critic Chuck Klosterman in Chuck Klosterman Reviews Chinese Democracy:

… Chinese Democracy is (pretty much) the last Old Media album we’ll ever contemplate in this context—it’s the last album that will be marketed as a collection of autonomous-but-connected songs, the last album that will be absorbed as a static manifestation of who the band supposedly is, and the last album that will matter more as a physical object than as an Internet sound file.

Jay takes Klosterman’s comment and expands on it further:

That’s another reason why there is a perceived notion that music criticism is no longer necessary. And it isn’t that there are no longer artists and bands that are making “albums” in that context, I’m sure artists like Radiohead are going to record maybe two more “albums”, but people simply don’t care for “albums.” Not that definition. Today’s music listeners probably don’t even know what it meant to make an album. That things like track order “meant” something and it was not a random choice. The only thing they may care about is if the songs are “playlistable”.

This is fascinating stuff. People have been making mix tapes for years (if not decades), but there were always albums, compilations, soundtracks, etc. that were the source material.

In a similar vein, there have been a number of calls promoting the atomization of news content (I want to attribute this to Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine, but I may be mistaken) so that content can be unbundled, selectively consumed, and sequenced as desired. The medium is different, but the concept is similar:

• Music of all kinds has been packaged in albums for years.
• News articles have been packaged in newspapers and magazines.
• Short stories collected in books and magazines.
• TV and radio news stories packaged together in programs.

On the other hand, comic books are increasingly being packaged as “trade paperbacks” or anthologies with many individual issues being bundled together.

This increasing atomization of content, whereby the consumer gets access to increasingly smaller, separate chunks, is a topic worth discussing. For example:

• Does the “concept album” (aka The Who’s Tommy and Quadrophenia; Pink Floyd’s The Wall, etc.) ever stand a chance of resurfacing?
• Will more artists move to “unit marketing” where they push the smallest possible pieces of content into a marketplace that mixes, matches, and rearranges (even more so that today)?
• Will we see more “mash-ups” of content?
• What’s the impact on both the creator and the consumer if these trends continue?

These are some of the things that I’m thinking about.

Late as I usually am to most parties, there’s been a lot of talk during the past couple of days about Shyftr and the way it would be aggregating content without attribution (although I guess they’ve backed away from that and will be providing author credit.)

ReadWriteWeb kind of summed up this discussion by placing it in context of the commoditization of creative content, primarily blogging.

I’m not as concerned about this concept as some people must be as I don’t make any income from blogging.  I would probably see it differently if blogging was a significant source of income for me.

I wrote a comment that summed up my current thoughts on this topic:

When 5,000 bloggers write about making money online, it’s rather hard to avoid commoditization of content.
Something to consider, though: you can copy someone’s words, but it’s harder to copy their tone, ideas, and point of view without inadvertently identifying the original source. I can do a decent Seth Godin imitation, but I can’t get it 100% right. However, if you read his words, even under a different author’s name, it’s hard to mistake who really wrote them. As for the rest of us, I think Mark Evans and other writers have got it right - we need to keep working on drawing people to our blogs. If only I knew how to make a widget.

What do you think?  Is this much ado about nothing?  Is blog content becoming a commodity? Is it a no-win scenario or a death spiral?  Or is this just another market reality to adapt to?

EDIT:? January 31/08 - this piece is flawed and should have been edited much more thoroughly.? I am going to do a rewrite at some point in the near future.? My apologies for inflicting this on you, dear readers.?

I don?t like to pay for something when I think I can get it for free. At the same time, I would be disappointed if I didn?t make some revenue from the fruits of my hard labor. This is a paradox and I?m still trying to resolve it in my mind. But I think it?s one of the biggest issues in modern culture and it?s not going to go away.

In this virtual boxing ring we call modern society, we have two competitors:

• In this corner: writers, artists, musicians, corporations and anyone who ever tried to copywrite, patent, trademark, or otherwise protect their creative output.
• And in this corner: Google, shareware, Creative Commons, and 99% of the people participating in blogging and other social media, plus anyone who ever downloaded or used content without paying for it.

There?s a growing number of people with a foot in both camps. There?s an ever-increasing amount of user-generated content proliferating through the Web, most of which does not provide revenue for its creators. Social media sites are draining a lot of time, effort, and energy from users while those site owners make revenue through ads distributed around and in their user?s content. Many users contribute their time, energy, and emotion to create content and their motivations will vary.

In a similar vein, it?s getting harder to get an ever-growing number of consumers to actually pay money for content. Especially when so much content (audio, video, writing, and images) can be obtained without paying the creator. In some cases, the creator ?gives away? their work - it seems like hundreds, if not thousands of people have free eBooks, podcasts, MP3s, YouTube videos, and photos available.

Freeware and shareware have been around for more than a decade and help to launch companies like ID Software, the makers of Doom and Quake. On the other hand, virtually any song, movie, or television program made in the past couple of decades can also be viewed or heard without paying the creator and a lot of it is not considered to be free.

I?m not here to judge whether or not it?s immoral to pirate content. However, I think it?s important to acknowledge that a lot of work goes into creating content, regardless of the quality or whether or not it ?sticks? with the audience.

FRUITS OF LABOR

Let?s compare the creation of content with the creation of physical assets for a moment:

• If someone built a hospital for your community, such that it would provide needed services and employment for many people, would you expect that work to be done for free?
• If someone built you a house, a place where you were to spend many hours of your life, would you expect it to be done for free?
• If someone built you an extension on your house, some place where you would spend a number of hours of your life, would you expect someone to do it for free?
• If someone redecorated a room in your house, made it look more beautiful and more useful, so that you would derive hours of enjoyment from being in that room, would you expect someone to do it for free?

I could continue on with these examples to a much more detailed level, but there?s an interesting principle in play with these scenarios. Granted, we?re talking about bricks and mortar, literally, instead of creative content, but there are more similarities than differences between creative content and physical objects.

A creator, whether a creator of ideas or something solid, exchanges time and effort for some future reward. The reward may be material, monetary, or emotional, but almost no one is so selfless to create something without the expectation of some future reward, save for a child who delights in creation and experimentation, or the adult who clings tightly to their work of art, unwilling to part with it.

This exchange of labor and time for compensation was the status quo for centuries until the World Wide Web and inexpensive content distribution served to decimate the collective willingness to pay for most content. Now that there?s an almost incalculable supply of free content (music, books, videos, pictures, stories, reference materials, you name it) available online, why would anyone ever want to pay for content, even if some of it represents the pinnacle of human creativity?

You, the person reading this article right now, are only paying for the ISP time needed to give you access to the Web. I?m exchanging a couple of hours of my life in order to create this article and I probably won?t receive any money for my work. I figure that it?s a relatively small sacrifice to make, especially if I convert you, dear reader, into a fan of my writing. Someday I?ll hope to monetize your interest in my work, but that?s not a realistic expectation in the short term.? As Seth Godin once indicated in his Ideavirus eBook (available for free), asking for money too soon in a creator-consumer relationship will ultimately reduce the revenue that can be generated from an idea.

Now let?s look at a similar, yet very different scenario: writing a book. Writing a book can take weeks and months of effort from start to finish. Instead of two hours of my time and effort, a book might require two thousand hours of effort spread over two or more years.

While I might get a lot of personal satisfaction from writing a book, many people would earn $25,000 (or much more) in their full-time jobs by exerting a similar amount of effort. However, since many of us do hold day jobs, the time spent writing a novel is time stolen from other activities, like leisure, friends and family, personal development, charitable activities, community service, exercise, and sleep. The same holds true for creating a large painting or mural, sculpting a bust, or recording a music album.? There is a price to be paid for mastering any skill or art, but the promise of a career, or at least an income

Meanwhile more literature is available, for free, on the Web. It?s great for the consumer, but it?s lousy for the creator, unless someone actually pays for the work. Everyone needs to eat, have shelter, and otherwise survive. The tradeoffs between creative time and survival needs are very difficult to manage. Many struggling creators have been highly dependant upon patrons, grants, and multiple paying jobs in order to maintain the essentials while trying to build a career in the arts.

Some readers are probably rolling their eyes at this point.? Anything that’s worth doing is supposed to be worth the sacrifice, right?? The answer to that question is dictated by the individual’s desires and values.

SOMEONE?S GOING TO PAY

Fortunately, a “white knight” or sorts appeared on the scene to help save the day.? Enter Google and on-line advertising, which can pay some of the bills and, with some luck, even make it financially rewarding to create content. These ad platforms are what make ?free? work.

Let?s look at this relationship in more detail. There are four main stakeholders to consider:

Content production
The creator (in this case, myself)
The distributor (ISP, blogging platform, hosting services, other supportive services)

Content consumption
The ?enabler? ? the middleman who makes ?free? financially viable
The consumer/advertiser ? the person who actually pays for the content

In the standard ?buy and consume? model, the consumer pays for the content at retail prices (prices which have been set by determining the cost of production and distribution plus the desired profit margin). In the ?free? model, the creator and the advertisers pay for the content creation and distribution.

It?s great to be a consumer, but the environment for the stakeholders at the other end of the transaction isn?t so rosy, unless the content proves to be extremely popular, which can lead to ad revenues to cover costs and, heaven forbid, turn a profit. Someone somewhere has to pay or else the system collapses.

What I?m really trying to say is that there is no such thing as ?free?: we?ve merely changed who is really paying for this content through the development of new distribution techniques. Cover prices and subscriptions are becoming obsolete as content becomes more of a commodity.? Ad revenues are becoming the primary model of revenue generation.

Periodicals have been using this revenue model for years, except that it?s become a model whereby you can?t charge a cover price for a newspaper or a magazine anymore and expect the reader to pay for it when there?s a fresher, ?free? version available online, unless the experience of buying and handling the content is more important than the money you give up by paying for it.

Today the advertising revenues either pay for the whole thing, part of the costs, or, in many unfortunate cases, doesn?t pay at all. In the case of many user-generated content sites, the original creator never receives any revenue (and you can argue that quality of this content ranges from abysmal to brilliant, but most of it is probably average quality or less, so most of it can?t find a willing buyer).

If the creator did their research ahead of time, they must know that they made this tradeoff at the very beginning of their creative journey. After awhile, though, it must sting a little, despite the knowledge that it was a voluntary arrangement.

There?s a whole industry and science around the publication and distribution of ?free? content that?s really paid for by advertisers. Enter Google Adsense/Adwords and hundreds of other methods to pay for content production and distribution. Over the past decade, these advertising platforms have smoothly and deeply inserted themselves into the publishing status quo. ?Free?, as we know it today, probably won?t work without these advertising platforms.

QUESTIONS FOR THE FUTURE

This leads me to two very important questions:

1. What happens when the advertisers decide that the Google advertising platform, and those of its competitors, isn?t sufficiently rewarding for them and they opt out? In other words, what if they feel that all of these ads are not leading to increased sales and market share?
2. What happens when the advertising platforms decide the status quo isn?t sufficiently rewarding for them and they either raise prices, reduce the creator?s cut, or else find a more profitable business to be in?

I don?t have any answers to these questions. But I think the future of ?free? content lies at the heart of the answers to these two questions.

Author’s note:? this essay was influenced by multiple sources.? I particularly want to acknowledge the writings of authors like Seth Godin, Jeff Jarvis, Scott Karp, Mathew Ingram, and Yoni Greenbaum as having inspired the thoughts behind this essay.? If I have unintentionally omitted some other source, please let me know I’ll adjust this section to reflect their contributions.