Some Proactive Thoughts On Making Newspapers Better

from the build-community,-sell-scarcity dept

Last week, in discussing my debate about newspaper online business models with the NY Times' David Carr, one of our commenters wanted more actual examples of what newspapers should do. Luckily, an anonymous commenter put up some ideas and some suggestions on how to structure a news business. Meanwhile, over the weekend, Steve Yelvington posted a nice list of seven keys to building healthy online community, which newspapers should mostly follow (my one quibble: I think he's wrong to deny anonymous commenting). But most of the other stuff in there makes a lot of sense, and includes things that newspapers rarely do, such as giving the users more power, participating in the community, and even just recognizing that the community is a priority.

Then, Mathew Ingram points us to a list from Dan Gillmor about things he would do if he ran a news organization, most of which focus (also) on involving the community a lot more. The whole list is worth reading, but one thing I really liked was the idea of including a box with each article that includes "Things We Don't Know" with an invitation for readers to fill in some of the blanks. So, along those lines, we certainly don't know "the answer" to news business models (as if there is a single answer), but would love to hear more ideas in the comments.

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Dear Newspapers: Time To Focus On Enabling The Community; Not Limiting It

from the try-this-again dept

As we keep hearing from newspaper execs (and sometimes, reporters) insisting that paywalls or micropayments are the solution to what ails the industry, we keep asking why people will pay. The whole reason why newspapers used to work as a business model was that they collected a community around news. But, these days, there are much better communities out there. The newspapers haven't kept up. And, when it comes to news, people want to participate. They're not passive. That might mean contributing to the news or commenting on the news, but just as likely it means sharing and spreading the news, as well. But nearly every proposal from newspapers looks to limit that ability, which only makes it less valuable to the very community the newspapers need, driving them elsewhere. We've been saying for years that newspapers need to focus on enabling communities, but that still seems to be the last thing on most of their minds.

For example, this rather depressing discussion of research presented at the Future of Journalism conference concerning participatory media suggests that many in the newspaper business view the whole "participation" thing as a pain to be dealt with. Very few look for ways to better enable the community -- most seem focused on how to prevent the community from doing something bad, or looking for other ways to somehow limit the community.

And then you have situations like this:

Finding newsworthy material in contributions from the public is a challenge. In his study about Dutch newspapers and UGC presented at the conference, Piet Bakker found that there was little news contained in comments on stories.

From the point of view of the traditional journalist, the amount of news in comments was minimal. Instead, comments were seen as a way to attract more visitors and increase loyalty, but these benefits were counterbalanced by problems with abusive comments, a lack of contributions, and the cost of moderation.

They're viewing the entire thing backwards. First, they're complaining that there's "little news contained in comments." But who said there was supposed to be? It's the basic difference between reporting and a discussion. But the newspaper folks are so focused on having to be "reporters" that they're missing the fact their community wants to have a discussion around the news. Instead, it's seen as a bad thing that it's "not news." Furthermore, rather than being seen as a way to enable the community, comments are reduced to a way to attract more visitors. If you're just looking to attract more visitors, there are all sorts of things you can do. If you want to enable the community, it takes a different mindset.

Of course, not every newspaper person thinks that way. Techdirt reader Shane Richmond, who is the head of technology for the Telegraph, has written up a report for the Nieman Foundation, discussing the various ways that paper is looking to enable the community. As you read through it, it's not about page views or having the community submit stuff for journalists to do the real work on, it's actually all about enabling the community: enabling them to have a voice, enabling them to connect with one another and even enabling them to have an audience. As Richmond notes, there's still a lot more to do, but it looks like the Telegraph is approaching this with the right mindset. It would be great to see more newspapers follow the same path.

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Jason Mraz Listens To His Fans In Picking 'I'm Yours' As A Hit Single

from the not-the-muckety-mucks dept

We just wrote about the rather insane process by which major record labels go through to pick which songs will be the "single" they promote off of an album. We focused on all the "protections" the labels try to build in to keep the songs from leaking while the execs make this wise decision -- but there's a separate issue as well: why is it that these execs are really the best at picking the hit single? The folks behind the "New Rockstar Philosophy" book point us to an article talking about Jason Mraz's hit song "I'm Yours," which you've almost certainly heard unless you live on a deserted island (if not, it's on YouTube of course). It's pretty catchy -- but the key point raised by the link above is that Mraz apparently didn't keep the song hidden and locked up until some bright execs could figure out the hit single (though, yes, he's been on a major label for years...). The article notes that he performed the song live for audiences for years before putting it on an album, and it was the audience response that made him realize it was a perfect hit single:

"The song was really born into the crowd. ... I noticed almost an immediate response to it and people really celebrated in a different way during that song," he said in a phone interview. "And then by having those three years to jam to the song, it gave us the opportunity to do something simple, yet spirited" in the studio.

And the song is doing quite well. The whole point of the article is to note that the song has the longest ever run on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Apparently sales of the song weren't "hurt" by the fact that people could hear it long before it was chosen as a single. In fact, it seemed to do just fine. So why do execs try to lock up that decision making process so much?

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Music Critic Explains Why The Music Industry Is Better Off Embracing Fans

from the preach-it dept

My friend Tom emailed me to let me know he heard Chicago Tribune music critic (and host of the excellent music podcast Sound Opinions) Greg Kot on public radio's Marketplace, and said it sounded like I was talking, based on what was being said. Indeed, the interview hits on a lot of what we usually talk about here, noting how the old industry is overreacting, and there's a new music business that's growing rapidly by embracing what fans want:

There is a part of the music industry that is dying as a result of what's happening on the Internet. But I think a new industry is being born, a grassroots industry.

Kot is asked to describe the business model, and he notes the importance of community (though, he leaves out the latter part of the equation -- the "reason to buy" part):

I think what it comes down to is building a community around what an artist may do. I think what was happening in the past, where everything was being funneled through a few big corporations, a few big record companies, a few big radio stations, fans really didn't feel personally invested in the artist. And what the Internet is facilitating is artists communicating directly with their fans and vice versa. To the point where you have fans participating in the art, whether it's making videos, or doing remixes, they feel part of the equation. And as a result they're investing in the artist in numerous ways.

After naming (of course) Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails as bands that have it figured out, Kot's asked about how smaller, less well-known bands can do things, and Kot's got a ready answer (though, he doesn't name names -- even though there are many such examples):

You know, it's very hard to keep a secret on the Internet. If your music is genuinely good, you will not be a secret for very long. I think the key is start small, start with a community base, start with a few hardcore fans and build it from there. And secondly lower your overhead. Keep your operations small and surround yourself with a few invested businessmen. In other words, you still need infrastructure, but it should be a lot smaller.

All in all a good interview, though probably won't break much new ground for readers here. Still, it's nice to see Kot recognize these things, and makes me interested in reading his recent book, Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music.

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It Ain't The Link, It's What You Do With The Traffic

from the sigh dept

A media consultant, Arnon Mishkin, has a post up at Paid Content supposedly about The Fallacy Of The Link Economy, where he suggests that those of us (he links to us at Techdirt, for example) who are insisting that aggregators aren't a problem and that news sites should be happy about getting linked to, are wrong. But he seems to have gotten the basic argument wrong. He seems to think we're saying that the all you have to do is get linked to, and you should be happy.

But that's not what we're saying.

The link is a vote of confidence, but it's just a start. From there, you then need to actually do something with that link. Mishkin dismisses the value of the link by noting that most people who visit those aggregator sites don't click through. That's not news. That's the way it's always been, but that doesn't mean there isn't value there. On this, I can speak from personal experience. Over the years, we never worked that hard at building our own traffic (we never built a business that depended on traffic), but our traffic kept growing. Any time we were linked to from larger sites, some people clicked through, but we always knew it was a small fraction of the overall traffic to that originator site. But, so what? It's still new traffic that wouldn't have found us otherwise. On top of that, we knew that most of that traffic would visit us just that one time and not think to come back -- but again, that's fine. Because what did happen is that we started to build up our reputation.

So, no, getting a single site to link to you isn't that meaningful, and won't drive that much traffic initially (or even repeat traffic), but as you build up your reputation, and get linked multiple times in multiple places, and then build up credibility based on your content and your community then people start to come back. So, getting linked from a certain site once is meaningless. But as we would get linked multiple times, we'd start to notice that then our traffic would increase. It was a case of that other site helping introduce others to us, not because of a single link, but the combination of being linked to multiple times, along with having good content and good discussions -- and then people would realize that it was worth visting us regularly (or adding us to their RSS reader or whatever).

It's an ongoing process, but the fact that most people don't click through on a single aggregator link is meaningless. Those people wouldn't have seen the story anyway, but it may help build up the brand of the original site. And, I can assure you, over time, if you keep providing quality, that pays off.

The problem here is that Mishkin and others seem to think the value is in the single atomic story. It's not and never has been. Being unable to view the larger picture and the overall process misses the point. It's not the link alone that has value or the story alone that has value, but the overall process of building a community.

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Media Consultant: Comments Are Bad, Please Shut Up

from the that's-not-strategy,-that's-being-a-curmudgeon dept

As newspapers have struggled to get the online world, most of them did the simplest thing of all, which was toss up some comment forms at the end of their articles. However, they never did anything to actually engage with commenters. Instead, they looked at the comment form as being a community, but never gave any incentives for the folks in the comments to do anything intelligent. They didn't tend to the community or have the authors of the articles respond to comments (in some cases they specifically barred it!). So if you treat your comments as a place where the riffraff is just going to say stupid stuff, don't be surprised when that's what happens.

But, it seems that some are getting the wrong message from this. Douglas Bailey, who apparently is a "media consultant" or a "media strategist" has simply determined that all newspaper comments are dumb and should be done away with. Instead, he suggests you write a letter to the editor or an op-ed.

But his reasoning is backwards (and makes me wonder why anyone would hire him as a consultant). First, he gives a few apocryphal stories to make his point -- which isn't exactly compelling since they could be entirely made up. Second, he assumes that because plenty of comments on newspaper sites are dumb the problem is the commenters or the very act of commenting itself. Apparently, it never occurred to him that perhaps the problem is the way the newspapers set up the comments. Those newspapers didn't do anything to try to build up community or to encourage people to post more insightful comments. The problem isn't that the commenters are dumb and pointless, but that the newspaper failed to put in place incentives to encourage smarter comments. The newspapers failed to actually engage with their community and talk with them rather than to them. Any newspaper that wants to hire a media strategist these days should probably find one who looks for ways to help a newspaper better engage their community, rather than one who tells them to ignore the community.

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Sears Settles With FTC For Putting Spyware On Customers' Computers

from the customers-aren't-lawyers dept

You may recall a couple years back, a controversy over the fact that Sears appeared to be installing spyware on the computers of online customers who had agreed to join a "community." Sears insisted this wasn't true, and that it really was software to help create a community of shoppers -- but the evidence suggested otherwise. The FTC eventually got involved, and now Sears has settled the charges that it was unfairly spying on users without clearly indicating this to users. Sears insisted that because the fine print of the terms of service for joining the community said that it would track your online browsing, it was in the clear, but the FTC noted, accurately, that most users would not have gotten that impression from signing up. As Thomas O'Toole notes about this ruling:

I'm pretty sure that attorneys would understand the breadth of the consent covered by the phrase "online browsing." It means everything. The position taken by the FTC signals the agency's belief that consumers should not be treated like lawyers when it comes to privacy-related disclosures. The FTC also appeared to be concerned about the fact that the disclosure was buried in a lengthy privacy statement, which was displayed to the consumer rather late in the consent-collecting process.

This is a good thing. Customers shouldn't need to be lawyers to understand what it is they're agreeing to, and it's nice to see the FTC recognize that fact.

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The Value Of Twitter As Compared To Google

from the it's-growing dept

I recognize that it's becoming fashionable among many to bash Twitter, but for those who have learned how to use Twitter well (as opposed to many who use it poorly), the value of it is quite impressive. I now spend a lot more time using Twitter to find news than I do my feed reader -- and that's amazing to me. However, I think Mark Cuban actually has made the strongest point, noting that in many ways, Twitter is becoming more useful than Google. This isn't to say that Twitter is "killing" Google (x killing y stories are lame), but that many people are finding information via Twitter now, where they used to find it via Google.

Cuban gives an example of trying to buy a car, where there may be a lot of value in being able to message a guru on the type of car he wants to buy via Twitter (or, better yet, finding a few of them). I know I've found Twitter to be useful in this manner. A few months ago, I was looking for a new backpack for my computer -- and I had very specific requirements (such as the ability to carry both a laptop and a netbook at times comfortably). It was quite difficult to come up with a Google query that made sense for such a thing, but I could ask it easily in 140 characters and plenty of people could easily understand it, and then provide thoughts and recommendations. It comes back to two points:

• Having real humans respond to a query works well for more specific queries that simply aren't well automated.
• Perhaps much more importantly, real people can better offer recommendations or explanations than an automated query on Google, which simply seeks to find data or answers.

Basically, what Twitter is enabling is an entirely different form of information gathering online: via conversation, rather than via data dump. Each has it's place, but the reason many of us find Twitter so compelling is that it's opening up tremendous new possibilities to enable useful information flow that simply wasn't possible before.

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Ten Lines Of Code Is Easy; Building Community Is Hard

from the yup dept

Fred Wilson has a good post pointing out how ridiculous it is for various elitists to scoff at a certain internet startup because it could be recreated in "ten lines of code." I certainly know the feeling (and have, at times, felt it myself), but as Fred notes, the comment is really far off the mark, and is a situation where techies tend to be doing the same thing that content owners have been known to do: overvaluing one part of the product over what's likely to be even more important. While content owners overvalue the content itself, techies often overvalue the code. But with certain services, it's the community that's more important than the code. The fact that the code can be (and has been) replicated is meaningless, if you can't also create the same community around it.

This is a point that's also important when it comes to the various discussions we have about patent law around here. Some patent system defenders insist that they need to "protect" their invention. But, again, if that invention isn't bringing users, there's not much worth protecting, at all. You can copy all you want, but if no one's willing to use what you do, you haven't done much valuable. Ten lines of code may be meaningless. But if those ten lines of code bring in millions of users, it's a different story.

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Yes, A Newspaper Can Survive If It Focuses On The Community

from the well,-look-at-that... dept

When it comes to newspaper business models, we've been saying over and over again that the problem has never been about "free" vs. "paid" but the fact that newspapers have never done a very good job enabling their communities. It comes from the fact that many newspapers incorrectly think they're in the business of selling news to people. That's never really been true. They've always been in the business of selling their community to advertisers. And if they do things to drive that community away (or to fail to keep up with other, competing communities) they shouldn't be surprised that their business disappears as well.

As evidence of how focusing on the community can work wonders for newspapers, just check out this recent column by David Carr (who just a week or so ago had jumped on board the "all newspapers should collude to start charging" bandwagon). In it, Carr talks about the success of the Austin Chronicle, the local newspaper in Texas that has been able to weather the "newspaper business model crisis" just fine while (get this!) giving away its newspapers for free. But, it's also built up the famous South by Southwest event that just happened in Austin, and has become a huge community builder for Austin. In fact, many now identify the city with SxSW -- and that only helps the Chronicle. While others are shutting down, the Austin Chronicle isn't looking to lay anyone off. Business is off a bit due to the general downturn, but the paper doesn't have massive debts and seems to have a really loyal following among locals who recognize the overall value it adds to the community. Meanwhile, it's the newspapers that haven't bothered to really connect with their communities that are suddenly demanding those community members pay -- and are suddenly offended when people tell them "no thanks"?

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President Obama Still Missing The Point: Include The Public In The Process, Not Just The Selling

from the the-difference-between-transparency-and-outreach dept

The new Obama administration was supposed to represent a revolution in participation and transparency -- and while there have been some moves in that direction, there's plenty that's troubling, such as its recent decision to declare negotiations on an intellectual property treaty a state secret. However, more troubling is this fundamental disconnect between what the administration seems to think "participation" in the process means -- and what it really should mean. Rather than actually having people participate, it seems the administration is a lot more focused on having people sell.

That's not the same.

We saw it in the stimulus plan -- which was written by the same political insiders, and then the various email lists and social network connections were used to try to get the public to support the bill -- and now we're seeing the same thing with the budget. Apparently, the DNC is putting on a big push to use the 13-million emails collected during the campaign to help urge passage of Obama's budget, with David Plouffe claiming this is "the first major engagement" of that public list in the legislative process.

But that's the problem. This is a bit late to be engaging everyone. The budget's already been written. Shouldn't participation included more openness earlier in the process and more of a real way to participate to get these people to actually buy into a budget that they had input on? But that's not what we're getting. We're getting the same stuff, handed down from on high by the same political operatives, and being told that the people's "participation" is to help this budget get passed.

I would imagine people would be a lot more excited about doing that if they'd actually been asked to help out in the process. I'm glad that the administration is trying to reach out to people more, but so far it's doing so in a very fake way. It's not getting people to really participate in the process at all. It's just looking at them as a way to help sell. That's not the same.

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Slate Realizes It Has A Valuable Community

from the take-a-hint dept

What will be the defining picture of today's economic crisis? The '30s had bread lines and the '70s had gas lines, but as Slate points out, "in many ways this economic crisis, despite its deepening severity, has been less visible than previous ones. You can't take a photograph of a collateralized debt obligation." So, like any smart media company these days, Slate is turning to the community for help capturing that iconic moment.

To do so, Slate has created a Flickr pool entitled Shoot the Recession that currently has more than 100 user-contributed photos in it. NPR's Planet Money has been doing this, too, but because Slate is more visual, it would seem that more people would be motivated. This is a smart move - it lowers the expense for Slate to report on the crisis and recognizes that people are motivated by things other than money (reputation being the big one here). But it is also smart because instead of reinventing the wheel, Slate loosely joins together another small piece of the web - Flickr. Though there is still a lot more Slate and its peers can do, this is a step in the right direction.

Kevin Donovan is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Kevin Donovan and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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Looking For A Little Info On The Community

from the survey-time dept

One of the examples I used in the Trent Reznor case study I did was how he sent out a survey to everyone on his mailing list -- but was quite open and honest about doing it -- and he did so in a way that actually made him sound human. Such surveys are a pain in the ass and they certainly annoy some people -- but, as Reznor pointed out in his email, since he and his team are figuring out everything as they go along, it certainly would help to have some info from his fans. We're in something of the same position. We're always working on ways to improve things for our community, as well -- and have a bunch of projects in the works, all focused on helping to reward you, in the community, further. The Insight Community has been quite successful so far, and in 2008 we were able to pay out five figure commissions to our top contributors. What other community are you a member of that pays you for being smart?

Please take a moment to fill out our reader survey.

Like Reznor, it would help if we knew a bit more about you. And, yes, we know that taking surveys is a pain in the ass. And, for those of you who feel that way, please just skip right on over this post and the survey. Sorry for wasting your time. But, for those of you who do feel like a part of the community and wouldn't mind sharing a bit of information that should help us provide more for you in the future, we'd really appreciate it if you could take just a few minutes of your time and fill out the survey. Thanks!

Letting The Community Be A Journalist's Assignment Editor

from the that's-one-way-to-do-it... dept

Jay Rosen points us to the news that a journalist for the Patriot-News, in Pennsylvania, is experimenting with letting the community be his assignments editor. Basically, he's hoping that readers of his work will submit story ideas as blog comments. From there, he'll choose a few that look interesting, create an online poll, and then see what the community thinks is most important for him to work on. It's an interesting experiment, and one worth watching, but I'm not sure if it's enough by itself. It's great that he's tapping into the community, but a mere voting mechanism sort of misses the point of what that community can add. It should go beyond voting to actually helping out -- giving tips, feedback, ideas, facts and opinions. Let the community help research a story. Yes, some of that might happen in addition to the voting, but the voting by itself seems like a bit of a gimmick rather than real participation.

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Reminder: Not Everyone Online Is A Jerk

from the nice-to-know dept

Following the incredibly tragic story of Abraham Biggs' live broadcasting his suicide, plenty of "web 2.0" critics such as Andrew Keen jumped on the chance to blast the "anomie, cruelty and narcissism that characterises much of the web." Of course, if you think social networks are evil, you're going to interpret events that way, but, of course, as has been pointed out before, communication tools don't discriminate over who can use them -- so of course there are some awful people who use them, just as there are many good people. Communication tools don't change that. And, for every tragic Abraham Biggs story out there, it seems likely that there are many, many stories like Ayelet Waldman, who talks about how her online community of friends saved her from committing suicide. Of course, those stories don't get nearly as much attention, so folks like Keen can pretend they don't exist and that social networking communication tools are mainly used for shallow, meaningless conversations.

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What Obama Should Do To Get The Entrepreneurial Viewpoint

from the we're-about-to-find-out dept

Two contrasting articles crossed my desktop this weekend, both about how President-Elect Barack Obama is likely to govern. The first, by Mark Cuban, criticizes Obama for the list of economic advisers that Obama chose to consult concerning his plans to take on the economic downturn. Cuban, correctly, worries about who is missing from that list:

Notice anything missing?

Not a single entrepreneur. Yes Warren Buffett started a business, but he will be the first to tell you that he "doesn't do start ups". Which means there isn't a single person advising PE Obama that we know of that knows that its like to start and run a business in this or any economic climate. That's a huge problem.

I absolutely agree. It is the entrepreneurial spirit that is needed right now. But, at the same time, it makes you wonder just how Obama would have accomplished this. Any one or two entrepreneurs are unlikely to do a really good job representing all entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs, for the most part, don't all view things the same way, and there's no real organization of entrepreneurs. The reason entrepreneurs become entrepreneurs is often that they see their own way of doing things and don't want to be locked up by convention. So, while it is worrisome that there aren't any entrepreneur-types on the list, I'm not sure I'd be that much more comfortable with a few entrepreneurs representing the interests of all entrepreneurs either.

That brings us to the second article. It's by David Carr in the NY Times, and looks at how Obama's campaign ran like an entrepreneurial startup itself, leveraging the internet and new technologies to do a complete end-run around much bigger and more well-known "corporate brands" in the political space. And it wonders if Obama will continue to use those tools to govern as well.

So, at the very least, one could argue that Obama, himself, is something of an entrepreneur, but more importantly, one would hope that Obama does, in fact, continue to leverage the internet to hear from folks -- and is actually willing to listen and take suggestions seriously. Why not create an economic roundtable of sorts online that lets more people weigh in? Let ideas in the mix bubble up to the top using ratings systems (and maybe some White House moderators) and contribute them to the mix. If someone has a particularly good suggestion, why not invite them to a meeting with those "big shot" economic advisers as well? It doesn't mean that every hare-brained scheme needs to be listened to, but if there's a good way to allow the best ideas to bubble up and get recognition, it could be quite a powerful new way to govern. To some extent, there's already some indication that this is where things are headed with the transition website Change.gov, but it remains to be seen if that's just a Presidential suggestion box... or something a lot more powerful.

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Belgian Newspaper Lets Readers Into Editorial Meetings On Financial Crisis

from the connecting-with-your-community dept

Earlier this year, I wrote about how too many newspapers thought that adding "community" just meant putting comments on stories. That's not really engaging the community, though. While we've seen a few examples of newspapers doing a better job of really engaging communities, this new story out of Belgium may be one of the best examples so far. A reporter for a newspaper there, De Tijd, had been experimenting with some live blogging solutions, and decided to basically liveblog an editorial meeting where the paper decided how to cover a developing chapter in the financial crisis. While some others in the editorial meeting were nervous about "opening up" their editorial process, it actually was quite useful.

The wider community contributed plenty of useful feedback both on what they hoped the newspaper would cover (which was different than what the editors originally planned to cover), but also in providing more details about what was really important. It gave the journalists there much more insight into the real story, rather than the usual shallow coverage that often comes out of newspaper reporting on a sudden crisis (for example, recognizing that interbank lending -- or the lack thereof -- was a much bigger story than a collapsing stock market). It became truly interactive, with various journalists bouncing ideas off of the community and getting a lot of real time feedback to create a much better product.

Even more interesting was that after the reporter shut down the live chat, many in the group simply organized themselves into an IRC chat room and continued the conversation themselves. It's a fascinating story of how a newspaper embraced an actual community, rather than simply thinking that community was something you add on as a module at the end of the "real journalism."

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NBC Once Again Overvaluing Content, Undervaluing Community

from the their-own-loss dept

NBC Universal, like so many big media companies, seems to view everything through a top-down broadcast media lens. For example, while it may seem like a good idea that the company is finally (finally!) recognizing that people may be craving local content that is sometimes difficult to find, there's something missing in its announcement of plans to create "locals only" websites targeted at specific geographic regions. You can read the entire press release and see if you notice what's missing.

Every single part of the description of the site is about delivering content to people. Nowhere is there any sense of actually building a community around that content. The only time "community" is mentioned is as a "target." The press release claims that these sites are aimed at "social capitalists" who are the leading influencers in their communities, but the company seems to have missed out on the fact that the reason those folks are influencers isn't because they sit back and just consume the content shoveled to them, but because they take part in the process. They share the news, they comment on it, they write it, they annotate it, they build on it and they help create it. But all that NBC Universal is talking about is taking the same old, old model of simply shoveling content to people.

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Apple Finally Realizes That NDAs For Developers Are A Bad Idea

from the took-'em-long-enough dept

It was definitely surprising to see Apple trying to enforce an NDA to stop iPhone developers from talking about their applications, so it's nice to see Apple (for once!) respond to the backlash by dropping the NDA. However, the company's explanation for why it had the NDA in the first place doesn't make much sense:

We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don't steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.

It's unclear what "inventions and innovations" would be "stolen" (the company probably means infringed, not stolen, obviously) without such an NDA in place. Also, the patents are a separate issue. The whole explanation, frankly, is misleading. The NDA and the patents protect entirely different things in very different ways, and it's difficult to see how the lack of an NDA allows anything to be "ripped off."

Either way, it's good that Apple has recognized that such NDA's significantly limit its developers. It's tough to have much of a developer "community" when said developers are barred from communicating.

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Is Firefox Missing The Point In Its Response To Google Chrome?

from the not-so-fast dept

Seth Godin thinks Firefox is missing the point by launching new features in response to Google Chrome. He says the problem now is that "when your friends switch to Firefox, your life doesn't get better." Firefox needs to provide people with an incentive to spread it, so that the more people use it, the better it gets for users (think of a social networking site -- you have a better experience if more of your friends join). He suggests new communication and collaboration features that only work if you have Firefox.

I think he's missing the point.

He ignores the Firefox community. The life of a Firefox user does improve as the user base grows. A more vibrant community means better add-ons, bug fixes, security patches, phishing reports, translations/dictionaries, etc. -- all members benefit. Mozilla is already providing the sort of incentive he describes. Sure, there may be ways to improve, but I don't think they're missing the point.

Plus, "only for Firefox users" isn't the Mozilla approach. Mozilla wants to improve the web for everyone -- not just Firefox users. Mozilla thinks your browser should be like your phone or your car; it shouldn't matter if your friends or co-workers are using the same product. You don't need to consider which phone carrier your friend uses before making a call, or which car your co-worker has before providing directions; you shouldn't have to think about what browser someone uses before communicating with them online. People don't need special browser-specific features in order to communicate browser-to-browser, that's what web services (or add-ons) are for. Those kinds of features would make life on the web more difficult for everyone if they were Firefox specific, and if they weren't, Google could just implement them in Chrome.

The community is one thing Firefox has that Chrome can't copy overnight.

If you read some responses to Chrome from people at Mozilla, it doesn't seem like they're missing the point. Competition in the browser market is validation of Mozilla's mission for Firefox, and Mozilla plans to compete by continuing to innovate and to involve the community. Seth Godin makes a great observation about giving people an incentive to spread your product -- "people will recommend something if adoption improves their lives" -- but he doesn't mention the ways in which Mozilla has already taken that to heart. How do you think Firefox became popular in the first place?

Blaise Alleyne is an expert at the Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Blaise Alleyne and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.

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