After reading the piece by Steve Rosenbaum, I'm just stoked, and I had some ideas I'd like to share and get some feedback. Some of it has to do with my current project and I have a followup email with a question.
Read the full text here: 5 Trends That Will Change Media in '09 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-rosenbaum/5-trends-that-will- change_b_155119.html --- 1. The Growth of the Curation Economy What makes the Curation Economy so powerful, and so disruptive, is that the core resource required to building a high-quality curated experience is not capital, but knowledge. --- I've been the curator of a frisbee dog community for a while now, and now I'm branching out into the wider dog sport world. There are more people like me, and there will be many more communities like k9athlete.com going up in the near future I know of several right now in dog sports. Community is the new capitalism. So with these communities springing up needing content professionally assembled the people on this list fit in. The people on this list can generate and assemble that content. Give the producers a serious stake in the sales and distribution of the content - 40%, give 40% to the talent, give 20% to whatever house is publishing it. That's 2 bucks a unit. 30 vids do 500 views, that's $30K for 30 days of work and a thousand bucks for the disc dogger that you shot and cut. The people leading into the Curation Economy need you as talent, tech, crew and editor. --- 2. The Emergence of targeted CPA / CPC as Contextual Content Revenues They're arriving with intent, finding what they want, and swiping a credit card. This means there IS revenue - just not for big broad unfocused ads. --- This is very interesting, and again a no-brainer for a community. Topical ads specially tailored to the community to pay the bills and sales of content to go to the team. Well chosen ads by people within the community should do really well. I'm no fan of advertising, but it's all some people are willing to do. That's great, but k9athlete.com is looking to partner with the passionate small business people and medium sized businesses that share our passion for dogs. --- 3. The Merging of eCommerce and Content This idea of intent driving commerce, rather than advertising creating a 'demand' for a particular brand or product, is turning Madision Avenue on its head. --- It's here. Downloadable digital video is here. It's a done deal. Upload the file, tell it how long to remain active after purchase, name it, add a pic, some meta... hit save. It's a shopping cart, a little clunky, but it's nice enough. Somebody needs to knock off iTunes open source style and open this stuff up for real. Pay to play, that's going to be the antidote to digital TV (Which, I think we ought to use to try to put a stake in the heart of that dangerous beast, but that's another rant...) F2009. That'd be sweet! I'm not a fan of subscriptions, they are a big investment. We, as a people are going to need some impulse shopping, and what could be better than grabbing a few minutes of your passion. We might do the subscription thing, but not sure... The social network on our site will have moderated groups by the instructors who've sold instruction where they can further groom their students with personal interaction. All of the activity of that group hits the activity stream for the whole site, creating a buzz and hype on whatever piece of instruction is hot at the moment. I think it could be magic. --- 4. Digital Goods - people begin to pay for content Sure, folks look at the free apps first - but it becomes clear quickly that a few dollars can often get you a much better product. --- I believe this to be true and am banking on it. The spirit of community is important, we want to help people come together and spend their money and time with eachother instead of throwing their money away to petsmart, the cable company and NBC. Being surrounded by people who share your passion who are talking about this and that, and this and that is interesting to you, and this and that are for sale, right here. The people who made this and that get paid, the people you like who were featured in this and that get paid, and the people who watched it get happy. Oh, did I mention immediate gratification at a fair price? Never... underestimate the power of immediate gratification at a fair price. --- 5. Cottage Media Takes Off 2009 will be a year of gut wrenching, dramatic, roller-coast change. Big things will get smaller, or die. Little things will survive and start to grow. Consumers will become creators. Lurkers will become participants. The volume of voices will expand exponentially - and the need for clarity and trusted filters will go from being useful to being essential --- I hope so. It would be good for lots of people. And for more reasons than just some suits falling into a golden blog and building a media empire, but for the ability of real people doing real cool things being able to share them with people directly and profit from them. I think the coolest thing about cottage media, as Rosenbaum called it is that it will allow lots of people to do what they love to do and profit from doing it well. peace, Ron Watson http://k9disc.blip.tv http://k9disc.com http://k9athlete.com http://pawsitivevybe.com [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
