(2006-08-14) Boyd New Content Vs Sellout

Stowe Boyd says that New Media players shouldn't Sell Out to Big Media. I certainly understand his reasoning: wind up embedded in a wounded, failing giant like AOL/Time Warner. I tried making a similar point at a Managing Growth breakfast forum a few months back (Wired Mag, Orlando Fl, Gothamist, Murray Low, etc.), and I didn't feel like anyone got the point...

But I don't think we have new Business Models For Information yet, other than Side Line publishing for fun and self-promotion....

Phil Jones linked in the comments to John Hagel's post on the implications of the Long Tail for Big Media industry structure. Chris Anderson appears to believe that in a long tail world brand fractures and fragments as customers themselves, or at least the tastemakers and celebrities among us, develop reputations as trusted advisors to help others navigate through the long tail. I hold that, in a long tail world, Customer Relationship businesses have an opportunity to create very powerful and scalable brands based on the proposition that they know individual audience members or customers better than anyone else and can be trusted to use that knowledge to become ever more helpful to the audience member or customer. I am also a bit more skeptical than Chris appears to be about Advertising as a sustainable business model for many media companies over the longer term.

• Dave Winer says he made $2.3M last year from blogging. I Commented in a Robert Scoble thread to ask how he does that, not even having Advertising.

  • ah, he's counting the sale of WeblogsCom. Which is consistent with his ongoing statement that the money in blogging isn't from Advertising, but from using Story Telling to leverage Brand You.

    • so how much did Scripting News make the previous 5 years? (Not that $2.3M/5 is a bad take.)

  • Dave also re-links to a piece from a few weeks ago about his thinking on the future of WebAd-s. If it's perfectly targeted, it isn't Advertising, it's information.

• Scoble says you don't need huge numbers to make Advertising work. You probably need to be a good direct salesman yourself, then.