MiniMediaGuy

The premise of home-grown media is that the public wants content outside the mass taste. That premise was affirmed in an October 2004 article by Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson. Entitled The Long Tail, it suggests that web-based distribution systems like Amazon.com are selling lesser-known works that retail outlets, with limited shelf space, haven’t previously been able to carry or promote them.

Anderson explains how Amazon’s recommendation engine — people who like this book also liked whatever — made Touching the Void a new mountain-survival hit, by linking it to the coattails of the more heavily promoted Into Thin Air.

He dwells on the economics of music distribution — Wal-Mart can only sell 1 percent of CDs, because it carries only those with a certain sales threshold. Even online distribution is overpriced at 99 cents a cut, he says, because the real cost of digital delivery, including current profit levels to the creative folks, is about 79 cents. Online jukebox Rhapsody sold three times as many tunes at 49 cents than it did at 99 cents (but lost money on each sale because it paid 73 cents per cut by his figures!).

Anderson uses that experiment to suggest that publishers of all stripes dramatically cut prices on their backlist — titles they own but no longer promote — and use the web to find the price point where the niche content finds its audience.

Tomorrow, I’ll take the niche content idea to the next level, and ask whether we can create a peer-to-peer entertainment system. People once entertained each other. They didn’t outsource amusement. Anderson touches on this concept, citing the example of MP3.com, an online distribution label that tried to let bands bypass the record labels and got a reputation for peddling “an undifferentiated mass of mostly bad music.” Goodnoise made a similar effort.

But I want to leave you with a number from the Pew Internet survey which found that 10 million Americans “earn at least some money from their performances, songs, paintings. videos, sculptures, photos or creative writing.” To me that suggests a viable market of some sort. Stay tuned.

Tom Abate
January 5, 2005

The tsunami that killed thousands in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and neighboring nations has shown the power of do-it-yourself media. Within hours of the disaster sites had sprung up to post eyewitnesses reports, upload pictures of the missing, or provide links to donate money or help.

All of this is commendable but not surprising given the magnitude of the disaster. Yet each day thousands of minor tragedies go unnoticed. Children die of dysentery because their water is contaminated. I recently came across an initiative that focuses on these overlooked tragedies by linking donors in the developed world with tiny unmet needs. It’s called Giving Global. I tripped over it one day while searching for something else and thought, “What a great idea!”

The non-profit group was founded in June 2002 by Pamela Hawley. Her bio says she did volunteer work in India around microfinance — making tiny loans to get individuals or families on their feet. In 1996, she co-founded VolunteerMatch, a non-profit that matches volunteers in the U.S. with groups in need. Now she seems to be taking that same concept global.

I wasn’t able to find much written about the group, which is not surprising given that it’s new, so I don’t mean to suggest they’re the best or the only effect in this realm. In fact, when I mistakenly transposed the words in the group’s title to “GlobalGiving,” I found a website under construction by the Salvation Army.

The point is that we shouldn’t wait for big events to take action. We need to do little things on a regular basis. Take water purification. The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose recently honored a scientist who invented a way to kill bacteria and viruses using ultraviolet light. The inventor, Ashok Gadgil of Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, estimates it would cost $1.50 a year to provide clean drinking water to a single person. That’s less than I will spend on coffee today.

Ultimatey, web-based matching systems will make it possible for me to forgo the occasional cup of coffee and donate a buck-fifty to provide someone with a year’s worth of drinking water. Of course I’ll hope most of that money makes it thru the donation pipeline, because there have been scandals. But web-based links and small projects may be less prone to problem. We’ll see.

I’m just pleased that global giving via the web will continue after the current wave of interest recedes.

Tom Abate
January 4, 2005

Businesses thrive in central locations. Theater districts attract restaurants and bars. Malls and downtowns are predicated on concentration. Customers like to shop in neighborhoods. How do we create commercial neighborhoods on the Web?

In the mid 1990s, a 17-year-old Oregonian named Sage Weil created the WebRing. It’s a technology that allows a group of kindred sites to insert a link on their pages that allows visitors to go from page to page without traveling back to a central site. I learned about rings when my friend George Butko, a 3-D photography buff, directed me to one such ring to explain the workings of a stereo camera that I had inherited from my dad.

Investigating what seemed like a brilliant idea, I came across a December 2001 article in Salon that explained why webrings have not become as wildly successful as the current favorite way of finding content on the web, the search engine. The gist of the article is that Weil sold the technology to a small Oregon firm called Starseed, which was acquired by GeoCities, which was in turn acquired by Yahoo. Yahoo found the webring’s decentralized model incompatible with its own need to drive trafffic — and thus advertising — back to its own site. After a rebellion by the old webring community, Yahoo sold the technology back to Tim Killeen, an engineer involved during the Starseed era.

James Huggins, unofficial historian of the WebRing saga, taught me more. A posting on the Travel Notes e-zine pointed to sites where web masters can acquire different webring technologies. I couldn’t find a whole lot written about webrings recently. I guess they’re not “hot.”

Yet many thousands of rings exist to connect web pages catering to all sorts of specialized interest groups. I wonder whether new ways to distribute advertising can give webrings greater commercial clout. This may already be occurring. I’ll snoop around some more and report back at a later date.

Tom Abate
January 3, 2005

Thank you for visiting my blog. Let me tell you why I started it.

The Internet is changing how we work, communicate, organize, and relax. The essence of this transformation is the ability to find like-minded people and join them in some common task. By enabling people to form new linkages, the Internet has ignited a vast experiment in social re-engineering. I want to join this experiment.

I step forward with gratitude and humility. Many people have come before me to create the tools I am using now. Many others have show by example how to use these tools to stir things up. I will try to build on their efforts.

Because time and attention are precious, I will keep my postings brief and focus on areas where I might add something useful. I’ve spent most of my professional life working in and around media, and am eager to explore the new business models arising around Net-based publishing.

To avoid monotony, I’ll point out noteworthy developments in science, technology and business. Sustainability and frugality will also be recurring themes.

In each posting I’ll try to point to some useful resource. Today I direct your attention to a white paper entitled We Media. It focuses on what the authors call “participatory journalism,” and brings together a wealth of useful and inspirational material. It is well worth a look.

Meanwhile let me keep my promise of brevity by ending here. We can resume the conversation later.

Tom Abate
January 2, 2005