Yesterday, two stories from Aol’s DailyFinance appeared in the Sunday print edition of the Daily Telegram, a newspaper in southern Michigan. These stories appeared on a business page that would otherwise have been produced almost entirely with stories from the Associated Press. The Daily Telegram got permission to publish these Aol stories not through a big corporate content deal, but directly through a peer-to-peer relationship — The Daily Telegram simply subscribed to DailyFinance’s newswire in Publish2’s News Exchange.

Now I’m going to tell you why what you see on this page of the Daily Telegram could play a decisive role in the race between Aol, Demand Media, and Yahoo to win the prize of big brand advertising on the web, and why it is also pivotal to the future of news.

It’s about a big idea that I introduced at TechCrunch Disrupt: The Content Graph — an analogue to the Social Graph, where high quality content brands create a large scale distribution network that could rival search and social media as a distributor of content.

In the Social Graph, you’re defined by your friends. In the Content Graph, a content brand is defined by its distribution relationships with other content brands.

The Content Graph is about leveraging the brand equity and consumer trust that is the greatest asset of every traditional media company. It’s about building a content brand’s reputation through distribution.

The news industry’s business model broke after it lost control over the distribution of news, with news brands suffering one wave of disintermediation after another.

The Content Graph puts news brands back in the game, but not as a return to monolithic monopolies, rather through the power of networks — a network of content brands. (This network includes independent journalists who cultivate their own personal brands.)

Ultimately, the Content Graph could be a map for brand advertising on the web, that enables advertisers to tap into a network of high quality content brands, at scale.

Sound interesting? Let’s dig deeper.
Continue reading…

Tweet This Post  Share on Facebook

This week, at TechCrunch Disrupt, we’re announcing the launch of Publish2 News Exchange, a platform aimed at disrupting the Associated Press monopoly over content distribution to newspapers. With Publish2 News Exchange, newspapers can replace the AP’s obsolete cooperative with direct content sharing and replace the AP’s commodity content with both free, high-quality content from the Web and content from any paid source.

With Publish2 News Exchange, we’ve created what the AP should have become, but can’t because of a classic Innovator’s Dilemma. The New AP is an open, efficient, scalable news distribution platform. We’re enabling newspapers to benefit for the first time from the disruptive power of the Web, and from the efficiency of content production on the Web.

Read more about the New AP at the Publish2 Blog now.

Tweet This Post  Share on Facebook

Newspaper online advertising has not benefited greatly from the recent upswing in online ad spending, according to the New York Times and most of the recent newspaper company quarterly results. This is no surprise because most newspaper websites sell SPACE for commodity advertising — display ads and classifieds — and thus are hard pressed to compete with ad networks that specialize in selling commodity ad space by the megaton (or giving it away for free, in the case of Craigslist).

Back when newspapers where the only game in town for ad space, they could charge whatever they wanted. Now the web has near infinite ad space, and newspapers find themselves playing the wrong game. They’ve got ad sales staff that specialize in commodity order fulfillment and not premium advertising solutions.

So what distinguishes a premium ad solution from commodity ad space? It’s a premium solution if not every site can deliver the value. Any site can slap a display ad on a page — that’s what makes it a commodity. High-end brand publishers like newspapers  really have only one way to distinguish themselves from every other web publisher on the planet — their ability to create high quality content that attracts a targeted, high quality audience.

Continue reading…

Tweet This Post  Share on Facebook

In response to the launch of Google’s Fast Flip, I observed that Google is correctly focused on creating a new user interface for news, when most media companies are not. A lot of people responded that Fast Flip is not an innovative or effective UI for news — which may be true, but that misses the point entirely.

It doesn’t matter so much whether Google succeeds or fails with this particular experiment. What matters is that they are trying to solve the right problem.

The challenge for media companies is not to figure out what to do with their content — content in and of itself doesn’t matter. It never has.

It’s all about the package.

Newspaper articles don’t matter without a newspaper. Magazine articles don’t matter without a magazine. TV shows don’t matter without a broadcast or cable channel.

Continue reading…

Tweet This Post  Share on Facebook

Google knows a lot about the future of news — more than many publishers. It’s evident in Google’s new product, Fast Flip, which allows news consumers to “flip” through news stories. What’s striking about Fast Flip is that Google is innovating precisely where publishers used to lead innovation.

Fast Flip is a new package for news.

The publishing business has always been about packaging content. Newspapers. Magazines. Newsletters

In digital media, on the web, the news package is now a function of software — which is why Google is innovating precisely where publishers are not.

Continue reading…

Tweet This Post  Share on Facebook

Why Facebook Wants FriendFeed
GigaOm | August 10, 2009
Scott Karp says: Om Malik calls it “the problem of plenty.” Facebook is trying to solve it by acquiring FriendFeed. Will news orgs compete?

Facebook Takes FriendFeed To Take On Twitter
TechCrunch | August 10, 2009
Scott Karp says: M&A, as always, is driven by startups building what incumbents should have but couldn’t.

karaswisher: Now That There’s FaceFeed, Does That Make Twoogle More Inevitable?: http://bit.ly/fET9I
Twitter | August 10, 2009
Scott Karp says: Winner – Best FF/Facbook Post Title

mathewi: Real-time reaction to FB/ @Friendfeed deal at http://friendfeed.com/bret [and at @scobleizer's page: @digiphile
Twitter | August 10, 2009
Scott Karp says: Meta FriendFeed acquisition.

mediatwit: Quick thought: What if Facebook is just buying FriendFeed to kill a potential competitor? Wonder if they’ll integrate it, kill FF site.
Twitter | August 10, 2009
Scott Karp says: Good question.

dangillmor: Facebook buys FriendFeed, combining two of the most popular social networking sites i rarely use
Twitter | August 10, 2009

BenLaMothe: Crap, crap, crap. My favourite URL shrinker, tr.im, is dead
Twitter | August 10, 2009
Scott Karp says: In a nutshell.

kleinmatic: tr.im’s collapse will have a more obvious and lasting effect than Facebook/Friendfeed.
Twitter | August 10, 2009

The Briefing: Who’s going to save your URL shortener from extinction?
Publishing 2.0 | August 10, 2009
Everything you need to know about the death of tr.im and the issue with URL shorteners but were afraid to ask. First draft of new Publishing 2.0 blog feature (this post is another first draft).

Bloglines On Life Support. This Story Needs An Ending
TechCrunch | August 10, 2009
Scott Karp says: Is RSS dead (re: Bloglines)? I don’t think it is, but who can resist “dead” memes?

Recession: Why Ad Industry Won’t Recover in Second Half
AdAge | August 10, 2009
Scott Karp says: Online and PR are “pockets” of strength in an otherwise bleak advertising forecast

USAA Bank Will Let Customers Deposit Checks by iPhone
New York Times | August 10, 2009
Scott Karp says: iPhone helping to kill another scourge of the paper-based world — physical check deposits.

ianbetteridge: The last company to try and control 3rd party software as Apple does on the iPhone was IBM with its mainframes. And we know how that ended.
Twitter | August 10, 2009
Scott Karp says: But the  iPhone is just a wee bit cooler than the IBM mainframe. And it’s consumer hardware.

carr2n: wake up call. @BradStone writes that you probably didn’t have your coffee before you checked this tweet: http://bit.ly/e2qGt
Twitter | August 10, 2009
Scott Karp says: For more and more people, the web has replaced newspapers as the first media they consume in the morning.

(Curated with ease using Publish2, thanks especially to Social Journalism features.)

Tweet This Post  Share on Facebook

Journalists are news companies’ most valuable assets.

That’s what Mike Arrington asserts, and I think he’s right (disregard the “failing old media” rhetoric):

And earlier today I got a glimpse at what AOL is up to – they are hiring all the journalists being fired and laid off by the newspapers and magazines. And they now have a news room 1,500 journalists and editors strong. Amazingly, failing old media is throwing away their most valuable assets. And AOL is eagerly picking those assets up for a song. Before anyone knows it, AOL may be the most powerful news outlet in the world.

Given that NYT has gone to great lengths to avoid newsroom layoffs, I suspect they know full well how valuable their journalists are.

Continue reading…

Tweet This Post  Share on Facebook

The New York Times technology blog, Bits, which features original online reporting by all of the NYT technology journalists, has formally launched a new feature called “What We’re Reading.” This feature (powered by Publish2) illustrates a number of important best practices for how journalists and news orgs can create significant value for readers by curating the web. I’ve got six of them for you.

But first, here’s what the feature looks like, in the blog’s right sidebar, under the ad at the top (click for larger image):

And here are the six best practices:
Continue reading…

Tweet This Post  Share on Facebook