Tech / Media / Strategy / Culture
I love the Common Craft series. This one seems like the longest of all of them, which is understandable, given the complexity of a huge topic like “social media.” It’s a good intro, as usual.
Get more Common Craft videos at their web site. You can even buy them for use at the office.
I remain amazed at how misunderstood the notion of “podcasting” is. It’s been nearly 4 years since it arrived on the scene yet folks in public media remain baffled — along with the general public.
Perhaps Leo Laporte was right a couple years ago when he suggested that the “pod” in podcasting be eliminated and replaced with “net” to make “netcasting” the word. Of course, that might have confused things with various forms of streaming.
In any case, here’s yet another Common Craft video you can share with your public media clients to explain podcasting a bit. You can even contact Common Craft to get the video branded with your own company name.
I would also recommend Apple’s introduction to podcasting, which is iTunes-specific, but iTunes is a really great choice for most listeners due to the integration of their podcasting directory / subscription system.
For those of you a little confused by Twitter, everyone’s pals at Common Craft put together this intro video, another in a great series of introductory pieces on popular Internet / Web 2.0 technologies.
I was chatting with the boss this week when I made a shocking suggestion.
I told him that one or perhaps all of the audio (radio) programs we create today — and for which we charge hefty fees to “member” stations — be simply given away to any station that wanted it.
Immediately he shot back: “But someone has to pay for that content!”
I love these situations. I get to try out newfangled business or economics insights to suggest something that’s anathema to the old guard (people and/or ideas). Plus, it’s a little logical fallacy that’s fun to pick apart:
Indeed, someone must pay for the people and equipment (mostly people) required to produce award-winning content, regardless of medium or delivery system. The future isn’t all user-generated content (UGC).
The notion of free has come up a lot for me in the last year, as I’ve ruminated on the idea that PBS and NPR should give away all their content to incumbent pubcasting stations for free. (But someone has to pay for that content!) I’ll explore more of that idea in postings to come.
For now, I’d like to share some FREE readings that have been published within the last week concerning this notion of giving it away, seemingly willy-nilly. The notion of “free” has actually been a viable business option for decades, but in the digital media space the idea is gaining widespread traction very quickly.
Because in the digital media world, where every user is one link away from any other user and everything can be digitally copied to perfection with little or no impediments, maintaining control is becoming impossible. Plus, as media content volume rises toward infinity (or certainly more than any one person can possibly consume), the value of content (in broad terms) falls toward zero.
So, here are my picks for the late February 2008 “free reader” if you want to get schooled in how and why giving it away makes sense in lots of situations:
Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business
Chris Anderson / Wired / 25 Feb 2008
Anderson was the author of the article and follow-on book called The Long Tail that’s been cited as much as any Web 2.0 meme can possibly be cited. It’s accepted as a given truth (a little too easily, I might add) at this point. Now he’s been exploring the notion of free as a part of viable business models and this is the opening article in what’s sure to be both a series of thought pieces and, eventually a book. This is basically the seminal article of “free” at this point. There’s even a little intro video included with the article, featuring Anderson himself.
Chris Anderson Takes Up The Free Banner
Mike Masnick / Techdirt / 25 Feb 2008That ‘Free’ Stuff Is Catching On…
Mike Masnick / Techdirt /26 Feb 2008
Masnick is a wizard at both succintcly explaining tech-focused business developments and eviscerating ideas that make no sense. In these two cases, he points out the Anderson article, adds some other links, and in the first article points out the mistake in Anderson’s logic — the notion that the “free” model turns economic principles on their heads. He rightly points out that, no, in fact no laws of economics are broken. Well worth your two clicks so you don’t get sucked into believing FREE is bigger than it is.
Free is the Future
Lee LeFever / Common Craft / 26 Feb 2008
Step aside from the free hyperbole for a moment and read this piece. In this case, the guy that owns and operates the Common Craft custom video development service explains all the ways in which his business — a money-making venture, to be sure — has benefited by using free technologies and services from other businesses. Indeed, his two-person shop is wildly successful today precisely due to the impacts those free services had on their ability to get the word out and share their work. It’s a great piece because Lefever takes you step by step through the ways in which “free” made their profitable business possible.
Free Is A Great Way To Make Money
Fred Wilson / A VC / 25 Feb 2008
This post is mostly a link over to the Anderson article — with one exception. Wilson points to one of his own posts from July 2005 (!) that discusses the notion of free in business models.
Better Than Free
Kevin Kelly / The Technium / 31 Jan 2008
- Immediacy
- Personalization
- Interpretation
- Authenticity
- Accessibility
- Embodiment
- Patronage
- Findability
Sick of discovering how you have to give it all away? Wondering how you’ll actually make money? Well here’s the antidote to the free movement — here’s what can’t be given away, what really carries lasting value. This article probably had more buzz at the IMA conference than perhaps any other because it lays down a conceptual map for the services that public media can provide that are fundamentally undisruptable (yes, I just made that word up).
Gravity Medium 