My former colleague, the always-ahead-of-his-time Nick Denton, has some interesting things to say about what he calls "nano-publishing" and the direction of individualised, post-blog web content, driven by economies of scale and niche audiences.
It also has fundamental implications for the concept of charging, and whether or not purchasing content form these sorts of sites - assuming an efficiently functioning micropayment system - might be one of the ways ahead for generating revenue in the online world.
One of Nick's latest projects is Gawker , which is fast becoming the must-read daily chronicle of cultural life in my previous hometown....The Guardian likes it, and draws some interesting conclusions on the future of blogging and thin media - mainstream and otherwise.
Had a lecture today with my brilliant head of department Prof James Curran and he made me think about an interesting point when we were talking about Lawrence Lessig and the concept of privacy and personal space on the net.
What often gets overlooked in the big brother debate is that while information 'wants to be free', you can't underestimate the degree to which people will voluntarily surrender their personal details in order to use specific sites. Content that folks would run a mile from paying for, they'll happily give up all manner of data which could be just as valuable.
But one of the inevitable by-products as the dot.com boom became unsustainable was that as users became more sophisticated, they became aware of ways to ignore constant spam and pop-up ads; while at the same time the idea of data capture became progressively less valuable - what's the point of collecting detailed information on a reader if you're only using it to try to sell them something, rather than enhancing their online experience?
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It also has fundamental implications for the concept of charging, and whether or not purchasing content form these sorts of sites - assuming an efficiently functioning micropayment system - might be one of the ways ahead for generating revenue in the online world.
One of Nick's latest projects is Gawker , which is fast becoming the must-read daily chronicle of cultural life in my previous hometown....The Guardian likes it, and draws some interesting conclusions on the future of blogging and thin media - mainstream and otherwise.
Had a lecture today with my brilliant head of department Prof James Curran and he made me think about an interesting point when we were talking about Lawrence Lessig and the concept of privacy and personal space on the net.
What often gets overlooked in the big brother debate is that while information 'wants to be free', you can't underestimate the degree to which people will voluntarily surrender their personal details in order to use specific sites. Content that folks would run a mile from paying for, they'll happily give up all manner of data which could be just as valuable.
But one of the inevitable by-products as the dot.com boom became unsustainable was that as users became more sophisticated, they became aware of ways to ignore constant spam and pop-up ads; while at the same time the idea of data capture became progressively less valuable - what's the point of collecting detailed information on a reader if you're only using it to try to sell them something, rather than enhancing their online experience?
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posted by Steve at 9:17 PM
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