3 Articles That Inspire New Media Thinking

Posted on August 20, 2009
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Here are three pieces of content (some articles, some Blog postings) that add fresh, unique and thought-provoking perspectives to business. If you’re having a bit of a grey and rainy Saturday, these should add some intellectual sunshine to your weekend…

Content Is A Service Business (July 13th, 2009) – Courtesy of the O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Blog comes this great Blog posting by Andrew Savikas. “Whether they realize it or not, media companies are in the service business, not the content business. Look at iTunes: if people paid for content, then it would follow that better content would cost more money. But every song costs the same. Why would people pay the same price for goods of (often vastly) different quality? Because they’re not paying for the goods they’re paying Apple for the service of providing a selection of convenient options easy to pay for and easy to download.” Be sure to read Savikas’ full rant and the subsequent comments. It’s an amazing conversation about publishing, content and new business models.
The Generation M Manifesto (July 8th, 2009) – Courtesy of Harvard Business Publishing Blog comes this new perspective from Umair Haque. “What do the ‘M’s in Generation M stand for? The first is for a movement. It’s a little bit about age — but mostly about a growing number of people who are acting very differently. They are doing meaningful stuff that matters the most. Those are the second, third, and fourth ‘M’s. Gen M is about passion, responsibility, authenticity, and challenging yesterday’s way of everything. Everywhere I look, I see an explosion of Gen M businesses, NGOs, open-source communities, local initiatives, government. Who’s Gen M? Obama, kind of. Larry and Sergey. The Threadless, Etsy, and Flickr guys. Ev, Biz and the Twitter crew. Tehran 2.0. The folks at Kiva, Talking Points Memo, and FindtheFarmer. Shigeru Miyamoto, Steve Jobs, Muhammad Yunus, and Jeff Sachs are like the grandpas of Gen M. There are tons where these innovators came from. Gen M isn’t just kind of awesome — it’s vitally necessary. If you think the ‘M’s sound idealistic, think again.” Once again, the comments are also incredible, so much so that Haque has a follow-up Blog post entitled, Your Thoughts About Generation M, which is also well-worth reading.
Where Attention Flows, Money Will Follow (September 28th, 2008) – Courtesy of The Technium comes this fascinating Blog post by Kevin Kelly that only showed up on my radar this past week. “Almost anything else except attention can be manufactured as a commodity. Luxury goods are only luxuries temporarily. They quickly are counterfeited and commodified. Premium brands are only premium because they garner a surplus of attention. Maintain an incoming flow of attention and money will follow. That is really all you need to know. Thankfully there are a zillion ways to garner and maintain attention. You can be consistently amazing. Brilliantly novel. Irrationally helpful. Attractively weird. Remarkably reliable. Outstandingly truthful. Etc. But converting attention to money – isn’t that what shameless self-promoters do? And celebrities? Yes. But it is also what Google does, and Genentech and crusty manufacturing companies like 3M. They are providing useful products and services. But so are their competitors. So are we all.” This piece is especially rich and profound in terms of how business can flow better by understanding the online channels. Like the other two Blog postings, the comments on this posting are particularly amazing as well.