Last week I was asked by a media friend in Israel if I would contribute to a paper about where media will be in five years.

My answer was that five years is a long way off, and way too distant a horizon to be thinking about media. (But it’s still a hellova a measuring stick to use when trying to figure out Soviet farm production goals.)  And, anyway, when thinking about where things are going, rather than trying to plot specific points along the digital highway, I tend to limit myself to just trying to figure out the right direction, to try to see what’s going on and hazard a guess as to where the media world might be heading.  And to that end, I have a compass, which as opposed to the normal one needle with four points, has only three points:  1. First-person Communication; 2. TheCurve; 3. Open-Source Media. Let’s look at them one at a time.

1.  THE ERA OF FIRST-PERSON COMMUNICATION:
We’re living in it.  And have been for about two years.  It’s a world where everyone can publish and everyone can distribute. And this, of course, is what is crushing what used to be called traditional media.

In the Era of First-Person communication, celebrities, athletes, politicians and anyone else who can make themselves part of the news now can communicate directly to their audiences, without having to go through the traditional media. They can do it through blogs, if they have the time, and the writing or video ability; they can do it through micro-blogging applications like Twitter and Facebook; and they can do it through real-time social networking applications, like Foursquare.

2.  TheCurve:
As I’ve written about throughout this blog Technology moves things to the extremes — and that’s going on right now in the media/content world at a continually accelerating pace. This means content consumers will be continue to seek the most high-end content, stop randomly grazing and be more selective about their consumption of medium quality content (the stuff created for the lowest common denominator), while far more of their time will be spent consuming the lower-end First-Person Communication directly from the news makers. (Like Shaq’s tweets.)

3.  THE OPEN-SOURCE WORLD = OPEN-SOURCE CONTENT = VOYEUR MEDIA

The open source paradigm’s migration from the tech world to the content world has had enormous effects, especially in journalism and the world of short-form video.

Again, because everybody can now publish and distribute their own content, and because the tools for gathering and producing content are now so inexpensive and readily available — our smart phones, our iPhone’s, digital cameras that shoot video with stills, etc. — we now live in a news world of infinite eyeballs.  And as we’ve seen with the Tiger Woods and Ben Roethlisberger stories, this has made millions of us participants in voyeur journalism, which naturally flows directly into celebrity and gossip journalism.

The immediate battleground for this trend in media is the sports world — and not just because of Tiger. It’s because the sports world has been a remarkably closed ecosystem, controlled by the leagues and rights holders, that’s inhabited by players and a sports media that, for the most part, all have their interests aligned with each other. Ah, but now onto the field has come a group made up of Everybody Else (as in “Here Comes Everybody,” to use Clay Shirky’s book title).  And the interests of Everybody Else are not aligned with the rights holders and players, the way traditional media’s interest are.  Now Everybody Else is acting solely in their own self-interest, which for the most part is their interest in getting noticed and gaining status. The result is that now Everybody Else is looking to capture video and still images to blog and micro blog about their favorite and least favorite athletes. And the result of that has been the tabloid-ization of sports coverage, led by TMZ and Deadspin.

TMZ’s, Deadspin’s and other non-rights holding independent media are unaligned with the rights holders and players — because they don’t care about the biggest thing that’s kept the traditional media in sports, and in politics, in check: Access.  They don’t want to sit in the press box. They want to enjoy what’s happening between the lines, and they want to write about what’s happening outside the lines: They want to be in the bars, restaurants and police stations.  And they want to be monitoring the athlete’s own First-Person Communication, and creating their own content from there. And that’s what makes them so interesting.

Because these outlets don’t care about access, the leagues, athletes and other movers and shakers of the sports world have no control over them.  They can’t kick them out of the press box, because they’re not in the press box. They can’t stop talking to them, because they’ve never talked to them.

(“The Daily Show” enjoys the same enormous advantage over the network and cable news divisions — not because of the web but because of… their green-screen. Their green-screen is The Daily Show’s middle finger to the politicians of the world. It’s what says, “We don’t need no stinkin’ press credentials that you could take away from us if you got angry with anything we say, which would make us toe the line. We don’t need to  get your permission for an interview, or for a camera location… so screw off. You’ve got nothing you can take away from us to force us to play your game by your rules.”)

And that’s the same thing that makes Deadspin so popular.

Whether or not the traditional news outlets want to go down the tabloid path is immaterial, because they have no choice, and they’re already well on their way. But how far down the path will they go?  It’s quite a conundrum for them: If they don’t move in this direction they will lose more and more of their audience to those media outlets catering to user generated gotcha content. But if they do follow this path it will put them in conflict with the leagues and rights holders with whom they are partners.

This is going to get really interesting.

And, once again, this is where First-Person Communication comes back into play, as moving forward, the unwilling subjects of everybody’s eyes and video cameras will have no choice but to engage their audiences in direct communication through their own blogs and micro-blogs, and like political candidates with their war room, they’ll have to constantly be prepared to explain (and often apologize for) their behavior.

(On the other hand, as we all begin to live our lives more publicly, the standards for behavior will no doubt change — “defining deviancy down,” in the words of Patrick Moynihan, who probably didn’t realize that he was describing the 21st century media world — and so perhaps there will be less apologizing than we might expect.)

So, my compass continues to point to an expanding and ultimately infinite number of sources for content, with consumers continuing to value most those media outlets that don’t just bring them content — most of which they can get a thousand other places — but bring them the tools and applications that work best for the consumers of content in ways that make it easy for them to find and filter what they want, aggregated content the way they want, personalize it the way they want, and share it the way they want.  (As I’ve written before on TheCurve: http://tinyurl.com/Open-Source-Journalism

But wait!  What about the iPad?

What about Steve Jobs controlling content providers access to consumers by not letting anyone put an app. on the iPad?

And what about Comcast choking off the pipes?

And what about Rupert’s walled gardens?

What about the forces of control?

Well, that’s why my compass right now says media is quickly moving into the intersection of greed and anarchy — and that’s where a really big and scary battle is about to be fought.  And in that battle, I’m betting on anarchy to, if not win, then continue to do some real damage.

Why?  Two reasons: (1) Because I think an infinite number of little guys who can network with each other can continue to make the big guys bleed — they’re a guerilla army, and the topography of the digital battlefield favors them (you’ve seen The Matrix, right?) — and (2) Because the infinite number of little guys have one really big guy on their side (at least for now) and that’s Google. Google likes and understands the open-source media model, and Google likes and understands that it’s no longer really about the content — except in very rare events — and that it’s about the tools and applications.  (Oh, ESPN’s content and digital guys realize this too, which is why, unless someone there really screws up, ESPN will remain ESPN.)

Anyway… that’s where my five year compass points.  At least for the next two to three years.

In this week’s New Yorker, James Surowiecki on his Financial Page has an article, “Soft In The Middle” that is entirely about theWarshawCurve!!!

Okay, okay, it’s not actually about TheCurve — but Surowiecki’s article describes exactly the same phenomenon — about how, when it comes to consumer products:

While the high and low ends are thriving, the middle of the market is in trouble.

Now, while I originally started writing about TheCurve focusing on evolution of the consumption of television content (see graphics below), I later began posting about other areas that adhere to TheCurve, along with Adam Park’s observations about TheCurve and consumer electronics. And although Surowiecki never graphically drawers TheCurve, in this week’s New Yorker he does write about how the consumption of consumer electronics has shifted from “the amorphous blob of consumers who make up the middle of the market to the high and low ends.”

For Apple, which has enjoyed enormous success in recent years, “build it and they will pay” is business as usual. But it’s not a universal business truth. On the contrary, companies like Ikea, H&M, and the makers of the Flip video camera are flourishing not by selling products or services that are “far better” than anyone else’s but by selling things that aren’t bad and cost a lot less. . . unlike Apple, the companies aren’t trying to build the best mousetrap out there. Instead, they’re engaged in what Wired recently christened the “good-enough revolution.” For them, the key to success isn’t excellence. It’s well-priced adequacy.

These two strategies may look completely different, but they have one crucial thing in common: they don’t target the amorphous blob of consumers who make up the middle of the market. Paradoxically, ignoring these people has turned out to be a great way of getting lots of customers, because, in many businesses, high-and low-end producers are taking more and more of the market. In fashion, both H. & M. and Hermès have prospered during the recession. In the auto industry, luxury-car sales, though initially hurt by the downturn, are reemerging as one of the most profitable segments of the market, even as small cars like the Ford Focus are luring consumers into showrooms. And, in the computer business, the Taiwanese company Acer has become a dominant player by making cheap, reasonably good laptops—the reverse of Apple’s premium-price approach.

While the high and low ends are thriving, the middle of the market is in trouble.

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A SIMPLE PHRASE

I’ve come to the conclusion that all of this can be summed up in a single sentence:

Technology moves things to the extremes.

That’s what we’ve come to see everywhere — not just in content and consumer products, but also in politics, sports and even interpersonal relations. (Something I’ll write about in a bit.)

And that in a nutshell is the lesson of TheCurve:

Technology moves things to the extremes.  The middle drops out and both ends of the curve move up:

Indeed, that’s what happens whenever disruptive influences enter an ecosystem.

As posted back in May of 2008, it turns out that TheWarshawCurve actually follows what evolutionary biologists call a “Disruptive Curve,” as you can see below, along with the two other evolutionary curves: the “Stabilizing” and “Directional” curves (again, click on the images to enlarge them):

(Click to Enlarge)

If you think about it for just a second, it makes a great deal of sense that this same disruptive evolutionary curve should be found in patterns of consumer consumption:

New media and communication technologies — “disruptive technologies,” as they are commonly called — are entering the marketplace today at a frenetic rate, specifically with regard to the storing and sharing of content.  Devices and platforms such as TiVo, generic DVR’s, iPods, iPads, YouTube, Pandora, Netflix and on and on and on — basically all the stuff that’s making life hell for the television networks and film studios, who once upon a time, not too long ago, lived in a world where consumers had to eat whatever they served — and most of it was mediocre content. (After all, as Ernie Kovacs so eloquently put it, “You know TV is a medium because it is neither rare nor well done.”)

The result of all of the time shifting, sharing and storage, of course, is that people are no longer eating the middle of the curve and instead are saving up the high-quality stuff to eat later and noshing on the low-quality stuff (mostly thanks to YouTube) whenever they want to see a cat flush the toilet, a bull dog ride a skate board, a skate boarder crash or an infinite number of other things to entertain themselves for a moment, at that moment.

ONE OTHER THING THE CURVE TELLS YOU: BRANDS MATTER LESS AND LESS.

Finally, as Surowiecki also notes — under these new conditions, as we’ve written before:

The result is that brands matter less: a recent Nielsen survey found that more than sixty per cent of consumers think that stores’ generic products are equal in quality to brand-name ones. In effect, the more information people have, the tighter the relationship between quality and price: if you can deliver a product or service that is qualitatively better, you can charge top dollar. But if you can’t deliver the quality you can’t get the price. (Even Apple, after all, couldn’t make Apple TV a hit.)

It’s a point that I’ve been debating with the CEO’s and senior level executives of advertising agencies for well over two years now.  (And I completely understand see their point of view: ’cause when you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail — and, after all, their existence is based on pitching brands, so it’s hard for them to see that brands matter less in a world of constantly iterative products. But that’s the natural result of TheCurve. So, please, if you won’t take my word for it, take James Surowiecki’s.)

The reason, as noted earlier in “Consumer Goods and TheCurve,” is that as the cost of production and distribution drop, goods inevitably become mass produced commodities — not just consumer goods but all forms of content and entertainment.

(Oh, and once again, before everyone goes pointing to Apple as being the most obvious exception to the rule that brands mater less, please read (“Apple Stumbles Along the Curveabout how Apple is as much a service company as it is a product company.  And how, in a world of iterative products, service matters more than ever — which is something that Microsoft has never understood and, alas, something far too many technology based companies, especially start-ups, fail to understand.)

More on how technology moves things to the extremes — including the world of sports and sports fans’ behaviors — in posts to follow.

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NBC’s coverage of the 2008 Beijing Games clearly sits at the very far right-hand side of The Curve: it’s high-end production by the best producers, directors and announcers (especially Al Trautwig) in television.

Now, I’ve been reading a lot of interesting articles about NBC’s ratings success with these Olympic Games (including this terrific piece in MediaWeek) … and, well, here’s a quick thought about a yet unmentioned factor that I think may be helping to drive Olympic viewership:

Combined with all the usual suspects for what’s driving the ratings, such as great stories (Michael Phelps and Dara Torres, et al), the early success of the American athletes, America’s curiosity (and fear) about China’s rise as a super power, NBC’s use of the web (finally!) to help drive interest, and the network’s outstanding production/coverage — I would add one more possible factor: Flat-screen TVs.

With the proliferation of flat-screen TV’s it’s now almost impossible to walk into any business establishment that doesn’t have a TV monitor.  And we’re not just talking bars but restaurants, grocery stores, auto-shops, building lobbies (business and residential) — you name the place, flat-screens are there, and right now almost all of them are tuned to the Olympics.

And I’m not just talking in the major cities.

While that out-of-home viewing doesn’t show up in the ratings (Nielsen doesn’t measure it), I think the ubiquity of flat-screens — which translates into the ubiquity of Olympic video — it’s doing two things:

(i) it’s promoting the sense that the Olympics are “event” television, and

(ii) the flat-screens are acting as a thread that’s stitching together all of the atomized elements of modern day communication — the web, blackberry’s, iPhone, mobile feeds, etc. — through which individuals are getting information about the Games.

If people were just getting their own feeds, there wouldn’t be the same feeling about the Games. Watching on TV — with other people, or even just at the same time that you know millions of others are also watching — provides a sense of community and allows for the water-cooler conversation that’s critical to driving continued interest in the Games over the two weeks of competition.

The world is Flat-screened.

And that’s a good thing for NBC’s broadcasts of the Olympic Games.

As I wrote earlier, it will be interesting to see how Apple publicly responds to its disastrous rollout of MobileMe.

Remarkably, most of the MSM still hasn't reported on it — actually, given the extent of the problems, it's more astounding than remarkable — but it is a story, and David Pogue of the NY Times has posted an extensive write-up (or as Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon would say, "a good beat-down") regarding what he's dubbed, "Apple's MobileMess." Pogue's post includes some very nasty details — about individuals losing ALL the emails that they had EVER written, even those stored on their hard-drives(!) because of MobileMe — and he mentions small business owners who've incurred loses.

Given all the speculation about Steve Job's health — yesterday, Joe Nocera of the Times wrote about the rumors and their implications for Apple's share holders, about whether or not Job's health is a "private matter" and even about an "off-the-record" (and out of the blue) phone call that Nocera just received on Thursday from the secretive Jobs, himself — given all of that, one can't help but wonder if there's a connection between Job's health and Apple's lack of response to the MobileMess…and their stumble on The Curve.

I wrote earlier that “it will be interesting to see how Apple publicly responds to its disastrous rollout of MobileMe,” and it has been interesting, indeed. Apple’s remarkably belated response is a “MobileMe” status blog. written by an Apple employee named “David G.,” assigned directly by Steve Jobs:

“Steve Jobs has asked me to write a posting every other day… to ensure that we keep you really up to date… it’s been a rocky road and we know the pain some people have been suffering.”

Apple’s MoblileMess blog clearly holds true to the company’s core message, which has always been that Apple feels the pain experienced by Microsoft Windows and Vista consumers. Only this time — for the first time since Steve Jobs returned to Apple — Apple’s messaging is addressing not Microsoft pain but Apple pain inflicted by Apple on its own consumers.

As mentioned in previous posts ("Other Sectors Following The Curve?"), a few contributors have used The Curve to look at the the consumer electronics market. That makes sense if you think of the various low-end vs. high-end, cheap vs. premium, electronic products that you can choose between when making purchase decisions: inexpensive digital cameras (vs. high-end Nikon and Canon consumer SLR's), earbuds (vs. Bose headphones), generic laptops (vs. MacBooks) and, as already mentioned, cheap cell phones (vs. iPhones, BlackBerry's and other PDA's).

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Apple, of course, mostly hangs out around the high-end of the curve (the far-right): premium products at premium prices. And what makes Apple products truly premium? Apple's overlooked secret is that it's not just the hardware and the software inside their devices. It's also the service that surrounds them.

If you own an Apple product, you know that whenever you have a problem you can get on the phone and talk to someone at Apple support who actually knows about their products, and your problems.

Think about that statement and it's two parts: (1) Apple service folks know their products (we'll get into that in a second) and (2) Apple service folks know your problems. First, let's talk about that last part:

The political statement of the last 100 years that most resonates with Americans today is not, "The only thing we have to fear…". Nor is it "Ask not what your country…". Nor is it one of my family's favorites: "I did not have sex with that woman…". Nope. The political statement that most resonates with Americans today is: "I feel your pain." That's what we want to hear!

And Apple, like Bill Clinton, feels your pain.

Think about their commercials:

Yeah, they're funny. But interestingly their message isn't, "Look how much fun you can have with an Apple!" or "Look at the creative stuff you can make with a Mac." They tried selling with that message years ago, and it couldn't even get them 4% market share.

Since 2006 their message has been:

"Man, we know that using a computer is a hair-hurting, murderous bitch of an ordeal,
full of stuff that makes no sense to you or anyone else. But don't worry! We feel your
pain.

"We feel the fire raging between your ears AND we can put it
out." And they say it with a smile. And they do put it out. And they
heal your pain with product (hardware and software) and service. Real
service. Go into any Apple store, or call their support number, and
they will work with you till your problem is solved.

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REAL GENIUS?

It's a strategy that's got a bit of genius to it — without requiring real geniuses to execute it.

Because even though they call them "Geniuses" at the Apple stores, you hardly have to be a genius to work there. You can't be an idiot, but you don't have to have gone to MIT or Cal Tech or Princeton.

That's because the amount of stuff you need to know isn't enormous — because Apple's product line isn't enormous!

Look around the store: a ton of the stuff is third-party product, about which the sales staff's knowledge is hardly encyclopedic.  Apple's held to a fairly limited number of product lines, and many of the products in those lines share a great deal of functionality (and key strokes!); consequently, as soon as their customers learn how to use one Apple product, the easier it is for them to learn another.  Same thing with Apple software: many of their programs share similarities in their approaches to managing media — iTunes, iWeb, iPhoto, all of them share similarities in look and feel, user-interface, and even if they don't share the same, exact functionalities, well, then they share metaphorical functionalities (and key strokes!).  And that's what makes learning on a Mac so much easier than learning Windows based products.

With no disrespect to any of the great folks working at the Apple stores: you don't have to be a bloody "Genius" to learn that limited an amount of stuff — especially when you're surrounded by co-workers who are learning the same limited amount of stuff. Still, because Apple employees actually know their products, well, that makes them seem like geniuses.

But if you ask me, a real genius would be the poor bastard working at Best Buy or Circuit City who actually knew what he was selling.

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Real genius is someone who still knows how to help you even when they're confronted by a dizzying display of dozens of different products by dozens of different manufacturers, none of which works like the others—even if they do the same task!—and all of which are iterative and, therefore, constantly changing and being rolled out on schedules that have nothing to do with one another.

And — this time with no disrespect to any of the great folks working at those electronics chains — more often than not, Circuit City isn't exactly hiring geniuses.

They don't feel your pain.

They are your pain.

Which is what makes Apple's latest stumble so strange.

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APPLE'S STUMBLE:  MOBILE ME  (or "BLANK ME!" — where "Blank" isn't "Mobile")

Apple, the company whose secret sauce contains an overdose of service, recently released along with their new iPhone a whole new line of web-based applications called "MobileMe." And, as demoed smashingly by Steve Jobs and team, it's the cool kids' equivalent of an iPhone with a blackberry and exchange server. Only better.

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Except it's not better. Since the day they've rolled it out, it hasn't worked.

Apple doesn't feel your pain with MobileMe.

Apple is your pain.

And when was the last time that happened?

And what's amazing is that they haven't just stumbled over product. They've stumbled big-time over service.

Heck, today's tech consumers understand that new products have problems (even when the word "Beta" isn't slapped on them like some short-hand legal disclaimer). But customers don't understand why no one at Apple support or in the stores or on their MobileMe chat seems to really know what's wrong with their product. And worse, Apple isn't acknowledging that they've got a problem. (The support people on the phone, actually, will vent their frustrations to you — if you coax them nicely — but Cupertino's corporate communication certainly isn't owning up to the problem.)

And it's been over two weeks since the fire in the head first began.

(And, strangely, the press has given them a free pass, so far.)

But trust me, it will be interesting to watch what happens over the next few weeks: A premium product that isn't working, without premium service? (Sort of like owning a Jaguar sports car in the 1980s.)

That's Apple's rare bad experience at the high-end of The Curve.

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In the 1960s, a small number of absurdly gifted writers began to change the definition of journalism.  Using literary techniques found more frequently in novels than the New York Times. Tom Wolfe, Norman Mailer, Dick Schaap, Jimmy Breslin, Hunter Thompson and George Plimpton were at the forefront of what quickly became called “New Journalism.”

“Participatory Journalism” was a key element of New Journalism, and it developed in two forms out of the minds and typewriters of Plimpton and Schaap:  Plimpton was the author turned participant, who wrote about his often humbling experiences in magazine articles and books like “Paper Lion” and “Out of My League,” while Schaap turned participants into authors, in books like “Instant Replay,” which he co-wrote with the Green Bay Packers Jerry Kramer.  Both Plimpton and Schaap brought readers inside the locker room, the huddle and, at their best, into the mind of the athlete.  The result was “Up Close and Personal” in print, before Roone brought it to television.

Big Media & the “New Participatory Journalism”
Today, in the era of DIY media, where everyone has a camera and iMovie, and is publicly living their lives online, media companies can leverage their scale and resources to enable large numbers of participants at events to participate in their event coverage.

Rather than just have a single “special guest contributor” — which is Big Media’s style and something that, if it isn’t already, will soon feel like a quaint concept — media companies should be opening up their event coverage to as many participants as possible.

For example, prior to the SxSW Music Festival, at Blender.com we contacted bands and musicians and asked them to video their experiences and then submit their own reports for our Event Blog. The result was a collection of video snapshots and reports from these participants that provides a better picture of the lives of indie bands at their musical Super Bowl than anything else I’ve seen or read.

EXHIBIT-A:  this tremendous, short video report created by the band, “Produce O.”

We received dozens of videos, all snapshots filed by the bands and musicians attending the SxSW Festival.

And, get this: those band-made videos were viewed over 15-million times. (That’s not a typo.)

We’re talking dozens of homemade A Hard Day’s Night‘s (a film with one of the all-time great opening sequences: three minutes of pure magic).

(Again) Think Quilt, Not Blanket . . . and Sell It
Event coverage for Big Media is no longer about blanket coverage, instead it’s about putting together quilted coverage from it’s own and from outside soruces: It’s about stitching together moments, fragments, video snapshots and commentary — creating an evolving scrapbook for an audience that doesn’t just tolerate but has an appetite for low production values (the left-hand side of The Curve) and incomplete productions — and publishing them in real time for an audience that isn’t looking for the whole story in a single narrative.

It’s an audience that with regard to video is happy with fragments in the form of quick scenes, and in print online with pictures, short comments and links.  And it’s an audience that loves new media’s New Participatory Journalism.

Which means advertisers will like it, too.

As I mentioned at the end of the post before last ("Content is No Longer King"):

Being able to create high-quality content is a big advantage, but it's not the endgame. On the web it's less and less about creating and more and more about Aggregating … Curating … Annotating … and Facilitating.  That's a big reason why the little guys are now jumping over the big guys like Jack Russell Terriers on a hunt, and in heat.

That said, the Big Guys do have a bunch of advantages.

Before we get to the advantages Big Media enjoys — and how they can create new editorial products that can be monetized, based on those advantages — let's review the current state of their affairs:

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DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS

The internet with it's ever evolving set of features and utilities has made it incredibly easy to aggregate content and information, and the inevitable result is that rather than create new content, most individuals have gone meta — the web is filling up with content about content, news about news, remarks about remarks, reviews about reviews — simply because it's far easier and faster to comment than to create. It's far easier to simply link, rate and rant, than produce original content.  So, almost all what individuals are producing, and a good chunk of what is now being consumed, is happening down on the left-hand side of The Curve.

To be clear: I'm not saying bloggers are lazy by nature, I'm just saying the web makes some things incredibly easy.  And it takes a lot of resources to do more than just comment and link.

So, the Big Guys are dying a death by a thousand cuts — make that a google's worth — in no small part because they're still doing the heavy lifting, e.g. they're creating news reports, episodic television shows and feature films, and spending lots of money to do it — while everyone and their mother is using Big Media's highly produced materials as grist for their own home brew mills. 

And, unfortunately for Big Media, the audience would just as soon read meta content, just as soon read coverage about the coverage than read the actual coverage itself; or, if it's video, the audience often would rather see the raw and unfiltered videos, rather than the produced, filtered and packaged coverage.

In short: the gatekeepers have lost their gates, and now they're getting nibbled to death by millions of little guys down on the left-side of The Curve, each one a nasty little blade cutting away at the Big Boy's audience.

Death by a google's worth of cuts.

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“HOW DO WE GET THOSE LITTLE BLADES WORKING FOR US?”

That’s the question the Big Guys are finally starting to ask themselves:

How can Big Media get the blades — especially the blades of the blogisphere — to work for them? 

Once again, let me say right off the top: I'm not bashing content.

Heck, I've devoted the last 25 years of my life to it — back when it was just
called "writing" and "programming," and stuff like that. 

Content is still key.

But too many media companies are failing to make the most of their
content, ironically because they've put it on a thrown and value it
too highly, as I wrote below.  And at the same time, they continue to undervalue the importance of utilities.  The latter is now the most important factor for the
success of media properties on the web: features and functionalities that get people to your content,
get your content out to people, and let people do things with
it.

Justin Kim, a terrific, on-the-edge indie marketer has an interesting take on this.  Here's some of it:

I think the never-ending quest for the killer app has resulted in
the development of a ton of cool little tools. Like mitochondria, maybe
one day they can come together with other apps to form an evolved
interface.

…it's all about creating the best platform for serving content —
be it RSS, aggregation, peer-to-peer, voting, whichever's clever.  And easiest to get your quick fix.  Different methods work better for different kinds of content.

 All things considered, ease of use and
providing the quickest access to the desired content is a recipe for a
platform with stickiness. It's not just the content that gets people to
come back. Just as most successful shows eventually become syndicated,
the same content is almost always available elsewhere. Or at least a
knockoff version. The winning platform is the one that works the best
for the user.

On my personal scale:  Usability > Content > Interactivity > Popularity.

Justin's scale is an interesting one.  Especially when you try to figure out why so many people — especially in the younger, instant gratification generations — watch one piece of content over another, simply because it's easier to get to.

More on the above, and other thoughts from JK at  www.blogoriety.com

And I’m not just saying that because I’m about a decade sick of the old cliché.

Content is still key, but the king’s crown now belongs to Utilities (features and functionalities).

To help prove the point, here
are two interesting items that were put together by one of the fastest
minds I know (Mr. Russell-Foltz Smith).  They’re
eye-openers for anyone trying to reach that rather elusive male 18-34
demo:

(Click-on graphics to enlarge.)

Eye-opening not only in terms of where the traffic’s going but also in terms of where the advertising dollars are going, too.

.

SO, WHERE DOEST ALL THIS PUT THE FORMER KING, CONTENT?

Like I said up top, it’s still key — it’s just not the big Kahuna, anymore.

In
almost all cases, content is still the means by which that elusive
thing called “brand” is best expressed — it’s the voice, the look, the
tone for a media property.  But while that once was
enough for content to keep its crown, now on the web content is the wrapping around the new king: utilities.  Content is the label, it’s the billboard, it’s the promo, it’s the sign on the door.  But it ain’t the house, no more.

What
percentage of the time do you think people are spending on Facebook and
MySpace ingesting “content”?   That’s not what’s driving them there, or driving them around and around the sites once they get there.  They’re showing up and sticking around for activities (i.e. utilities).

Social-networking is not about content, it’s about activities — and
those activities are the result of compelling features and functionalities.