Content Atomization
We've talked with clients for some time now about information products being a wrapper of discrete "bits" - take model-train news, model-train features, and model-train classifieds, slap a cover on them, and you've got a publication or Website or podcast about model trains.
And bits of information are modular - take that bit about model-train news, add model-airplane news, and model-ship news, and you've got a different publication - Modeling News.
News organizations have a great opportunity to mix and match all their bits of information (and across media: text, images, video, sound) to "publish" literally thousands of information products. All that's required are the tools to make it happen - capabilities that are often referred to as "personalization features."
There are many examples of the popularity of atomized products: consumers can easily buy one song from iTunes, readers can choose 1 or 100 RSS feeds at a time, TiVO allows viewers to record or watch what bits of shows they want...the list is long (although newspapers are notable laggards).
And as we noted in an earlier post, telcos seem to be positioning themselves to build business models around "per-bit" pricing. Once the commerce backbone and model meet product features, it won't be long before people who download songs will pay for those songs on a per-bit basis and those who read articles will pay less, again based on the total data load.
The question will be: What will happen to free? And how will the ad-driven business models, like Yahoo's and Google's, be affected?
And bits of information are modular - take that bit about model-train news, add model-airplane news, and model-ship news, and you've got a different publication - Modeling News.
News organizations have a great opportunity to mix and match all their bits of information (and across media: text, images, video, sound) to "publish" literally thousands of information products. All that's required are the tools to make it happen - capabilities that are often referred to as "personalization features."
There are many examples of the popularity of atomized products: consumers can easily buy one song from iTunes, readers can choose 1 or 100 RSS feeds at a time, TiVO allows viewers to record or watch what bits of shows they want...the list is long (although newspapers are notable laggards).
And as we noted in an earlier post, telcos seem to be positioning themselves to build business models around "per-bit" pricing. Once the commerce backbone and model meet product features, it won't be long before people who download songs will pay for those songs on a per-bit basis and those who read articles will pay less, again based on the total data load.
The question will be: What will happen to free? And how will the ad-driven business models, like Yahoo's and Google's, be affected?
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home