How Can Big Media Get Back in the Game? The Big Bang Business Model

If you've shown up here, why don't you mosey on over to my new blog? Yeah, I just soft launched The BrandForward Blog. It's at http://michelletripp.com. You can find all the same posts you can find here. But it's a bit more pretty.

Yeah, go on! Scoot! Nothing to see here!

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I got this thing all figured out.

The universe, you know.

Once upon a time there was nothing. And then after a "Big Bang" there was something.

And as things started expanding there was a lot more of this something. And then the universal momentum waned and gravity took over. Things contracted. Once again there was nothing.

You'll have to forgive me. I saw Star Trek this weekend.

So even if Jean-Luc Picard had never lost half his humanity and William Shatner had never traded the 1701-C for a hippie beater van, we still know the universe starts from nothing and ends with nothing. It's a cycle. The universe expands and eventually contracts.

Now, more than a few scientists out there might want to debate my cosmological accuracy. Not everyone agrees in the closed universe. But that's okay. We're not here to analyze the space-time continuum or get published by the Scientific American. We're here to talk about a business model. Scientists go back to the lab. Everyone else, thisaway.

So as we know, the universe is expanding. (Which for us humans is really the preferable thing.)

But let's take a look at the media industry. It's doing just the opposite. It's contracting. And to provide some movie-worthy visuals let's just say it's about to reach the event horizon.

The point of no return.

End of movie.

After reading yesterday's Mashable article by Stan Shroeder about News Corp's plan to install the Great Paywall of China, and proclaiming it would be "rightfully high," it looks like Big Media isn't exactly caught up on their Sci-Fi (or SyFy). Because they're on a collision course with a big sucking black hole. Haven't they heard of Stephen Hawking? If you've made enough missteps to find yourself approaching the edge of a black hole, things are about to get a little discombobulated.

But wow. By thinking a paywall is the way out of this mess, Big Media is basically putzing around at impulse power. Hoping it's a mirage. Assuming if things get that bad they can just dial up that fancy warp core so the lumbering mothership can continue on its merry way through the Milky Way galaxy.

Going where every man has gone before.

Ho hum.

Sorry, but it's time for the Big Bang Business Model. Where outdated business models collapse, and new sparkly ones emerge from the primordial soup.

Yeah, there's a chance Big Media can make a resurgence. Expanding out into the ethers with its long tentacles.

But it could also make like a Monty Python parrot and cease to be.

If Big Media wants to leverage getting sucked into a black hole, and hope that its particles cohesively reassemble during the Big Bang, it has to figure out that it isn't in the information business. It really never was. What made Big Media ubiquitous and highly in demand was the human desire for personal power. No, not information. Not spreads with Annie Liebowitz photographs. Or articles written by Pulitzer Prize winners.

What readers really wanted was the personal power the information gave them.

I mean that's why business executives read Time magazine or Newsweek or WSJ or Ad Age, right? To amass more knowledge that can be leveraged for power. The more information you possess, the higher-level conversations you can have. Your critical thinking skills might actually improve. Your value to your company increases. Your boss stops asking you to bring him coffee. People want to talk to you more. Listen more. Your mind expands. You revel in acquiring even more information because you like the result of having it. By absorbing and sharing information, you increase your personal power. Why do you think 14 year-old girls read Cosmo or Glamour? It's about increasing their ability to have presence and popularity. Forget information. It's just that thing you have to get through to attain personal power.

But somewhere Big Media got lost. The powers that be couldn't stand to lose what they felt they owned, and chose to engage in an epic struggle to control what they think they offer of value: information. They ventured into the internet-planetary system but once they realized what Web 3.0 is all about, they reversed engines and started planning how to keep their "valuable" information away from users who expect it for free. They started strategizing ways to shield it from pesky blogging parasites.

The problem is that the internet is all about sharing, which is at direct odds with Big Media's old business model. Big Media placed an arbitrary value on information because they erroneously thought information was their business. But now that the information has lost its monetary value, they're apparently still not ready to accept that the singularity is near. They're thinking that by installing paywalls, preaching about expenses, and calling their news "premier" they can miraculously grind the reverse Big Bang to a screeching halt. The problem is, "premier" information is losing its value.

Because free information can grant personal power, too.

Ouch.

To survive, Big Media has to realize that information is no longer scarce. The proprietary information that used to give readers an edge, give them more power, respect, and influence is now available for free. But there's a way to capitalize on this. Want to solve Big Media's business model dilemma? Use a little physics. The whole equal and opposite action thing:

When the amount of information increases, there's something conversely decreasing.

And when the value of information is decreasing because there's so much of it, there's something else increasing in value because it's harder to come by.

If Big Media would analyze their greatest offering, personal power, they'd realize that to attain personal power you need both the access to information and the time to go out and leverage it.

But with so much information out there, we're experiencing an ever-increasing scarcity of time. More information, less time. And with millions of new web pages every day, it's not going to get any better.

Anyone who's lost five hours googling in one sitting, or has 1,700 unread RSS articles in their feeder knows what I'm talking about. The last thing anyone wants is to pay $2.99 for an a la carte article or subscribe to one more news feed. And a paid one? Forget it. Dream on. We're already overloaded with great stuff. Great free stuff.

What we humanoids need is a way to synthesize information. We need a serious time-saver. We need access to the best information customized to our personal preferences. New stuff. Old stuff that's relevant to our new stuff. "Trusted" stuff. And untrusted stuff. Articles and blogs and social media conversations that represent our favorite products and brands, complement our daily activities, reflect our personal goals. All mishmashed into an aggregated system that we'd swear was magic. Super value efficiently delivered so we can be on high receive, while still having spare time to act on it and share it.

There's the value. That's where the next business model is. Once Big Media crashes into the singularity, there will be an explosive opportunity to harness information.

Not paywall it.

What Big Media should be doing to save themselves is cornering the market on personal power. Developing a property that allows users to aggregate their own "personal power interface." A truly ubiquitous aggregator. With Big Media populating what should be some of the best content, of course. But also populating from across the web. Being okay with having their stories aggregated along with pesky bloggers or websites they don't own or control. Drawing in the best articles, blogs, tweets, and updates on the issues and activities and people that shape a person's world. An individual's world.

Realize it's no longer mass media. It's individual media.

And instead of selling advertising onto a newsprint page or TV commercial, develop innovations to integrate relevant brands and companies into interfaces in a way that doesn't feel like advertising's unwanted guest. Take a serious look at the core of social media, maximize its strengths, and create interwoven sharing opportunities. Not just sharing news, but sharing brands. In a way that's not already being done. In a way that advertisers will pee their pants over.

Seriously. If Big Media had been focusing on innovating instead of quarterly profits, they might have realized that the portfolio of media acquisitions they'd acquired during the 1990's gives them an advantage to merge content through an interface that has real value for individual users. If Big Media wants to emerge from the Big Bang, it has to embrace its core value and realize what it's offered all along: Personal power. And create something that maximizes it.

Hard to believe the trick is something as simple as a set of aggregation algorithms, huh? Who wouldn't love something more relevant than a Google search. Something more focused than an RSS reader. More personal than Alltop. More customized than Twitter. Less asinine than Facebook. Imagine something that creates a powerful information efficiency, aggregating what matters to an individual. Creating a "life channel" that saves time and increases personal productivity. The perfect storm of personal power.

That's the Big Bang Business Model: Monetizing the value of information, not the information itself. Making aggregation the focus of innovation. Placing importance on the benefit, not the product. Recognizing the emerging problem: too much information and lack of time to leverage it. And solving that problem, not adding to it.

A lot of companies are toeing the line of this hot, new mystery property. But none of them have yet to capture the magic. A few are getting close. But by creating an aggregator that's truly revolutionary, one that seriously impacts the ability to gain knowledge and personal power, Big Media could get back into the game.

This is our new universe. The race is not going to be won on control of information. It will be won on the aggregation of it.

Aggregation turns information into personal power.

Information is cheap. Personal power is priceless.

And if Big Media can't deal with that, not even Captain Kirk with the Enterprise (or William Shatner with his tricked-out van) will be able to mount a rescue from that big, black hole that's quickly emerging.

Big Media Slept on Titanic While Steerage Rowed to Shore

If you've shown up here, why don't you mosey on over to my new blog? Yeah, I just soft launched The BrandForward Blog. It's at http://michelletripp.com. You can find all the same posts you can find here. But it's a bit more pretty.

Yeah, go on! Scoot! Nothing to see here!

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Oh I can just hear it.

"Why Rothchild, look at those pathetic little boats in the distance. Why ever are they paddling away? Don't they know this is the Titanic? The greatest most indestructible ship the world has ever built?"

"Wretched parasites I say! Let them play on their little Twitters and YouTubes. Let them float along on their blogs. We're on the Titanic, daaahling. Their miniscule machinations are of no concern to us."

Ah, don't you just love big media.

Apparently Google does. A lot more than it loves providing untainted search results. Because Google has decided to dance with the devil. To officially usher big media through the velvet rope. Right past those pesky blogging parasites.

And to justify this sacrilege they're calling it "trusted results."

Gee thanks, Google. Trust "this."

What puzzles me is this move by Google barely got a whimper of response from the blogosphere. Where were the chanting protestors? Where were the snarky T-shirts? I was ready to burn my hard drive. Just couldn't find a ready bonfire.

This is a big freakin' deal. Big media basically slept on the Titanic while steerage rowed to shore. Web 1.0 and 2.0 happened while big media put the blinders on and continued with business as usual. They didn't pay much attention to the pesky bloggers, sneered haughtily at MySpace and Facebook, and for a brief minute discounted Twitter. But then something dawned on them. If everyone in the steerage section can have their own boats, who needs the Titanic?

Engines full stop!!!

So committees were formed and meetings were had. Big media was having none of this. They after all, had gotten the steerage to the other side of the ocean in the first place. What right do these parasites have to abandon ship now?

Enter Google. Who now wants to placate big media by throwing out one of those 100 mile-wide trawling nets to drag everyone back into the boat for a big happy kum ba yah.

Forget that it's sinking. Forget that it's a lumbering oaf that can no longer glide agilely through the water. Did I say it's sinking?

Google can prop up "trusted brands" for only so long before the Twitterers and YouTubers break free of the net and eventually find their way to shore. Google can pacify big media with digital harpoons to stop internet users from easily accessing those parasitic bloggers but eventually, steerage will make it to shore. And unfortunately for Google it won't be what it apparently considers the "right" shore. Oops!

Tropic of Twitter, anyone?

Now maybe the reason this whole "trusted brands" thing has gone down without so much as a squeak is because it's an insidious kind of misstep. The kind that doesn't look so bad at first but eventually oozes over and turns an unnatural shade of green and results in the untimely amputation of a limb. And Google will surely traipse along for awhile as if nothing happened. Merrily building its internal structure like the skeleton of the Death Star. But eventually the damage will surface. That magical thing that made Google as ubiquitous as toilet paper will disappear. Sucked down the big porcelain vortex.

Yes, I did just compare Google to toilet paper.

Okay forget the toilet paper. This is the paragraph to cut and paste. This is why Google's bow to big media is so huge. If internet users wanted a "trusted brand" they would skip Google and go straight to the brand site to begin with. Those "trusted" sites have been there all along. So if big media and "trusted" brands were what users wanted, Google wouldn't have gotten such a foothold in the first place. Big media would already be getting primo page rank. Nothing to have meetings about. Nothing to twist Google's arm over. And duh! Big media had the same opportunities as everyone else for building links and engaging in social media and gaining basic trust to achieve page rank. They just didn't feel the need to associate with steerage. Until they started rowing.... AWAY.

Ding!

So what we have here is this shiny new algorithm to artificially alter page rank. To expose users to what they were running from in the first place. They didn't want the corporate party line. They wanted the raw stuff. The untrusted stuff. The whole reason Google gained such huge market share is because people want content that's REAL. Not manufactured. Not politicized. Not meted out in pre-packaged seal-of-approval bite-size morsels. Users wanted access. And to be accessed. On their own terms.

Google saw the lighthouse through the fog and created a product that leveraged the human desire to KNOW. The desire to communicate, connect, listen, and be heard. Without interference. WITHOUT INTERFERENCE. This is what Google gave us. A central place to find what matters. And to create what matters. Wrapped up in a neat little equal opportunity package. All of the AdSense and Analytics, the AdWords and Gmail, the Reader, the iGoogle. That's just icing. The cake has always been the search.

And what made Google blaze past Yahoo! and whatever those other search engines were that we've now since forgotten ever existed, (oh yeah my favorite, MS SiN) is that it provided a level playing field and gave internet users "innocent" results. Sure, there were algorithms to handle spam, and a recent middle-of-the-night tweak to boost "recent" results to compete with Twitter. But ultimately users could trust Google results. If a story or a blog or a site or a page ranked high it was because someone trusted it. A lot of someones. Or better yet, it was something original. There was really never a need to manufacture another level of trust. It was already established.

So guess where this leaves us? Right where we've been trying to get away from: Big media dominating the news and controlling the minds of the masses. Telling us who we want as President. Telling us which morals are acceptable and which are passe. Squeezing out the voice of anyone who could make a real difference. (Anyone remember how the networks put the pinch on Ron Paul?) Is this really the same media you want influencing (controlling) Google?

Oh hey! China would love this. And all those other countries that use the iron grip of censorship... banning and controlling what the populace is exposed to. Maybe China can have a meeting with Google so they can have their own version of "trusted results." I'm visualizing a "trusted results" algorithm for people who live in Israel. And one for Iran. And one for... New Jersey.

All of the sudden 'trusted results" have become "tainted results."

So while big media was missing the boat, Google was missing the point. The beauty of Google and search engine ranking has always been that anyone can rise based on a combination of quality of content and strategic linking. And then Google has to go and pull the plug on its own juice. Compromising what made itself relevant to begin with.

Dropping itself several places in my mental page rank.

Google, are you paying attention? I know your little crawlers will be stopping by in the next 3-5 days.

Funny, I get the feeling I may eventually be looking for a missing Gmail account.

Old Media Falling Into The "Digeration Gap"

If you've shown up here, why don't you mosey on over to my new blog? Yeah, I just soft launched The BrandForward Blog. It's at http://michelletripp.com. You can find all the same posts you can find here. But it's a bit more pretty.

Yeah, go on! Scoot! Nothing to see here!

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I'm a little confused here. Haven't magazines learned anything from the music industry?

Some questionable protests were recently made by Time Inc.'s CEO Ann Moore that are the epitome of what I'll call the "digeration gap." Apparently she preached at some college students that "good information costs money." By her own admission they started to throw shoes at her.

What should have been a newsflash for Moore turned out to be more of a bake sale challenge. Instead of walking away from that interaction with a renewed quest for finding a viable business model that works with emerging technologies and the evolving consumer climate, she gave lip service to the idea of a new model in one breath, while reinforcing her own perceptions in the next:

"I think it is time for Time Inc. to sit down and seriously think, what is the model? We are going to have to figure out a way to have paid content in the future."

Our little peek into Moore's business strategy speaks volumes. Time Inc. intends to look for answers by going back to the old business model: subscriptions. They're taking a move from the RIAA play book and repackaging it. They're not looking for a new way of doing things. They're looking for a new way to do it the old way.

What's happening at this critical juncture is that some really smart people are just not getting it. Yesterday's business model will not work now. And it really won't work tomorrow. But instead of being at the forefront of developing this new model, a lot of key executives are trying to bulldoze past it, hoping somehow it'll turn into fertilizer for their own crop.

So this is the digeration gap. The difference between people and companies who embrace the internet and the future of information, and the ones who are still in love with the way things were, and desperately hang onto the "tired and true" way of doing things.

There's one little piece of information that those on the wrong side of the digeration gap are failing to realize: Tomorrow's business model is about the individual, not the corporation. Executives like Moore are trying to come up with a model that supports the corporation, that reinforces widespread control, that focuses on selling a lot of things to a lot of people from a central point of vantage. And they honestly believe they're being strategic and logical about it. Sure. But it's as if they're trying to play major-league baseball on a croquet course. Things aren't fitting but they'd rather fumble around instead of just looking down.

Another comment made by Moore that's hurting my head like a blunt object:

"Who started this rumour that all information should be free and why didn't we challenge this when it first came out?"

Wasn't it some Chinese fellow that said "the answer is in the question?"

Moore wants to know why "we didn't challenge it." I think the real question should have been "why didn't we challenge ourselves?" Companies that fall into the digeration gap are the ones that aren't just asking the wrong questions, they're also looking for the wrong answers.

Let's take one more look at this doozy:

"Good information costs money."

Now that's the ultimate rub. Good information no longer costs money. As more people on the planet gain the ability to communicate to a mass audience, it's clear that quality reporting can be done by someone without an editor breathing down their neck, without the necessity of a "Baghdad Bureau," and without the corporate structure propping them up (and no doubt influencing them). Time Inc. is operating on the concept that information is expensive, and that to survive they need to keep it expensive.

Yeah, I realize they have this big huge multi-national corporation to run, but the consumer doesn't care. Ann Moore can do the lecture circuit at every high school and university on the planet trying to convince the next generation they should pay for information. Hell, she can turn it into LollaPAYlooza and bring the RIAA and MPAA with her. I hope she has a lot of room in her closet. The shoes will be forthcoming.

Job number one for corporations like Time Inc. should be one thing: "How do we maintain ownership of the space we've built in our consumer's mind over the last 50 years." Because right now the one thing they stand to walk away from the ashes with is their brands. Brand as in mindshare. When the magazines shut down and the newspapers fold and the television networks are lost in a sea of original non-network INDIVIDUAL content, the brands will be all that's left.

As aging corporations use their might and brawn to resist their forced approach to the ledge of the digeration gap, they have only two choices:

Corpse or phoenix.