BuzzMachine

The media pundit's pundit. Written by NYC insider Jeff Jarvis, BuzzMachine covers news, media, journalism, and politics.

Month: November 2005

  • They got it backwards

    12 comments on They got it backwards
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    Time Inc. announced that Andrew Sullivan is moving his blog to Time.com. Good for Andrew. But they got it backwards. They should have left Sullivan right where we was and sold advertising there. That would have extended their reach to a new audience. They’re thinking the old way: trying to draw people to their site and brand and buying content to do it. The new way would be to build your audience and brand and ad revenue all over the web, at all the best places, piggybacking on the audience and reputation that is already there. They’re thinking like a marketplace in a distributed world. [hat tip: Jay Rosen]

    : Here’s Andrew on the move.

  • The price of thought

    13 comments on The price of thought
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    The WSJ reports that Google is toying with the idea of renting books that can be read, not downloaded or printed, over a week. They say Google would charge 10 percent of the cover price. Thus, they believe that the ideas and thought are worth one tenth the paper, distribution, and retail markup. And, of course, not all that would go to the guy who had the thought; she’d get a fraction left over after publishers, agents, and Google itself. Content is devalued yet further. [via Paid Content]

  • Storming the media bastille

    2 comments on Storming the media bastille
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    Here’s the lead of my latest Media Guardian column about bloggers and media and the French riots.

    It’s anarchy. The long-oppressed masses are rioting. The old roles are confused, the old rules erased. Am I talking about the French riots or the internet? Both, of course. It is just my cheap, rhetorical trick to tie the two together. But the arrest last week of at least three young bloggers for allegedly using their sites to incite violence precisely highlights the confusion this new medium brings. So does a controversial government official’s use of internet search advertising to push his inflammatory agenda. And so does old French media’s fear that covering this explosive story would only favour the politicians they do not favour.

    Taken together, this illustrates how media used to be all about control – with journalists and governments managing the messages – but now are all about the loss of control. The audience took over the internet and blurred all the old lines: where is that line now between witnessing and reporting, between communications and conspiracy, between inciting violence and expressing rage, between speech and crime?

    : Another path to it here.

  • The crowd of futurists

    1 comment on The crowd of futurists
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    Here’s a conference I wish I could attend: the prediction markets summit.

    Smart mobs, swarms, information markets, crowd wisdom, communities, trade exchanges social networks and knowledge markets — all are getting a lot of popular attention today. Why? Because they are highly effective.

    Top knowledge scientists, information market practitioners, business school professors, think tanks and prediction market tool providers are converging for a one-day Summit in San Francisco/Silicon Valley on Prediction Markets.

    It’s not just about predictions, of course. It’s about the crowd’s ability to define relevance (see: Google) and taste (see: Flickr interestingness) and news (Digg.com) and topics (Del.icio.us).

    : There’s a company devoted to prediction markets.