Who Is Willing to Pay?

Forrester's Sarah Rotman Epps took a closer look at the demographic profile of those users who said that they would be willing to pay. Gender and marital status had no influence on a consumer's willingness to pay. Those who are willing to pay for magazine content are slightly younger that those who won't (43 years vs. 47). For newspaper content, however, there was no difference. Income, too, only makes a small difference. Those with a higher income are slightly more likely to pay for newspaper content than for magazines.

The report concludes that there is no consensus among consumers about how they want content delivered to them. The fact that 10% still prefer PDFs clearly shows that we are still in a transitional period. What is clear, though, is that consumers aren't very willing to pay for content online.

According to Forrester, publishers have two options: continue to offer a free, ad-supported product or offer consumers "a choice of multichannel subscriptions, single-channel subscriptions, and micropayments for premium product access."

As Rotman Epps also notes, there is a third solution: have a third party subsidize the cost of the content. This could be a device manufacturer who wants to offer exclusive content, for example.

A Slightly More Optimistic View

According to a report in the New York Times, about 48% of all Internet users in the US said that they would pay to read news online. This study by the Boston Consulting Group also looked at online news in general and found that a larger number of users was willing to pay. On average, though, these users were only willing to pay about $3.

The overall idea behind Fast Flip is interesting. Over time, the service learns what you like to read and will personalize its news suggestions for you. The execution, however, leaves much to be desired. Instead of a Google Reader-like text-based interface, Fast Flip displays a series of screenshots.

Usability?

On the desktop, you get a large picture of a page with the first part of an article without the ability to scroll down, and cut off sides where ads or links to other articles tend to be. Often, because a lot of magazines tend to feature very large images at the top of a page, all you get is a headline and an image. To actually read the article, you have to click on the screenshot.

On an iPhone or Android phone, the experience is even more annoying. Besides the problem that Fast Flip isn't extremely fast on a mobile device (images take longer to load than text, after all), the size of the screen guarantees that you can't actually read much in those screenshots besides the headline. To get a better view, you have to tap the screen and a menu will pop up that allows you to zoom into the picture or read the full article on the actual newspaper site or blog. As Rob Diana points out on the Regular Geek blog, that's a lot of clicking just to get from an unreadable thumbnail view to the actual content.

The other problem here is that Google is only working with a select number of content providers. At least for the time being, this is a closed off ecosystem.

Disappointing

Overall, Fast Flip just seems like a disappointing product. The cooperation with content producers is interesting, though we wonder if a single AdSense unit on the site will really make newspapers any money. Google Reader or personalized applications like my6sense on the iPhone or feedly on the desktop just seem far more interesting and usable than browsing through a series of screenshots.

Up until now, Dazzboard supported this to-and-fro between PC and mobile while also allowing you to upload to media sharing sites like Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube. Today, the company adds one more option: MySites, a web-based service offering an unlimited amount of cloud storage.

The first step to using Dazzboard is installing the software, which currently works only as a browser plugin (IE/Firefox) on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 PCs. The company has a Mac version in the works and will support Google Chrome once extensions come to that browser. A Facebook app and iGoogle gadget are also available.

From the web-based Dazzboard interface, you can easily move your files to and from the supported platforms and online services. You can browse, play, and organize your files which are organized into three categories: photos, music, and mobile.

For now, Dazzboard's focus is on the consumer market so for end users, the service is free. However, companies and brands wanting to use Dazzboard's API can do so if they're interested in sharing their content with website visitors or Facebook fans. Dazzboard simplifies the process of having that content pushed from web to mobile and handles the content's global mobile distribution for the brand. This service will be available for a fee and will help keep the consumer-level offering free.

...Now With Unlimited Cloud Storage!

With Dazzboard's new "Cloud Storage" option introduced today, you can upload files to MySites, a personalized homepage designed for file sharing. The MySites web service provides you with a custom URL (yourname.mysites.com), privacy control features, an RSS feed, and a multi-file upload option for sharing several files at once. After uploading your media, your page will feature the files and links to download and you also have the option to share the files using embed codes, Facebook, Twitter, social bookmarking services (Delicious, Digg, Google and Reddit), and even mobile QR codes.

Unbelievably, MySites, a free service, has no upload limit, no file size limit, no resizing of the original file, no download limits, no speed limits, no nag screens, and no watermarking. You can play your content right from MySites as the service provides players for the different file types hosted there (video, music, etc.) The company also plans to offer a Dropbox-style desktop client and API in the near future.

Dazzboard does not have an iPhone application at this time and may or may not ever build one. Since iTunes essentially does the same thing for iPhones and iPods, it would almost be foolhardy for Dazzboard to try and compete with Apple or any of the other thousands of apps available in the crowded market that is the iTunes App Store. Instead, Dazzboard's focus is on the other mobile devices outside of Apple's ecosystem. That's not a bad plan. Although sometimes it seems like everyone owns an iPhone these days, the reality is that worldwide, their are still plenty of other mobile phones to choose from. Now those device owners can enjoy media on their mobiles, too.

How has Answers.com achieved this stellar growth? The same way Demand Media has: sheer quantity of content.

UPDATE: Bob Rosenschein, CEO, Answers.com, left a comment on this post with some illuminating data points. He first notes that the majority of page views comes from WikiAnswers.com, which had 22M uniques in July '09 while Answers.com had 10M "with some overlap." What's more, he notes that "the growth in our traffic is almost entirely from our WikiAnswers site."

Answers.com is run by Answers Corporation, which also has Q&A site WikiAnswers.com in its stable.

How Answers.com Works

In some ways Answers.com is the same as Demand Media - both output huge amounts of practical, useful reference content. This content attracts Google's spiders, which is a big part of the success of both companies. That's probably where the similarities end, because Demand Media largely produces original content. Answers.com, on the other hand, is basically a giant aggregator of third-party content.

The difference was noticeable in an example query I did for both sites: what is an rfid chip? The eHow page on RFID chips was short, basic, uninspiring content. The result on Answers.com was a long, thorough article about RFID chips. Impressive... except the content is actually from Wikipedia. If you scroll right to the end of the page, you will see a single sentence acknowledging this. But most people would probably be unaware that it's not original content. Why? Because this Answers.com article is peppered with links to other Answers.com pages. This of course is great for SEO (search engine optimization). UPDATE: Answers.com CEO Bob Rosenschein commented that "we put a no-index on pages which contain only Wikipedia content, so that they do not even show up in Google's index."

Answers.com's modus operandi boils down to this: use content from other sources, judiciously replace all of the links to point to their own domain, and reap the page views that result from Google. It can use Wikipedia content so liberally because it is licensed under Creative Commons.

The Secret to Success: Millions of Pages Indexed by Google

Answers.com has a staggering number of pages indexed in Google: 31.8 million! This is only 11 million less than Wikipedia (currently 43.1 million). By comparison, Demand Media's eHow has 'just' 4,320,000 pieces of content indexed in Google. About.com has 6,150,000. ReadWriteWeb.com has 30,100.

Note that Answers.com isn't necessarily highly ranked in Google. Answers.com has a Page Rank of 7/10, whereas Wikipedia is a 9. ReadWriteWeb has a Page Rank of 8. A search on the phrase "what is an rfid chip?" in Google revealed that Wikipedia holds the top slot and Answers.com doesn't even make the first page. So we can fairly say that Google isn't rewarding Answers.com for the quality of its content - or more correctly, it isn't necessarily being linked to by high-quality sources like Wikipedia is.

Conclusion: Quantity, Quantity, Quantity

We noted yesterday that Demand Media largely competes on quantity instead of quality. Answers.com takes quantity to another level altogether - and it can do this because it produces little if any original content.

Just look at Answers.com's growth over the past couple of years. The results speak for themselves.

Who Pays, Who Doesn't

The European Commission's Digital Competitiveness Report (PDF) is a comprehensive annual resource which looks at everything from broadband penetration to use of social networks and more. One of the chapters in the latest report, published earlier this month, deals specifically with online entertainment.

In this chapter, the EU study reports on the state of the online entertainment industry, revealing factoids like "less than 5% of Europeans have paid for online content in the last three months."

The most interesting results from the report, though, are not the details about who pays, but about who doesn't. Among the non-payers, factors like lower prices would convince about 30% to pay while things like better quality, wider choice, better availability, and others would convince between 15-20%. Yet one figure stands out: only around 20% of online users would pay for online content if all the other free options suddenly disappeared.

Peer-to-Peer File Sharing Not to Blame, Says EU

The impact of this finding didn't escape the notice of the EU researchers, who go on to point out that this seems to mean, contrary to what industry execs say, illegal copying is not to blame:

"...the low percentage of individuals that consider the possible lack of freely available online content as a reason for paying, calls into question the argument put forward by representatives of the content industry that European consumers will in the long term suffer from a lack of commercial availability of high quality content if the current model of audiovisual content distribution, based on illegal copying, is not curved."

Instead, what seems to be happening is that people pay for their internet connection and then gorge themselves on the abundant free content that's available online. Because there's so much out there which costs nothing at all - from web news to streaming video to software applications - internet users tend to balk at the idea of actually having to pull out their wallets to make a purchase. It's the internet itself that has led us down this path to a place where old monetization models simply no longer apply.

What's the Answer?

The report goes on to look at the business models of all sorts of content sites in detail including online news/newspapers, video, movies, music, and online games. While the ways consumers access these different types of content may vary (RSS for reading news, streaming videos, downloading music), the findings are relatively consistent across the board. With only a few exceptions (Apple's iTunes Store, music-based games like Guitar Hero, etc.), many of the current business models are not sustainable.

So what's the answer? There isn't really a good one just yet. Many businesses try "freemium" models which convert power users to paying users. Other sites try sustaining themselves on online ads (which is difficult to do in a down economy). But the best ideas for new business models may very well be the ones that haven't even been thought up yet. The only question is whether or not they'll be discovered in time before more content-producing industries fail.

Image credits - used freely thanks to the Internet and Creative Commons: downloading, flickr user Arenamontanus; I love P2P, flickr user Brocco Lee; p2p logo, flickr user jatop

Just post your questions in comments on any Question of the Day post or email them to tips@readwriteweb.com with the word "Question" in the subject line. Our elves will start processing them immediately.

Those were all answers to questions you didn't ask, though, we just thought of them ourselves! We want to know what questions you, dear readers, would like answered. We expect they'll often be more sophisticated than the ones answered above, but they don't have to be.

Several of us on staff have experience as consultants; consider this an opportunity for free consulting plus input from other industry experts and our community of readers.

What Kinds of Questions?

How many developers does it take to screw in a wiki? We're not sure about that, but if you've got questions about using wikis at work, uploading videos from vacation, social search for spiritual salvation or anything like that - the new ReadWriteWeb Question of the Day is going to be for you.

Technical questions, strategic questions, marketing questions - we're open to all of them. Whatever we think our readers will find interesting we'll answer publicly and point you towards good places to learn more. Look for OPML files of the best blogs on the topic you ask about and custom search engines you can search for more. Because that's how we roll.

We're looking forward to hearing from you. We'll start posting answers to the most interesting questions we receive on Monday.

Today StumbleUpon has introduced a way for new visitors of the service to Stumble without the toolbar. To make discovering new sites easier, the service has turned their homepage into a stumbling portal. The homepage will now feature popular content from various categories. Unlike its current homepage, this one will be updated daily. This will also give new visitors a chance to use the service without having to install the toolbar. Those with unsupported browsers will appreciate the change too.

Click to enlarge

StumbleUpon Partner Program

StumbleUpon has also announced services to partnering sites. To increase effectiveness and appeal for partner content, StumbleUpon will offer stumbling services directly on partnering sites for visitors to stumble through. Currently this is available for the visitors of the following partner sites:

• The Huffington Post
• HowStuffWroks
• RollingStone
• National Geographic

Exclusive Services...For Now

StumbleUpon is offering these great new services for new visitors and selective partners only. However, there are plans to expand these services to current members and more partners. We think these services will definitely help to give StumbleUpon not only a nice boost, but a brighter future. The homepage redesign is sure to receive great traffic and provide both new and current members with more interaction with the service. The option to stumble through content without clicking the toolbar numerous times is a welcomed alternative. We're sure that quite a few blogs are more than happy about the Partner Program. Only time will tell how long until we can all enjoy these services.

Habari Integrates With Flickr, Viddler

What's most interesting about Habari is the way it integrates with third-party services. Instead of having to download a plugin for things like Flickr integration, for example, in Habari you can browse Flickr for a photo to add to your post just as some other blogging platforms allow you to browse your computer's hard drive. As you search for a photo, you have the option to enter in a tag to better locate the picture you need. In this way, Habari the platform performs very much like Zemanta the plugin, an add-in which allows for a similar type of interaction.

Searching Flickr in Habari:

Another example of this platform-to-cloud integration is how Habari lets you record video blogs. From within Habari itself, you can click a record button to record a video. When finished, the video can be posted directly to Viddler's video-sharing web site as well as to your blog itself.

Although Flickr and Viddler are the only two sites configured at the moment, they are only the beginning. Just as how a service like FriendFeed can pull in data streams from sites all over the social web, Habari will be able to access other media silos as well. And for anything that's not supported by the platform itself, there are still plugins available just as there are in WordPress. Currently, some of the more popular plugins include Disqus comments, Feedburner integration, Twitter posting, and a lifestreaming plugin (example).

Habari Features

Also like WordPress, Habari supports static pages, Atom publishing, tagging, multiple authors, and multiple sites under one install. There are even importers for Serendipty and WordPress available to help make the transition easier.

Because Habari is still a work-in-progress to some extent, it may not be ready for the newest of bloggers just yet. One day though, the developers hope to appeal to both them and blogging experts both. They want to address the pain points that make blogging difficult for new users, but they also want to bring the focus of blogging back to content creation. That's why the compose page is clean and simple by default (see below). They also want to focus on ways to make your blog the place where you actually blog, not the place where you have store videos and photos.

Habari wants you to just write:

It's Not New, They Just Need Better Marketing!

The Habari Project has been around for a couple of years now, so you may have heard of it before. If not, don't worry - you're not alone. When one of the developers gave it a shoutout at this weekend's Blogorlando conference, neither the speaker nor many of the audience members had ever heard of it. "Come again?", and "How do you spell that?", people asked. And this was a blogging conference, mind you.

If you're looking to try a new blogging platform, Habari is ready for install today. You can learn more about the Habari Project on their homepage here: http://habariproject.org. If you're interested in getting involved, visit the community page here: http://wiki.habariproject.org/en/Getting_Involved.

LinkedIn users are now being shown personalized news targeting their industry verticals on the Business and Technology sections of NYTimes.com and will then be prompted to share those stories will professional associates.

A number of other social networks and bookmarking services have "share this story" links on NYT stories, but it's unclear how much traction those links alone are getting. Last month we wrote about one of those services, social news site Mixx, that's still seeing fewer than 1 million unique visitors per month despite "share this on Mixx" buttons on a long list of the biggest news sites in the world, including NYTimes.com.

How much more compelling is this partnership? We think it's a lot more compelling; check out the screenshots below and imagine the feedback loop this could create between the NYT and LinkedIn. LinkedIn has 25 million registered users and the NYT sees 17 million + unique visitors per month, but the partnership will need none the less to introduce more people to LinkedIn in order to really be a home run. See this NYT page for an "introduction to LinkedIn." That's pretty classy, though it's unclear yet when that link will be displayed and when it won't.

We'll see how the recommendation process works; we hope it doesn't rely exclusively only on explicitly shared links, but we'll see. This certainly gets the mental juices flowing about any number of other integration and recommendation possibilities.

One question we have is about money changing hands. There has been extensive discussion around the web of late about LinkedIn using partnerships as a revenue source and it wouldn't surprise us if the NYT is paying for this integration. LinkedIn may not be a huge social network, but its user demographics are some of the most financially desirable in the world.

We expect to see more partnerships like this emerge, perhaps from a chastised Facebook attempting to relaunch its Beacon program in a more acceptable fashion.

The New York Times application's (iTunes link) most prominent feature is that it allows for off-line reading, which makes it especially useful for those who use an iPod touch and want to read the Times during their commute. At the same time, though, the offline capability also severely slows down the experience, as the app tries to download a large package of stories every time it updates. The thumbnail photos that accompany most stories typically take even longer to appear. In many ways, this approach is reminiscent of what the New York Times does with its Times Reader desktop application.

Once updated, the interface is very straightforward. The bookmarks at the bottom of the app let you chose between "Latest News", "Business News", "Opinion", "Photos", and "More." A major flaw here is that these bookmarks can not be rearranged. If you want to read the Technology section, you first have to click on "More" and then "Technology." Making the app a little bit more configurable would also go a long way in making it more usable. Correction: You can actually move icons around pretty easily if you head for the second page and look for the 'edit' button at the top of the page.

One really nice feature of the app is its search function. Just enter any keyword and it will look through the local database of stories and return the results within seconds. However, this search is limited to the local cache and it does not search the Times' online archive.

One annoying feature, though, is the advertising that is displayed at the bottom of the screen. Between the bookmark bar, the advertising, and the navigation bar, a good third of the screen is dedicated to something else but the actual content.

Associated Press: Mobile News

The AP Mobile News application (iTunes link) looks a lot like the NYTimes app [UPDATE: AP emailed us to say that "the Mobile News Network Web application launched in May 5 BEFORE the New York Times application was released (July 10)"]. Mobile News, too, stores a local cache of stories on the iPhone, but doesn't suffer from the same kind of slowdowns. It also has a very fast search engine, but unlike the Times, it doesn't put it on the screen at all times. Instead, it is hidden away on the second page.

Unlike the Times, Mobile News does give you the chance to customize the bookmark bar at the bottom of the page, which immediately makes it a lot more user-friendly. The AP, for now, is also not running any ads on its service.

The AP application has a number of other features the Times app does not, which include the ability to send an SMS or email message with a link to the story, as well as the ability to save it for later reference. Users can also take and send pictures from breaking news events they witness directly to the AP.

Bloomberg

While the AP and New York Times obviously try to cover a very wide range of topics, the Bloomberg application (iTunes link) is, as the name suggests, completely focused on financial news. Indeed, regular news only takes up a small part of the application.

The Bloomberg app is the only one of the three apps tested here that does not download a local cache of its stories. It is also completely focused on text and does not feature any photos - which, given its focus on business news, is probably not a very big deal.

Besides the news part, though, the areas where the app really shines is in the displaying the latest ups and downs of stocks and indexes worldwide, with the ability to drill down to charts and stories related to any given company. It is also the only of these news apps that makes use of the iPhone's accelerometer. When you look at the details for any given stock, rotating the screen brings up an enlarged graph of the stock's past performance.

Verdict

In terms of design, the Bloomberg application makes the best use of the iPhone's capabilities and it would be nice if the other apps copied some of these ideas for their more general news applications. Between Mobile News and the New York Times, the main difference really is the content. While the New York Times app is pretty slow, it does work very well once it is up and running. It has to be said, though, that using the New York Times' mobile website is probably a better choice for those who have good connectivity. It loads up faster and the advertising mostly stays out of your way.

Here at ReadWriteWeb we pride ourselves on being able to provide you with fresh content! While there's no escaping the "echo chamber", being able to provide a fresh perspective on the news goes a long way to helping out with social media. Every thought and opinion is unique even if all parties agree.

You can also venture out of your comfort zone and into unknown territory for better insights for providing fresh content. It's no easy task, but it can be done.This not only helps break away from the "echo chamber" effect, but allows you to experiment, discover, and learn about variety of subjects you might not have previously considered. In doing so, you'll expand not only your audience, but social media.

Spread The Link Love

Once upon a time, linking to others was a rare thing. It used to be a common fear to abstain from linking to others in an effort to keep your audience. Building a "walled garden" around content is counter-productive to social media. Spreading the link love is actually one of the best things you can do for social media. Not only does it help with networking, but for social media this is a great way for users to find great content. This is also another way to spread ideas that others might have never. Not only will others appreciate the love, but so will your audience.

You can spread the content of others by using Google Reader's Shared Items feature to share your own link blog of great content that you've read. "Retweeting" great links on Twitter or "liking" things in Friendfeed are other great ways to share and promote ideas in an effort to contribute to social media.

Roll Your Own

While there's plenty of ways for users to contribute to social media, developers can also play a large part. What's revolutionary about social media content is that it can be based on standards like RSS and XML. To quote Phil Glockner of Scribkin, "this lends a lot of re-interpretation of the data available for the taking." Some of the most popular Twitter apps are an example of this.

Mashup platforms are getting easier to develop for. Developers no longer need to know C# when you have platforms like Google App Engine, Django, and Yahoo! Pipes to play with. In an effort to contribute to social media, why not "roll" your own mashups. Developers can take advantage of these platforms to extend the functionality of social media tools such as Twitter and Friendfeed. RSSmeme developer Benjamin Golub did it today with Tweet 2 Tweet by utilizing Django and Google App Engine (reviewed on SheGeeks).

Share Your Findings

A new application pops up everyday. While we all want to be the first to talk about a new app, sometimes we hold out on these findings.Directories such as FreshAIRApps, which we reviewed earlier, aim to help users discover these new applications. Share these findings with your audience by reviewing it on your blog, stumbling it on StumbleUpon, or even with a "tweet" on Twitter.

This helps the social media community to advance in many ways. Your findings could be exactly what someone has been searching for high and low for weeks. Since applications can serve a multitude of purposes for users, your reasons for using one app could be used for entirely different reasons by someone else. However, the discovery of these purposes can't happen unless you continue to share.

Stay Active

Of all our picks, staying active is the most important contribution you can make to social media. Social media requires active participation within the community. It's an act of both give and take. While it's perfectly fine to be a lurker, if something strikes your interest, don't be afraid to voice your opinions and share your knowledge of the subject. Want to learn more about something? Ask a question. With social media, the community is there in an effort to help you benefit from not only the web, but life.

Sharing Really is Caring

These are just a handful of great ways to contribute to social media. Keep in mind that contributions to social media are also beneficial for other niches and the web community overall. So if you haven't started your link blog or have been hesitant to tweet that new app you discovered, now is the perfect time to start.

The double-edged sword that comes with keeping abreast of all the latest developments in technology means that we're always aware of the latest and greatest applications and services to try...but it also means that we've tried all of them. Unlike the average user, who doesn't even bother creating a Facebook profile until several of their friends cajole them into doing so, technology early adopters are the first to sign up and create profiles on every service that launches.

Sometimes these services have value; if so, they trickle down to the rest of the world over time. For example, social networks like MySpace and Facebook changed the way people interacted online. Flickr made photo sharing fun, easy, and social. YouTube let everyone be a star. However, sometimes they're not so great after all, and they end up fading away into nothingness in that area we've affectionately dubbed the "deadpool."

These failures don't seem to dampen our enthusiasm for trying the "next big thing," though. Every day, the web is filled with posts about this new app or that great service. When you think about it, it's really rather impressive that there are that many of them out there - enough to be written about in a seemingly nonstop fashion.

For technology enthusiasts, it's not enough to just "try" the new apps and services though. If they're the next big thing (or so everyone says), we're supposed to jump on board and use them, use them, use them. Scoble even recently threatened to expose some of the so-called "A-Listers" for not being active enough, saying:

"I thought about embarrassing most of the A listers on FriendFeed, because very few of them actually read that many blogs (I can tell, they rarely comment on, or link to, or FriendFeed with other people’s blogs)"

So, no. Commentary is not enough. We're supposed to live, breathe, eat, sleep, and dream this stuff. The problem is, while we're busy experimenting with this new thing and that new thing, we might miss out on actually enjoying the services that are already there for us, working just fine, thank you very much.

Too Many Choices

However, there are certain areas we've noticed that seem to be the biggest sources of conflict as of late. In these areas, several companies are clamoring to be the winner of the space, releasing duplicate or similar products, constantly adding new features, and generally trying to one-up their competitors in an effort to come out on top. When there are several companies doing the same thing, it gets confusing for the average user and time-consuming for the early adopters who play with everything. In the end, the hope is that one great service would come out on top, but that's hardly ever the case. We're already on MySpace, Bebo, Facebook, and LinkedIn because there's no one winner for social networks...are we going to have to use all these newcomers battling it out, too?

The Battle to Be Open

We never thought we would see the day that the big companies were actually fighting to see who can be the most open of the bunch, but that seems to be exactly what's taking place now in the battle of the social graph APIs. You've got Google's Friend Connect service vs. Facebook's Connect service vs. MySpace's Data Availability, each announced within days of each other. Instead of making it easy for users to understand what it means to be maximizing a social graph, the companies have just flooded the feeds with their separate announcements. As Marshall reported on Monday, the reason, at least according to Google is that "the beauty of open standards is that companies don't have to talk. They can just meet up around interoperable technologies." We would like to think that this battle for openness will lead to easier-to-use social networks as our friend graphs will get to follow us around, but something about the timing of these separate announcements smells like a battle brewing.

The Battle of the Lifestreams

There's MyBlogLog's lifestream, FriendFeed, Lifestream.fm and even Facebook's attempt at lifestreaming, which involves integrating a handful of services into users' Mini-Feeds and News Feeds. Too much? You betcha. Although FriendFeed is getting buzz, even it doesn't offer a way to really filter the info it displays. Sure, the "filter by service" Greasemonkey script can help narrow down content and the Friends & Groups script can help sort your friends into groups of your own choosing, but we shouldn't have to rely on a Firefox add-on to make our apps work for us. And while FriendFeed may be one service (besides Twitter, of course) that internet addicts can't live without, it still has a way to go to cross over to the mainstream user, especially if Facebook starts offering similar integration.

The Battle to Tweet on AIR

It seemed that every time our favorite Twitter AIR app Twhirl was updated, Alert Thingy followed suit and vice versa. Both struggled to integrate FriendFeed into their stream while still providing the best Twitter-on-the-desktop experience, and neither really accomplished that. Alert Thingy integrated FriendFeed updates into its stream in one window while Twhirl went with a second window just for FriendFeed. Neither was a perfect solution. Alert Thingy lacks the Twitter-specific features of Twhirl and Twhirl's two windows isn't ideal for users concerned with desktop real estate, like laptop users. What's worse is that in addition to Twhirl/Alert Thingy battle, we also had to contend with other also-rans which included both Twitter, FriendFeed, and combo apps like Snitter, Spaz, Feedalizr, bTT, and MySocial's browser sidebar and AIR app.

The Battle to Filter Your RSS

It's not just RSSmeme vs. ReadBurner - although that's an obvious pairing. Both of those sites feature top shared items from Google Reader. RSSmeme recently launched an API, which means it now offers filtering, albeit the geeky sort involving the creation of custom URLs. ReadBurner, not to be outdone, announced NetVibes support shortly thereafter. However, Google saw that other services were springing up around their RSS reader, so in an effort to keep people in "Googleland" they added friends to your reader to allow for a more personalized filtering experience. Those friends can also now share items with notes, so you don't even need to go elsewhere to comment on the items in the feeds.

Unfortunately, the downside to the friends feature means that in addition to those feeds that you now subscribe to, you're also reading suggestions from friends. Not that they're not great and everything, but is it really so hard for Google Reader to go ahead and mark it as read in your feed list if your friend's shared item is from a blog whose feed you already subscribe to? Apparently it is. Which means if it's really good news, we'll read it twice. Or even three times if someone else shares it later on. There might be a light at the end of the tunnel when it comes to filtering Google Reader via AideRSS, but ranking by popularity is really only one way to find the best content. There's something to be said for the hidden gems that get overlooked, too.

But the battle of RSS filtering doesn't end with Google Reader either. Perhaps not as apparent, but both Twitter and FriendFeed are slowly becoming people's preferred method of getting news. Why read through hundreds of unread, unranked items just to stay on top of the news? If it's any good, you'll hear it on Twitter or see it shared on FriendFeed. Some users are even positioning themselves as "human information filters," on these services, something our newest ReadWriteWeb contributor, Corvida, discussed not to long ago on her personal site. These highly active users (yes Scoble and Louis come to mind) are good friends to have on the service since they'll constantly be posting and filtering the best stuff for you.

Then there are the other memetrackers that exist to highlight the top stories of the day, too: Techmeme is at the top of the list, of course, but there are also newcomers/up-and-commers like LinkRiver, Techsted, SocialMedian, and community builder BlogRize. I'm just scratching the surface here and that's already ten different ways to filter the news.

The Battle of the Mobile Social Networks

This one will really surprise those not following the mobile networking space closely. When researching mobile network up-and-comer Brightkite, I stumbled upon a slew of mobile networks already competing in the space.

There's MocoSpace, Friendstribe, Hobnobster, Dodgeball, Zyb, mig33, Mobiluck, MeetMoi, JuiceCaster, Loopnote, Rabble, Wadja, Treemo, groovr, flagr, Lime Juice, Loopt, and Next2Friends, to name just a few. There are, in fact, many, many more. Some focus on texting, some on sharing images, others on geo-tagging, and others on traditional social networking. They're all acting like the mobile web is the wild west and if they can just get there first they might have a shot at winning.

However, who wants to bet that the mobile networks everyone ends up using are the ones who aren't pretending that the mobile web is some different web altogether? Even more likely winners are the mobile versions of MySpace and Facebook, where all your friends already exist.

The Battle of the Social News Sites

Of course there's Digg. But Digg is opening up the space for competition once again now that they're focused on going mainstream and featuring less technology news. Mixx seems to be doing well as a small, friendly tech social news site, but they're not the only one looking to catch the Digg overflow. There's also Yahoo Buzz, Propeller, Reddit, Digg-for-girls Kirtsy (formerly Sk*rt), Sphinn, roll-your-own Digg tool Pligg, please-don't-link to us Hacker News, and "if-we-ran-Digg" clone Sift'd. While all these sites are great for getting a post noticed by a wider audience, they're also multiplying the numbers of places you can read the exact same story you read hours ago in Google Reader, saw tweeted on Twitter, shared in FriendFeed, promoted on Techmeme, etc.

What Can We Do?

It's hard to say. Early adopters are not going to stop playing with every new service, but it's clear that we're getting to a point where tools that centralize, aggregate, but most importantly filter our content are going to be the ones that win out. There are only so many hours in the day, and, as it stands right now, every single one of them could be filled just consuming and interacting with content, social media, and web services. There's also this little thing called "going outside" that we would like to take part in, too. Hopefully we'll see the killer web app to filter the noise someday soon to help us do so, but it's definitely not here yet. ]]>Discuss]]> http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/too_many_choices_too_much_content.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/too_many_choices_too_much_content.php Trends Wed, 14 May 2008 04:00:00 -0800 Sarah Perez Over the weekend, it seemed that everyone in the tech blogosphere contributed to the discussion around fractured blog comments; Robert Scoble even went so far as to say that the "era of blogger's control" is over. What all these discussions hinged on was whether or not a web service called Shyftr had the right to appropriate bloggers' RSS feeds and build their brand around our content (a practice they've now modified due to this outcry).

It's up to us to decide whether to fight this change or ride the wave.

The Value of a Blog

In a post entitled "What Are My Words Worth?", blogger Steven Hodson worried about the devaluation of his brand, saying:

"We are being told that once we have written our posts we no longer have any say over what happens to them. In effect we are having to give up the vary basis of what gives our brand its very worth...So as we watch our pageviews and revenue streams decline because it’s now okay that the conversations can either be taken over by other services...It’s okay that someone else can build a brand off of our now non-important brand. It’s okay that any conversations over our original thoughts can take place anywhere because the home we have worked hard to build for our brand isn’t worth anything anymore."

What this speaks to is a blogger's fear that this type of shift will lead to a devaluation in a blogger's brand. Effectively, their content is now the commodity that other services can utilize or exploit to build up brands of their own.

Content in Today's Society

It's not just bloggers whose content is being used, shared, and profited from today - perhaps now bloggers can begin to appreciate what other industries, like the recording industry or the movie-making industry, has had to face in this new digital age.

How did it come to this? Jonathan Handel, a digital media, entertainment and technology lawyer posts on his blog about the nature of content in today's society.

He sees six reasons for content's devaluation (to paraphrase):

1. Supply and Demand: The supply of online content has grown enormously in the past decade, including user-generated content, a bunch of which includes content created by people who don't care if they get paid for its creation.
2. Loss of Physical Form: When you steal an object (like a DVD, for example), you deny it to the owner. When you "steal" a movie, by downloading it, it's still there for others to use. Its intangible nature makes its appropriate feel much less like stealing.
3. It's Easy: Getting content from the internet is far easier than through traditional methods.
4. New Media is Ad-Supported: The "freemium" model makes content available at no cost to the user - so why should the user see the content as valuable?
5. Market Forces: Computers and web services are more valuable when more content is available, and non-professionals flock to use the new technologies of the web, as they had long been denied access to distribution via traditional methods.
6. Culture: A generation of users has grown up indifferent or even hostile to copyright.

What It All Means

What this means for us as bloggers and new media creators is that the very technologies that we have grown to love are the same forces that are turning our efforts, be them our words, our videos, our music, our photos, or anything we create, into a commodity - something that has little monetary value on its own, but in aggregate, can become something of value.

Case in point: iTunes. Individually, the songs are inexpensive, but by combining them and providing the downloading service, iTunes rules the digital music landscape - something old media is not fond of. Take NBC Universal's Jeff Zucker and his infamous railing against Apple as being a corrosive force in the media business: "We don't want to replace the dollars we were making in the analog world with pennies on the digital side."

We may have scoffed at his concerns at the time, but now, bloggers are feeling those same forces at work on our own content, as it gets sucked into other services, making our individual contributions nothing more than a droplet in the stream that is new media.

However, we can't on the one hand support the commoditization of other media - happy to download music either via P2P or for pocket change and cry when DRM restricts its copying - and then, at the same time, purport that our very own creations, like our blog posts, or even more absurdly, the comments around those posts, have some sort of value that is above and beyond them becoming commodities as well.

Other Impacts

Handel also comes to the conclusion that the abundance of content is not necessarily good for users. "When everyone's a creator, there's less room for high-quality professional content," he says.

While it may seem like there is less room for high quality content, I would argue that there's still just as much room, it's just harder to find the best stuff because it's mixed in with the rest. Information overload, you could call it.

That's why services that can help you find quality content, whether an RSS recommendation service like Toluu, or a recommendation-based search engine like the upcoming Delver, will be the next-gen tools for the digital age.

Conclusion

As media creators and consumers, we have to realize that content is a commodity now - it's too late to fight this trend, so we need to just make the best of it.

I think Mark Evans hits on a good idea on his post "Shyftr's Lessons for Bloggers" saying that if it's so important to you that your blog retains value of its own, then make it a destination:

"Use cool widgets, blog asides, newsletters, polls and, of course, a user-friendly design. Whatever it takes to convince people that visiting your blog is worth it can only be a good thing."

Agreed. Without some sort of interactivity or blog-only content, readers will find themselves consuming your content off-site more than ever in the coming days.

All that's left to decide is where you stand. Should information (even yours!) be free? Is your motto "steal my content, please?" Or will you fight this disruption and try to cling to the old model like the RIAA and MPAA did? Or maybe you think there is still some middle ground to be had. Let us know your thoughts in the comments.