Social Media has created new challenges for many different industries and professionals. As more and more “amateurs” have become empowered to create, publish, and distribute their own media, it’s flooded the marketplaces with both new sources of talent and new sources of material.

It must be frightening as a member of one of these groups. Sentiments such as this probably don’t bring much comfort either:

Half a dozen lurid and splodgy pictures in the local paper brought home to me the death of an honourable profession this week. I took them. I am in my small way responsible for impoverishing an old friend, because he, not me, is a professional photographer, and his living has been more or less abolished by the changing world. Just as film has been replaced by digital, professionals are being replaced by amateurs. The changes are partly technological and partly economic, but the final blow to his profession has come from Flickr and similar Web 2.0 sites.

[…]

A picture-sharing site like Flickr contains the work of tens of thousands of talented amateurs, all of them capable of producing one or two photographs a year that could be published anywhere. A British photographers’ site, EPUK, has calculated that if only 1% of the pictures on Flickr are publishable, that would mean 1.5m usable pictures uploaded there every year. Most of the drudgery of identifying good, relevant pictures is also done here - by the photographers themselves, who tag them, and by the other users, who notice them and have their interest recorded by the software.

Source: The Guardian, “We all helped to speed the demise of professional photographers”

The irony is that, usually, the little guy is the one being pushed aside by the incumbent. We’re seeing a reversal in many ways, though. I venture the underdog has always had a sting to them, however small that might be, especially when there’s tens of thousands of them.

Technorati Tags: longtail, blogging, social+media

Excuse the very late notice for this - the budget for Podcamp West ended up having more room than we anticipated and we wanted to do something fun to kick off the festivities.

Yesterday, Vic Podcaster, Brian Solis, and I baked the plan to have a small pre-party on Friday, November 17.  We’re going to The Mint, just a block or two away from the camp venue to have several pitchers of beer as well as some finger food.  Things will get started at 6:30pm and continue on until at least 8:30pm.

In case you don’t remember, this is the same spot that Vloggercon ended at.

Please RSVP here so we can tell how to prepare best to serve you ;)
http://upcoming.org/event/127408

For the past couple of months, Vic Podcaster has been working tirelessly to bring together the West Coast’s version of PodCamp, aptly called Podcamp West. Vic and I originally hatched the plan over chinese food in Boston’s South Station after the original camp had concluded.

San Francisco has seen its share of podcasting and videoblogging events, to say the least, however, there’s something quite different about Podcamp West. With a camp, the unconference model provides us with a way to move the hallway track to the main stage. It begs to argue that an unconference on podcasting is a unification of the rants and raves of thousands of podcasters everywhere. At the same time, Podcamp West is not just about videoblogging but everything related to the art and trade of podcasting.
If you are in SF, you definitely want to stop by on Saturday and Sunday for a good time and interesting conversation.

Where: San Francisco
When: 18-19 November, 2006
Timing: 12 PM - 6 PM
Days: Saturday and Sunday
Venue: Swedish American Hall
Map: Click here
Address: 2174 Market St. San Francisco, CA

Mark Cuban has a very compelling piece up today that discusses some of the economics of the Long Tail. It is interesting mostly in that it is a very harsh, and potentially telling, view on just what success might take. There are quite a few interesting points, though I recommend you read the whole thing.

Mark’s first point is to provide more context around the Long Tail’s topography. He identifies new labels for two areas of the graph - The Vert Ramp and the Content Ceiling. Mark’s done a nice job explaining it but I just though the diagram needed some help so I created a new one:

Now, as I’ve shown it here, there are the Capital Needs on the Y-axis and Commercial Interests on the X-axis. Mark makes a good point that when you really are in it for the money - you need to be in it for the money. The last PEW study estimated that more than 10% of “bloggers” wanted to blog for the money. I’d imagine, however, that given the insight that blogging might net them more than pennies, quite a few more individuals would be interested in shaking the money tree. As Mark notes:

First content providers, whether podcasters, vloggers, bloggers, movie makers, writers, poets, whatever the content type make the decision of the creation of the content is about love or money. Is the goal of the finished product commercial, or purely personal ?

If the goal is commercial, whether to make money directly or indirectly from the content, then the battle to fight through the Content Ceiling begins.The bottom line is that people want to get paid for their work. Creators have a vision. They think there is something special about it, and they want to get rewarded for their effort. Its a simple goal in concept, but its incredibly difficult to achieve.

Is the Internet A Long Tail Ghetto ? - Blog Maverick

Mark introduces the notion of a Content Ceiling - reflecting the point where the tail starts to transition upwards. The Ceiling is actually the threshold where enough circumstances become positive that an actual business can ignite. For this reason, Mark refers to the many individuals toiling in the lower recesses of the Long Tail as the Ghetto. In the Long Tail Ghetto, there is an abundance of people pouring their blood, sweat, and tears into a proposition that barely nets them minimum wage.

For all the talk of the internet changing distribution, the reality is that in order to break through the Content Ceiling and to climb the Vert Ramp, 99.9 pct of content creators are going to do need OPM (Other Peoples Money). The internet alone is not going to get the job done. You can put your content everywhere and anywhere the net allows you to be hosted, but for most people the amount of revenues for that content you had before you started the hosting process will be the exact same as what you have after the hosting process.

Is the Internet A Long Tail Ghetto ? - Blog Maverick

This is an interesting point as well, though I am not sure how much I agree as of yet. On the one hand, I believe that the economics of the Long Tail are fundamentally flawed if not solely than that they still revolve around hits. We are still in the very early stages of learning what influence and attention are valued, but ultimately, I believe that the eyeball model will cede in many different places to one based on influence. To that end, moving from a small scale publisher with a small audience, you will need a lot of money - the kind of money that makes publishing and distribution broad and meaningful quickly. Mark’s point seems to be that the crux of that happens in unline (that place not online).

Naturally, my role at SocialRoots taints my views on this world. Whereas I believe there is a ghetto.. I think there’s also a market. When the conversation is made granular - note a different set of tools is required to handle boulders than gems, it may be that distribution and reach are things that can equally be distributed.

If a hit today is 100M (viewers, listeners, readers, downloads, etc), what will it be in 3 years? How many tails are there? As infinite as the tail itself?

technorati tags:mark+cuban, long+tail, socialroots, content+ceiling, vert+ramp, blogging, podcasting, social+media

This weekend at BloggerCon, there was lots of interesting discussion. I ended the first day Dave Winer asked us what we’re all doing to change the world. When I had my chance at the mic, I noted that I’m very mindful of the leverage that other companies are creating around the things WE create. Doc dug a little deeper on my point which I quickly whipped out the “user-generated content” banner. My thought, as I’ve noted before, is that we are not users, we’re Active Publishers - reacting to an new environment of swift media.

My main point, however, is that when someone asks us to create something for them and doesn’t pay us, or worst, patronizes us with tokens of their sincerity, that we’re being put in the vice grip and leveraged into larger markets and networks that we can’t easily see from our seats in the nosebleed section.

Today, ShopWiki made a very interesting gesture towards our community:

ShopWiki, an incredibly innovative online shopping community, will announce today another step to expand their service’s offerings. The company will pay users $50 per video for the first 500 submitted product review videos selected for inclusion on the site - that’s $25k total. This site is nuts already and paying people to add video reviews is going to take it over the top in terms of usefulness. Or maybe it’s just really cool. I’m not Mr. Online-shopping by a long shot and even I think ShopWiki is loads of fun to use.

TechCrunch

One interesting counter to my argument was offered by Mary Hodder of Dabble towards the end of the day. She seemed to take a position that I made too sweeping a generalization with regards to those using that term. Her point being that she views herself as a User - referencing her prior role in usability. I went to her afterwards to clear the air a bit - and that conversation is important.

First, I noted that I have no problem with any company that recognizes the value in what they’re asking for and creates a pathway for rewarding the participants. There’s not as many as there should be yet, but there’s quite a bit of activity in this arena and more en route. We’ll never have equal footing if we don’t continue to assert our value.

Second, I still reject the term User-Generated except in the context that I am explicitly requested to create it - at which point I am a user of a system designed to collect something from me. On the other hand, while I surely am -using- Wordpress to make this blog, I am certainly not a user of SocialTwister - I am the publisher, editor, and janitor. Mary’s vantage point that, as a usability person, everyone’s a user simply isn’t sufficient for the range of participating and interaction we have in the world today.

Nothing like winding down a whirlwind trip to San Francisco with a blinking exclamation point, huh?

[full disclosure: I am the CEO of a startup dedicated to getting us all paid for our creativity and ability or to go broke trying]

technorati tags:socialroots, bloggerconiv, mary+hodder, napsterization, dabble, monetization, socialmedia, blogging, videoblogging, podcasting, activepublishing, crowdsourcing

Podcasting continues to grow in reach and influence. With this growth there’s a new increasing interest in how to do advertising placements in this medium. We’ve been exploring this problem for some time now and are actively working on solutions to assist in the process.

ClickZ has a quick look into the process of securing placement for their client, Travelocity. As noted:

There’s no formula to our approach, but I figured I could share how we made this sponsorship happen.

The first thing you need to know is, at this point, this is a very manual process. There are podcasting networks that can make it easier for you to sponsor podcasts, but they’re still pretty early in their development. A few of the networks include Podtrac, Kiptronic, The Podcast Network, and PodShow. You’ll probably want to try the networks, but do some exploring on your own as well.

Source: ClickZ, “No Formulas for Podcast Sponsorships”

They go on to add 3 steps to their process:

1. Find top-ranked podcasts
2. Listen and evaluate
3. Contact and negotiate

One point I do take issue with is the absolute correlation of good quality with credible content. In my opinion, the two have nothing to do with each other. You can have great quality while the content is worthless and vice versa. Our new medium is not about perfection - sometimes it’s even on purpose. I’m listening to Adam Curry go on now about the “beauty” of podcasting meaning it need not be perfect.

If advertisers are seeking perfection before they make placements, they have a long road to travel. Of course, there’s no way to deny that those shows, even without the best quality, are still gathering and growing audiences.

Who would have guessed? Everyone doing it of course. Well, it turns out that some analysts at the Diffusion Group have done a study, Podcasting: Fact, Fiction and Opportunity. Here’s a snippet (via Corante/podcasting):

“Today the term ‘podcast’ refers to almost any online mobile content distribution service,” said Marc Freedman, contributing analyst with The Diffusion Group. “It has taken on very general precepts, thus indicative of its status as a service category as opposed to a branded activity.”

While the iPod explosion created demand for both portable digital music players and inexpensive, downloadable content, Freedman contends that it wasn’t until consumers became aware of personal video recording and the virtues of time-shifting (that is, downloading or saving to consumer media content when most convenient to consumers) that podcasting became a distinct activity.

“Consumers were already accustomed to downloading music for playback on portable devices – this is a well-engrained activity that precedes online digital music,” said Freedman. “However, the downloading of online ‘audio blogs’ for portable on-demand consumption is certainly new. Yes, the roots of podcasting lie in non-commercial amateur blogging, but podcasting’s non-commercial status is changing as more businesses begin to find creative ways to use this new delivery medium to push audio content.”

Source: Yahoo! News

Podcasting can help you in more ways than you think. Adding to the stack, I recently learned about the Podcasting Elevator Pitch” (via Business Opportunities Weblog) and I think it’s a wonderful idea.

The technique calls on several unique opportunities that exist today:

• A VC that’s able to be reached via Podcast. Although there are likely a few, there’s one that’s enabled this, Fred Wilson.

• An open bookmarking system that provides a method for adding to a feed, a la tagging. Enter del.icio.us. It turns out that Mr. Wilson has setup a special tag, fred’selevatorpitch, that let’s people tag their audio as an elevator pitch.

• Stir in some RSS reading, and more specifically, some Podcatching software.

• For extra punch, stir in the new del.icio.us

http://www.rexblog.com/2005/06/01#a7027

Trouble In Paradise

Unfortunately, the increasing “infringement” on the Podcasting landscpe by the MSM is troubling for quite a few. On the one hand, it’s understandable that many want to hold on to the yestermonth and keep it a few people chatting back and forth on the new wire. Realistically, it doesn’t really matter at all.

MSM is uniquely positioned to bring this content to the world - they already make it. The expectations for quality and professionalism are both set and maintained by them in a very significant manner. The thousands of new voices are facing a difficult chasm to cross, be unique in the way you are or follow the lead of MSM and mimic their style. Don’t believe me? Take a look at what the quick risers sound like, what they are doing, what they are using. You’ll see it’s not just fun and games anymore.

Long Tail Approaches

For the past few months, I have been explaining to people that the land of opportunity, in my opinion, is in the middle. What middle? The inflection point where MSM meets CM, as opposed to on any other side.

Let’s consider the three approaches that could be taken to monetize podcasting:

Top-Down Approach

It’s easy enough to concede that MSM has the money and, hence, will come to rule the medium. If we were talking about a product that exclusively lives in the spectrums that they controlled, I would certainly agree. But that IS JUST NOT THE CASE. As I’ve noted eariler, they do have an uncanny ability to dictate set the expectations of a very large segment of the population, but as we’re seeing more and more, that’s not going to be enough in the long term.

Regardless, since the MSM has existing relationships in place for marketing, advertising, business development, etc. they will undoubtedly make use of podcasting as a slimline revenue generator or a loss leader that maintains mindshare amongst the general population.

This approach is definitely scary for the little guy that’s trying to make a go at it. It also has absolutely no meaning to the person that’s doing this as a hobby, has zero or minimal fixed overhead, and does it for love. As Doritos said it best, “Crunch all you want, we’ll make more.”

Most importantly, if you are NOT in the MSM already, don’t bother trying to get in there. The Podcasting process, as it stands, while convoluted, is not that complicated for anyone that wants to do it. Clear Channel doesn’t need much help producing MP3s. Of course, many corporations will also pursue this channel and bring in “pros” to assist, but the opportunity is limited at best.

Bottom-Up Approach

Coming from this direction seems like the best way to go, when you take into account the grassroots nature of Podcasting. Why not provide a suite of tools and services that make it possible/easier for the everyday person.

Sounds good in theory, but it’s harder than it sounds. In the last 9 months we’ve seem all manner of tools, services, directories and the like launched that attempt to do just this. Are any of them runaway successes? Hardly. Will many of them see their markets dried up by offerings from larger companies (*cough* iTunes 4.9 - all your pods are belong to us).

The real problem is that making something complex simple, well, it’s a really big pain in the ass. Getting adoption from small audiences is quite possible, but is it sustainable? If it’s just you, with your day job to support you, most likely. If it requires a team of programmers to develop your system and support it, then the games a little different, maybe even a lot. And don’t forget the leagues of offerings that will be donated to the community at large, for no cost that all cut into your ability to survive.