Social media has gone mainstream, and jaded geeks are totally over it. Facebook? It’s turned into “sludge for the brain now, filled with fluffy rabbits and gibberish.” Twitter? Just a mess of “mass-market spoonfed ‘trending topics.’” Instagram? What was once the epitome of geek chic has been overrun with filthy Android smartphone users, not to mention Iran’s Supreme Leader.
So trendsetting geeks are pinning their hopes on a new, geekier-than-thou social network called App.net. For just $50, you, too can become part of this exclusive club of early adopters, free to sniff at the riffraff on Facebook and Twitter. Social networking has reached the crucial “alt” phase.
"My suggestion: Twitter has the opportunity to become extraordinarily aligned with their best users. Offer the top users the opportunity to pay $10 a month. For that fee, they can get an ever-growing list of features, including analytics, verification, 160 characters, who knows…That would be a service with paying for. Right now, I consider App.net an alternative worth backing.
Tech Snobs Are Throwing Their Money At a New Indie Social Network
My suggestion: Twitter has the opportunity to become extraordinarily aligned with their best users. Offer the top users the opportunity to pay $10 a month. For that fee, they can get an ever-growing list of features, including analytics, verification, 160 characters, who knows…
10,000,000 users choosing to pay $10 a month means that the service turns a profit (!) of more than a billion dollars a year. And because the company is in alignment with their most powerful and evangelical users, that number grows over time. Every decision proposed will have to answer just one question: what makes our users happier?
"Twitter, shut up and take my money.
Stipsters is definitely fetch, though.
Christopher Mims, Technology Review. What’s Wrong With Almost Every Old Media-Inspired New Media Startup.
Mims lists companies he believes get it (eg., Newser, News.me and the Atavist), writing, “Notice that what all of these examples have in common is that where they’re really succeeding isn’t the web. If you think you have the money and clout to be the next Huffington Post, be my guest, go “innovate.” But the web is a surprisingly mature medium, and old-media pundits turned new media hucksters who think they’re going to tell anyone else how to launch a sustainable business there are emperors sans clothes. New media companies that will succeed are founded by two kinds of people: technologists, and media people who think like technologists.”
(via futurejournalismproject)What FJP said. Seriously.
Want some Gumbo with that Magazine?
Publishers constantly consider their business models. Often it’s the now mundane debate about whether to paywall or not to paywall. Other times it’s about brand diversification.
For example, the Washington Post survives because the Washington Post Company makes millions off of Kaplan, its for-profit education company. The New York Times Company, until recently, was part owner of the Boston Red Sox. Hearst, which publishes magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Esquire and Popular Mechanics, owns a number of television, radio and cable stations.
In turbulent times, diversification can be a good thing. So take the Oxford American, the 23-year-old quarterly dedicated to southern writing. They’re opening a restaurant.
Via the Oxford American:
The Oxford American, a literary magazine of Southern culture, will soon transform its new buildings in Little Rock’s burgeoning South Main Street (SOMA) district into a home for diverse arts programming, thanks to a significant grant from ArtPlace.
The space will include a restaurant that will celebrate Southern culinary culture. Accompanying the food will be nightly cultural programming that will feature the best of Southern arts and culture across a variety of formats including literature, music, film, art and drama. The Oxford American will focus on community-oriented programming developed through partnerships with local organizations and institutions.
The Oxford American will also outfit this space with recording (audio and video) equipment that will allow all of the programming to be live-streamed over the organization’s website as well as recorded for podcasts, videos, and other presentations. New and unique broadcasts also will be developed through The OA’s existing partnerships with NPR and PBS. As a result, the programming will be viewed and appreciated by people all over the world.
ArtPlace is a new national collaboration of eleven major national and regional foundations, six of the nation’s largest banks, and eight federal agencies, including the National Endowment for the Arts, to accelerate creative placemaking across the U.S. To date, ArtPlace has raised almost $50 million to work alongside federal and local governments to transform communities with strategic investments in the arts.
Good reads. Good eats. Good entertainment.
Liking this.
Instagram Isn’t Monetizing Those Retro Photos; This New Ad Network Is | PandoDaily
He who waits to monetize will get beaten to the wallet. Or something.
