BuzzMachine

Here are my notes for my talk to the TEDxNYed gathering this past weekend. I used the opportunity of a TED event to question the TED format, especially in relation to education, where — as in media — we must move past the one-way lecture to collaboration. I feared I’d...

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My first bit of advice to pissed-off Cablevision customers in New York — who’ve just lost WABC right before the Oscars — I do recommend that you switch to Verizon Fios. You won’t get it in time. It’s not perfect. But for me, it has been a helluva lot better...

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Here’s audio of an appearance on The Takeaway on public radio this morning about the American Cancer Society’s new prostate (PSA) screening guidelines, telling doctors to discuss the test and its implications first — the moral equivalent of the breast-cancer-screening shift of a few months ago. I disagree. As the...

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Warren Buffett — owner of one newspaper and director of another — complains in his letter to shareholders (PDF) about his quote being mangled and misused by sound-bite journalism: Last year we saw, in one instance, how sound-bite reporting can go wrong. Among the 12,830 words in the annual letter was...

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I am in Tampa waiting to fly back home to New Jersey and, thanks to the snowicane but rather than sitting in the usual information vacuum to which airlines subject us, I am watching as Continental shows us the status of the flights that were supposed to bring our jet...

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Friend Michael Rosenblum forwarded word that the Star-Ledger in New Jersey was just nominated for seven local Emmys for its video work. Bravo for my old friends there and for Rosenblum, who trained them . I remember when my old colleague Jim Willse, then editor of the Ledger, told me he...

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Meredith, the magazine publisher, is taking on functions of ad agencies, as the Wall Street Journal describes in detail today. It’s a smart move by Meredith and it’s inevitable as we shift from selling scarcity to selling service to marketers. Meredith is taking on the functions of a creative agency....

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Demand Media just announced the formation of an advisory board; Staci Kramer has the details at PaidContent. I was invited to join but decided to decline. I’ve been saying a lot about Demand — sometimes disagreeing with the common and negative perception that it is a content farm, arguing that...

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Italy is endangering the web. It convicted three Google executives for privacy violations for a video that was posted on YouTube Google Video that Google took down when it received a complaint. By holding Google liable for the actions of a user, the Italian court is in essence requiring Google...

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Here’s another in an occasional series of posts to that try to examine, explain, and illustrate the new structure of media. This one looks at how we discover content now. Back in the day, a decade (to 50 decades) ago, we discovered media — news, information, or service — through...

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Paid Content is holding a conference on paid content. I’m there. Sigh. No surprise that I think this is too much focus on one model and meme. At the start, James McQuivey of Forrester says: “People don’t pay for content and they never have… They have always paid for access...

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I’m talking too much. For the rest of today (Friday), you can get free access to webcast I did yesterday for What Would Google Do? Warning: 90 min. Here’s video of a talk I did not Beta, likely to be my next book. Here’s a panel I moderated on teaching...

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Google News has just open-sourced its code to create what it calls Living Stories. What this really is, I think, is Google’s attempt to take editors to school on content presentation in our new world. The article, I’ve argued, is outmoded as the building block of news. The new atomic...

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The best reason that some newspapers have to stay in print — at least a few days a week — is to distribute coupons and circulars (free-standing inserts, or FSIs, in the jargon). But as newspaper circulation declines below critical mass and as digital means of delivery of coupons and...

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As soon as Buzz was announced — before I could try it — I tried to intuit its goals and I found profound opportunities. Now that I’ve tried it, reality and opportunity a fer piece apart. It’s awkward. I’d thought that I had wanted Twitter to be threaded but I...

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As a group, Germans are more private than anyone I know. My German grandfather-in-law used to lecture me: “People do not need to know that.” Germans complain about Google Streetview taking pictures of them … in public. They’re going after Facebook on privacy. They say that Google Analytics violates privacy....

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Hilarious. Just mention a rumor of Howard Stern replacing Simon Cowell on American Idol and the so-called Parents Television Council rears its head again. Haven’t heard from them in a while — have we? — because they and their coconspirators at the FCC succeeded in making broadcast TV and radio...

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I still need more time to get my head around Google Buzz, which will enable users to post and share updates, links, photos, videos with the world or with friends tied to geography via the web, mobile apps, and voice. Buzz also promises to prioritize the “buzzes” we get. I...

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Including my parents, we own four Toyotas in my family; over time, we’ve probably owned eight or 10. Will we ever buy another? Depends. Depends on whether we can trust the company given its performance lately. There’s a reason we bought our Toyotas. They are incredibly reliable. I abuse mine,...

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If you are selling a scarcity — an inventory — of any nonphysical goods today, stop, turn around, and start selling value — outcomes — instead. Or you’re screwed. Apply this rule to many enterprises: advertising, media, content, information, education, consultation, and to some extent, performance. * * * Start with...

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Recently, at CUNY, we held a roundtable for ad sales people from hyperlocal blogs to big newspapers to hear what they are hearing from local merchants. We’re wrapping up our research for the New Business Models for News Project — indeed, it was Alberto Ibargüen, head of the Knight Foundation...

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At the Google party at Davos, I was enticed into doing the Flip dance with none less than Sir Tim Berners-Lee: Another Sir Tim video from a session on social media. The first half of this 3:44 is him talking about the need for authority signals i social networks. In...

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The theme of this year’s World Economic Forum meeting at Davos was “rethink, redesign, rebuild.” When a friend recited that list for me, I responded that given the institutions there, the more appropriate slogan is “replace.” Last year when I arrived at Davos, I wondered whether we were among the problem...

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First, the news: Google told me today that they would consider giving more transparency about revenue splits in Adsense. At a private meeting with a dozen and a half media people at Davos with CEO Eric Schmidt, President of sales Nikesh Arora, search boss Marissa Mayer, YouTube founder Chad Hurley,...

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The European, a German online news service, asked me to write a commentary for a debate on paid content. Here it is in German. And here’s the English text: I have nothing against charging for content, if you can. After all, I’m selling a book. But I believe building pay walls...

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