Mantic Media

The breakthrough of Web 2.0 was the first filter. Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, etc. was where you went to find interesting links, filtered by (mostly) anonymous users. This was amazingly useful, but not quite as good as getting recommendations from people you know and trust.

Recently, I’ve found myself visiting these sites less and less. Not because they aren’t interesting anymore, but because a 2nd filter has popped up that’s even more useful.

Services like FriendFeed (and Twitter within that) add another layer of distillation by allowing you to track the activity of people you trust and respect.

Finding quality, relevant links just got even easier for people curious enough to take advantage of it.

Today’s Lefsetz letter is sensational (subscribe):

Despite repeating the mantra that content is king, the major labels never believed this. Nor did the movie studios. Distribution is king. If you can’t find something in the store, in the theatre, it’s like it doesn’t exist. And the major labels controlled the store just like the movie studios controlled the theatres. Sure, they had to compete with each other, but there was no issue of renegades entering their domain, until the Net flattened distribution, made it available to everyone. Any act can sign up with TuneCore and get its wares on iTunes. Giving up a hell of a lot less in the process than they would if they made a deal with a major. And getting paid too, assuming they sell.

And secondary to distribution was marketing. That was the driver in the nineties. That’s what Tommy Mottola was all about. Working the media into a frenzy, driving the public into the record shops. Once again, it was a limited universe. The individual, the so-called indie, had no access to major media. Couldn’t get on the “Today Show”, never mind Top Forty radio or even MTV. Labels would pick their priorities and hype them to high heaven. They were good at this. But now they’re flummoxed, how do they reach a public that’s not paying attention?

First the strategy was street teams. Not only at the gig, but online. Thought was if you just paid enough kids, they’d spread the word on the Web. The audience is stupid, it can be influenced.

Only one problem, it can’t.

Have you visited a message board recently? The hypesters and trolls are usually outed in one post. Fake hype just doesn’t work on the Web. The culture of the Web is to out fraud. Pulling the wool over the public’s eyes is a failed strategy…

And look at the biggest success online. Google. It does essentially no hype. Google triumphed because it was good. Be good and the public will spread the word, users will flock to you, you’ll reach critical mass.

Success on the Web is predicated on quality. Sure, train-wreck value is important too, kind of like a novelty record. But those sites don’t tend to last. Unless they’re all train-wreck all the time. Then there are the MySpaces and Facebooks. Those are like new music genres. They don’t have to be executed perfectly, they just need to be new and different.

So it’s about the idea. And, ultimately, the quality of that idea. It’s not about distribution and it’s not about marketing. And the old guard doesn’t like this.

Go read the whole post. This is true of all art, not just music. I’ve got ideas and will share later.

That headline was a tease. There is no secret. Just make something sensational.

What is sensational? Two components:

• Utility. Its creates value. Something that improves people’s lives. (making someone laugh is very valuable)
• Uniqueness. It doesn’t exist anywhere else and there are no suitable substitutes.

This first is the easy part (relatively). Find something of value and deliver it. The second is the sticking point. It’s ineffable. Some things have it, some don’t, and no one really knows why. Unfortunately banging your head against the wall for long enough won’t make it happen.

It’s magic. The charisma of a brilliant writer. The perfect blend of features and ideals that explodes into a passionate community.

Working hard at the first part is enough to earn most people a living. Finding the second part is what we all dream about.

Murdoch: Technology driving vast changes in media:

Unlike traditional media, choices in the future will be generated from the bottom up, not top-down,” Murdoch explained. “A 13-year-old girl in Delhi is not going to want the same news and entertainment as a 50-year-old executive in Chicago … Our challenge is to personalize the experience for these people so we can reach them both.

Great post today from John Battelle. This part gets me excited:

I believe we are at the beginning of an explosion in online media brands, akin to the explosion of consumer magazine brands in the 1940s and 50s, or the explosion of cable TV brands in the 1980s and 90s. With magazines and cable, we saw a move from a handful of major brands to hundreds of choices, all supported by major consumer marketers. With the Web, I think we can take that an order of magnitude further, or even more - from a handful (AOL, Yahoo, MSN) to thousands, or perhaps even tens of thousands.

Go read the full post.

A big shot at Viacom is echoing the sentiment of my earlier post about portals losing traffic and ad dollars to niche sites:

The Web is fragmenting in a big way. People are using search to find what they are looking for, and they want to go deep into what their passions are.

Depending on the surveys you see … over 50% [of Web surfers] are using search as their electronic program guide. They’re typing into a search box for what they want and they go in deep. That tends to bypass the portal model.

So instead of being told what to look at, people are using search to find it for themselves. Makes sense because more high quality niche content sites are popping up to service those queries.

In addition to Google and Yahoo, people are also using human driven aggregators like Twitter (follow me), Delicious, Digg, StumbleUpon, et al, to find recommendations.

Reminds me of the day I discovered social media. Browsing Digg and Del.icio.us introduced me to great content I never would have found otherwise. More people make the same discovery every day.

This is the entrepreneurial marketer’s dream. Create something great, throw it out there, and the users will spread it for you.

The portals have 2 choices: devote themselves to search and the network business (Google) or move into the niche content business (Yahoo). As Calacanis astutely points out, the second option directly under cuts the first.

The margins are much higher for search, but Yahoo is getting crushed there. Competing with potential partners (eg niche content sites) will only exacerbate that problem.

Things are not looking good for Yahoo, but they are for the little guys who want to build a business around a passion, for users as passionate as they are.

The first era of the web was about digital interactions substituting for person to person interactions. Instead of going to a real store to buy something, you buy from an online store. The details and circumstances of the interaction don’t change much, they just happen online now.

The next era of the web will be about interactions that could never have existed pre-web. This is going to shake things up, destroy many old businesses, and give birth to many new ones.

Take, for example, Redfin.

They have an intriguing and aggressive business model. Instead of providing useful real estate information to consumers and then pointing them to real estate professionals like competitors Trulia and Zillow, Redfin is doing their best to completely remove real estate agents and brokers from at least half of a home sale. [TechCrunch coverage]

In short, Redfin will help you find a house online and then help you buy it without employing a real estate agent.

And here’s the rub: they refund buyers 2/3 of the buy-side real estate fee AND usually negotiate a lower sale price. On average this saves buyers $13,650.

That’s not pocket change. It’s an amount buyers will love bragging to their friends about. Unless traditional real estate agents are willing to change they’re going to get crushed.

Well, if Digg isn’t going to implement my feature idea, it’s good to see that Mixx is going ahead with it.

Convenient that I wrote a bit about conversational marketing the other day, as Starbucks just launched a major interactive marketing campaign.

They’ve created a site where users can contribute ideas for improving Starbucks and vote on the ideas of others. It’s very well executed and seems to be getting good participation.

This isn’t a place for Starbucks to push their message. It’s a way for them to listen and draw customers into a community centered around the Starbucks experience. There is a lot of dialogue going on and a feeling of inclusion.

This is a site users could browse for an extended period, just because they’re interested in the content. It feels more like a conversation than an ad.

I’d say that’s a bit more effective than a banner or a 30 second TV spot.

Mike Arrington recently posted on the trend of blogs accepting venture capital and how the big ad revenue and media attention blogs are receiving has changed the nature of the medium.

His observations are inline with my own, and are the reason I’m bearish on blogging for money.

Once a blog becomes a business the dynamics change. Rather than being about the flow of ideas and active discussion, it becomes about money and politics.

Each link out is an opportunity to brown nose a superior, or failing that, a visitor lost to a competitor. Content is tailored to maximize traffic and attract lucrative sponsors.

As cliques solidify and fear/resentment builds it gets harder to gain traction every day.

Another reason blogging stinks as a business is that it’s driven by talent. If you are the talent, then you can start off as solo act, bootstrap for the first couple years, and hopefully generate enough revenue to hire more talent. But forget about an exit.

Blogging is anti-entrepreneurial, in the sense that the blog founder (unless they can afford to hire top talent from the start) is inextricably tied to the business and the brand.

For economic reasons, the top players will eventually consolidate, either through acquisitions by big media companies or mergers where “the top talent band together in a company where they each have an equity stake”.

With this statement Arrington reveals his ambitions for the TechCrunch empire.