Content is King but Metacontent is Emperor
In a recent comment here, Jeremy Wright of b5media claimed I’ve been saying nothing but “content is King”.
So let me expand on that, and excuse me for going over old Web n.0 ground again. “Content is King” is early Web and real world. Web 2.0, has been largely about flashy presentation and so-called community values, more properly interpreted as “collective”, or socialist, ideology.
Web 3.0 will leave the leftist politics behind and loudly proclaim : “Metacontent is Emperor”. The Semantic Web will be about making new connections between content to make it more usable by “the next five billion” users, who will be the folk who visit retail sites, like Amazon, to buy stuff, and occasionally use Google to search for a product, service, or answer to an exam question.
By metacontent I don’t mean machine-aggregated snippets related to traffic, or dud “voting” extravaganzas. I mean areas where choice and editorial control make human sense of the mass of data coming at us every second.
“Portals” are the buzz word now in online publishing. Portals are metacontent aiming to simplify our choices of what to read and what to do. Almost every blog network is developing portals nowadays. By Jove we’ve even done it ourselves, although we call them network magazines.
That’s so their purpose is understandable to every single individual who lands on them. Everybody knows what a magazine is, but some may be confused by “portal”. It also tells the visitor something : there’s a human interface here — an editor — and the content will be of the level you would expect in a good paper mag.
Metacontent forms a content platform, above the actual content it serves, to give it more meaning and provide more pathways through it, the very aims of the Semantic Web. So Jeremy was being ingenuous in ignoring the layered effect. Of course, we haven’t finished with the magazine format. There’s a long way to go before the ultimate vision is realized — Web 4.0, perhaps?
Recently, over at Bloggertalks, I wrote about Digital Maoism, the aspired-for Will of the Collective, sometimes rose-tinted as the Wisdom of the Crowd. You’re welcome to substitute “mob” if you’d prefer. This is the aim of Web 2.0 as expressed by Tim O’Reilly — the collective intelligence of mankind is, I believe, the ultimate goal. The history of Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao tells us all we need to know about that.
C.G. Jung, who lived through it all from his base in Switzerland, wrote “the individual is the sole carrier of life”. He meant, of course, as observed from a human perspective. Once you let that principle slip, by unleashing the dogs of collective intelligence, you set free every ghastly, super-energized ego on the planet who has the personal objective of total domination and control. Bill Thompson has a great piece in The Register just now, seen from the point of view of a developer.
Now I’m not saying that network magazines are going to solve all these problems, but they are a small pointer to the re-emergence of individual excellence and people-guidance in small distributed parts of the internet. It’s a principle I call Superdemocracy : decisionmaking at the point of maximum competence, which is almost always below the level where decisions are taken now.
The crucial words here are “excellence” and “competence”, not a vague vox pop in which you only have to have two legs and some sort of head to feature on prime-time. In England, we call that “Buggins’s turn” — the idea that all shall have prizes and no-one shall fail, no matter how useless they are. Tony Blair’s Britain is built on that nonsense, and just look at it.
So content is not just King, it also has to be shaped and arranged by people who know what they’re doing and can be held personally accountable for it. In other words, what used to be called “civilization”.
That means editors are not dead, and publishing skills will prevail on the internet over the wayward tidal flows of aggregated popular opinion.
Metacontent is Emperor and Empress.
John, I like that last paragraph….
“That means editors are not dead, and publishing skills will prevail on the internet over the wayward tidal flows of aggregated popular opinion.”
… and know where you’re coming from.
My evolving view of blogging and the information we’re drowning in (and I’m coming from an Aussie angle with this) is what is better: drown your readers with content after content (keep churning them out - even if it’s all quality) or have editors make selections and essentially slow the whole information delivery down a little - my feelings on this is that people are rebelling against all this overload and want something more simple: a strong brand in their niche with decent, quality content but at a slower pace - a “blogazine” if you like.
With your magazine angle push - take away the flak you’ve gotten - you’re obviously trying to meld together blogging techniques with a little tried and true magazine ideals to tempt the mainstream into your readership (same here). The mainstream understands what magazines are - the trick is to bring that online and meld it together with the blogging platform so the early adopters and mainstream get the most out of it.
I know my future readers will have little knowledge of our blogging ways, so I have to go the old newspaper/magazine route to ease them into it - and will slowly educate them to understand blogging.
Sorry for the ramble, just a very interesting topic in that blog networks and blog publications need to find ways to break out of the “echo chamber” of the b’sphere and get at the masses.
BTW, I read the back and forth between you and Jeremy the other day - seems Jeremy is taking over Duncan’s role.
By Martin Neumann on November 26th, 2006 at 2:23 pm
At last someone sees what I’ve been getting at! Who would have guessed it would be you, Martin — and no mention of the Ashes. This must be serious.
Seriously, though, I agree, and what you’re doing locally is a good way of addressing, say, the Australian retail trade, which may not be interested in paying to advertise to an American or European audience. I’ll be keeping an eye on the Small Office Herald, sounds like a great project.
Jeremy taking over Duncan’s role? That’s interesting. The conversation began with a Google Talk ping, and spread into the comments here. I got the feeling he was coming round a lot to this point of view.
Duncan should be back in WA today, so maybe we’ll get more from him on his Julius Caesar moment in Toronto.
By John Evans on November 26th, 2006 at 2:33 pm
The Ashes - I didn’t want to rub it in just yet - I think Warnie will wrap it up quite quickly - rain being your only hope, and there’s some of it coming I hear.
I like an intelligent discussion (after we got rid of all the BS) on this issue - hopefully more can get involved in it because the more minds involved the more ideas that come out of it - and we all benefit.
It’s basically come to this because AdSense won’t do it for most blog networks and the “echo chamber” are very ad blind - to succeed we need new audiences outside of our echo chambers (god I’m starting to hate the term “echo chamber”
I definitely know from talking with Marketing Managers that Aussie advertisers don’t want to go after anyone outside of Australia - those that want to reach a local audience want strong results (strong leads/sales) - and going niche as I have is the way to go - it’s my selling point. And I can tell you, it’s working.
Advertisers also don’t understand (or care much about) blogging so the way I’m going (newspaperish/mag style) is helping to bring in the advertisers.
It’s been good watching the reaction to your strong pushing of the “magazine” concept over recent months.
I learnt a lot. I’m still brainstorming how I’ll brand myself.
Following that, next step is getting my brand out to the mainstream.
BTW, the Matt’s BlogMedia / ProBlogging move took me by total surprise. I’m wondering quietly to myself if there is a business/revenue model in reporting on blogging. Not quite a death knell, but maybe the fad is simmering down.
Blogging is maturing, eh John - Lots of changes and growing pains along the way as it settles (if it ever does).
I still believe the whole blog network craze over the past year was caused by the 8-figure sale of Weblogs Inc. No matter what anybody might want to say/believe many jumped on the bandwagon thinking 25mill for a handful of blogs - gosh that’s gotta be easy money, I can do that.
Many are finding it tough. Although I still see B5 as really the only big winner from the pack in the long run.
By Martin Neumann on November 26th, 2006 at 3:15 pm
Yeah, the echo chamber idea came from Chris Pirillo, the ubergeek, so even the natural denizens of b’sphere are getting nervous.
I like your local focus a lot, Martin, especially as Syntagma is concentrating on retail names. Of course, Walmart plays to the US and the UK, and many points south. But it doesn’t always work well. I deal with an ad agency that has offices in San Francisco and London. But it’s the SF office that holds our account. So I’m looking at the US primarily, but a special UK magazine full of .co.uk sites and focussed on shoppy stuff like upmarket shirts, wines and travel goods is next up. Maybe I’ll morph into Hugh McCleod.
On Matt, he’s putting on a brave face, but it does look like a headlong retreat to me. Not so bad if you’ve got something fresher in mind, but he’s still stuck with “blogger” in his company name. I can’t see face to face consulting on blogging working out, when people can just go through Darren’s massive archives and find anything they want.
And b5? For me, the jury’s still out. It’s got everything, except a publisher to my mind. Now they’ve got the VCs breathing down their Duncanless necks, and huge monthly outgoings. Unless they adapt fast and diversify a bit out of that walled enclosure, I’m not so sure about their future. I get the feeling Jeremy’s listening very carefully to what people are saying, and it’s in Darren’s character to do the same. Let’s hope they hit the right trail soon.
By John Evans on November 26th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
It works very well - thank you very much.
Yes, Darren has alot of information available - however, if you’re a Fortune 500 company - you’re most likely *scared to death* of blogging. You’re not going to go running over to Darren’s blog to find out this information - because you’re scared. We’ve been doing these sorts of conversations for quite some time already.
And no, I’m not putting on a brave face. We’re debt free and we’re not being forced into this by anyone - we’re just making a strategic move to what we think is the next business opportunity for us and one where our heart lies.
Matt
By Matt Craven on November 26th, 2006 at 11:27 pm
Well, when you’ve got 50 blogs in your network (like me) .. and do not have much time to properly nurture and promote them (like me) .. I know I’ve certainly enjoyed reading the COMBO RSS FEEDs that aggregate each channel into one feed .. than all the individual feeds ..
It just takes less time to get a good scan of it all i.m.o. and that’s what H.E.N.- II is about.
For me personally .. this whole subject is like … // ever see That Simpsons episode where Santa’s Little Helper fails obedience class .. because everything he hears is … “blah blah blah blah .. blah blah Santa’s Little Helper blah blah” … // THAT.
It’s odd .. but I think this is the future of us little network of blogs. Everybody is telling everybody else that you should not go wide .. go long and deep on certain niche topics .. but as a reader .. I know I enjoy seeing a mix. Maybe these portals are the way to go - I think so with H.E.N. anyway .. Instead of group blogs with group authors .. it’s like group domain URL’s now.
By HART (1-800-HART) on November 27th, 2006 at 11:46 am
Well, HART, a network magazine is a “wide” solution by definition. There are advantages to that, especially that individual experts can have their own space. I too dislike “group blogs”. they rarely work for me as I’m always trying to figure out who wrote what.
The magazine model also allows you to shoot at bigger niches, broken down at site level into tighter ones. Our new retail mags — ShopShape UK and Retailz USA — will do just that.
By John Evans on November 27th, 2006 at 11:53 am
How would you differ from what, say, Debbie Weil is doing? There are lots of business blogging consultants out there chasing after the Fortune 500s.
Presumably, you’d concentrate on the technical aspects, serverside etc?
The best of luck, anyway.
By John Evans on November 27th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
[...] I’ve not had a chance to read the pdf yet, but if Carr’s precis is spot on, it reinforces much of what we’ve been saying here for quite a while : Wang argues that both ends of the value chain — content creation and content distribution — are increasingly characterized by oversupply and hence weak profitability. Value, as a result, is migrating to the center of the value chain, where content aggregation and branding take place. The profit, in other words, is in packaging. Which means that, economically anyway, the middleman is still sitting pretty. [...]
By » SYNTAGMA - the home of Syntagma Media on November 28th, 2006 at 3:10 pm
[...] Recently Syntagma Media hit that ceiling with our wish to attract serious retail advertising by launching two massive network magazines, one in the US and the other in the UK. I’ve documented the problems in making that decision, here and here. [...]
By » SYNTAGMA - the home of Syntagma Media on December 4th, 2006 at 12:17 pm