Great post about start-ups Vs. “a real job”.
If your baby doesn’t show you something special in its first year or so, the smart move is usually to drop it like a bad habit.
Same with women, only she better show you something special in the first week or so. How many times should I have dumped my partners in my first year with Ennunci?
sei in bici, vedi un automobilista un po’ troppo lanciato che potrebbe non fermarsi allo stop, hai paura, inchiodi, ci sono sabbia e sassolini per strada, cadi e rischi di ammazzarti. Mi era capitata praticamente la stessa cosa e quasi esattamente nello stesso posto 8 anni fa. Soccorso da due ragazzi di Napoli, mi avevano subito detto che avrei dovuto denunciare il comune, e si erano offerti di fare da testimoni. Avevano ragione loro, e io non ho ancora imparato la lezione.
E poi invece zitti zitti quelli della BnF fanno un accordo con Google. C’era una volta la Francia?
Va bene che quelli del PD sono ormai web2.0, tutti YouDEM, 123DEM (stella!) e addirittura pronti per le Frattocchie 2.0, ma un redirect da festaunita.it a festademocratica.it era troppo difficile?
Alice(.it) e Virgilio(.it) si sono separati. Il fascinoso pescatore ha mollato la sciatta velina?
More Bad News for the Newspapers: Your Main Offering Is Your – Free! – Website
Newspapers say they won’t have a print edition in only a few years’ time; view Google and the Internet – the largest distribution channel they ever had, and for free! – as their enemy; seem to think that the world will come to a standstill the day they will take their content off the web; and, contrary to all evidence, seem optimistic that the public will be happy to pay for their content.
I think they’re wrong on all the above points. And it’s nothing less than shocking to see that the folly runs so deep that the Associated Press thinks it can charge $ 12.50 just to let you quote 5 words of one of their articles on your blog, not to mention that they’re acting as if fair use didn’t exist, and even try to charge you for quoting words and works that are in the public domain.
First, I agree with Malcolm Gladwell: the printed newspaper is a pretty cool product.
Even though the printed version of the paper is on the decline, I think there is still room for a printed newspaper. After all, not every print publisher is losing money, and there are opportunities to be had, both on the high end and on the low end, and perhaps even somewhere in the middle, as long as papers are willing to forget about the margins they used to enjoy. And while I think that newspapers should explore the opportunities offered by the E-paper and the mobile phone versions, I think they should not blind themselves to the fact that these are, at best, untested, and that the centerpiece of their offering must be their free website, and for many good reasons.
The web is where people are and where people look for the news. Choose not to be there, or to shut yourself off from the traffic Google sends your way by making your content available only to those who pay – and no, an iTunes model does not make sense – and in 5 years’ time nobody will remember about you. The same that applies to e-commerce is true here: choose not to sell (not to publish your articles) on the web, and somebody else will gladly do it in your place. As Clay Shirky rightly said, it doesn’t make sense to talk about a publishing industry when the publishing part of the business has actually become very simple. The cost of running a press on the web is very low, so there will always be content – though not necessarily quality content. If you choose not to let us read your articles, we will miss you. But you will miss us even more dearly.
The web is the best market research tool ever invented. Which articles get read the most? Commented on the most? Linked by blogs the most? Is it not perhaps time to fire that expensive foreign correspondent who keeps on turning out average, lifeless articles or whose articles get little attention anyway on your paper – and hire a couple of local investigative reporters instead? Can you do this kind of research with the paper version, or on the Kindle? Not really. On the web, people can ready any paper they want. Which part of the news you carry in print is interesting on the web? Concentrate on those news. Cover local news. Serve your community. The NY Times won’t do that. That’s your opportunity. Even your printed paper will be better as a result.
The web is the social and collaborative tool we use to try to make sense of reality. With the paper version, or the E-Paper version, we can read YOUR version. It’s interesting, but not enough. We want links. We don’t want you to speak down to us. Links to your sources, to raw data, to editorials with different opinions, to blogs, to other newspapers on international matters or on things you are not an expert about etc. Why? Because the web is made of links (it’s how it works); because links have value; because readers don’t want to take your word for everything. Today, filtering news does not mean summarizing everything in your article once and for all, but rather linking out to other points of view and trying to help your readers make sense of the world around them, with your help and on their own. And if you think this, too, is going to go back into the box because you will offer us a safe E-Paper version of what you offer us today, you’re wrong.
The web is the social environment in which news are going to be read, shared and judged. Unlike what was happening only 10 years ago, online readers today have access to news sources and the tools to filter the news. That was a large part of the role the newspaper played. That’s over. What can newspapers do today? How about give their readers the opportunity to interact with one another? Let your readers vote (up or down) every single article, let them leave (threaded) comments on every article, ask your journalists to at least follow these conversations, and sometimes reply to comments, let readers vote (up or down) comments, let them create a user profile with all the articles they liked and all the comments they left, let them connect with their friends and see what their friends read, let them meet new people whose comments they like etc. They might even help you understand what to put on the first page of the paper tomorrow!
The web can be profitable. Do something smart and brave, like opening up to the web, and reap the rewards. Stop thinking you can’t double your readership. You can. And while not cheap, the web is open, while the cost of publishing an E-Paper with the Kindle, or a mobile version for the iPhone, is and will remain high, and the toll you will be asked to pay to Amazon, Apple and the mobile phone operators will make Google look like your best friend in comparison.
Embrace the web without fear – you could be surprised by how well you end up doing!
di sicuro userei Philtro. Pare che lo usino molti italiani, se è vero che in questo momento il cinguettatore con più disliked posts è Alberto, disliked 98 times. Nella top10 dei più odiati figurano anche Enrica e Macchianera, hated 96 times. Non c’è che dire. Complimenti, ragazzi.
It used to be that company taglines were the only proprietary words in the dictionary – and that was bad enough. But things are getting worse, and the Associated Press now apparently thinks that if you want to copy and paste an excerpt of even just 5 words from one of their articles, you should pay them twelve bucks fifty, thank you very much.
Update: It’s worse than I thought: they will even sell you words in the public domain!
Sta quasi pensando di mettersi a usare twitter per gli status update, e di tenere facebook come puro social network, che i permalink ai miei update mi mancano, in effetti. Continua, invece, a non capire chi usa twitter per scambiarsi link, in particolare a cose di lavoro. D’altra parte, è ben conscio di come siano sempre di più i blog che rilanciano le notizie in modo pedissequo rispetto a quelli che vi aggiungono delle considerazioni personali. 160 caratteri sono fin troppi, per un sacco di persone, e forse dovremmo convincerli a passare definitivamente a twitter.
Il dramma della sinistra in Italia è che è una sinistra di soli sentimenti e non di azione. Sabato poco dopo l’ora di pranzo a Radio Popolare il palinsesto è stato più o meno il seguente: reportage dal campionato europeo di nuoto sincronizzato maschile gay (Italia medaglia d’argento, complimenti, ragazzi). Mi chiedo: nuoto sincronizzato maschile non era gay abbastanza? E come fanno a essere sicuri che non vi siano etero? E perchè mai, poi? E li schedano tutti, con scritto ‘gay’ di fianco all’iscrizione alla federazione? Non è illegale? Senza contare poi il saluto della giornalista a fine servizio e intervista: “un bacio, o un abbraccio, o quello che vuoi tu”. Secondo reportage: una grigliata di vegetariani. Giuro. Anche qui, trattati come se fossero animali da circo. Poi, se non ricordo male, un servizio da un qualche accampamento di nomadi o centro temporaneo, o magari campo profughi in Palestina. Non ricordo, ma ha poca importanza. Come negli altri due casi, la cosa importante era solo dimostrarsi – gaffe del bacio o dell’abbraccio a parte – più “di sinistra”, alternativi, fricchettoni, dolci d’animo e dalla parte di ciò che è buono e giusto degli altri. Fino a quando la sinistra italiana non sarà una sinistra d’azione, e in grado di spiegare perchè i diritti di tutti sono diritti anche miei – fino a quel giorno (se mai arriverà) in Italia la sinistra non vincerà mai. Non ha mai vinto – Prodi ha vinto – e non vincerà mai.
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