Some of my good friends are talking about the death of the pageviews, coming crisis in media economy, and now Jeff Jarvis is talking about the distributed media economy. I love the whole debate – except for two things.
Jeff and other media pundits, however, don’t address the big question: how will this economy be greased? In other words, how will people make money? That’s the big question, and someone please answer that. Otherwise, lets just go with the pageviews – at least they keep the wheels in motion.
(Sure, the widgets are a big phenomenon, bolstered by the growing popularity of MySpace, a business incidentally supported by pageviews-based advertising system. Just saying….!)
Second question: if people cannot agree with Comscore’s current data collection methodology, something they have had years to fine tune, how can you expect anyone to take their future (and nascent) efforts in the Ajaxified web!
It would be nice to get data that compares the growth of Ajax-web versus old school web in 2006. Maybe Hitwise, a Comscore competitor, could do us all a favor?
Om, there has been a ton of talk about how foo-barred things are on the web. However, there has not been real progress towards a set of metrics that are a solution. Do you have any ideas on what stats make sense? I just posted on the topic on Widgify and am trying to see if people have any good ideas. Hope all is well! 🙂
Jeff and other media pundits, however, don’t address the big question: how will this economy be greased?
the short answer is this: “sucessful engagements.”
for people such as yourself, or your average blogger, it’s about being topical or providing needed insight. Jumping from there to standing in line at the bank is a whole other problem that I believe caused the death of a bunch of companies in the last months of the previous century.
Ultimately the most obvious model for sites like yours is that used by Stew Alsop, Esther Dyson, Ben Rosen and even the NEA in the preInternet era. it’sd the newsletter-convert the cream to an event audience model. Without that component you’re just shouting into the wind and counting echo returns.
Engagements bind you and an audience. Pageviews are like masturbation– it may make you feel good, but it doesn’t result in genetic propagation so it fails the genetic imperative test.
Any VC that breaks away from their crackberry during a presentation long enough to note and record the raw number of pageviews cited in your presentation should be avoided. He’s still subscribing to the Industry Standard and hasn’t figured out that “in space no one can hear you scream.”
Om, think “newsletter model” and “how do I monetize an “A” list readership?”
hard questions!
best,
Jim Forbes
(from a small mountaintop in rurl San Diego County where I have my very own personal tractor).