Nichifying the Web: The Future of Digital Media
Posted: November 02, 2009
Jason Davis, Vice President, Disney.com Global Network
By Brittany Lawson
[San Francisco] The Digital Media Conference West show, held here Oct. 28, brought together the leading analysts, entrepreneurs and financiers of the rapidly growing digital media industry. The panelists and attendees discussed issues including monetization strategies for the future (touching upon three companies in Asia who did $510 million in revenue in 2008 in social network gaming), use of content (where are the lines drawn for third-party data use?) and forecasts for the future of digital media (more niche, consumer-oriented content).
More Niche Content
Across the board, panelists and speakers predicted that niche content would be the future of digital media. Bill Tancer, general manager, Global Research, Experian Hitwise, says that the early adopter will “seek guidance through niche portals with an editorial viewpoint and that there is an interest in niche social networks that specialize on online video sharing.” This coincides with Nick Veronis, managing director, Veronis Suhler Stevenson, who says that “the scarcest commodity today is audience attention,” whereas pre-Internet it had been distribution. The Internet has made it possible for companies to distribute their brands across the market easily and for a very low cost. Time spent on the site and user interaction has become the more effective measure of success. In order to maintain audience attention, digital media providers are focused on the promotion and availability of content that is pertinent to an individual’s interests.
Jay Adelson, co-founder and CEO, Digg, also addressed the need for digital media companies, including Digg, to address the future trends in content demand. In his opinion, Google’s job was to make sense of everything on the Internet and Digg is a people-powered relevance engine. However, in order to meet the increasing needs to find out information that is not only popular, but relevant and interesting, as well, Adelson says Digg is in the process of making “substantive changes to the site.” These changes include processes to create another layer of vetting on the site in order to expose better stories sooner.
These demands alluded to the Web 3.0 subscription model, which the social media panel discussed as having huge potential in the future as a way to monetize content.
Customer Awareness
Craigslist founder and “customer sentence representative” Craig Newmark spoke about catering to your customers. “Take care of your customers and you will succeed” is his mantra, and this is executed in the fact that he will “only do customer service until he dies.” Craigslist is an outlier in the digital media world - the user interface is quite simple and there are no plans in the foreseeable future to change that. Newmark wants to give customers what they want, not what designers want.
About his monetization strategy, he simply says he does what “feels right.” Newmark felt that charging people posting jobs and real estate seemed right, and not charging people looking for jobs and places to live seemed right, too.
With the revenue numbers for the year projected at $100 million for Craigslist, digital media companies can learn quite a bit from Craigslist’s unwavering focus on its customers and the ability to best provide them service.
Data is King
At, “Data is King - Learning (and Profiting) from the Wealth of Information Gathered Online,” the panel and audience engaged in an animated debate about the use of user data information. All three panelists aggregate data from consumers using their clients’ services in one way or another.
Dave Goldberg, CEO, Survey Monkey, which allows users to create and send surveys, told the audience that his customers own their data.
Jason Lopatecki, CSO, TubeMogul, reports aggregate data on behavioral activities of Internet video watchers using flash-embedded technologies. He stated that they share nothing personally identifiable with companies. The idea that there is a differentiation from analyzing group behaviors and selling personal data is something that has been seen in the past (like credit card companies and large retailers reporting on customer behavior), however, as the boundaries for this are still being established around this issue attendees seemed concerned about who gets their data.
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