CONSTANT BETA

I chanced upon Noah’s link to Y Combinator’s Request For Startups. Both the RFS’s hit home with me and I thought I’d take a few minutes to pen down my thoughts.

1The Future of Journalism – This is such a loaded query. What indeed is the future of content ? More importantly, what is the future of content consumption? This particular RFS asks us to consider this question from a different perspective: how would this site make money. I don’t have the answer but there are several themes floating in my head that perhaps can make some sense when sewed together?

Setting expectations from the beginning: I’ve written in the past about social media expectations and how they are directly related to the future of any new business service in the social media space. (PS – Social media is not the same as social networking, although some rules still apply) In this post that I wrote a few months ago, I expounded on the premise that success often follows social networks or services that set the expectations from the very begining. Since the obvious goal here is to make money, the ideal content website would approach this by defining reader/user expectations before anything. I’d approach the build of such a site with a simple premise in mind: people will pay for content and service when they percieve value, so don’t focus on building a user-base first. Charge from the VERY begining. Case in point: Club Penguin, Moncole (web-only edition) etc.. Threadless, etc.

Multi-platform content? Content limited to browser? I think this is worth considering especially in light of new technologies. People are OK with paying the monthly subscription fee for blogs they can access for free otherwise on Kindle. Essentially, people are paying for mobility and for convenience. I think the future content site should be built with the idea of convenience and mobility at its core? It would be foolish to consider limiting a content site to just the browser. For those who still enjoy their ‘content’ in print, perhaps the idea here is to set up print-kiosks aroudn the world at airports and other major city-hubs that allow anyone to pick and choose articles they’d like to read on paper and simply hit the print button. Viola – the selected content is packaged into a magazine/newspaper, at a premium ofcourse. Literally turning the tables around. Case in point: magcloud, blurb, Mine magazine (not sure how successful the venture was, but definitely knocking on the future of content)

I also just read a very interesting article in this months’ Fast Company about multi-platform storytelling to be launched by Penguin and the creator of CSI. The idea here is to use books, video, games and several other platforms to tell a linear story. Perhaps the same model can be used for news/content?

Format: This area is so tricky. On one hand the success of sites liek Breakingnews and on the other there’s the chatter around the $100 billion hyper-local news industry that remains untapped. I am torn. I get my news from my “network” – whether that’s on Fbook or Twitter. I follow enough local friends to not feel out of loop and I follow enough strangers to know exactly whats up with the world. So I’m not so sure I’d want to pay for that. What I’d be willing to invest my time and money is long-form news and op-eds from incredibly smart people. Case in point: The Daily Beast and HuffingtonPost

I think that people like me generally approach content with this point of view: If it’s interesting, it will find me. So what would make someone like me ’seek’ out and ‘pay’ for content?

As someone who started her career as a journalist, the future of content is very close to my heart and I’d love to hear your thoughts, ideas and things you are seeing in the marketplace.