The misguided search for an ‘iTunes for news’
Submitted by Basheera Khan on January 14, 2009 – 10:58 amNo Comment
David Carr at The New York Times wishes someone would develop a media business model which would do for news what iTunes has done for the music industry. Seamus McCauley responds:
“… the analogy with iTunes is desperate, misleading, unhelpful, simply false. iTunes is a business model for distributed content, a way of monetising the fragment itself. Until every news article, every photo, every headline costs something (even a fraction of a fraction of a penny) to read or includes a paid-for ad we do not and will not have an iTunes for news.”
Jeff Jarvis adds his 2c on Carr’s fallacious analogy between the music and news industries; Mathew Ingram says Carr’s column is a sign of just how desperate things have become at even major papers like the Times.
Elsewhere on the web:
Stephen Waddington picks up on an interesting experiment emerging in social media PR and marketing, via Mark Earls who’s called for a brand-free January (i.e. not to use the b-word) because: ”… the word itself is a sloppy metaphor for a whole bunch of stuff (much of which isn’t entirely true) with the power to distract you from precise thinking, expression and action, (why ‘build the brand’ when you could be doing something really amazing with the service/product etc…?) so let it go…”. Earls expounded on this thinking in a Gaping Void interview late last year.
Given the state of the global economy and the job market, it’s hardly surprising to see a slew of how-to articles springing up around finding work social media stylee. Mashable carries a guide to building the ultimate social media resume, and Jeremiah Owyang turns life coach with this challenge to readers to ponder their career mission; he’s also looking for respondents to a survey he’s put together to understand who’s hiring in this recession and why.
ReadWriteWeb reports on something most people with social network fatigue will welcome with open arms – a system which integrate all your social networks from around the web into one central dashboard, envisioned by Marc Canter. Here’s the pitch:
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