New York Times Dominates The Tech Blogosphere
Has anyone noticed that the New York Times is completely dominating the tech blogosphere today? Five of the top eight stories on Techmeme today are from the NYT — and the #1 story is ABOUT the NYT:
All of the stories are indeed notable for one reason or another — here’s my .02 cents:
In Web Traffic Tallies, Intruders Can Say You Visited Them
It’s amazing how much online media is still a raw traffic game — the more the better, no matter the source, which leads to abuses like those profiled in this piece. This is why the New York Times cozying up with Digg actually makes sense, at least for the time being — there’s no denying that Digg can drive traffic. In fact, there were two NYT stories on the first three pages of Digg when I just checked. Are any of these Diggers people that NYT advertisers want to reach? Will any of them spend any time on the site? Will any of them become regular readers? Who cares! It’s traffic!
Times Sq. Ads Spread Via Tourists’ Cameras
As my friend Rex Hammock points out, the term “consumer-generated pictures” is indeed a bad omen. And for all those marketers looking to stage events in Times Square — beware the Chevy Tahoe effect — consumers have this knack for sensing in-authenticity and taking your brand in a direction that you didn’t exactly intend.
YouTube Adds a Layer of Filtering to Be a Little Nicer
So much for the leveraging the power of the YouTube community. Too much corporate interference, and the consumers will start looking for elsewhere for a more suitable experience — the same reason why pre-roll video won’t work, as Fred Wilson argues: “So if you want to build a business around digital media, you have to be the best place to view/consume the media. Being the only place to see it is a naive strategy that won’t work. You have to make digital media easy to find, easy to watch/listen/view, easy to comment/tag/share, and easy to replicate/reblog/republish.”
Squeezing Money From the Music
You’ve got to do a lot of aggregating across the long tail to work your way back up to the big hit CD business that was based in part on getting people to buy songs they didn’t want.
Sales of iPods and iTunes Not Much in Sync
Perhaps if iTunes had a decent recommendation engine or could better harness the power of sites like Last.fm and Pandora, the long tail might do a bit more wagging.
The tech blogosphere has certainly been ahead of the curve in many instances on breaking news and original reporting, but don’t count out “old media” journalists just yet.