The sites that succeed are those that get a lot of traffic. To sustain such traffic levels, some publications publish fresh content every six minutes#.
Some media sites have established the role that curation has in developing and transmitting news. Other sites aggregate content and information published around the Web and to social networks in an easy and visually compelling format.
I argued here that there's a value equation between aggregator and curators.
Traffic is good for advertisers -- and most publishing models are sustainable through advertising. Yet, there is also an argument to be made for relevant advertising. Ads as a service is how Josh Quittner, a veteran Time Inc. journalist turned editorial director at Fipboard put it in a recent interview#.
Flipboard defines itself as the world’s first social magazine. Quoting Laura Locke at CNET News:
Social magazines can be personalized according to a reader's interests by pulling in real-time content feeds from sources like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as RSS feeds from a variety of Web sites and publications.
Last July, Flipboard launched brand advertising on its iPad application in partnership with Condé Nast The New Yorker, Bon Appétit, and Wired. American Express and now Lexus are the first brands to take advantage of this partnership with the social-reading platform.
To date, the iPad app was downloaded 3.5 million times and got 550 million monthly "flips" to the 50 publishing partners that have agreed to share content through Flipboard. The company got $60 million in investment funds.
Those are some pretty compelling numbers. They show that the future of media:
- is social - reading, learning together and sharing with friends is more fun, and profitable
- it streams - having the ability to quickly glance through content and connect with personal social presences makes sites sticky
- it scales - updating and refreshing information and stories frequently is a sure recipe to get people to come back to your app or site and to bring their friends through sharing
All of which is sustainable when looking at it as a model for trade. Flipboard is one of my favorite apps, and I'm glad they're building up a way to be here for the long haul.
Publishing original material and providing value daily is not for the faint of heart. Without the support of a committed tribe who gives back is some way, commenting and sharing at a minimum, it is also quite easy to decide to trade on other activities that provide higher yield, like client work.
What I provide here is not memory -- the ability to find information is available to all of you who want to run a search and keep up with the news. I provide clock speed, which is connection with meaning. And that is to help those of you who self select to trade better and compete.