Guest author Ryan Warren, FirstRain VP of Marketing
Do you create, or do you aggregate? That, it seems, is the pressing content question of the day. Penny posted on Tuesday about the seismic shift happening in the media space as news aggregators like The Huffington Post begin to assume market pre-eiminence over more traditional content creator/distributors like The New York Times. Even NYT Executive Editor Bill Keller‘s expressions of aggravation, have now had to be moderated as I’m sure his somewhat snarky commentary triggered a wave of exasperation and irritation amongst the New Media community.
In reality, of course, a forced choice between content creation and aggregation is a false dichotomy. The explosion of innovative content consumption platforms has simultaneously sharpened people’s hunger for more quality content and for technology to improve the efficiency and efficacy of consumption. Content creation and aggregation are like conjoined twins with a passive-aggressive relationship. They may share the same heart, lungs and kidney, but that doesn’t mean they have to like each other.
In addition to the NYT/HuffPo challenge that Penny points out, this shift is also well represented by LinkedIn’s recent entry into news aggregation space. In fact, their new feature LinkedIn Today is a great example of several emergent forces coming together, including Web news aggregation, social networking and real-time news. It allows business-focused users to consume an aggregated feed of linked and posted news stories that people within your identified LinkedIn industry are sharing on Twitter or LinkedIn, and lets you further customize by identifying additional industries or incorporating the twitter feeds of a range of news sources from Ad Age to Bloomberg News to Harvard Business Review.
It’s a smart play, because despite Twitter’s protestations, to date they haven’t provided a very robust platform for business users to consume an aggregated real-time news experience (a la TweetDeck). LinkedIn’s move steps in and intercepts that need by leveraging an existing social network that many of us in the business world are increasingly invested in, while also providing a whole new entrée into real-time news for those who haven’t yet jumped onto the Twitter bandwagon.
But with all this focus on the schism between the forces that ‘Create’ and ‘Aggregate’, there’s another critical element out there that’s just as powerful but sometimes is overlooked: let’s call it ‘Interrelate’. It means the unique and powerful value that business monitoring applications like FirstRain bring to the table. Although we do bring together vast amounts of news and other business content from the Web, what we can do that others can’t is interrelate that content through our (unique and patented) semantic categorization, deliver you some really targeted results, and then show you emerging trends through some pretty nice visualization analytics. What this means to business users in practical terms is quite effectively filtering out Web noise. It makes the time they spend getting up to speed on, or monitoring on an ongoing basis, an industry, market, company or subject, much for efficient and effective.
And not only is this more efficient, but through this type of interrelating of content a new kind value is generated (one that should be of great interest to content creators): the ability to make useful connections between content that may not have been anticipated by the creators themselves. This allows solutions like FirstRain to drive even more high-value traffic back to content creators than conventional news aggregators (or more general-purpose search engines), since we’re making connections for users that others simply can’t.
So as we look at the evolving relationship between content creators and aggregators, let’s resist the temptation to think of this relationship as twin poles between which we must navigate. The key role that ‘interrelators’, like FirstRain, play may emerge as an equally significant link in that chain.
There is a seismic shift going on that is continuing to shake the foundations of journalism. The intellectual view was well captured in an editorial by NYT executive editor Bill Keller – while the commercial reality is impossible to avoid as you can see in this chart from Business Insider on the drop in ad revenue over the last 10 years.
Keller’s piece, which is at once thought provoking and snarky, expresses annoyance at the hyper-inflated public and market valuations of aggregators like The Huffington Post, arguing that AOL’s purchase of HuffPo no more moves it into the content game than a company “announcing plans to improve its cash position by hiring a counterfeiter.”
Clearly he has an issue not only with the HuffPo team making out like bandits – but more so because they are doing so, in his mind, through aggregation. Earlier in the piece, Keller describes the news aggregation business model as “taking words written by other people, packaging them on your own Web site and harvesting revenue that might otherwise be directed to the originators of the material,” a practice he then likens to Somalian piracy. Methinks he also finds Arianna’s ability to capture a thought and repackage it in a warmer, more convincing way, very annoying.
Keller’s irritation is somewhat understandable, after all, he presides over one of the world’s great newsgathering organizations, one maintained at great expense and passion, and he’s watching the public perception of the monetary value of that content sink precipitously. But while aggregation in some form is here to stay, the quality of journalism is a pendulum that will swing back. His bemoaning of the fate of journalism is not unlike to bemoaning of the smut being circulated in England in Victorian times. Yes, there were great writers publishing in periodicals at the time (Dickens for example) but at the same time the Illustrated London News was a bestseller with stories of scandal and mayhem like Jack the Ripper.
I think Keller substantially misinterprets the value and appeal of HuffPo. Not only does HuffPo attract readers with pop culture – it also hosts a tremendous amount of valued, original opinion content authored by high-profile bloggers from politicians to religious leaders, mixed with aggregated news, yes I admit all from a decidedly left-wing perspective. I am often surprised to find out who is reading HuffPo. Not only rabid liberals in the mid West, but also academics and captains of industry. I find out because they tell me their reaction to some of the provocative pieces I have myself written for HuffPo.
More importantly, however, I think Keller misses the overall shift in content dynamics to which The NYT is also subject – the growing ability to analyze new and aggregated content and derive relationships between them making the stream both relevant and unexpected. Something we provide to our business users.
It was International Women’s Day yesterday and our Gurgaon team celebrated the day by giving roses to each of our female employees in the Gurgaon office and taking them out to lunch. You can see a picture of most of our our female team members below.
FirstRain is an unusual company in that so many of the leadership are women. Myself (CEO), YY (COO) and Aparna (GM India). We all developed our careers based on deep technical training and hard work – there are no quotas in the technology world – and it is both unusual and worth celebrating to have a deeply technical company with almost 50% of the leadership being women (and one woman board member too). It may be indeed be unique, we don’t know. And it is probably a sign that women continue to improve the opportunities they have in our society.
As Aparna (our GM in India) told her team:
“International Women’s Day (8 March) is a global day celebrating the economic, political and social achievements of women past, present and future.
The new millennium has witnessed a significant change and attitudinal shift in both women’s and society’s thoughts about women. We do have female astronauts and prime ministers, more women in the boardrooms, greater equality in legislative rights, and more importantly women’s visibility as impressive role models in every aspect of life. And so the tone and nature of IWD has, for the past few years, moved from being a reminder about the negatives to a celebration of the positives.
2011 is the Global Centenary Year and let’s take this opportunity to celebrate success of all women and especially the India woman Rainmakers.”
A subset of our Gurgaon female team members:
Do you remember those futuristic articles or stories we’d read in the 80s that talked about how with technology we would work less and have more time to recreate? Technology was going to free us from the shackles of our desk. Well, that is possible, if you actually wanted to change it.
The technology of the future has freed us from our desks (mobile phones, laptops, etc.), and this article discusses how the right mix of technology can easily enhance our productivity. Additionally, the Internet has dramatically changed the way that we gather information for business decisions.
With improvements in analytical algorithms in business monitors like FirstRain, Capital IQ, FactSet, and many others, more valuable data can be targeted. The FirstRain platform can filter out the noise, and simultaneously generate highly targeted business intelligence with its patented semantic technology and analytics. Through such advancements, analysts can not only receive information that is personalized and adaptive to their markets, but discover valuable patterns and data trends as well.
In speaking with one of our customers—a sales rep named Samantha Barrett, I was able to understand how she used FirstRain to solve four problems:
This newfound method of information gathering is contradictory to what used to be considered the “traditional” way of researching. Think of it as a new perspective for a new century—it was acceptable, and necessary to “do-it-yourself” given tech limitations in the 90s and first half of the last decade. Searching for your own information was the way to go—who else could you trust to find the most relevant results and cover all the bases? Well, now we can automate it, and we have to start building that trust.
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The change in information management models to platforms like FirstRain comes as no surprise. Using solutions like FirstRain allows for an easy, efficient way to manage information. Not having to worry about how credible the sources are, or how much time you spend gathering information allocates time for more important tasks.
Being able to understand information in different ways, and having access to meaningful patterns and data trends can directly or indirectly make all the difference in an entire business. Those who embrace the technology will be more effective, and have access to a plethora of information that they otherwise wouldn’t.
The stories of the future are now the stories of the present—the revolution is here and it would be smart to adopt the 21st century trend of “trusting tech,” as the end result will benefit decision makers. No longer can you do-it-yourself, the 80s were right, and once again technology dramatically eases our lives.
It’s interesting to look at the smartphone choice our users have made across different markets. We conducted a mobile survey a couple of weeks ago and found that a BlackBerry is still a necessity in the corporate environment, but often not enough. However, our survey results are contrary to the latest consumer survey that shows Android surpassing Apple iOS and the Blackberry platform in market share.
While we are developing the FirstRain mobile application, our survey showed that among the users surveyed they have an average of 1.2 devices each – and when we broke it down by device to find that 14% of the BlackBerry users were also using an additional device. We suspect this is because while BlackBerry may be mandated by many firms it simply does not have the app support and so is not as useful and fun outside of the standard corporate apps like email and calendars.
 FirstRain Corporate Survey February 2011 |
What does this mean for RIM? Research in Motion first introduced the BlackBerry in 1999, and 12 years ago the BlackBerry was able to hold its own— a strong operating system, stable, reliable—all the works. With the highly anticipated BlackBerry 6 OS debuting with the Torch, BlackBerry users can keep up with the competition—right?
The BlackBerry Torch does have all new features—upgraded camera, proper touch screen, security features, built-in GPS, universal search, and perhaps most favored by IT — the administrative control available. But is this enough to keep up with personal and work demands?
We found that for our users, the BlackBerry as a smart device is not cutting it. The app development has been slow for the BlackBerry OS, and the functionality of the apps are not up to par. If 14% (and growing) of our users need a second device, usually an iPad or iPhone, to maintain the quick pace of the workday, the Torch will not salvage RIM as a business-friendly product.
If 2011 is the year of the enterprise app, then this may be the beginning of the end for RIM. The BlackBerry has not made substantial enough strides to maintain functionality with all of the “super apps.” Salesforce already has 20,000 companies that have embraced their new Chatter mobile app, and it is no surprise that more than 50% of the workforce is using mobile devices as their new desktop. With more companies shifting towards app development, including FirstRain, maybe there is a reason that so many of our users who utilized BlackBerry’s also needed a supplemental device.
It is also quite hard for the BlackBerry OS to compete against the prominently featured “fun” iOS system. The iPhone is becoming so deeply embedded in our business culture, that it is seen as a necessity and the new iPad 2 is going to continue Apple’s overwhelmingly dominant control of the tablet market. Businesses like Juniper and Good.com are thriving with more consumers bringing their mobile devices into work (that now need additional security). In October, Good Technology released their first quarterly data report— illustrating how the rapid adoption of iOS is revolutionizing enterprise mobility and how they are benefiting from the move away from the Blackberry.
Whether this means more good news for Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android, or a meek future for RIM, one can’t be sure—but it is clear modern users will now demand competitive apps on their primary handheld device.
I was so very sad to see the news that Borders is failing and has not being able to keep up with the digital era. I saw it with Tower Records — falling to iTunes and other downloadable music; Blockbuster –falling to Netflix, and now Borders falling to…Amazon’s Kindle? Barnes and Noble’s Nook?
The top 3 comapnies we see in this industry:
-Amazon.com, inc.
-Barnes & Noble, inc.
-Apple inc.
There are many reasons as to why the bookstore giant is losing share, but at the heart they simply missed the digital trend and did not keep up with the rapidly changing industry. The lesson here is they are in a long line of businesses that failed to adapt to digital media fast enough and they will probably not be the last.
This same fallout happened in the movie rental industry, with Blockbuster going down for the count. In 2000, Blockbuster declined several offers to buy Netflix, for a now trivial price; ten years later they declared bankruptcy. Netflix now has more subscribers than the entire population of Australia, and the thought of driving to the store to pick out a movie seems archaic. The problem is that Blockbuster can’t keep up with mail delivery and Redbox type vending machines. (Full disclosure – I have been a Netflix customer almost from the beginning because I knew the management team so I am a little biased.)
This chart illustrates the effect that Netflix has taken on Blockbuster.
Also, Netflix streaming video, which was in their strategy from the beginning but which took a while to make reality is what’s making them #1. Netflix now accounts for more than 20% of the bandwidth in America during peak internet hours and it is going to get worse from here. With the flexibility of streaming to your PS3, Xbox 360, television, Nintendo Wii, iPad, Tivo, iPhone and more—it’s hard to beat the immediacy.
Tower Records also missed the mark in this age of downloading, and it cost them greatly. They prospered through the days of the cassette tape and compact disc—but when Tower didn’t react fast enough to the decrease in sales of tangible items, current music giants like iTunes quickly took over. Tower filed for bankruptcy in 2006, and their failure to adapt to the ever-changing technology cost them everything.
With even the Dalai Lama making appearances on twitter several times per week, it is no surprise that everything is becoming virtual. Medical records, newsstands, bank accounts, and college textbooks…what’s next?
Back to books. It is also interesting to see why Barnes and Noble has survived and may thrive in contrast to Borders even though on the surface they seem the same. The fundamental difference is that BN saw and acted quickly on the digital trend, unlike Borders who dragged their heels and only brought up their website 3 years ago. Barnes and Noble’s “Nook” has more than 2 million titles to download, and its easy-to-read screen and inexpensive price has made it a tough competitor. Amazon’s fabulous Kindle has increased their share price over 60% in the last year.
The bottom line is that our society is going digital. Perhaps it’s our laziness, or ability to create, but as H.G. Wells puts it nicely—“adapt or perish… is nature’s exorable imperative.” So who is responsible for killing Borders, Blockbuster, and Tower? Themselves.
Before the famous were famous—Oprah, Steven Spielberg, Bill Gates, and many others—they were interns. Everyone has to start somewhere, so why not begin your career where you are welcomed with open arms?
We have a small number of interns working at FirstRain right now and it’s interesting to look at not only the direct benefits for FirstRain, but also the indirect ones. Internships are powerful both for us (the company and the intern); it’s a great alignment of mutual interest.
The benefits to the intern are obvious. Experience drinking from the fire hose, training and rapid learning, the fun of working in a small dynamic company and, because it is small, the opportunity to work on a wide variety of different projects.
We benefit in some obvious ways – first and foremost that we get to interview someone on the job. Since the intern does not have job experience it’s hard to interview them on prior work experience (!) but by bringing them in and having them work on clear objectives we can review their performance and so make a more informed hiring decision.
But the non-obvious benefits are almost more interesting. Our new college graduates are fresh. They have new perspectives and challenge our assumptions – and the assumptions of how a job “should” be done. They are eager to learn and as all teachers know, teaching something causes you to think hard about what matters and really understand what you are teaching. There is also a fun energy you get into an organization when you have a group of professionals, often with 10-20 years of experience, mixed in with new graduates.
While Silicon Valley is coming back for people with experience, it’s still a hard place to find a job if you don’t have experience and this creates a Catch-22 for the intern. As one of our interns told me:
“For many of us recent college grads we have little or no real-world experience. This experimental period not only helps me decide what I would like to pursue in my career, but it also helps me because being able to reference an internship on a resume can make all the difference in a future employers decision. They can see if I have a strong work ethic, if I was smart on the job, and help me bridge from college to my new career. And I can check you out and network with your employees!”
So who knows whether I have a future Oprah or Bill Gates in my organization. But I do know that the added productivity, the energy and the opportunity to help the next generation of graduating students is a win-win for FirstRain – and it’s fun.
Sometimes you have to wonder, are Google and Apple friends or enemies? They compete to move an industry left behind, forward. Is that really competition or is it a concentrated, coordinated effort to bump everyone else out?
Apple and Google are now in full competition for the digital newsstand. First Apple has a new subscription model – and yesterday Google introduced the “One Pass,” a similar payment system for digital content. With both of these competing services, will just one come out on top? Both are a big deal to the publishers and while the initial changes are small the long-term effect is disruptive.
Apple has now made electronic magazine and newspaper subscriptions part of the iTunes app store. Their newsstand will be similar to the iBook store, in hopes of attracting people deeper into the digital world. The newsstand is already selling the digital versions of various major magazines and newspapers, and Apple has readied changes in iTunes so that I (the end customer) am able to use the app store billing system, all on my one credit card.
Google’s “One Pass” does the same thing for Android devices and beyond (accessible via web browsers). They will implement the familiar “Google Checkout” online payment service to users who wish to pay for content. One Pass is in a race with Apple’s newsstand to compete for users who buy digital media through mobile devices. An additional perk that Google offers however is more flexibility in payment options. As long as the user is signed into their Google account, they can purchase publications from any other participating website (whereas Apple’s has to be through iTunes).
Clearly Google is building flexibility in as a differentiator to Apple. Apple is putting in draconian control and a whopping 30% revenue share. Any news service currently offering an app with a subscription must now either offer the app within the Apple store, or allow Apple to offer the same app for the same price or less.
In contrast, Google is allowing purchase of subscriptions, articles, or even day passes at a much more competitive revenue split of 10%.
With Apple at 30% and Google at 10%, are they together trying to become a monopoly in the digital newsstand industry? Will it be worth it to publishers to accept this reduction in revenue just to associate with the “cool” Apple brand – or will they be compelled to access the explosive number of Apple device users? Either way, whoever ends up dominating the digital newsstand, this will revolutionize the news industry.
If done right, these two “frienemies” will drive many more readers to the new digital era of media. And these new digital copies of magazines and newspapers will be anything but ordinary– they are a great outlet for a new generation of creativity of media creation. Can’t wait!
Here is a survey by Josh Gordon, comparing readers’ preferences on digital magazines, versus traditional websites.
There’s an old adage that the UK economy is tied more closely to the US than to “the Continent” – one of the many arguments used to justify keeping the Pound separate from the Euro. But over the past few months we have witnessed a strong divergence in policy to deal with the continuing gloomy forecast.
Newly elected, David Cameron has set out the harshest program of spending cuts since WWII to try to deal with the long term impact of the recession on the UK, and in an opposite approach Ben Bernanke and the Obama administration are trying to spend their way out of the problem – for now.
Maybe this difference in approach is deeply cultural. The British (me included) are good at being tough, dealing with hard times for Queen and Country. With budget cuts being pushed through at record speed, some Labours believe it endangers the recovery of the country and reduces prospects for employment in the short term, and for prosperity in the longer term. This cost-cutting plan mainly impacts the bottom half of the income distribution (although the Royal Family will see a 14% decrease), drastically cutting welfare payments and government programs, but it’s a necessary evil according to the Conservatives.
Americans (me included) are endlessly optimistic. Even if we are running up record debts and many states are bankrupt Obama ran on Hope and he’s not going to back down from the optimistic view of the future even as he moves closer to the middle and Reaganism.
Although the US markets are up, neither approach is pulling their economy out fast enough for the record unemployment. Austerity or spending – neither is working well yet.
Where there is commonality and spending is in the green movement – hoping to save significant amounts of money on future energy consumption. The UK has invested in wind farms to provide a cleaner, greener, secure energy source to the country. In both countries the investment in going green is a spend that can create jobs and show a path forward. The US will spend up to $550 billion on green technology this year.
Or consider cosmetic surgery – clearly another area individual Americans continue to spend. Amazingly the number of Americans voluntarily going under the knife for cosmetic surgery has grown 5% in the last year. Is this because individuals feel a need to cheer themselves up in a down time (or could it be that this is a rising trend that is outpacing any ups and downs in the economy)?
Neither country is on the road to recovery just yet. Spend or save? Dour and tough or endlessly optimistic? Hard to tell yet but having lived through Thatcher’s England I’d bet on austerity paying off in the long run.
Want to track a pubic figure like David Cameron or Ben Bernanke? Follow famous people on our FirstRain Newsmaker pages.
Every recession, every major generation of the Valley, naysayers come out and say the good days are over – but Silicon Valley continues to reinvent itself.
The latest herald of doom is Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun. In a Business Insider interview Scott claims that Silicon Valley’s emerging sectors, like social networking and “green” technology, will not make up for jobs lost due to the software and computer industry consolidation. But with big names like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook planning for expansion, I wouldn’t be so quick to assume it’s all over.
Claiming that every new transition creates less job opportunity than before, Scott lacks confidence in the future potential of contemporary partnerships to flourish. But he’s wrong. Not only is it anticipated that social networking industries will more than make up for lost jobs, but we are likely to see unprecedented growth in the consolidation of software and hardware companies. The technology sector never fails to impress me with new innovation and change, and this “recession” is no exception.
Even Obama sees it (although maybe he is here fund raising at the same time). He says that our tech companies are the heirs to the industries that made the United States the worlds biggest economy. He is in the Bay Area today to discuss job creation and innovation around the Silicon Valley with executives like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt, and many more.
Maybe the irony is stinging. Facebook announced last week that it will in fact move its corporate headquarters to Sun’s old facility in Menlo Park (Sun having been swallowed by the Oracle whale). This is Facebook’s second move in the last two years and they have now leased a 1-million-square-foot campus. Google has announced a big addition as well, introducing a new campus in San Francisco to help alleviate long commutes. Google has also experienced a record 75,000 job applications over the last week, and they expect to grow more than 30,000 employees by 2012 (Dow Jones).
It is software technology that is driving this growth. Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, claims that more than 300,000 Android devices are being activated everyday, requiring more engineers and sales people to keep up with the high demand. “This will be our biggest hiring year ever,” said Jordan Newman (a Google company spokesman). Note — FirstRain is currently hiring in California and India.
Growth Industries:
Sadly I think Nokia is trying to get back to growth by partnering with Microsoft for their phone OS but my personal opinion is they just killed what was once a great phone provider. Microsoft may gain – they are trying to make the new Windows Phone 7 a success – and they are hooking up with Nokia’s strong hardware but I doubt the combination will compete. But they are not the only ones focusing on Valley software innovation. Their old competitor, Sony Ericsson, is shifting resources from its headquarters in Sweden to Silicon Valley in order to keep up with the shifting increase from hardware to software demands in the mobile phone industry.
I think Scott is just plain wrong, or certainly colored by his predominantly hardware background. He believes that Silicon Valley is “not the best place in the world to start a company,” but the evidence in the software world is to the contrary. Maybe it’s just his personal preference, but as Senator Mark Warner of Virginia correctly claims, the Internet and social networking have been “one of the rare areas of growth in the U.S. economy” in a decade that didn’t spur much innovation.
As for “green” technology not being able to make up for lost jobs that is certainly true in the short term, as it typically takes a full generation for a new industry to take effect. However, the key to the Silicon Valley economy is now software innovation, and we’re excited to be a part of it.
