Content is king. Content is the reason why so many of us choose to spend our time on the Web. Put simply, the Internet provides access to more content than any other medium we have. It’s why my RSS feeds are so well maintained and cultivated. I must cultivate them if I’m to make my way through the noise and find the signal that registers most profoundly with my likes, dislikes, politics and sense of humor. The Internet makes multiple sources of information accessible, and, for now, that service is essentially free.
The Daily, a brave and noble attempt to create a unique news source for the emerging tablet market, faces too much competition. There was a time when people bought a single newspaper and were satisfied by its contents. The paper you read also indicated, to a certain degree, your political and social leanings. For instance, my parents read the OC Register while the family across the street read the LA Times. I always saw the LA Times as an extravagance. It was much more expensive than the Register and it seemed to be concerned with a broader subject base. My parents still buy the Register, but they also supplement that information with news accessed via the Web. Their political leanings are still very rooted (against my biased pleas) in a conservatism that I can’t comprehend but that millions of others do identify. The Daily’s target audience may seek either a liberal or conservative audience, perhaps both, but what it can’t do is offer the unique ability of the Web to aggregate multiple points of view from myriad sources. The Internet is the source of infinite opinion and perspective, which is why the NY Times has decided to create something very much like Flipboard, a social application that aggregates content given relevance though social. News.Me seems to be a simple aggregator, one that isn’t concerned with just NY Times content, which is odd and also suggests that the NY Times is embracing the concept that it doesn’t need to be, and perhaps shouldn’t aspire to be, all things for all people.
Why is this appearing on a Blog called “Content Beware?” Well, it’s my opinion that content is made more appealing to users when it appears technologically advanced. Somewhere, somehow, we conflate the notion of technological sophistication with actual sophistication. The result is that the medium has become the excuse for its content to exist. Media are no longer content to shape content — media creates content. News.Me is an interesting example of that formula. The chicken before the egg metaphor may seem strange, at first, but no doubt content will be generated and prized with the hopes that it is consumed by the social circle that values it not because the content is important but because the user hopes that his or her social circle will view the content as important and thus view the contributor, the social aggregator, as important. This form of aggregator creates opportunity for ad revenue and product revenue without a need for content creation on the part of the news organization, although the news organization will of course hope its content makes the cut. If News.Me were simply created for the NY Times it would be a feature not unlike their top-emailed stories feature.
The Daily, an experiment that seems bent on creating, from scratch, content that is already being created, will fail because it wants to be a singular source for content. That concept was obliterated by the Internet. Still, I love the idea of The Daily and it will sell for a very reasonable price, a price cheap enough for me to consider purchasing it. This is, where the concept becomes fascinating. I am willing to buy The Daily, but if The Daily were available on the Web, I would not. At this point, I doubt that I would pay its very reasonable price to the NY Times despite the fact that I read it everyday.
More alarming still is the fact that most reviews on the subject will no doubt focus on what The Daily will look like. This is due in part to the fact that it is being promoted (hell, it’s being celebrated PR style) based on its looks/functionality rather than its content.
Content Beware.
Content Beware 