Posts Tagged ‘critical mass’
Does the fight for local eyeballs mean the end of AP?
Ken Doctor’s article: “Remaking of the U.S. News Landscape: New York Times Local Experiments Grow” http://bit.ly/c0OnEg had a very interesting item that I conclude might be the end of the Associated Press…or at least the original founding principle. Ken said:
“…local dailies are increasingly becoming purely local, and the national papers are getting local, adding local print editions, getting hyperlocal, finding ways to serve their readers’ (and advertisers’) needs beyond national / global.”
The AP is an association of local news providers contributing to a pool of content so that they can use/publish each others’ news, local or national. If a local paper believes Ken analysis, why would they ever want to share their content with a large national paper trying to get “hyperlocal” in my territory? AP may need a new mission.
The local challenge is critical mass…of both content and eyeballs. Lacking either one, business models fail. Maybe the news-platform isn’t the right user aggregation platform since they just can gather a critical mass of eyeballs. Besides, Angie’s List has to be more useful and credible than any targeted ad in a newspaper or their site.
Perhaps the cell phone combined with Google and GPS is a lot more appropriate platform and everyone else is just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic!
My session at Buying and Selling EContent April 20th: ”Whose Eyeballs are they anyway?” will address some of these issues.
