Friends in high places…

Some unexpected praise this week from an unusually elevated source. Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger, giving the 2010 Hugh Cudlipp lecture, singled out Bookarmy as a ‘digital disrupter’: covering its niche “with a conviction, range, depth and passion that a portmanteau print-based newspaper cannot match”.

A big surprise, and a real shot in the arm for all involved. Even if we were wheeled out as a threat to our own sister companies…

Bookarmy is a rather clever site – completely free – where, once you’ve registered, you can share your passion for books with thousands of others. You can join forums around types of books, or individual books. You can have virtual discussions with authors, link your reading group to others, publish your own reviews and so on. Apart from the authors themselves, there are no “authority” figures here.

Compare it with, say the Times books pages. Here the reverse is true: the emphasis is on “expert” reviews by critics, with not much interest in what you might have to say about a particular book. There is a kind of book group, but you would have to say that interactivity is not the feature it most promotes…

…BookArmy is a telling illustration of two aspects of the digital world.

- One is the ability of digital disrupters (in this case, even within the same company) to take one bit of a newspaper and do it with a conviction, range, depth and passion that a portmanteau print-based newspaper cannot match, especially in digital form. It is the unbundling of newspapers.

- And the second is the only hope of matching the power of the these digital disrupters is to harness the same energy and technologies which they are using.

The lecture is a rather good summary of the current (and future) state of journalism: you can read it all on the Guardian site…

February 7, 2010 | Filed Under Digital Media Business | 1 Comment 

Wired UK’s biggest competitor: Wired US

I’ve been quietly enjoying Wired UK, which launched earlier this year - three issues in, both magazine and website seem to be finding their feet. But for all the pricey marketing across tube, press and web, Wired UK’s biggest challenge seems to be coming from its own colleagues across the Atlantic.

Subscribers to Wired are still continuing to receive Wired US in the mail; shops continue to stock both versions - in some cases, I’ve seen them proudly displaying the two editions side by side on the shelves. And here’s what’s oddest of all: Conde Nast are still actively marketing the American Wired website directly at UK users. Almost incessant Wired US ads scoop across the top of my google mail, regularly spinning me off to top stories from the States – hardly helpful when the UK team appear to have been pouring their own ad spend into hotmail.

All in all, Wired.co.uk is an a strange situation – far prettier, far friendlier, far more usable than it’s US cousin at Wired.com, it’s also far thinner on content. Positioned more Tomorrow’s World than Today’s Web, for comprehensive details of breaking web and tech news I still find myself hopping to the bigger beefier ‘.com’ site – where I also get fuller comment and analysis.

That I’m even able to do this comes as a surprise. It seems Wired now runs two completely independant English-language websites, and no redirection, no ip-recognition exists on the American site to suggest that I’d be better served by the new British team. And given how easy it is for me to append ‘.com’ to the Wired address and access twice as much information, it seems a missed opportunity that i’m not able reach down to find it all through the British portal too - where presumably i’m far easier, far more efficiently monetised by a UK focused sales team.

I’m sure there a reasons - I suspect CondeNast’s US and International wings work far more independantly than you’d think, and given that the magazine publisher still splits its digital arms from its print teams there are probably four separate companies attempting to co-ordinate their efforts. Indeed, the UK launch, both web and mag, might be going so splendidly well that all this stuff seems like detail – I have no idea how rosy things look. But the question remains: why compete with yourself?

July 4, 2009 | Filed Under Digital Media Business | Leave a Comment 

Price of Twitter ‘disease and early death’

The revenge of the geeks will be short-lived if their social networks kill them. Just ask the BBC, who invited academic Aric Sigman onto the Today program to explain why digital chatter is no alternative to physical interaction…

Newsnight, meanwhile, lined up Bad Science’s Ben Goldacre to face off with Sigman in front of the cameras - cue much confused head scratching but no real debate from the mild-mannered quack-hunter, who ended up reluctantly agreeing that if twitter wont actually kill you, sitting on your arse all day very probably will…

February 24, 2009 | Filed Under Digital Media Business | Leave a Comment 

Trying too hard

Amazon’s apple-style video trailer for the newly launched Kindle 2 manages Jobs-era friendly futurism until roughly 37 seconds in, when this breathless announcement nearly kills the whole ad:

Images display in a super sharp 16 shades of grey

I’m still laughing fourth time round…

February 12, 2009 | Filed Under Digital Media Business | Leave a Comment