Spend a little time with Biz Stone and Evan Williams, two Twitter founders, via Kara Swisher’s (WSJ’s Boomtown) interview. Note the nice art direction with the bird sitting on Mr. Stone’s head.
She also toured their HQ. Nice digs and nice guys.
Thanks Kara! Boy these lines are blurring — newspapers /video /broadcast / blogs /Twitter, etc. Old media functions with new media tools. We need some new words to describe what’s happening.
Ross McCulloch of the ThirdSectorLab interviewed the now famous (at least on Twitter) Janis Krums, who took the first photo of US Air Flight 1549 with his iPhone and posted it on twitpic.
The interview was conducted through Twitter on the ThirdSector blog. Interesting how many of the questions came from both old and old media. And how it was all done through tiny format Twitter and published on a long format blog. He was even asked the boxer or briefs question.
Is this a first? I don’t know.
Thanks Lee Brimlow for the link to this really cool site. I love Twitter already! (This should have been a tweet.)
In his latest blog post, in his New York Times column, Pogue’s Posts, David Pogue talks about his idea for a book he’d like to write for the basic computer user. Things like highlighting a word by double-clicking it, etc.
In this time of social media, all he had to do was mention it and check the comments on his blog. He has a good head start on his research with no need for editorial assistants. And perhaps no real need for the book since we can get the information in one place on his blog.
I learned several new shortcuts. Thanks everyone!
It used to be that if you wanted to get your ideas, or literary gems, distributed to a large audience (and make some money along the way) you would need to find and convince a publisher (not often easy for an ‘unknown’ writer) to publish your book. (Or movie company, etc.)
And the publisher, in order to convince people to buy and read your book would use it’s various channels in tv, radio, magazines and newspapers to promote your book. However, none of these media exposures would comprise the complete work, or full idea. One must buy the book to get that satisfaction.
The publisher promised and controled the relationship between the audience and the writer.
So, enter Mr. Christian Lander, the ‘unknown’ writer of a blog called Stuff White People Like, which reports hits of 21,269,514. Not so sure, but it let’s suppose it’s a fact. And the blog does appear to be a complete work or idea.
Well now, Random House buys the rights to a book from Mr. Lander. It’s not clear if the book will be based on the site, but it would appear so. A $300,000 advance is rumored.
Does Random House expect to reach these same people, or similar people, with a book about something they’ve been getting for free essentially? Will Mr. Lander have the time to write the blog, which he must do, to maintain his ‘audience’ and at the same time write the book? Ghost writer? Perhaps there is another spin — a book about writing the blog, the scene behind the blog.
So if we look at this, Mr. Lander has already acquired the audience, all by himself, without a publisher, with a little blog.
The publisher is no longer the holder of the audience, the writer is. And the general media had little, until now, to do with generating the audience.
Hmm. Isn’t that interesting?
A new business model is in the works. Writers need to figure how to capitalize on the audience they acqure. That is, if they would like to make some real money.
Power has shifted. Did you feel the quake?
Powered by WordPress