We create the stories of the connected society

Game Changer Demand Media’s Byron Reese describes the different thinking about content and the process of creating content.

If Ashton Kutcher’s 4.5 million Twitter followers make you feel inadequate, I’ve got good news: scientists investigating social networks have punked the “influentials” theory that drives celebrities to the top of the charts.
Aplusk, who boasts that he’s bigger than CNN, is apparently overrated. A new study finds that the importance of most influential spreaders in [...]

Amra Tareen, the savvy and ebullient founder of AllVoices, has
just closed a $3 million funding round for the innovative, citizen journalism site. That brings funding to $9 million for the two-year-old start-up. Not bad. TechCrunch has a good take on the AllVoices funding.
How does she do it? Amra returns to We Media [...]

The biggest surprise from yesterday’s unveiling of Apple’s iPad was that print publishers and journos weren’t terribly excited. “Waiting to be surprised. That hasn’t happened yet,” said Jim Roberts, the only New York Times wonk who didn’t confuse Steve Jobs with Moses. Valleywag has a good take on Print Media’s Big Tablet Letdown.
Our [...]

Magazine and newspaper publishers have fantasized, for more than a decade, about the day when portable digital display technologies render paper, ink, printing, trucks, postage and home delivery obsolete. The flaw, of course, is expecting too much from technology – the next big thing.

We couldn’t get to Hyderabad for this year’s group hug of the world’s newspaper publishers, but it sounds like the old boys are getting feisty in their dotage. Forced once to postpone because of bad economics and waning interest, the reconvened World Newspaper Congress, organized by the merged World Association of Newspapers and IFRA, launched [...]

Dear Mr. Murdoch:
We’re so fortunate that we can entrust you with the future of the news business in the U.S. Such a shrewd business leader, too. Can you help a confused citizen understand your plan to save the news?

1. You’re going to charge people to read a story online that they won’t read, and [...]

This is a true testimony to the magic of a system that allows for open communication and collaborative problem solving around public concerns. You can really see how media, industry, government and private citizens can work together to improve their communities:

How to profit from the business and behaviors of the Weconomy.

Today at Noon ET on the Naked Media show: Avner Ronen, CEO of media aggregation startup Boxee, and Betsy Morgan, former CEO of Huffington Post. Details here.

Each day brings another story that publishers are lurching to the business model that will save newspapers: charging for online content. Yet, each day brings news of additional buyouts and layoffs in newsrooms. Sometime soon, the publishers are going to figure out the next problem: they neither have enough good content that’s worth selling nor [...]

History may not repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme, observed Samuel Clemens. I was reminded of Clemens’ vision and failures amid this week’s hoopla over the new Kindle as well a Congressional hearing held today on the crisis in newspapers.
Clemens was a visionary who foresaw the age of invention. He wrote a glorious fable [...]

The Senate Commerce Committee announced announced the lineup for their hearing about the future of journalism.  The list of speakers includes:

Senator Ben Cardin
Marissa Mayer – Vice President, Search Products and User Experience, Google
Alberto Ibarguen – President and Chief Executive Officer, The Knight Foundation
David Simon – Author, TV Producer and Former Newspaperman
Steve Coll – Former [...]

According to the New York Times, magazine publishers are trying to figure out if they can raise their prices without losing subscribers.
The answer is no.
I subscribe to more than twenty magazines, including Time, Newsweek, US News, The New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, Vanity Fair, GQ, Sports Illustrated, Wired, and GOOD.  I read every single magazine cover [...]

Google announced this week that they were creating a venture capital arm whose main objective will be to turn a profit.  The group, called Google Ventures, is expected to invest up to $100 million in the next 12 months.
The New York Times article on the announcement notes that “Google will tap the connections of its [...]