Content Matters

I was pleased to note that among the speakers at an upcoming conference are two companies previously profiled in the "50 Content Companies that Matter".

The conference, entitled "Selling Subscriptions to Internet Content" is hosted by ContentBiz, the sister company to MarketingSherpa.  There will be thirteen case studies presented during the two-day event (in New York May 8-9).  Among the thirteen are Consumer Reports and Jigsaw, each of which have been profiled here in the past.  Others include Match.com, the NY Times Digital, Hoovers, Reuters and Time, Inc., ConsumerLab, SQL Server Worldwide Users Group, Simply Audiobooks, the Scotsman, edweek and a special "Entrepreneur of the Year" session.

The focus of the conference is similar to that of the ContentBiz site, in that it is case study-based.  I expect it to be full of very useful and practical advice that publishers can apply now. 

Of course, there will also be a networking cocktail reception the evening of May 8th, along with various other activities.

While there are many compelling events this time of year, this one is certainly worth putting on your calendar.  The practical nature of the case studies make this more accessible than some of the more ethereal "future of the content business" events.  If you're a CEO, marketing director or product strategy lead for a content company, you'll find this a valuable investment of your time.

“Big brother is listening.”

In light of recent news of NSA wiretaps and FBI “raids” on libraries that may sound ominous. But, what if you asked “big brother” to listen in?

That’s the idea behind last.fm. Last.fm, formerly AudioScrobbler, is an iTunes plugin that drives a music recommendation engine. The concept is pretty simple. The plugin monitors all the music you listen to on iTunes, generating lists of your favorite performers and songs, then compares those to others in their database.

Using various matching algorithms, Last.fm is able to create music neighbors, people whose listening habits are similar. The more interesting information comes when you click on a performer you like. The Last.fm engine quickly shows you other “similar” bands. I have found this a great way to discover new bands. For example, if you look at the Arctic Monkeys, you’ll see Maximo Park, the Libertines, the Subways, the Rakes and other UK indie bands. Another useful feature is that you’ll see the songs for each band or performer ranked by the number of times they are listened to. Want to sample a few songs from the Subways? With just a click you’ll see their most popular songs on Last.fm are Oh Yeah and Rock and Roll Queen.

Last.fm also supports tagging of songs and artists, as well as the ability to recommend an artist to another last.fm user. Outside of the “neighbor recommendations”, the community aspects of Last.fm are modest today, but there’s certainly opportunity for growth.

Last.fm has also launched the last.fm player, a personalized online radio station. With the Last.fm player you can listen to your own favorites or choose to listen to what they call neighbor radio. And now, my biggest complaint about last.fm has been addressed. Most of us listen to a lot more music on our iPod than on our PC. Yet Last.fm only picked up what was played on your PC. Now third parties have developed free plugins that will take your iPod usage and include that in your Last.fm results.

Last.fm also makes your listening habits accessible via an RSS feed. The feed itself doesn’t serve any great purposes today (not sure anyone out there needs real-time reporting of what I’m listening to), but could lend itself to an interesting mashup. What if VNU’s Billboard were to layer their sales rankings on top of Last.fm play lists, then cross-reference those by country? It might make for some interesting predictive capabilities for the music industry. Fred Wilson, in the Music section of his blog, includes his weekly and all-time top 10 playlists from Last.fm.

So, what’s the message for content providers?

First, monitoring customer behavior is not a bad thing. In fact, if you are upfront about what you’re doing and offer clear and compelling benefits to your users, they will welcome the monitoring.

Second, recommendation engines are not simply for e-tailers. If you can leverage community usage behavior to cluster similar content together, it can create a powerful and compelling recommendation engine. Combine that with simple distribution tools such as RSS and you have a low-cost, high value tool to promote new content to existing users. 

P.S. For those interested in knowing what I am listening to, you can visit my last.fm profile.

I am starting a new list on Content Matters, of Emerging Content Technologies.

There are so many compelling new things happening in the content technology space that I felt it would be helpful to catalog and share them. Many of these companies are what are commonly referred to as “Web 2.0” products such as tagging, vertical search, social software, RSS, mashups and related technologies. 

Why not simply include these in my existing list of the “50 Content Companies that Matter”? The main reason is that the characteristics of these companies are very different from most of the companies on that list. Most of these are early stage companies. While their concepts are intriguing, as innovators, they may not be the ones who eventually emerge as market leaders when these technologies are adopted. Some of these companies will not make it; others will be acquired by Google, Yahoo or others along the way.

Many in “traditional” content companies may wish to overlook these companies; after all, few of these companies have made inroads in the b2b market. It’s true that teenagers are bigger users of mashups and social software today than business users. But, traditional publishers should ignore them at their peril. These companies and their offspring are the ones who will be taking your market share in the years to come. To that end, wherever appropriate, I will share my thoughts on the relevancy of these technologies to more traditional content businesses. My recommendation to you is that you play with these various applications, making sure that you understand them, then think about how they might impact your business in the years to come.

The first post in this new series is on Last.fm. 

As always, I welcome your feedback and suggestions.

 

For those who were involved in KM or KM-related solutions a few years ago, the words "Knowledge Management" bring to mind terms like "black hole", "no ROI" or worse.
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