Content Matters

Buying and Selling eContent got off to a quick start.  After Esther Dyson's keynote, the first panel discussion, “When Everyone’s a Publisher: The impact of user-generated content” was moderated by David Meerman Scott.

Rusty Williams, Co-Founder of Prospero, led off with a view of how professional publishers should look at user-generated comment.  In Rusty’s view, premium publishers need to be orchestrators of content.   Publishers should embrace this – build a blog, subscribe to RSS, etc.

The model is changing from “inside-out” to “outside-in”, collecting content from all sources and places.

Bloggers shouldn’t be smug; it’s not a religion, it’s just a technology.  Only blog if that’s something you feel comfortable doing.  Richard Branson: “business is about being true to yourself” – use the tools, feel how it expresses you, etc.

Larry Schwartz, President of Newstex, discussed their inclusion of blogs within their news feeds.  According to Larry, Newstex views blogs as commentary; they have several hundred blogs today.  In terms of why bloggers would syndicate their blog, they have found bloggers choose to syndicate their content for a few reasons:
1. To generate traffic for their blog
2. To get publicity (particularly consultants)
3. Some professional journalists want the chance to post their opinions without having to be reviewed by an editor.

Newstex users, largely traders and other financial professionals, see blogs as a way to find information before the mainstream media.  He cited the example of last week’s announcement by Apple Computer of their intention to support Windows.  Gizmodo picked up the story at 9:05am, while AP and other wires were 30-40 minutes behind that.  The time advantage allowed traders to get in and out of the stock while others were just reading the news.

Cyndi Schoenbrun, researcher for Consumer’s Union, uses blogs as a research tool.  They serve as an early warning system as blog editors post to their blog several times per day, a more frequent news cycle than the MSM.  Also, blog editors often have good access to CEO’s at conferences and provide podcasts and transcripts.

For Cyndi, blogs must be proven to have authority, for her to rely upon them.  While authority is hard to determine, she looks for transparency (does the blogger identify their professional identity?) and also looks where advertising is not intertwined with the content.

Some of the sources Cyndi relies upon are PaidContent, I Want Media, Mediabistro and Rexblog.

In response to an audience question about whether Consumer Reports would look to blend user-generated content with their authoritative research, Cyndi indicated that they were already doing a modest amount of that today by having subscribers post comments on automobiles.  They are currently looking to expand that to consumer electronics.  At the same time, they tend to act cautiously and are concerned that a manufacturer might stack the deck with favorable ratings and reviews.