Content Matters

Attend any conference and you’re bound to hear some truthiness – those concepts that the pundits believe to be true and repeat often, yet have little or no basis in fact.

 

This week’s SIIA Information Industry Summit was an excellent event, but there was a certain level of truthiness that I wanted to point out. Here are the examples that jumped out at me – I welcome in the comments examples you’ve heard there or elsewhere.

 

Truthiness #1

Those “25 and under” employees turn to Google, while those over 25 in the workforce use Factiva, LexisNexis or other "professional information" sources.

This was probably an accurate statement in 2000, but ten years later, it’s a crock. Do you know which of your customers turn to Google first? ALL OF THEM (with the possible exception of the corporate librarians). When users think of finding information, they think of Google. They’re not thinking of Factiva nor LexisNexis (nor Bing for that matter). And that applies to your 30-year old customers, 40-year old customers and 50-year old customers.  If you want to argue that those in the 55-65 age group are not active Google users, you might have an argument, but you probably can’t build your business around them.

Sure, there are differences between “digital natives” and those who grew up offline. But it’s not in the area of search. The differences are more around things like email. I know 19-year-olds who have Blackberries but never use email. To them, the Blackberry is simply a good keyboard to use for messaging.

 

Truthiness #2

All newspapers are basically the same; a model that works for one should work for another.

This one has been tossed around heavily in recent months, as newspapers explore the possibility of moving their content behind the pay wall. Pundits typically take one of two positions: those in favor of paywalls say “it’s working for the FT and the WSJ, so it can work for others”; while those opposed to paywalls say “it failed for NY Times Select, so it can’t work for anyone”.

 

But, not all newspapers are created equally.

First, the obvious example (and thank you, Gaby Darbyshire of Gawker for being one of the few to “get” this) – the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times are business newspapers. A large proportion of their subscriptions are paid for by corporations or are expensed by employees. Unlike most newspapers, these are a b2b purchase.

 

On the opposite side is the TimesSelect example. Yes, TimesSelect failed. But that doesn’t mean that every subsequent effort by the NY Times or others will also fail. Looking at the ideas floated by the New York Times, you can see they’ve learned a lot since then. They welcome the search engine traffic and plan to use a metered system so that only heavy users will pay. Will this work? I remain skeptical, but the concepts do have merit. Of course, it’s also important to keep in mind what the goals are. I don’t think the Times sees paywalls as a means to gain huge new subscription revenue. Instead, it seems like it will be an effort to slow down the attrition rate of their current print subscribers. If they are smart in the way they implement this, they could achieve that goal without losing much of the other traffic they desire.

The key takeaway here is that each newspaper is different. You need to look at the specifics of each property to understand what their drivers are. A good example of this was the news this week that Newsday, since launching its paywall 3 months ago, has only attracted 35 paid subscribers to the online-only version. That is a laughable sum, especially since the systems to support the paywall cost an estimated $1M plus, but it helps to first look at Newsday’s goals. Newsday is owned by Cablevision, which is facing fierce competition in its core Long Island market from Verizon Fios. Newsday granted free online access to Cablevision subscribers. So, as much as this is a defensive move for Newsday, I think it may be moreso a defensive position to help Cablevision retain its customers, as it increases the switching costs.

 

Truthiness #3

We’re impressed by your access to corporate leaders.

Ok, this one’s not really a truthiness issue, but it’s an annoyance that comes up at every event.

At an early age, we’re all taught that no one likes name droppers. Yet some pundits still feel obligated to give example after example that demonstrate little other than the fact that they had access to some corporate leader.

Now, if you tell me you dated Scarlett Johansen, played ball against LeBron James or jammed with Bono, I might be impressed. But corporate executives are not rock stars (no, not even Steve Jobs) and we don’t need to hear about the 10^th time you interviewed Alex or gave a (virtual) footrub to Mark. We just don’t care.

The fact that you have access to industry leaders is only of interest to me to the extent that you can share insights about their strategy or their success. If you provide no insights beyond what us “outsider” already know, you’re just a name-dropper. And I think your mama taught you not to act that way.

 

What bugs you about the pundits? Drop me a note in the comments.