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 10th 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.
