Brian Steinberg hits a home run in his first column for Variety (which desperately needs to fix its RSS feed) as he talks about how the media, whose business models depend on viewers’ full attention, have been simultaneously making it clear that the viewers’ full attention is not necessarily. They’ve been doing this by including ads in the programming (and programming in their ads sometimes) and through encouraging people to have social media conversations at the same time they’re supposed to be watching a show.
There’s so much in this story about how LinkedIn has added to its original or curated editorial mix that can be learned from if you run or participate in some sort of publishing program it’s a bit overwhelming. Just a treasure trove of moments that had me bouncing over to Evernote to jot down an idea, question or action item.
Likewise this “thinking out loud” post from Paul Smalera about how content editors can’t be blind to the analytics, technical requirements and other factors that can influence what content is published, how it appears and more.
Fan activation is something I’ve been thinking a lot about recently and the WSJ has a story that looks at how a couple of fashion brands have begun sourcing photos from everyday folks – albeit still often young and attractive ones – and incorporating them into their online marketing. This is actually exemplified in a separate but similar story about how one particular company tapped popular Tumblr publishers to model their clothes, photos which were then aggregated on the company’s own Tumblr profile.
If ever there was a story that exemplified how some companies see social networks simply as content engines it’s this one about National CineMedia working in various ways to leverage Twitter and Foursquare information. Not only will NCM produce original content based on Twitter trends but it will ultimately sell ads against that data while also selling local business-oriented ads based on Foursquare check-in data. And most all of this is also being utilized across web and mobile platforms operated not just by NCM but also theater partner Regal Entertainment. Super interesting example of four or five different convergence points happening at the same time across platforms.
