Content Decoded

In the Food Special issue of the New Yorker, is a brilliantly written piece on the Michelin Guide and its undercover inspectors.

The Michelin Guide launched in North America around 2005 but failed to drum up much response or sales from the New York population. The Michelin inspectors are under strict anonymity and confidentiality contracts, often not even allowed to reveal their employer and occupation to their families and friends. These inspectors are required to fill out detailed questionnaires and forms about their experience at any particular restaurant, recounting their experience at the restaurant from start to finish, often including lists of ingredients from the food they have.

The reason I bring up this article is to highlight a quote offered by the founder of Zagat Guide, the customer-driven food survey guides run by Nina and Tim Zagat.

“We’ve never believed that there were experts that should tell you what to do…I’d love to know what their (Michelin inspector) training is. Uusally, the experts, for example, the major critics for the major papers, you know what their background is. But this business of making a virtue out of not knowing? I question it. How are you supposed to judge their expertise if you don’t have any idea who they are? “

It was mostly in response to this mystery around the inspectors and as an effort to open up the Michelin process to drive up sales, that they invited the New Yorker reporter to spend an evening with a Michelin inspector and write the piece. Regarding their training, turns out that every Michelin inspector comes from the hotel management, restaurant, or cooking background. Fair enough.

What is interesting to me is this struggle between Michelin and Zagat to drive the market share. It’s not simply a struggle between two competitors, but it’s that of two very different ideologies. If Michelin is elite, Zagat is for the masses. If Michelin relies on a handful of expert opinions, Zagat rates restaurants based on 30,000 + customer reviews. It’s not the question of one being better over another, because clearly a high rating from either is an honor for the restaurants and a major revenue driver.

Both Curation and crowd-sourcing have their pitfalls. Curation is a reflection of one person’s tastes and crowd-sourcing is easy to game, and hence, sometimes difficult to trust. Is there room for a new model that adapts the best of these two schools to create a new, game-changing solution?

We’ll let the market decide. But do share your thoughts! Very curious to hear where you stand.

I came across Fora.tv a few weeks ago and when I looked it up, I was pleasantly surprised to see a familiar name on the team. Blaise Zerega and I connected on Linked in a few years ago when we were both at Conde Nast. Blaise has a particularly interesting background and has created a niche for himself launching  magazines and content properties. Prior to joining Fora.tv as the CEO, Blaise led the technology coverage at Conde Nast’s Portfolio magazine. He was kind enough to chat with me for a few minutes on the phone yesterday and I want to share some of the interesting themes that popped up in our conversation.

If you haven’t checked out Fora.tv, do it now. Fora.tv is building the world’s largest content library of unmediated video from live events, lectures, debates, and conferences going on all the time at world’s top universities, think tanks and conferences. As Blaise said, “Everyday all around the world, great ideas are being discussed in a university classroom or at a conference. There is a strong opportunity for this long-form content that people are interested in, but don’t have access to. ” And Fora makes this aspirational content accessible to everyone.

Fora’s business model is fairly straightforward right now with three revenue steams: 1) Advertising and Sponsorships 2) Production (live streaming conferences etc0 3) Premium Partnerships. With Premium partnerships Fora helps its partners unlock the value of their content and upsell it to more audiences. Because Fora attracts a smart, affluent and passionate audience and it offers partner’s content in safe environment. Additionally, fora’s infrastructure allows the partner content to travel widely and freely on the web. They just started generating revenues this year so I’m curious to where they end up a few years from now.

I want to highlight the two themes that emerged from my conversation with Blaise. Tell me what you think.

1) The You Channel: “In the future, there won’t be millions of channels,” says Blaise, “there will be one channel and it’ll be yours.” Blaise referred to this notion of “serendipitous discovery” that will dominate our experience with content on the web. Fora unlocks its content for youtube, hulu, boxee, mobile and even facebook – allowing users to consume partner content when they want, and how they want it.

2) Need for high quality content: One of the wagers the Fora team is making on the future of content is that users will demand high-quality content. “People right now are accepting low production value,” Blaise mentioned. But as the premium space expands, the online video experience will need to be as good as broadcast. That’s why, all the content we produce at FORA is now in High Definition.

3) Print and Online are different medium, but still media: One of my questions to Blaise was whether his experience in print media was helping him with his new job as the CEO / Editor of an online content company and his answer didn’t surprise me at all. He summed it up, “Regardless of the media, you are still trying to compete for attention.” As an example, he shared how Fora.tv only started using headlines for the videos in Nov 08 (the company was founded in 05!). As a print journalist, crafting intriguing, provocative headlines is a must-have skill and Blaise knew it was teh same for video. Once Fora started using headlines for their content, the results were immediate and positive. (increase in consumption, engagement, shareing etc)

Hope you enjoyed this! Let us know your thoughts below.

CNN launched a new site redesign Oct 26. The new CNN site  prioritized content by focusing on three central themes photography, videos and social networking.I usually have an optimistic outlook towards companies that are trying to be better and provide a better experience for the customer. I am never the first to dismiss attempts at redesigns, new services or new innovations. So apart from the more obvious features re-design features, three learnings emerge from the site re-design that I think are worth paying attention to.

Advertising is integrated seamlessly within the content

The home page is clearly divided into three content areas: photography, video and advertising. However, by giving content and advertising the same design treatment, CNN has managed to make advertising not look “ugly” and “pretentious.”

Even in the Editor’s Choice section below, see how beautifully a Lexus commercial is inserted in with the other content pieces.

Content is merchandised on the new CNN.com – not simply packaged.

CNN has taken a page from e-commerce websites. Each story, after all, is a product. I’m very interested in learning how some of these newer features fare but I like how even though as a user, I’m not “shopping” for stories, I now have the ability to save them, follow them or pursue similar topics. I don’t think any of these features are groundbreaking  – but design has had a central role in streamlining these offerings into a seamless experience for the reader. This, I like.

Content Curation shows signs of refinement

I can’t remember if the old CNN site had any of these features because I never paid much attention to the old site. The Editor’s Picks section, the revamped iReport section and the Hot Topic section receive more real estate on the new site and shows CNN’s efforts are curating and bringing the best stories to the top in order to provide a better experience to the site visitors.

Overall, the design is pleasing and streamlined. I’m interested to see how it will be perceived and whether or not it will help CNN achieve it’s business goals.

What did you think of the new CNN site re-design?

In a perfectly timed article for Contagious Magazine Faris Yakob (Chief Technology Strategist at McCann Erickson) debunks the “Content is King” aphorism in favor of “Content is the Republic.”

At the heart of Yakob’s thesis are two ideas:

1) As more consumers produce content, traditional content monetization models (paid, advertising) are challenged. Because digital content is platform agnostic (no distinction between video, news, articles – it’s all content online) it creates room for different monetization models based on context and consumer desire.

2) Align servicing next to content: iTunes has been successful because it made buying music simple and cheap enough. Youtube is experimenting with a new monetization model by allowing users to offer high-quality downloads of videos for low prices.

I agree fully with the issues Faris raises here, however, I think that this dialog and the issue of content monetization is incomplete without further exploration of the idea of content curation. Incidentally, in the comments section of Faris’s post, Carl from the Communications Room makes a very interesting observation,

I’d like to see some kind of Stack Magazine/Ad Exchange model. I don’t want to pay $20 a month each across 20 different publishers. But I might pay $40 a month for access to all those publishers. They then share the money between them based on the content people use across the networks. It also makes publishers compete to create really good content.

Carl’s comment reminds me of HSBC’s 2-week pilot effort to market its Premier Card – personalized in-flight magazines. A kiosk located at Heathrow Terminal allows passengers to select magazine articles on topics they are interested in and have them bound into a hardback form they can take on their flight.

Time Inc’s Mine Magazine took it a step further by allowing subscribers to pick their favorite topics and four Time Inc magazines to receive a curated/ personalized magazien featuring articles that reflect the subscriber’s selection.

While the results from these early experiments are still unavailable, additional services that refine and evolve this idea have popped up. (offbeatguides.com, idiomag.com, fuelfortravel.com)

An indication of the future ?

Read The Content Republic here.

Gilt Groupe, the mother of all online flash sale websites, launched JetSetter – a site that mimics the model for travel deals.

JetSetter’s approach focuses on packaging the experience around exploration and discovery. The discounts are only 30% or so below best available rates. But to keep up the curatorial aspect and to establish editorial authenticity – JetSetter sends it’s travel correspondents to scout the destinations prior to featuring the deal. And so accompanyingy every travel deal are brief first-person travel accounts/ reviews and beautiful high-end photography.

My personal issue with JetSetter is its differentiation – it falls too close in the Tablet Hotels or an Online Conceirge – business models created around curation but, ultimately to push sales.

If you think about it, apart from the product deals, JetSetter is relying very strongly on the first-person advertorial accounts to seal the deal. I’m just curious to see how this site is received and what tweaks they make to it in the ensuing months.

I’m not sure how exactly JetSetter contributes to the dialog on content – but perhaps in a few months from now, patterns will emerge and I will be able to connect the dots?

Project 3Six5 is right at the sweet spot of this blog because it has hand-picked elements from various disciplines (journalism, social media and marketing) to evolve the existing state of citizen journalism. Project 3Six5 will be curating three hundred and sixty five eclectic individuals to write a journal entry narrating their experiences in a particular day of 2010, creating a diverse, yet global snapshot of the year.

I asked founders Len Kendall and Daniel Honigman a few questions about the project and how it is adding to the dialog around the future of content.

Your backgrounds and interests seem to merge at the seemingly opposite ends of the spectrum: storytelling, journalism and marketing. Can you talk a little more about how Project 3Six5 is at the center of this ?

LK: The social web is shaping the future of content by providing more of it. It’s made it easier, cheaper, more collaborative, and shareable. As marketers, there are many theories on where this reality will take us, but one we’ve been thinking about lately is:

When/If all our content becomes free, the way to monetize it, is to have the most of it.

At a Borders bookstore today, I noticed this conspicuously placed ‘Recommendation’ tool lifted directly off of e-commerce practices. In addition to this approach, Borders had about ten other ‘curated’ tables of books ranging from ‘Tickle the funny bone’ to the more obvious ‘Bestsellers.’

In an upcoming article, I will explore how effective this particular curation model has been for Borders. But would love to hear your thoughts, experience or reaction to this.

Two thought leaders recognized a role that has slowly crept up the cultural cool lingo and job descriptions. I read Rohit Bhargava’s very insightful manifesto for a Content Curator.  He says,

By some estimates in just a few years we will reach a point where all the information on the Internet will double every 72 hours. Double.

And there will emerge a role assigned a single individual whose job it will be to sift through this content and tell you what to consume. Rohit has even provided a concise job description. In the comments section, Joe Pulizz acknowledges and gives further credibility to this idea by shareing his title, Chief Content Officer.

Now couple that with this NYT article I chanced upon yesterday. Although it is filed under Fashion & Style, I think it really belongs in Business. Why, you ask me. Simply because, the way I look at it, the role of a ‘curator’ is a cultural shift in how we perceive the web and our roles.

We are all everyday curators. From curating what to share and what NOT to share on our Twitter Feeds, we are consistently in the game of trying to one-up our own content broadcasting and production smarts. As the NYT article shares, “curate is code for “I have a discerning eye and great taste.”

Virginia Postrel sums it up best when she says,

Because there are more things to put together, the juxtapositions become a big part of the interesting experience of those things. It is a creative activity in itself.”

What are your thoughts on content & culture curation and your role in it?