Wordcamp 2007 – Blogger journalism an innovation
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ANALYSIS, San Francisco – WordCamp 2007 commenced today in San Francisco, at the Swedish American Hall on Market St. This is my second post.Presenter in the second session, was experienced journalist and IT veteran John Dvorak. He was joined by writer from the (sadly rumoured to be defunct) Business 2.0, OM Malik.
Dvorak had two interesting points regarding innovation:
“Bloggers present themselves as bloggers”
“Citizen journalism”
Schedule: http://2007.wordcamp.org/schedule/blogs-vs-journalism/
Both these allude to the innovation zeitgeist as 2thinknowTM define it.
The innovation zeitgesit in blogging is the upcoming professionalism and redesign of the presentation of user journalism as it transitions to mass-market in various defined markets.
Background to innovation
In marketing, as I said in my previous post, we typically talk about how marketing typically divides markets into stages on a curve.
I asked the presenters about international barriers to blogging becoming mainstream. OM Malik didn’t appear to really understand my question, hence his off-topic limited response about broadband penetration (and cricket)…
The idea that acceptance of a medium is driven strictly by broadband penetration fails to account for culture, which is an under-rated influence factor.
Technology is less important is some countries, and as people who spend all our time in the English-speaking West some of us assume everyone is like us.
The Marketing Curve
There’s an easy way many MBA students study marketing and new products.
It’s the marketing curve (originally it is called a Product Diffusion Curve); a recognized marketing model which has many variants. The marketing curve traces back to work of future Stanford Professor Everett Rogers, summarised in Diffusion of Innovations in 1962, which explains innovation stages along a bell-curve.
Here’s a copy of the diagram in a simplified form. It’s taught as a key distinction in various forms in marketing and MBA curricula, and is the source of the common term “early adopters”, which most people at WordCamp 2007 would be, of course!
It’s useful to map all products on this curve within their target market.
But if you’re an innovator or early-adopter, you may tend to assume a broader target market than actually exists. In broad-market terms blogs are in their early-adoption to early-majority (part of the mass-market) stages depending on the country/region.
Current State
Looking at the marketing curve, the
In
In
When I was in
When will blogs go mainstream?
Once bloggers deliver quality content in an efficient way/format that suits reader’s lifestyles and does not require technical skills, it will be mainstream.
Happened before - iPods suit people’s lifestyles along with iTunes.
How do we know blogging is not mainstream?
OK, for all you non-marketing people out there, here’s a way to look at the distinction:
Until bloggers are paid what journalists are (which they will be), and the market rewards them (which it will); then they won’t be a profession on equal par with traditional press (which they will be).
Figures bandied around were $140,000 per annum as a high level blogging income, and if you know much about salaries, that’s not much for high-end knowledge professionals.
The global blogging market is tiny at current compared to traditional media.
Look at a 2-7 year time frame on blogging to dramatically explode in size. It won’t be tiny for long.
Which gets back to Dvorak.
“Bloggers present themselves as bloggers”
Which in short gets to another aspect of the broader point.
Blogging is just a method of writing content, and Wordpress is a superior easy delivery platform (simple CMS) for this content, for a small number of users.
And each new medium always begets new approaches. Newspapers begot illustration and reading news daily.
But the underlying point in the not-to-new world, is that it may not look like blogging anymore.
Technical people sometimes mix up the platform with the outcome or content.
It kind of needs an XML division into data and meta data (including design/usability) formatting.
So get ready for the thrill-ride in media.
Christopher
Speaker. Author. Editor-In-Chief. Executive Director of Innovation, 2thinknow.
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