Boutique Media
Shelton Bumgarner
To me, Barry Diller the last decade or so has been a man in search of
a mission. He's got the brains and the vision, he just needs -
something - to get him back to his rightful place in the sun. Well, I
think I've got just the trick.
What he needs is to gobble up a whole passel of proto-boutique media
sites and integrate them into his existing company. By "proto-boutique
media" I mean they're kinda like Cornelius' kid at the end of Escape
>From the Planet of the Apes - they will grow up to be boutique media
sites one day, but right now they're just a baby chimp that can talk.
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The sites that InterActive should buy are Friendster, YouTube,
SixApart, Dreamhost and Technorati. See, the crux is that such a
series of buys would put him at the forefront of the boutique media
revolution. InterActive (which I would rename either Friendster,
YouTube or Technorati) would not really be a media company so much as
a facilitator of OTHER people producing content in a boutique media
fashion. All the pieces would be there for a boutique media empire,
you'd just need to tightly integrate the back end and make the whole
thing a seamless experience to the user. As an aside to all this - if
ever there was a company in search of a CEO it's AOL in search of
Barry Diller. If TimeWarner ever gets off its ass and spins off AOL,
Barry Diller would be just the man to save the company from the
otherwise warm embrace of Google. Diller could work some serious magic
with the AOL brand, I just know it. There would be a place at a spun
off AOL for Steve Case...but Steve Case is no Steve Jobs. Only someone
like Diller could truly take AOL to the next level.
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Boutique Media19 Apr 2006 11:03 pm
The Definition of Boutique Media (edit this)
I've given it some thought and I can now give you my official
definition of "boutique media." (Coming soon to a Newsweek cover near
you!)
Boutique media is the profitable production of digital content and
its consumption using the principles of sociable media.
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In other words, sociable media is to boutique media as the Internet
1992 is the to World Wide Web 2006. At least in my mind. To me,
sociable media is that guy in the first season of Will & Grace that
drove Grace crazy 'cause he was way too nice. Sociable media is
spending long nights studying Ani Difranco lyrics and day dreaming of
writing the perfect poem. Isn't that just sweet?
Meanwhile, boutique media is the "Lazy Sunday" SNL skit, that Late
Night episode 20 years ago when Crispin Glover almost beheaded Dave
Letterman and trying to figure out when Tom Cruise will finally -
finally - admit that he and Jim J. Bullock pulled a "Freaky Friday"
and now the real Tom Cruise's soul is in the man on Hollywood Squares.
Boutique media wants to destroy everything you know about media.
Traditional newspapers, TV, movies, books, - everything - is gone.
>From now on, there is no Big Media, only lots of little guys (and
gals) who come together to produce a product in a "thunderclap" of
creativity. And they get paid for it!
Welcome to the future, bitches.
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Technology and Meta-Media Musings and Boutique Media18 Apr 2006 09:41
pm
The Future of YouTube (edit this)
The more I use YouTube, the more I wonder why some Major Media Company
hasn't bought it yet. It's so simple and so perfect, there is a huge
amount of money to be made if The Man gets his greedy paws on it.
The key is - it's got the interface and the brand name. What it
doesn't have is a lot of content that people want. What if, say, a
Barry Diller were to buy it and start using his friends in Hollywood
so instead of a bunch of crap, users could find 15 minute clips of
stuff they actually want to see?
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Somehow, Mr. Diller could make it so people who paid a few buck a
month could get that really cool SNL clip in 36 hours, while everyone
else would have to wait 48. Or some such. The site would obviously
lose some of its grassroots, spontaneous appeal, but the addition of
legal content would greatly enhance the site. I'm not saying that the
average person couldn't still upload stuff, they could. It's just
there would be a whole new area devoted to legal downloads of short
clips. In the future, Diller could leverage the YouTube name into
letting folks download ENTIRE MOVIES for a monthly subscription fee.
Or maybe one of the Big Four (Five?) TV networks will buy it to
showcase their stuff. I think AOL could do some pretty cool stuff with
YouTube. It's definitely got more of a Yahoo or Google vibe to it. Or
maybe Friendster could buy it. Someone's going to buy it. I just don't
know who exactly.
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Meta-Media Musings and Boutique Media08 Apr 2006 08:37 am
Other Than That, Mr. Sulzberger, How's The Newspaper Doing? (edit
this)
For once, I can't argue with the conventional wisdom - the print
edition (ped) of newspapers is kaput. It's all over but the yelling as
they say. Now, let me stress it's the ped of the newspaper that's
finished. Newspapers as an organization will continue to prosper and
thrive in the new Boutique Media age.
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Their newsroom may not really exist anymore. And they're always going
to face the possiblity that some of their better, more well known
writers will jump ship and start their own newsblog, but newspapers
will still be there. Newspapers-as-organizations will also face a
great deal of competition. We're talking the type of vicious, horrible
competition the American newspaper business has not seen since the
Maine was blown up. (That was a long time ago.)
All of the technology to kill the ped of every major American
newspaper in existence today is already available, it just to be put
together. And guess who is going to come out with the device that will
kill the ped is: Steve Jobs. Now, I've thought a lot about this and
what will kill the ped is an uber-Ipod. It'll be thin, wireless and
have a nice readable screen. The newspaper person in me sees the
Koreans using their PSP on the subway and grimaces. That's the concept
that will kill peds, the screen just needs to be a bit bigger. And it
needs to have WiMax/WiBro access.
See, it's the issue of portability that is really preventing the
"true" tipping point that kills newspapers from happening. Once the
iNewton (wink) comes out with its lightweight design and large screen,
newspaper publishers better start knocking on Steve Jobs' office door.
Here's the deal they should be offering: You provide us a cut rate on
the iNewton, we buy huge numbers of them....and then sell them to the
subscribers of our print edition to migrate them to our online
edition.
I'm not saying the process isn't going to be painful. It is going to
be EXTREMELY painful! Thousands of newspaper jobs are going to vanish.
A lot of hardworking folks in the back office are simply not going to
have a job anymore. Who needs a pressman if you don't have a press?
And newspapers as an organization simply aren't very fast changing -
or very good at doing what little changing they do. At the end of the
process, however, newspapers are going to be hugely successful and
will continue to churn out huge amounts of money.
One interesting thing, though, I suspect in the smaller markets
newspapers as organization may not survive. Not everywhere, but in a
few small, under served places a Website produced by well known and
well connected reporters might replace the incumbent newspaper. I know
small towns and really what you need is an OCD writer with a lot of
power, money and friends. They'll provide the advertising and the news
tips and the rest will take care of itself.
Besides portability, there is one other thing that is stopping the
switch over: The lack of a viable micro payment option. If you could
pay 50 cents to view that day's edition of usatoday.com using your
iNewton, then really the end user newspaper experience would be almost
the same as it would be using a regular print newspaper. But Visa and
Mastercard keep killing the idea, so I don't know if Americans will
ever have the opportunity to enjoy micro payments. Sigh.
Overall, the future of newspapers as "infotainment producers" is a
bright one. We're just in for a rough patch the next decade or two.
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General and Meta-Media Musings and Boutique Media31 Jan 2006 10:25 am
YouTube & the Dangers of Sociable Media (edit this)
YouTube is some dangerous, dangerous technology folks, is all I gotta
say. It's dangerous for a number of reasons. (As you may know, YouTube
is a sociable media site (of sorts) that lets you upload your own
video clips.)
First, given enough time, creative people are just going to make their
own content, up load it to YouTube or its successors and skip the MSM
altogether. We're talking a serious, serious inflection point. That
could happen between now and the next general election. But I'm
thinking more about the time the 2012 election rolls around. Screw
audio podcasts, I want my YouTube! Note to the powers that be - vlog
is a horrible, horrible name for video blogs. Sheesh.
Next, it brings us one step closer to my dream of boutique media where
groups of creative people will simply set up a boutique media company
the specializes in whatever aspect of production they specialize in.
They will then use The Power Of The Internets to create music, TV,
websites or movies on an ad hoc basis. You a producer wanting to do
the next James Bond film? You go to your favorite boutique media site
and start clicking. Before the days over, you've got boutique media
companies scouting locations, doing story boards, working on casting
and some "legitimate businessman" outfit in New Jersey willing to do
the catering!
And lastly, the darkest element of all of this - the global village as
overlord. I used to live in a village and it sucked. Just imagine a
village on a global scale and do you see what a horrific future that
could be? Everyone will be so busy uploading and streaming every
aspect of their life that one day - maybe in some post-apocalyptic
future where Microsoft and Chindia have merged to become The Company
of Alien fame - every aspect of our lives will be known by Little
Brothers who are more than willing to narc us out for this or that
thing we're not supposed to do.
It's a global village, after all. Can't have personal freedom in a
village, now can we?