Chris Anderson, Editor-in-Chief at Wired, and author of The Long Tail has recently released his new book Free: The Future of a Radical Price.
With the publishing industry currently imploding, “free” is very controversial these days. Malcolm Gladwell slammed Free last month in The New Yorker.
To put his money where his mouth is, Anderson released the entire book as a free audiobook available on iTunes. While his book cites compelling examples of how “free” translates into profits, I’m not sure how that will work for him here. Probably from enough chaps like me writing about it and linking to Amazon for the real book.
I’m about half-way through and haven’t hit anything revelatory. But maybe that’s because I’ve been listening in on this conversation for some time.
Hey clients, guess what? We ad agencies kind of don’t get this social media thing yet either. But don’t worry we have the interns teaching us what all this Twittering and Facebooking stuff is all about.
And while we badger you about your corporate sluggishness to adopt, we’re a little afraid of it too.
Today yet another service has launched for sharing your life.
thisMoment uses “moments” as the organizing metaphor. The interface looks impressive, easy to use, and fun. It also appears to seamlessly integrate with other services you’re already likely using, such as Facebook, Flickr, and YouTube.
As I wrote in a previous post, after the web 2.0 bust, I’m very hesitant to “invest” in new services like this. Especially ones where you chronicle the great moments in your life. Just today even I was starting to fret again about the level of content my wife and I have been putting in our now 1-year old son’s Tumblelog.
I have to say however, that I like where thisMoment is going and I won’t be surprised to see features like this begin to crop up in Apple’s iPhoto.
Great video here from Clay Shirky on how social media has permanently changed the media and communication landscape.
He reviews some powerful moments such as the citizen journalism that happened during last year’s earthquake in China, and recent user interactions with Obama.
Coincidently, I was reading yesterday of the collapse of a building in Brooklyn. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt. The news came via the local, The New York Times local news channel that harnesses citizen journalism and bloggers
With the rise of social media, ad blockers, time-shifting, and the decline of newspapers and magazines, the industry is frequently speculating if advertising is dead. The question really is, “how is advertising transforming and redefining itself.”
