The Internet is a river, part deux
March 17th, 2008 by BryanAlfred Hermida highlights a relevant part of the State of the News Media report:
A site restricted to its own content takes on the character of a cul de sac street with yellow “No Outlet” sign, reducing its value to the user. “Search has become the predominant … paradigm,” an influential market research report circulating throughout the industry reads. That means every page of a website — even one containing a single story — is its own front page. And each piece of content competes on its own with all other information on that topic linked to by blogs, “digged” by user news sites, sent in e-mails, or appearing in searches.
and says:
This means that news becomes a journey, rather than a destination. The smart news outlets realise this and seek to take on a new role, as a central hub in someone’s journey through a network of links.
Or, as I said earlier, the Internet is a river, it’s not a well.
Interestingly, I heard this mentioned several years ago by James Brady at a convergence conference. He noted how much Washingtonpost.com traffic came through search engines, or through individual pages, and yet editors continued to fight for prime real estate on the home page. Even on a tiny blog like this one, I notice more and more traffic coming from search and RSS readers. People looking for relevant content. Something we have, or we point them toward.
March 17th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
I think you are right and you could also look at it another one. A hub and spoke type model. internet sites can act as hubs and they can send information or content out to the spokes. You don’t necessarily have to be the destination site but you can beam content into the site with the niche audience you are looking to engage.