Report Outlines Six Competencies News Organizations Need to Develop to Profit from Changes in Technology
EVANSTON, IL - Six special capabilities "could well prove the difference between winners and losers in the next generation market for news and information," according to a new Media Management Center study of technological trends affecting news and information businesses.
"Emerging technologies are opening up both enormous possibilities for news organizations as well as threats. It's vital that news organizations understand these trends and learn how to harness them to their advantage," said Michael P. Smith, Executive Director of the Media Management Center (MMC), in releasing the report.
The Six Competencies report, the result of interviews with 24 technology leaders and thinkers, identifies major technological trends that promise to have significant impact on the collection, production and distribution of news and information. It outlines a series of special skills and capabilities organizations should develop, acquire or strengthen as a result.
Moser-Wellman calls the six special competencies "The Platform Strategist," "The Marketer," "The Community Builder," "The Data Miner," "The Complete Storyteller," and "The Entrepreneur." These competencies encompass many specific skills, from smart product differentiation and advanced digital storytelling to the abilities to technologically extract maximum value from archives, leverage content across platforms, and drive contact and collaboration.
The technological developments reviewed range from the Semantic Web, 3G and 4G connectivity, cloud computing and mesh networks to the democratization of the tools of media, the rise of location-based information and the increased ability to target both content and advertising.
NOTE: The Media Management Center has created a special Webinar presentation that outlines and explains Moser-Wellman's findings. Moser-Wellman is also willing to do a small number of customized, interactive live Webinars for interested companies or associations. For more information, contact Vivian Vahlberg at v-vahlberg@northwestern.edu, or 847-467-1790. "As the report points out, greater sophistication of devices and software will lead to growing consumer expectations for different levels and types of content from each platform" said Vivian Vahlberg, MMC Managing Director. "To successfully deliver experiences on and across multiple platforms, news organizations must understand what function each platform plays - and then develop products suited to the unique dynamics of each platform."
To remain viable, the report concludes, news organizations will need to partner with companies that have skills (particularly technological) they don't have, that have high engagement with Web audiences, and that can help solidify their market leadership and shore up their consumer base.
Here are the six recommended competencies:
The Platform Strategist: To capture market opportunities by leveraging content over and across multiple platforms, news organizations must understand the unique attributes and capabilities of each platform; know consumers and spot their unmet needs; understand their own strengths and offerings, and develop products accordingly.
The Marketer: News organizations need to think like the best marketers – carefully defining their brands and working to develop deep consumer engagement with them. The essential first step: identifying more clearly what differentiates them in the marketplace and determining what unique value and role they provide.
The Community Builder: News organizations need to become more expert community builders, using technology to help connect people around shared interests. Using the increased technological capacity for information-sharing between individuals and groups, news organizations can more effectively shape dialogue and enable consumers to link to discussions of increasingly wider context.
The Data Miner: News organizations that become expert data miners and managers can develop unmatched depth of insight about consumers that they can use to profitably deliver both personalized content and targeted advertising. They can also unlock the value of their current and archival content.
The Complete Storyteller: Digital technologies give news organizations a much broader palette and set of tools to use in thir storytelling. It's not just text, photos and videos - it's a mix of all three plus interactivity, games, charts and much more. Excelling at these new kinds of storytelling is a competency that can differentiate news organizations from competitors.
The Entrepreneur: In this environment, news organizations must develop their ability to think like entrepreneurs and identify assets they can leverage and new services they can provide, by pursuing partnerships, experimenting smartly and developing new models of advertising.
The Media Management Center is an executive education, research and development institute at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.
(Annette Moser-Wellman) It's easy to get tied up in our underwear debating what should be the mission of the news organization - delivering news or providing information? Jack Lail, News Director of Innovation for the Knoxville News Sentinel, knows his answer. "I'm a big believer that we have to be useful to our audience. That is really what we do. If being useful is making it easy for you to find out stuff or acquire social currency at the water cooler, that's great. But it's also how to plan your life or what you're going to do this weekend. If you focus on being of use to your audience, then the news is very important, but it doesn't have to be the only thing that you try to accomplish."
And the Knoxville News Sentinel is finding a lot of fresh ways to be of use. Facing the challenges of any local news service, the paper and its Web site, knoxnews.com, are focusing on serving audiences in a multi-platform way. From text alerts to Twitter feeds, their goal is a deeply useful engagement level with consumers.
"In our local market, we need to be the largest player in monthly visitors to our Web site," he says. "We are using different strategies to get people to come more frequently, particularly if they are not print newspaper readers."
And of course in a local market, you have to find ways to be useful vis-a-vis TV stations and their sites. Knoxnews.com differentiates itself in two important ways: breaking news and video. Breaking news is updated on the site frequently and provides in-depth reporting.
"We have to have more breaking news than they do and we have to do it more completely than they have it," Jack says. The News Sentinel's staff has produced more than 600 videos in the last year – possibly as much video as the local TV station. Reporters are given inexpensive flip digital cameras for talking head interviews and on-the-scene reporting. These video can be e-mailed virally or even embedded on a MySpace page.
As a holding of Scripps Newspapers, experimenting with new technologies at the News Sentinel and knoxnews.com is important. Jack mentions the ownership's penchant for being first to try new things, such as the new Yahoo ad serving system, APT.
He notes that trying new things in the mobile platform is important too.
"Mobile may be the dominant platform eventually," Jack says. "Certainly with devices like the iPhone, you can see how mobile could be the primary way people get information. We have our eye on it, but for now we are doing a lot of text messaging. In a week we'll do 75 to 80 text messages. As we update the Web site, the mobile sites are also updated." Knoxnews.com also has a site for the community to upload and share photos.
Jack sees more 'low-hanging fruit' in the media group's core Web sites. Growing audience penetration and monetizing every page view confirms their mission. Knoxnews.com is even launching a new site, Knoxville.com, that will be entertainment-oriented and provide more 'go and do' sorts of information.
A central factor of the marketing equation is the good use of outbound linking. "We use a blog aggregator called blognetwork.knoxnews.com to either link to or list stories. On our sports site, we often do round-ups of what other newspapers, Web sites or bloggers are saying about football, basketball, coaches or whatever. Newspapers sites need to do more linking like this instead of trying to create all the content. Instead, make it easy for others to find the content, even if it's from a direct competitor. It all goes back to the mission of being useful," he says.
So whether it's news, information or someone else's news and information, serving the needs of your audience prevails. Because when you become the trusted authority, you've built brand loyalty and never have to be tied up in your underwear again.
What do you think? Please share your thoughts, experiences and reactions by clicking on the comment button below.
This TechScout article is part of a new series of Moser-Wellman interviews commissioned by the Media Management Center to explore opportunities and insights at the intersection of technology and the news media. A book, "Six Competencies of the Next Generation News Organization," and workshops - both based on the TechScout research - will debut November 11.
(Annette Moser-Wellman) The road to Internet revenue is littered with pay-for-premium-content failures. The most visible was the New York Times' TimesSelect, which charged for access to special content online. Two years after it was launched, it was abandoned in September 2007 because, of course, there was more money to be had in advertising revenue than online subscriptions.
And remember when Rupert Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal that same year? The ubiquitous buzz on the street was that he was going to abandon subscriptions and make content free online - because of course, there was more money to be had in advertising revenue than in online subscriptions.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the Internet. The WSJ online still prices its online subscription at $99 per year (and with print on promotion). What the heck happened? Either News Corp management figured it was too hard to make money through online advertising OR subscription revenue was so lucrative it was hard to walk away from it.
Either way, the WSJ example is proof positive that the days of "walled garden" content are not over. It seems that paying for premium content may be making a small but perceptible comeback. Perhaps the 'free news lunch' is slowly becoming a thing of the past?
Listen to Staci D. Kramer, Co-Editor and Executive Vice President of paidcontent.org, a site that provides global coverage of the business of digital content. "One of the things on the horizon (for news organizations) is better ways of making use of what we already do. How do you make the most of what you have now? A lot of people didn't like TimesSelect but it was in many respects the right model. Take something that people want and see if they are willing to pay for it separately. What you're seeing now are a number of publications and a number of new models trying to tap into that concept of premium subscription."
Last year when I interviewed John Skipper, Senior Vice President and General Manager of ESPN.com, he talked about the success of ESPN Insider and ESPN 360. The Insider offers premium content online for a subscription fee that complements the free EPSN.com site. Skipper said, "We believe ESPN Insider to be the second largest subscriber-based content business on the Internet after the Wall Street Journal." A second complementary Website, ESPN 360, is a broadband Internet service that is available only through Internet service providers. EPSN generates revenue through its partnership with the ISPs.
And if we want to get granular, this trend of fee-for-content extends to services as well. Consider Craigslist. Yes, Craigslist, the classified site that eviscerated the easy revenue of newspaper advertising by creating an online place for free postings. Have you tried to list a job lately? Be prepared to pay $25 to $75 per job "category" depending on your metro location. To adequately describe a new position, you'll need to pony up multiples of that fee. How is that cheaper than the old days of newspaper listings?
So my point here is that the concept of strictly "free" content and even online services may be slowly becoming a thing of the past. Internet companies need to make money, too. And just as start-ups like Facebook, LinkedIn and others find ways to hook you and then find clever ways to monetize the mass audience, free content can't be sustained over time without adequate revenue. So go ahead and find ways to charge for premium content. Experiment with ideas that your consumers might be willing to pay for. Because sooner or later the economists are always right. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
What do you think? Please share your thoughts, experiences and reactions by clicking on the comment button below.
This TechScout article is part of a new series of Moser-Wellman interviews commissioned by the Media Management Center to explore opportunities and insights at the intersection of technology and the news media. A book, "Six Competencies of the Next Generation News Organization," and workshops - both based on the TechScout research - will debut November 11.
TechScout: On Becoming A Next Generation News Organization at NPR
(Annette Moser-Wellman) – As readers of TechScout know, I’ve been spending the last year scouting out technological trends that will affect the news business and mulling over what capabilities news organizations need to cultivate as a result. In just a few days, you’ll learn what I’ve concluded, when Media Management Center publishes my new book, "Six Competencies of the Next Generation News Organization."
So let me whet your appetite for my findings by sharing with you parts of my interview with Carlos Barrionuevo, who is Senior Director of Business Development at National Public Radio (NPR). Carlos shared with me recently how his organization is transforming for the digital age. Imagine my delight when I realized that some of NPR’s initiatives nicely illustrate the very competencies outlined in my MMC work.
(To learn more about the study’s findings, sign up here for a free Webinar November 11.)
Here are some of the reasons I think NPR will lead in news markets to come and why NPR continues to surprise and delight audiences.
On being a Platform Strategist:
"We think about radio segments as stories. Reporters break material down to the story level, decide where that story will go and what material goes with it. We try to create dynamic internal structures that allow you to distribute to multiple platforms, whether it’s an iPhone, simple streaming or a listening experience online. We are one unified newsroom supporting multiple platforms."
On being a Community Builder:
"So we said, 'Okay, we've got Facebook. We've got Twitter. We've got blogs.' But the structure of our site was a walled garden. Rather than control where our content was, we decided to open up our API (application programming interface) and put it out there so people can start to take pieces of our content and put them on their site. We thought, 'Let's just open up everything we've got and see what our audience will do. If we are truly public, let's see what happens.' It's promoted the mentality of our public mission and we can move now from driving page views to driving engagement."
On being a Data Miner:
"We are doing the down and dirty work of digitizing our archives. We have twenty-something years of archives we need to digitize so that we can put that material to other uses. These archives can be valuable for us in terms of our public service mission as well as potentially launching into new markets and driving new revenues."
On being a Complete Storyteller:
"We are putting systems in place that actually make storytelling easier. We are combining a number of different production systems so that we can approach a story from the reporter level and the editor level and allow people to add associated content, be it pictures, graphics or notes. We think in terms of stories. We have six minute pieces which no one else does. This lends itself well to adding many different kinds of media."
On being an Entrepreneur:
"You need to change the leadership of the newsrooms to people who can understand the importance of supporting the whole organization. Online has grown up in many companies separate from what would be considered core programming. But NPR has a management commitment to integrating digital as core to the news process."
What do you think? Please share your thoughts, experiences and reactions by clicking on the comment button below.
This TechScout article is part of a new series of Moser-Wellman interviews commissioned by the Media Management Center to explore opportunities and insights at the intersection of technology and the news media. A book, "Six Competencies of the Next Generation News Organization," and Webinars – both based on the TechScout research – will debut November 11.
TechScout: Relationships of trust and the future of on-line advertising.
(Annette Moser-Wellman) -- A college student recently told me something shocking. "My friends aren't using Facebook anymore. We don't want information about our lives open to anyone – especially marketers. Feels like Big Brother." Well, you can't mark a trend from one data point, but you may have noticed Microsoft's recent version of Internet Explorer has a feature called "InPrivate Browsing". It automatically deletes cookies so advertisers and the like can't have access to your Internet activity. Could it be that just when the dream of highly targeted advertising seemed near, it's disappearing in a puff of smoke?
There is a new mandate evolving for the Internet advertiser: develop a deeper relationship with your audiences.
"I think what's really going to happen is that marketers will have to effectively woo people into signing into services and let them know what's in it for them, rather than surreptitiously taking the information from behind the scenes," says Doug Winfield, Vice President, Digital Strategies at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide.
He adds, "That gets to the idea of the social aspect of the Web. When you know you are entering into a relationship with a marketer, you expect to give up some degree of your personal information, but you also expect to get something in return." Winfield says we can expect this "return" to be anything from pay-for-view advertising to augmented customer service. But, one thing is for sure, advertising will be highly integrated with consumer relationships management.
How can news organizations develop this deeper relationship with consumers? By moving from a "sell advertising" mindset to a "create dialogue" mindset. As an example, Winfield describes how Dell uses social networks to keep in touch and keep a pulse on their consumers. It actively mines data from sites like Twitter to learn more about Dell users. Dell staffers also monitor Twitter for comments or anecdotes on the company's reputation, for responding to customers about service or product issues. A second-party site like Twitter can also help the company learn about and solve customer service issues.
Winfield tells the story. "I recently bought a new computer from Dell. It's a nice computer, but it came with the wrong power supply, so I decided to do an experiment. I sent a message out to the e-mail support group at Dell to see if they could solve the problem for me. I got various e-mails from Dell's tech support, but it wasn't going anywhere. Then I went to Twitter and wrote a post saying, 'Hey, I just bought this snazzy new Dell laptop. Great, except wrong power supply.' The following day, I got a response from somebody at Dell asking what the problem was, what my order number was, and then a couple of days later, I received a new power supply." By scanning Web sites where their users congregate, Dell stays close to its customers needs and wants. It becomes a relationship expert.
Check out HowardForums. This is an online forum for consumer discussion about cell phones. People post problems they are having with their phones and talk about new cell phone features and functionalities. These sites are actively scanned by cell phone companies. They use them to get a better understanding of users' attitudes and behaviors and, importantly, as a place to solve customer service problems. Winfield says services such as telephone and cable providers are doing the same thing. Rather than create their own forums, they use existing communities to gather feedback and engage in the dialogue. While it's popular for news organizations to include 'talk back' features on their sites, how frequently are these forums reviewed for consumer perspective? Could new content be developed based on the dialogue? Where else might your audience be online where you could meet up and build relationships with them? How can you provide them information that would be relevant and start a conversation rather than shout a message? The ability to build relationships with consumers is one of the competencies news organizations will need to compete for advertising dollars.
Winfield explains: "Online advertising has been a big, booming area, but people may have more control in the near future over the types of advertising that they'll see. Companies have to think about how to make it more likely that they can engage people to buy their products or services. Part of success is certainly going out and doing discovery and understanding where those people are likely to be. Certainly a part of it is understanding those communities and saying the things that people want to hear, and some of it requires building relationships, because if you don't have a relationship that's built on trust, you're just a flak."
So to make the dream of effective advertising come true, companies will need to build a two-way dialogue – a relationship of trust. This should be good news for those in the business of selling news and information. Because who has a history of building those relationships of trust better than the news organization?
What do you think? Please share your thoughts, experiences and reactions by clicking on the comment button below.
This TechScout article is part of a new series of Moser-Wellman interviews commissioned by the Media Management Center to explore opportunities and insights at the intersection of technology and the news media. A book, "Six Competencies of the Next Generation News Organization," and workshops – both based on the TechScout research – will debut this fall.
(Stacy Lynch) For the past several months I’ve been trying to answer a simple question: "If you want to really wow people online, what should you focus on most?" Research is expensive, leadership energy is at a premium and there’s a desperate need for prioritization at every level.
From that question emerged a just-released Media Management Center study that answers some very fundamental questions about what matters most online and what it takes to cut through the overwhelming amount of information.
And overwhelmed is how many users feel online. When it's a subject they care about, the Internet's seemingly infinite volume is wonderful. When it's not, it's a nightmare. People varied greatly in how successfully they seemed to manage the volumes of information available. Particularly in the news realm, users urgently sought ways to get what they wanted (and only what they wanted) with the least effort.
As we listened to dozens of heavy Internet users talk about their experiences online, it brought to mind a term coined by Walter Lippmann back in 1922: "cognitive miserliness." What Lippmann described was the way human beings process new information with the least mental effort. Human beings look for shortcuts to sort and sift new or unfamiliar information quickly. People try to relate new information to things they already know, stick to familiar territory and limit the amount of information coming in. The more knowledge and experience they have, the more quickly and efficiently they can process information. The less they know, the more likely they'll feel overwhelmed and disoriented when encountering something unfamiliar.
It was as if Lippmann were describing how users are coping with 2008's Internet. All around the Internet, users are being "cognitive misers" in the sites they choose and how they choose them. Particularly when it comes to news - widely seen as ubiquitous and largely "all the same" - users aggressively employ ways to limit or manage the amount of information they’re dealing with.
One important aspect of cognitive miserliness is how knowledge and experience impacts the challenge. For heavy news users who bring a large amount of knowledge to the table, the experience and expectations are wildly different from light news consumers. Rather than point toward universal solutions, this study shows how important it is to understand who the audience is (and isn't) when designing Web strategies.
What I found in my study is that the most important thing for news organizations to learn is to respect 'cognitive miserliness.' Web sites that understand and help users cope with information online win; those that create work for users suffer.
The results of this work were just published: "WHAT IT TAKES TO BE A WEB FAVORITE," is based on joint research by MMC and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Download the complete study at www.mediamanagementcenter.org/webconsumer.asp. And let me know what you think.
Stacy Lynch, a consultant and MMC associate, was formerly Director of Innovation for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and research manager for MMC's Readership Institute. She teaches in various MMC programs and has created a new MMC seminar on customer focus that will debut October 5-8, featuring not only the Web favorite research but also not-yet-released additional research on what makes consumers think sites are "easy to use."
(Annette Moser-Wellman) In the war for the time and attention of consumers, news organizations face some pretty fierce competitors. And in the wild and wooly world of the Web, the competitors to beat arguably are social networking sites.
In terms of spent per visit, we can crown Facebook as the winner in the battle. Last year hitwise.com estimated the average length of a Facebook visit at 21 minutes, three times longer than the average news and information site. Twenty-one minutes! It begs the question: should news sites just admit defeat in the war for time and attention? Or is another strategy called for?
Increasingly, news organizations are finding it more productive and profitable to work in a symbiotic relationship with others - with aggregators and with social networking and bookmarking sites. Fully two-thirds of the traffic to NYtimes.com now comes, not through the home page, but through aggregators, blogs and outside links. Many more readers come to the site from search engines and links on other sites, instead of coming directly to NYtimes.com.
These indirect readers, or readers from other sites, are proving more valuable in terms of advertising revenue than even potential subscription fees. Thus, the 'walled garden' or 'gatekeeper strategy' is being replaced by a new rallying cry: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em.
I asked the creator of a social network how he thinks news organizations should view social media. Nova Spivack, Founder and CEO of Radar Networks, recently launched Twine, which he calls an "interest network." Based on semantic technologies, Twine helps users organize, share and discover more about their personal interests.
"Social bookmarking is the best thing for news organizations because it sends them traffic," he said. "They should be eagerly embracing as much of that as they can... They should be getting their content to every social bookmarking app there is. We distribute their content and [drive] the audience back to them. They are getting the clicks. News sites and publishers really need to view [social media] as complementary and as the other half of what they are doing," he said.
But driving audience to a site isn't enough. Fighting to win becomes less about competing for eyeballs and more about increasing the quality of engagement with your audience.
Hansen Hosein, Director of the Master of Communications in Digital Media Department at University of Washington, asks the question, "Is it as important as it was in the 20th century to get as many people as possible to consume your content, or it is important to get a more engaged quality of information consumer? Many people now believe it's the quality of engagement rather than the quantity of the engagement that matters.
"What that means is that you need to know your audience very well and develop and nurture that audience," he said.
In other words, news organizations need to ensure their content is so wildly compelling that it differentiates itself, draws in the audience and holds them there.
Deep knowledge of the consumer makes for competitive advantage in this environment. How can news organizations deeply understand their audience and provide exactly what they need and want? How can they partner better with social networks to distribute their valuable content. How can they leverage what the networks do best without duplicating efforts?
Spivack believes news organizations are far better partnering with than creating social networks. For example, Forbes Magazine is launching a social network for CEOs called AnswerNetwork, designed for the exchange of ideas.
Spivack weighs in on this approach: "News sites should not attempt to make their own private social bookmarking networks, the way Forbes is doing. That's a big mistake because people don't want to have 50 different accounts. They want everything in one place where they can manage and track all their interests and then click out to view the content in the publisher locations. Publishers should try to get their content spread virally and drive traffic back to them from as many places as possible. If they take the inward-focus, defensive way of looking at things, they are going to create a little tiny community. What they really should be doing is thinking of the whole Web as their community."
So the key for news organizations is to partner with those networks that can serve customers best and allow them to share content as widely and naturally as possible. Which networks will be able to capture the sustained interest of the audience? How can you spread your content virally and get it picked up on a more regular basis? Here's where the role of the marketer is so vitally important to the news organization. Spreading the information becomes nearly as important as gathering it.
Because the online marketplace is a battlefield like every other in history. It's finally a war for the heart and mind of the consumer.
What do you think? Please share your thoughts, experiences and reactions by clicking on the comment button below.
This TechScout article is part of a new series of Moser-Wellman interviews commissioned by the Media Management Center to explore opportunities and insights at the intersection of technology and the news media. A book, "The Seven Competencies of the Next Generation News Organization," and workshops – both based on the TechScout research – will debut this fall.
EVANSTON, IL - Six special capabilities "could well prove the difference between winners and losers in the next generation market for news and information," according to a new 
(Annette Moser-Wellman) It's easy to get tied up in our underwear debating what should be the mission of the news organization - delivering news or providing information? Jack Lail, News Director of Innovation for the Knoxville News Sentinel, knows his answer. "I'm a big believer that we have to be useful to our audience. That is really what we do. If being useful is making it easy for you to find out stuff or acquire social currency at the water cooler, that's great. But it's also how to plan your life or what you're going to do this weekend. If you focus on being of use to your audience, then the news is very important, but it doesn't have to be the only thing that you try to accomplish."
And of course in a local market, you have to find ways to be useful vis-a-vis TV stations and their sites. Knoxnews.com differentiates itself in two important ways: breaking news and video. Breaking news is updated on the site frequently and provides in-depth reporting. 
Jack sees more 'low-hanging fruit' in the media group's core Web sites. Growing audience penetration and monetizing every page view confirms their mission. Knoxnews.com is even launching a new site, Knoxville.com, that will be entertainment-oriented and provide more 'go and do' sorts of information. 
(Annette Moser-Wellman) The road to Internet revenue is littered with pay-for-premium-content failures. The most visible was the New York Times' 
Listen to Staci D. Kramer, Co-Editor and Executive Vice President of 
And if we want to get granular, this trend of fee-for-content extends to services as well. Consider 
(Stacy Lynch) For the past several months I’ve been trying to answer a simple question: "If you want to really wow people online, what should you focus on most?" Research is expensive, leadership energy is at a premium and there’s a desperate need for prioritization at every level.
One important aspect of cognitive miserliness is how knowledge and experience impacts the challenge. For heavy news users who bring a large amount of knowledge to the table, the experience and expectations are wildly different from light news consumers. Rather than point toward universal solutions, this study shows how important it is to understand who the audience is (and isn't) when designing Web strategies.
I asked the creator of a social network how he thinks news organizations should view social media. Nova Spivack, Founder and CEO of Radar Networks, recently launched 
Spivack weighs in on this approach: "News sites should not attempt to make their own private social bookmarking networks, the way Forbes is doing. That's a big mistake because people don't want to have 50 different accounts. They want everything in one place where they can manage and track all their interests and then click out to view the content in the publisher locations. Publishers should try to get their content spread virally and drive traffic back to them from as many places as possible. If they take the inward-focus, defensive way of looking at things, they are going to create a little tiny community. What they really should be doing is thinking of the whole Web as their community."