What I'm thinking about this week:
Capital NY: 60 Second Interview with Callie Schweitzer, Director of Digital Innovation, Time
"In an ever-crowded media landscape, how do you give people news they don’t know they need? I love thinking about ways to infiltrate people’s news reading habits, and I'm focused on building products that will expand our reach and efficiency—from A/B testing newsletter subject lines (our daily newsletter The Brief now goes to 800,000 people and has an average open rate of 40%, the publishing industry standard is 23%) to an initiative like our new weekly subscriber Q&As with the staff."
Re/Code: October announcement on Buzzfeed's promotion of Dao Nguyen to Publisher
"We are redefining the role of Publisher to reflect the way the world works today where technology is the core of publishing. This is very different from the traditional role where the title is inherited within a family business, like the Sulzbergers at the New York Times, or in the magazine world, where the Publisher is often the person responsible for selling advertising and overseeing business operations.
Dao is a new type of Publisher. She isn’t the heir to a newspaper baron and she won’t be responsible for the business, selling ads or physical newsstand distribution. Instead, she’ll lead publishing for the social web, in the most modern sense, where data science, the CMS, technology, and a deep understanding of social networks, mobile devices, and digital video matter most. If publishing is “the activity of making information available to the general public,” then I’m confident Dao will become the very best publisher in a rapidly changing industry where technology and data science are the key to success."
AVC: What just Happened (2014 in review)
"1. the social media phase of the Internet ended. this may have happened a few years ago actually but i felt it strongly this year. entrepreneurs and developers still build social applications. we still use them. but there isn’t much innovation here anymore. the big platforms are mature. their place is secure.
2. messaging is the new social media. this may be part of what is going on in 1. families use whatsapp groups instead of facebook. kids use snapchat instead of instagram. facebook’s acquisition of whatsapp in february of this year was the transaction that defined this trend."
JLL: I'm especially interested in trend number 2 and will be watching how brands and organizations adapt. My prediction: As many brands are forced to operate more as advertisers than as participants on the big social platforms, creating opportunities and incentives for user-generated content on messaging and social platforms will uptick.