In yesterday's OLDaily (28 October 2004) Stephen Downes suggests that the October edition of the Morgan Stanley report An Update from the Digital World would be of interest to those from the business world. I disagree. As Stephen highlights the report is well researched but, because there are some signficiant implications attached to the nascent business models discussed, I believe we all have something to gain from reading the Morgan Stanley report. The Morgan Stanley Updates from the Digital World have been around since 2002 and their purpose is to:
“… discuss major events and inflection points related to the Internet that we thought were underappreciated.” (page 2)
The October 2004 edition of the report focuses on the 'underappreciated' blogs and syndication (in this case RSS).
The reports views web content syndication as of increasing importance; evidenced by increasing acceptance by users and publishers. The momentum, the report contends, comes from: increasing use of RSS for distribution; the escalation of user-generated content (including blogging); and the entry of major aggregators like Yahoo! prepared to make easy the creation of personalised news/information Web pages based on syndicated feeds of interest to the user, e.g. My Yahoo!
Note that emphasis on 'make easy'.
“In our experience, if there is value in something that is also easy/friendly to use, people will use it.” (page 7)
“We believe that the simplicity of RSS is reminiscent of the simple user experience popularized by Google Search.” (page 9)
“By intergrating blogs with search, and by making it easy for end-users to find and add blogs, Yahoo! is playing a key role in driving blog readership and RSS usage among end-users.” (page 10)
Other examples of 'make easy' technologies included in the report are, Web browsers, and the Apple iPod. Interestingly, later on in the report, we find a further reference to the Apple iPod but this time having a multimedia content 'refill' via a RSS based 'Podcast' (page 14). Auricle readers should at this point note how RSS is becoming more than a text delivery vehicle. Another example of RSS for multimedia delivery is Stephen Downes' Ed Radio . N.B. I've added the RSS feed from Ed Radio to Auricle's Syndicated LOs menu.
After reading this report you are definitely left with the impression that the author's believe that blogs and content syndication are big … really big. Here's some samples:
“Web-based user-generated content is at the heart of some of the most relevant and fastest-growing applications we have seen on the Web … For users is has created the opportunities for expression, community, and insight.” (page 4)
“In many ways, blogs are the quintessential fomr of user-generated content.” (page 4)
“Blogs are important because they sharply lower the barriers to entry of producing a professional looking and frequently updated Web site.” (page 5)
“The numbers of blogs has been doubling every six months, according to Technorati … and reports over 4.5 million blogs as of 10/04 … Despite all the noise and random content in blogs, many bloggers become the source for breaking news, fresh ideas, and expert commentary … We believe that some of the best commentary comes from the thought leaders in a given subject matter.” (page 7)
“And if there are hundreds of thousands of thought leaders and motivated, interested parties on the Internet with ability to publish news or insights into any number of local or global issues, then it is safe to say that these blogs often become both the first source of news, a vital proving ground for authors and a source of potential community for other interested parties.” (page 8)
“The medium is nothing without the message, and for the Internet, the popularizing of syndicated content further enhances the medium as a democratized content platform.” (page 12)
All great stuff, so what's the issues?
Imagine this. You are a recognized 'thought leader' in your specialist area. You generate and syndicate 'content' via your blog and perhaps other dissemination vehicles. One business model views your syndicated 'thought leader' content as valuable, that is the full content. Not just the link and description, but the full content. Your syndicated content could for instance be hosted in Yahoo!
“In our model, Yahoo! potentially serves as an 'agnostic' Assoicated Press, collecting freelance pieces from the Web, and distributes a portion of the revenue generated by advertising in each one its syndicated papers, meaning each of those personal syndicated feeds that users set up.” (page 15)
As well as money the other carrot is increased readership due to, say, the Yahoo! brand and user-friendly tools which makes revisiting an author's content easy.
What seems to be being argued for here is something called 'open syndication' (page 15) and to be fair to the Morgan Stanley authors they have addressed copyright and IPR issues in their report (page 15) with some acknowledgement of the potential contribution to be made via, say, Creative Commons. However, they also say:
“While RSS is an open medium, publishers who wanted to close off part of their content via copyright law could slow what should be a technical process akin to Google News aggregation … this could result in a system that favors links rather than a more useful reading system.” (page 15)
On the one hand here we are advocating openess and sharing via syndication and along comes a potential business model that says “thank you very much that's really powerful, we want to use your syndications, increase your readership and eyeballs to our site, and give you some monetary reward as well.”
You only need a few 'thought leaders' to go along with this before it becomes the norm. But is it any different from the Amazon associate initiative? Will it compromise the freedom of the 'free' press? Will it turn everyone into a potential hack for Mammon? Will it normalize syndication thus accelarating the take-up and design of distributed systems. Discuss!
Stephen Downes, of course, has been a leading advocate of syndication and distributed systems for years but now we find the business world is starting to wake up to the potential. The question here is that for good or ill? I don't know but it would be good to hear the views of others.
