keyleedaud (REAL ESTATE)

Even before the current economic situation, certain media industries were in trouble. In particular, TV and newspapers had both been losing their audience. The current downturn is probably going to accelerate that. There is the sense that anything that can be reduced to digital bits has changed in some fundamental ways. Here's Virgina Hefernon of the N.Y. Times on how writing for print is not just writing. Does anyone still believe that the forms of movies, television, magazines and newspapers might exist independently of their rapidly changing modes of distribution? The thought has become unsustainable. Take magazine writing. In school or on the job, magazine writers never learn anything so broad as to “tell great stories” or “make arresting images.” You don’t study the ancient art of storytelling. You learn to produce certain numbers and styles and forms of words and images. You learn to be succinct when a publication loses ad pages. You learn to dilate when an “article” is ...

Two years ago, I wrote about Chris Anderson and his book, The Long Tail . A quick summary is that in a brick and mortar world, retailers want their shelves filled with their most popular items in order to maximize profit from the physical limitations of their stores. However, in a digital world, shelf space is essentially infinite and free, so offering maximum choice is a better strategy. An item may only sell once a year, but if you have enough of those items, they can generate enough profit to rival the income you make from more popular items. There are several well-known online companies that are built on this business model: Amazon, iTunes and Ebay. They each offer a wider selection than physical stores are capable of and have enlarged the market for their products as a result. These companies are often referred to as aggregators, as they pull together lots of products under their virtual roofs. The long tail has been criticized as a theory. Anita Elberse is a marketing prof...