- Slides: Generative Media Networks
- Generative Media Networks: Fueling growth through action: Introduction
- Generative Media Networks: Fueling growth through action: Market context
- Generative Media Networks: Fueling growth through action: What it means for journalism
- Generative Media Networks: Fueling growth through action: Practical examples
- Generative Media Networks: Fueling growth through action: Modeling commercial success
- Generative Media Networks: Fueling growth through action: Patterns to the future
- Generative Media Networks: Fueling growth through action: Conclusion
- White Paper: Generative Media Networks
Strong digital media businesses fuel valuable activity across networks. #
While the things that media organizations produce can define the brand, what happens as a result of producing an article, some data, a picture, a video, a package of stories, a sponsored message, a retail advertisement is what defines the value of the business. #
In particular, it’s the generative media platforms that become the strongest. #
This means that a platform benefits from the actions that their customers, participants and users take and then, crucially, reflects more value back out to them as a result of their actions, encouraging them to do more. #
Those actions may be as simple as spending time with an article or buying a book, or it may be as complicated as managing a community or even campaigning for causes. #
For newspaper businesses, that co-dependency was traditionally managed through paper, trucks and newsstands in the past. Then in the early Internet years, most media brands’ web sites served merely as new access points, a co-dependence defined by the digital newsstand also known as Google. #
The domain-as-distribution model works, but it is also incomplete and doesn’t embrace the larger powers inherent in networks. #
The mesh-like characteristics of the Internet reward platform approaches to media, one where the actions of one node in the network can be interpreted by the platform as additive information for other nodes on the network to use. #
There’s a common model amongst many of the most successful Internet companies…they function as platforms for a network of activity. As a result, all their moving parts and relationships resemble an ecosystem. #
I’ll try to use this series to articulate what that looks like to me. It comes from a bit of experience trying to make such a thing work and from lots of observation across the market over a few years now. #
Where possible I’ll use examples from what we’re doing at the Guardian to illustrate what I’m talking about, but, to be clear, this is not a definitive strategy, by any means. I’m posting it all here in hopes that others will chime in and help evolve the concepts further or show me better ways to think about this stuff. #