Thomas Baekdal has impressed me for a while by consistently providing in-depth insight, research, and analysis on the ever-changing, continually more important world of social media and new media. He recently started Baekdal Plus, which gives you access to even more comprehensive articles, some of which are 7-10 pages long. It costs $4.99 a month or $49.99 a year and is well worth the price.
Oh no, a paywall, you moan. Not at all. Not only does he write about social media and the web, he obviously gets it too. All Baekdal Plus articles are accessible by subscribers via RSS feed as well as on the site. Even better, a subscriber can link to them elsewhere, and anyone can read them. As an example, the following article is from Baekdal Plus, but you can read it for free. (What you don’t get is immediate access to all his Plus articles.) Here’s the intro.
The new world of sources, channels, and destinations
A big change in 2011 is the shift to a world divided into sources, channel and destinations. The shift has a profound influence on every form of publishing.
The shift is not just about the media industry. It is equally disrupting brands and marketing. The focus used to be on creating product magazines, websites, and experiences – all in the form of destinations. All things that are now secondary. Marketing people have to think of their brands as a source.
For newspapers and magazine, the shift will completely undermine all their business models. They have to figure out what they want to be. Do they want to be a source, a channel, or a destination?
Just having him phrase it that way makes me think about Polizeros differently. Currently, I think it’s both a channel (filtering news) and a source (creating original content.) Given that insight, it’s clear what I want to do it make it more of a source and less of a channel.
Thanks a lot Bob, great article! 🙂
Yours too!