I’ve never held, in my hands, a copy of the Rocky Mountain News.  I’m a tree-hugger and happy to watch the disappearance of more printed materials.  BUT…I love media, and more importantly, I love people.  Today we mourn the loss of an online publisher as well, not just a printed paper.  And more importantly, we empathize with even more people who have lost their jobs.

If you haven’t had a chance to watch the video and slideshow on the website, http://rockymountainnews.com, you must.  It will tug at your heart strings.  The video is hosted by a couple now unemployed, with young children.  The slideshow includes photos of employees who brought their kids to work, getting the bad news with their children on their lap.  It really hurts.

While printed newspapers are definitely on their way out, digital news has hit an extreme lack of innovation, with many of these news sites turning into complete commodities.  They all look the same.  Header, standard banner ads, list of news, maybe some video, disappointing search, and maybe some links out to other sites.  The content is largely the same as the content available on competing sites.  The holy grail of local continues to be elusive.  I hope the news industry gets innovating, because we need to save real journalism.  UGC is taking off, but it’s no replacement for news bureaus with real journalists.

Rocky Mountain News and rockymountainnews.com, rest in peace.

Will newspapers still exist in 2015?  Here are my predictions:

1. Printed newspapers will be virtually gone.
2. About 35% of newspapers will still be available, but primarily as content providers, rather than print  distributors.
3. The majority of news will be consumed on a handful of social news portals, platforms similar to Facebook but specializing in news, allowing layout flexibility and hyper-localization.  It will not be Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft.
4. These portals will monetize with a combination of advertising and subscriptions.
5. Subscriptions will come in different forms: All content, all content from certain content providers (formerly known as newspapers), and subscriptions limited by usage quotas (# of articles, etc).

Your thoughts?  Am I on track?  Is my timing about right?  Am I way off base?  Please post your predictions, and feel free to post links to your posts on the topic.

Twitter is a great tool, still lacking business model.  What I hate about Twitter is that a huge percentage of tweets are about Twitter.  What I love about Twitter is that it’s an open canvas; a new medium for creativity and USEFULNESS.  I’ve seen Twitter used as a platform for news, customer service, “interactive” PR, and even an author’s new medium.  What is the best human-powered use of  Twitter?  Please send your nominees, and we’ll hold a vote.  As you comment, I’ll bring the nominee list up here.  Please recommend.  And please share this link to get as many quality nominees as we can.

PLEASE nominate a use, and if possible, a tweep:

140-character short stories / @arjunbasu, @twirledview @mrichtel
Breaking news situations / (If you have a list of accounts, comment and I’ll link)

I just read Did Standards Kill the Online Ad Business by Saul Hansell on nytimes.com.  It is true that standard ad sizes lowered the cost of entry for digital ad networks, but these networks would have emerged and succeeded even if standards weren’t formalized.  Informal standards would have been dictated by the largest publishers or ad networks.  The success of ad networks has everything to do with their business models, and nothing to do with standards.  Furthermore, the online ad business is far from killed; it’s maturing.  Ad networks simply makes sense, on a medium where publishers are plentiful, and not limited by bandwidth over coaxial cable, printing, or distribution costs.  With the large quantity of publishers, mostly with a relatively small share of Internet reach, ad networks become necessary.  Most publishers can’t afford large sales teams, and don’t have the distribution to pull in scalable deals.

I would argue, though, that many large traditional media companies  have brought this tough competition on for themselves.  Many of them have turned to these same ad networks to back-fill the ad inventory they were unable to sell-out with their internal sales teams.  Why would a large advertiser pay a premium to buy ads on a premium site when they can pay a tiny fraction of that amount to get their ads on the same site through the ad network?  These publishers can typically block specific advertisers or industries on these ad networks, but unless every major publisher issues such a block, the savvy advertisers will continue to find cheap ways to get their message out using these standard units.

Here’s how traditional media companies can beat the effect of digital ad networks on the web:

1. Deliver a product people truly want to your audience. Migrating newspaper content to the Internet is simply not compelling enough to accomplish this goal.  You need to differentiate yourself from an overcrowded set of publishers.  And stop with the one way broadcast, already!  Engage your users!  Lucky for you, many advertisers still want their message on premium brands only.
2. Deliver innovating ad products that really pay off for your advertisers. This is difficult, because many advertisers are still not savvy enough to go after custom solutions.  Additionally, these solutions can be very costly.  That said, if you can show a few success stories, you can make it happen.  The bottom line is that you need to help your advertisers accomplish their goals if you want to keep them.
3. Don’t be so rigid, try something new and take a chance. Go out on a limb and try something that you’ve never tried before and can’t guarantee success with.  Just be sure to measure success, and have a plan in place so that you can make adjustments from what you learn.  Again, differentiate yourself!
4. Be and early adopter for all new media platforms, including social media. Rich Sanchez?  ’nuff said.

I certainly have my own theories on why good software ideas fail when rolled out to the real world.  As a product manager, I believe I know why good ideas fail.  Here are some questions to answer if you think your good idea is failing:

1. Does the idea solve a problem that causes a real frustration for users?
   You may have a good idea, and it may solve a real problem.  But do your users care enough about the problem to use your product?  Perhaps solving the problem just isn’t worth any effort or change in behavior for your prospective user-base.  If this is the case, you’re toast.
2. Does the solution require a larger investment from the user than the existing alternatives?
   It may be difficult to see this in your own product, but perhaps it’s just too darned hard to use.  Or perhaps it takes too darned long to accomplish a task.  I’m getting frustrated just thinking about this one!  It’s common to start with a simple solution that balloons by the time you get to completion, making it harder for users than what they were doing before.  Perhaps it’s time to go back to square one, and look for an easier solution.
3. Was a prototype of the idea tested on real users before and throughout development?
   Launching an entirely new product without prototyping and user testing throughout the process is like playing darts for the first time.  Good luck!  Do you really want to find out your execution was awful…after you’re done, or after a huge investment of time and money?  Better late than never, try it now.
4. Did somebody else do it significantly better before you got to market?
   Notice that I didn’t ask if someone else did it first.  I asked if they did it better and first.  It’s time to start thinking of versions 2 and 3, because you need to play leapfrog.  Fast.
5. Were enough resources put on the project to make it succeed?
   I’ll admit I’m not a big tennis fan, but I have heard of no man’s land.  It’s that area in the middle of the court when you can’t get to the net, but you can’t back to the baseline.  If you don’t stand in the right place, you don’t stand a chance to succeed.  If you can’t commit to the right resources and the right amount of resources, you’re going to fail.  You can either scale back on your goals, or pony up.  Commit.  Or quit.
6. Has the idea been given a true chance to flourish?
   Don’t give up so fast.  Some ideas just need time to catch on.  Which leads to the next point…
7. Was the idea aggressively marketed to the right segment?
   Some people believe the right solution will market itself.  I believe that may be true, over time.  But marketing is more than just consumer marketing.  You need to make sure you target the right potential audience for your application.   Demographics (age, gender, income range…), verticals, etc., who’s going to use it?  How are you going to make sure they know you have a solution to their problem?  Now you know who they are, just make sure you tell them.
8. Do all of the stakeholders buy in?  Completely?
   If not, change stakeholders or cut and run.
9. Did you define success and failure before you launched?
   How can you succeed if you never defined success?  Do it now, and lay out your goals for today, tomorrow, next month, next year, and the next three.  Hurry!
10. Is it priced right, or is there a real revenue model?
    “If you build it, they will come,” but can you afford for them to come?  Are you asking too much from people?  Or did you think at all about how you will make money?  Some companies, like Twitter and Facebook, use the technique of building audience first, and getting a business model later.  This could work.  But then again, it could not. Get yourself a business model, or fail.

Disagree with any of these?  Have some ideas of your own?  Please share, I’ll keep this list updated.  Perhaps you may even have some suggestions to get a bad idea to succceed!

Update 2/27/2009 – Check out a good related post by Seth Godin, Three things you need if you want more customers.

Aspirations.  Aim high.  Reach for the clouds.  Thing big.  Take over the world.

Not anymore.  More than ever, I’m seeing businesses with small ideas.  Niche ideas.  Some that have symbiotic relationships with other small businesses.  Perhaps there are bigger ideas they haven’t let out of the bag yet?  Here are some examples, and why they might be onto something.  And why they may not be.

1. ShareThis
   This site offers a social sharing button.  An API.  And a Sharebox for users.  That’s it.  At its core, this is a button.  I love it for a few reasons.  It offers the publisher reporting, an API and customization.  Also, if you don’t want to keep up with every sharing service, ShareThis takes care of it for you.  For ShareThis, they own the data on usage of social sharing sites.  Business model – perhaps advertising, perhaps sharing data, perhaps a tiered pay model?  Who knows.  But they got $15 million in funding in March ’08.  Still seems niche and small to me, and it’s dependent on all of the sharing services – which do not yet have a proven business model either.
2. TweetDeck
   This application is a Twitter client.  Twitter is still fairly niche, although many are betting for it to go mainstream this year.  There are also a large number of Twitter clients out there.  And Twitter doesn’t even have a viable business model yet.  Yet, TweetDeck closed an angel funding round at $500k.  I highlighted TweetDeck, but there are a ton of Twitter piggy-backers, like Qwitter, who’s only feature is notification of tweeps that stop following you.   That’s about as niche as you can get.
3. Plinky
   One of the newest entrants into the micro-blogging arena (kind of), Plinky managed to get a lot of hype before finally making its premise known yesterday.  They ask a question each day, and you provide an answer.  They basically just prompt you for something to write about, and allow you to share your response on the social grid.  This managed to get a $1.5 series A.

Is this niche company phenomenon due to the recession, or is this a bi-product of Web 2.0?  I think both.  There’s no question that a bad economy triggers more start-ups.  Enter Web 2.0, and we have all of these opportunities for apps with symbiotic relationships.  If you can run a small business and make a little more than you made working for someone else, why not do it?  As long as these businesses are reasonable to support with small teams, they have a good chance to bring in more than they cost.

But the risk is high.  Twitter, and even the major social networking sites still don’t have proven, viable business models.  If these businesses fail, the ecosystem of apps that are dependent on them also fail.

I love the idea of these small businesses, although finding the apps you want becomes difficult in this crowded app environment.   Enter twitdom.com to solve that problem, too.

TTFN.  I have to go start a micro-biz