Joe Wikert's DisruptorFest

How the Internet of Things (IoT) affects content

You’ve undoubtedly heard all the hype by now. Sensors will be everywhere and we’re about to sink in the sea of data they’ll produce. Don’t just view the Internet of Things (IoT) as how your coffeemaker connects to the web though. This phenomenon means so much more, especially for content creators and distributors.

Fast forward with me to a time where your car and house are connected via the IoT. You’ll no longer need to keep track of oil changes, tire rotations, furnace filter replacement dates, etc. You’ll have immediate access to all the particulars via a dashboard app or receive text alerts when something needs attention.

All that data will also help identify trends and the likelihood of something going awry. For example, based on your driving tendencies and those of thousands of other drivers, this data will help determine when you’ll need to perform future maintenance and repairs. These predictive analytics will help you avoid even costlier repairs down the road.

What does any of this have to do with content?...

I’ve just outlined a terrific opportunity for creators of how-to and DIY information. If your organization offers content for weekend warriors or anyone comfortable turning a wrench, well, the IoT could be a game-changer for you.

Those sensor vendors and app developers will want to offer more than just the raw data. The value of their products increases significantly if they can also help their customers with their maintenance and repair projects.

Think of this as a whole new distribution channel with plenty of interesting revenue model options. Freemium, premium, subscription, micro-transaction…they’re all viable models here, but don’t forget the need to share some of that new revenue with the companies providing the sensors and apps.

The IoT opportunity goes well beyond the examples I’ve mentioned here. Think about the type of content you produce and how sensors and the IoT will eventually open new doors for discovery and distribution. The possibilities are endless and the data is just the beginning.

Why today’s ebooks are like the golden age of radio

The date was April 8, 1927 and the front page of The New York Times featured this headline: FAR-OFF SPEAKERS SEEN AS WELL AS HEARD HERE IN A TEST OF TELEVISION. Click here to read a PDF version.

As I read that 1927 article I recently I couldn’t help but wonder how confused the public was with this newfangled television thing. After all, radio had been popular for several years and few probably even imagined the need for a more powerful and engaging communication and entertainment vehicle. In fact, the article notes the following:

The Bell Laboratories have been directed to concentrate on developing television with all possible speed, although the American Telephone and Telegraph Company has no idea today whether it will ever be commercially valuable.

So a new technology was invented, the public was curious but everyone questioned its viability.

Sound familiar?

We’re in the print-under-glass stage of ebooks today. The ebooks we read are nothing more than digital replicas of the original print product. They almost never take advantage of the powerful digital capabilities of the devices they’re read on. I often refer to this as “reading dumb content on smart devices.” 

Today’s ebooks are more or less at the same stage radio was at back in the 1920’s. Like radio in the 20’s, ebooks are still a somewhat recent success, particularly since the first popular e-reading device, the Kindle, is less than 10 years old. Today’s ebooks are easy to get comfortable with. They operate like we expect them to. But other than the content itself, the presentation of today’s ebook rarely surprises or delights; it’s basically a digital page-flipper of the print edition.

The market has experimented with enriched or enhanced content and the results have been weak at best. As a result, most publishing experts feel the future promises nothing more than the print-to-e editions we see today.

I couldn’t disagree more.

In April of 1927 television was viewed as a gimmick, a solution in search of a problem, similar to how anything beyond today’s static ebook is perceived. It didn’t happen overnight but television obviously got beyond the gimmick stage and became an enormous industry. I believe the same thing will happen with the next generation of ebooks, or whatever we end up calling them. Anyone who believes today’s ebooks are as good as it gets probably would have scoffed at television in 1927.

By the way, although that NYT article is almost 90 years old it’s important to note that radio hasn’t gone away. Listeners don’t spend anywhere near the amount of time with radio that they used to and families certainly don’t gather around radios for evening entertainment. But radio found its niche and didn’t disappear.

The same will be true not only for print books but for today’s static ebooks as well. Sometimes you just want to curl up with a simple story, no fancy digital device or web connectivity required. But there are plenty of other types of content and reading experiences that will dramatically benefit from moving beyond today’s print-under-glass model. That’s where the real disruptive opportunities await an industry that’s never been known for embracing change.

Data-driven content recommendation

Which is better at assessing your content interests: a display ad on a random website or the app you spend hours reading magazines in each month? If my recent experience is any indication, the display ad is the winner, hands down.

I recently went on audible.com to explore audio books and picked one I thought I might be interested in. I was curious to experience the purchase process but I stopped before clicking “buy.” Later that same day three different websites featured banner ads from Audible with the cover of the book I almost purchased. The digital breadcrumbs I left behind on my audio book experiment probably still exist somewhere deep inside my browser’s cache.

Compare that to the fact that I regularly read sports magazines in my Next Issue subscription. So why doesn’t the Next Issue app use that information to recommend other sports content to me, right inside the app?

The answer is pretty simple: Online advertising services leverage data but content apps don’t. It’s amazing that in 2015 so few publishers and content distributors are utilizing the valuable data they gather every day.

The opportunity here isn’t just to get me to read more related content in the app I’m already in. Yes, that will increase engagement and serve as a win-win for publishers and readers. The real upside is around discovery and affiliate income.

Once Next Issue wakes up and starts recommending more sports content from its other magazines they should also recommend books in the same category. I’m not keeping a close eye on the newest ebooks about baseball and hockey, but Next Issue knows I read a lot of articles about both, so why not use that information to give me a heads-up about books I’m likely to be interested in?

This would be a terrific opportunity for book publishers to create an affiliate program within the e-zine app. Book and magazine publishers aren’t direct competitors, so why not work together to provide reading recommendations?

This is a two-way concept, btw; ebook publishers should be willing to serve up recommendations to relevant magazine content as well. An affiliate cut of any new revenue generated from these recommendations would be passed along to the recommending app/publisher.

First we need the app vendors to recognize and tap into the valuable data that’s right under their noses. Then we need to tear down the walls that exist between publishers so that data can be used to improve discovery and generate additional revenue streams. It will be interesting to see who figures this out and builds a truly data-driven content recommendation service.

Customers as curators: Going beyond simple reviews

My magazine reading is almost exclusively limited to what’s offered in my Next Issue subscription. If you’re not familiar with Next Issue, it’s an all-you-can-read e-zine service featuring more than 140 titles. Sports Illustrated, BusinessWeek and Wired are just a few of the magazines I read in my $14.99/month subscription.

I recently received an interesting email from Next Issue and it got me thinking about how customers are evolving into content curators. Every customer won’t do this, but a significant enough number will and it will lead to new forms of content discovery and consumption.

The email I got from Next Issue can be seen here. You’ll notice that a Next Issue employee shares a link to her favorite stories on the outdoors in that email. I’m not exactly the outdoorsy type but even I was intrigued enough to click and read the recommendations. Why?

I’ve gotten so numb to all the automated, algorithmic recommendations in emails and on websites (e.g., “those who bought x also bought y”) that I was curious to learn more. It just goes to show that human curation can still trump computerized curation.

Then there’s the passion factor. Recommendations from an actual person have a more genuine feel than the sanitized, generic messages we’re so used to seeing. Whatever your hobbies and interests are, you can probably create a more credible, click-worthy reading list than even the most sophisticated computer algorithm.

And let’s face it: We are a lazy society, so we want others to vet articles, books, blogs, etc., before we waste our precious time on them. If Next Issue sends me a recommended reading list, even if it’s based on my reading habits, it feels empty, void of any soul. But if that same list comes from an actual person, even an employee of the company, it has more credibility.

This all means that a publisher’s most enthusiastic readers can potentially become on of its most influential sales and marketing resources. It’s an opportunity for those readers to share their passion with others while also helping the publisher increase engagement.

This is the next evolutionary step for product reviews written by customers like you and me. Rather than having reviews sit passively on a website, waiting for prospective customers to arrive, they can be spun into active narratives, encouraging deeper engagement from existing readers/subscribers.

It’s all about the personal curation though, and having a name and face accompany the message. It’s also an opportunity for a publisher’s biggest fans to take on a new role, but only for those publishers who are willing to give up some of their precious content curation control.