Joe Wikert's DisruptorFest

How content containers can dramatically affect user experience

I’m a big believer in the notion that content containers are slowly going away in the digital world. Those things we think of in the physical world as books, newspapers and magazines are being redefined digitally. It’s a slow evolution but one that is definitely taking place.

In the years ahead we’ll see more blurred lines here. One format will bleed into others and the edges around them will become less rigid. We’ll also encounter new ways of discovering and consuming content. For example, maybe you won’t have to actually buy an “ebook” to obtain full access to its contents.

The lenses through which we read content are going to change dramatically in the future as well. Wikiwand is a good example of this. It’s described as “Wikipedia Reimagined” and “a beautiful new interface to the world’s knowledge.” In short, it’s a Chrome plug-in that completely changes your Wikipedia experience.

Over the years the Wikipedia has started to look rather dated, almost as quaint as the old print encyclopedias it replaced. Compare a typical Wikipedia page to a more dynamic page from The Guardian or ESPN, for example, and you’ll see what I mean. Both The Guardian and ESPN are rendering the same type of content they presented 10 years ago but with a much more modern user experience. It sounds superficial but sometimes that’s all it takes to make content more engaging. 

Wikiwand is simply rearranging the objects on a Wikipedia page and presenting them in a more attractive and logical manner. I’ve always wondered why the table of contents for a complex Wikipedia page is buried below the introduction. Take a look at the World War II Wikipedia page, for example. You won’t see the outline for that page till you scroll down a bit and once you scroll further it’s no longer on the screen.

Now look at the same page in Wikiwand. The outline for the page is conveniently placed in a panel on the left. And notice that it always remains on the screen no matter how far you scroll down the main page.

Search is another area where Wikiwand offers a superior experience to the original Wikipedia. If you type in a search phrase in Wikipedia you’ll see a dynamic list of potential matches. It’s a user experience that’s been around for quite a few years now.

Type the same search phrase in Wikiwand and that dynamic list of potential matches comes to life. You can hover over any of them and a small pop-up window is displayed featuring a quick summary of that particular page. All of this happens without leaving the original page where your search began.

I’m just scratching the Wikiwand surface. Install the plug-in, try it out and you too will quickly discover this is a much better Wikipedia content experience.

As I’ve said before, we’re stuck in a “print under glass” era where publishers are taking the easy way out by offering quick-and-dirty digital editions that look just like the print format. We spend all our time consuming dumb content on smart devices.

I realize the cost of creating a true “born digital” approach for most content is too expensive and doesn’t offer an attractive ROI. At the same time, I believe innovative approaches like Wikiwand, where the same content is presented in a new and more engaging manner, can inspire new thinking and help publishers take baby steps beyond the print under glass stage where the industry is currently stuck.

Are content curators becoming more important than content creators?

I’m sure most of you bristle at the thought of curators being more valuable than creators. After all, the former have no job without the latter. I agree, but it’s not as if the content creation population is declining. In fact, that number only increases every month, and that’s what’s driving up the value of curation.

Regardless of your preferences and interests there’s simply too much content to read. Whether it’s books, magazines, newspapers, blogs, websites, newsletters, etc., every year it becomes more difficult to keep up. Faced with this steady firehose stream of content, we can all use some help determining which elements are worth reading and which are a waste of time.

Separating the good from the bad is, of course, where curation comes into the mix. My favorite magazine, The Week, shows just how powerful and useful curation can be: Every week their editors sift through the latest news, presenting both sides of every story and saving readers countless hours with their summary coverage. Flipboard is another example of a platform that leverages curation. At first Flipboard curated the content and then they expanded their platform so now anyone can create a Flipboard magazine. Here’s mine, for example.

Despite its success, Flipboard illustrates the fact that curation still has a long way to go in its evolution. I say that because the signal-to-noise ratio of Flipboard and Flipboard magazines is getting worse. Every week I find fewer new, interesting Flipboard stories to read and reflip for others to discover.

So where will this valuable curation and consumption take place in the future? Today it’s spread across the web but I’d rather have it all united in one convenient stream.

The Evernote platform has the potential to move from simple note taking to becoming a more powerful content curation, sharing and consumption service. I’ve stopped using Instapaper because it’s so easy to clip, annotate and save web pages into Evernote. I’m also clipping magazine pages from my Next Issue subscription and pouring those into Evernote. In short, Evernote makes it easy and convenient to curate content from a variety of sources and splice them all together. 

Here’s the thorny question that will probably need to be answered soon: At some point, does a service like Evernote offer an option to buy access to the curation of others? In other words, can I charge you for access to my curated Evernote collections, including all that content I have no right to redistribute?

It’s yet another example of The Innovator’s Dilemma: Traditional publishers will aggressively fight to prevent it while forward-thinking ones find a way to participate in the revenue stream it represents. And this revenue stream, by the way, will be one where the curators are highly valued and, in some cases, become the key brand.

3 content pricing models from the future

The year is 2020 and I’m about to make a digital content purchase. It’s amazing how much the industry has evolved in the past five years. For example, pricing is no longer a one-size-fits-all, take-it-or-leave-it component. I now have multiple pricing models to choose from: 

Social bulk discounts – That digital newspaper subscription I’m considering offers a 50% discount if I can get at least 30 of my social network friends to subscribe as well. Yes, the Groupon model is still alive but with a twist. In order to take advantage of the deal I first need to rally commitments from my friends. If successful, all the participants are also committing to broadcast their purchase via Facebook, Twitter or whatever other social network they opted in with.

Advertising-subsidies – It finally happened and publishing purists are still complaining about it. Meanwhile, the rest of us are thrilled to choose from two different options and price-points when we buy ebooks. Those who prefer the traditional ad-free approach pay full price while others pay less and are presented with ads as they read the book. Even deeper discounts are offered to consumers who agree to share their name and email address with sponsors and advertisers. I’ve completely embraced the ad-subsidized approach and find the same as reading a magazine or newspaper.

Clubs – Ever wonder what happened to the old record and book clubs of yesteryear? They’re back in the digital world. I get to choose from 3 deeply discounted ebooks to open my account and then I commit to paying full price for at least 10 additional ebooks over the next 12 months. If I fall short of that commitment my credit card gets hit with a penalty charge at the end of the term, so better to just buy all the books I want rather than pay a fine with nothing to show for it.

I hope you agree that tomorrow’s pricing models are terrific for consumers. The data and buying commitments ought to be good for publishers and retailers too, right?

You probably quickly surmised that Amazon isn’t a fan of any of these, mostly because they want to own all the data and sell it to publishers. That’s OK though because all the other retailers recognized the benefits and now offer all three models. Publishers are also using them in their direct-to-consumer efforts on their websites. As a result, the retailer playing field has been leveled a bit, benefiting both consumers and publishers.

Rest assured, the future is bright (but the Cubs still haven’t managed to win a World Series).

Peer-to-peer content distribution

The smartwatch movement inspired me recently, which is surprising because I haven’t worn a watch since I started carrying a smartphone many years ago. I’m about as far as you can get from being a fashionista and I liken a watch to other obsolete single-use devices like the GPS. I doubt I’ll buy one anytime soon but I believe the device synchronization model used by smartwatches lends itself to content distribution as well.

You’re probably aware of how most smartwatches get paired with your smartphone. Although they don’t have all the capabilities of a smartphone, things like text messages and phone calls can be redirected from your phone to your watch, thanks in large part to Bluetooth technology. Your phone communicates with your watch the same way your phone connects with a wireless headset or desktop Bluetooth speaker, for example.

Let’s fast-forward to the day when we’ve all become peer-to-peer content distributors. Rather than relying on centrally-managed and hosted sites and services that handle everything from reviews to downloads, this peer-to-peer model means we’re doing all that for each other using Bluetooth or some other simple networking protocols. For example, your phone or computer can easily be turned into a wifi server, allowing you to connect multiple devices to it; that's a capability that exists today and I'm suggesting it could be extended for new uses in the future.

The Kindle introduced a whole new level of reading privacy. Once upon a time on a crowded bus you could see the cover of the book being read by the person across the aisle. Now we’re all masking our reading habits with tablets and phones. No, I’m not suggesting we embrace an overly intrusive model that has privacy advocates screaming in the streets. Rather, I believe a peer-to-peer model could be used to improve discovery and consumption at the hyperlocal level.

Think of the hundreds of riders on a commuter train each morning. Maybe they’re traveling from the northern suburbs into Manhattan. Some of them are neighbors. Many of them are businesspeople. All of them probably follow and read some type of news. Instead of just knowing the top global trends on Google, wouldn’t it be interesting to know what news stories your fellow commuters are reading?

The same concept can be applied to passengers on a plane or even homeowners in a neighborhood. Just as NextDoor.com has disrupted Angie’s List and brought communication and recommendations to the local level, I suggest a peer-to-peer model could do the same for content.

The peer-to-peer aspect really shines when you consider how the content gets from my device to yours. That news story I just read on TheGuardian.com still lives in my browser’s cache. If enough of my fellow commuters read the same article, it floats to the top of the popular news list for our little commuter community. You click the link to it in our peer-to-peer content app and the article is pulled from my cache to your device.

In short, we’re distributing content to each other, without having to go up and down, to and from a central server. Wouldn’t this be terrific on a 4-hour flight with no wifi? Each of our devices acts as a mini-server, hosting content for everyone else.

Publishers would freak out over this model, at least initially. They’ll no longer control distribution and it will create holes in their analytics. I’m sure most, if not all, publishers have something buried in their terms and conditions preventing this sort of thing, but those who want to embrace broader distribution and consumption will eventually warm up to it.

Btw, the model isn’t limited to web pages. Think about the benefits this offers the book publishing sector. What if you could see a list of the popular ebooks in your neighborhood or among your fellow commuters? And what if you could pull a sample of one of those popular titles from someone else’s device, again, a particularly useful solution when you’re outside wifi and cellular range? If you decide you like that sample and you end up buying the ebook your peer-to-peer commuter friend gets credit for the sale with an affiliate cut of the resulting transaction.

We place way too much emphasis on the ability to measure global trends. You see it every day on Google, Twitter, etc. While we all care about these global trends, we’re also keenly interested in local and hyper-local trends. This peer-to-peer model addresses that point while also providing some relief for data plan limits and spotty wifi coverage.

One day content will enrich itself

You’ve probably heard me say that we live in a print-under-glass world, one where we’re consuming dumb content on smart devices.­­ It’s true simply because, as Michael Bhaskar of Canelo Publishing stated it at BEA, “publishers treat ebooks as a secondary priority.”

It’s far too easy to quickly convert the print edition to a static e-edition and drive some incremental revenue. Meanwhile, more and more publishers are starting to report flattening ebook sales.

I believe part of the problem is due to the fact that many consumers who aren’t already buying ebooks are holding off because they’re satisfied with print and see no significant benefit of switching to e. The Bookseller recently reported that millennials are “least likely to buy ebooks.” We’re talking about a born-digital generation, one that has come to expect rich, immersive experiences in everything digital. It’s no wonder why they haven’t warmed up to today’s ebook experience.

Publishers and authors sometimes balk at the notion of creating anything beyond the static ebook. They question the ROI as well as the time and effort required. That’s a reasonable response, particularly given the various failed experiments with native apps and other digital platforms. Plus, some ebooks are perfect just the way they are; readers don’t want or need them to incorporate extra digital bells and whistles.

But there are plenty of other books and entire genres that would dramatically benefit from a deeper digital experience. Think reference and how-to content. Videos, photo galleries and any one of the various web widgets could add significant value.

So what’s a publisher to do when it’s hard enough just getting the manuscript from the author?

I think it’s reasonable to expect that in the next few years we’ll see content that self-enriches. The application or reading platform will handle the details and little, if any, human curator intervention will be required.

While it’s true that auto-enrichment might never match the quality of human enrichment, the former will be a huge step in the right direction, hopefully priming the pump for more of the latter to eventually take place.