5/16/2014 Steve Gillmor, John Borthwick, Dan Farber, Keith Teare, Kevin Marks, and Tina Chase Gillmor New York, Betaworks, Beats, Dr. Dre, Apple, New York Times, leadership change, deportalization, content, social sites, notifications, Facebook, iPad, aggregation, curating, journalism, Guardian, TV, BBC, Snowden, Gruber, Jimmy Iovine, Spotify, Rdio, music industry, Tim Cook, Steve Jobs, wearables, Jony Ive, Next, Eddy Cue, Angela Ahrens, bigger iPhones, Microsoft, China, Xio Mi, 4K TV, Amstrad, fragmentions, Instapaper, HuffPo, Morning Joe, Drudge, distribution, Flipboard, Medium, creationist, atavist, buzz feed, CPMs, Wall Street Journal, Chartbeat, personalization, monetization, new G3 show, ustream, salesforce, newtek tricaster Steve - coming to you from NY, along with John Borthwick, at Betaworks HQ, also with us is Dan Farber, hopefully not last and certainly not least, Keith Teare Keith - sunny here, pouring there Steve - and Kevin Marks, if you can hear us Dan - bit of slow week, no major product intros, rumblings of Beats Dre Apple tie-up dominating, NY Times leadership change Steve - change of leadership more like execution? Dan - seems that way, more interesting is document on innovation, how NYT doing becoming digital first, damning though doing pretty well, need to catch up, being broader, not hiding behind wall of sanctity - report spent months and 100s of thousands, then picked up by ankle biters who probably get more traffic Steve - John, have you heard anything? John - strategy paper interesting - disintegration of home page - melting ice cubes… desktop app, many still have not invested in making mobile app better than a container for web site - combo of social and deep linking, home page becoming a relic, the portal - sites designed around home page finding it hard to sustain Dan - spend a huge amount of time on front page, what six stories get there, this harms efforts to be broader, create more buzz, be more social, used over and over - 435 tech, 30 design 120 product development, 30 R&D, should be kicking ass, but cultural issues prevent being as entrepreneurial as John’s shop - fail early & often, celebrate successes - cool feature is can follow a story, get latest breaking news on that story - seems straightforward for NYT to establish John - to what extent are you an aggregator? wrong question, but what gets asked in big media brands - NYT is aggregator, expanding scope shouldn’t be a massive strategy session, should be fairly easy, distinction of aggregator vs. brand is hard - don’t believe the 400 in tech Dan - includes servers & IT, not on CMS - still have plenty of firepower John - out of norm, seemed wrong Dan - 1 tech for every 3 journalists Keith - same as MS, numbers are staggering, little per dev - run out of time - to me we got to aggregation in about 2005, Fred Wilson coined deportalization … - still in world of content separate from place of publication - show phone notifications, coming from Slack, am a subscriber - they can’t own distribution any more, own content, it’s good, but have to get compensation in new ways Kevin - notifications and routing coming through social sites and mobile apps, challenge is making sure you don’t go too far that way and hand over control - yes, we’ll route through FB, then they say “you have to pay for those now” - FB bounced back with redesign - sites optimizing for that running rings around traditional sites Steve - outlier as read Times religiously and have since birth - recently signed onto full mobile clients - iPad app as part of global digital subscription, but phone outside, gave up and paid tariff - ability to consume Time escalated rapidly - haven’t read report, think they’ve done a pretty damn good job of it - for aggregation, new service where they link to other stuff around the web, not interested in paying for that, anyone else Keith - get the Sunday paper edition as love it with coffee Steve - would anyone value aggregating Dan - I would, pay $420 / year for all of it - if we’re such great journalists, should be great curators as well - save me the trouble, show me what I should be looking for - coopting as everyone else is with your journalism John - adding to Dan, an aggregator that gave Times journos and readers to participate would be interesting, room for that - different related point - clearly need to innovate and push product through system faster to respond - doing so much better than other print pubs - with exit and leaked memo, easy to bundle with others, but Times is making transition well Keith - what about Guardian, bidding to host debate against TV channels, now just media, don’t have to go to BBC John - love Guardian, led with Snowden, incredibly important role for journalism still Steve - tease around with record business thing? John - with Beats? Steve - like this size of headphone Keith - confused and taking a long time - Gruber now understands it John - sort of clicked for me over weekend, think it’s - why’s it taking so long good question - it will happen, interesting deal - first, surprised like many, watched interview with Jimmy Iovine, a lot have referenced him as piece of deal, why makes sense - maybe 100k on it, small next to spotify rdio - smart and thoughtful - summary of music industry, mistakes around the CD, filling with content and abusing customers - when he talks about beats, this is not a product for white men over 30, architected and built for kids - they’ve made big headphones - older people want something that disappears, they’ve turned them into fashion - another generation that needs to love apple - also a wearable, large apparatus people willing to put on head, beats brand gains permission to put on head, transition to others Keith - makes sense in abstract, but don’t usually embrace other fashion brands, seems Tim Cook and not Apple John - Tim Cook has to put a mark on Apple, Jobs was tight coupling fundamental - wearables fairly loosely coupled via wifi or bluetooth, this will provide tightly coupled Keith - knowing people, think there’s a huge fight - guessing Jonny Ive won’t like John - not a big acquirer, last one was Next at 400M, transforming culture a huge challenge, need to go forward into world beyond phone - walk around and see these big devices, happy to put them there Dan - Eddy Cue beating head against wall trying to get music companies to play ball - bring in Jimmy Iovine, Apple can improve quality, on subway, bus, mostly going to see Beats and Apple, cornering ears, plans to go beyond, next phase of music play, Angela Ahrens from Burberry, improve consumer creed, deep into healthcare, lots more going on beyond bigger iPhones Keith - whiteboard session - eyes, ears, mouth, nose Steve - Apple - reports of iPads demise ridiculous, opportunity for Air/iPad merge - bigger phones will be huge, tired of watching and waiting, huge markets to walk into here, analogy of struggle for identity, what locked up MS for 10 years - they’ll be as successful as MS in breaking out of the box Keith - not yet, see evidence they’re making smart cloud decisions, Office for iPad good and smart, but still dependent and culturally attached to OS Steve - if you look at MS and old power centers, Apple as Gruber’s world vs. Beats, actual differences overstated - used to discussion on MS side, also used to it on Apple side - Apple is hardware, Google understands network - assumption that Apple doesn’t get how to do networking on a global scale - everything they’re doing is that, constantly Keith - have made some mistakes, this morning lawsuit relating to undeliverability of iMessages to people who switch to Android Steve - acknowledge Keith - come from their DNA, understand that it would be best if it were cross platform Steve - look at what MS is doing right now, after being tied up in knots for decade or more keeping everything out of browser for business model, Apple is same sort of problem - somehow MS figured out, maybe Apple won’t have such a problem, so what if Beats is bass heavy and low quality, lots of people like it Kevin - bass heavy is a feature to many, want to shake ears - had to change culture of mastering music so does have dynamic range - way to that is selling better speakers - complementary product to what they have, will sell in their stores, also, broaden out connection for them - need someone who’s able to negotiate with the labels and make deal with them - different skill from Tim Cook negotiating with suppliers, which has made Apple rich Keith - at airport, can see Beats every few yards, owning ears - low hanging fruit - building sensors for temp, pulse, probably crossover to health also John - while on device, release in China, Xio Mi guys released line of tablets, most powerful Android out there, also 4k TV for $600 in China, HD streaming box that goes with it, looks and feels like Amazon Fire box - doing an amazing job of driving good cheap hardware into market - pretty cheap, but $250 and pretty good hardware Steve - do have a captive market John - really important to get China right, have struggled, bigger iPhone going to be important - hardware provider with full line of digital hardware, don’t have that in US, closest is Samsung - hardware focus on phone, tablet, TV, infrastructure Keith - look at 4k tv 47 or 49” selling for $600, can bring it into this market though not early intention - in China market is very… - 5S is for cool kids - Amstrad in UK but with better design sense John - excited to push out fragmentions (Kevin’s work) on Instapaper Kevin - link to part of the page, phrase or paragraph, define url format including ability to select that part of it, they brought into Instapaper, pleased at what they’ve done, for me came up with idea 2-3 weeks ago, realized need better ways of linking - built for selves, found using all the time, engineers have built links like that into their programs - NYT has something like it, but only for them - then put out as browser plugin Steve - so Instapaper is now using that technology, yes? John - yes, acquired about a year ago, major upgrades pushed out a couple weeks ago, included highlights, while testing Kevin did his post, so adopted it, often want to do deep linking within web pages Keith - more than an anchor? Kevin - page has to create an anchor, discover is hard, view source and look by hand, instead link to series of words, good and quite resilient - linking to phrase, patents and academic citations, well known - pattern of usage around it already, Instapaper spreading Keith - embed in your own, reflect back Kevin - piece they’ve built Dan - will have it with a side of fries Kevin - plug event - NYT offices 6/28, good place to talk about these techniques, make sure can connect without having to route through Tw, FB, but can if want to Keith - HuffPo accused of stealing, but linked - could be interesting Kevin - want to connect pieces and link to them, but also make sure your stuff is available without having to … Steve - missing what people are thinking, enormous divide, don’t know why they fired editor, metrics not adding up after certain amount of time, excuse to shake things up Keith - she clearly rubbed people the wrong way - watch Morning Joe, best news Steve - Joe is a Republican and really a Democrat, rubs everyone the wrong way Keith - NYT is so screwed up - paid less as was a woman - normal for them to have differences, now accused of being sexist - distraction dealt with badly, lying, said wasn’t true when was, sexism becomes the story Steve - illustrating what’s really going on there, different reasons she was fired, not the ones on Drudge, why not map difficulty to that between app and web devs Dan - dunno about that connection, NYT very political, publisher decided can’t take her any more - web and apps, I have no idea, apps or web, web or apps, all part of same fabric, how do you want to consume it Steve - right now sounds like 2 ships passing, not even noticing other one is there Keith - bigger problem is changing means of distribution - when delivering paper to door, how does content owner survive when audience isn’t on platform you own - NYT problem no different than any other, when not owning delivery, not reading you on your property, found by aggregator, hard problem to fix Dan - problem everyone is facing, home page not where people are spending a lot of time - have to play social promotion game, more like television, put on better show, not quality of journalism, faster pace, tougher fight, things people do today, dollars for dimes, maybe quarters - different kind of revenue per view/action - others through fair or sometimes unfair use can sometime monetize better than you can - so more apps and products for live events, paywalls for some things in arena where people have many choices, not as simple as dropping newspaper on porch Keith - flipboard - Dan - what’s your revenue share with them - flipboard created a special report on obits, tons of traffic, things NYT should be doing Keith - look at medium or story something - sold as tools, creationist, atavist are other ones - create beautiful content, not so good stories, NYT should focus on story Dan - challenge after playing traffic monetization - ### best this or thats (buzz feed) getting more engagement, if NYT not doing that, making that choice not to tarnish their brand going downscale Keith - think already down too far - links mass market, drive up CPMs through stuff like that, not distinguished from bad guys Dan - people aren’t valuing, several hundred thousand do, model that has to work for them, journalists working on it - if can get it for less Steve - Times and Journal continue to provide incredibly steady content to survive, what is the bar, problem for Times? John - as industry, have created unstable biz model relates to advertising - transformed, data says no correlation between people sharing a story and people reading - chartbeat looked for correlation when share, do they actually read, large portion who were sharing no reading - headlines are optimized for sharing, not for reading - put out short and long form pieces people actually want to read, think about how people Steve - locked in for me in last couple minutes, think that between Dan / Keith and John’s summarization have heard some things that have not heard in other media, divorced of print/death of print, decline of margins as move to digital world, need to change behavior of the reader so they become more engaged workforce Dan - very much like other industry challenges - content industry online is based on advertising, which is broken as hard to find anyone who clicks on ad, maybe it follows you and eventually - model need to change so personalization, cues deliver adverts relevant to you - until then will be hard to fix except with lots of page views, lots reading it, crappy page views - so called advertising industry will be slow to change - DVR and skip ads as fast as you can Keith - if trying to fix it and had NYT assets, have to take content separate from its source, that’s an asset, not a liability, think about storytelling packages that can be moved around but carry with the subscription authentication model - why can’t let brand and monetization travel with story Kevin - going to see change, already have funding models designed around connecting people who care about content with those producing it - real threat to orgs is that, kickstarter, etc. John - violent agreement with everyone - Keith’s point about stuff traveling, fascinates me on web and in app world - fragment ions interest me as deep linking Steve - nothing to say, which is rare and pleasurable - new show from Tina Chase Gillmor, G3, soft launched it - will put a link in the show notes and chat, check it out and go to Facebook page, turned out marvelously, looking forward to thank to ustream, salesforce newtek incredible trickster, John, Keith, Kevin, Dan - thanks to chat room, Betaworks, Tina, see you again next time, bye bye - Steve Gillmor