Perception, Reality: According to the New York Observer, Rolling Stone founder Jann Wenner visited Las Vegas to work on development plans for a rock ‘n’ roll-themed resort using the magazine’s brand.

Technorati Tags: magazines

Speaking of retro: Retrofitting a a Mac Mini in an old Mac SE box proves what I’ve been trying to tell you: Mac owners (and I’ve been one for 22 years) are nuts.

Technorati Tags: apple

See, Flickr is like a blog: Yesterday, a reporter asked me why I use Flickr for sharing photos. As I explained why, I could have easily been explaining features found on a good blog-publishing platform: permalinks, comments, RSS feeds, linking to others, tags. And today, I’ve already said in a previous post that if you have a Flickr account, you are a publisher. Frankly, in many ways the Flickr platform is a wonderful blogging platform for the visual thinker/sharer. While I like to limit my “what he said, A-men” links to Dave Winer to one-per-day (granted, most days, I fail), I must once more today point to Dave and use this Flickr “photo” on Dave’s account to display just how “blog-like” the Flickr platform can be. One of my favorite RSS feeds is the one that delivers to my newsreader (that displays photos) a steady stream of images from wherever my “friends” (that’s the Flickr term) are posting them.

Retrowagging: I was hoping for something a little waggier from the new weblog, ValleyWag.

February 3, 2006: (from the new weblog from Gawker media, ValleyWag: “Tony Perkins’ embarrassing web stats“): “Perkins’ new venture, AlwaysOn, has much the same lumbering style, and business model, playing to the egos of its contributors more than the curiosity of its readers. The one flaw? On the web, everything is measured, including AlwaysOn’s readership, which is miniscule, even for a site that calls itself an insiders’ network. AlwaysOn: not any dog, but a chihuahua.”

February 14, 2003: (from rexblog: “In his dreams“): “He’s also about five (20?) years too late to be considered an innovator in this arena. Slashdot is just one of thousands of long-running examples of the “ebayization” of media. What Perkins (and others) will discover is that, unlike eBay, no one will be able to “brand” and “own” networked conversational media. Perkins knows it has been around for several decades but seems intent on convincing somebody that he can “bundle it up” into a business model.”

Looking back at that three-year old post, I realize I have changed my blogging style. Today, I would never “personalize” an opinion — I’d still say the same thing, but wouldn’t make it about “Perkins.” Back then, I was not as sensitive a blogger as I am today. Today, I realize that I’m talking about real people. Today, I would never actually imply someone is psycho when they take a stab at packaging something “old” and calling it “new.”

(Bonus new rexblog word: “retrowag, retrowagging” — repackaged antique gossip, snark, or formerly new ideas. Used in a sentence: “There is alot about Web 2.0 that is retrowag,” said Rex who maintains the retrowag-filled rexblog.)

Technorati Tags: blogging, magazines, publishing, retrowag

Small is the new smaller: Because of the way I have my newsreader flowing news to me, the following two items just “flowed” by together:

What Dave Winer said in a post titled “It’s a Different World“:

“…we don’t have to convince the editors of PC Mag and PC Week that our products matter. When the big dinosaurs, Microsoft, Lotus and Ashton-Tate, and later Borland, wanted our market, the publications had little choice but to give it to them. Now I am a publication myself. I can communicate directly with users. That changes everything.”

Erick Schonfeld (of Business 2.0 magazine) said in a post titled “What Comes After the Blockbuster? The Nichebuster“:

“…media companies will need to shift away from creating a few blockbusters every year, and instead try to create hundreds of nichebusters. Admittedly, this will be a big challenge. But if they do it right, media companies could actually reach more people and create deeper connections to many different audiences than they do today.”

For much of the past 15 years, I’ve been known in a small corner of the magazine publishing world as a “smaller publisher.” For example, in the past, I’ve chaired the “smaller publishers” committee of the American Business Media. I can look around the room of any convention or conference or seminar of magazine publishers and see that the vast majority of “human beings” in the room would consider themselves a “smaller publisher.”

Ironically, the term “smaller publisher” has no definition or size designation. When I’m at meetings with the heads of the companies that publish magazines like the one Dave mentions, I’ve stop being surprised (if I ever was) when the CEO of a company I consider massive attends a session that has the label “smaller” attached to it. I know it’s more about the session’s topic or the people who are speaking — it has nothing to do with “size.” I’ve learned over several years that engaging “conversations” (and playing tennis) with other human beings trumps “my company is bigger than your company” any day.

In other words, in the real world, we hang out with and listen to people we think have something interesting or enlightening or entertaining to say, those who we can laugh with and share with and play with and learn from. Rarely does one say (unless one is a misguided opportunist - and they are typically too clueless to realize they have “misguided opportunist” written on their forehead), “I’m sorry, you’re company only has $X million in revenues, so I find no redeeming quality in you as a human being and you have absolutely nothing to say that I could ever find of interest.”

Today, everyone can be a publisher, software developer, record producer, movie maker, etc. All you need is passion, authority (in the eyes of least one reader), talent, skill and a platform (a blog, a Flickr account, a del.icio.us feed of links). Get over the need to think everything you do has to be a blockbuster. Get over thinking that if you’re not Microsoft or Time Inc., you’re not a software developer or publisher that matters.

And here’s a secret I’ve learned: Big media company executives (and I’m sure it’s true in other industries, as well) know they’d be enjoying themselves a lot more if they were small and nimble and flexible and had the freedom to actually do what Erick says they need to do: create niche busters. They’re miserable because they can’t because niche busting is not rewarded by Wall Street analysts following quarterly earnings. Niche busting requires being able to handle lots of failures and sometimes being quick, and sometimes being very, very, very patient while an audience catches up with you.

We’re all publishers. And that changes everything. And that’s a good thing. It’s been that way for a long time, however. People are just now realizing it.

Technorati Tags: magazines, publishing