So, Twitter lists.

Apologies; this involves a little story.

As the more Addiply-aware of you will have, hopefully, twigged we now have a little thang going on with the good people of TrinityMirror and their far-flung North-East, hyper-local outpost; the JournalLive ‘Your Place’ platform…

http://www.journallive.co.uk/northumberland-sites/

Means that we can now offer an little Amble solicitor the chance to advertise to his local community for a fiver a week rather than take a chance that a Google text ad would ping half-way round the world and back again onto his preferred site in Amble… it’s a simple philosophy that is now open to any SME in rural Northumberland looking to digitally market their wares.

Here you go, peeps… take your pick…

http://www.addiply.com/index.php?option=com_addiply&Itemid=69&r1=1&r2=1

Naturally – given this is the Age of Collaboration; that whilst content may still be king, collaboration is queen, etc… – I’m more than happy to help Helen, David and the TrinityMirror Co ’seed’ some awareness of Addiply; we’re working together.

As we all have to.

So, I therefore start to tart myself round Twitter looking for digitally-minded folk in the region that might ‘get’ what Addiply offers them. Simple, accountable, place-it-yourself advertising for a fiver a week.

@HallMeister, in fairness, finds me. She’s smart that way.

But off we go to @Girl_Geeks_NE and out pops @ElegantIntros

Our Louise runs a posh dating agency out somewhere near Hexham; seeking out the alpha males of Walker, Wallsend and Byker…

http://www.elegantintros.com/

So far, so simple… Ponteland, you sense is posh. OK, place an ad there Louise…

That’s great. But I now want to see who else is out there on Twitter; running a small, digitally-minded business in the North-East. So, I kinda figure that someone, somewhere must have a ‘Twitter list’ of North-East businesses…

And old smarty pants Louise, does…

Like the rest of us, not quite sure why she collected/curated/managed/edited/coralled a list of 165 North-East businesses together under one ‘roof’ – her own, note – but there it is…

@ElegantIntros/north-east-businesses

… which I duly follow.

Now that list is just the kind of list that I was looking for; I don’t know any of them from Adam.. I live at my Mum’s in Norfolk; or at least for as long as she’s in the N&N, I do.

So the chances of me putting together a list of that relevant nature that’s 166-people strong? Nil.

Could do it; but bit like SEO… have neither the time, the energy or the inclination. Not when someone has already done the hard work for me. Louise Northwood, in this instance.

But what’s fascinating in all this is the value that is starting to emerge.

Wittingly or not – and, obviously, she knew what she was doing – but Louise has collected a list of value that, crucially, she controls. And Twitter gave her ‘the kit’ to do it.

She is the gatekeeper to a list of 166 names that I want access to… and Twitter ring-fenced them beneath her brand, @elegantintros

I can’t get to that list without going through Louise, so to speak. Or without Twitter.

I can sift through all 166 little avatars and message them directly; or else I can appeal to the Mistress of the Message and ask Louise to let me in…

Now, for my marketing needs re Addiply and TM’s Northumberland sites, I’d probably pay a micro-payment for access to that list… if a Port & Lemon on the Quayside fails to suffice.

And then Twitter and Louise can divvie up that micro-payment between them.

What’s really interesting is the fact that whereas we thought this new world of ours might be networked – that silos were sooo old-fashioned – here comes Twitter installing glass silos into a network; in that we can now press our Twitchy noses against the glass of Louise’s @elegantintros/north-east-businesses ’silo’ – but we can’t touch.

Not to them en masse… as a group… as a list… as a community.

Not without an invite.

Or, in theory, a micro-payment.

And it’s empowering Louise to be a woman of influence. She’s the one with the ticket to the ball.

For now. Until the next person builds a bigger and a better Twitter-list.

Now I look at other lists. And I look at @DavidCohn – he of SpotUs fame. Top lad.

And I’m following his lists @DigiDave/colleagues cos I strongly suspect that there will be people of value therein; my squidgy nose is pressed up against his glass silo wondering what I have to do to get in… and would I pay to market either myself or my wares to that particular crew…

Possibly; I’d pay five bucks on the door… he’s a smart lad; he probably hangs around with a cool crew; his list is one on which to be seen…. etc, etc.. I could do some business in there; make some good connections with people that Dave has already edited for my benefit.

For that’s what he’s done. He’s subbed out the run-of-the-mill; discarded the flotsam and jetsam and concentrated his efforts and his invites on those that are making the right kind of sounds, not those just making any old noise.

He’s acted as a filter; as an editor.

And in doing that he’s made my own life easier… right, those are the people I need to be talking to… over there.

And for that simple act – of putting a list of his mates together – both @DigiDave and Twitter deserve a reward. And therein may lay the genesis of a business model.

Very interesting.

Alas, my time hasn’t been wholly my own of late; only kid duties have called.

But this was great; like really great…

http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/editors/2009/09/29/mtc09-moritz-wuttke-dont-rely-on-google-and-develop-your-own-adsense/

Because the author – in this case Moritz Wuttke – was delivering the same message to the same audience [the World Association of Newspapers] as Matthew Buckland was earlier this spring; namely that newspaper publishers had to start thinking outside the Google box; that maybe AdSense wasn’t doing them any favours…

In short, Matthew Buckland was describing www.addiply.com in his call for an ad model that delivered a 90% return to publishers…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=272

Just as Mr Wuttke was describing Addiply when he suggested: ‘…that newspaper publishers make advertisers work far too hard when it comes to buying adverts. It should be possible within three clicks, he said…’

As it is.

On Addiply.

And then there was this piece… by Shelby Bonnie. Let’s kill the CPM…

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/25/lets-kill-the-cpm/

And these lines…

What will a new solution need?

• Simple. In the end, I realize that to make the business of marketing work it can’t all be art. You have to have a way to create a streamlined process… Simplicity can lead to scalability, which allows for more efficiency for publishers, agencies, and marketers.

Where do we start?

• First, just stop using the CPM. Yes, it will break every model and process that the industry holds dear, but we need to get rid of the crutch. The ensuing turmoil will bring creative thinking, new ideas, and entrepreneurial passion….

Yes, he’s describing… OK.

If I look back over the last 12 months in this roller-coaster world of ours, there are two lines that stand out. One, almost, inevitably by Clay Shirky. ‘Nothing works, but everything might…

The other comes from Mr Cohn who I first bumped into at Jeff Jarvis’ www.NewsInnovation.com gig at CUNY in the autumn of 2007. David subsequently went on to win Knight funding for his Spot.Us project out of San Francisco… all of which inspired those wonderful lines about if, online, content was king, then collaboration was queen. And as with the game of chess, we all know which is the more powerful…

http://www.digidave.org/2009/03/collaboration-is-queen.html

Superb.

It was to such thinking that David returned with news that a certain Warren Hellman was about to pump $5 million into the launch of a Bay area newsroom that would, it appears, have collaboration at its heart.

http://www.sfbg.com/blogs/politics/2009/09/hellman_and_partners_to_launch_1.html

Or, at least, that was David’s hope… http://www.digidave.org/2009/09/dear-warren-hellman-some-solicited-advice.html … as various parties, the New York Times and the Berkeley School of Journalism among them, sought to find a new, not-for-profit way of providing the Bay area with the kind of news that the San Francisco Chronicle once laid claim to.

Of course, we have our own interest here. Cos for the last 5-6 months we have been collaborating with said J-School; looking to see if we couldn’t empower Richard Koci Hernandez’ kids to run OaklandNorth and MissionLocal on a not-for-loss basis.

Behind the scenes, that process continues as we tweak and twidde with our $ Addiply.

But the point is simple. For me, in media’s darkest hour of need, big media and small media are starting to work together; there is a growing sense that the solution – perhaps – lies in this vast, great melting pot that lies between the two…

…that if we can apply some of that big media ’selling’ science honed and refined over 300 years of newspaper production and ad sales to some of the street-level solutions that such community-minded folk as David at Spot.Us and, hopefully, us here at www.addiply.com have come to recognise as key to our own survivals, then maybe part of an answer may emerge.

I suspect the answer may be beyond all of us; part of an answer may however be within reach.

http://www.buzzmachine.com/2009/04/06/arianna-huffington-saves-journalism/

It is an interesting piece in the sense that it chimes well with the current debate about ‘not-for-profit’ business models; that, perhaps, the future of decent journalism might – for now – have to rest with the generosity of a donor or two.

Or at least as we wait for new ‘Foundations’ to spring up to fund various future news organs in the manner of The Scott Trust. News organs, one presumes, that don’t look like the MEN, the Reading Bi-Weekly Chron or the Stockport Express – none of which much tickle the Scott Trust’s fancy these days.

‘But now the indefatigable founder of The Huffington Post comes riding to the rescue with a new, not-for-profit arm to fund investigative journalism out of foundation and public donations. It starts with $1.75 million…’ writes Jeff.

The problem, of course, comes (a) when that first tranche of $1.75 million runs out and (b) if the subsequent results of the investigations concerned are deemed to be in any way skewed – to the left in Huffington’s case; to the right if, say, the Drudge Report followed suit.

And found a willing ‘donor’ in, I don’t know, Halliburton Inc.

It is, in short, not without fault. As Jeff points out; though without perhaps the force of one or two of his subsequent commenters.

But, again, to misquote Mr Shirky: ‘Nothing works, but everything might…’ So, fair play, to Ms Huffington; she’s giving it a go and – on the surface at least – keeping a roof over the head of one or two investigative journalists Stateside.

Personally, I tend to favour the more ‘bottom up’ solution that David Cohn seeks with his Spot.Us work out of San Francisco – http://spot.us/ – with its greater onus on being funded from the streets of local, neighbourhood communities, as opposed to by a distant, liberal elite.

Once again, there is evidence there of the world splitting two ways – of a bottom-up, street-funded, individual-empowered ‘answer’ to the West; and of a top-down, more corporate-enabled ‘answer’ to the East. A block that we’ve been round before…

http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=251

But what is interesting is DigiDave’s take on events re TheHuffPost. He’s there, in Jeff’s comments.

And he’s right, of course. There ain’t no such thing as ‘clean’ money – be ad dollars or donor dollars, none of them come sprinkled with ‘fairy dust’…

‘…. There is NO such thing as clean money.

‘You find me clean money… I’ll find you fairy dust and we will do a trade.

‘Money from advertising isn’t clean.
‘Even money from foundations isn’t clean.

‘The best we can do is be transparent.

‘By being transparent and making sure we are diverse in public money – we stand to have more accountable journalism than that which is supported by advertising (one big source of money and only semi-transparent)…

But what, for me, is fascinating is the emphasis he places on ‘transparency’… that maybe in thataway lies some sort of hope of an ad-funded model for journalism; if we can just better establish who’s paying what to whom. And for what…

It’s the same emphasis that Matthew Buckland places on ‘transparency’ here…

http://www.matthewbuckland.com/?p=675

It’s the same emphasis that Daniel Roth placed on ‘transparency’ here…

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_reboot

That ‘the era of sunlight has to give way to era of pixelization; only when we give everyone the tools to see each point of data will the picture become clear…’ etc.

And for ‘each point of data’ read the exact contribution made by either donor or advertiser; how many bucks did they pump into that investigation and what are they looking for?

This is what we want; for me, this might be the start of a post-capitalist world; a new mode of thinking now that – in journalistic terms – we now own both the means of production and distribution; both now lie beneath our finger-tips; sit on our kitchen table.

Transparency.

It is, after all, the same thinking that underpins the current UK furore over MPs expenses… we want to see what you’re getting; where it’s going; we don’t want to be blinded by ‘the era of sunlight’ any more – we want to see for ourselves….

DigiDave’s line is worth repeating; because for me it offers a hope of a more sustainable platform for journalistic endeavour than the donor market.

‘By being transparent and making sure we are diverse in public money – we stand to have more accountable journalism than that which is supported by advertising (one big source of money and only semi-transparent)…

More ‘accountable journalism’ is surely where we should all aim to head; funded, in part, by a far more transparent and ‘accountable’ system of advertising.

And, finally, it’s a theme that you can carry onto the latest spat between AP, the aggregators, the search engines et al.

Because right at the heart of that lies a little road that AP might be somewhat loathe to go too far down. As in being rather more ‘transparent’ about just where that story came from, who was the source…

For isn’t it the person at the source of the story that needs the reward, rather than anyone who just re-nosed, re-packaged and re-hashed it on its way….? �

Or rather the killer paragraph therein that then got tweetified in the shape of this: ‘Content is King, but collaboration is Queen. In Chess king = most important, but Queen = all powerful…’

It is a wonderful, wonderful way of looking at our new world and, of course, harks back to one of Jeff Jarvis’ greater legacies to this whole new media debate… that you do what you do best, then link to the rest…

That given the simple math of web economics we cannot afford to try to be all things to all men; if we don’t do great TV, don’t do it – link to someone that does.

And by the same token, if you do great TV, but don’t do great stories – link to someone that does.

We have to barter; swap; trade. Do what it takes to engage a community for the minimum of financial outlays.

It is particularly beholden on provincial newspapers, IMHO, to embrace said thinking with a passion; that as they retreat into Forts Dunlop, Nottingham and Hull etc, why not reach back out into your communities with an ever-more aggressive and inclusive policy of linking; accept – with a tad more grace – that you’re not the only news show in town any more…

… let your local community shoulder some of that news-gathering burden; empower them; entrust them to be part of your ‘brand’ – and take free content wherever you can find it.

But I’m beginning to wonder now whether Dave’s thoughts on collaboration being the all-powerful Queen of this digital chessboard of ours might not take us into different directions.

That, actually, all we’ve been talking about before in the ‘do best, link to the rest…’ way of new life is talk about the King. To think about content.

Where can I get better content from? Where can I get free content from? Link here, link there – but the collaboration is still content-based. Be it data or story, tis content.

But what if we looked at collaboration in terms of distribution models.

If I wanted to get my content delivered to my community with the speed and style that they might now come to expect, who would I look to collaborate with?

Well, I wouldn’t entrust it to someone with a delivery system that was still tied to a bicycle.

And, as a writer, a story-producer, I’d like my words to be packaged nicely; to come in a slick-looking parcel; one with bells and bows on; lots of touch-button knobs and joined up thinking.

And if I was looking to collaborate with someone – to swap my precious words for someone’s delivery system – I don’t know if I’d want them to come to the table with a legacy of a previous industrial age; to come to my party weighed down with a print press, a paper boy and a pension fund.

I’d want them to have a network; but one, perhaps, that was more mast-based than newsagent-centred; that they’d offer a nice, new shiny set of rails for me to run my content train on.

Because I’m beginning to wonder whether that’s where the new partnerships might lie; that I might swap my words for someone else’s wifi-cloud – just as I would swap my words for someone else’s TV.

Because a wifi-cloud has the same problem as an ITV.Local [as was... RIP] or, indeed, the BBC’s TV and Radio web-sites; they don’t do great words.

But we still do.

We don’t do great packaging. Nor do wifi clouds. But then we start to know the people that do…

And maybe somewhere within that kind of mix lies our next spot of collaborative thinking. That if you can marry hardware to software to content, you’re going in the right direction.

After all none can survive without the other; that within that mutual-dependency, there ought to be a new collaborative relationship that could meet our 2009 needs.

All you need to do is make sure that the delivery hardware concerned doesn’t involve a bike.

I stumbled across a guy called Patrick Thornton last night who – from a distance – appears to be one of Jay Rosen’s ‘posse’ out in the States. In that he’s just taken over from Knight News Challenge winner David Cohn in working on www.beatblogging.org – http://patthorntonfiles.com/blog/2008/06/19/my-newest-journalism-adventure/

David I’ve met; co-hosted Jeff Jarvis’ www.newsinnovation.com gig in NY last autumn and helped me find an Internet connection – ex-Canary boss Peter Grant was in the midst of getting sacked, if memory serves. Top man. And a Knight News Challenge winner, to boot.

Anyway, beatblogging.org all looks very interesting; the only question mark that appears – from a distance – to follow Rosen around is the old cash question. As in how do you make any… But then, in fairness, he’s not exactly alone in that regard.

Wandering through Thornton’s world, he had some very decent thoughts on the future of hyper-local; made this time last year ahead of the rise – and fall – of LoudonExtra.

http://patthorntonfiles.com/blog/2007/07/09/hyperlocal-will-make-money/

The bit that caught my eye was his thoughts on mixing local news with social media; opening up FaceBook-type communities as part your hyper-local site; one for the PTA, one for the swimming club, one for the football club…

Given our little man swims with Loddon Dolphins – http://www.nelsonsdomain.co.uk/loddonwhitedolphins/ – and plays football for Loddon Grasshoppers FC – http://www.loddongrasshoppers.co.uk/ – and his mum is a community governor at the Infant School and a parent governor at the Junior, then there are four ‘FaceBook-esque’ mini-Loddon communities that could all find a congregational home at www.mylocalwriter.com/loddon

That having initially stepped into our ‘reading room’ to catch up on the latest Loddon news, our rich and varied community could then disappear off into their various ’side-rooms’ to meet and mingle with their chosen ’sub-set’.

One of which, for me, would be a FaceBook-esque community of Loddon baby-sitters; given that ours has managed to get herself a social life all of a sudden… I’m no great fan of Twitter simply cos I know diddly-squat about it… but there seems to be an opportunity.

Twitter out to your sub-set community of Loddon mums; ‘Out on Friday night, girls, anyone up for a baby-sit?’

And then the community could watch a conversation flow.

‘Oh, where you going..?

‘Just thought we try the new Indian in Brooke…

‘Oh, tell us what it’s like…’

Communal inter-action and information enacted and enabled across a social-media-meets-local-news website.

And one that’s just as applicable to the Stamfords of this world as it is to the Loddons… http://outwithabang.rickwaghorn.co.uk/?p=75

Which is why I then found Oliver Luft’s piece on what next at the NY Times so interesting… http://www.journalism.co.uk/2/articles/531775.php – and, in particular, this little bit…

“The new tool was built to also add some of the social media aspects of Delicious, Twitter and Facebook to the Times website, senior Times software developer Derek Gottfrid told Beet TV.

“Each action executed on the profile page will also register in the user’s Facebook mini-feed and can also be exported as an RSS feed.

“TimesPeople also allows users to link to friends and have a Twitter-style feed of what they are doing on the profile page.

“The technology is currently in a public beta testing phase…”

Poke your nose into TimesPeople (beta) and not that I’ve ever had much of a design eye, but from where I sit, it looks just the job; that when it comes down to slapping our own beta CMS together, I’d quite fancy one of those boys.

Not to tie the NY Times people together, but to find me a baby-sitter in downtown Loddon on a Friday night… Or in Stamford on a Saturday.

http://timespeople.nytimes.com/packages/html/timespeople/faq/#4

Cos I think that tool bar that sits atop of every NY Times page you read via Firefox looks the business; pic of my Mrs with the activity listed as ‘Looking for a baby-sitter…’ and we’re out for the night at the new Indian in Brooke; on her return, she’s giving it the review… ‘Don’t go there girls, pilau rice was cold…’ and away we all go.

What we do if the Brooke Tandoori has just signed up for four months launch advertising via www.addiply.com/loddon is a bridge to cross another day, but bit by bit I think we’re starting to work out what we do in terms of ‘Project Stamford’…

We’d run a ‘StamfordPeople’ tool bar right across the top of our www.mylocalwriter.com/stamford home page…