What’s Going On In The Media World?

The New York Times is bankrupt.  Gawker growth is flat.  Digg, the next big thing, is stumbling and changing.  Meanwhile, Mashable might get bought up by AOL (or is it Aol?).  The Huffington Post became a legit source of news.  And the iPad is going to solve everything.  The new media is replacing the old media, and it’s getting its ass kicked by the new, new media.  What the hell is going on?  Well, let’s look.

Online, it’s best to be female

Over the last year, Huffington Post traffic is up 118% and the Daily Beast’s is up 270% (check out compete.com for numbers).  Conrad Black is in jail, Arthur Sulzberger is bankrupt (along with Sam Zell), and Rupert Murdoch has never surfed the information superhighway.  Sex sells.

photo credit: priceyeah

Technology doesn’t matter, even on your iPhone

Mashable uses WordPress; HuffPo uses Moveable Type.  You don’t need to go custom to succeed.  Reader’s don’t care how your content is organized; they only want to read it quickly and easily.  In fact, it’s probably better to use a canned solution — save some money (just don’t spend it on an iPhone app).

Who has an awesome iPhone app?  NYT, AP, Chicago Tribune … bankrupt, old-media newspapers.  The Daily Beast doesn’t even have one.  Mashable’s is odd and clunky.  HuffPo has one that seems to be somewhat popular.  Only the NYT is hoping for the iPad to save it.  A simple mobile site is enough.

The future of mobile media isn’t a repackaged, miniaturized newspaper (or magazine, sorry Esquire).  It needs more reach than that.

Social reach trumps mobile reach

Digg just realized that Facebook and Twitter matter.  The web is real-time and you don’t need user effort to measure it.  Look at BuzzFeed.  They’re the Digg of today and nobody needs to vote to bubble things up — it just happens.  Social networks make that possible — reading and sharing determine popularity.

Mashable focuses on Twitter and Facebook.  Huff Po was an early Digg adopter, then moved to Facebook Connected social news (now including Yahoo, Google, and Twitter integration).  The Daily Beast is heavily invested in email newsletters.  All three have realized that integrating into another facet of a reader’s online life leads to increased readership.  Sure, David Carr has 244,000 Twitter followers and the New York Times has 2.3M but Mashable has 2M too — and guess which company has lower overhead.  Every story Mashable posts is a social home run.  Successful sites are harnessing the power of user-generated traffic.  The old boys are not.

The widget communitistas are dead

To each according to his patience, from each according to his widgets.  Widgets were the future in 2008.  “Customized” homepages, like those offered by Netvibes and PageFlakes, are impossible to differentiate, easy to replicate, and worthless.  Customization isn’t the future.  The future is filled with a site that fits everyone — given an infinite number of options, your dream site is likely out there waiting for you.  Think about clothing — do you buy custom shirts?  Nope, you get them from the Gap.

Conclusion

So that’s it: be female, don’t worry about tech, forget about apps, focus on social, and hit a niche without customization.  Simple!