3.1 The Attention Economy

As the media landscape has changed, so too have audience expectations and demands. Traditional media outlets can no longer rely on dedicated and restrictive channels that ensure a captive audience, but must instead contend with everybody else in what has been termed the ‘attention economy’.

The week we looked at how to keep the attention of our audience, we were asked the following questions:

• What is your reaction to Shirky’s claim that the Web and Weblogs have made publishing a “financially worthless activity”?
• How might the ideas Kelly proposes be relevant to your chosen topic/field? Can you think of examples of people working in this field who have used some of these ideas
• In what other ways do you think it might be possible to add value to information for your readers?

Shirky’s claim that the Web and Weblogs have made publishing a “financially worthless activity”?

To a degree I agree with Shirky that in this day and age, web publishing as an individual is basically worthless. Skirky states, “in a world where publishing is that efficient, it is no longer an activity worth paying for” (Shirky, 2002) there are many people on the net doing the same thing and to get noticed and obtain advertising is a difficult task. Once you are noticed and you do have a following and advertising backing then the idea becomes less financially worthless.

How might the ideas Kelly proposes be relevant to your chosen topic/field? Can you think of examples of people working in this field who have used some of these ideas

From the eight generatives that Kelly (2008) talks about, Personalization and Findability are most related to my topic;

Personalization – My blog is it is tailored to people who live in Sydney or are visiting Sydney, all the restaurants and events are in Sydney Metro.

Findability – the reviews on my blog can be found on twitter and Urbanspoon

There are many food reviews that use different generative values, for example http://www.notquitenigella.com/ uses Findability, and you can find her reviews on almost any restaurant. Authenticity, people look to her for reviews, they value what she has to say.

In what other ways do you think it might be possible to add value to information for your readers?

Communication – readers like to feel connected with the author, so communicating with your readers (i.e. responding to comments and messages) adds value to your blog as the reader feels he or she is part of the conversation and as Shirky said “participating in the conversation is its own reward.” (Shirky, 2008)

 

Writing Task:

Our writing task this week was on Creating Generative Value, where we needed to take a current news item (related to our topic of interest or not) and write a piece that adds value to the information contained within it. I decided to write my piece on Bugs and how they could be come the next food source for the Western culture (see here)

 

References:

Kelly, K. (2008). Better Than Free. Retrieved from http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kelly08/kelly08_index.html.

Shirky, C. (2002). Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing. Retrieved from http://shirky.com/writings/weblogs_publishing.html.