Shiny Objects -- No. 2

Here are a few of the more interesting things that have distracted me this past week:

1. Buzz-Fueled Media Startups

Wired has an illuminating article on how digital news startups like Buzzfeed is reshaping how we deliver and consume news, moving from the concept of a traditional destination-centric news site to organic vehicles that use everyday people to deliver the content for them. Here’s a key graf:

"But the thing is, the media isn’t just competing with your little sister—it’s co-opting her, using her as a vector to spread its content. She is the new delivery mechanism. We don’t learn about the world from The New York Times, we learn about it from the Times stories that our family and friends share or that show up as push notifications four minutes before one from The Guardian does. Thirty percent of American adults get news from Facebook, according to the Pew Research Center, and more than half of Americans got news from a smartphone within the past week, according to the American Press Institute. And these metrics are just going up, up, up. The question for news publishers is no longer how to draw an audience to their sites, it’s how to implant themselves into their audience’s lives."

2. Pitch podcast: “The Clearmountain Pause”

Click to read more ...