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”

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Open-source cars? I like the idea, but ...

Chris Anderson, editor of Wired and famous for his “Free” and “The Long Tail” books, has a provocative story in this month’s Wired magazine about an open-source car maker called Local Motors.

Local Motors CEO Jay Rogers is taking all kinds of innovative approaches in launching the new Rally Fighter off-road car. (Wired.com)Open-source car maker.

Think about that.

Local Motors is a few months away from releasing its first model, the $50,000 off-road Rally Fighter. Local Motors tapped real people to “crowdsource” the design and help weave currently available parts into the finished product. “Each design is released under a share-friendly Creative Commons license, and customers are encouraged to enhance the designs and produce their own components that they can sell to their peers, Anderson writes.”

Ok, that’s cool. Kinda like a big auto app store.

But here’s the real kicker: Customers will build the cars at “local assembly centers.” That takes the kit-car concept a step further, moving assembly out of home garages to larger places where more hands and advisers can pitch in. Could this lead to something bigger, where truly custom and unique cars (as opposed to personalized from a palette of fixed choices) become commonplace?

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Wired explores some wild business offshoots

Call me a geek (no, really), but I get a kick out of marketing surveys. I enjoy taking them, in large part to get inside the thought process of ideas banging around other media companies.

One of the questions on the Wired surveyCase in point is a recent survey I took from Wired magazine that explored the openness of its subscribers to different business ideas and rewards programs, such as Wired-branded retail products and stores, Wired restaurants or hotels, and even reader-loyalty clubs with benefits such as the “ability to offer feedback on content prior to publication.”

Wired is a magazine I have long respected for its innovative design, thought-provoking journalism and ability to stay ahead of trends. Its won tons of awards, yet hasn’t been immune to the falling ad revenue that has hit most print publications.

So I guess I should be impressed the company isn’t resting on its laurels and is testing how far its subscribers might flex in embracing new initiatives. But more than a few ideas struck me as being odd, even desperate, extensions of the Wired brand.

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