Writing for an audience of one

reader/viewer/user popularity contests are here and will never go away, so be it. and reducing the influence over editorial of the power lunch with jack welch is a fabulous development, long overdue.

but the idea that popularity is a measure of editorial relevence is disturbing, even if it is inevitable.

i wonder: would darwin's works have made the cut if "amazon ranking" and "most emailed story" were the measure that mattered back then? "mein kampf" on the other hand was and still would be extremely relevent. and would woodward and bernstein's early reporting on watergate have been supported or sustained if immediate reader feedback had been the criteria? etc....

hopefully we can balance society's need for leadership and vision and social repsonsibility with our well-founded euphoria over the overthrow of the old media elite

This is a long tail problem right? Or opportunity. in a world focused on economics you look at the ROI. So you write for the masses to succeed if your printing a magazine that costs X and needs a circulation of Y to make the return the advertisers are looking for. Otherwise they shift their support (as they are generally doing)

What's great about Long Tail communications is the ability to segment down to that tiny group that couldn't be economically communicated with in the past. That's the magic of email or blogs right?

The advertiser has the choice of how to reach a million people. A run of press ad in a national publication that appeals to the masses, or find a million people through 100,000 "long tail" publications.

No telling which results are going to be better for the advertiser yet...but it's going to be a fun ride for everyone.

Economics seems to collide with everything. Is there a way to measure a GDP for every article? Possibly, and for the random mishmash of everyday articles that are written, this is probably fine. However, the groundbreaking articles, those written by passionate authors, won't cater to the dollars and cents.

If you look at media and communications in terms of long tail you’re going to be fighting an uphill battle as marketer or editor. You’re competing with possibly dozens of others who may be more of authority on the subject then you are.

I think the only way to truly reach your crowd is creating content that is relevant to the long tail perspective but at the same time write something that is compelling, so that anyone reading would be enthralled. Long tail communication that can grow through viral means is the key to success for web 2.0 marketers, in my opinion that is.

I always enjoy the posts here at Blogspotting. In fact I wrote about it in my 'Tech Newz' blog today and linked to a story entitled 'Social Computing 101.'

I think we're just scratching the surface on this new media. My personal take is that mainstream media is not going away, but those that are innovative (like BusinessWeek) will certainly preference in people's RSS feeds and regular news scanning.

The whole idea of ranking in regards to media does have some validity as long as we're talking about actual new sources and not including the entire blogging community.

Makes your head buzz...I look forward to reading more. Thanks Steve & Heather!

Times have changed since those days of yore - it's no longer and audience of one, but it's now much more democratic. At least that's my opinion.

You make a valid point ... but I think it's up to journalist, authors, playwrights, filmmakers etc to tailor their work to the audience. The era of continuous partial attention is upon us and to grab that audience's attention you need to deliver your work in a way that get noticed.

We can't go on doing our work - in my case as a journalist - the way we used to do it 20 years ago. We need to be innovative in the way we use the new technologies to present our stories.

Our job is to create a buzz. Find the angle that hooks them in or the platform that best showcases our work and the rest should follow. We need to market what we do better - in blogs, on TV and radio, using multimedia presentations etc.

These days, not everyone has the time (or attention span) to read 2000-5000 word pieces of worthy journalism. Popularity doesn't have to mean lightweight.

It is still an audience of one. Everyone is writing for me.