PETER VANDEVANTER’S FAQs

(be forewarned there are more than 100 questions here – search by subject if you want, by hitting the FIND button under EDIT tab above; for example search “paywall” or “advertising”, etc.)

What has happened to the news?

I have been in the news business my whole career. I have seen technology change everything about the business, except the actual nature of news, until now.

News now is different because it's chosen by the receiver not the giver. It’s self-chosen, self-empowering; it’s personalized.

What is personalized news? News you choose because it's important to you. It's the opposite of breaking news, which is news professionals deem important to you and push at you.

I'd like to make this prediction. Personalized news will do to traditional news what telegraph news did to pony express news in the 1850s -- make it obsolete. Telegraphs were faster than ponies, right? And Personalized News is more relevant than breaking news, right? Today relevance is the value, because speed is a given.

What will happen to advertising?

And, by the way, I predict personalized advertising will replace mass media advertising.

Of course, personalized advertising is advertising that's chosen by you because it is important to you. It's the opposite of mass media advertising which is chosen by brokers for you. Based on who they think you are. But nobody can know you but yourself.

What is personalized news and advertising collectively?

Personalized Media.

That's what we will explore now: How to Personalize Media.

Is News the only media product that has changed?

No, all media has changed. And ironically enough, changed into the same thing. Books, magazine articles, news reports, tv shows, movies, radio programs, music – all are now digitally created, digitally delivered. Used to be magazines were printed on glossy paper and newspapers on newsprint. Today both are reproduced on a PC, the same device. All media content is now platform agnostic. And all are being personalized. Books have been personalized by Amazon; magazines by Time; news by MyYahoo and IGoogle, tv shows by Tivo, movies by Netflix, radio programs by Sirius. And the list will continue to grow and grow.

Media is defined today not by platform, as in the past, but by personalization. All media is individuated media. All media is personalized.

Publishers, are your stories lost in a jungle?

"The average consumer or business decision-maker is bombarded with 1,500 marketing messages a day. Throughout all our waking hours, we are pounded by a rapid drumbeat from a wide array of competing channels -- direct mail, print, e-mail, television, radio, Web, telephone, text messaging, the list grows every day. Consider that the typical household in the U.S picks up 82.4 television channels, chooses from among 17,300 magazines titles, has access to 4.4 billion pages indexed by Google.” (1)

The truth is we are inundated by that invisible professional group of media brokers who make a living deciding what we will learn every day.

And we're all fed up. And we know we are being duped. And we've begun to find ways around. Facebook gives us information about the world filtered through our friends, just as Digg.com and other social networking sites like Twitter.

These are the tools by which traditional, breaking news is replaced by self-chosen, Personalized news. And mass media advertising morphs into personalized advertising.

Oh for a while, a long while perhaps, there still will be five or six or seven or eight stories a day that people will believe define that day in history. Yahoo and MSN and the Drudge report and many other popular web sites are continuing that ruse into the digital age, a carryover from the information age.

But eventually everyone will know and realize and be comfortable with the fact that there are a trillion stories a day that for a trillion different people are THE news of the day.

For instance, I always enjoy tracking the so-called one reason for the swings of the DOW each day, as one of the best examples of the outright lies of mainstream media. Lies that have compromised our credibility.

This week the DOW went up because of the jobs report . . . This week the DOW went down because of the jobs report. Either way, the jobs report probably had little to do with the DOW.

What’s a Publisher to do?

With such media fragmentation a publisher must adapt and see the evolution in the revolution.

Is it truly advantageous to publish one-to-one? Yes. Let's look at direct mail first, where the last decade has shown that a personalized message can double response rates from 1 percent to 2 percent. But you need to ask yourself: Is that the best I can do? Or can I do even better than direct mail? (2)

In most American markets the money spent on direct mail passed the money spent in newspapers in 2001 and since then the gap has widened. In 2001 the newspaper was a $42 billion business and so was the direct mail business. By 2004 the direct mail business had grown to be a $60 billion business and the newspaper business was a $46 billion. You get the picture.

So if newspapers could learn to personalize they might begin to reduce that gap, perhaps in a major way.

What should a publisher know about VDP?

VDP stands for “variable data printing” and every print publisher should know that it is the key to Personalized Media.

You can't have an personalized print publication without it.

But be aware that VDP describes a $200 home printer as well as a $5 million digital press such as the ones Oce and Hewlett Packerd and IBM have developed.

In fact surprisingly both the home printer and the big digital presses work off the same technology, inkjet printing.

VDP simply means every printed page can be different. The paper rolls through the "press" and instead of receiving the same pattern of images over and over again, the pattern is different every time.

So far the concept has only been used sparingly.

The Washington Times varied the pages of its national weekly for about 50 subscribers using OCE presses in Boca Raton in 2008.

And a German startup called Syntops partnered with the Swiss Post in 2008 to deliver newspapers that had a combination of pages chosen individually by 500 recipients.

So crude first steps have been taken.

Can you dig digg?

One way to receive Personalized Media is to be the recipient of a group of your peers' choices.

In other words, if you can completely identify with a group of people, then their choices of media would automatically become your choices of media.

That's the theory behind digg.com. Thousands of digg fans vote every day on the best stories posted each day by you know who -- those very thousands of fans.

That's a fundamentally different scenario than someone describing his or her interests, that leads to search-predicated content.

But http://www.digg.com is worth thinking hard about as you piece together the Personalized Media for your audience, publishers.

Can Personalized News count with ABC?

You betcha.

Scott Hanson, SVP electronic & centralized audit services, has endorsed Personalized News home printed reports as unique editions of newspapers, which means that the reports count the same as paid, delivered and verified numbers of the daily newspaper.

Here is a transcript of the letter dated Oct. 30, 2009: "Right now, you do not need to do anything differently, we would qualify the Personalized News as a Unique Edition of the Denver Post."

So newspapers can grow their top-line circulation with Personalized News products. That's great news.

So what was the pony express news?

Slow. To say the least.

Not as slow as the boats from England to America at the turn of the 19th century, the other source of news previously.

Anyway, the telegraph was invented and although at first no one knew what to send through the lines, the Civil War changed all that. Send news of battles. So suddenly people in Massachusetts could find out almost immediately what happened in a skirmish in say far-off Virginia. Especially the names of those dead and wounded.

Overnight, news began to be published using the telegraphed, Morse coded stories.

In the West, the pony express was still the primary source of news and information, but only until the late 1800s when the lines arrived.

No one relied on horses after there were telegraph poles.

Why is traditional news and advertising broken?

There are many explanations. But the simplest is that there is simply now a better mousetrap: social media. All of us have always weighed the opinions of our friends and neighbors over any media critic or advertising spieler. Now our friends and neighbors have a way of speaking to us -- of characterizing for us -- everything from the war on the other side of the world to, yes, the grill we are thinking about purchasing. Here is a wonderful blog that clearly points out the value of social media in the traditional field of retail research/advice, which, in a simple twist of fate, becomes Personalized Media:

Boy Meets Grill

Posted by: Jeff Kline on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 1:51:41 pm

Ranking and Commenting are changing the way in which we buy products

I wanted a new grill. It was that simple.

My old one was on its last legs, and I was on the hunt for a replacement.

At Home Depot I saw an amazing NexGrill model. It had all the features I craved and bells and whistles I didn’t know I had craved. But I’m a cautious buyer, so I put it to the Consumer Reports test.

Consumer Reports loved the NexGrill. But something didn’t seem right.

I had a nagging feeling the data was too selective, too narrow, and biased. And while a third-party endorsement from an institution like Consumer Reports a decade ago might have convinced me to go with NexGrill… now we have more tools at our disposal.

So I went online and dug into the relevant sites. The Web is teeming with blogs and forums devoted to all aspects of grilling, just as it teems with sites devoted to all products and pursuits. So finding information straight from the source – grill buyers, rather than manufacturers or media – was easy. It required only a few clicks and an open mind.

Turned out my doubts were justified. The vast majority of comments and reviews about the NexGrill were negative. My fellow consumers – with no profit at stake, no reputation to burnish, and no slant (except a love of grilling, of course) – gave me straight talk. And it was: “Stay away.”

So I turned my attention instead to the Weber I’d spotted. Guess what? The response was overwhelmingly positive. Hundreds of reviews and comments heaped praise on it. Even better, there was nuance and detail and real-life experience I could never get from a magazine or store. Weber had put out a good product, its customers were thrilled, and they were more than happy to advocate its purchase. Online, my fellow consumers spoke with expertise and enthusiasm professional marketers would spend months chasing.

And that’s the power of ranking, voting, and commenting.

They’re a set of tools representing “word of mouth,” amplified.

People have always gone to friends and family for product feedback. Blog environments are the logical extension and even more valuable to consumers. People might not trust manufacturers. But a fellow traveler (so to speak) has no vested interest in misguiding you. In fact, a stranger who feels compelled to share his thoughts is almost certainly going to be more honest than anyone else.

People inherently trust the wisdom of crowds.

Think about how The New York Times website offers its “most e-mailed” and “most-commented” lists. It’s because readers want to know what other readers are thinking. Web giant Digg and similar sites use crowd sourcing to propel interest in stories. The Web is all about momentum, and momentum cannot be created in a laboratory or from the top down. It is organic and springs from groundswell.

As vehicles like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook get a lot of the press for activating momentum, organizations like yours looking to gain a foothold online are also wise to take advantage of simpler Web 2.0 tools that capitalize on the same core philosophy. Tools like voting, commenting, and ranking have made blogs far more effective in spreading message than largely static web pages.

The urge to vote, to comment, and to rank is something forward thinking organizations seize. Opinion and bias, after all, fuel the Internet engine. The sites that harness them are several steps ahead. Go to www.tripadvisor.com to find out the real scoop on hotels and travel adventures worldwide. Thousands of travelers routinely report on their real-life experiences as they travel.

You want to give visitors a reason to come often, stay longer, feel more connected to each other, and feel more engaged with the site itself. Incentivizing traffic spurs growth and sustains momentum.

As I’ve said before in this space: feedback is critical. Blogging into a vacuum is barely worth the effort. Allowing comments is an easy way to interface with your consumers. People want to give feedback, and they want to read others’ feedback. They value each other more than they’ll ever value a business itself. Great sites don’t just speak AT visitors, they also speak FOR them.

Your comments section can become one of the most vital parts of your site – in both senses of the word. Instantaneous feedback is a vehicle for change. And the sense of community that grows up around the commenter acts as the lifeblood of the site. Even as commenters help make your site more efficient, they also work to grow it from the ground up.

Foster the participation that helps developing sites take flight.

Do search engines play with Personalized Media?

Search engines are key.

But Personalized Media plays no favorite. And will use them all.

The important aspect is that the receiver gets what he or she wants. Whether that is from Google or Bing or ICurrent, from Digg or from a favorite blog.

Will Personalized Media be hard to find?

Au contraire.

Easy. Easy. Easy. Easy.

For instance all the popular magazine articles are expected to be found on one online newsstand. Consolidation and aggregation have always been the name of the game online. Technology news: Tabbloid.com. Media news: Newsandtech.com. World news: Cnn.com or Yahoo.com or Msnbc.com or drudgereport.com or huffingtonpost.com.

And that will be true of all content someday -- or it won't be content. All content will be available digitally online. There already is too much to pick from. Not too little. The tools to parse and search all that content from an individual's point of view are becoming more and more sophisticated. Whether they are keeping up with the proliferation of content, is impossible to say.

Can you get Personalized Media exactly right?

No.

In fact the ultimate Personalized Media algorithm has yet to be written. We all know that content keeps growing exponentially. As of 2009, Google indexes tens of millions of websites of content. However search is still stuck in 2000, vintage Google, which delivers a hierarchy of headlines and first sentences based on who knows what. It's the search that must be refined. And will.

How could printing anything be desirable today?

Many people wonder in this day and age why printing even matters. “Isn't everything going to be digital,” they ask?

Here is an apocryphal story. A 10-year-old girl who would never read anything on paper, according to her father, spent hours one December morning researching where the best place would be to cut down a live Christmas tree When she had finally picked out the best spot, she printed the website home page, and then she printed directions to the site.

The point is this: People print what is important.

Perhaps it's in our DNA. Let’s compare today’s media environment to the history of canvas painting. More than 150 years after the invention of photography, putting paint on canvas is still believed to be the most effective way to illustrate reality. What happened? As photography evolved the most talented painters began to paint “reality” differently, and “reality” became more intense, and more valuable. Today paintings by great artists regularly fetch prices way beyond their relative value before the invention of photography.

That's what will happen to printed material. More than 150 years from now printed material will be more valuable than ever.

Is content really king?

That's been a concept that has been in and out of vogue ever since the internet showed up to the party. For awhile, distribution was king, then software was king, then networks, then hardware, etc.

Although the whole revolution has not played out, my guess is that the content will prove out to be king, especially as delivery channels proliferate and thus no one or no one company can monopolize material.

What is the mantra of Personalized Media?

Choice. Choice. Choice. Choice.

The four C’s.

Publishers let your readers choose their:

1. Content.

2. Advertising.

3. Platform.

4. Time (of delivery)

And you’ll never go wrong.

Easy as one, two, three. Four.

Who are today’s publishers?

Anyone and everyone who writes, edits or pushes information onto the world wide web, manages content onto paper, blogs, writes application code, or sends dispatches to smartphones, e-tablets or any other digital format. All are today’s publishers.

What’s a good abbreviation for Personalized Media?

PM. After all, Personalized Media is terribly difficult to say, and remember. Well , PM is easy.

Is Personalized Media -er, PM - necessary?

YES. Because the 19^th Century was all about them. The 20^th Century was all about us. And the 21^st Century is all about me.

So what is the secret of news?

All news comes with an embedded secret that only the receiver recognizes. News that the reader chooses is news that the receiver knows pushes his or her buttons. Why am I obsessed with Bob Dylan? Or why am I obsessed with abstract painters?

Or why are so many people obsessed with earthquakes? Or plane crashes? Or news about the economy? Or mortgage rates? Or former President Nixon? Or the current president? Or former President Clinton?

We know what we are interested in, although we may not know why. That’s the secret of news.

Now we can take a stab at explaining our obsessions. As Jung might say, obsessions may derive from the great unconscious we all share. Some items are symbols that strike at our common experiences, or historical precedent , iif you will. Cultural hand-me-downs.

Take shoes. Some of us are obsessed with shoes, and by extension, news and advertisements about shoes. Well the book of symbols gives us some clues. Because shoes have meant similar things to many generations of people.

The Dictiionary of Symbols, Penguin Press (1969) says (p. 877): “Shoes are a sign that the individual is his or her own master, self-sufficient and responsible for his or her actions.”

What, then, is the secret of media?

We know what we are interested in, although we may not know why: both stories and advertisements. That’s the secret of media: PM.

Is facebook the personal newspaper, after all?

Reminds me of the old show “To Tell the Truth”, where three people purport to be the same accomplished citizen and the guest panel asks questions and then must pick out the real person from among the imposters. (True story, Sergey Brin went on To Tell the Truth and no one guessed he was the actual co-founder of Google.)

Yes and no. Yes because the news you care about most will often show up there. But no because it’s totally dependent on your friends, and only your friends, to give you the answers.

But still, Facebook is closer to being a “personal newspaper”, than the local newspaper’s newspaper and website combined. Scary.

Can the PM business model thrive exclusively on advertising?

No, eventually the stories would become suspect. The Personalized Media business model requires subscription fees. In a February 2009 Time cover story (“How to Save Your Newspaper”), former TIME editor Walter Isaacson quoted Henry Luce, the founder of TIME magazine. Luce had observed that to rely solely on advertising was “economically self-defeating”. Isaacson wrote that Luce believed “good journalism required that a publication’s primary duty be to its readers, not its advertisers.” In the Personalized Media model, the readers are completely in charge of picking the advertisements. Luce would be proud.

Is it okay if newspapers and magazines die, but journalism is saved?

That’s like saying its okay if car factories are shut down but cars are saved. (Wouldn’t that by definition mean that we would all quickly be driving old models?) Anyone who claims you can save journalism but not need newspapers and magazines (in reality, groups of journalists combined together in a profitable venture) doesn’t understand the resources necessary to do quality journalism. Put simply, it takes a village (of employees). Yes there can be and are many expert lone gun bloggers, whose cost of goods sold -- or COGS in financial terms -- are very low. But not non-existant, because that blogger still must make a good living, travel to meet sources, pay for equipment to interview and publish material, spend money on research and administrative support. And no freelancer can survive economically covering all aspects of a community’s interests from home values, to city council law changes, to political campaign claims, to overall market forces. Or any other public institution’s business, for that matter. And if you look closely, unfortunately, most bloggers’ economics derive from the very companies the blogger covers. In Luce’s words, that is “economically self-defeating”? Do you currently pay for the blogs you read? Will you in the future?

How many platforms of delivery will the media have?

An unlimited number. Trust me, more than we can count. I know some people say there will only be the PC, the smartphone, the e-reader, and print (newspapers and magazines) and a few others to come.

But I’m fond of saying: “What are publishers going to do when the news is distributed on shower curtains?” Will we start trying to manufacture shower curtains? (Not if we’ve established a robust Personalized Media business to serve shower curtains.)

Because that will happen. Read about Sixth Sense technology, as it is called. Or visit the MIT Media Lab in Cambridge, MA, and you will immediately realize that media platforms can extend to everything from walls to windows to mirrors to tablecloths to refrigerator doors to floors to ceilings to roofs to cars to garage doors. To any place anyone wants.

Take a look at this video on Youtube.com: http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html

This video hints at why publishers need to forget trying to outrun the next platform and concentrate on changing their definition of news and advertising and figure how to deliver that new generation of desirable stories (news) and valuable materialistic offerings (advertising) on ANY platform someone wishes.

Do newspapers and magazines face the same fate?

Yes. They are both doomed, if they continue writing and reporting what they currently do.

I know many people point out that magazines have never depended on daily timeliness like newspapers, and so are not as vulnerable to the second-by-second timeliness of the web. On top of that, the slick paper and beautiful colors of magazines make them more attractive than newspapers and more differentiated from the web and other platforms. But even those distinctions don’t matter, in the end.

The web will eviscerate all forms of communication and render all platforms another extension of the web itself, which is at, its essence, an personalized medium.

However, the good news is that the only adjustment media needs to make is to evolve away from breaking news to personalized news, to survive on all platforms.

What about printed newsletters?

Doomed, See previous.

How are the mix-and-match page trials going?

Both of the major mix-and-match newspaper trials are taking place in Europe. In the Augsberg, Germany, area, Syntops or http://www.personalnews.com offers you the choices of pages from 40 newspapers each day and sends you an electronic PDF package or you could opt to receive the printed version a day later. In the Vienna, Austria, area, http://www.Niuu.com accomplishes the same exercise with perhaps a little more sizzle. These products may well be the result of the cultural biases of highly literate, multi-lingual societies and may not appeal to many people in other countries.

Of course, Google’s FastFlip – http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/ -- is a close cousin to this approach. With FastFlip a reader sees a series of actual pages of media websites – such as the New York Times, The Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Huffington Post, Boston.com, Reuters, Bloomberg.com, etc.– arranged by categories. So, for your viewing pleasure, appears a lineup of how major media outlets reported a given subject or topic that is of great interest to you.

The point in all these experiments is that live web search for content from the major branded media companies is time consuming and sometimes frustrating, but if a reader can designate an area of interest then a “packaged” product drawing from multiple sources, can be delivered either in print or online that may be satisfying.

I believe these are powerful experiments. And there are many others, large and small.

What is breaking news?

Breaking news is a term used in newspaper jargon to represent news that is changing as it is being reported. The assassination of John F. Kennedy was breaking news for more than a few days as the country watched the body flown back to Washington for burial; the swearing in of Lyndon Baines Johnson; the killing of Oswald, etc.

However, with the advent of the always-on internet, all stories that make it to be stories are by definition breaking stories because they have to have a time element of newness.

The exact opposite kind of story is the personalized story, which of course could be about anything, just as long as the receiver asked for it or really wants it.

I’ll give you a good example in my own life.

I have enjoyed my Kindle since I bought one when they were first manufactured in 2008. I immediately subscribed to the New York Times on my Kindle. But I don’t read the Times daily. I use my Kindle to archive each issue of the New York Times and then – three months later -- I like to read the stories to see what people said was going to happen relative to what actually happened (now that I know what that is in the present). What were the financial stories three months ago: predicting higher or lower interest rates, improved or deteriorated GDP, increased or lowered unemployment. What actually happened? What did the sports teams say about their expected seasons in the beginning, now that I know what happened, and the season is winding down. There are always wonderful surprises in reading what the world expected three months ago compared to what actually happened.

Now when the stories were written and published they were breaking stories. But when I read them they were personalized stories.

See the difference.

So we have to wean our reporters and editors away from thinking about breaking stories – which is all they think about now: what’s new, different, unexpected, changed, evolved – to thinking about stories that people want to read: anything, not necessarily timely or even uptodate.

Our reporters and editors, just as valuable as ever, will be experts at how to find ANY story, also the most requested stories on the web, also the stories that mean something to very specific interests, and how to find them easily and communicate them seamlessly. They will become investigative reporters on behalf of individuals instead of groups of people.

Why is there no more breaking news?

First of all, most breaking news is a lie. So much reporting is conditional: So and so said today that IF this happened then that would happen.

First of all so-and-so is not a seer.

Second of all the “IF this happened” is never going to happen.

And thirdly, even if “this happened” the reader doesn’t necessarily agree that “that would happen.”

That in a nutshell is the experience of so many people reading newspapers the last 20 or 30 years, that all credibility is gone.

Yes, credibility. That’s what newspapers and magazines believe they still have in spades.

No, ironically enough, what they still have is trust, not credibility. There is a difference. Trust is the recognition by other people that you are well-meaning. Stupid, perhaps, but well-meaning.

And journals are, if nothing else, well-meaning, and everyone knows it.

Will the CPU someday deliver PM?

Yes, probably, someday. Then, again, the quest for artificial intelligence of that caliber may turn out to be like the quest in the Middle Ages for the formula to make gold from other elements. Doomed.?

Even optimistic experts put the date when artificial intelligence may effectively predict what you or I want to read.

Quoting Googled: The End of the World as We Know It by Ken Auletta (p. 326, The Penguin Press, 2009):

“One could argue that the ultimate vertical search would be provided by Artificial Intelligence (AI), computers that could infer what users actually sought. This has always been an obsessions of Google’s founders, and they have recruited engineers who specialize in AI. The term is sometimes used synonymously with another, “the semantic Web,” which has long been championed by Tim Berners-Lee. This vision appears to be a long way from becoming real. Craig Silvertsin, Google employee number 1, said a thinking machine is probably “hundreds of years away.” Marc Andresssen suggests that it is a pipe dream. “We are no closer to a computer that thinks like a person than we were fifty years ago,” he said.

If Larry and Sergey can’t make it happen now, who can?

That’s not to say that there aren’t some valiant seekers out there: Ramana Rao of ICurrent.com being one of the purists. And Keith Bates of Kibboko.com one of the ablest practitioners.

Can you read both sides of “the writing on the wall”?

Personalized Media often leads to two sides of the same coin.

For instance, in 2009, Der Spiegel commemorated the fall of the Berlin Wall with an article entitled "The Error That Led to Unity."

The story explained that bureaucratic confusion over new travel regulations led crowds of East Berliners to gather Nov. 9, 1989, to entice the border guards to open the gates, sparking the night of celebration and reunion.

In America, we believe that is trivializing an historic change.

Which news do you believe? Which news do you choose? Can Personalized Media give you both?

Prince or pauper, princess or pauper, no one lives in a walled garden of media any more. We are free to create our own landscape. In fact, construct we must. Even 20 years later.

Another example:

The Los Angeles Dodgers have been one key pitcher away from the world series the last two years.

And now the team's owners Frank and Jamie McCourt are engaged in a costly and public divorce.

So where does the fate of the Dodger team lie? In the field of baseball trades or in the court of divorce.

What News do you choose? http://www.latimes.com or http://www.dodgerdivorce.com ?

Essentially if the post-nup is not valid then California law divides the team between the two of them, which would probably force a sale without the needed pitcher, no matter where the trade talks are headed.

If the post-nup holds -- without too much legal expense -- then probably Frank would own the team and be able to spend the millions for the trade for a needed pitcher, if the trade talks had proceeded well.

Which news do you choose to follow?

Another example:

On Nov. 8, 2009, The New York Times reported that the mass killer Hasan was a nut case and, on the same day, the London Times reported that Hasan was associated with 9/11. So who do you believe? Which news do you choose? Prince or pauper, princess or pauper, none of us live in a walled garden of media any more. You are free to pick your landscape. But pick you must, if you want various flowers in your garden.

Is PM a force for self-isolation or self-expression? This is important.

Nicholas Carr writing in the New York Times magazine ("The Price of Free") writes: "That's one funny thing about the Internet it's an extraordinarily rich communications systems, but as an information and entertainment medium it encourages private consumption. The pictures and sounds served up through our PCs, iPods and smart phones absorb us deeply but in isolation. Even when we're together today, we're often apart, peering into our own screens."

This is a problem, especially with Personalized Media, if people construe PM to be a form of consumption rather than expression. In other words if your choice of news is all about your private experiencing, we're doomed. If it's about expressing yourself to other people, we have succeeded. It's all a question as to what end you have in mind for Personalized Media.

How do E-readers fit into PM?

Seamlessly.

Sometimes it’s hard to keep track of the newest available E-readers and their relative size and shape. Here is a good presentation of these new presentation devices with the idea of a Christmas present in mind at the Missouri School of Journalism. http://devemail.missouri.edu/pl_templates/html.scene1.asp?action=&dsid=17172178&pid=7970&key=431531463307370&slide_id=7942&scene_1=scene1

Some people even believe they are the saviors. Peter Kaplan formerly editor of The New York Observer and a journalistic descendant of Clay Felker the guru of new journalism at New York Magazine (patron of writers like Tom Wolfe and Norman Mailer) has predicted that the upcoming e-tablets will bring a new era for newspapers. Watch on The Charlie Rose Show: http://www.charlierose.com .

Is PM a cultural issue?

Yes. As Mr. Springer is quoted as saying at the end of this story: Germans are print centric; Americans may be online centric. No matter what Axel Springer, the head of the largest daily in Germany, explains that aggregators need to pay a licensing fee -- which is a copyright law issue, essentially -- just as a radio stations pay a licensing fee to aggregate music, etc. Everyone should read <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/07/business/media/07iht-springer07.html?_r=1&emc=etal">this.</a> Another gem in the story is the observation that "a highly industrialized society" cannot function on rumor, instead of solid reporting

How do various PM platforms mix with one commercial brand?

I think we will see some very special roles that each platform takes on, all melding into one successful brand, as the parts add up to more than the whole.

The London Daily Telegraph online editor has a fascinating column that says: "And the longer times goes on, the more convinced I am that the internet needs newspapers."

The column ends with: "So, in a curious way, things have come full circle. Fifteen years ago, the Telegraph newspapers needed an internet site to help transform the brand image of the paper, to make it seem more modern and relevant. Now, I think, when our internet presence has made us a global brand, we need the newspaper even more to remind those readers why they value what they are reading."

Check out the full column: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/6546773/Why-newspapers-are-vital-to-the-future-of-the-internet.html.

Can PM ever“wow.”

Check this out: Sometimes you see things that are phenomenal.

Check this out: http://www.ted.com/talks/pranav_mistry_the_thrilling_potential_of_sixthsense_technology.html

Takes me back to the "wow" I originally felt reading Being Digital by Nicolas Negroponte while on my way to Boston in 1996, where I experienced the Media Lab.

Beyond all the deja vue-all over again amazement, this short video tells you beyond a shadow of a doubt that in our lifetimes there will be more platforms for news than you can shake a stick at. Remember my shower curtain analogy?

How many platforms are there, again?

So we are now post-Kindle. Here come the digitized magazines WITH advertisemnts. Can newspapers be far behind? Hoorah. Last month Conde Nast demonstrated its concept of a digitized magazine tablet. Now it’s Time Inc.’s turn: The publisher is demoing an iteration of Sports Illustrated compatible with the "upcoming" Apple tablet and/or other tablets. Both publishers will offer add-ons like multimedia and links into the web. But it's the replica aspect here that may make the digitized business model work. Circ-based advertising sales will still work, we hope. And let's hope the magazines are beautiful on tablet. Read all about it on http://www.tabbloid.com/share/37408/8a2c1f2edf6411debe16001cc4dec67c .

Will subscriptions to PM really work?

First let’s look at the problems with subscriptions.

We all are shocked by the closing of both the print and online E&P. Here is a well-thought out discussion of the whole problem with any kind of subscription: http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/12/ep-and-the-emotional-commitment-of-a-subscription .

I heard the news about Editor & Publisher closing as I hear many things these days — through Twitter. Patrick Thornton (jiconoclast) tweeted: “Does anything better symbolize the state of print media right now than the closure of E&P? Yes things are very bad.” At first, I hoped his tweet didn’t mean what I knew it meant. But a quick search of Twitter yielded proof. Yes, E&P had told its staff Thursday that it was shutting down operations.

This shook me even more than when Gourmet announced its closure a while back. (I found out about that on Twitter, too.)

I read E&P almost religiously in my early years as a journalist, devouring it the moment it arrived in my mailbox. The magazine had a bright purple cover back then. As time went on, I didn’t renew my subscription. I’m not sure why.

I enjoyed E&P’s articles. I appreciated the reporting. In fact, in the last few years, its web site became one of regular online haunts to find out what’s going on in the news business.

Sometimes, I’d head to the E&P web page myself, but more often I’d be drawn there by a well-worded tweet or a blog post from someone whose opinion I valued.

Now, I have no information about why E&P shut down, but I’d assume lack of ad revenues or subscriptions had something to do with it. So perhaps I was part of the problem. Or at least me and the many others like me who appreciated E&P’s content but didn’t buy it. Or maybe how I read E&P was just a sign of the times, part of this changing way we consume the news, in small bits throughout the day triggered by smart people we follow online.

That got me thinking. Why didn’t I pay for E&P while it was still here? Why didn’t I subscribe? Would I have subscribed online if they offered it?

The truth is, for me, not subscribing — either in print or online — has little to do with money. It’s about commitment. And I think that’s the problem many news organizations are facing as they try to bring their products online.

In the old days, I paid for E&P because if I didn’t, I’d have no idea what was going on in the industry. I wasn’t paying for news; I was paying for the chance to be in the know in my field.

Things changed with the web. Now, if I choose one magazine to subscribe to out of myriad sources, it feels like I’m limiting my options in a way. I don’t want to commit to one publication, one source, one newspaper, one magazine. Why? Because the publication has become less important than the news itself. I want to be free to surf, reading dozens of different newspapers, blogs or magazines that I may visit just once or twice. I enjoy the synchronicity of happening upon a publication I have never heard of and will probably never visit again.

Yes, I realize that even if I subscribe to one publication, I can still read others. But the act of subscribing is picking one over the others. If you’re a runner, you have a choice of two major magazines: Runner’s World or Running Times. By picking one, you’re choosing not to pick the other. You might glance at the other once in a while, but you probably don’t read them both cover to cover.

I think many of us feel that if we pay for a publication, we expect it to become one of our primary news sources — not just one of dozens of places where we get news. I may feel a bit cheated if I end up getting more of my news elsewhere. I may feel cheated if I subscribe but forget to check the site every day, going instead only when a Facebook friend sends me a link.

In a sense, it’s the dilemma with the makings of a country song: If I subscribe, I feel like I have to dance with the one who brung me — when I really want to play the field.

So maybe at some level I didn’t subscribe to E&P in print because I knew if I headed online, I’d get lots of E&P-like news. Sure, some of it would start with E&P’s reporting, with commentary added by bloggers. Some of it would be from other sources. I was interested in getting as much news and information as I could about the journalism industry. I wasn’t interested in one particular brand.

So what is the answer to that? To me it always comes back to the question: What are you really paying for? I’d gladly pay for online information, a small monthly fee like I pay for my television viewing, a subscription to the whole web. What I don’t want to do is pay for one brand, one publication. I want to be free to follow the news.

A good example of what I mean is Jim Romenesko’s blog at Poynter Online. I read it almost every day. It’s in my RSS reader — but I don’t usually get to it from there. I don’t need to. I remember to check it. I remember to check it because I won’t just find E&P stories there — as great as they were — but I’ll find a whole lot more. It’s like the good ol’ days, when E&P was selling me the chance to be in the know in my field. And that, honestly, I would pay for.

Gina Chen | Dec. 11, 2009 | 10:36 a.m.

Secondly let’s consider the advantage of subscriptions: People attribute more value to anything they pay for.

Who’s doing PM on the web?

Personalisation of news websites is a tricky business. After IGoogle and MyYahoo, one of the earliest was DailyMe.com. One of the most practical is kibboko.com where the old thumbs up and thumbs down navigates you quickly through legions of stories. One of the most dramatic in its results is ICurrent.com.

Will the virtual newsstand be able to PM?

Most of the major magazine companies are collaborating to create an online newsstand, according to a published report. Now if we all just had time to peruse that newsstand. That's what was so great about the brands that had been created already --we knew what brands we wanted before we knew exactly what we wanted from them.

It's great that they will all be on a digital platform so that a personalized search function can find stories of sympatico across the brands. Will they charge by the story? Not sure. Here's what the New York Observer story said:

"The formation of a new company to run the online newsstand -- sometimes characterized as an 'iTunes for magazines' -- may be announced in early December. Time, Conde Nast, Hearst, and Meredith all intend to be equity partners in the new company, although the deals have not yet been signed.

"In the face of slumping print circulation for many magazines, the publishing houses are eager to exert some control over digital readership, said people at the companies, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about the plans.

"In other media sectors, rivals have already formed joint ventures for the Web. Several television networks are stakeholders in Hulu, an online television and film Web site. Some music labels are partners in Vevo, a music video site powered by YouTube that will make its debut next month.

"The new magazine company would, in theory, make it easy to buy print and electronic copies of magazines like The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Esquire, and Better Homes and Gardens from a single Web site. While mostly leaving the hardware to others, the alliance of competing publishers would develop software standards for magazine viewing on iPhones, BlackBerrys, e-book readers and other platforms, people familiar with the plans said.

"The New York Observer reported Tuesday that the Time Inc. executive John Squires would become the new outfit's interim chief executive while the partners look for a permanent head. In June, the Time Inc. chairmwoman Ann Moore gave Mr. Squires the responsibility of creating a digital road map for the company.

" 'It's increasingly clear that finding the right digital business model is crucial for the future of our business,' Ms. Moore said in a memorandum at the time. She added, 'We need to develop a strategy for the portable digital world and to refine our views on paid content.' "

Now if we could create our own magazine from the virtual newsstand. And I’m sure someday we will.

What about Google and PM?

Google stays away from content such Personalized Media products that don’t embrace the whole web all the time. Google is happy to have the collective web prioritize stories. Google, legally is a lead generator. Period. Paragraph.

Rupert Murdoch, who owns the Wall Street Journal, the London Times and is chairman of the multimedia News Corp., has fired a salvo across the bow of Google by insinuating he may make an exclusive deal with Microsoft's Bing for his content.

I've often thought that breaking news creators -- newspapers, radio, television and sundry websites -- should create a "live story" site and search tool, because of the innate differences between research and timely content.

Rupert Murdoch, the head of the News Corporation (which owns the Wall Street Journal and the Times of London) has testified at a public hearing about his well-rehearsed opinion of Google.

"To be impolite," he says. "It's theft," quotes The Washington Post.

Deep in this story you will see where Murdoch says he plans to put all his content behind a pay wall.

Now even Google is getting more serious about people paying for valuable information on the web.

The New York Times reports that Google announced in a blog post on Tuesday, the company will allow publishers to limit nonsubscribers to five free articles a day.

And the loophole by which people avoided subscriptions has been closed.

Is this a foreshadowing of things to come? Is this a concession?

No, don’t believe it.

Are Individuated Media and Personalized Media synonymous?

Yes. They mean the same thing. Individuated and Personalized mean the same thing and are interchangeable.

Does the concept of PM apply to other disciplines and businesses?

Yes, perhaps all disciplines and all businesses eventually. Let’s look at two very different businesses: travel and medicine.

First let’s look at travel.

Here’s Tim Hughes of the Boot (the business of online travel) blogging Sept. 8, 2009:

There is a concept from psychology, economics and demographics called Individuation. I will dodge the Carl Jung and Neitzche inspired definitions and give you the short one – Individuation is the process in which individuals become differentiated from each other. I am seeing the theories of individuation coming into the mobile and social media space in travel and I predict that we will all have to come to term with this notion as we develop means for capturing consumer attention.

In a recent article in Theoretical Issues in Ergonomics Science (Sept 2009, Vol. 10 Issue 5) called "Individuation: the N = 1 revolution" by P Hancock, G Hancock and J Warm say that...

"a continuing increase in computational power and associated memory storage capacities will lead to circumstances in which each and every single person can be coded as, and treated as, a separate individual and therefore not necessarily as a representative part of any group, sample or population"

This is the concept of Individuation that the travel industry can now embrace to target consumers on an individual level rather than through representative group samples.

In the past we have undertaken consumer planning through analysis of the average behavior of a group of consumers. Individuation in this context says that once we have the right matching of technology and social trends we can move from tracking the average, generic profiles or demographic groups to at scale analysis of what Hanckock et al call “specific instances of momentary behavior of one single individual”. This already exists in psychology, neuro science and molecular genetics where the combination of data, technology and social preparedness allows those sciences to be able to track and understand for the first time “how specific individuals perform their own personal and very complex acts of cognition” (Hancock et al again) rather than rely on averages.

In travel we can use these same techniques to classify and recommend at a level of EveryYou rather than Everyone. The reasons I am attracted to this concept have arisen through the technology capabilities that we now have and the community/social environment we are now in. Let me explain how this happened and why you should care.

In the early days of online travel we reveled in the data we were able to collect from customers but really we were only able to see that data in two dimensions – Breadth and Depth. By breadth I mean that we were able to use and collect data on more than one person interacting with the site and sometimes other sites. By depth I mean that we were able to track the different things that consumers did on the site. This allowed us to manage our sort orders. To bias the display based on consumer behaviour to help generate what we think are the best result for a basket of consumers.

In the last few years we have improved on this and added a third dimension to our data collection and analysis. We have added Context. The ability to see the inter relationship between the data we have on one person and the data we have on others. Through our actions, those of the consumer and other consumers we can link previously unrelated data based on the relationship between different people and past collective behavior rather than one off activity. We have seen this in the complex CRM systems we have all bought and use every day.

The common theme with the first three dimensions is that we have collected the data from consumers “without their knowledge”. That is not as sinister as it sounds because we have regularly asked for consent. The fourth dimension is Community – which is data that is freely given to us by the consumer. Often unrelated to a particular purchase. And not necessarily for a tangible gain. Though there is very often an intangible gain. What are examples – writing reviews, forwarding links to friends, making recommendations to strangers, building online profiles, contributing to forums, writing a blog etc. The combination of these four dimensions of data can result in an individuated experience. An experience in online media, retail, or community that is unique to an individual but also part of a group experience.

We have seen this individuation in media already. Your twitter feed, facebook newstream and RSS reader list is different to any other anywhere. As the Digital Deliverance group said in their post "What are Individuated Media (What are the New Media)?"

"...the most widely used Individuated Media vehicle today is Facebook. Its more than 200 million consumers give it a mass reach that very few of the world’s Mass Media can equal, yet each of those consumers see different content than one another

Collecting four dimensions of data is not easy. It requires technology leaps in bandwidth and computer processing power - which we now have. The technology needed to allow us to capture and process the data is now matched with the desire of internet users to seek answers to open ended questions and contribute into a community process.

For us as marketers, retailers and media people it means we no longer have to be constrained to gear our marketing to EveryOne. Sure we developed demographic cuts and installed CRM systems to improved the targeting but we were still marketing to EveryOne in the hope of catching the individual. Now with the matching up of technology and social desire we can seek to market to the EveryYou.

The four dimensions of data and technology now allows us to do away with 30 years of econometric dependence on distribution, central tendency and variation – you know bell curves – and instead we can envisage the ability to research an individual at scale rather than rely on measuring their responses as part of a group or sample. Instead of seeing individual behavior as a “variance” or “outlier”, we can aim to target Every combination of individuals. The EveryYou rather than EveryOne.

Here is my definition of EveryYou:

“The development of a specific and targeted recommendation of one based on the unique combination of desires, needs and interests of each individual at any moment in time”

The EveryYou concept I am working on says that technology and social change put us in a place where we can work on a recommendation of one rather than relying solely on generalisations.

EveryYou marketing and planning approaches are now available to us because of new developments in:

• Social trends that favor online interaction;
• technology innovations that provide organizations with the four dimensions of data; and
• scalability.

In the travel industry, EveryYou means we can answer the question “where should I go next” with a specific answer. We can answer the question which hotel should I stay in "Rome" with an answer that references past purchase behaviour, past reviews written, friends on facebook, people trusted, media read etc. That takes into account that human beings are a mess of contradictions in the things that they like and want. For instance I love the blues, Byzantine mosaics, bad zombie movies and body surfing. No bell curve can market to that.

Companies can treat users as co-researchers in developing a bespoke solution for their individual requirements. The user's needs are met by conjoining the company's expertise in travel and the user's expertise of themselves, thereby creating a tailored travel solution for one. Consumers are and will be willing to provide information on the understanding that it will eventually be deployed to their benefit.

If we use the technological capabilities and social trends available to their fullest potential then we can conceive of a day where we do away with general principles and customisation for the group and instead market to the apparent contradictions in consumer behaviour and aim for the delivery of specific, unique and targeted answers. We could kill off the head, body and long tail of sales and replace it with a sale of one, a market of one for the EveryYou.

Second, let’s look at medicine.

December 27, 2009, 11:18 PM EST: Stocks & Markets

BUSINESSWEEK

Life Science Stocks: A Growing Market in 2010. Genetic research projecst for personalized medicine are drawing $10 billion in government stimulus funds. Nonmedical applications are promising, too.

It took more than four years, a double mastectomy, and multiple other surgeries—as well as radiation treatments and bad reactions to ineffective chemotherapy drugs—before Christine Hanson's breast cancer was brought under control by Dr. Mark Fesen in Hutchinson, Kan. By then, cancer had spread to her lungs, liver, and brain.

Through a port implanted in her chest nearly five years ago to reduce stress on her veins, Hanson, the mother of three children not yet in high school, has been getting weekly infusions of cancer-treatment drugs Avastin and Abraxane, which have put her cancer into remission. What if doctors had a detailed road map of the kinds of drugs and therapies that Hanson's genetic makeup makes her most receptive to, instead of having to arrive at treatments through the costly—and sometimes painful—method of trial and error?

That's the promise of the nascent field of personalized medicine, where treatment is prescribed based on an understanding how an individual's body is genetically predisposed to welcome or resist certain compounds. The day when customized treatment is widely available may soon be within reach, thanks to technological advances being made by life science tools companies. They develop and market protein-separation devices and other instruments that will eventually provide researchers with the knowledge needed to precisely target the best treatment for life-threatening illnesses.

After bureaucratic delays this year that frustrated investors, the awarding of $10 billion to the National Institutes of Health under the Obama Administration's stimulus program over the next two years is likely to give a big boost to life science companies' earnings as the money funds a fresh wave of research.

Genome Sequencing for $1,000 less

It's been less than seven years since completion of the momentous Human Genome Project, which took 13 years and an estimated $3.8 billion to map humanity's genetic material.

Sequencing an individual's DNA currently costs about $50,000 and there's a road map to get it down to $1,000 within three to five years, say equity analysts who cover the industry.

At $1,000, it would still be more expensive than the average home computer, but that's the price point below which personalized medicine is considered far more economically viable. The lower the cost of genomic sequencing, the greater the shift analysts expect to see in the allocation of research funds toward the consumer market, says Timothy McCandless, an analyst at Bel Air Investment Advisors in Los Angeles. The dramatic drop in costs over the past five years has already sparked demand for applications in other areas such as agriculture, where genetic information can be used to breed more drought- and pest-resistant crops and livestock prized for certain types of meat. The push toward biofuels also makes the technology relevant for energy applications.

Drug companies have been reluctant to embrace personalized medicine because it's easier to sell a less-targeted drug to a broader population than to market more narrowly applied drugs to smaller populations.

When Merck (MRK) voluntarily pulled its blockbuster arthritis drug Vioxx from the market in 2004 in the face of mounting evidence of side effects such as heart attacks, it served as a catalyst to get other pharmaceutical manufacturers and the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) to think more seriously about the viability of personalized medicine, says McCandless.

To be clear, several years of increasingly fine-tuned diagnostic and clinical research will be needed before personalized medicine are available to the extent that it might quickly identify the optimal treatment for Christine Hanson's breast cancer. The process remains in a stage akin to batting practice before an actual baseball game, says Jonathan Groberg, an analyst at Macquarie Research Equities.

Third, well take your pick.

If interested in PM what should I, as a publisher, do?

Innovate, remembering the four C’s:

Choice. Choice. Choice. Choice.

Reader choice of content. Reader choice of advertisements. Reader choice of platform. Reader choice of time of delivery.

And, perhaps, attend future conferences on personalized media, by bookmarking http://www.personalizenews.com, which has blogs and updates on developments, including upcoming conferences.

INC 4 in Denver, CO, in 2010 is officially the fourth Individuated News Conference. But the event title is somewhat of a misnomer because the annual get-together of about 100 experts regularly addresses both news and advertising, and should be named the Individuated Media Conference. However, IMC doesn’t have the same cache as INC, now, does it?

INC 3 – the third Individuated News Conference -- occurred in Washington in the summer of 2009, and was highlighted by the unveiling of the TIME personalized magazine: MINE.

Sponsored by Lexus, TIME printed 50,000 copies of MINE and mailed them to anyone who had gone online to express preferences between five of eight titles including Sports Illustrated, Time, Food and Wine and Traveler. Stories in each magazine were thus individuated for the receiver, as were the ads that included the receiver’s name and reference to where the receiver lived. Three issues of the magazine went out a month apart. However, so many people signed up that TIME had to cap the print run and decline to deliver printed versions to some people, fulfilling only online. In fact the whole initiative was not without its hiccups, as you can read at: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/business/media/21adco.html

INC 2 in 2008 was in Denver (the headquarters for MediaNews Group, its major sponsor), but the original INC 1 was in the Gutenberg homeland of Leipzig, Germany, for historic purposes, obviously. The first newspaper, with dispatches from the Hundred Years War, was printed in Leipzig and is on view at the museum there, even today.

INC 1 was built around the newly built variable data printer , the Kodak Versamark. That has to go down in history as the first one. And its inventer: Christian Bayerlein, a young man in Germany, who was the scion of a printing company family, and, as the story goes, went bankrupt making that first printer for newspapers. Nevertheless he presented the details of his printer at the first conference.

Is PM within reach?

Memo to self (1999). The final steps:

1. Write the perfect questionnaire. A way to discover an individual's personal media interests.

2. Devise a software program to connect answers with appropriate feeds. RSS feeds that answer the perfect questionnaire. A means of connecting the answers to the opinion questions with appropriate, compelling, uptodate exciting RSS-fed stories. (The web is doing the work.)

3. Create a concise pagination program. Probably proprietary program that creates a beautiful newspaper page from the RSS-fed stories. (Yes, Virginia, we have beta.)

4. Find a bold investor willing to take go for the "killer ap". (Plenty would qualify.)

5. Invent an e-reader. Done. Invent a mobile phone that can display news and advertising. Done. Invent a VDP printer. Done. We have everything from home printers to a high-speed digital printing press capable of running at least 5,000 copies an hour of one-off newspapers.

6. Craft a one-to-one advertising campaign. Monetize this product. (A cinch -- one-to-one marketing.)

7. Build a new labor force. A delivery team that can get the newspaper into the right person's hands. (Possible, even according to jaded distribution experts.)

Is there a digital print explosion?

"The reason for the explosion in digital newspapers is simple: the improvements in digital technology, both press and post-press," writes Adam Hooker in PrintWeek:

Digital print steps up to the plate

Adam Hooker, PrintWeek, 24 April 2009

Improvements in technology and deteriorating market conditions have meant that whereas once newspaper publishers shunned digital, they are now clamoring to use it, says Adam Hooker:

It recently transpired that when newspaper giant News International was in the planning stages of what would eventually lead to a £600m web press investment at its UK sites, it seriously considered including digital presses in the spend.
The plan centered on placing machines to produce The Sun and The Times in commercial print firms in some of the more remote areas of the UK. The rationale was simple: rather than spend time and money shipping products from one of its main production centres, it could simply produce the papers locally, reducing costs, cutting CO2 emissions and, importantly in the internet age, saving time.

When News International were pondering this flirtation, digitally produced newspapers were in their formative years and there were still concerns about the quality, availability of colour and cost per unit (newspaper). But that was three years ago and, since then, the interest in digitally produced newspapers has grown dramatically.
For example, the Daily Mail is now being digitally printed in New York using a Screen Truepress Jet520 on the same day it's printed in London. This is just one of many examples, with a raft of other titles now being produced in locations faraway from their home markets.

Technology improvements
The reason for the explosion in digital newspapers is simple: the improvements in digital technology, both press and post-press. Color is now almost as vibrant when produced on a digital press as it is on a litho machine and the range of substrates has also grown. Equally the speed of the digital machines has come on significantly. While their output is still nowhere near the capacity of the cold-set behemoths that are used to produce newspapers the world over, and is never likely to be, the machines are now more than fast enough to cope with limited runs in the hundreds or thousands. Also, just as importantly, the cost per unit has tumbled.

The viability of digital newspaper models is largely down to the choice of digital engines and this has inevitably spawned fierce competition among manufacturers. Companies such as Océ, Xerox, Kodak, Agfa and Screen have all developed presses with the ability to produce on-demand newspapers.

However, as is so often the case, on the finishing front there are fewer options. Most experts will tell you that there is only one route available for finishing digitally printed newspapers: Hunkeler. But as the interest in the sector grows, so will the choice of finishing options.

 Hunkeler first launched its Newspaper Line around 10 years ago, long before the idea of printing newspapers on a digital press was considered possible, let alone viable. But joint owner and chief executive Franz Hunkeler had long been considered an innovator and one of his dreams at the end of the 1990s was short-run newspapers. He decided that it was something that could be done. So, largely using products similar to those already built by the firm, he set his team the task of finding a solution. As a result, when the first digital printers came to the company to ask about the possibility of producing digital newspapers, Hunkeler already had the answer.

The first newspaper finishing line was a means to an end. It ran at a little over 30m per minute and, by the firm's own admission, it was quite simple. However, in the same way that digital presses have moved on in the past 10 years, so has the sophistication of Hunkeler's post-press line (see box).

Rising interest in digital
The Swiss manufacturer's kit is distributed in the UK by Friedheim International and Robin Brown, national sales manager in the company's digital solutions division, says that enquiries in the digital sector are on the up. "When we were at Drupa, every newspaper group in the UK was talking about it - there was an awful lot of interest."

Currently, the UK has one prominent digital newspaper printer, Stroma in west London, which is part of Océ's Digital Newspaper Network. It began producing newspapers around eight years ago and currently handles 400 titles using its Océ kit and one of Hunkeler's original newspaper finishing lines.

According to Stroma managing director Steve Brown, one of the reasons for the lack of options available in finishing is down to the perceived lack of interest in digitally printed newspapers. He believes the only likely rival to Hunkeler comes from hand finishing.

"The main problem is that there are too few people printing newspapers digitally right now," he says. "There is no real incentive for anyone else to follow Hunkeler. It has never really interested another finishing manufacturer. I think Hunkeler spent a lot of money on their R&D and they now have a solution that really works.

"The only other option that I have heard of is in Singapore, where labour is obviously a great deal cheaper. They actually hand collate and fold the newspapers. But numbers for that will certainly not be huge."

Brown adds that the latest Hunkeler newspaper line would make life easier. "You print it digitally and the next time you see it is a finished item, it would be lovely to have one."

In the US, worldwide newspaper distributor Newsworld is also taking advantage of the digital model. It has linked up with a New York branch of the Alphagraphics franchise to produce the Daily Mail and plans to expand further. Like Stroma, the print firm is incorporating Hunkeler kit.

Newsworld chief executive David Renouf agrees that finishing kit for newspapers is currently in short supply, but he does see more manufacturers identifying the opportunities the burgeoning market offers and coming on board in the near future. However, the issue he has is not whether or not they will do it, but how much it will cost and how long it will take.
"It is a chicken and egg scenario," he says. "There is not a lot of choice, so people are put off printing [digitally]. But if nobody is printing newspapers, the manufacturers aren't going to get caught up in doing it.

"Essentially all you need is something to cut, collate and fold - it is as simple as that. I think there are some companies interested. We talked to several manufacturers and the answer we got was yes it can be done, but it was going to cost in the region of €500,000 (£455,000) and a prototype would be a year away."

Renouf believes that Hunkeler has a huge advantage at the moment. "It is a proven product, we are very happy with it and it has already demonstrated that it works," he said.

Lack of choice
So what other options are available? Chris Aked, marketing manager for continuous feed solutions at Xerox, says that another company offering finishing options on the back of a digital press is Lazermax Roll Systems. He is confident that other alternatives will follow.

"You can use an MBO or GUK folder as long as you have the collator, which Lazermax does," he explains. "Even Hunkeler integrates an MBO, so there is no reason technically why other manufacturers can't put their equipment on there.

"As the decline of newspaper use continues and technology is now at a viable speed for short-run newspapers, the rest of the manufacturers are not going to stand back and say ‘well we will just let Hunkeler have this one'. But Hunkeler have certainly stolen the march, they can hook on the back of any digital press."

As with anyone that finds themselves "out in front", Hunkeler is fully aware that other vendors will come along and the company is looking at other options.

"It is still very early stages, but they need to stay ahead of the game," Friedheim's Brown says. "The next challenge is to collate sets, so that Sunday broadsheets can be produced. In another 12 months, there are sure to be more developments. This could also be used for more than just newspapers and that is the key for the line, it won't just be handling newspapers."

So it seems we are at a ‘wait and see' juncture in the newspaper finishing market. Hunkeler has got itself ahead of the pack and is likely to push improvements through in the near future. But, if there is an outlet that can make manufacturers money, it is certain that the rest will follow suit in one way or another. Hunkeler has raised the bar and the chase is on.

Is artificial intelligence the key to PM?

Of all the challenges facing the personal newspaper, the "perfect questionnaire" may be the most difficult.

I try to follow advancements in artificial intelligence because the success of the perfect questionnaire, an opinion questionnaire, depends on its synchronicity with RSS feeds (or whatever replaces RSS feeds).

Currently we have a very crude system. We've devised a series of questions whose answers are directly tied to RSS feeds.

That's the jist of the program.

A client answers the questions and our software program generates a personal newspaper by choosing RSS feeds.

That's the extent of our artificial intelligence. I’m sure Jules Verne felt the same way about his rocket vs. his dream to go to the moon.

Is print media now an art?

Well, let’s consider newspapers. A reporter asked me if print is dead.

No, I said.

The analogy I would make is to visual art in the 19th Century -- in particular painting -- under siege by photography as a process that was clearly going to be a more effective means of rendering images of visual reality.

As a result visual art begun to give people images of mental reality, emotional reality and onotological reality. Visual art went higher up the aesthetic ladder, and became more valuable.

So the newspaper is losing the battle for reporting what's happening in the world in the most timely fashion to radio, tv and the internet.

As a result the newspaper -- with the evolution of the personal newspaper -- will begin to present a reader's mental reality, emotional reality and ontological reality.

Or said differently, media will become Personalized Media; move farther up the aesthetic ladder; and become more valuable.

Is there a direct mail bonanza for PM?

Where will the new money for Personalized Media come from? How will Personalized Media grow new advertising revenue?

By one-upping direct mail Personalized Media is better than direct mail.

Such media is invited into the house and knows for sure the interests of the subscriber, so advertising can be dependably targeted. (Direct mail is NOT invited into the house and can only guess the interests of the receiver, based on demographics.)

And there is a lot of money spent on direct mail -- in fact, more than is spent on newspapers.

In 2006, $59.6 billion was spent on direct mail, whereas $48.1 billion was spent on newspaper advertising (source: The New York Times, "Junk Mail is Alive and Growing", November, 2006).

Is music personalized?

Let's look at the history of another medium in the last decade: music.

Used to be people bought prepared discs of music called albums and 45s.

Today people download music from the internet and create their own albums, or CDs, or I-Tunes.

The medium has been personalized.

Too often there is so much noise about distribution changes, and marketing changes, and pricing changes -- that the obvious is overlooked. People now choose their mix of music, instead of buying it canned.

Now the canned goods are still available, but the driving force -- the phenomenon -- in particular, the I-pod, is all about individuation.

When did I build my first PM product?

Here’s the original blog announcement 11/26/06:

It's easy.

Simply go to <a href="http://www.mydailyonline.com">http://www.mydailyonline.com</a> and sign up.

That will generate before your very eyes a personalized MyDailyOnline site. Please note the URL across the top, because that is your URL to visit and change over and over again.

(Go ahead visit mine: <a href="http://www.mydailyonline.com/pvandevanter">http://www.mydailyonline.com/pvandevanter</a> -- and you will see that a four-column page has been generated using 13 RSS feeds.)

If you look top right on your (or my) page you will see an "edit feeds" button.

Click that and 13 windows appear with RSS feed addresses embedded.

By changing out any of those RSS feeds and hitting the "submit" button, the four-column page is automatically changed to reflect the new feed.

That's how you slowly build your own crude, four-column, online newspaper -- but you get the idea of how we will eventually paginate a newspaper with only content someone has requested.

When did my interest switch from wanting people to just choose content to also choose advertising and delivery channel/platform?

By 2009 I realized – after numerous global conferences, public presentations and field tests – that the key issue for Personalized Media was choice, choice, choice and choice. (Yes, I’m borrowing from the real estate mantra: Location, location, location.) In fact choice of advertisements and platforms may be more important than choice of content, because choice of advertisements defines materialistic value and choice of platform defines ease of use.

Furthermore in 2008 my good friend who worked for me at The Charlotte Observer – James Molnar -- emailed me about http://www.DailyMe.com the website/company put together by Eduardo Hauser in Boca Raton, Fla., through a grant from the Knight Foundation. I quickly contacted him and invited him to the second Individuated News Conference that we held in Denver in 2008. He attended and was one of the most influential voices there.

With DailyMe Hauser evolved the choice of content from straight questionnaire to patented algorithm by 2009. He called me when he released the new iteration and I remember telling him that I was no longer interested in perfecting choice of content and that was why Hewlett Packard was continuing to work with me to develop a new easy-to-use platform – i.e. the “automatic” home printer -- to deliver personalized material into the home, and also seeking peoples’ advertising interests to include in all Personalized Media products. I said we were limiting choice of content to a subset of the local, daily newspaper or out-of-market AP content.

Where did the term Individuated Media come from, by the way?

I prefer to let someone other than myself explain this:

All Hail Individuated Media

By Vin Crosbie, ClickZ, Jun 27, 2008

Sponsored by Tribal Fusion

More than 1.4 billion people have gone online.

Too many publishers and broadcasters think that most of those people have gone online to read mass media for free. Those media executives forget that mass media companies followed people online, and with quite a lag.

The people who have gone online already had access to mass media in print or via terrestrial, cable, or satellite broadcasts -- formats in which (let's be frank here) mass media content is easier to read, see, or listen to than via a computer screen.

Moreover, mass media content nowadays isn't even the majority of what people look at online. For example, how many of the sites you visit daily as a consumer (not as a media executive) are mass media company sites? How many are blogs, social media, quirky topical sites, hobby sites, and the like? In research to which I'm privy, mass media sites account for a minority of the sites that consumers regularly visit, often a very small minority.

The vast majority of consumers (and even media executives) go online to communicate with family, friends, and business contacts; to find people who have similar interests to their own; and to find content that specifically matches their unique mixes of interests, including very specific interests that most mass media organizations don't cover.

Today, consumers are hunting and gathering for whichever mix of contents each thinks best matches his unique mix of interests. They are hunting and gathering from hundreds of millions of Web sites.

Some techno-savvy consumers, rather than hunting or gathering, are automating the process, thanks to RSS readers, iGoogle, My Yahoo, and other services and technologies that let people mix their own sets of content from millions of Web sites and online content services.

One example of this type of new media is Facebook. It has more than 80 million users and each user's home page has a similar template; but each user sees an individual set of content, because each user has a different set of friends and interests.

It may be massively used, but it isn't mass media. The hallmark of mass media is that the same set of content (be that a newspaper or magazine edition or a broadcast program) is sent to all of its consumers at once. Facebook doesn't do that; each of its consumers receives a different set of contents.

What should we call this new form of media if it isn't mass media?

Some people call it personalized media. But that's a misnomer because "personalized" means "to have printed, engraved, or monogrammed with one's name or initials." Personalized is the "Dear Vin" I get as the opening line in junk mail. It's the same junk mail everyone else gets. I likewise have a set of personalized hand towels. Although they're monogrammed, anyone else can have the same towels.

"Customized media" isn't much better. Do you like racing stripes? We'll paint stripes down the Buick's sides and customize it for you. It's a standard edition Buick but with racing stripes.

Some companies, notably Pepper & Rogers Group, use the term "one-to-one media." However, if a company uses this media to deal simultaneously with hundreds or thousands or millions of consumers, that media is hardly one-to-one. It's at least one-to-many (and if those many consumers are simultaneously dealing with dozens or hundreds of media companies, then it's certainly many-to-many). So, one-to-one is a misnomer.

I'm in Denver today at the Global Conference on the Individuated Newspaper. It's a conference about using database-driven, newsprint-roll-fed digital presses (basically giant inkjet printers) to produce unique newspapers. Each consumer would be able to choose what categories, topics, datelines, and brands of stories he receives, plus whatever bulletin, urgent, and investigative stories the editor thinks everyone should receive.

I winced when first I read "individuated." The word sounds like something only the most obtuse academic would coin. Yet that word has been growing on me.

It accurately describes a media in which each individual receives different content than every other individual. It's also the individual who controls that process. "Individuated" is a far more accurate adjective than "personalized," "customized," "one-to-one," or "many-to-many." I don't wince at "individuated" anymore.

Moreover, the term "individuated" has intellectual roots. In a variety of fields, it's a concept in which the undifferentiated tends to become individual -- as in how what once were mass media audiences are fragmenting into masses of individuals using new media to find whatever mix of content matches their unique mix of individual interests.

So raise a toast to those of us who've forsaken mass media to work in individuated media!

Individuated media is the major reason more than a billion people have gone online, each getting what he individually wants.

What then could be the role for newspapers?

“Newspapers are the cornerstone of democracies, even today,” in the words of Dean Singleton, CEO of the largest privately held newspaper company in 2008, when he spoke those words at INC 2.

(Not necessarily true in America. Only a little more than half the people in America read a newspaper on a weekly basis.)

Yes, now more than ever, especially in countries outside of the U.S. People can more clearly develop their opinions because the sources of content have multiplied. And the power of the intellectual ruling class (i.e. editors) who filter and censor and control the flow of information is abating.

Newspapers need to be the leaders in this true democratization of information. Newspapers need to liberate its readers. Give them what they are truly curious about.

What is the relationship between PM and “long tail” advertising?

Personalized news is clearly the Long Tail of Media, and personalized newspapers may just as clearly be the tail that wags the printed dog.

But Chris Anderson in his book “The Long Tail” makes a very important point when he suggests that today's business must both be the head and the tail: "Successful Long Tail aggregators need to have both hits and niches." (3)

That's why the first incarnation of Personalized Media may be the combination of a mass media newspaper with personalized content on a digital platform of choice. Visit and enjoy http://www.longtail.com.

What would be digital nirvana?

A clear-headed blog addresses the simple fact: 100 percent variable, digital, inkjet printing will be a reality for the newspaper business, just a matter of time.

Entitled "The case for the Individuated Newspaper" by Andrew Gordon of OCE, the piece points out that "Core strengths, like local knowledge, rich content, market research, advertising and distribution are significant competitive differentiators that newspapers can use to compete against other forms of media."

Gordon predicts "a perfect storm" and: "Surviving this period of transition requires developing strategies that move away from the broad-reach circulations dictated by underutilized fixed assets."

OCE was one of the pioneers of out-of-market newspaper printing (i.e. printing The Washington Post in London for same-day reading) with its Digital Newspaper Network utilizing digital presses at the remote location.

Now OCE is encouraging the newspaper industry to consider the "significant opportunities in printing niche products and local and smaller circulation papers" with the new digital presses.

Read the whole thing at http://www.thedigitalnirvana.com.

Why is PM California dreaming?

The Otober 2009 cover story of Presstime, the Newspaper Association of America's monthly magazine, had a tantalizing title: "Digital Printing: Newspapers inch toward personalized editions."

Interesting. So two of the industry's three monthly magazines had weighed in: "Newspapers and Technology" said media is blazing toward personalized products, and PresstPM says it's inching in that direction.

No matter the speed -- the hare and the tortoise both get to the finish line -- the NAA article had one exciting piece of information. Investor's Business Daily in Los Angeles this fall is venturing into microzoning by incorporating variable datea into news sections, using an HP Inkjet Web Press in the beta.

Note: PresstPM ceased publication in December 2009. News and Technology continues full tilt.

Why shower curtains?

Why not. It’s just my medium of choice. I would love to read the newspaper on my shower curtain every morning and be able to click through to other stories on the curtain and move stories up and down the curtain.

Is all media going digital?

Yes. But that doesn’t mean online. Any platform will do (including shower curtains). But the source of all data will be/is digital.

Was MINE the first PM magazine?

Even with glitches. Read on.

A Magazine Just for You Arrives With Glitches

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

Published: April 20, 2009, Editor and Publisher

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WHEN TPM Inc. and Lexus devised a project they thought could be a new business model for magazines, they discovered that new business models come with new problems.

The project is an individualized magazine called Mine. It is meant to play off the customizable features in the new Lexus 2010 RX by letting readers order the articles they want from Time Inc. and American Express Publishing magazines; the issues include Lexus ads personalized with readers’ names — along the lines of “The All New 2010 RX, Now With More John Doe” — or with references to the cities where they live.. .”

What went wrong? Well a computer error mean that some people (including myself) received articles in MINE from magazines I had not chosen.

But I didn’t mind. That was like getting a rare book with that signature typo that makes it more valuable than the perfect version.(Or it was forced serendipity, maybe.)

Yes, I’ve still got my copies with the ads that talk to Peter Vandevanter, who lives near the Rockies.

According to reports, Time Inc. made 200,000 digital versions and 31,000 print versions available.

The head of the ad agency that put the project together is quoted in the New York Times as saying, “There were several people that thought digital’s going to be on fire and sell really well. We were a little surprised as well. I think a lot of people have talked about, well, the death of print, and digital is the new print. But we still think there is relevancy and need for magazines. There’s a tangibility of having something in your hands that people still enjoy,” he said.

Howeve, I wouldn’t take that advice to the bank.

Is Printcasting PM?

You will have to ask Dan Pacheco.

For those of you who don’t know the Printcasting software as a service, you can sign up for the service on the web for free at http://www.printcasting.com. The softwware takes your blogs and makes them into newsletters. Very nifty. In effect it allows people to sign up for personalized newsletters.

Pounding the Pavement and Planning Ahead for Printcasting

By Dan Pacheco, April 20, 2009

It's been about a month since Printcasting launched in Bakersfield, and our local grassroots outreach is well under way. Every week our marketing evangelist meets with several new groups and individuals. Many of them see immediate uses for Printcasts, and we're starting to see a stream of new activity.

As of today, 180 Printcasts have been set up that have published 734 editions (You can peruse them all in the Printcasting directory), and 144 registered content feeds. Because we're seeding the market with our own content and magazines some of these are ours, about half of this comes from the community -- which is not bad for the first month, and before we've done any serious marketing.

I'll be sharing more anecdotes about community outreach in the coming weeks. In the meantime, we continue to improve the product based on feedback from people in Bakersfield and elsewhere (for example, see this review and our response on the Metaaprinter blog).

The new feature we're most proud of is a new tool that lets you create your own masthead using a photo from your hard drive.

Our development team is going down a punch list of 34 near-term projects like this. And in parallel, we're starting on the next big round of features that will launch in early summer. Those are:

1) Ad payment and controls
We're now working with The Commerce Guys in Jackson, Michigan to build out a straightforward, secure way for businesses to pay for ads (currently free during a trial period). Publishers will also be able to reject individual ads -- or all future ads from a particular business -- before those ads can appear in their Printcasts. All of this should be available in a testable mode in May, and ready to launch in June.

By the way, for you Drupal fans out there, we're really excited to have Ryan Szrama, the lead developer on the open-source Ubercart module in Drupal who recently joined the Commerce Guys team, working on the ad payment project.

2) Revenue Share
The Commerce Guys are also helping us build out a very sophisticated, but user-friendly, system that shares advertising revenue. We will be providing more information about how this will work in the future, but here's the gist.Whenever a business places a self-serve ad in a Printcast, 60% of that money will immediately be passed on to the publisher via a Paypal account deposit. 30% will be set aside in an escrow account which is shared with contributors on Printcasting.com, and that escrow will be split among them every quarter in proportion to how much their content has been used. The final 10% will be maintained by the Printcasting network to cover ongoing hosting, development, maintenance and transactions fees.

Sharing revenue at all is fairly radical for anyone, including a newspaper. But we'll also be giving much more direct revenue to the citizen publishers on our network than most revenue-sharing services do, and for a simple reason. We feel that publishers bear the highest burden for the success of everyone on the network, and the network itself. They'll be footing most of the bill for printing, distribution and marketing of their publications to their own communities of interest, and contributors will only benefit when they do. If they incur the highest costs, we feel they should get the highest reward.

Note that the percentages above reflect only our current thinking, and they could change. One reason we can keep our portion so low is because our expenses are covered by the Knight Foundation through the end of May 2010. After that date we hope to be able to keep rev-share proportions steady, but much will depend on how much ad revenue is coming in the door by then, and how it compares to network expenses. In that sense, our own future success is also dependent on the financial success of publishers on the Printcasting network. And we like that, because it automatically aligns our interests with the interests of Printcasting.com participants.

Do you think these percentages are too high? Too low? Just right? Let us know.

3) "City Hubs"
As I've written about before, from the beginning we have seen organic demand for Printcasting in other cities. Our original plan was to extend Printcasting to five other cities starting in December, but based on all of the interest out there -- which includes interest from other newspapers -- we will be starting this rollout sooner.

City Hubs will be geographically-targeted launching pads for partners in other cities to promote Printcasting. If you don't live in Bakersfield and you want to use Printcasting, be sure to add your zip code to your Printcast at setup. This data will be used to surface your content on any future city hubs we may roll out.I can't share which cities will be first because the partners have not been announced yet. But do let me know if you or your organization are interested in sponsoring a city for our national rollout.

3) Print on Demand
If you've ever ordered photo prints from a site like Shutterfly or ordered an on-demand book on Lulu.com, you understand what we want to do here. Imagine an "Order a Printed Copy" button on every Printcasting.com microsite and you get the idea. You click that button, enter payment details, and a few days later get a copy of the magazine at your doorstep (or perhaps pick it up at a local print provider).

When I started this project a year ago I assumed there would be numerous print services that we could tap into using free Web APIs. I was wrong in that assumption. Most of these types of companies don't have full open APIs, although some are beginning to work on them. Now that we've launched, we're finally making progress with getting some large printing companies with national footprints to talk to us, so I'm hopeful that we'll be able to add printing functionality sometime in the summer.

Okay, so who is in the PM race today?

Everyone in the media business. Well we’ve talked about Kodak that spent millions to build the first press available commercially that could print every newspaper differently, personally. But since then in 1996 (please see the FAQ about the first Individuated News Conference) there has been huge progress made by OCE, and Kodak and HP. (And there’s IBM and Kyocera and Screen, too.) And those are just the VDP manufacturers. What about the smartphone manufacturers and the e-tablet manufacturers. WHEW.

Here’s Steve McClellan in ADWEEK, April 20, 2009.

NEW YORK Kodak is using an arsenal of national media properties anchored by assets under the recently formed Women@NBCU banner to drive a value message for its fledgling printer and ink business.

The new campaign, which directly challenges some of the leading competitors in the field, uses a combination of branded integrations on properties including Bravo, Oxygen and iVillage, and, to a lesser degree, Nickelodeon. Print, online and TV spots drive viewers to a Web site, printandprosper.com, where users can compare ink prices with those from brands including HP, Epson, Canon, Lexmark and Brother. Those companies either declined comment or didn't return calls seeking comment on the Kodak campaign.

Leslie Dance, VP, brand marketing and communication at Kodak, said the company is targeting "ultra-high burners." Internally, said Dance, Kodak marketers profiled the consumers they're after as female, "40, feisty and facing frugality." These women, she added, are usually a family's "memory keeper."

Market research, Dance said, also showed that "by far the largest consumer dissatisfaction with home printers is the cost of ink."

Deutsch, the Interpublic shop that won the estimated $40-50 million media account (printer and ink) last November, approached NBCU about anchoring the TV portion of the campaign around the  Women@NBCU properties.

Peter Gardiner, chief media officer at Deutsch, said the combination of platforms and properties within the Women@NBCU collection of assets and the network's ability to offer creative integrations appealed to the marketer.

The Kodak deal, said Maryam Banikarim, SVP, sales marketing at NBCU, was "one of the first" major packages assembled under the Women@NBCU banner since the unit was formed last summer. Other deals will be unveiled soon, she said.

Kodak's printer and ink line will be integrated in the properties in a variety of ways. For instance, it's being tied to a BravoTV.com segment that debuts this week -- promoted on the cable network -- called the Makeover-Matic, which allows users to create new hair colors and test different kinds of makeup, and then print out the images. The sponsorship includes a "brought to you by" Kodak shout-out as well as online messaging located by the Makeover-Matic app. There are also custom vignettes highlighting the products on the TV network.

The client also sponsors Oxygen.com's Obsessed, a "hot list" of suggested products, from nail art to videos, found on the home page. A button links to a Kodak ad covering two-thirds of a screen. The ad ends with the lines, "Switch to a printer that uses only fairly priced ink. Now who wouldn't love that?" followed by a link to Kodak's printandprosper.com Web site. The Oxygen network will also air Kodak-branded vignettes in mid-May.

Gardiner said NBCU was also appealing because he could cherry pick additional properties owned by the media company, such as NBC's Today show, the USA Network and prime-time programs including The Biggest Loser. While technically not part of Women@NBCU, they're being used to round out the campaign.

The Nickelodeon sponsorship includes spots on Nick Jr., Nick at Night and an online "activity center" for kids and parents that links to the Kodak Web site. Nick also has an on-site Kodak kiosk at its hotel in Orlando, Fla., that promotes the printer and ink line.

The campaign, which kicked off three weeks ago, runs through the end of the year. Early results have been positive, said Kodak's Dance. Product sales, Web traffic and brand awareness tracking, she added, are all "doing much better than we expected -- and we had high expectations."

Are book companies into PM?

Way ahead of newspaper and magazine publishers, to be honest. The book you are reading is print on demand. Look at this from the Manchester Guardian, to learn about something truly far-out.

Revolutionary Espresso Book Machine launches in London

Launching in London today, the Espresso Book Machine can print any of 500,000 titles while you wait.

Alison Flood, Guardian.Co.UK

April 24, 2009

It's not elegant and it's not sexy – it looks like a large photocopier – but the Espresso Book Machine is being billed as the biggest change for the literary world since Gutenberg invented the printing press more than 500 years ago and made the mass production of books possible. Launching today at Blackwell's Charing Cross Road branch in London, the machine prints and binds books on demand in five minutes, while customers wait.

Signalling the end, says Blackwell, to the frustration of being told by a bookseller that a title is out of print, or not in stock, the Espresso offers access to almost half a million books, from a facsimile of Lewis Carroll's original manuscript for Alice in Wonderland to Mrs Beeton's Book of Needlework. Blackwell hopes to increase this to over a million titles by the end of the summer – the equivalent of 23.6 miles of shelf space, or over 50 bookshops rolled into one. The majority of these books are currently out-of-copyright works, but Blackwell is working with publishers throughout the UK to increase access to in-copyright writings, and says the response has been overwhelmingly positive.

"This could change bookselling fundamentally," said Blackwell chief executive Andrew Hutchings. "It's giving the chance for smaller locations, independent booksellers, to have the opportunity to truly compete with big stock-holding shops and Amazon ... I like to think of it as the revitalisation of the local bookshop industry. If you could walk into a local bookshop and have access to one million titles, that's pretty compelling."

From academics keen to purchase reproductions of rare manuscripts to wannabe novelists after a copy of their self-published novels, Blackwell believes the Espresso – a Time magazine "invention of the year" – can cater to a wide range of needs, and will be monitoring customer usage closely over the next few months as it looks to pin down pricing (likely to be around the level of traditional books) and demand. It then hopes to roll it out across its 60-store network, with its flagship Oxford branch likely to be an early recipient as well as a host of smaller, campus-based shops.

The brainchild of American publisher Jason Epstein, the Espresso was a star attraction at the London Book Fair this week, where it was on display to interested publishers. Hordes were present to watch it click and whirr into action, printing over 100 pages a minute, clamping them into place, then binding, guillotining and spitting out the (warm as toast) finished article. The quality of the paperback was beyond dispute: the text clear, unsmudged and justified, the paper thick, the jacket smart, if initially a little tacky to the touch.

Described as an "ATM for books" by its US proprietor On Demand Books, Espresso machines have already been established in the US, Canada and Australia, and in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Egypt, but the Charing Cross Road machine is the first to be set up in a UK bookstore. It cost Blackwell some $175,000, but the bookseller believes it will make this back in a year. "I do think this is going to change the book business," said Phill Jamieson, Blackwell head of marketing. "It has the potential to be the biggest change since Gutenberg and we certainly hope it will be. And it's not just for us – it gives the ability to small independent bookshops to compete with anybody."

Is Google ever going to pay for content?

Google already has settled with the book publishers for an upfront fee to digitize non-copyright books. And they have also paid . . .

But look at this from the mouth of Eric Schmidt, Posted by Emma Heald on April 27, 2009 at 2:59 PM on http://www.editorsweblog.com

Sharon Waxman of TheWrap managed to get some interesting information out of Google CEO Eric Schmidt at a party at Arianna Huffington's mansion on Friday. He told her definitively that Google has no plans to start creating original content, and described Google's vision for news search in the near future.

Schmidt explained to Waxman that Google has plans for a 'solution' to help save newspapers who are struggling from reduced revenue. In about six months, he said, the company will "roll out a system that will bring high-quality news content to users without them actively looking for it," reported Waxman. When they go to Google's site, users will be automatically served the news that interests them as established by the company's latest algorithms. These apply more sophisticated filtering, based on search words, user choices, purchases and others to determine 'what the reader is looking for without knowing they're looking for it."

Google believes that as this news will be personalised and targeted, it will be able to sell premium ads alongside it. The creators of the content, however, will not receive a cut from this extra revenue. According to Schmidt, the arrangement will benefit publishers because readers will be offered stories that they are more likely to want to read and therefore newspaper websites will get more hits.

Schmidt told Waxman that the New York Times and Washington Post will be the first two news organisations to participate in the new search mechanism. It is not clear whether this means that they will be the only two publications on a Google search page, or whether they will be adopting this new technology to their own homepages.

Google continues to improve and refine its search technology. It recently introduced a Google News Timeline, which arranges news search results in chronological order and allows searchers to filter by date or publication. Conflict between Google and publishers continues, however, and the newly launched Fair Syndication Consortium hopes to spur online advertising networks, such as that run by Google, to share income from reused content with the original publishers.

May we review?

I have been in the newspapers my whole career starting in 1969 as a Princeton undergraduate editor. I have seen technology change everything about the process of delivering the news business, except the actual nature of news, until now.

I am predicting that Personalized Media – news and advertising you choose – will replace traditional “breaking” news – just as computers replaced typographical stones in the 1970s, just as the computer modems replaced faxes in the 1980s, just as the internet replaced newspapers in the 1990s, and on and on.

Not immediately, but eventually.

I am talking about the metamorphosis of the actual nature of news.

Until now news has been information about events outside of ourselves that came to us through some medium of choice, in print or on tv or on the radio, etc.

But news has become facts that emanate from inside of us – news will be defined by what we as individual citizens, believe, not what professionals believe. Not even what professionals report.

That is already evident with Facebook and Twitter.

We as individuals will effortlessly create renditions of reality we believe and call those self-interpreted facts, news.

There will be no such thing as news we don’t choose.

News we don’t choose will NOT exist, just as, historically, news not chosen by professionals didn’t exist.

For publishers the transition can be very easily accomplished if the goal is well understood. Publishers have a much better chance of getting a story read if publishers can speak to each reader as an individual.

Personalized Media makes that possible, and will not only transform how publishers communicate to people, but it will transform the working lives of the journalists and editors who are doing the work.

Publishers need to set their goals in an age of media fragmentation, and the easiest solution is report fewer stories (but make each story high quality), limit advertising to what people say they want and need (and make those ads compelling), and be totally agnostic about platform of delivery (embrace all).

Start by getting your definitions straight about what true one-to-one publishing is, and what it isn’t.

Here’s a guideline adopted from ‘Individualizeing Media Essentials” by Roger Gimbel & Associates and Indivia, Inc. Now read this and think how these purely printing press rules could be broadened to apply to web sites, smartphones, home printers . . . shower curtains.

1. BROADCAST EMAIL – SPRAY AND PRAY

This is precisely what one-to-one is not. It’s the “one size fits all” approach in which the same solicitation is sent to all prospect mailboxes. No differentiation is made between recipients. Indeed, we’ve all received the mail that’s addressed to “Occupant” or “Current Resident” or “Neighbor” – and recognized the impersonal feel of the method.

Still, Broadcast Mail could be highly effective. Reach enough people with an attractive offer – and you will get a significant response. Sears Roebuck could even sell homes through the mail.. . for a while. But there’s also a lot of waste. For every customer who’s gained, there may be vast numbers who discard their mail. . . unread.

2. SEGMENTATION -- CLUSTER CLAMOR

With knowedge, comes power. And when direct marketers began to accumulate data about their target audience, they were able to go beyond Broadcast Mail --- and divide recipients into like-minded segments or clusters. You could segment consumers by geography, demographics or behavior history – or business decision-makers by vertical market or company size. In every case, it was possible to print and mail different “lots” with targeted messages and offers that were versioned to the specific needs of a particular group.

Powerful as this method was, it still remained impersonal. Because even though direct mailings were segmented by a pivotal piece of data – age, gender or family status, for example, or customer versus prospect – they still treated diverse recipients within a target group identically, not as individuals. And that proved to be a great drawback, since we all like to think we’re unique. Still, like Broadcast Mail, this worked . . . for a while.

3. PERSONALIZATION – PLAYING THE NAME GAME

Unquestionably, one of the key breakthroughs in direct mail marketing was the abilitiy to personalize a mail piece. The fact is, peole like to see their name in print – and by deftly using personalization, marketers could virtually guarantee a higher response rate than they’d receive with a non-personalized materials.

The more crative the use of personalization, the greater the chances of success. The clumsier the usage – repating the recipient’s name multiple times in the text, for example – the more transparent the technique became, and the easier it was to say “no.” Worse, if the data was inaccurate – and the name, gender, title, address or other variable was wrong – the effects could be disastrous. The bottome line: What was once a novelty – personalized a piece with the recipient’s name – has become commonplace. And the relative certainly of a higher response rate is no longer a guarantee of success in and of itself.

4. CUSTOMIZATION – CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR

Whent personalization evolved into customization, markets moved closer to the ideal of true one-to-one communications. By taking sophisticated individual data – and merging it with personalization – it was possible to create direct mail pieces that were targeted on an individual basis. Indeed, the early days of Variable Data Printing (VDP) can be traced to this technology as it arrived on the scene in the 90s.

However. . . the full power of VDP was not yet apparent. Usually, there were only a limited number of “plug in” elements that could be varied. VDP was paired with offset printinig to generate pieces that were hybrids. And whil content could be targeted to the individual. There was generally not enough flexibility to do justice to the brand . . . or the customers’ emotional connection to it.

5. INDIVIDUATION – REACHING AN AUDIENCE OF ONE

Data rules! Now, as VDP technology comes to the fore, you can use customer and prospect information to drive every aspect of your communications. You can vary text, photos, design, offers, colors – everything – on a recipient-by-recipient basis. So each piece in a print run is different, and is geared to the unique needs and preferences of the targeted consumer or business decision-maker.

This is individuatalization (individuation) at its purest. It emulates the best practices of a one-to-one, in-person sales call – in whicih an expert sales person engages prospects in a way that’s personal, timely and persuasive. But instead of you having to pay for the sales person’s time and travel, you create 4-color materials that set up a two-say value-based information exchange – a “conversation” of sorts – in which useful, relevant information is continually passed back and forth between you and the targeted individual. So every time your customer or prospect provides you with information, you’re able to incorporate your findings into your next communication – and resume the dialogue in an iterative, knowledgeable manner.

Or to put it another way: You take the evolution of direct mail to its logical conclusion – by practicing smart segmentation on a universie of one . . . amplifying the “that’s me” recognition of personalization to the “n” degree . .. and going beyond the selective “plug ins” of customization to put every element in play. It’s all the result of print technology catching up with database technology – opening up a vast new worldof strategic opportunity for today’s marketer.”

The time for all media individuation is now. Don’t let Facebook own the world.

Harness the power to put Personalized Media to work for you. Extend your vision across your enterprise. Individuation can become your tool for company-wide change.

What do you have to gain: Reader retention; reader involvement; reader acquisition; transactional publishing.

Don’t feel so alone. Nearly every industry is turning to individuation: Retail, automotive, financial services. B2B.

Getting started, your data comes first.

Here are the 5 questions that Publishers frequently ask about the ROI of Personalized Media.

1. How much will the content cost?

2. What is the value of the advertising?

3. Who pays the delivery charges?

4. Can coding guarantee the delivery of content on any platform?

5. How quickly will people adopt?

Here are my answers.

1. The same as it costs today.

2. CPMs should be north of $50, perhaps as high as $500.

3. The Receiver pays the delivery charges. AND the receiver pays for the subscription.

4. Yes.

5. It takes years.

If you are trying to change your company, the first thing you have to do is adopt a common language. Memorize and memorialize the four c’s: Choice, Choice. Choice. Choice.

Remember the four choices for your clients, the four C’s.

1. Choose your content.

2. Choose your advertisements.

3. Choose your platform.

4. Choose your time of delivery.

Imagine the many faces of individuation, where one is the number that matters most. Start with one person and ask them exactly what they want.

Now we only have 10 trillion more people to go.

How different are we?

In America, very few people would question the value of democratic access to information. So this plea from the founder of Wikipedia makes a lot of sense.

An appeal from Wikipedia founder, Jimmy Wales

Today, I am asking you to make a donation to support Wikipedia.

I started Wikipedia in 2001, and over the past eight years, I've been amazed and humbled to see hundreds of thousands of volunteers join with me to build the largest encyclopedia in human history.

Wikipedia isn't a commercial website. It's a community creation, entirely written and funded by people like you. More than 340 million people use Wikipedia every month - almost a third of the Internet-connected world. You are part of our community.

I believe in us. I believe that Wikipedia keeps getting better. That's the whole idea. One person writes something, somebody improves it a little, and it keeps getting better, over time. If you find it useful today, imagine how much we can achieve together in 5, 10, 20 years.

Wikipedia is about the power of people like us to do extraordinary things. People like us write Wikipedia, one word at a time. People like us fund it. It's proof of our collective potential to change the world.

We need to protect the space where this important work happens. We need to protect Wikipedia. We want to keep it free of charge and free of advertising. We want to keep it open – you can use the information in Wikipedia any way you want. We want to keep it growing – spreading knowledge everywhere, and inviting participation from everyone.

The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization I created in 2003 to operate, grow, nurture, and protect Wikipedia. For ten million US dollars a year and with a staff of fewer than 35 people, it runs the fifth most-read website in the entire world. I'm asking for your help so we can continue our work.

Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet has free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s where we’re headed. And with your help, we will get there.

Thank you for using Wikipedia. You're part of this story: please make a donation today.

Jimmy Wales

Founder, Wikipedia

But to many people in other cultures around the world this plea would sound ridiculous.

Google founders Segey Brin and Larry Page were similarly shocked when supremely intelligent foreigners attended the TED lectures and objected to the democratization of information through search.

On such a global scale it’s easier to understand our blindnesses about other people’s assumptions – but scale those blindnesses down to one person, and the misunderstandings become even more enormous. That’s the message of individuation. And the need and opportunity of Personalized Media.

Publishers,what applications would you need to have to offer PM?

A simple interface that asks four questions, the four C’s, right?

Audience, please choose:

1. Your content

2. Your advertising

3. Your platform

4. Your time of delivery

In this chapter we will look at the prospective content choices you could offer.

You could offer your newspaper reports by category, or by section, and then offer choices such as the 196 choices that the Associated Press has in its APComplete. Check with AP before you do this, but this has been done in beta in Denver, CO.

196 TOPICs:

(Business)

Careers

Corporate News

Economy

Financial markets

Government business

Industries

Personal finance

(Entertainment)

Amusement and theme parks

Architecture

Art

Astrology

Award shows

Books

Celebrity

Children’s entertainment

Contests

Critics

Dance

Entertainment distribution

Fairs and festivals

Fashion shows

Games

Media

Movies

Museums

Music

Nightlife

Performing arts

Spectaculars

Theater

(Environment and nature)

Animals

Environment

Plants

Weather

(General News)

Accidents and disasters

Crime

Law and order

Oddities

Summits

Transportation

War and unrest

(Government and politics)

Defense

Elections

Government bodies

Government business and finance

Government policy

Government workers

International organizations

International relations

Non-governmental organizations

Political issues

Political organizations

Political systems

(Health)

Aternative medicine

Children’s health

Death and dying

Dentistry

Diagnostic tests

Diseases and conditions

Drugs

Fitness and exercise

Health care costs

Medical ethics

Medical research

Medical specialties

Men’s health

Nutrition

Public Health

Seniors’ health

Treatments and therapies

Women’s health

(Lifestyle)

Automobiles

Beauty and fashion

Careers

Entertaining

Etiquette

Food and drink

Hobbies

Home design

Lifestyle groups

Occasions

Pets

Residential real estate

Self-improvement

Travel

(Science)

Agricultural science

Archaeological science

Astronomy

Biology

Chemistry

Computer science

Earth science

History of science

Materials science

Mathematics

Oceanography

Physical anthropology

Physics

Psychology

Science education

Scientific ethics

Scientific methods

Scientific prizes and competitions

Scientific publishing

Scientific research funding

(Social affairs)

Cultures

Demographic trends

Education

Ethics

Ideologies

Philanthropy

Religion

Social interactions

Social issues

(Sports)

Aquatics

Archery

Athlete health

Athlete recruiting

Athlete retirement

Automobile racing

Badminton

Baseball

Basketball

Biathlons

Billiards

Bobsledding

Bowling

Boxing

Bridge

Canoeing and kayaking

Chess

Coaching

College sports

Corruption in sports

Cricket

SubCurling

SCycling

Disability sports

SubDog shows

Doping

Equestrian

Fantasy sports

Fencing

Field hockey

Football

Golf

Gymnastics

Handball

High school sports

Hockey

Horse racing

Lacrosse

Loge

Martial arts

Motorboat racing

Online sports

Physical education

Poker

Polo

Racquetball

Rodeo

Rowing

Rugby

Sailing

Shooting

Skating

Snooker

Soccer

Softball

Sports and fitness videos

Sports apparel

Sports books

Sports business

Sports equipment

Sports films

Sports governance

Sports media

Sports medicine

Squash

Stakes

Sumo

Table tennis

Tennis

Track and field

Triathlons

Volleyball games

Waterskiing and wakeboarding

Weightlifting

Wrestling

Yoga

(Technology)

Consumer and product technologies

Industrial technologies

Information and communication technologies

Technology issues

Are newspapers niche?

Yes. What’s the definition of niche? A publication that appeals to an identifiable segment of people who wish to connect with an identifiable group of advertisers. I would say until the advent of the internet, which began to appeal to everyone who came of age after, say 1995, the newspaper was a mass medium. But not today. Today, audience expectations have been fragmented into niches.

Are niche publications about technology or audience?

Check out the cat site on Wordpress video. There you will find that the site gets more visitors per day than any newspaper site in thecountry, or the world. The cat site uses Wordpress, one of the most inexpensive, available for everyone tools on the net. Yet newspapers pay millions of dollars each year for their own proprietary sites.

What are the economics of Personalized Media?

Similar to niche publications, I have developed a Wizard for niche publications that can be appropriated for PM. Here it is:

How is PM like traditional niche publishing?

Identical. All niche rules of publishing apply to any audience-serving publication. (Examples here.)

So whether your pub/website/blog serves 20,000 athletes or one person who is a marathoner makes no difference in the economics (for every 10,000 reduction in people increase the CPM by $10 – starting at 100,000 plus distribution you get a $30 CPM, for a 90,000 circ you get a $40 CPM, for an 80,000 circ you should get $50 CPM; by the time you get to 10,000 circ you get a $120 CPM and then for every 1,000 circ reduction you get $10 more cpm, so for 9,000 circ you get $130 CPM, 8,000 circ $140 cpm down to 5,000 circ $170 CPM and finally the 1,000 circ $210 cpm; below that you get $10 cpm for every 100 reduction so it’s 900 circ or $220 cpm down to 100 circ at $290 cpm and below that the sky is the limit. The brass ring of course is 1 to 1, and since no one has done it, we’re not sure what that CPM should be: $300 CPM? $3,000 CPM?

How many categories do people need to satisfy all their interests?

About 25. I have this number for having watched niche publications carefully for about 25 years. I have observed market after market, naturally and interchangeably launch successful niche pubs in 25 categories. So my thinking is that if markets can repeatedly satisfy audiences in these categories, then those most be the major category Here’s the list:

Super Citizens

Homebuyers

New Home Buyers

Apartment seekers

Home Stylists

Auto Buyers

Regionalists

Seniors

Job Seekers

Brides

Women

Business People

Deal Seekers

Activity Seekers

Minorities

Foodies

Self Improvers

Newcomers

Parents

Partners

Enthusiasts

Animal Lovers

Art Lovers

Travel addicts

Athletes

Can you think of a category not on this list?

There is no category there for pornography, because it can comfortably fit in the Activity Seeker category, or perhaps the Deal Seeker category, or even the Enthusiasts category.

What about vegans, for instance, you ask?

Obviously vegans fall into the foodie category. Those 25 categories encourage further focus . As I mentioned in the Wizard, the more targeted the higher the CPM, that’s all. And of course publishers can discount the CPM if they wish -- at their own peril, i.e. the internet.

How limited in audience reach is niche?

Unlimited. Any online application you can think of for a newspaper or other media company, you can think about for a niche publication.

How do you compare PM and niche media?

Personalized Media is niche media extended (descended/ascended) to 1 to 1.

Traditional niche media – local magazines and tabloids covering designated interests – have always depended upon self-selected audiences (to reduce print and delivery costs) and high CPM ad rates to be profitable.

Are newspaper s then niche pubs?

Yes.

The good news is that they can then perform as PM. That’s why PM should be so attractive. It is so appropriate. Like all niche pubs, the audience has already self-selected, so making the process more formal by asking them what they want specifically, only deepens the experience and relationship for the reader/subscriber. Plus most of the readers have been conditioned over the decade to understand what their choices are and have made them. Everyone knows their favorite way of reading the newspaper (Sports, front page, editorial page, features or features, editorial page, front page sports or front page, editorial page, sports page, feature, etc.) their favorite comics, their favorite columnists, their favorite puzzle.

Imagine (apology to John Lennon)

Imagine a media with stories just for you.

It's easy if you try.

Imagine there's no worldview.

No hell below us. Above us only sky.

Imagine all the people

Choosing their ideas.

Imagine no official reports.

It isn't hard to do.

Nothing to kill or die for.

Imagine all the people

Learning more about themselves'

Imagine all the people

Sharing themselves

You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one.

I hope some day you'll join us.

And the world will live as one to one.

Is PM most importantly a social revolution?

Yes, Just as the typewriter was essentially a social transition tool. The typewriter changed the novel; the workforce; the advertising medium; language; etiquette.

Read Marshall McLuhan on the typerwriter.

So the Internet is the tool like the typewriter) that has begun to change news and advertising to be Personalized Media, which in the largest sense is a social revolution.

Remember, first we create the tools and then the tools create us (paraphrase from Chapter 3, page ____).

Publishers,what advertisers can you offer subscribers?

That should be easy. At least you have a list of advertisers that you currently place. How many other “long tail” advertisers are there in your backyard? A simple self-service platform like Wave2Media can get you started easily.

Here are some of the many advertisements that readers could choose for their daily report.

Finally, how many platforms could there be?

I guess I can’t answer this question enough times.

Here’s a synopsis of the Pranag’s TED presentation, which will open your eyes to the “platform” aspect of Personalized Media, and you will never again think you, as a publisher, can wait to overtake every platform as it comes to market by somehow engaging a third party technology company.

How many examples of that failed strategy do we need? Careerbuilder.com, Cars.com, HotJobs.com – newspapers build a third party brand in order to have access to a new technology, and then the built brand abandons the newspaper.

Once again, how many platforms could there be?

Let us count the ways:

E-tablets

E-Readers

Smartphones

Internet sites: Facebook, Twitter, Digg.

Tablecloths

Any wall

Any piece of paper

Your breakfast table

Your floor

Your mantle

The mirror

The window

A garage door

The frame of a chair

The palm of your hand

Finally: the shower curtain

How does PM embrace all content, advertising and platforms?

Personalized Media starts with the receiver and pulls in content, advertising and platform, instead of starting with content, advertising or platform and pushing them to the receiver.

The dynamic, the force, the vibes, the spirit – whatever word you want to pin the experience with – the flow is going out instead of in, north instead of south, west instead of east or east instead of west, whatever, the opposite direction.

What is the value of content?

There have been algorithms written that determine just that. Perhaps the number one purveyor of the value of content on the web is Luke Beatty of Associated Content, based in Cherry Creek, CO. (Visit http://www.associatedcontent.com).

Luke’s formula looks at the web and calculates first what are the most popular subjects on the web, what are the most emailed stories, what are the most read websites, what are the most requested reports, etc. and then uses an appropriate advertising CPM associated with that content to determine the value of content.

This is quite ingenious because the more people read and email and link and request a story, the more relevant that story must be. And in a roundabout way they are choosing their news.

What is the value of advertising?

Now the value of advertising is much more easily quantifiable, because we have benchmarks that we currently use and accept: Such as the cost of remnant ads on the web, (currently $2 CPM), the cost of newspaper ads ($30 to $50 CPM), the cost of magazine ads ($50 to $100 CPM), the cost of national retail ads $10-$20 CPM. All of these ads have very recognizable guidelines, although the ad costs may vary market to market and media company to media company.

We also know that in direct mail the response from a campaign is doubled if any personalization is included.

So let’s say that value of Personalized Media advertising is twice whatever the platform is used, whenever the content and the advertising are chosen by the receiver.

That would make online remnant ads worth $4 CPM, newspaper ads $60 to $100 CPM, magazine ads $100-$200 CPM, and the cost of national retail ads $20-$40 CPM.

What is the value of platform?

Nothing. Getting the platform right for the consumer is just the doorway to a relationship (that could be for a lifetime). Consumers pay technology companies like Comcast and Verizon and AT&T and Dell and Microsoft and Apple for tools to access stories and advertising, but they don’t pay media companies. Why is that? Because media companies don’t “own” the platforms. They just borrow/use them.

There once was a period in the 1980s when media companies tried to be Internet Service Providers (and thus own the platforms of delivery) but that didn’t last long.

How will people get the news necessary to protect their culture/democracy?

This is a very interesting question and one that comes up quite often with people in the media business already. But just because someone might subscribe to Personalized Media, doesn’t mean they are separated from the modern world. Radios are still ubiquitous. Newspapers are still extant. Consumers will still have access to other internet sites. And TV will keep them uptodate with mass media (read “breaking”) news, for sure.

I say render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Radio, TV and newsprint have mass media chops; let them be mass media. It’s the duplication that’s reduced, by Personalized Media going off in a different direction.

Personalized Media can render all the personalized news a consumer would want. Actually Personalized Media is a good partner to mass media, a good complement, because it’s not a duplication. That’s why radio, TV or newsprint could partner with Personalized Media successfully.

Will people tell you what content they want?

Yes, absolutely, they will tell you about 10 percent of what they want from the getgo. After they get used to Personalized Media and get used to its satisfactions, the percentage of information they want personalized will go up tremendously. So Personalized Media in very few cases is expected to be someone’s full media diet.

Have tests shown that people will tell what advertising they want?

Absolutely. In tests by the Denver Post in the summer of 2009, volunteers of automatic home printing of the Denver Post overwhelmingly agreed to divulge what advertisements they would want to receive. And when given the choice, perhaps surprisingly, the number one category of advertisement they wanted was local restaurant discounts.

Personalized Media is all about giving people what they know they want.

That doesn’t necessarily preclude giving them what they don’t know they want.

But currently—with mass media -- all that is offered is under the guise of what they don’t know they want. In other words, the professionals decide what stories they should get and what ads they should get. Behavioral targeting, the so-called “BT” ads popularized by Yahoo, strive to understand what your actions online might infer you are interested in and thus serve you up ads that are targeted at you. But just because I look at a Mercedes ad because my brother-in-law just bought one, doesn’t mean I ever intent to buy one. Yet for days perhaps weeks afterward I will probably see Mercedes ads wherever I go on the internet.

Wouldn’t it be easier to just ask me if I ever intend to buy a Mercedes, or would I rather receive Volvo or Hyundai or Toyota ads. I know. My belief is that most people will tell, if they trust you and are willing to risk privacy issues. The privacy issues are what a media company must overcome.

Yes, privacy issues are real, but they are trumped by trust. After all, cookies on computers have been tracking people’s activities for years and most people have not stopped using Google search, for instance, because they are worried about what Google will learn about them. They have clearly come to trust Google. And trust is something that newspapers still have in spades. So if Personalized Media purveyors don’t do anything about the knowledge gained about people used against their wishes, I have every confidence people will trust Personalized Media companies as much.

Will people tell you what platform they want?

Yes. But they may well change their minds with time as far as their favorite platform, when the newest gadget comes out.

Is it true that all print media is declining?

No. FSI’s are up. Way up. Those are the print inserts in your newspaper. They are up by 13 percent in 2009 over 2008. That is not unsubstantial. There isnothing wrong with print. It is still very compelling, and practically the only medium that demands your sole attention when ingesting. There has never been a rash of accidents due to people reading the newspaper while they are driving.

How does PM help people self-realize?

I always thought of myself as a fan of Bob Dylan, but generally I knew nothing more than the average music buff about the man until I began in 2003 to use a keyword search on MyYahoo to track his whereabouts, activities and music reviews. Suddenly I truly could discuss him with authority. I knew he was writing a book before my mjusic friends. That he won the National Book Award for that book, before my music friends. Exactly where he was always touring, before my music friends. That he had been arrested in New Jersey, mistakenly considered a vagrant wandering in empty buildings, before my music friends. That he was going to make a Christmas album in 2009, before my music friends. Through my keyword searches on MyYahoo, I finally had the means of self-realizing my passion for the artist.

I’ve always hated parochialism, which I define as those people who self-realize geographically That’s why Personalized Media holds out so much hope for me as a social movement. No longer are you “expert” only on the local Indian mounds, or the local Revolutionary War memorabilia, or the birthplace of a President, or the site of a civil war battle, or the place where the best ski-ing or snowboarding or scuba diving or sailing is – not that those are not important passions. But I would want people to be expert on something totally outside of the geography of where they were born or were raised or reared their children or practiced their career – now, with Personalized Media, they can.

Be an expert on earthquakes around the world, or the AIDS pandemic, or quilters globally. As you can see, the physical location of anyone gets erased.

Or you become expert on where to buy $500 Ferragamo shoes for $100, or $175 Hugo Boss shirts for $25. Whatever.

Further self-realization. Whenever I’m in my best moods, I imagine myself as a particular artist. By being able to constantly learn more about my favorite artists I can create good moods in reverse. That’s self-realization. When I travel I can feel like Edward Hopper and remember the painting NightHawks. When I am home admiring my little house I feel like Matisse and remember his cutouts. When I am wandering through a supermarket admiring the myriad varieties of product, I can feel like Picasso and remember his cubist extravaganzas. When I am outdoors, amazed by its complexity, I feel like Robert Rauschenberg and remember the paint-dripping mattress. When I am reading a newspaper, admiring its concise packaging of the world, I can feel like Jasper Johns and his Target renditions. When I am swimming or ski-ing or snowshoeing or doing anything exhilarating outdoors I can feel like Rodin and remember his burghers. Why, I don’t know. I don’t know why, but I know if I feel that way I am feeling good. Personalized Media about those artists is another way for me to prepare to feel good – to self-realize.

So maybe your passion is mathematicians, or beauticians, or Hollywood celebrities, or fiction writers, or musicians, or automobile racers – exercise your passion, your identity, your self-realization. Feel like them. Follow them on a daily basis. Follow their shadows on the world wide web. Follow their repercussions with Personalized Media.

How does PM help democracies develop?

Because everyone can get answers to their questions if they have the time to ask. Google is good for that. Almost like trivia answers. But a socio-political consciousness needs a methodology applied to everything from sports to shopping to elections on a regular basis. That’s Personalized Media.

Imagine the genesis of the United States without Tom Paine’s pamphlet “Common Sense.” The actual Declaration of Independence was a one-time document that in fact very few people of the day ever read. But Tom Paine’s pamphlet was read weekly far and wide.

Newspapers have always been described as the protectors of democracy, but Personalized Media will do an even better job. Although it may raise the level of “noise.” In other words, so many people will have opinions they will want to discuss, the discussions may get more heated than usual.. But in the end resolution will come despite the diversity of opinion, as it should in a real democracy.

How does PM address paywalls online?

I wonder what we will think about this plan looking back a decade from now?

The New York Times Co. has a year to sell the public on its plans to start charging frequent NYTimes.com users for access but first execs have to sell the segment of its own staff that wanted to stay free. A year of constant carping about how awful it will be—whether anonymous or out front—may be damaging, if not lethal.

It helps that Executive Editor Bill Keller is behind the idea of a metered service.

Without support at the very top of the newsroom, it would be even harder. But as one newsroom insider told me the other day, during the year-long discussions about whether to charge or not, few, if any, people changed their stance. Those who favored free stuck with it; those who thought pay was the way to go may have shifted on the how. That means a lot of people who don’t like it will have to work to make it happen. The sell job memo to the staff from the very top, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. and Janet Robinson, emailed everyone in the newsroom. Here was the point: Metering is an important decision about the future of newspapers. Here’s what they said first:

Today we are announcing that we will be introducing a paid model for NYTimes.com at the beginning of 2011. As you will see in the press release, we have chosen a metered approach that will offer users free access to a set number of articles per month and then charge users once they exceed that number.

They also said they would not join a media consortium to make the metered approach standard; in fact the would continue to work with many different approaches to the problem. But the point was to expand the web offerings and extend into mobile and social networking products.

Are we a tribe?

In the modern-day lingo of Seth Godin's book "Tribes", those of us interested in personalizing web content appearing on all platforms from print to mobile to shower curtains, are a tribe, who get together once a year or so for a “personalize news” conference. If you haven't read Godin's wonderful book watch him on Youtube: http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_godin_on_the_tribes_we_lead.html.

Will there ever be a payday for “Reader Media”?

The arrival of IPads (Apple) and Kindles (Amazon.com) and Skiffs (Hearst) and Nooks (Barnes and Noble) and Daily Editioins (Sony) and apps for smartphones (anyone) – all of which present reading material upon subscription -- hold out the hope of a payday for “reader media”, whereas the walled garden of websites never did. Read this insightful piece: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8414725.stm .

Can there be too many E-Readers?

Can there be too many automobile models? Can there be too many architecture styles? Can there be too many fashion brands? Can there be too many art museums? Can there be too many political points of view?

Personalized Media -- self-chosen stories and ads on any platform -- cut through the fog of all the new platforms.

Can anyone part the Red Sea, please?

The New York Times may part the red sea yet with its plan to meter charge readers.

ms in combination.”

Is metering PM?

In my book, yes.

Do I disregard the numbers? Since when do numbers point the way, anyway?

Numbers-wise metering is a looser.

So the announcement was roundly criticized.

That’s because no one publicly considered the value of choosing your news -- of Personalized Media -- which should be part of this equation. Through metering you are helping people choose their news and only charging them as they gain momentum. Now the NY Times just has to have the discipline to get the revenue back in advertising CPMS. Ingenious.

But for all the literalists among us:

Running the numbers on the NYT paywall

Jan 20, 2010 21:54 EST

By Felix Salmon, Reuters

Apologies for being something of a one-trick pony today, but reading John Gapper’s column on the NYT paywall makes me realize that a lot of people fail to appreciate exactly what’s at stake here. Gapper seems to think that online subscription revenues can make newspapers profitable again; they can’t. In fact, insofar as the paywall makes any sense at all, it does so only as a tool to boost print subscriptions.

Gapper notes that the Guardian’s parent company lost $93 million in the last fiscal year, despite having a website attracting 35 million unique visitors globally, and 13 million domestically. He reckons that charging some of those subscribers could make the Guardian’s problems disappear:

Outsell, a research group, reported this week that only 6 per cent of US online readers say they would pay online news sites if they charged.

If we are to take the figure at face value (which I don’t think we should), then The Guardian could get 2.1m people to subscribe to it online, making it highly profitable at a stroke.

The logical flaws here are huge. Let’s just count a few:

•Gapper is assuming that if 6% of online readers would end up subscribing to some site or other, that’s the same as saying that any given site can persuade 6% of its readers to subscribe. But that’s not the same thing at all.

•Gapper is taking a poll of US internet users, who are more likely to pay for things online than other nationalities, and extrapolating the numbers globally.

•Gapper is assuming that foreign readers (say, Guardian readers in India) are just as likely to subscribe as domestic readers (Guardian readers in the UK).

•Gapper is assuming no overlap at all between the 6% of readers who would pay online, and the percentage of readers who already pay for a newspaper subscription in print form. The NYT has already said that its print subscribers will get an online subscription for free, and I’m sure the Guardian would do likewise.

•Gapper is ignoring that putting up a paywall will always reduce advertising revenue, which means that in order for the new subscription revenue to make the newspaper “highly profitable at a stroke”, it would have to not only make up existing losses but also cover the drop in online advertising revenue.

Once you understand what Gapper can do to statistics like these, then, it becomes a bit easier to make sense of something like this:

Rates for online display ads have been falling steadily as competition has proliferated, with most sites now finding it hard to get more than $4 per 1,000 impressions on their pages (or $14m for the 3.5bn hits on all US newspaper sites monthly).

I have no idea where Gapper’s getting his $4 CPM figure from, but it’s clearly much closer to being a minimum than an average. Papers might find it hard to get more than that, but you can be sure that the NYT, for one, is succeeding all the same. In fact, the WSJ reports today that nytimes.com is pulling in $100 million in revenues annually — more than you might think the US newspaper industry as a whole was making, if you read Gapper too literally. Indeed, in the third quarter of 2009, the New York Times Company made $79 million from its internet businesses, of which $68 million came in advertising revenues. Newspaper advertising was $39 million — and that was in a very weak quarter. On an annual basis, I’d be surprised if nytimes.com didn’t make significantly more than the $100 million that the WSJ is talking about.

It’s also worth noting that Gapper has managed to confuse CPMs — the amount of money that an advertiser pays per 1,000 pageviews — with RPMs, or the amount of revenue that a publisher receives per 1,000 pageviews. There’s nearly always more than one ad unit per page, which means that RPMs are some multiple of CPMs, depending on how much of a newspaper’s inventory is sold.

Gapper, then, is systematically overestimating the upside of subscription revenues, while underestimating the magnitude of advertising revenues. Erick Schonfeld, by contrast, is much more realistic, concluding that total subscription revenues from nytimes.com would optimistically reach only $9 million per quarter, or $36 million per year. With the New York Times Company making the best part of $300 million a year from online advertising, it’s hard to see that the extra revenue boost would really be worth it.

The point here is that with the powerhouse nytimes.com site front and center, the New York Times Company as a whole is a major online media player, serving up billions of high-prestige pageviews and building strong relationships with every major online advertiser and media buyer in the country. Even under the most optimistic scenario, a majority of the NYT’s loyal readers will desert it when it moves to a paywall. And with those readers gone, media buyers are by no means guaranteed to stick around.

Gapper makes great play of the fact that websites can target ads more accurately when readers are registered, but you can’t target ads at readers who no longer exist. And the NYT is a mass-market general news publication: it’s not the kind of place where high-end business-to-business advertisers will pay $90 CPMs to reach C-suite executives. Or if it is, the numbers involved would be so small that they wouldn’t make a visible dent in its overall online advertising revenues.

What’s a realistic number for how many people will pay to subscribe to nytimes.com? David Carr says that the NYT wants to target “10 percent or so” of the 17 million current readers of nytimes.com. That’s 1.7 million people. Subtract the print subscribers who will get nytimes.com for free, and you’re left with 1 million, more or less. How many of those could you dare hope to persuade to subscribe? One third? Once again, just as Schonfeld did, we get to somewhere in the region of $35 million a year, assuming a subscription price of $100 each per year. For a company with annual revenues in the billions, the hit to the value of the brand alone has to be bigger than that.

There is one other dynamic at work, here, however, and that’s the price of the print subscription, which has proved to be surprisingly inelastic: David Carr in fact lauds the way in which “The Times has shown a great ability to leverage prices once they have custody of a consumer”. But pushing existing consumers to the limit of what they can pay only makes it that much harder to attract new ones.

The NYT aspires to be a national paper, which makes sense, since it either already has or is never going to get most New Yorkers as print subscribers. But the annual subscription rate, if you live at say 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, is $769.60, and it’s really hard to get people to pay that kind of money, in the middle of a recession, for a newspaper they’ve lived happily without for all their lives, and which they can get online for free.

So I see the decision to implement a paywall not as an attempt to build a significant revenue stream for the website alongside ad revenues, but rather as an attempt to shore up — and maybe even increase — the print subscriber base. Even a Monday-Friday subscription, at $384.80 a year, brings in much more money than any online subscription ever will. Yes, it probably costs more than that to print and deliver the paper. But for the time being at least, print advertisers are still willing to pay top dollar for a full page in the physical New York Times. And so long as that’s the case, the NYT will do anything to keep its physical circulation numbers as high as it can — even, it seems, if that means dealing a serious blow to nytimes.com.

I-Pad-dy pat pat is moot? And sturm and drang,too.

No matter at which end of the spectrum the I-Pad falls -- on laptop or smartphone extremes -- it is a moot point. Today platform is a red herring. Everyone will have their favorite platform eventually. It's getting the news and advertising that you want on THE platform you've chosen . . . that's what’s important. A corollary: Personalized Media (news and advertising you've chosen) must be available on all platforms. That's digital liberation, the promise fulfilled.

For déjà vue all over, read all about the sturm and drang of platform in the NY Times (1/27/10):

SAN FRANCISCO — After months of feverish speculation, Steven P. Jobs introduced Wednesday what Apple hopes will be the coolest device on the planet: a slender tablet computer called the iPad.

For all the hoopla surrounding it, however, the question is whether the iPad can achieve anything close to the success of the iPhone, which transformed the cellphone and forced the industry to race to catch up.

Apple is positioning the device, some versions of which will be available in March, as a pioneer in a new genre of computing, somewhere between a laptop and a smartphone. “The bar is pretty high,” Mr. Jobs acknowledged. “It has to be far better at doing some key things.”

Half an inch thick and weighing 1 1/2 pounds, the device will vividly display books, newspapers, Web sites and videos on a 9.7-inch glass touch screen. Giving media companies another way to sell content, it may herald a new era for publishing.

But the iPad, costing $499 to $829, also lacks some features common in laptops and phones, as technology enthusiasts were quick to point out. To its instant critics, it was little more than an oversize iPod Touch. A camera is notably absent, and Flash, the ubiquitous software that handles video and animation on the Web, does not work on the device.

Another thing missing is an alternative to the AT&T data network, which is already buckling under the strain of traffic to and from iPhones. Some versions of the iPad can, for a monthly fee, use a 3G data connection like cellphones, but the only carrier mentioned was AT&T.

The event, in typical Apple style, was tightly scripted and heavy on theatrics and hyperbole. But the success of the iPhone, and the hive of rumors and leaks surrounding the iPad, raised expectations and made this perhaps Mr. Jobs’s most highly anticipated product unveiling yet.

It was one that he clearly cared deeply about. Mr. Jobs, a consummate showman, presented the iPad to an enthusiastic crowd of around 800 employees, business partners and journalists, some of whom shoved their way in when the doors opened to grab the best seats. It was only his second public appearance since a leave of absence for health reasons last year.

Mr. Jobs posited that the iPad was the best device for certain kinds of computing, like browsing the Web, reading e-books and playing video.

The iPad “is so much more intimate than a laptop, and it’s so much more capable than a smartphone with its gorgeous screen,” he said in presenting the device to a crowd of journalists and Apple employees here. “It’s phenomenal to hold the Internet in your hands.”

One question Apple faces is whether there is enough room for another device in the cluttered lives of consumers.

“I think this will appeal to the Apple acolytes, but this is essentially just a really big iPod Touch,” said Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research, adding that he expected the iPad to mostly cannibalize the sales of other Apple products.

Mr. Golvin said book lovers would continue to opt for lighter, cheaper e-readers like the Amazon Kindle, while people looking for a small Web-ready computer would gravitate toward the budget laptops known as netbooks.

But other analysts say they have heard similar criticism before — once aimed at the iPhone, which has now been bought by more than 42 million people around the world. These believers say Apple’s judgment on the market is nearly infallible.

“The target audience is everyone,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president for strategy and analysis at Interpret, a market research firm. “Apple does not build products for just the enthusiasts. It doesn’t build for the tens of thousands; it builds for the tens of millions.”

Apple says the iPad will run the 140,000 applications developed for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, but the company expects a new wave of programs tailored to the iPad.

One of the most significant applications for the iPad may be Apple’s own creation, called iBooks, an e-reading program that will connect to Apple’s new online e-bookstore.

Mr. Jobs said Apple so far had relationships with five major publishers — Hachette, Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan — and was eager to make deals with others. Publishers will be able to charge $12.99 to $14.99 for most general fiction and nonfiction books.

Apple’s announcement that it was diving into the growing e-book business put the company on a collision course with Amazon. Mr. Jobs credited Amazon with pioneering e-readers with the Kindle but said “we are going to stand on their shoulders and go a little bit farther.”

John Doerr, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who serves on Amazon’s board and is also an adviser to Apple, said there could be room for both companies, noting that Amazon sells many books to iPhone owners who use its Kindle application, which will also work on the iPad.

“I don’t think Jeff Bezos is going to leave the e-book business,” he said, referring to Amazon’s chief executive, “and I don’t think it will be confined to the Kindle.”

Three models of the iPad, $499 to $699, will connect to the Internet only via a local Wi-Fi connection. Three other versions will include 3G wireless access and will be available later in the spring, costing an additional $130 and requiring a data plan from AT&T. Owners of the iPhone who already pay at least $70 a month to AT&T will not be getting any breaks.

Other companies have sold tablet computers for years, but they never caught on with consumers. In 2001, Bill Gates predicted at an industry trade show that tablets would be the most popular form of PC sold in America within five years.

“The fact that he and Microsoft didn’t deliver is surprising,” said Tim Bajarin, a longtime industry analyst. “It has taken Apple to bring this to consumers and make it work.”

Apple has been working on a tablet computer for more than a decade, according to several former employees. Improved technology has helped the company to finally bring a model to market, as has the ubiquity of wireless networks.

The success of the iPhone and its cousin, the iPod Touch, have shown a path for tablets. People have been willing to pay to customize those devices with applications, turning them into video game machines, compasses, city guides and e-book readers.

The iPad will be a big opportunity for software developers, said Raven Zachary, president of Small Society, an iPhone development company based in Portland, Ore. “Although I think some of us were a bit surprised we only have 60 days until it launches to develop for it.”

Why do I read old news? Why you should.

That’s one of the most despicable myths in media: OLD news. There is no such thing as OLD news, meaning useless news (or well known news). Decrying that myth sounds heretical to just about everyone. But it’s true. It’s a myth.

And, I dare say, it’s a myth that the (print-TV-radio) media of yore created and has perpetuated, to its own detriment now that the internet has usurped the power of timeliness.

News reported at a specific moment about specific event s at a specific time in the past can be so insightful viewed, reviewed and read in the context of a later time when the actual consequences have come to fruition. I love to read news that was posted months or even years before. Because the kernels of truth and the kernels of lies become more abundantly clear and I can more effectlvely interpret reality and gain some valuable information. (That’s why, among other reasons, I happily reprint articles and blogs in this book from the past that deal with the essentials of Personalized Media. When you read them in hindsight you can more easily see where the lies are lying.)

Can publishers hope their content can be protected?

Absolutely. Read on.

Can publishers get substantial revenue online?

Absolutely. It’s inevitable. No question; Super-relevant (self-chosen) content is valuable and people and advertisers will pay for it.

Imagine a patient not paying for the diagnosis from the doctor. Imagine a student not paying for his or her grades. Imagine a traveler not paying to fly to the destination he or she desires. Imagine a shopper not paying for the dress she has picked out.

The solution will not come from pleading with people to take out subscriptions online or pleading with people to make micropayments online – when they have the same options for free The solution will come by putting everything that is published in a context of commerce. In a shop. Behind a fence.

The solution will come when people associate choosing with paying.

Whenever there is the context of commerce, people expect to pay for choosing. And in the choosing they are proving to themselves the appropriateness of their participation. That’s the rule of economics.

In other words, when a music fan chooses who they want to see perform, they feel appropriate and reinforced in their decision by paying. They don’t want people who don’t pay, i.e. people who don’t CHOOSE to be at the concert.

As the reader chooses, he or she is also choosing to pay. It only feels natural. In fact paying reinforces the act of the choosing.

As the preeminent media theorist Marshall McLuhan said/wrote, among other things: We first create the tools and then the tools create us. (I’m paraphrasing.)

Dan Kruger, the founder of (INC 4 sponsor) IPhase3, likes to refer to the Rule of the Commons in economics. The story goes like this.

Towns were built around fortified castles in the middle ages. Over the centuries the actual castles began to deteriorate to the point that they were destroyed by citizens who wanted the stones to build their own houses.

Empty, grassy centers of towns were accidentally created. At first people suggested that these abandoned areas belonged to everyone. And anyone should be able to use them.

Those centers became available to citizens for whatever use they wanted. Many people brought their sheep to craze, and soon enough many more people brought their sheep to graze. And the grassy centers began to disintegrate and were ruined. They became dust.

The next generation of people built a fence around these so-called “parks”. And so the next generation of people were able to charge citizens to allow their sheep to graze.

So the parks began to thrive again. The grass grew again. That’s the Rule of the Commons. Anything valuable that is given away free will be destroyed.

(INC 4 sponsor) IPhase3 has created a proprietary platform to reverse the Rule of the Commons relative to the World Wide Web, which is being destroyed by (online) sheep grazing. A fence needs to be built, which can’t be built on the World Wide Web. Dan argues that in (INC 4 sponsor) IPhase3’s parallel universe, Personalized Media will thrive. What do you say publishers?

Remember the 4 C’s mantra. Make your choices, readers:

1. Content

2. Advertising

3. Platform

4. Time of delivery

Embrace micropayments, readers, and be assured that your identity, your predilections, your choices, your insights, will not be copied and disseminated everywhere. Be a citizen who recognizes the Rule of the Commons.

You’ll pay, after you’ve already determined the story is worth paying for. No coercion; no blind subscriptions; no behavioral targeting of advertisements; no algorithmic guessing about your interests. Just straightforward choosing. And paying. And protecting (on both sides).

As a publisher, could I mix pages of my newspaper with pages from another newspaper?

Yes. Syntops, a German company, has perfected the process of mixing newspaper pages to create mix-and-match e-pubs, if you will. In other words you can have the sports page of the Denver Post, the world page of the Washington Post and the science page of the San Jose Mercury News. Actually you get to pick 10 categories or sections from as many as 10 different newspapers if you want. The PDF of the mix of newspapers that you want will come to your email every day or once a week or how often you want it. It’s a wonderful exercise in Personalized Media, without advertising. Check it out at www.personalnews.com .

As the founders of the company -- Gregor Dorsch and Michael Stangl – know, the best applicaton of their software may be for local newspapers that have no national or international sections. Here the sections could be appended as thefiles are on the way to the presses each day.

What about magazines?

Time Magazine created Mine in 2009, which was a magazine where a prospective reader would choose from four different magazines to be combined in one, according to their preferences.

As a result people received a magazine whose seven stories came from the sources cited such as Time, Sports Illustrated, Gourmet, Forbes.

Mix and match magazine. And in 2009, this was printed for you, rather than sent as a PDF. In fact the printed advertisements were directed right at you with your name in the offers, sponsored by Lexus. “Peter Vandevanter, come try the new Lexus” one ad said in my Mine.

In what print products will PM work best?

Of newspapers, magazines and newsletters, perhaps best in magazines, because that medium has a history of reader-chosen content (unlike newspapers) and because the beauty of the pages (unlike newsletters) can be heightened by reader choice. Wherever the smallest change of habit in the consumer the more likelihood of success. So the reader is used to choosing magazines by their editorial content AND their advertisements. Most people look at Vogue magazine, for instance, for the advertisements, not the stories.

Can you have paywalls without content protection?

No.

Without content protection you will always fail at the precipice of success. It’s the old sweat shop fate. As long as the business volume is low sweat shops work because people are grateful for the work. But the minute the big order comes in, and everyone should participate in the success, the strike occurs because finally there is real money available to strike for.

So with the news. Paywalls and micropayments will work as long as the stories are small and inconsequential. Those interested will pay the micropayments they are required. But as soon as the news is large and valuable, they will make the micropayment and broadcast the story broadly so that only a handful of people actually pay for the content in the end, and the people who make the money are the aggregators, not the creators.

It’s the story of the music business in the 90s, before I-Tunes. When everyone downloaded and sent music to their friends and friends of friends and friends of family and families of friends, etc. With I-Tunes you are technologically constrained from sending a song to more than a few friends. The content is protected. The product is protected. The creator is protected.

More than that the creator is recompensed, so that he or she is inspired and financially capable of continuing to create.

In the example of news, if the creator or the creator’s company is protected and recompensed the creator and/or the creator’s company will be incented to create new, important news.

If the actual valuable story is not protected by its creators, but in fact is given away to hordes of people, then the creators will no longer create.

And “The Day the Music Died” will be rewritten “The Day the News Died.”

Bye, Bye Miss American Pie.

How many subscribers could PM add for a newspaper?

Legend has it that the new president of COKE in ____ was asked how much he wanted to grow penetration of the world market against Pepsi – three or four or perhaps more percent – and he answered that he didn’t care about competing against Pepsi, he wanted a larger portion of everything everyone drank, meaning water and milk, etc.

That’s the same situation here

By offering Personalized Media, newspaper publishers are not trying to just grab market share from a competitor but expand the pond so much that the service takes subscribers from every information source available including radio, television, newsletters, single sheets, telegrams, hand signing, smoke signals, shower curtains, and of course word of mouth.

Is PM a panacea for media companies?

No.

No more than autos were for horses. Or transmissions were for buggy whips. Or the Ice Age was for dinosaurs.

Is the digital wallet PM?

Yes. The digital wallet refers to businesses such as department store and grocery store loyalty cards that are available now in digital form online and with some standalone laser sensitive devices like the Mobeam that offer downloaded digital discounts (instead of printed coupons).

Since the online and device digitization effectively gives people the advertising discounts they want and request, then the so-called digital wallet is a form of Personalized Media?

Why are the 4Cs necessary?

The four Cs – choice, choice, choice, choice – are necessary because people may admire complexity but they reward simplicity.

Can PM be protected?

It’s very exciting to think that protection may be possible.

Imagine a story. Any story. President Obama and Sara Palin’s love child, as a hypothetical. (Clearly, fiction.)

Imagine you, as a consumer, have asked for all the “family-oriented” news about the “President” through your Personalized Media portal. And imagine that the Asbury Park Press breaks the Obama love child story with pictures of Obama’s grown child, as well as affidavits from the 10-year-old child, and the secret mother confesses in a long (sealed) affidavit. And through Personalized Media this story shows up on your cellphone, as you have requested at 8 a.m. in the morning because you subscribe to the Asbury Park Press as well as “family-oriented” news and news about the President.

Let’s say you immediately email the story to everyone in your rollodex. But no one can open the story who doesn’t subscribe to the Asbury Park Press, though Personalized Media.

Imagine that unlike the current fate of the story – which would have been emailed to millions of people within hours – the story remained only available to those people who either through Personalized Media subscribed online to the Asbury Park Press or logged into the Asbury Park Press and paid a one-time fee for the story, or began a subscription.

Let’s say the one-time fee was one dollar. The Asbury Park Press would make millions of dollars in one day. And be able to pay for more awesome investigative journalism, many times over.

But you say, “What about all the other media that would pick the story up (nice word for steal): radio, TV, national newspapers, blogs.” Without access to the secret mother affidavit, all commercial media would have to direct people to the Asbury Park Press for enough details to satisfy curiosity – or run the serious risk of looking foolish and losing all credibility, if the story is false.

We would be back to what has always been the driving force for media – important, unique, well-sourced, professionally crafted stories about the realities of the world that impact our lives.

So yes, imagine that Personalized Media could be protected from piracy.

And this scenario also applies to very local stories. Let’s say the city council votes to ban dogs from the city. Today one person can subscribe to the newspaper and email the story to as many people in the neighborhood as desired.

But what if the recipients couldn’t open the story to read it. They would be relying on the word of the sender and that may not be enough for most people to ship out their dogs, or, even worse, have their dogs put down.

Large or small, the inability for anyone and everyone to open stories sent across the internet would protect creators.

Protection is clearly necessary before charging for stories makes any sense.

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

Like a piece of jazz, this file of FAQs is just a record: An ephemeral vision (in a verbally-silent, oral tradition) of the questions, fears, plans, hopes and dreams of the reading continuum, an ever-evolving medium.

It is built like a book, but what is a book but small sheets of paper stitched together and printed on a specific day in history -- a dead document -- and this is a living document dedicated to helping evolve the world.

This book espouses no business plan, no product, no platform, no piece of software: Only an exploration of (and an underlying, undying curiosity about) what would happen if everyone in the world had total choice of media?

As a founder of an association and an annual conference dedicated to personalization of news and advertising, I always enjoy the dialogues. Enjoy.

Peter Vandevanter

MAY 15, 2010

In “Personalize Media” all media has become self-chosen, reader-picked content and advertising. Publishers banish the concept of official news, as well as mass media and behavioral advertising – to embrace PM (Personalized Media). “Personalize Media” is a 1-to1 vision for newspapers, magazines, television, radio, music and movies told in the language of FAQs

Who are today’s publishers? Everyone on the web.

What is the secret? All media is pull not push. Readers/receivers dictate everything and creators only stock a universal source of information. So publishing begins with the understanding that all content must attract viewers, not demand viewers, in order to become general knowledge. Publishers begin by asking, not telling.

Peter Vandevanter has been a niche publisher since 1996, when he launched the super successful Boston Homes. Since 1999, he has been an executive for major media companies overseeing dozens and dozens of local magazines/websites in the U.S. covering a full range of topics from parenting to health to home décor to cars to coupons. He founded the Personalize Media Association in 2010.

© Jan Vandevanter 2006

IF YOU ARE TIRED OF BEING A STATISTIC AND WANT ALL YOUR INFORMATION PERSONALIZED (AND PROTECTED) JOIN THE PERSONALIZE MEDIA ASSOCIATION. AT HTTP://WWW.PERSONALIZENEWS.COM CHECK IT OUT.

OR IF YOU ARE CONCERNED THAT IN MANY COUNTRIES PEOPLE CAN’T GET THE INFORMATION THEY NEED, JOIN THE PERSONALIZE MEDIA ASSOCIATION AT HTTP://WWW.PERSONALIZENEWS.COM. CHECK IT OUT.