In the Cut and Paste Era, Traffic Happens Elsewhere

Imagine for a moment that you can take any piece of online content that you care about - a news feed, an image, a box score, multimedia, a stream of updates from your friends - and easily pin it wherever you want. Once clipped, you can drop the content on your desktop, an online start page like Windows Live or Pageflakes, “the deck" of your mobile device or even “a crawl” on your Internet-connected television.

This isn’t some far off vision. It’s the near-term future. It’s the coming era of the Cut and Paste Web.

All of the building blocks of the Cut and Paste Web are in place today. They include RSS, widgets, APIs, Javascript embed codes and web services. If you use a personalized start page, you’re already believer. For a sample, check out my Netvibes page, below. You’ll notice that it not only includes news, blogs and social network streams but also images and embedded iPhone versions of Web pages that snap in perfectly.

However, for all of its benefits, the Cut and Paste Web is potentially more disruptive to big traffic sites than Web 2.0 was. If almost all content can be lifted from one spot and placed somewhere where it’s more convenient to the user, just how will it be monetized? The ramifications reach far and wide. It will impact anyone that wants to attract eyeballs - media companies, brand marketers and community/social networking sites.

This week in my AdAge column, I outline three strategies for thriving in the era of a decentralized web. The rest of the column follows. I have written about this before, but it won't be the last time. You will be hearing a lot more about this subject in the months ahead. Now is the time to be ready. All you need to do is remember three little words: "traffic happens elsewhere."

Three Strategies for Thriving on the Decentralized Web

As Long-form Content Becomes Bite-Size, Make Everything on Your Site Embeddable

The Long Tail of content and increasing demands for our attention have created a perfect storm where traffic to brand sites may soon shrink. It's simple supply-and-demand economics at work.

Long-form online content has been usurped by all things bite-size, whether it be widgets, YouTube clips, or micro blogs powered by services such as Tumblr, Jaiku and Twittergram. This column offers three simple steps marketers should consider to thrive in a web that is increasingly becoming decentralized.

Think web services, not websites. Most innovation online today is created by an army of talented, independent web developers. Sites such as Microsoft, Google and Facebook are turning themselves into platforms that can run these applications, almost like Windows did on the desktop. This has spawned hundreds of miniature online applications.

To thrive, marketers need to think about how to create similar mini experiences via web services that plug into these sites yet are consistent with the brand.

Connect people. The web is transforming into a medium where the greatest value is created when people connect via platforms of participation around a common goal -- to make money, be entertained or informed, to create, etc.

To thrive, brands need to identify these motivations and participate in these new micro-content platforms in a way that helps consumers meet their goals. For example, the Los Angeles Fire Department recognized that consumers actively use Twitter when disaster strikes. It has opened a channel on the site to provide updates at twitter.com/LAFD.

Make everything portable. The next version of the Macintosh operating system, due out in October, has a small feature called Web Clip that turns any part of a site into a widget that lives on the consumer's desktop. This is a big sign of things to come.

In the very near future portals including iGoogle, My Yahoo and Netvibes as well as social networks will be able to easily inhale the smallest pieces of content from across the web. Don't wait. Start now to make everything on your website embeddable. Traffic is becoming something that happens elsewhere, not just on your site.

Comments

[Rich Pearson]

Great post - not making your content easily consumable fails to take advantage of the Internet distribution channel and is likely to annoy savvy Internet users.

In this 'Cut and Paste Era', I would submit a 4th strategy: Understand where how and where your content is being used.

Why? First, watching your content spread at across the Internet is a valuable source of insight (e.g. Which type of content is moving most, with what audiences, on which sites?). Without web-wide visibility, effective measurement of your program's objectives will be limited.

Monitoring how and where your content spreads across the Web also ensures you are getting "full value" for their content. Full value obviously depends on your objective. In some cases, you may not require any restrictions on content re-use, while in others, you may require a logo or a link back to your site. If monetization is your objective, requiring your content to be served with your ads is doable as is asking for a revenue share of 3rd party ads.

Full disclosure in that I work for a company that provides companies with visibility in to content re-use; it's an easy step to ensure that you know where "elsewhere" is.

[Rocky]

This is where media sites that do things beyond text have a huge advantage. With ordinary news stories, people can cut and paste sections (or the entire body) and you don't get the traffic.

With video and audio, that's harder to do. And if you're smart, you make it easy for them to cut-and-paste the way you want them to. Then stick your pre-rolls/post-rolls/other monetization strategy into that widget.

The other thing media sites can do is build community around their personalities. If I'm part of the conversation (see: this comment), I come back to your site, not just to comment, but to see what others have said or what you've said in response.

Steve,

Thanks for you kind mention of the Los Angeles Fire Department in yet another thought-provoking article. We've been honored to appear in a previous post at Micro Persuasion, and count ourselves among your most passionate readers.

Along with the aforementioned LAFD Twitter and the LAFD Blog, the Los Angeles Fire Department maintains a notable presence on Flickr, Youtube, BlogTalkRadio, Jaiku, Tumblr, Facebook, MySpace - and more than six dozen other popular 'Web 2-dot-oh' properties.

Thanks Steve, for inspiring us to always do our best. You can rest assured that we will do everything in our power to remain worthy of your respect and praise.

Fraternally Yours in Safety and Service,

Brian Humphrey
Firefighter/Specialist
Public Service Officer
Los Angeles Fire Department

[Mark Evans]

Steve,
So do content producers do to protect their home turf? In other words, how can they benefit from the content they produce if it's being read somewhere else? At some point, economics will come into play as content producers look to leverage their online assets as revenue coming from traditional mediums (newspapers, magazines, etc.) starts to decline even more.

Mark

[Kevin]

Steve - How were you able to add Plusmo as a Netvibes widget?

[Steve Rubel]

Mark, content producers will need to learn how to be a home team as well as one that plays well on the road and synchronize the two. Also, the entire way we measure will have to be re-calculated. Right now no one is counting or monetized content that is embedded somewhere else.

Kevin, simple. I added the HTML widget. Click here to add Plusmo to Netvibes. Just add the iPhone URL once it's loaded.

[Ty Graham]

Steve - I already invented the system speculated in this post in every way. You'd be quite amazed that "no one" is actually "just one". You know what? Soon, everyone is going to get blip'd!

[Rchard Stacy]

I have long been preaching the concept of what I call the floating digital content package as being the principal communications unit of the future. And the more I think about it, the more interesting and difficult understanding the concept and role of the new content becomes. Now that content is being freed from websites it is developing a spatial component - it moves, you can follow it, it can carry things other than the messages it contains. I have made a stab at trying to define the new content landscape here: http://tinyurl.com/2yfdmh

The implications for most current content producers will be profound. Most content will not be able to be monetized in the sense that its consumer will pay for it - however, there will be an increasing number of intermediaries (brands) who will need to make a much greater range of content they will then issue for free. There will also be a demand from content consumers for mediation - which may be a role that can be monetized. Personally I think the whole area of content mediation is an interesting one - beyond the types of content aggregation provided by the likes of Digg. Had some first thoughts on this here: http://tinyurl.com/2qmxme

I guess you must have seen the great Michael Wesch video that is basically about this cut and paste trend and the freedom of content. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

[Jonathan Hargreaves]

Steve,

Great post but what I struggle with is not just the whole monitization challenge of this kind of floating media but also the notion of authenticity. Clearly the web-savvy will develop ways of verifying fragments of content but I fear for broader e-mailing public. True there appears to be growing ability and intelligence amongst consumers to discern say a site that looks like historical journal in order to promote holocast denial etc but this kind of junk food content could easily become viral and reach huge numbers of people before it is debunked and after all mud sticks.

[Jacqueline]

Thought you might wanted to know that I one again proved that the Cut and Past Era as you have been calling it in your post already exists since I saw your post yesterday in my feeds, saved it to del icio us and blogged about it (in Dutch) today here http://www.frankwatching.com/archive/2007/08/22/het-knip-en-plakweb-overal-en-nergens-content/#more-2363

[Brian Solis]

Hi Steve, how do you feel about services such as Clipmarks, diigo, yoono, etc. To a great extent they offer exactly what you describe. While they're not mainstream yet, it is their efforts that are enabling this shift. Would love to get your thoughts on it...

[Rich Pearson]

Jonathan raises a really good point - companies will confound the legitimacy problem if they fail to stipulate that their content is branded, providing consumers with the legitimacy to muddle through the mass of content.

Rushing to set your content free without ensuring your brand will be attached would be a mistake

[Elliot Turner]

Great post! It's exciting seeing more discussion on the reusability/decentralization of web content, especially your usage of the "cut-and-paste" metaphor. Something that might be of interest: My company is developing a product called AlchemyPoint that enables the visual "cut-and-paste" of web content, even Flash embeds or CSS.

Here is a short screencast that illustrates copy-and-paste of Yahoo Image Search Results into Google Result pages.

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[Mohd. Hashim Khan]

Credit goes to ajax which made these cut pase code goddies possible. I am not that kind of blogger who uses k2 and widget just beause it makes easier, i feel it makes more difficult because you don't get perfect results.