J415 discussion

Jay Small

Newspapers | Interactive

Discussion outline

  • Tell me about your projects
  • Audience development
    • What kind of product/service is a newspaper? It's a convenience bundle of information services.
    • Problems with convenience bundle: Never know who to market to, what they are buying for. Spaghetti sauce example.
    • In 'long tail' you're unbundled by default
    • With info services, start by picking your filters. 'Local' may not be a good enough filter. Local-plus-1.
    • What audiences will respond to info filtered that way? Will they want it? Need it?
    • How big is that audience? Enough to sustain the information service?
    • How can you test their interest?
  • Product/service development
    • What kind of innovator are you?
    • Are you authoring or aggregating? Publishing or communicating?
    • What is your service's value proposition? Saves time. Informs. Entertains. Cleans better than 409.
    • Is the value proposition profound or incidental?
    • Is the service possible to build? Sustainable once built?
    • Do you have a development pipeline? Milestones to check your success? Components of the service to review and adjust?
    • How radically are you prepared to change the service if it doesn't meet your expectations?
  • Competition online
    • Did you use existing services as models for yours? Are they competitors or just similar services with different audiences?
    • Are there known competitors for the audience, either deployed or in development? What are their filters?
    • Does your service offer a competitive advantage? What is it?
    • Is the advantage fleeting or sustainable? What is your upgrade path?
  • Assignment: Your filters