AOL plants a SEED
Clay Shirky recently blogged about how traditional media business models can not withstand the changing dynamics in news. Shirky says to the traditional model, that it is not “whether the internet is going to alter their business, but, ”he says, “about the mode and tempo of that alteration”.
In other words, it is not a question of IF the internet is changing the dynamics of news and how we get, produce and illustrate it, but the media’s response to that changing dynamic as a testament to their viability and longevity in the industry. There is no doubt that the industry is changing- there are no more “IF’s” about the internet and new wave journalism–because that’s a ever-growing reality–the only question now is, what do we do with the old business models of media now that we are in the new wave of media and news gathering? Shirkey’s reponse is simple, media groups needs to change their practices and become flexible with the changing news gathering atmosphere. In this blog post he writes:
“Complex societies collapse because, when some stress comes, those societies have become too inflexible to respond. In retrospect, this can seem mystifying. Why didn’t these societies just re-tool in less complex ways? The answer Tainter gives is the simplest one: When societies fail to respond to reduced circumstances through orderly downsizing, it isn’t because they don’t want to, it’s because they can’t.”
The key here is re-tooling or restructuring the way the way things were with the way things are now. Enter SEED, an AOL parented blog site that uses “user-generated” content to produce a “wire service” esque online venture with other sites of its kind. At SEED writers and photographers can submit their own work, usually based off the assignments board on the right corner of the page that SEED uses to post current projects they need contributors for, and have their work submitted to various online blogs and sites WHILE GETTING PAID!
And if i had time in this blog i would point out why the last three words in the above graph is probably the most important thing in this blog post…but i digress
At SEED, the traditional model of media, news gathering and news consumption has been replaced. The model at SEED is: You Create it. Your heard. You earn
At SEED the idea is about crowdsourcing (cheaper production) and media Curation (which is cost effective and a great marketing tool). AOL has allowed themselves to forgo the traditional business tools AND news gather techniques to create SEED. AOL took a chance. They flexed their flexibility and didn’t fail to respond to the circumstances of the industry. Instead, they took advantage of it, they planted a SEED.
