Publishing and Mobile Devices

I've been interested for a long time in writing applications that will provide some useful service on a mobile phone, and with the advent of smart-phones I get to explore this a little more. This got me to thinking about apps that run on smartphones and that are possibly useful to information customers - apps that a publisher might develop and deploy to their subscribers. And since I have a new Droid phone, I started doing some programming for that. But it begs an interesting question - what phone(s) should a publisher target in developing a new app?

Of course, this is heavily informed by the particular publishing sector and by the kind of information being published. Phones, with a small-ish form factor, will favor small units of data; pads would more readily support larger. In fact, the form factor on a pad (like the iPad) is such that simply using a browser in the pad to access the same publisher web resource that one would access via a computer is usually an acceptable user experience. So, if I were a publisher, trying to decide what phone to develop an app for first, what factors might influence my decision? Here's what's floating around in my head:

1. Hard to ignore the overwhelming presence of the iPhone. Huge market penetration. But small form-factor. And it just plain pisses me off that I have to go through the iTunes marketplace and pay Apple a pound of flesh. It's my data after all! And I suspect most publishers are not really selling the app; they're selling content.
2. Hard also to ignore the skyrocketing increase in iPads. Seems like everyone has one these days! Wish I did. And, given that the iPad runs the Safari browser (which is Webkit compliant), I can develop a variation of my website using an HTML5/CSS3 approach, host it on my own servers and not have to go through iTunes/Apple. More on Sencha/jQueryMobile/PhoneGap in another post... But if I need to create something that runs on the iPad, I run into the same iTunes/Apple question.
3. Some of the stuff I'm reading indicates that the various Droid phones are increasing market share considerably. And I can develop an app for a Droid phone and distribute it myself without going through the Google market or, if I choose, I can go that route. 
4. It seems that in certain market segments Blackberry is ubiquitous. Especially in the legal and lobbying worlds. As with the Droids, I like the fact that I can deploy an App frmo my own sites and am not forced to go through a marketplace. The small form-factor makes the BB somewhat limited for larger units of data and the differences between versions of BBs and the attendant differences in API support make BB develop somewhat challenging, although a cross-platform approach such as HTML5/CSS3/PhoneGap may limit those difficulties. OTOH, RIM is trying to shift to QNX and allow Droid apps to run on Blackberries. But when? And how long will it take for that upgrade to penetrate the marketplace. And a lot of the stuff I read indicates that RIM is losing market share. 
5. And then there Microsoft. I sometimes think that if MS creates a phone that integrates seamlessly with their back-office servers (Exchange, Sharepoint, etc.), those would become the darlings of IT departments worldwide. Enough so that they could drive RIM out of that spot. But that hasn't happened and MS phones are distant cousins in terms of market share. 
6. Kindle Fire? I love the idea and the price, but it means limiting app development to Android 2.2. We'll see!

So, I think I still have more questions than answers. And I know that some of this is a religious argument - I hear fans of the droids espousing their virtues over the iPhones and vice-versa.

Semantic-Content Management

We've been developing a tool set, or framework, or whatever for several years. We call it "Tractare" which is Latin for "to handle, manage, perform". I'm a sucker for that kind of naming.

Anyway, what's it all about? Well, as the Internet becomes more saturated with raw information, keyword search engines really aren't enough to locate that needle in the haystack. We (content providers) need to describe our content in a way that users "get" -- we need to describe the "aboutness" of our content.

An example I like to use when speaking on this subject is this: If you were to use google to search for "retarded", you would get a gazillion hits. But few, if any of those hits would have come up using the politically correct phrase "intellectually challenged". This is because a keyword engine like google depends on the actual presence of the keyword, either as text in the content or as metadata. Now, you could encode both forms of this concept as meta-data on your web-page and it would be found. Now, if you are a psychologist or someone working in mental health, you'd probably be getting the results you want. But if you are a firefighter, the word "retarded" has a whole different meaning. How do we express that? The answer is in several parts of course. But first, we need to capture the meaning of the content; the "aboutness". We need to associate the "firefighter" concept with the content that pertains to fighting fires. This is what Tractare permits us to do.

Tracare is a framework. It's not an off-the-shelf product. It is built on the idea of topic maps -- organizing content around indexes and concepts. It's true power lies in a combination of searching and navigation tools that allow the user to narrow the scope of their work to a set of concepts. We build custom CMS and delivery solutions on top of it.

The CMS systems we build usually include features found in social networking, including folksonomies (as well as traditional taxonomy and classification support) and ranking/commenting. These features allow content providers to apply semantics to content in a number of new and different ways.

The delivery systems we build often include a number of search and navigation interfaces that web users have come to love, including mashups, classification searching, semantic browsing and so on.

Advertising-Based Publishing

In a previous post, I was exploring new trends in electronic publishing (April 30, 2008). One of the key points was that traditional subscription and publishing revenues are shifting away from subscription fees towards "free" information supported by advertising revenues.

"One well known revenue shift is towards advertising revenues. This is an old model, of course. Newspapers have been at it forever, and online search engines for years. But more recently, we're seeing a larger shift of revenue away from subscription sales for information resources and towards advertising."

I had this reinforced recently when I realized that even traditional reference book publishers such as dictionaries and encyclopedias were increasingly garnering revenue from advertising rather than from subscription sales. Wow -- that was an eye-opener. It makes sense though -- if I'm looking for an informative article on "Chocolate", am I going to pay for access to Britannica or would I go to the free Wikipedia? I guess the answer (for me at least) depends on how authoritative my answer needs to be. But in general, I would go to the free site. And I suspect I'm not alone. So how is a traditional reference publisher to compete in the age of Wiki-whatever? Product quality alone isn't enough. It has to be free too. Enter advertising.

On the surface of it, it seems easy to generate advertising revenues. Especially if your area of publishing is targeted - in fact, the more specialized your content, the more valuable you are to advertisers? I'm not sure that this is true, but it sure looks that way. Virtually anyone can establish a Google AdSense account and tie it into their content publishing operation (as I've done to this blog). But who's actually making money at this? That's the hard question.

It always comes back to the same basic principal - supply and demand. I loosely translate the supply side to "timely, quality content". Timely doesn't necessarily mean frequent, it means "frequent enough". And demand is partly driven by the content and partly by your sales/marketing operation. Demand is partly the number of visitors to your web site and partly by the number of visitors who pay attention to your advertising. So, we need quality content and we need to advertise its presence.

These sound like the principals as those by which we've been driven forever.

Gilbane, San Francisco, 2008

I spoke at the Gilbane Conference in San Francisco in June (http://gilbanesf.com/) on the subject of using folksonomies as a publishers tool for classifying content. The session moderator had warned me that attendance was a little thin and that we shouldn't expect too many in the audience, but my rough estimate was that we had about 45 people there. I was pleased. And there were lots of questions and a lot of discussion.

Here's the abstract from my presentation:

Folksonomies, Just Good Enough For All Kinds of Things
Extending Folksonomies to Describe All Kinds of Content

Folksonomies are gaining popularity in the content delivery world as a "good enough" way to classify content; tag clouds are becoming commonplace on content-driven website. More and more, folksonomies are working their way back into the content creation and management process. Huge volumes of content, increasing and diversifying user requirements are pushing content management operations to look to folksonomies as a Web-2.0 way to describe the "aboutness" their content.

With this simple concept in hand, why not use this technology to describe more than just content subjects? "Aboutness" is just one aspect of your content. What about order, threads, or related content? This talk will explore the extended use of folksonomies as a technology for enhancing content in new and different ways.

I can send the power point to anyone interested, please email me or leave a comment on this blog.

New Trends in Electronic Publishing

I'm a consultant (sounds like an admission) in the publishing industry and throughout my career I've developed and integrated new technologies to help publishers stay competitive. Everything from back-room content management to user-facing "wow" tools. And, I'm noticing some trends in the publishing business lately. Especially in electronic publishing. These are some things I'm observing from my clients specifically, and from public media (annual reports, news, and so on). I think we're seeing a big shift in the way publishers generate revenue, away from the value on information.

One well known revenue shift is towards advertising revenues. This is an old model, of course. Newspapers have been at it forever, and online search engines for years. But more recently, we're seeing a larger shift of revenue away from subscription sales for information resources and towards advertising. I think this is driven by a couple of factors.

First is the nature of the internet and social networking. These are creating an underlying expectation of free information on the web. No news there! But this is creating new revenue streams in the form of advertising that are replacing traditional subscription revenues. And with tools like Google's AdSense, this is easier than ever to do, making it possible for just about anyone to create an ad-driven information portal.

The second factor is the rise in information portals repurposing and rebranding content for their own purposes. Tools like RSS and aggregators like Feedburner make it easy to brand your own content, creating a demand for and an expectation of specialized information sources. In a sense, this is dividing the traditional publishing industry into two parts -- information creation and information dissemination. Publishers used to integrate both these functions under one roof, but in the repurposing/rebranding scenario lines between these functions become clear. New revenue streams are being created and recognized by selling content for aggregation, repurposing and rebranding.

Related to this is the increasing role public entities are playing in the information dissemination arena. A large market used to exist for private publishing of government information. In the old days, these publishers took government data and added value through indexing or other finding aids and sold the improved access. As technology tools have improved, government agencies are more easily and readily able to perform this publishing themselves. So adding content value has become more important to the ability to create revenue than using technology to improve access.

And this is exacerbated by the economy. With more choices and less budget, customers will opt for the cheapest product that reduces their workload. User expectations are indeed greater. Users now expect to access content with minimum wasted time and maximum accuracy. To stay competitive, publishers need more sophisticated user-facing technology to meet these expectations. In turn, new revenue streams are coming from sales of integrated technology and content or from the sale of the technology itself (software products).

So, do I have a conclusion from this? Not really. I don't think anyone can accurately predict the course of publishing over the next few years. I do think publishers need to keep their tools sharp. My personal belief is that investments in the right technology will win out in the end, but mostly because it will enable the publisher to be ready to respond to changes more rapidly. Of course, I'm a techy saying this, so my view is slanted. I'm reminded of a joke by Emo Phillips: "I used to think the brain was the most important organ in the human body, then I realized what was telling me this!" But I can't help thinking that technology investment, especially in these tough economic times will out.