DISQUS

Publishing - people will always want to read professional (paid) writers filtered by the publishing houses
Tourism - people will always use professionally produced content (video, photography, writing) from official marketing organisations as opposed to local experts/passionate individuals (eg local business owners)

The latter is ripe for disruption!

James

Hi Nic,

Another way of managing the bootstrapping approach, of course, is to find yourself a quality coder at the beginning of his/her career and grow the poduct(s) with them. I know it doesn't always work out (and can be horribly expensive as was the case with the original tech behind MoneySupermarket at floatation) but there are real long term benefits if you can persist as a team.

James

Hi Nic,

Adverts help us to discover stuff and given the glut of information/content on the web, ironically, I think ads are needed more than ever. Perhaps the more an advert can become the visual content of a site (say, a photograph) the more useful it is as a filter to help people discover stuff. Display ads, by their very nature, are visual so they fit the times. I guess it comes down to ones definition of 'display advertising'.

Hi Nic,

It's also interesting to note just how large the *global* audiences are for online papers now based in the UK. Jan 09, Guardian 30million and Telegraph 26million. Unique users. The Telegraph was up over 100% year on year.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/26/rec...

The Guardian's move today will increase those numbers.

These are success stories.

James

Re: 'what I’m really interested in seeing on Twitter is what people are saying over a period of time on a single topic' - agree wholeheartedly on this point and I would certainly be a *paying* customer for such a service (would save us building one when the devel slot opens up!). The benefit of such information just in the travel/tourism vertical is mouth-watering. All that realtime, high quality, localised, specific info that one can host. Pls tell me when you find the service ;)

Very enjoyable post.

In the face of all that discouragement it's astonishing how many people bend over backwards to help you.

I'd also say that no matter how cerebral/rational a person you are, instinct's in the driving seat. Does it feel right?

Hi Nic,

People derive a great deal of pleasure from, and devote a great deal of time to, discovering the items they want to buy or the places they want to visit. It's fascinating to watch friends & family build up to a purchase over a period of time, buy and then begin the process all over again. It appears to be a delightful, sensory experience that's as important as buying and then talking about the purchase afterwards. It's the antithesis of the clinical, rational Google experience. I think social shopping, in this sense, has a great future. Same in other verticals. Discovery.

And then we'll be able 'to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening or criticize after dinner, just as [we] desire' Marx, 1845.

That's the recession solved then.

Hi Nic,

I'm not so sure confidence is fragile with those starting out/bootstrapping. The opportunities are once-in-a-lifetime for businesses small and VC scale at the moment and I get the sense that most business people (certainly the ones I know) *get* this. Sure, realistic about the year ahead, but optimistic beyond.

Interesting comments to the post. When writing fiction, the golden rule is 'show, don't tell'. Internet advertising (or put differently 'new forms of engagement') could learn a lot from that, especially the travel sector.

Quality blog so cheers for writing it. Happy Christmas too.

Hi Nic,

I know you're getting at something slightly different but advertising is content on: search engines (eg Overture/Google AdWords/AdSense), shopping engines, travel engines, classifieds engines etc. Offline it used to be the content of Loot for example. The 'advertising as content' model has been around for decades just as you noted that the freemium model has been around for decades in shopping malls etc.

Excellent stuff, cheers :-)

I'd like to know what the warmest fleece/fleece material is these days. Specifically, am looking for a couple of chunky fleeces to buy for the winter (him/her) to go over base layers and under down body warmers. Last two chunky fleeces bought for Himilaya were a Sprayway 300g and Lowe Aleutian but they be old now! Thank you :)

Morning Nic,

Nice post. I think it's also much, much easier for a small company to collaborate with its customers to build a product from scratch. So I think customers will find these types of small but fast growing products more attractive too. For me, your definition of Web2.0 earlier this week describes this process.

Hi Nic,

Agree on the web2.0 definition with a caveat supplied by Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia: ‘Any company that thinks it’s going to build a site by outsourcing all the work to its users completely misunderstands what it should be doing. Your job is to provide a structure for your users to collaborate, and that takes a lot of work.’ The man has a point :)

I think that place is most stunning around harvest time. Particularly love the views from the top of King Alfred's Tower on the Stourhead Estate: http://www.picturetheuk.com/uk-tourism/attracti...

Nic - what about social networks working in a specific vertical like WAYN. Easier to monetise?

Cool info - nice to see vid clips like this on an outdoor gear site. Am v. tempted as Dartmoor's getting seriously cold and with that in mind I'm off to axe some wood.

'many media industries will simply be much smaller than they have been' - with the publishing industry in mind, I think the opposite is true. Publishing houses and literary agents are about to get whacked, yes, but these are the guys who have been restricting both innovation and the supply of content to the market. There's going to be a lot more content and the opportunity to monetise the content of the publishing industry is phenomenal IMO. Very different to music, photos verticals etc. Certainly agree it's a promising area for startups.

My little daughters enjoyed scampering around there. My missus grew up in the area so have spent loads of time there over the years. East of Shaftesbury is great as well if you haven't explored that area. Win Green has stunning 360 views and is just above a shooting estate owned by Madonna. Garston Woods up from Sixpenny Handley are mad at bluebell time in April/May. If you ever want to swap picis of the places you visit in Dorset for Webtogs promotion, would love to do it.

Not philistine. People told stories by word of mouth and then by hand via manuscripts etc and then through the printed word and now digitally. The words matter and not the delivery mechanism.

However, I do find repulsive the marketing guru's assertion that a book (whether digital or not) is a souvenir that holds ideas. God help us if that's what writing's all about these days.

Sad. Undermines our trust in 'real' reviews as well which has disturbing implications for businesses working in that area.

Nic,

Quite right too. And if you flip your viewpoint and see it from the entrepreneur's perspective, it's a blast to work that way. Makes you happy :-)

Richard - my six year old daughter is wandering around a Devon farmhouse at the mo taking hundreds of photos with a DSLR including rather a nice shot of my foot. Is it photography? I don't really care to be honest. It's how it is. It's up to an entrepreneuer or a VC or (gosh) a corporation to find new ways to unlock the revenue from this new reality.