Two years ago, the New York Times produced Snowfall, and broke the four minute mile in online publishing. Given that I’ve been working in online publishing since 1995—first with Smallworld, then with ESPN, Cheezburger, and most recently with Do206—I’ve spent quite a bit of time thinking about innovation in online publishing.
Last week, Geekwire reported on Pixotale which is attempting to push publishing toward Snowfall for the masses. Similarly, a few of the guys from Cheez went off to Steller which is mentioned in the article.
After Cheezburger, I considered a few startup ideas in the “innovative online publishing” space, but ultimately stayed away. I had passion for the topic, but couldn’t find a business model that I liked. I think what I learned from my research was two fold:
First, I think an innovative online publishing solution really has to be a B2B enterprise solution. I could be wrong—and that’s the bet that Pixotale and Steller are making—but I don’t believe regular people want take the time to make innovative content. Or, more precisely, there are regular people who do want to tell stories, but there aren’t enough of them to have a successful business.
And, second, even within the enterprise, most organizations won’t spend the money and don’t have the ability to tell good stories. I think that’s why there has been only one Snowfall.
Speaking of which, NYT produced this innovative piece about Iraq earlier this week. To me, the format is interesting on the desktop, but I think the presentation is even more compelling on mobile. In some ways, it reminded me of what Ben Huh is doing with Circa. As a consumer, the Circa concept/format is something I’d like to see more news publishers adopt.