At a Berkman center session last week about supporting investigative and international reporting — “difficult journalism,” in convener Ethan Zuckerman’s wording — I talked about the link economy v. content economy and at lunch, one of the participants asked what the link economy requires of us. Try this list on for size:
1. All content must be transparent: open on the web with permanent links so it can receive links. It’s not content until it’s linked.
2. The recipient of links is the party responsible for monetizing the audience they bring. In the old content-economy model of syndication, the creator sells content to another and the one who syndicates has to come up with the ad or circulation revenue sufficient to pay for it. Now in the link economy, it’s reversed: When you get traffic, you need to figure out how to benefit from it. As Doc Searls said at the event: this is a shift from “making money with” to “making money because.”
3. Links are a key to efficiency. In other words: Do what you do best and link to the rest.
4. There are opportunities to add value atop the link layer. This is where one can find business opportunities: by managing abundance rather than the old model of managing scarcity. The market needs help finding the good stuff; that curation is a business opportunity. There is also an opportunity to add context (here are lots of links about Darfur but here is a page that will explain what they mean). There is also a need to add reporting and new content and information atop a link ecology. There is a need to create infrastructure for linking (full disclosure: I am involved with two companies trying to do this — Daylife and Publish2). There is a crying need for advertising infrastructure and networks to help the recipients of links monetize them.
[...] link economy is a shift from ‘making money with’ to ‘making money because’; http://is.gd/16hJ [...]
Sorry for the blatant spamming, but my small product is about links…
It’s a FireFox extension to help publishers easily add links to their content. It uses OpenCalais for semantic analysis, and Google search to suggest links.
It’s still alpha code, but I think it’s already useful and fun to use.
Check it out in kaalga.com
Would love to hear what you think
These make sense.
One other consideration to think about is provenance. Think of it as a public resource where anyone can see who did the original post/article and who deserves the link. Without this, we think it’s gameable.
It’s not content until it’s linked.
I like this sentiment, but would qualify at least partly. It’s not valuable content until it’s linked. (Or only the author cares about it until it’s linked).
Content is content; we could argue about that with no end. However, it’s the link providing much of the context, likely much of the readership, and therefore much of the discussion, and certainly most of the circulation.
And I particularly like RP bringing provenance into the discussion. Once an author creates something, it is no longer up to the author to determine it’s meaning. It’s up to us, hence the links.
Linking to the original source is a practice of many bloggers, who are also seen as curators of valuable information. News organizations need to realize why this has worked for the bloggers and understand that it adds value to what they are offering.
I also agree with the need to add value on top of just providing links. Why are you linking to this other source? What will the reader learn from that source that they don’t already know? What additional information might the reader be looking for?
[...] BuzzMachine » Blog Archive » The imperatives of the link economy All content must be transparent: open on the web with permanent links so it can receive links. It’s not content until it’s linked. (tags: links linkeconomy) [...]
What do you think of the approach that the ACM (http://portal.acm.org/) and the IEEE (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/) take with their digital libraries? Anyone can link to their article pages or discover articles through search engines, but you generally need to be a paid subscriber in order to access the full text. Does this align with or contradict what you see as the imperatives of the link economy?
@Matthew – in a perfect idealist state, I agree that provenance is not necessary; however, in a world where links equate to search engine and direct page traffic and every single page is monetizable via AdSense, a free public look-up resource seems warranted.
[...] a way to transition into the era where hyperlinks tie the story together. He gives the following imperatives. 1. All content must be transparent: open on the web with permanent links so it can receive links. [...]
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[...] It’s not content until it’s linked, links are a key to efficiency, and more. [...]
[...] Jarvis provides an extension of these thoughts when he writes on Buzzmachine – “All content must be transparent: open on the web with permanent links so it can receive [...]
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[...] remarkable is their success that the “link economy” has become an increasingly recognizable phenomena, a pattern that spotlights value [...]
[...] since we covered some new and strange-sounding topics, here’s additional reading on the link economy (and more posts here), the press sphere, and networked journalism (and more here and [...]
“It’s not content until it’s linked”
Does a tree in the woods make a sound if no one hears it fall?
The tree is there and the content is there and the statement is solid. Without a means of generating presence, content remains a static monument of emptyness. Linking simply gives life and meaning to an otherwise unknown block.
[...] should get a small cut of the ad revenue of cross-posted stories. We can become a linking service. Do like politico, the content creator shares their content with whomever wants to [...]
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[...] Link. If you don’t link, you’re a dead-end. [...]
[...] “you should know this” — then chances are, it’s not worth saying and in the link economy it won’t get audience, and so it’s not worth [...]
[...] this,” or “you should know this” — then chances are, it’s not worth saying and in the link economy it won’t get audience, and so it’s not worth [...]
[...] He coined, awhile back, a simple line that is quickly becoming more of a mantra than anything else. Full detail here, but his line: “do what you do best, and link to the rest” resonates with the best way [...]
[...] Jarvis is a big proponent of the link economy. All content must be transparent: open on the web with permanent links so it can receive links. [...]
[...] “link economy” strategies work for “traditional” companies? Here are Jeff Jarvis’ four principles. And below is a modified version, applied to companies in pursuit of [...]
[...] Link Economics (Buzzmachine) View Poll [...]
[...] is a necessity of efficiency – no one can afford to waste resources on commodity news – but also a necessity of the link economy, for it is through others’ links that original journalism will get attention and audience and the [...]
[...] (nadie puede permitirse el lujo de gastar recursos en noticias generales) y también por la economía del enlace, puesto que a través de los enlaces de otros el periodismo genuino logrará atención y audiencia, [...]
[...] second point is that Rick is keen to bring the online notion of the link economy, explained here by Jeff Jarvis, back to the real world. In his lecture, Waghorn quoted Jarvis by saying “[d]o [...]
[...] if news becomes more transparent. The whole web works by links (what Jeff calls the "linked economy"), so why shouldn’t news work in the same way. By doing “what you do best [...]
[...] link economy works. The copy-paste website method that most papers practice isn’t going to cut it in a [...]
[...] a small point to harp on, but it feels like a misstep by the normally surefooted Times. Part of the link economy is making it possible (even easy!) for other people to send you traffic. This entry was written [...]
[...] Kort gezegd is het de volgende slogan: “Cover what you do best, link to the rest” (lees ook deze twee artikelen van Jeff [...]
[...] i vente”. (Hadde DN som et mediehus med økonomi som spesialfelt også forstått nettets lenkeøkononomi ville jeg ha lenket til artikkelen, men slik blir det ikke all den tid DN neglisjerer [...]
[...] contacts and build a name for yourself. But it’s more than that: Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) harps on linking as a journalistic skill too. When you are immersed in your beat, instead of viewing other news [...]
[...] contacts and build a name for yourself. But it’s more than that: Jeff Jarvis (@jeffjarvis) harps on linking as a journalistic skill too. When you are immersed in your beat, instead of viewing other news [...]
[...] mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} “link economy”, championed by Jeff Jarvis, and which he deems vital to the future of online [...]
[...] The imperative of the link economy [...]
[...] If you’re looking for more detail from Jarvis, read The Google Economy and The Imperatives of the Link Economy. [...]
[...] should get a small cut of the ad revenue of cross-posted stories. We can become a linking service. Do like politico, the content creator shares their content with whomever wants to [...]
[...] current definition means that a ‘new media’ expert is up-to-speed on blogging, linking, short form video, Facebook, Twitter, other social networks, etc… All of this expertise is a real [...]
[...] concept de @cosme repose sur la Link Economy (que Jeff Jarvis a été le premier à mettre en lumière) : @cosme ne vend pas de produits lui-même mais joue le [...]
[...] thinks. It’s hurting them by cutting off links to the original reporting. That is how the link economy works. (Oh, and by the way, the big bad portals are themselves crumbling. One wonders which will [...]
[...] who have invested their capital, skill and time.” He doesn’t want to see that in the link economy, Google does precisely the opposite: adding value with its links. If you think those links are so [...]
[...] the structure of the link economy, it’s then up to the Post to monetize that audience. This could be aided, though, by a [...]
[...] media organisations still stuck in the yesteryear are struggling to cope with what some has termed the link economy. In this Internet period of humankind, I think the question is not about whether people should be [...]
[...] safe to assume that the majority of your content can/will be found elsewhere online. Thank the link economy and information wanting to be free. Therefore, people can find your service elsewhere, they don’t [...]
[...] taking content rather than sending audience to him, but I’ll spare us the lecture on the link economy vs. the content [...]
[...] how can journalists create value? They can and should report – but the link economy demands that they specialize, that they stand out above the level playing field by reporting [...]
[...] gratis, Jeff Harvis insiste en que el desafío actual, entre otras cosas, es conocer los modelos de contenidos. Saber armar una nota o un vídeo ya no es un requisito diferenciador, [...]
[...] about bloggers. Like the millennial clash of business models in media – the content economy v. the link economy and the inability of one to understand the other – here we see a clash over journalistic culture [...]
[...] thinking is incomplete in a few ways. First, he is ignorant of the imperatives of the link economy. The links and discussion he wants to outlaw is precisely how content is [...]
[...] thinking is incomplete in a few ways. First, he is ignorant of the imperatives of the link economy. The links and discussion he wants to outlaw is precisely how content is [...]
[...] contenus implique le passage d’une économie de contenus à une économie de liens. Jeff Jarvis a formulé les quatre impératifs de l’économie de liens, dont celui-ci: 2. The recipient of [...]
[...] today must be online and are governed, in part, by the concept known as the Link Economy – a term popularized by Jeff Jarvis, an early blogger, internet enthusiast, and journalism professor, and promulgated by [...]
[...] their journalism from the conversation that will distribute it. Let’s have a talk about the imperatives of the link [...]