At Huff Post and Social Media Networks - A Nation of Serfs, and a "Tom Sawyer Moment"

David Carr, NY Times:

... The Huffington Post, social networks and traditional media may all seem like different animals, but as advertising, the mother’s milk of all media, flows toward social and amateur media, low-cost and no-cost content is becoming the norm.

For those of us who make a living typing, it’s all very scary, of course. It’s less about the diminution of authority and expertise, although there is that, and more about the growing perception that content is a commodity, and one that can be had for the price of zero. (Content manufacturers like Demand Media that gin up $15 articles based on searches, put the price only slightly above that.) Old-line media companies that are not only forced to compete with the currency and sexiness of social media, but also burdened by a cost structure for professionally produced content, are left at a profound disadvantage.

For the media, this is a Tom Sawyer moment. “Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?” he says to his friends, and sure enough, they are soon lined up for the privilege of doing his chores. That’s a bit like how social networks get built. (Just imagine if Tom had also schooled them in the networking opportunities of the user-generated endeavor: “You’re not just painting a fence. You’re building an audience around your personal brand.”)

“The technology of a lot of these sites is very seductive, and it lulls you into contributing,” said Anthony De Rosa, a product manager at Reuters. “We are being played for suckers to feed the beast, to create content that ends up creating value for others.”

Last month, Mr. De Rosa wrote — on Tumblr, naturally — about how audiences became publishers, essentially painting the fence for the people who own the various platforms.

“We live in a world of Digital Feudalism,” he wrote. “The land many live on is owned by someone else, be it Facebook or Twitter or Tumblr, or some other service that offers up free land and the content provided by the renter of that land essentially becomes owned by the platform that owns the land.” ...

How Authors Move Their Own Merch

Joanne Kaufman - WSJ: "... Web-savvy authors point to the myriad opportunities provided by social networking sites. (Bruce DeSilva, for example, posted a slideshow on his Facebook page of famous people reading his debut crime novel, 'Rogue Island.') They point, as well, to publishers' ever more skimpy advertising budgets and the contraction of marketing and publicity departments, making it all the more essential for them to step into the void. And they have taken due note of the daunting noise—and numbers—in the marketplace. According to Penny Sansevieri, an adjunct professor at New York University and CEO of Author Marketing, a publicity firm, there are 1,500 books published daily in the U.S., including self-published titles. 'To get noticed,' she said, 'you have to throw more at people than just your book.' ... "

Wattpad Reports 300% Growth in Traffic Dec. '09 vs. Dec. '10

Press Release:

Wattpad is reporting a record December, seeing a 20 percent growth over November’s traffic and 300 percent more visitors when compared to the previous year. This reading spike resulted in many novels crossing the 1 Million Reads landmark.

 The Android app saw the largest percentage of growth, with four times the usage in December as compared to the month before, furthering its gain over the BlackBerry. December also saw an increase overall in minutes spent on the site to 338 Million minutes a month.

The iPhone, iPod and iPad app remains the largest driver of mobile traffic of all devices, accounting for as much traffic as the web.

As Wattpad’s overall numbers grew, many novels and their authors saw exponential traffic increases. The top three books on Wattpad this December were:

1. YA novel “The Adventures of You: Fabulous Terrible” by Sophie Talbot, published by Chooseco, publishers of the Choose Your Own Adventure series.

2. 16 year old Jordan Lynde’s YA novel “A Proscriptive Relationship” which brings her total number of reads to 4.85 Million

3. Historical novel “The Last Dance” by S. Dust which has been read 3.6 Million times" ...

How Online Reading Habits Have Changed Over 2010

Macmanus, NYTimes: "One of the more subtle trends of 2010 has been the way that our reading habits have changed, due to a convergence of other Web trends: mobile apps, real-time Web (mostly Twitter), and social networking as a way to track news (mostly Facebook). In the previous era of the Web, the so-called Web 2.0, RSS Readers and start pages were all the rage. Over 2010, though, more people used tools like Twitter, Facebook, Instapaper, Flipboard, LazyWeb, Feedly and TweetDeck, to track news. Nowadays I'm more likely to find stories to read via a vertical aggregator (the media-focused Mediagazer is my current favorite) and save them to Instapaper for later reading via my iPhone or iPad. I still use Google Reader, but in all honesty I now use it more to scan than to read. ... "