Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

I suppose if everyone were jumping off a bridge, I’d be, too - as I’m sitting in a crowd full of live-bloggers at the Mediabistro Circus. Chris Anderson from Long Tail fame is on the stage … Let’s see what he has to say:

Anderson is speaking about community - here’s what that means:

• A community includes someone with a profile, and an energized reputation - someone who communicates w/ people publicly and privately. The people and the community both have an identity.
• Anderson isn’t a fan of the social network site… rather, he thinks that’s social networking should be build into existing sites.
• He’s a fan of Ning. (So are we.)
• In a world of commodity information, what we need is a "clear sense of purpose" for our information.
• Anderson’s posted the same PubMatic chart we referenced last week and is talking about the high CPC’s he sees from small niche sites - $7 compared to much less for the big guys. Message to BtoB publishers (and we’ve been saying this for some time) - It’s not about CPM - it’s about CPC and how relevant those ads become to the people using the site.

In a nutshell - the rewards for the niche publisher exist for those who embrace their niche and stop trying to behave like the big guys.