Lloyd's Challenge

There’s a good piece in today’s NY Times about Lloyd Braun’s efforts to create compelling programming at Yahoo.

Early in the article there is description of Lloyd’s mantras:

"more immersive," "more engaging," and most of all, more "original programming"

My initial reaction was, "that’s not going to work".  Original programming isn’t really what the Internet is all about.

But as I read on, I learned that Lloyd’s job is to:

invent a medium that unites the
showmanship of television with the interactivity of the Internet. Find
a way to combine the best of Hollywood’s talent with the voice of the
masses

That’s more like it.  The voice of the masses is what the Internet is all about.

I’d urge anyone interested in this stuff to go read the article because its quite interesting.

Lloyd’s challenge, and the challenge of anyone coming from the traditional content world, is to forget what they learned about original programming.  That’s not where its at on the Internet.

The challenge is all about how to take the work of the masses and assemble it into compelling content.  The company that figures that out will do very well.

A good first step is "Blog for Hope," a series of celebrity blogs about coping with cancer that Lloyd’s group is launching this fall.

I’d love to see more stuff like that.