Not Surprising
Saul Hansell has a story in today’s New York Times about Lloyd Braun’s new strategy at Yahoo!Media Group. Lloyd is backing away from long form video and focusing on user generated content and "content acquired by other media companies".
Lloyd is quoted as saying:
"I didn’t fully appreciate what success in this medium is really going
to look like," he said. "This is not about creating one-off hits like
in my old business. That is not going to create a sustainable
competitive advantage over the long term."
Frankly this is a good thing. Nobody really knows what "this medium is going to look like". So weaving and bobbing is what is required right now.
But I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that I saw this coming last September when I posted about another article in the NY Times about Lloyd Braun. At that time, Lloyd was promoting this strategy:
"more immersive," "more engaging," and most of all, more "original programming"
I said in my original post:
My initial reaction was, "that’s not going to work". Original programming isn’t really what the Internet is all about
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.
It’s good to see that Lloyd and his colleagues at Yahoo! are figuring that out quickly before they throw lots of time, energy, and money down a rat hole.