With promises of making big money off of readers without relying on subscriptions and hundreds of alleged partners who’ve signed on as early testers, publishing startup Invisibly might just be the next big thing/one of media’s best kept secrets. But if it’s not subscriptions, and it’s not advertising, what exactly is Invisibly’s play – and how can they be so confident it will translate into billions?
In response to the growing tendency towards short-form content and 140-character length snippets, Medium established itself as a destination for thought pieces and long-form articles. This case from Robert Siegel and Matthew Saucedo takes a look inside the challenges facing Medium’s leadership team as they strive to build a successful digital media company and develop a sustainable monetization model. As journalism innovates, can Medium serve as a noteworthy model for publishing in the digital age?
One of the most pressing issues facing the news & media today is how to navigate and define journalism’s evolving relationship with giant actors in the platform economy like Facebook, Google. As the 2016 presidential election and the skyrocketing of fake news show, these platforms wield enormous power in shaping the societal dialogue around critical issues, and publishers must grapple with the ramifications of being disintermediated.
Professor Bharat Anand offers some germane and timely advice for media companies (hint: all companies are media companies now) in the digital age. Namely, Anand revisits newspapers and reveals some surprising facts about what really caused the industry’s decline. Professor Anand’s insights are useful for anyone looking to play in the digital landscape and leverage the power of connections to develop profitable business models and avoid falling into the “content trap.”
In an innovative data-sharing partnership, Waze’s Connected Citizen Program connects local governments with traffic incident and congestion data. Professor Mitchell Weiss’s case on the program offers a masterclass in management principles for how small partnerships with government can scale like they’re a Silicon Valley hotshot and successfully build cities fit for the future.
This post was originally published on the Digital Initiative’s classroom blogging platform. “We are deeply sorry for the unintended offensive and hurtful tweets from Tay, which do not represent who we are or what we stand for, nor how we designed Tay.” [1] Approximately 16 hours after launching its conversational chatterbot Tay in 2016, Microsoft […]
This post was originally published on the Digital Initiative’s classroom blogging platform. GoPro’s attempts to capitalize on User Generated Content has led them through a journey of value creation, to value capture, and then back to value creation again, as it struggles to grow beyond its camera product line. In November 2016, GoPro cut 15 […]
This post was originally published on the Digital Initiative’s classroom blogging platform. How does crowdsourcing help create your favorite ice-cream flavor? Ice-cream fans: love the classic Cherry Garcia flavor of Ben & Jerry’s? Do you know it was developed out of a crowdsourcing campaign of the U.S. ice-cream maker? Ben & Jerry’s is probably best […]
This post was originally published on the Digital Initiative’s classroom blogging platform. Google Maps has evolved into a platform boasting powerful direct and indirect network effects. In October 2004, Google acquired Sydney-based Where 2 Technologies to create web application Google Maps [1]. At the time, it may have seemed that Google Maps was purely a […]
This post was originally published on the Digital Initiative’s classroom blogging platform. Leveraging the real-time data from crowds to make the best of the day and night Using the power of crowds to find the crowds Whether you have lived in a city for many years, or are visiting a city on vacation for the […]