What’s the difference between a Content Mall and a Web Ring?
Clint Ivy, a well known blogger in the Web Analytics arena asks what’s the difference between a Content Mall and Web Ring?
He refers to wikipedia for this Web Ring definition:
“A web ring is group of related web pages linked to each other in a sequence that forms a ring. When someone searching the web stumbles across one of the web ring’s pages, they can click through to other sites that have related content. Web content-providers can add their pages to the ring by ‘linking in’ to the ring so that web surfers are more likely to encounter their site. Web rings usually have a moderator who controls which pages are ‘related’ and which are orthogonal to the purpose of the web ring. The step-by-step click-through route around the ring is augmented by a hub-site providing links to all member-sites, which also gives some safeguard against member sites going offline.”
I believe that Robert and the Podtech.net’s model is to harness existing content and publish through the website as the platform. Robert eludes to several ‘media outlets’ that products content such as gawker, federated media, b5, and others. These tend to be more organized groups of content providers than a web ring, which may be an informal partnership. Robert says the following:
“The next six months are going to be very important ones. We’re signing up TONS of new content partners. It’ll be interesting to see if we can finish up the technology-focused part of our content mall and get some key stores in other areas like movies, sports, lifestyle, built up.”
In summary, A web ring is an group of informal partners or affiliates that link to each other, where I see a content mall as being a platform for multiple content sources to be shared. In many ways, YouTube is a content mall, and Google Images is not.
Does this make more sense Clint? It’s likely that a content mall is a new type of media type that’s not existed before. As you, these are just my opinions and I don’t know Robert’s full strategy yet, as I’ve not yet started as an employee at podtech.
3 Comments so far
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Jeremiah, when I first read your description of “content malls” what popped into my mind was “Ah, that sounds like a magazine!” Magazines typically (a) mix editorial content and advertising; (b) the content is produced by a mix of full time and part time staff (the work of the latter frequently being governed by “works made for hire” contracts); (c) there is frequently a communication or influence “firewall” between editorial and advertising operations, and (d) there is a mix of revenue streams based on both subscription income as well as advertising income. Is this an accurate metaphor?
Dennis
I talked to some other folks about your metaphor of “magazine” and it seemed to work well. Thanks
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