Publishing : Then & Now

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December 13, 2006

Since buying back their web domain name, Wired magazine has been spending a lot of time working out what to do with its site. On his blog, Wired’s editor in chief Chris Anderson admits that much has changed since they were involved in their site in the 90s. Here’s a summary of a list he put together of the changes he’s noticed in publishing:

THEN: Bookmarks and habit drive traffic to the home page… Portals rule.

NOW: Search and blog links drive readers to individual stories; they leave as quickly as they come. “De-portalization” rules.

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THEN: Media as Lecture: we create content, you read it.

NOW: Media as Conversation: a total blur between traditional journalism, blogging and user comment/contributions.

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THEN: Readers read HTML in a standard web browser window.

NOW: More and more people read via RSS, where content is divorced from context. Media is atomized and microchunked.

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THEN: We control the site. Editors are gatekeepers.

NOW: We share control with readers.

What would radical transparency mean for Wired? (Part 1)