Social Media Today, with IBM, hosted a breakfast interchange with author and digital visionary Clay Shirky and IBM Global Business Services (GBS) leader and author Saul Berman at the Yale Club. Part of PivotCon and Social Week, the breakfast included an audience of CEO's, CMO's, investors and top bloggers to participate in a conversation about how to monetize in the era of "freemium."
Some highlights:
According to Shirky, innovative publishing models, like the one being used at the New York Times, regard content as a "service," not a product, and allow people to interact in an experience of their brand.
When the conversation shifted to marketers and connecting with customers, Shirky noted that the big change for companies is that "the number of places where that can create value in the company is so much larger than the MarCom function anymore."
Berman, in referring to the need for better customer insight for monetization, noted that in IBM's recent CMO study, only 26 percent of the 1,700 surveyed replied that they monitor blogs for decision-making, relying instead on market data which is frequently dated by the time it arrives.
Further, as far as big data is concerned (which was a major concern of the panel), "... not one size fits all [...] lots of opportunity there [...] particularly in the area of predictive analytics."
We're bringing to our Social Media Today members the videos of yesterday's discussion here, and we're going to house them indefinitely in our Best Thinking reports area. I'd like to give special thanks and recognition to a great audience, who gamely agreed to participate in a contest to determine the best monetization strategy for book publishing (a hot topic in light of Amazon's recent announcement).
Along with our co-sponsor, IBM, we're very pleased to bring you this kind of look into the future of media and business models, and always are open to your ideas on how we can keep the conversation going. Reach out to me with your thoughts at [email protected].