An issue I’ve been discussing with Sami Salmenkivi in particular: with the overflow of news, articles, research, events, videos, fun stuff, cool stuff, etc. on the web, few people, especially those leading hectic business lifestyles, have the time or the resources to follow even the developments in their own field of work, let alone all the other stuff that might entertain or inspire them. For this, a new breed of workers, Media Jockeys (MJ’s), is required.
There are some services, such as myfeedz, that allow you to key in a few keywords, after which the service generates an automated feed around the subjects that you can subscribe to. While these can be useful (I’ve found some good stuff through myfeedz that I otherwise wouldn’t have), they generate a lot of useless crud that doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m interested in.
People, however, have the ability to pretty effectively screen out the useless stuff by just looking at the title of an article, and let through only the good stuff. this is why, for example, many higher-up business people could well use the services of professional media jockeys that would know their preferences and thus be able to serve them a daily dose of highly concentrated info flow. Of course, this is already done by many bloggers, for example, as they highlight certain develoments and events around the world. Some share their newsfeeds for RSS readers. Links shared through del.icio.us are also one manifestation of the phenomenon.
I certainly think there is a market for even more professional media jockeys (I do this for some of my clients as an extra service), since the lust for info is high and time is a limited resource. However, I’m not entirely sure what kind of business model would work here. Surely the MJ should already be pretty well in terms with the given area of expertise to be able to spot quality among all the useless stuff. What do you think?
1 response so far ↓
1 Niko // Mar 28, 2007 at 8:46 pm
It’s the problem of non-adequate filters.
Many people are trying to build filters with technology, MyFeedz being a recent entrant among older players like Technorati and other services that allow users to subscribe to tags or searches.
Everyone wants a filter that is completely tailored to their preferences. A personal mediajockey might do, for those who can afford it.
Not sure if the DJ analogy is good though — DJ’s pick their careful selection and broadcast them to masses, much like bloggers do. If you can find a DJ or a blogger whose tastes match yours 100%, good for you! I know I haven’t found either.
And taking this further, this jockeying of media is not much different than the work of a news reporter, except now there are millions of reporters to choose from (effectively requiring a JJ, jockeyjockey, who chooses which mediajockeys to pay attention to.. oh there are those already too).
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