Digital Quarters – Ben Elowitz
Wetpaint CEO Ben Elowitz on the Future of Digital Media
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About Ben Elowitz
About Ben Elowitz Ben Elowitz is co-founder and CEO of Wetpaint, a technology platform company that is reinventing the media model on the social web. The company attracts more than 15 million unique visitors monthly on its platform. In addition to Digital Quarters, he writes Media Success, a bold and forthright newsletter for digital media thought leaders. His work has been featured in FORTUNE, TechCrunch, All Things D, The Huffington Post, Forbes, TIME, CNNMoney, paidContent, and CNBC.com, among others. Prior to Wetpaint, Ben co-founded Blue Nile (NILE), the largest online retailer of luxury goods. Ben was also an early employee at Fatbrain.com (FATB), an ecommerce company that went public in 1998 and was sold to Barnes & Noble in 1999. Ben holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science and a B.A. in Applied Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is an angel investor in a number of media and ecommerce companies, and is a frequent conference speaker on digital media, social content, and entrepreneurship.
Archive for the ‘TV’ Category
Viacom Takes Its Toys and Goes Home
4 Mar2010
by Ben Elowitz
Viacom this week told Hulu that it is pulling its content out of the video site because they couldn’t reach economic terms that value The Daily Show and Steven Colbert to Viacom’s satisfaction. Brian Stelter reported the story for the New York Times this week, quoting me with reference to the ‘game of chicken’ that Viacom has been playing with Hulu. This game plays to chairman Sumner Redstone’s strengths, as he’s already presided over the protracted “off-again, off-again” conversations by which Viacom’s sister-company CBS has held out from Hulu.
But these negotiations over how to divide the pie miss the opportunity altogether. Against all odds, Hulu has surprisingly created a successful consumer destination. With a great consumer experience, Hulu has become *the* destination for “official” TV video. While media executives fret the impending decline of television, the future has already begun to gel at the site with an audience of 30 million, advertiser demand, and premium monetization.
The shame is that Hulu CEO Jason Kilar and his team have their efforts drained by brinkmanship negotiations with the industry. What a waste of time! Instead, what would benefit all parties — Hulu, its equity partners, and the industry at large — is for Hulu to spend time on improving the consumer experience, enticing audiences, and monetizing. Further, Hulu may be in the best position of any media venture to command premium and subscription pricing from consumers — so additional content and scale could help make digital video more profitable. Unlike the drain of the power games that Viacom is playing, these constructive investments would have the prospect of lifting the fortunes of the media industry for everyone’s benefit.
While Hulu offers hope for the industry, Viacom crushes it.
- In: Premium Content|TV
- Tags: cbs, daily show, hulu, jason kilar, steven colbert, sumner redstone, viacom, video
TV News Is Breaking — Can ABC Make A New Model?
23 Feb2010
by Ben Elowitz
ABC has begun today the process of restructuring its news operations, indicating planned layoffs of 300-400 employees. The six-point memo from ABC News President David Westin presents the changes as an overhaul of how the network produces news to match the “revolution in the ways that people get their news and information.”
But what we need now is a revolution in how content is created, not just in how it’s consumed. The real value isn’t in production efficiency for its own sake, and I’m surprised Westin missed the opportunity to define how ABC News can use this restructuring as a weapon to not just serve but grow audiences.
Yes, the changes will help ABC be more competitive on the cost side of the business by shifting the workforce into more flexible (and overall, far fewer) roles — doing more with less. Taking advantage of digital technology, the news industry no longer needs as many specialty roles to manage equipment and content. The technology is so much more accessible, portable, and efficient now that an it can all be at he fingertips of a single content creator.
Well beyond cost reduction, however, a vision of a more flexible workforce has real implications for audience — which is far more important of a lever on ABC’s business. If ABC can reduce the size of its working units, and evolve them to be more flexible to deploy, it should translate into the network being able to cover more stories, sooner, deeper, and better than competitors.
Additionally, if ABC can maintain its quality level of reporting in the new structure (and I think the news network should be and is deeply committed to doing so), it can scale its operations up this way, two ways: both with its own proprietary content, but even more interestingly, allowing it to integrate third-party and user-sourced content into the conversation.
The upcoming layoffs and restructuring will be painful, but this action is a sober and proactive recognition of the changing rules of the game. And if ABC executes right, it may not only be able to position itself as a leader of the new game, but to even establish some of the new rules of play. They certainly are indicating the right orientation to guide them: it is all about the audience.