What Would Google Do? Part 6

You need to encourage employees to suggest new ideas-even suggestions that will cannibalize, destroy, and rethink your business. It's better for you to disrupt and cannibalize yourself than for a compet.i.tor to do it to you. Just as Dell, Starbucks, and Salesforce.com maintain versions of their ideas platforms for employees and as Best Buy has BlueShirt Nation, its online community where employees solve problems, so does Google maintain a place for ideas. "It's like a voting pool where you can say how good or bad you think an idea is," Mayer told Fast Company. "Those comments lead to new ideas." Add the lessons of openness and transparency to the need for innovation and you will end up building s.p.a.ces where employees can share ideas and improve them. Procter & Gamble's A.G. Lafley said in Strategy + Business that "a practice of open open innovation" (his emphasis) with "a broad network of social interactions" is critical. "The idea for a new product may spring from the mind of an individual, but only a collective effort can carry that idea through prototyping and launch." innovation" (his emphasis) with "a broad network of social interactions" is critical. "The idea for a new product may spring from the mind of an individual, but only a collective effort can carry that idea through prototyping and launch."

There are different schools of thought about ownership of ideas. Lafley emphasized collective effort. Mayer said that in Google's "incredibly open culture" the company tries to avoid territoriality and to "give ideas credit, not credit for ideas." Nike understands the need to own and protect an idea. In 2008, I attended a brainstorming session at Nike aimed at finding better systems to encourage employees to contribute to their communities. We heard from four employees who were already doing this on their own. One of them, footwear designer D'Wayne Edwards, created a contest for young and aspiring designers. Edwards had many agendas: He wanted the company to nurture designers like him. He had grown up dreaming of creating sports footwear. Mentors gave him guidance and breaks, which led to his dream job at Nike. He wanted to give back. He also believed that Nike owed a debt to the urban young people who had elevated the company's brands and made them hot. And he believed his contest would help the company find and develop talent with new ideas. Edwards said the contest's winners, though just teenagers, had enough talent and innovative spirit to start working at Nike the next day.

The group discussed Edwards' process in hopes of replicating-or at least not ruining-his innovation and enthusiasm. We heard his fears. Edwards didn't want to be stopped, so he didn't start by asking permission. At Nike, they said, employees are told it's better to seek forgiveness than permission. Just do it, you know. Edwards also didn't want someone taking over his project, taking credit for it or corrupting it; he demanded ownership. Edwards needed Nike because its brand would attract young people and inspire them. Nike was his platform. To use the brand, he had to get his project vetted by lawyers, but he picked ones he knew would help. It was a rogue operation-innovation is, by definition, rogue. So here was Nike convening a meeting of insiders and outsiders to figure out how to nurture more rogues.

Bureaucracies, task forces, org charts, and formal processes do not breed innovation. They kill it. When I came up with the idea for Entertainment Weekly magazine at Time Inc. in 1984, it was rejected out of hand because the company's top editor did not think one magazine could possibly serve people who liked movies, TV, books, music, and video. People who watch TV, he said, do not read books. Six years later, my proposal arose again from the dead-idea file. After I made prototypes aplenty and we tested the idea exhaustively and made business plans galore, a task force was a.s.sembled for the express purpose of trying to kill it. You could say they were there to perform due diligence or you could say they were there to cover the bosses' a.s.ses. In any case, the magazine finally started. After an astounding $200 million investment-not all of it my fault-Entertainment Weekly became a franchise that brings in a few hundred million dollars a year. Innovation happens in spite of the structure of organizations.

In 2008, I joined a seminar on innovation at the World Economic Forum at Davos. It was a highly formatted hour, with the entire room sitting in a circle (making the moderator dizzy). They had us write down the technology we loved most. Then we compared notes with a neighbor and came up with some neat invention out of this mashup. We heard a few cute ideas and then, thank goodness, a scientist in the room put a stop to it. This, he said, is not how innovation is made. Scientists start with a problem and then try to find a solution. I'll show in a later chapter on the Google.org foundation, "Google Power & Light," that Google's founders approach invention in that order: first find the problem, and then create the solution. Beware the cool idea.

Of course, innovation and ideas do not come only from within. Remember Michael Dell saying that a company cannot be built on the ideas of a few people. "Ideas come from everywhere," Mayer told Stanford's students. When Google got into mapping, she said, it found engineers in Australia "who were just amazingly good at mapping interfaces" and then hired them. Google bought other products and ideas this way, leading to platforms for blogging, feeds, Google Docs, and advertising systems. Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics Wikinomics, told the BBC's Peter Day on his In Business In Business program in 2007 that Procter & Gamble now relies on ideas and solutions not invented there but "proudly found elsewhere." program in 2007 that Procter & Gamble now relies on ideas and solutions not invented there but "proudly found elsewhere."

Day went on to report on the solutions platform InnoCentive, where scores of companies post problems with offers of rewards for solutions from independent inventors, scientists, and tinkerers, whom InnoCentive calls "solvers." The problems range from the profound (a $1 million reward to find "a biomarker for measuring disease progression in Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis [ALS or Lou Gehrig's Disease]") to the scientifically geeky ("near complete conversion of phenol compounds into non-volatile or insoluble products in an aqueous solution") to the prosaic (a large company wanted "bakeable cheese technology" for snack products; another offered $5,000 for "novel approaches to gently and effectively clean a baby;" and the Rockefeller Foundation offered $20,000 for the design of solar-powered internet routers).

No matter where the ideas come from, innovation is, of course, all about people, their talent, and how you nurture it. Rishad Tobaccowala, an advertising executive you'll hear from in the chapter, "Advertising," says the genius of Google's 20 percent rule is that if you enable people to follow their pa.s.sions, they'll as much as work for free. Google, he said, knows how to find smart people and give them what they want: "They want to work for a winner. They want to have the ability to feel special. They want to have the ability to follow their pa.s.sions. They want the ability to make money. And they want to have the ability to increase their external market value-it helps me build a brand: myself." Mayer said just working with smart people challenges other people in the company-and besides, they're easier to manage.

Google's lesson is clear: Make innovation your business.

Simplify, simplify

Once you decide what business you're really in, once you settle on your strategy, once you figure out how to execute it in the new architecture and realities of the Google age, once you cast a new relationship with your world, once you absorb new ethics of this new era into your company's culture, once you make innovation a keystone of that culture, then there's one more important thing to do, another vital lesson to learn from Google: simplify.

In their 2005 history of Google, authors David A. Vise and Mark Malseed recounted the story of Google testing an early version of its spare and spartan home page with users: The testers were told to use Google to find the answer to a trivia question: Which country won the most gold medals in the 1994 Olympics? They typed www.google.com, watched the homepage come up on the screen, and then they waited. Fifteen seconds went by...twenty seconds...forty-five. [Marissa] Mayer wondered what was going on, but didn't want to interfere. Finally, she asked them, "What are you waiting for?" "The rest of the page to load," they answered. The same thing kept happening all day, Mayer recalled. "The web was so full of things that moved and flashed and blinked and made you punch the monkey that they were waiting for the rest of it to show up."

Mayer's team changed the design to make the copyright notice at the bottom of the page stand out, just to let users know the page was done loading so they could get started.

I had to learn the lesson of simplicity myself when I debated about the t.i.tle of this book with my editor and publisher. My original t.i.tle was WWGD? (What Would Google Do?) WWGD? (What Would Google Do?). It was a joke that I knew would work only in America, inspired by b.u.mper stickers and bracelets that ask, WWJD? (What would Jesus do?) In this equation Google was G.o.d. But the publishing company thought this double t.i.tle was too complicated. They wanted to simplify. I argued with them, holding dearly to my gag. To my editor's discomfort, I decided to take the debate to my blog readers, as is my reflex now. A great discussion ensued with a few dozen comments, a majority disagreeing with my argument. Then a commenter named Ellen advised: "To me, it doesn't matter what we all think. You should decide based on What Google Would Do, since that is the point of your book." Right. What would Google do? It would simplify. I had to follow my own rules. I simplified the t.i.tle.

Google is perhaps the most powerful single tool that can be used by anyone on earth. But it is also the simplest. Compare Google's home page with a TV remote control, a clock radio, a tax form, an insurance policy, any legal doc.u.ment, many ecommerce sites, Microsoft Word's toolbar, most companies' org charts, and the last five memos you wrote. Google is simple.

Google shares its design aspirations on the web for all to see. "The Google User Experience team aims to create designs that are useful, fast, simple, engaging, innovative, universal, profitable, beautiful, trustworthy, and personable," the team wrote on a Google blog. "Achieving a harmonious balance of these 10 principles is a constant challenge. A product that gets the balance right is 'Googley'-and will satisfy and delight people all over the world." Their key design principle: "Simplicity is powerful.... Google teams think twice before sacrificing simplicity in pursuit of a less important feature." Or to quote another internal Google company principle: "It's best to do one thing really, really well."

Simplicity is empowering. I don't have to use Google the way someone else says I should, following its path of navigation. I don't have to feel stupid looking up instructions. Google never makes me feel foolish for making mistakes ("Did you mean...?" it graciously asks when I misspell or mistype). It doesn't waste my time trying to find what I want. It just gives me a blank box and puts the world behind it.

Design is about more than aesthetics. Design is an ethic. Design is the path by which you interact with your public. Magazines, clothes, and cars aren't the only things that are designed. Companies are designed. Services are designed. Rules are designed. The simpler and clearer the design, the better. To be simple is to be direct. To be direct is to be honest. To be honest is to be human. To be human is to be in a conversation. To be in a conversation is to collaborate. To collaborate is to hand over control. And we are back to where we started, to Jarvis' First Law: Give the people control and we will use it. Don't and you will lose us. Simple.

Get out of the way

One more law from one more leader.

Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist, is a wonderful character. You'll never meet a more una.s.suming revolutionary and mogul. Proudly geeky, rarely fashionable (the one time I saw him in a tie, he said he put it on just to scare people), soft-spoken, impish, and ironic, he is not what you expect, whatever that is.

Newmark confounds business people, running a service mostly for free. He charges just for job ads and real-estate ads in some cities. By various accounts, he has destroyed a few billion dollars in value in the newspaper cla.s.sified business. But as I said earlier, Newmark isn't at fault-the internet is. craigslist reveals no figures publicly, but it has been estimated that it brings in $100 million a year with just 25 employees. Still, money does not motivate Newmark and his president, Jim Buckmaster. Newmark could exploit his service for many times more income and equity. He could sell out for a fortune. He has no intention of doing either. That's what business people don't understand about him. He is like an alien to them (indeed, he is a bit like ALF).

Newmark introduces himself as the founder and customer service rep for craigslist. That always gets a laugh, but he doesn't mean it as a punch line. That's what he does: customer service. And that is the essence of craigslist's worth. If the community becomes overrun with spammers and scammers, it will lose value for its members. So Newmark listens to their complaints and fixes problems. Craig is the cop.

When Newmark spoke to my students at the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism about some of the projects he was engaged in for the public good-such as investing in the future of quality journalism-one of them asked why he didn't sell craigslist for billions of dollars, which he certainly could, and turn his a.s.sets to philanthropy. Newmark said he believes he is helping people more by keeping money in their pockets and away from middlemen. He attributes the success of craigslist to treating his community as stakeholders, and he is paying them their internet dividend.

Newmark operates by many of the rules in this book. He created a platform and network for his communities. He trusts the wisdom of his crowd. He brings communities elegant organization. He understands that free is a business model. He relies on the gift economy. He dooms middlemen. He runs a disarmingly simple system. But then he adds his own unifying principle of technology, communities, and the internet. Here it is, with cla.s.sic Craig brevity: "Get out of the way."

That's it, Craig's Law: Get out of the way. If you make a great platform that people really want to use, he argues, then the worst thing you could do is to put yourself in the middle, getting in the way of what people want to do with it. As a customer, I often feel that airlines, cable companies, phone companies, insurance companies, doctor's offices, car dealers, banks, schools, and government agencies exist to get in my way-it's their business model. Not Newmark.

When he started craigslist as an email list, Newmark will tell you he had no idea what it would turn into. He didn't know the impact it would have on cla.s.sifieds and news. He didn't know that people would find each other and go on dates and find restaurants for those dates and get married and have kids and buy baby furniture and get apartments and buy cars and improve their lives thanks to his simple lines of code. But they did. He didn't know that when Hurricane Katrina struck, the New Orleans diaspora would use craigslist to find each other and jobs and homes. If he had tried to antic.i.p.ate that, if he had over-researched and over-designed and set up all kinds of rules, restrictions, navigation, instructions, and fees for how to use craigslist, Katrina's people wouldn't have done what they did. And craigslist would be smaller than it is.

Instead Newmark created something useful that people used. He stood back and let them do it. He listened to them and added the features they wanted. He kept listening and solved problems with the technology and with the community's use of it. And, by the way, his is about the ugliest but most useful design you can find this side of Google.

Google, too, tries to get out of the way. It creates platforms that people use-even enabling them to build businesses atop them-in ways that Google could not predict, could not design around, does not limit (well, not much), and generally does not charge for. Google realizes that its real value is not in limiting what people can do but in helping them do what only they can imagine. That is the essence of the Google worldview. That is what I will try to apply to a host of companies, industries, and inst.i.tutions in the next section of this book. We end this section with the single best bit of advice you can glean from Google and from craigslist: Make something useful. Help people use it. And then...

Get out of the way.

If Google Ruled the World

"The search engine is going to control the planet," declared author Paulo Coelho. But surely not everything, right? It's not as if Google would want to run something dull like a utility (except that it is investing in the power industry) or a telephone company (well, it almost has) or enter the health industry (but it just did) or open a restaurant (then again, its cafeteria is world-famous and so is its chef, who wrote the book Food 2.0 Food 2.0). Some people wish Google would take over a newspaper-The New York Times is often nominated-or entertainment companies or perhaps the software giant Microsoft. But no, Google knows what it is. Its ambition is not to take over the world, but to organize it.

So now that we have distilled Google's success into a series of laws and lessons, we will attempt to apply them to a number of industries and inst.i.tutions. I won't pretend that I can fix a company in just a few pages. If only it were that easy.... Nor will I claim that I have found all the secrets to Google's success. If only I could....

The point, instead, is to see things differently, to understand the fundamental changes of the Google age, to ask hard questions, to grasp new opportunities, to rethink, reimagine, and reinvent. That is the example to follow from Google. So the specifics of these cases are less important than the discipline, the att.i.tude, the imagination, and the courage it takes to lead in this era of magnificent upheaval. Even if you don't work in, say, the ad industry, I hope that in the discussion of how to remake advertising, you will find ideas and inspiration for your own situation. These industries and inst.i.tutions provide a wide variety of examples of how to live by Google's rules. Not all the rules will apply to your particular circ.u.mstances. But thinking and seeing in new ways is an imperative for everyone.

"Google has brought ma.s.sive shifts in the way different generations and people think," said ad industry visionary Rishad Tobaccowala. He predicted that as a result, "there's going to be a huge new business which is built around the psychology of being a.n.a.log in a digital world-everything that has to do with therapy. Which I think is why spas are so big now." That may be why Google's offices feature pods where employees can shut off the world and easy chairs where they can just stare at an aquarium. It's stressful organizing and changing the world. But before you check yourself into the sanitarium, remember that the real moral to the Google story is this: If Google can do it, so can you. Google is seeing problems, solving them, and finding opportunities in them by thinking in new ways. This is all about finding your own new worldview.

There are two ways to attack the problems of these industries: to reform the inc.u.mbents or to destroy them. In some cases, we'll take one path, in others both. But in any case, the wise course is to destroy your own models before some kid in a garage-or in a Harvard or Stanford dorm room-figures out a way to do it for you. Think like Google, succeed like Google-before Google does.

Media

The Google Times Googlewood GoogleCollins

The Google Times: Newspapers, post-paper Newspapers, post-paper

On what turned out to be an eventful week in London in 2008, Edward Roussel, digital editor for the Telegraph Media Group, told me over tea and toast that he had pondered the question I ask in this book's t.i.tle. He answered it with a striking vision for newspapers: What if papers handed over much of their work to Google? Roussel reasoned that Google already is their best distributor online. He couldn't imagine a paper creating better technology or attracting better technical talent than Google. In advertising, Google is the clear winner. So why not outsource distribution, technology, and a good share of ad sales to Google as a platform so the paper could concentrate on its real job-journalism?

Roussel was following a key rule in this book: Decide what business you're in. Decide what business you're in. The next day, I issued the same challenge to his compet.i.tion, the Guardian, where I work and where I wound up a series of seminars on the future of journalism. My a.s.signment was to pose 10 questions papers should answer now. The first: Who are we? Papers must no longer think of themselves as manufacturers or distributors. Are they in the information business? That would seem obvious, but when information can be so quickly and easily commodified, it is a perilous position. Are they in the community business, like Facebook? Not quite; few papers enable communities to organize themselves. Are they in the knowledge business, like Google or Amazon? Not yet; they haven't put themselves in the position to know what their readers know. In the end, I urged papers to become platforms for larger networks of news-but they're not there yet. The next day, I issued the same challenge to his compet.i.tion, the Guardian, where I work and where I wound up a series of seminars on the future of journalism. My a.s.signment was to pose 10 questions papers should answer now. The first: Who are we? Papers must no longer think of themselves as manufacturers or distributors. Are they in the information business? That would seem obvious, but when information can be so quickly and easily commodified, it is a perilous position. Are they in the community business, like Facebook? Not quite; few papers enable communities to organize themselves. Are they in the knowledge business, like Google or Amazon? Not yet; they haven't put themselves in the position to know what their readers know. In the end, I urged papers to become platforms for larger networks of news-but they're not there yet.

The night before, the Guardian had invited Arianna Huffington, founder of The Huffington Post, to speak. She announced she was taking her service local and would invade Chicago, hiring one editor to build a site around the best bloggers there. A reporter at the beleaguered Chicago Tribune-which now had Huffington's target on its back-asked me how the paper should respond. My reply: The old way would have been to treat Huffington as a compet.i.tor. The new way would be to find the means to work with her: Sell local ads for her and get a piece of her revenue. Quote her bloggers in the paper, taking advantage of her recruiting and relationships and earning friendship-and links-in return. Start new blogs that Huffington's writers would want to talk about and link to. Give Huffington headlines from the Tribune, which also link to the paper. The Tribune no longer owns the market, I told him. Its ambition should be to join and help a network.

News organizations don't yet think that way. That same week, while in London, I became embroiled online in a bloggers' battle with the a.s.sociated Press, which had sent legal letters to a site demanding that it take down excerpts of its stories, some as short as 33 words. The AP thought the bloggers were stealing its words. Bloggers, however, believed they were doing the AP a favor every time they quoted and linked to its stories.

In this confrontation, we witness the millennial clash of old and new media models: the content economy vs. the link economy. The AP, like the papers it serves, thought its content was its value and its magnet. But online, content without links is the tree that falls in the forest that n.o.body hears (and turns into newsprint). So the real value in this transaction was not the content that was, in the AP's view, stolen, but the links that were, in the bloggers' view, given. The content economy made money by controlling and selling content. In the link economy, it no longer pays to sell copies of content when the original is just a link and a click away.

This link economy makes five demands: First, you must produce unique content with clear value; commodity content will get you no links or Googlejuice. Second, you must open up so Google and the world can find your content. (If you're not searchable, you won't be found.) Third, when you get links and audience, it is up to you to exploit them, usually through advertising. Fourth, you should use links to find new efficiencies. (Do what you do best and link to the rest.) Fifth, find opportunities to create value atop this link layer: curation of the best content; technology infrastructure to enable links to be found; and advertising networks to help creators monetize links and traffic. Exploiting this sort of tectonic shift-seeing how the world is disrupted and finding opportunity in it-is a key skill of Googlethink.

For news organizations, going digital is not as simple as filling web pages. This transformation requires them to reinvent themselves-how they think of themselves, how they operate, how they relate to the public, how they make money-and fast. Jeffrey Cole of the University of Southern California Annenberg School's Center for the Digital Future found in a 2007 survey that young people 12 to 25 will "never read a newspaper." Never Never. Philip Meyer wrote in his 2004 book The Vanishing Newspaper The Vanishing Newspaper that if current trends continue, the last American paper will be published in 2040-and that downward slope has only steepened its decline since he said that. This is not a drill. that if current trends continue, the last American paper will be published in 2040-and that downward slope has only steepened its decline since he said that. This is not a drill.

Google's impact is more direct and immediate on media than on other industries-though their turns are coming. So as a demonstration of the discipline of adapting Google's rules, I begin this chapter-unlike others to follow-by laying out relevant rules and explicitly interpreting them for newspapers.

Atoms are a drag. Newspapers a.s.sumed their compet.i.tive advantage was in owning the means of ma.s.s production and distribution. In the old, scarcity-based content economy, they were right. But now print's infrastructure carries an unbearable cost burden. So I say papers should set a date in the not-too-distant future when they will turn off the presses. Newspapers a.s.sumed their compet.i.tive advantage was in owning the means of ma.s.s production and distribution. In the old, scarcity-based content economy, they were right. But now print's infrastructure carries an unbearable cost burden. So I say papers should set a date in the not-too-distant future when they will turn off the presses.

Foolish, you say? Old ma.s.s media still has value, you argue. Online revenue is not meeting print revenue. As readers move to the internet, newsstand money disappears. In advertising, print dollars are replaced by mere online dimes. Don't they still need paper? Yes, but the scale of newspapers' businesses will never be the same now that they no longer hold local monopolies. In the shift from physical to digital and ma.s.s to niche, the best way to exploit the legacy value of a paper is to use its old-media megaphone to promote and build what comes next. First, a paper has to decide what is next. It has to design and build its post-paper products-retraining and restructuring staff and sloughing off unnecessary costs-before the presses go silent. It has to promote the new products even at the expense of the old: Cannibalize thyself. Convincing audience and advertisers to move to the future is better than following them there after they have discovered other sources of news.

Casting off atoms will allow newspapers to brag: no more dead trees and lost oxygen (an ecological site calculated that newsprint production used up the equivalent of 453 million trees in 2001); no more gas-sucking, pollution-spewing trucks to haul them around; no more presses draining energy; no more waste to recycle; no more oil pumped to make ink. To h.e.l.l with going carbon-neutral. A former paper is an ecological hero!

In 2005, just after it had finished installing new, smaller-format presses at a cost of $150 million, the Guardian invited me to talk with its managers about what would come next-digital. Editor Alan Rusbridger stole my thunder when he conceded that those presses were likely the last they would ever buy. "The last presses." I couldn't imagine an American publisher saying those words except with his dying breath. Rusbridger saw it as his job to deliver the Guardian over the chasm it faced from print to online, atom to bit. His mission wasn't to shelter the old medium but to take its values to the new world as quickly, safely, and sensibly as he could.

Paper may not disappear. But if newspapers do not at least plan for the eventuality-if not inevitability-of the transition, they will be left protecting nothing but their presses. Again, protection is no strategy for the future.

Think distributed. News organizations can no longer rely on the idea that the world will beat a path to their door. People are finding their own ways to news through no end of new routes: friends' blogs, aggregators such as Google News and Daylife, collaborative news sites such as Digg, feeds on Facebook or Twitter, apps on mobile phones, and who knows what comes next. As a college student said in The New York Times in 2008: "If the news is that important, it will find me." Thus news organizations should stop presenting themselves as destinations and start seeing themselves as services, pushing out feeds, offering content to networks of sites, getting their news to where the people are. This is the new home delivery, the internet as paperboy. News organizations can no longer rely on the idea that the world will beat a path to their door. People are finding their own ways to news through no end of new routes: friends' blogs, aggregators such as Google News and Daylife, collaborative news sites such as Digg, feeds on Facebook or Twitter, apps on mobile phones, and who knows what comes next. As a college student said in The New York Times in 2008: "If the news is that important, it will find me." Thus news organizations should stop presenting themselves as destinations and start seeing themselves as services, pushing out feeds, offering content to networks of sites, getting their news to where the people are. This is the new home delivery, the internet as paperboy.

Be a platform. Join a network. You can't do it all yourself anymore. By joining collaborative networks, you can get help. For newspapers, that may mean soliciting the public's a.s.sistance in finishing stories. It may mean recruiting and mobilizing the public to report. It may mean setting them up in business. It certainly means welcoming their contributions and corrections (one way to follow the rule, You can't do it all yourself anymore. By joining collaborative networks, you can get help. For newspapers, that may mean soliciting the public's a.s.sistance in finishing stories. It may mean recruiting and mobilizing the public to report. It may mean setting them up in business. It certainly means welcoming their contributions and corrections (one way to follow the rule, make mistakes well make mistakes well).

Newspapers can provide collaborators with raw material to create products-news reports to comment on, video to remix, a.s.signments to follow. The New York Times and NPR each announced programs to make content available for mashups and remixing via APIs (application programming interfaces). Newspapers can also provide functionality-blogging tools and the means to repackage, say, Google Maps into collaborative community resources. They can educate collaborators, sharing what they know about how to get access to public information, avoid libel suits, or shoot video (as the Travel Channel and some local TV stations do). They can give good sites promotion and traffic. They can generate revenue by setting up ad networks for these collaborators, following Glam's example. The papers, in turn, get news and information they couldn't afford to gather on their own at lower cost and with lower risk, and they become part of something bigger than themselves.

Or that's the theory. A holy grail of online newspapers-as yet unattained-has been the idea of collaborative hyperlocal news networks: armies of blogging neighbors who gather and share news and photos from their school boards and street fairs. There have been many attempts to reach this goal and about as many failures, no shortage of them mine. I learned that it was a mistake to expect people to come to my newspaper site and contribute their work; often they want to own their own stuff in their own s.p.a.ce. I also learned that bloggers need the means to support what they do-that is, money.

In 2004, I held a Meetup to persuade people to blog on NJ.com. Good idea, said journalist Debra Galant, but it's too good an idea to do it for your site, Jeff. She started her own blog, Baristanet.com, which covers Montclair, New Jersey, and now serves 10,000 daily readers and 100 advertisers. What should its relationship be to the site and paper I worked with, The Star-Ledger? Rather than competing, they collaborated in 2008 to print a joint guide to Montclair, sharing content and credit, with both the paper and the blog selling ads. It's a start. Next, I'd like to see a network of scores of Baristanets covering hundreds of towns and eventually thousands of interests.

Collaborate. Collaboration is co-creation. It requires giving up some control of a.s.sets so collaborators may remix, add to, and distribute content. The newspaper gets more content and gets talked about, which is how it will get new links, readers, attention, loyalty, and Googlejuice. Collaboration is co-creation. It requires giving up some control of a.s.sets so collaborators may remix, add to, and distribute content. The newspaper gets more content and gets talked about, which is how it will get new links, readers, attention, loyalty, and Googlejuice.

In 2007, Brian Lehrer's public-radio show on WNYC wanted to use its ability to mobilize the public for a project in collaborative journalism. Lehrer asked his listeners to go to their local stores and report the price of milk, lettuce, and beer. Hundreds did, giving the station data no single reporter could have gathered alone. WNYC plotted the data on Google Maps, showing which neighborhoods were being gouged. It also learned that some stores were charging illegally high prices for milk.

The BBC opened up many of its resources in a public laboratory called Backstage, which enables anyone to build products on top of its content and data. Remixes have included a service that took BBC news feeds and searched for related material from citizens on YouTube and Flickr; a service that found out which BBC stories were the most talked-about on the web; and one that mashed up road-traffic data atop Google Maps. The BBC-like Facebook-attracted scores of developers making new products that made the BBC more useful and brought new ideas to the media giant without the cost or delays huge organizations bring. Welcome to the open-source, gift economy Welcome to the open-source, gift economy.

Listen well. Just as About.com and Google monitor search requests to see what the public wants to know, so newspapers should create the means for the public to say what it needs to know and to a.s.sign work to journalists. BusinessWeek is soliciting such requests. Digg.com had its users vote on questions it would ask politicians at the 2008 political conventions. In 2007, I worked with trainees at the German publisher Burda, brainstorming products. One of them asked a question so obvious I kicked myself for never having asked it myself: "Why doesn't the public a.s.sign us?" Right. Readers know what they want to know. Journalists need a means, like MyStarbucksIdea, to gather a.s.signments. This mechanism turns the relationship between the journalist and the public on its head. The public is now the boss. If journalists are uncomfortable with that, it means they don't trust the public they serve. Remember: Just as About.com and Google monitor search requests to see what the public wants to know, so newspapers should create the means for the public to say what it needs to know and to a.s.sign work to journalists. BusinessWeek is soliciting such requests. Digg.com had its users vote on questions it would ask politicians at the 2008 political conventions. In 2007, I worked with trainees at the German publisher Burda, brainstorming products. One of them asked a question so obvious I kicked myself for never having asked it myself: "Why doesn't the public a.s.sign us?" Right. Readers know what they want to know. Journalists need a means, like MyStarbucksIdea, to gather a.s.signments. This mechanism turns the relationship between the journalist and the public on its head. The public is now the boss. If journalists are uncomfortable with that, it means they don't trust the public they serve. Remember: Your crowd is wise Your crowd is wise. Remember, too, Weinberger's Corollary: There is an inverse relationship between control and trust. There is an inverse relationship between control and trust.

The internet kills inefficiency. Newspapers are inefficient enterprises-because, as once-rich monopolies, they could be. When Rupert Murdoch acquired The Wall Street Journal, he complained that 8.25 editors touched each story. At The New York Times, there are three editors for every writer. When Sam Zell took over Tribune Company, he had efficiency experts count how many inches of text writers produced. These may be shallow metrics, but they reveal much room to change. And that change is coming as, according to the blog Papercuts, newspapers laid off 12,299 journalists in the first 10 months of 2008. Once a paper decides what it is, it's clear that it must marshall all its forces behind one goal. For local papers, that should be local reporting. Newspapers are inefficient enterprises-because, as once-rich monopolies, they could be. When Rupert Murdoch acquired The Wall Street Journal, he complained that 8.25 editors touched each story. At The New York Times, there are three editors for every writer. When Sam Zell took over Tribune Company, he had efficiency experts count how many inches of text writers produced. These may be shallow metrics, but they reveal much room to change. And that change is coming as, according to the blog Papercuts, newspapers laid off 12,299 journalists in the first 10 months of 2008. Once a paper decides what it is, it's clear that it must marshall all its forces behind one goal. For local papers, that should be local reporting.

The ma.s.s market is dead. Long live the ma.s.s of niches. Papers should no longer make just one ma.s.s product, a newspaper. Some are producing new services for more targeted interests, locales, and communities: hyperlocal sites and papers; a local sports talk show; a local golf magazine; a mobile weather service; local job fairs; parents' guides. These products need not be created and owned by the company; they can be produced by others and distributed or sold by the paper. The more communities served, the better. Papers should no longer make just one ma.s.s product, a newspaper. Some are producing new services for more targeted interests, locales, and communities: hyperlocal sites and papers; a local sports talk show; a local golf magazine; a mobile weather service; local job fairs; parents' guides. These products need not be created and owned by the company; they can be produced by others and distributed or sold by the paper. The more communities served, the better. Small is the new big Small is the new big.

Elegant organization. A paper should provide its community with what Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg gave his. In a sense, papers always have. They organize a community's knowledge so it can better organize itself. Now there are more tools to do that. Papers can create platforms where neighborhoods, towns, schools, clubs, or people with like interests can share what they know and editors can bubble up news out of that. Once the platform has been created, they should follow Craig Newmark's advice: A paper should provide its community with what Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg gave his. In a sense, papers always have. They organize a community's knowledge so it can better organize itself. Now there are more tools to do that. Papers can create platforms where neighborhoods, towns, schools, clubs, or people with like interests can share what they know and editors can bubble up news out of that. Once the platform has been created, they should follow Craig Newmark's advice: Get out of the way Get out of the way.

Beware the cash cow in the coal mine. Papers sat back on their cash flow and a.s.sumed something would rescue them. Nothing did. Now papers will die. But the demand for news will not go away; it's growing. New products and compet.i.tors will emerge and there'll be enough audience and money to support them-if they are not saddled with the costs of printing. Can the papers that survive invent these new products themselves with their cultures? Jim Louderback, CEO of the internet TV company Revision3 (more from him next) has this advice for legacy companies: "Look at how Steve Jobs made the Mac. He took a core group of people and put them in a closet somewhere and they built something completely different. So take a core group of people and put them in Kentucky or St. Louis and build something entirely new." Rethink everything: What is a news story? Is a topic page a better vehicle for covering local news? How should news be gathered? How should it be shared? How should it be supported? Papers sat back on their cash flow and a.s.sumed something would rescue them. Nothing did. Now papers will die. But the demand for news will not go away; it's growing. New products and compet.i.tors will emerge and there'll be enough audience and money to support them-if they are not saddled with the costs of printing. Can the papers that survive invent these new products themselves with their cultures? Jim Louderback, CEO of the internet TV company Revision3 (more from him next) has this advice for legacy companies: "Look at how Steve Jobs made the Mac. He took a core group of people and put them in a closet somewhere and they built something completely different. So take a core group of people and put them in Kentucky or St. Louis and build something entirely new." Rethink everything: What is a news story? Is a topic page a better vehicle for covering local news? How should news be gathered? How should it be shared? How should it be supported? Encourage, enable, and protect innovation Encourage, enable, and protect innovation.

What does a newspaper look like if it is no longer a newspaper? It will be more of a network with a smaller staff of reporters and editors still providing essential news and recouping value for that. Paper 2.0 will work with and support collections of bloggers, entrepreneurs, citizens, and communities that gather and share news. A newspaper is no longer a printing press that turns out money. But as a network it could be bigger than papers have been in years, reaching deeper into communities, having more of an impact, and adding more value. To get there, it has to act small but think big and see the world differently.

Googlewood: Entertainment, opened up Entertainment, opened up

Entertainment is built on a blockbuster economy: Hits are huge and everything else is merely the price you pay to play the odds. This system has long been fed by scarcity: only so many movie screens, so many hours of TV seen by only so many viewers, and so many shelves in the record store (when there still were records and stores to sell them). The audience was herded together to consume a limited field of choice, and the winners were the products that appealed to the most people. There will always be blockbusters just because some things are that good (great movies) or because we enjoy talking about shared experiences (silly reality shows) or because the hype is too huge to ignore (the Oscars). Hollywood is eternal.

The economics of abundance-the ma.s.s of niches, the long tail-has opened up entertainment's business models in ways we have not seen since the last waves of new media technologies: sound recording, film, broadcast. Today we can watch whatever we want. h.e.l.l, we can make whatever we want. It will become harder and harder to turn out blockbusters because there is so much more compet.i.tion for our attention. But it also will be possible to produce more entertainment more people like-that is our new abundance.

Hollywood was built on a system of control. You could break in only if you made it through a gauntlet of agents, executives, and distributors who controlled the money and access to the audience. The internet is busting that system apart. But we didn't need to wait for the web to break free. It was possible to be a rebel before. It's just easier now.

I return to Howard Stern, who is not only the self-crowned king of all media but who was, I argue, Googley before there was a Google. He saw a radio industry built around the local broadcast tower and broke its rules, starting in 1986, when he built a syndicate of stations that made him famous (and infamous) across the country. He didn't rely on an existing network. He built his own network. Then he used radio as a platform to create a presence on TV. He used radio to become a best-selling author, and he turned his book into a hit movie. He later became huge on the internet, and put satellite radio in orbit.

Stern's relationship with his audience is what set him apart. He created a collaborative product-not just because he took phone calls from listeners but because those listeners made their own entertainment, which they generously gave to the show: phony phone calls, brilliant song parodies, theme songs for hapless producer Gary "Baba Booey" Dell'Abate, games, even movies. They gave him their creativity and loyalty. He gave them airtime and attention. This was their mutual gift economy.

Stern decided long ago that he would not push a self-serving charity as rival Don Imus had or sell tacky schwag like the Rush Limbaugh Excellence in Broadcasting mouse pad. I wouldn't mind buying a Stern hat or jacket-I'd wear my taste proudly-but Stern won't sell them to me. He refuses to cash in on our relationship. He knows that his value rests with his fans. Stern took a gamble on that relationship in 2006 when he moved from broadcast-chased off by the Federal Communications Commission's hara.s.sment-to Sirius Satellite Radio. He received a reported $500 million for the move-motive enough, of course-but there was no way to be sure that the millions of fans needed to make him worth his price would follow. They did. At Sirius, Stern has handed over control to his audience; when they told him to change programming on his two 24-hour satellite channels, he obeyed.

I use Stern as a case study in Googlethink to demonstrate that you don't need to be Google-or be on the internet or rely on technology or even be inspired by Google-to think in these new and open ways. Stern broke the control system and rules that the entertainment business holds dear and built his empire on his relationships. It's still about relationships. The internet just makes it easier to break rules and break in. Anybody who's any good can aspire to be a monarch of any or many media. They may not be as big as Stern, Jon Stewart, or Steven Spielberg. But in a post-blockbuster, small-is-the-new-big economy, they don't have to be.

Now fast-forward to 2005, when geek-show host Kevin Rose left TechTV after his network merged with G4, a game channel. Instead of getting another job at another network, Rose started his own networks, because he could. First he created Digg, a collaborative news service where users suggest stories and then vote on them to create the community's front page. It attracts more than 25 million users a month. The service was revolutionary, giving the public-rather than editors-the power to make news judgments. Of course, the public always had made its own judgments; Rose just recognized that and enabled them to do it together.

Then Rose started his video network, Revision3, and the first show on it, Diggnation Diggnation, in which he and his former TechTV colleague Alex Albrecht sit on a grungy couch with a different beer in hand each week talking about some of Digg's favorite stories for more than 30 minutes straight. If one of them has to do what one must do after drinking beer, they don't stop the tape; Alex just gets up and goes to the bathroom. The show could not be more casual and less like TV, but that is precisely its authority. My son, Jake, is a fan-he introduced me to it-and I tried to repay the favor by sharing professional podcasts about technology from NPR and the BBC. As soon as I played them, I realized they didn't hold the same authority as Digg because they were too packaged and plastic.

Diggnation draws an audience of 250,000 each week (a nighttime cable news show on some networks is satisfied with 150,000 viewers). Just because it's on the internet doesn't mean it's small. But its costs are. Nonfiction TV-news shows, not scripted dramas-on broadcast networks costs about $300,000 an hour to produce. An hour of Revision3 programming costs a tenth of that. Internet TV can get even cheaper. In 2007, I visited 18 Doughty Street, a five-hour-a-night Tory talk-show network in London that broadcast on the internet from a townhouse living-room set with all the trappings of TV: couches, seven cameras, a control studio, and potted palms. I asked Iain Dale, the founder, to calculate his per-hour cost for talk. It came out to $140. Sure, the comparisons are unfair. News networks have journalists, bureaus, producers, executives, expensive anchors, writers, makeup people, hair people, camera people, sound people, directors, and free m.u.f.fins. But do they need all that? In 2007, I wrote and recorded an opinion piece for a short-lived segment on the draws an audience of 250,000 each week (a nighttime cable news show on some networks is satisfied with 150,000 viewers). Just because it's on the internet doesn't mean it's small. But its costs are. Nonfiction TV-news shows, not scripted dramas-on broadcast networks costs about $300,000 an hour to produce. An hour of Revision3 programming costs a tenth of that. Internet TV can get even cheaper. In 2007, I visited 18 Doughty Street, a five-hour-a-night Tory talk-show network in London that broadcast on the internet from a townhouse living-room set with all the trappings of TV: couches, seven cameras, a control studio, and potted palms. I asked Iain Dale, the founder, to calculate his per-hour cost for talk. It came out to $140. Sure, the comparisons are unfair. News networks have journalists, bureaus, producers, executives, expensive anchors, writers, makeup people, hair people, camera people, sound people, directors, and free m.u.f.fins. But do they need all that? In 2007, I wrote and recorded an opinion piece for a short-lived segment on the CBS Evening News CBS Evening News (it never aired-my mention of dethroned anchor Dan Rather may have had something to do with that). Up to the taping, I saw 12 people involved, which didn't include countless more editors and unseen executive producers and technicians. That day at home I used the same script to record the same opinions on my Mac. Cost: zip. (it never aired-my mention of dethroned anchor Dan Rather may have had something to do with that). Up to the taping, I saw 12 people involved, which didn't include countless more editors and unseen executive producers and technicians. That day at home I used the same script to record the same opinions on my Mac. Cost: zip.

Movies are worse. Not long ago, I happened on a studio shoot in Manhattan. Even though I'd covered the industry for years, I was amazed anew at the cost of it, at the stuff they drag around. On one truck, a huge container was filled with nothing but blocks of wood with Paramount's logo burned onto them. Of course, studios do need much of this stuff to make movies that will look great on a big screen. But do they need it all? Diggnation Diggnation has just a camera pointed at its couch. It entertains, too. has just a camera pointed at its couch. It entertains, too.

In the text web, the delta-the difference-in cost between the old and new way is enormous; that is what has led no end of bloggers and newcomers to create content sites. In film and video, that delta is many times larger, which I believe will lead to even more investment in online shows, as the opportunities are even greater. Revision3 started on a shoestring but received a reported $9 million investment to create more shows, build a studio, and hire its CEO. It's still run on a shoestring, CEO Jim Louderback told me. "The story of the internet," he said, "is ruthlessly efficient business models and blowing away barriers to entry and access."

Revision3 saved money on equipment, which Louderback credited to Moore's Law. Intel's Gordon Moore decreed in 1965 that the number of transistors and thus the computing power on a chip would double every two years (this law enabled Google and the internet to exist and led to every law in this book). The cost of digital cameras has thus plummeted. Revision3 goes Cadillac with an $8,500 model but I've seen newspapers and even TV stations recording high-definition segments with $1,000 handhelds. Instead of a fancy TelePrompTer (and expensive writing team to fill it with words), Revision3 uses a cheap LCD screen and mirror. Instead of editing suites that once cost tens, even hundreds of thousands of dollars, they edit on Macs. The only equipment that doesn't benefit from Moore's Law, Louderback said, is the handmade Italian pedestal for moving cameras while shooting. It has no electronics but relies on precision ball bearings. d.a.m.ned atoms.

Staff costs are low, too. Instead of hiring pretty faces with good hair to read the words writers put on TelePrompTers, Revision3 hires hosts with knowledge and pa.s.sion about their topics and the ability to attract a community. Distribution costs little because there are so many partners, including Google's YouTube, that can spread video around. Marketing? No need for that when you have a loyal audience. I stood in that audience when Diggnation Diggnation came to New York and 2,000 people showed up (I was the oldest geek there and sympathized with my son, who was standing next to the only head of gray hair in the place; it was like having your mom take you to a Stones concert). To market itself, Revision3 cuts up its shows and puts the best bits on YouTube so fans can pa.s.s them around-a demonstration that your product can be your ad and your customers are your ad agency. came to New York and 2,000 people showed up (I was the oldest geek there and sympathized with my son, who was standing next to the only head of gray hair in the place; it was like having your mom take you to a Stones concert). To market itself, Revision3 cuts up its shows and puts the best bits on YouTube so fans can pa.s.s them around-a demonstration that your product can be your ad and your customers are your ad agency.

What about revenue? Louderback said that by the middle of 2008, a show the size of Diggnation Diggnation was selling three sponsorships per episode at a cost of $80$100 per thousand viewers (the standard measurement for advertising). By contrast, banner ads on web sites can sell for as little as a few dollars or even cents per thousand. How can was selling three sponsorships per episode at a cost of $80$100 per thousand viewers (the standard measurement for advertising). By contrast, banner ads on web sites can sell for as little as a few dollars or even cents per thousand. How can Diggnation Diggnation command that premium? Once more: relationships. The hosts deliver the commercials and viewers remember them. Louderback said 100 percent of audience members could recall the name of one sponsor without help and 93 percent could name two. That is unheard of on television, where commercials are ignored or skipped. So do the math: With an audience of 250,000 per week, that could work out to as much as $4 million a year and growing. Not bad for two guys on a couch. command that premium? Once more: relationships. The hosts deliver the commercials and viewers remember them. Louderback said 100 percent of audience members could recall the name of one sponsor without help and 93 percent could name two. That is unheard of on television, where commercials are ignored or skipped. So do the math: With an audience of 250,000 per week, that could work out to as much as $4 million a year and growing. Not bad for two guys on a couch.