It’s pretty. But that is not why it’s great.

Anyone who has anything to do with distributing online content has been in “the” meeting where “the” question gets asked: “What should the site look like?” Or, in its more common form, “How do you like the look of our site?” Then there’s my favorite variation, “What do you think of our Web site?” As absurd as these questions are, we all field them constantly. And, to be honest, I was asked all of them several times at the CNN event.

There’s a saying, “If you ask the wrong question, you’re guaranteed to get the wrong answer.” The question is not, “How do you like the look of our site?” Who cares what I think? The proper question is: “What do our users expect our site to do and, when they visit the site, do we satisfy their expectations?” The question is not, “What do you think of our Web site?” The proper question is: “Has the site met or exceeded its conversion goals or, have you been able to measure and profitably package your audience to your clients?”

The New CNN.com not only does exactly what you expect it to do, it does it brilliantly! And, because they have consolidated the technology and done some very efficient back-room, black-box stuff, you had better believe that it is a tour de force in best practices audience measurement and packaging.

Like I said, it’s pretty, but that’s not why it’s great. What I was most impressed with was the time and energy that went into creating the right mix of graphics, stills, text, audio and video for each story and feature. The New CNN.com takes the concept of user experience to a level that you have not seen on a rich-data site before. In fact, you have rarely seen this kind of emotionally satisfying content-manipulation in a rich-media site. Windows expand and contract in place and, while doing so, cause text to rewrap and graphics to re-form. The site seems to breath with the user and it reacts as you interact. The layout allows for different things to matter at different time, even while you’re on the same page, and there is a very strong sense of “above and below the scroll.”

The site is clean, simple and empowers you to find what interests you and get back to it easily. It may look like a bunch of boxes, but, “nothing easy is ever simple and nothing simple is ever easy.”

Free food and a bunch of smart people — who could resist? Pat Mitchell, who runs the Paley Center, framed the debate as billed. The Wall Street Journal has much of their online content behind a pay gateway. It seems to be working for them. The New York Times used to do something like it with Times Select, but when Vivian was there, she convinced them to make all of their content free and accessible online. That seemed to work for them.

Steven Brill agreed that payment gateways were probably not a good idea, but he suggested that there may be other ways to incentivize heavy users of content to pay for it. He outlined his theory of getting people who are used to getting free milk to buy cows.

To me, listening to this conversation was as absurd as listening to two people on the Titanic argue about the music the band was playing while they were loading the lifeboats.

There are only three business models: I pay, you pay or someone else pays. That’s it. I pay means that I (the publisher of the content) am willing to fund the creation, production and distribution of the content for my own purposes. You pay means that you are willing to pay me for my content. Someone else pays means that a third party is willing to pay me so that you can consume my content. Some of my KPMG friends have pointed out that, from the content producer/publisher’s point of view, there are really only two models: I pay or I get paid. I like to include the idea of third-party involvement, because it is so common to the media business.

In practice, we see three adaptations of the three models: Ad supported (broadcast), Subscription/Pay Per View (premium content) and the dual revenue combination of ad support and subscription (cable/print, etc.)

The common thread to all of these approaches to getting paid is the transfer of the currency of “cash” from one party to another for good and valuable consideration. Again, I pay, you pay or someone else pays — cash, credit card or check (with two forms of ID) please.

This is how business has been done for as long as anyone can remember. But it has very little to do with how business needs to be done now.

Cash is the currency we are all most familiar with, but it is far from the only one. Information is a currency. Knowledge (curated and filtered information) is a currency. Imagine a cab driver on West 38th Street in Midtown Manhattan driving aimlessly looking for a fare. If he had a device in his cab that told him that there was a fare waiting on 38th and Lex, he could almost immediately translate that information into cash. If several cabs had that information, it would be less valuable. If every cab had that information, it would simply be a business methodology with only commodity value. Any Wall Streeter will tell you that information (especially exclusive information) is cash. But a housewife living in the suburbs with knowledge of a sale at a local store or with an electronic promotional offering can translate that information into cash just as easily.

The key concept here is that a contemporary business model needs to “translate” the value of one currency into another. In the example above, the currency of knowledge is translated into currency of cash: you can’t get cash directly by distributing the information, it must be translated.

Information is an easy one, how about the currency of attention? Attention is such an established currency that it is written into the grammar of the English language, you “pay” and “receive” attention. In the online world there are a couple of other currencies that are key: Intention, Fame, Passion, Respect/Street Cred.

Google translates the currency of “intention” into about $16 Billion a year. They know that when you come to Google, your “intention” is to find something. They delight in telling you that in .02 seconds, they have found 2,374,345 things that you may have intended to click on. They offer all of their services for free. Why? They know that if they pay off your intention with valuable information that you will keep coming back. Like any good casino, they assume that if you show up often enough, you might click on something they get paid for. It’s the best currency of intention to cash money translation engine ever created.

I could spend a few hundred pages explaining how one might translate the value of the currencies of fame, passion or respect/street cred into the currency of cash. But I think you get the idea. Is it about promotional videos or selling t-shirts, concert tickets and merchandise? No, of course it isn’t. But a holistic approach to the doing of business is often an excellent way to translate disparate currencies into cash.

Will this work for a commodity like emergent or local news? It depends upon the originality and quality (in the eyes of the consumer, not your definition of quality) of the content. No one is going to pay for something they can get free of charge or easily do without. Newspapers, filled with yesterday’s news delivered to the outside of your house isn’t a good product in the 21st century. A wireless electronic delivery system that notifies me of relevant, emergent news is more in keeping with informational needs of today’s consumers … oh, wait, that’s what I get in my BlackBerry, on my iPhone and online.

Can a free online product ever make money? Yes, absolutely! You simply need to understand the currencies of the Internet and build models that translate the value of those currencies into wealth.

Want to have a really good time? Try getting through the other 81 pages of the “Federal Trade Commission, 16 CFR Part 255, Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” It’s a page-turner!!!

If this wasn’t the driest document I have ever forced myself to read, and, if this document didn’t illustrate one of the biggest problems that brands and consumers are going to face in the 21st Century, it would actually be funny.

Let’s review. Five years ago, including VHF, UHF, Low Power, Cable, Radio, etc. there were about 25,000 broadcasters in the United States. Today, let’s pick a number … there are ~55,000,000 entities and organizations that, at the touch of a button, can broadcast a message worldwide.

You will now push back and say that there are really only six major media companies that can broadcast worldwide, and the best everyone else do is make their content available to a worldwide audience. I’m fine with that distinction. It will not have any impact on the thesis of this writing.

The currency of the advertising business is attention. We “pay” attention to things that interest us and we “receive” attention from things that are interested in us. You do not need to use any complex mathematics to illustrate that the number ~55,000,000 is much larger than the number 25,000. Even if every individual only pays a little attention to something other than the original 25,000 broadcast entities, the shift in their attention will be very large.

This is the simplest way to describe what has happened to communications in the 21st Century, but the impact is being felt in much more subtle ways across all of the related disciplines. For advertisers and marketers, consumers seem to be more in control than ever before. For broadcasters and advertisers, audiences now seem atomized rather than fragmented. For consumers, there is simply too much to choose from, too much to pay attention to.

The FTC has noticed that people are paying attention to lots of different things. They have also noticed that they are not really set up to deal with ~55,000,000 purveyors of information. It’s not just a problem for the FTC, it is an endemic problem of our time. They have a mission. They work for consumers to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices and to provide information to help spot, stop, and avoid them. But the tools to deal with this in the information age simply do not exist.

Let’s say I’m a blogger, a micro-blogger, someone with 5,000 Facebook friends, a large group of LinkedIn contacts, a huge MySpace or Twitter following and I get a free camera from a CE manufacturer … shouldn’t I have to disclose the freebee? Would a new, young mother seeking advice from a semi-professional mommyblogger think more or less of the information she gets about a particular brand of stroller if she knew that the mommyblogger was getting paid to tout its virtues? Wouldn’t it be great if everyone (because there is now absolutely no distinction between professional and amateur journalists) that wrote about stuff had to make a full disclosure as to their particular motivations? It would also be great if there really was a Santa Claus.

The FTC guidelines are wonderful. So is the Golden Rule. But that doesn’t mean people will apply them. There is absolutely no way that this problem gets fixed; in fact, there is no probable future where it doesn’t get worse. How much worse? We are witnessing the very beginning of a metaphoric tectonic plate shift unlike any thing we have ever experienced.

“I know of scarcely anything so apt to impress the imagination as the wonderful form of cosmic order expressed by the ‘Law of Frequency of Error.’” Said Sir Francis Galton (Natural Inheritance, 1889) as he went on to describe the Central Limit Theorem. “The law would have been personified by the Greeks and deified, if they had known of it. It reigns with serenity and in complete self-effacement, amidst the wildest confusion. The huger the mob, and the greater the apparent anarchy, the more perfect is its sway. It is the supreme law of Unreason. Whenever a large sample of chaotic elements are taken in hand and marshaled in the order of their magnitude, an unsuspected and most beautiful form of regularity proves to have been latent all along.”

Central Limit Theorem or Law of Large Numbers, which ever one you like to apply to this kind of problem, you’re going to get the same general result. The millions of random bloggers and neuvo-broadcasters can create as chaotic a world as they like, but the trend is going to come out in the wash — more attention will be spent on lots of little things and less attention will be spent of few big things.

One probable outcome of this trend is the self-assembling of small trust circles around individuals who can pay and receive attention only to known entities that have earned and kept their trust. Can big media play a roll? Can big brands? Can big anything work its way into your trust circle?

The commissioner presented six principles that we might use to craft these new rules:

1) Consumers are entitled to access whatever lawful internet content they want.

2) Consumers are entitled to run whatever applications and services they want, subject to the needs of law enforcement.

3) Consumers can connect to networks whatever legal devices they want, so long as they do not harm them.

4) Consumers are entitled to competition between networks, applications, services and content providers.

5) Service providers are not allowed to discriminate between applications, services and content outside of reasonable network management.

6) Service providers must be transparent about the network management practices they use.

Now, as you can imagine, there are some people and organizations that think that these principles are good for America and there are some people and organizations who think they are bad for America. You be the judge. Although there has been a significant amount of chatter about Net Neutrality in the past, now we have some real details to argue about, but let’s not. Three questions immediately come to mind:

1) How will you punish violators of Net Neutrality rules? I’d like to know.

2) What is reasonable network management? I’d really like to know.

3) Is publishing terms of service satisfactory compliance with transparent network management practices and do ISP’s have the right to loophole us into hell by telling us that’s what they’re going to do? I’d really, really like to know!

Now, I said I don’t want to argue, so let’s not. You may have other issues with the six principles, I do too. But these three questions probably deserve some attention early in the process.

What I am wondering about is why our future is in the hands of private companies? (I know they’re all publicly traded, but they are non-governmental entities.) Net Neutrality rules will attempt to regulate private industry to the common good. I’m not sure this is a good plan.

Think about it this way, if a major company has a bad quarter or is having a down year and not delivering appropriate shareholder value, and it decides not to invest in infrastructure, who do we call? Here’s an imperfect metaphor as an example: Imagine if the major Interstate highways were allowed to fall into disrepair because AT&T had a bad quarter. What if certain direct regional routes were closed because private owners of the roads were not in a financial position to keep them open. Net Neutrality is trying to solve a problem we should not be allowing ourselves to have.

As I have often said, the speed of information is directly equated to economic success. This has been true throughout recorded history. If you know something before your competitor does, you are almost always going to be able to profit from the knowledge.

So, how is it possible that we are allowing Al Gore’s Information Super-Highway to be owned and operated by private industry? It really does not make sense. This will ultimately become a national security issue. In the information age, currencies include: money, information and the military. All of them require unfettered access to the highest-speed Internet we can possibly achieve. So, how can we let individuals or corporations with their own agendas control our access? I know it is the way it is now, but should it be?

I appreciate that the FCC is trying to deal with the world as it is, as opposed to remaking it. I also appreciate that the existing system was not designed … it evolved. However, the principles of Net Neutrality and the practice of Net Neutrality will, by definition, not ever be the same. This is probably a good topic for discussion.

I also think it is hard to argue the pros and cons of Net Neutrality without a firm grasp on the issues being discussed with respect to the National Broadband Plan. It seems to me that these two initiatives overlap in so many places that one cannot be discussed without the other.

The hottest trending topics this week included Joe Wilson’s rude and inexcusable outburst, Kanye West’s drunken, rude and inexcusable outburst, Serena Williams, self-defeating, rude and inexcusable outburst and several other virtually meaningless OMG moments that diverted us from things we really should be paying attention to. As I am writing this, the trending topics on Twitter include Jay-Z, Andy Richter and a bunch of TV shows like Survivor and Bones.

I was hoping that one other name or hashtag would become a trending topic today. It didn’t. I checked everywhere Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Google, YouTube, all the social bookmarking sites. It wasn’t on the radar. Jim Miklaszewski covered it for NBC Nightly News, but Brian didn’t mention it in the opening tease, nor the first bumper. No promos, no hype, no setup, just a story you’d miss if you weren’t paying attention. It did get a little coverage on some of the cable news networks, but it will be out of the news cycle completely by Friday, replaced by trending topics and new celebrity outbursts that divert us from things we really should be paying attention to.

I want to introduce you to someone. His name was Staff Sergeant Jared C. Monti. On Thursday, September 17, 2009, The President of the United States posthumously presented him with The Medal of Honor, our nation's highest medal for valor in combat.

During his remarks, President Obama said, "Duty. Honor. Country. Service. Sacrifice. Heroism. These are words of weight. But as people — as a people and as a culture, we often invoke them lightly. We toss them around freely. But do we really grasp the meaning of these values? Do we truly understand the nature of these virtues? To serve, and to sacrifice. Jared Monti knew. The Monti family knows. And they know that the actions we honor today were not a passing moment of courage. They were the culmination of a life of character and commitment."

When you are finished reading this, I'd like you to consider putting out news updates on all of your social media profiles. The URL is http://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/monti/index.html. Here's a bit.ly http://bit.ly/2We4na Use the hashtag #sfcMonti.  I want you decide whether this story is newsworthy or not. If you think it is, you have the power to tell everyone you know about this remarkable young man.

I would ask you to help remember, honor and fight for him as he remembered, honored and fought for us. I don't mean metaphorically. I mean, take action. Make him famous. Laud his heroism and hold him up as an example of what it means to be a man of admirable character and an enduring example of true American values.

We are the media, we (all of us) decide what is worthy of our attention. How is it possible that a drunken outburst from a rapper, a temper tantrum from a tennis player or even an emotional outburst from a congressman is more worthy of attention than a ceremony honoring a man who gave his life for "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty?"

The question is obviously rhetorical and I know the answer as well as you do. But I'd like to think that as the media business transforms into a hybrid realtime network with atomized communities of interest, trusted brands, self-assembled trust circles and other social networking components, we (as a collective group) can strive for a higher level of discourse.

Although I never met SFC Monti, I am proud of him. I am in awe of his actions and I know you will be too. Together we will mourn his death and through his actions, we will have learned what it means to be a true American hero.

Here is an excerpt from President Obama's remarks:

It was June 21st, 2006, in the remotest northeast of Afghanistan, near the border with Pakistan. Sergeant Monti was a team leader on a 16-man patrol. They’d been on the move for three days — down dirt roads; sloshing through rivers; hiking up steep mountain trails, their heavy gear on their backs; moving at night and in the early morning to avoid the scorching 100-degree heat. Their mission: to keep watch on the valley down below in advance of an operation to clear the area of militants.

They say it was a rocket-propelled grenade; that Jared made it within a few yards of his wounded soldier. They say that his final words, there on that ridge far from home, were of his faith and his family: “I’ve made peace with God. Tell my family that I love them.”

Shelly Palmer is a consultant and the host of MediaBytes a daily show featuring news you can use about technology, media & entertainment. He is Managing Director of Advanced Media Ventures Group LLC and the author of Television Disrupted: The Transition from Network to Networked TV (2008, York House Press). Shelly is also President of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, NY (the organization that bestows the coveted Emmy Awards). You can join the MediaBytes mailing list here. Shelly can be reached at shelly@palmer.net For information visit
www.shellypalmer.com

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