MicroPubs

I know you are thinking free, as in beer, but let's talk micro, as in content. As a last guest post, lets explore where The Industry Standard could be going in an age of Social Media.

For now, the social aspect of The Standard is it has a community of affinity with the brand and its leveraging a group weblog and comments as social software. It links off to social networking services like LinkedIn Groups. The falling cost of erstwhile personal publishing and easy group formation enables this site to not only exist but foster participation.

Fine and fancy, but how can MicroPubs make money? A couple changes are afoot:

• New Metrics -- the commoditization advertising using Google AdSense and CPC doesn't represent the value of commoditizing sponsorships. Look to new models like Cost Per Influence.
  
• New Measures -- be it links or subscriptions, they add up to attention and reputation
  
• New Formats -- sponsor-like ad formats are starting to work, but new formats are called for that are transitive. Most of The Standard's ad revenue could be from ads first served on other sites and passed along with editorial endorsement.
  
• New Standards -- as in technical. Atom takes RSS beyond the feed for two-way transmission via a syndication format and an API. When people can contribute to The Standard using their own tools on top of standards, it gives rise to a different kind of participation.
  
• New Participants -- just as the Opinion section is generated by users, look for new ways to engage participants in conversations and re-mixing media.

  It's all driven by a fundamental human desire to be social and meddle with media artifacts suddenly being fulfilled by lower cost simple tools. These are some of the themes we'll explore next week in Berkeley at the BlogOn Event.