New Comm Biz

I write this post knowing I run the risk of kindling the wrath of my good friend David Heller (@muchosalsa). (BTW I’m *mostly* talking about the physical format of the newspaper in this post) But I have never subscribed to a newspaper in my life. On my way down to Austin last night on the red-eye with David Patton (@spincycle3) I was at a loss with what to do with this stack of newspapers he brought on the plane.

The only value I see in the newspapers is passive discovery. The ability to read something, turn the page and find an interesting article about something you’d never go out of your way to find. The problem is most of the time I have no interest whatsoever in the article on the next page and there’s no StumbleUpon button to take me to the next article that may have more interest to me. I’m just stuck with what’s in the paper. (As a side note I found it much harder to scan a newspaper than a Web page)

AVC, Fred Wilson one of the original early stage investors in Twitter recently gave a speech at the 140 conference: The Value Of Twitter Is In “The Power Of Passed Links”.

To me Twitter is my passive discovery. The thousands of people I follow provide that discovery that most people get from the paper. Except instead of reading one paper I read bits of hundreds of “papers” and blogs.

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