The "attention economy" rules. That's why I built the Daily Quickie to demand -- at most -- 1-2 minutes of your time, not just in function but in premise.
It wasn't just that you could digest the Quickie in 2 minutes -- it is that when you looked at it, you understood (and perhaps valued) that you could digest it in 2 minutes.
It had actual fast-acting utility, but it also had the perception of fast-acting utility. PTI had the same thing. Blogs, too. Twitter. YouTube and even Hulu's 15-second pre-roll ads.
The other thing was that where most traditional media companies think their job is to take as much "mind share" as possible, I was very modest in my goals: "Just give me 2 minutes."
Actually, there is a back half to that: "Just give me 2 minutes... and I promise that I will make it worth your while. I will try to make this the most valuable 2 minutes of your sports-media day."
(Interesting tidbit: I really did build the Quickie to be consumed in 60-120 seconds, by design. The average time spent on the Quickie? Around 4 minutes.)
Nearly seven years later, obviously, the qualities that made the Quickie successful (by no means originating with the Quickie) have spread throughout media. Today, the Quickie is much closer to what consumers want and how they consume than your standard long-form column.
Hmm: Just realized we are right around the 7-year anniversary of my original Quickie pitch to ESPN.com. Wow. Cripes, we've navigated some water under the bridge since then, haven't we?
-- D.S.
Thursday, August 13, 2009
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