LA MICROATOMIZACIÓN (MICROCHUNK)

LA MICROATOMIZACIÓN (MICROCHUNK)
Por Manuel Barros: manuelone@gmail.com

Bit-sized (poco tamaño), es una frase que está pegando en Internet, ya sea para los cada día más populares videos, o para los contenidos informativos. Es el nuevo horizonte de los Media Business Mens. La papa; “convertir lo que antes era vendido y entregado como un gran paquete, en múltiples y pequeñas unidades de diferenciada y específica información”[1].

Ya muchos lo habremos notado en la comodidad que nos entregan los llamados “feeds”, o el fenómeno del “syndicate”, donde cada uno se suscribe al tipo de información que desea recibir, fresca y libre de otras porquerías, en su propia bandeja de entrada, armándose así su medio personal. Pero la verdad es que esto va mucho más allá. Se trata del “…birth of a new clip culture” (Chad Hurley, CEO de Youtube), ó el surgimiento de una nueva cultura del pedacito[2].

Y es que no somos unos tragatodo. No leemos las noticias enteras, sino que por partes, y sólo cuando realmente nos interesan. Ideado hace poco menos de dos años por el profesor de la Universidad de Harvard, Umair Haque[3], el concepto de Microchunk (o «microatomización» como lo bautizaré) refiere a una nueva noción del negocio en los medios de comunicación. Si antes –e incluso todavía hoy –teníamos que comprar un periódico entero para ir luego a la sección de deportes, espectáculos, internacional o el puzzle, hoy la Microatomización promete cambiar y mejorar el sistema de la entrega de este servicio. Sólo suscríbete a Deportes (específicamente rugby neozelandés), y a Política de Malawi. Todos los días recibirás una actualización en tu correo.

Se trata de innovar y abrir la ventana
Darle un aire nuevo al aburrido mundo de la media. Ya no hay que pedirle a los usuarios que abran una sesión en tu medio, y que cada vez que entren se logéen. ¿Para qué? Si de todas formas van a saber encontrar en algún otro lado lo que tú estás ofreciendo. Facilita la cuestión y “categoriza” de manera simple todas tus informaciones, utiliza tags y trata de asociarte con algo como Technorati, donde uno puede metabuscar información, fotos y documentos por medio del uso de palabras claves (tags). Dale a cada sección, o bloque, una dirección aprensible. De seguro así te harás con un grupo fiel que sabrá qué encontrar en tu sitio, dónde y cómo encontrarte[4].

Los problemas del Microchunk
Yo tengo un blog y le ofrezco a mis lectores que se suscriban al feed o al atom, para que reciban mis actualizaciones todos los días, cómodamente en su correo. Todo iba bien hasta que un vivaracho se le ocurrió juntar los feeds de muchos de los blogs vinculados a la crítica de música en un solo “gran blog”, donde aparecían todos los días las nuevas noticias de los sitios en uno sólo. ¡Claro! Sin créditos ni el más mínimo escrúpulo. Este es el famoso fenómeno del Splogging. Hay que tener cuidado con lo liberal que es la Web.
De todas formas han nacido soluciones, como el Creative Commons, o más recientemente el sistema ESBN, que es como un código de barras. Quien quiera robar tus posts sin duda podrá hacerlo, pero dónde esté tu artículo, foto –o lo que sea –aparecerá tu nombre y un link. Así no tendrá mucho sentido convertirse en un Splogger.


[1] Vaga definición del Wiki Dictionary
[2] http://www.bubblegeneration.com/2006/04/microchunking-economy-while-media.cfm
[3] U. Haque Es el director del Havas Media Lab de la Universidad de Harvard. Un centro de estudios que proporciona información, datos y novedades al mundo del negocio de la media. Conózcalo en su perfil de Harvard, http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/, ó su sitio personal http://www.bubblegeneration.com/
[4] Algunos de los datos que ofrece la Quickstart Guide to Microchunk de Brian Oberkirch: http://www.brianoberkirch.com/2007/04/04/a-quickstart-guide-to-microchunking/

¿a dónde vamos?

Los propulsores de la aproximación a la Web 2.0 creen que el uso de la web está orientado a la interacción y redes sociales, que pueden servir contenido que explota los efectos de las redes, creando o no webs interactivas y visuales. Es decir, los sitios Web 2.0 actúan más como puntos de encuentro, o webs dependientes de usuarios, que como webs tradicionales.

Así, podemos entender como 2.0 -"todas aquellas utilidades y servicios de Internet que se sustentan en una base de datos, la cual puede ser modificada por los usuarios del servicio, ya sea en su contenido (añadiendo, cambiando o borrando información o asociando datos a la información existente), bien en la forma de presentarlos, o en contenido y forma simultáneamente."- (Ribes, 2007)

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0

Bite-sized video is booming

How content companies stand to profit from breaking programming into smaller pieces.

by Erick Schonfeld, Business 2.0 Magazine editor-at-large
March 13, 2006: 5:59 AM EST

(Business 2.0 Magazine) - Andy Samberg, a rising star on Saturday Night Live, owes his success to short video clips.

After all, Samberg was discovered by SNL producers who saw his comedy sketches on TheLonelyIsland.com -- a website he started with two friends (who also got hired by the show). So it was fitting that his career really took off in December, when a spoof featuring Samberg and SNL co-star Chris Parnell rapping "The Chronicles of Narnia!" was posted by a fan on the video-sharing site YouTube.com. It has since been downloaded more than 5 million times.

Call it the new era of video distribution: With digital tools and the Internet, consumers can now surgically remove the pieces of a TV program they like and share them with friends. Ever smaller bits of video content -- what Internet strategy consultant Umair Haque calls "microchunks" -- can be e-mailed, linked to, searched for, downloaded, remixed, and made available in a thousand places at once.

Of course, short video and animation clips, from the dancing baby to "All Your Base Are Belong to Us," have been all the rage since the early days of the Web. But now media giants are learning how to play the microchunk game -- and they hope to start making a lot of money at it.

The first important microchunk produced initially by a major media company dates back to October 2004, when a 13-minute clip of CNN's Crossfire, in which Jon Stewart lambastes the show's format and ridicules co-host Tucker Carlson, quickly became the most viewed video on both the AtomFilms and iFilm websites. Now Crossfire is dead (killed in part by Stewart's critique, admits CNN's president of U.S. operations), and Comedy Central is enjoying a brand-new revenue stream: making Stewart's Daily Show available on its website, in chunks no larger than the Crossfire segment.

Comedy Central's clip service, called MotherLoad, offers one take on how a microchunk business model might work. It's entirely free, but it plays in a pop-up window alongside a giant ad. (Short commercials also play before some segments.) In operation for only a few months, MotherLoad makes Daily Show clips available the morning after they air; hot ones have been watched, e-mailed, and blogged about hundreds of thousands of times in subsequent days.

Instead of coming to the network's website twice a month, the average visitor now shows up three times a week. "The real revelation for us has been the demand for having the segments online very quickly," says Beth Lewand, Comedy Central's vice president for digital media.

Distribution transformed
Of course, microchunking requires a radical transformation in the way media companies do business. In the past, consumers were content with media bundles: bulky newspapers, full-length albums, three-hour prime-time TV lineups. A flurry of recent digital distribution deals, however, is all about unbundling.

MTV Networks is reorganizing itself into two parts, one that focuses on short-form video and one for longer shows. ABC and NBC are selling Desperate Housewives and Law & Order episodes for $1.99 a pop to video iPod users. ABC's news clips with ads are available free online and through iTunes. CBS and NBC are selling on-demand reruns for 99 cents via cable and satellite.

America Online and Warner Bros. (both, like this magazine, owned by Time Warner are streaming old shows like Welcome Back, Kotter for free, hoping to make money from the ads.

According to Fred Wilson, a partner at Union Square Ventures who sat on the board of bookmark-sharing startup Del.icio.us until it was sold to Yahoo, there are rules for distributing content in the future.

1. First, of course, microchunk it: Reduce entertainment to its simplest discrete form, be it a blog post, a music track, or a skit.
2. Second, free it: Let people download, view, read, or listen without charge.
3. Third, share it: Let consumers subscribe to content through RSS- and podcast-style feeds so they can enjoy it wherever and whenever they like.
4. Finally, the moneymaking part: Put ads and tracking systems into the digital content itself.
   
   Already, a startup called Brightcove is helping media giants implement those rules. Based in Cambridge, Mass., the company can deliver video content as individual shows or chunked-up segments, attach ads, and syndicate the video. All video is served from Brightcove's network, but to viewers it appears to be coming from AOL or any of dozens of other branded sites.
   
   If microchunking -- with all its inherent network effects -- is harnessed correctly, it could one day prove more profitable than the old centralized media model. Which is why investors are watching the rise of ad-supported video chunks closely. If the TiVo (Research) generation can put up with the occasional commercial, Samberg and Stewart won't be the only ones smiling.
   
   http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/13/magazines/business2/boominbitesize/index.htm

A Quickstart Guide to Microchunking

You have taken the Fred Wilson & Umair Haque correspondence course on the future of media, and you’ve decided that you want you some of that right there. But how do you start your avant media practice? Let’s begin with the microchunk. Deceptively, deviously simple to put into play.

The platform: ideas that spread, win. Microchunking (serving up your stuff in easy-to-find, quick-to-consume, remixable pieces parts) makes it easier for your ideas to spread. Trust us: you will soon beg for people to pay attention to your projects. You may even start paying people in some currency for their attention.

So, on with the guide. The quickstart to microchunking:

* Carve it up into smaller pieces. Obvious, I know, but it bears repeating. You want us to grab the whole record, but we want the singles first. If you rock, we’ll come back for more. Cut your omnibus blog posts into a smaller series. All this video you kids are putting on the Web, cut it up. I’m looking at you, PodTech.

* Everything is addressable. It’s the Web, people, and we likes our URLs. Give every chunk a simple, findable, human readable, predictable address.

* Metadata, metadata, metadata, metadata. You want people to find your stuff, right? Tell em what’s in the box. Use rel-tags to help us discover the content. (Technorati tags are the branded form.) What, you already use tags? ZOMG! You are using microformats. Wasn’t that easy? Now, let’s start paying attention to how others are tagging our stuff: watch delicious and Magnolia to see how they think of the content, and then start using tags that make sense. Whenever possible, allow users to add relevant metadata.

* Syndicate it. Show off your feeds like a new puppy. Make it easy to subscribe by tag, category, author. Get it flowing.

* Ping, ping, ping. Geeky sidenote: make sure you’re telling all relevant ping servers when you have new content up. It’s like announcing to the world that a hot new microchunk of goodness is ready for action.

* Partial feeds are not microchunks. They are lame. That is all.

* No DRM or identity barriers. Sweet Jesus, play with the rest of us, will you? No barriers to flowing info. You’ll thank me later when you are still in business.

* Links back to the ‘whole’. Your chunks need some sort of equivalent of where people can ‘read all about it’. If you’re using Feedburner, give them a Feedflare back to the mothership. Videos or podcasts can bake in URLs for more stuff. You’re just trying to help people excited about the content find more.

* Make it legally kosher. Say hello to the Creative Commons. Learn about their content licenses that make it cool for others to remix and republish your work.

* Create the equivalent of a virtual endcap where people can stumble across your microchunks. This is what is behind the ‘greatest hits’ sidebar items you see in blogs. Or the ‘related’ posts widget in WordPress. Think Amazon: people who like this microchunk also lurved this microchunk. Help them find the good stuff.

* When possible, offer an API. There is a world of smart Web nerds out there who can think of cool things to do with your content. Let em at it.

http://www.brianoberkirch.com/2007/04/04/a-quickstart-guide-to-microchunking/

to microchunk or not to microchunk

English

to microchunk (third-person singular simple present microchunks, present participle microchunking, simple past and past participle microchunked)

To split up a product or service sold traditionally as a package.

Example: If I were a television executive right now, I'd take my content, microchunk it, put a couple calls to a video ad server in the middle of it, and let it go wherever it wants to go.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/microchunk