Why Tumblr Was a Massive Steal for Yahoo by Adam Rifkin.
Adam makes two critical points for topic maps marketing:
First, Tumblr is an interest not a social graph. That is people are looking for context of interest to them.
Second, as Adam writes:
Writers have time but no money. Certain groups are going to be overrepresented: Students, stay-at-home moms, the underemployed, retirees. Epinions, which paid for product reviews, especially ran into issues with writers whose relationship to reviewed products lay more in the realm of fantasy than reality. Writers are also going to have the time and emotional commitment to give your site a lot of feedback about their needs and desires … many of which will be counter to the best interests of the business.
Readers have money but no time. They don’t want to spend hours combing the Internet for photos of vintage jewelry. They want to see a picture of a watch they like, and buy it now. If readers don’t find your content valuable, they’re not going to send you a long email about what they don’t like. They’ll just silently hit the back button and get gone.
Test:
In marketing a topic map, which of the following are more important?:
- Writers can contribute their input to a public topic map interface?
- Readers can purchase access to high quality content?
You have until your VC funding runs out to decide.