It's rare when you see such a clear example of the Internet's disruption: OK Go, the band best known for its clever music videos, has severed ties with its record label, EMI. The reason? The label is caught in old-think and wants to disable the embed function on the group's web-based videos.

OK Go ... God bless 'em ... told EMI to politely bugger off. The band knows embedding is an absolute must-have if you want to harness the web's power.

Speaking of which, here's the group's latest masterpiece:

Anil Dash follows up his great post on Twitter's suggested user list with an equally great piece that politely challenges Twitter follower counts. As he notes, analytics and inflated self-importance are nothing new:

It's a bit like when I worked at a newspaper: Every reporter thought "Well, our circulation is a million copies, that must mean a million people read my column." Facing the reality that only 10,000 of those people read the column, or that perhaps only 1,000 of them were reading the advertisement on the opposite page, forced a useful and important reckoning into some false assumptions that were underpinning that industry's workings.

The key here -- and Dash mentions this in his post -- is to dispel overblown notions so analytics become useful. Follower counts have value, just as page views, uniques, user-session times, circulation figures and subscription numbers do. But all those numbers have to be filtered through the realities of passivity and engagement.

Perhaps it's a function of the intricate tracking the Web provides, but I'm still amazed at media's inability to grasp the secondary (and often, tertiary) value of community efforts.

So let's make this as clear as clear can be: Twitter, Facebook, forums and other social media functions rarely make money directly. Their value comes from the attention they gather and the opportunities that attention creates. If you have a mass of people who have willingly opted-in to your messaging, you damn well better put useful, for-pay products in front of them. Otherwise, all you've got is a social club.

This recent piece from Forbes does a nice job tearing down the direct-revenue mindset.

John A. Byrne is leaving BusinessWeek to start a new business (not exactly a newsflash, I know). I generally don't care much if a bigwig leaves a position to venture out on his or her own. That happens all the time. But Byrne is different. BusinessWeek, for all its financial trouble, has a phenomenal web presence, and much of that was built under Byrne's watch. He's also a guy who inherently understands the power of direct communication with the audience. Just take a look at his Twitter feed. How many editors engage like that?

And then there's this ...

In a blog post announcing his new venture, he articulates the beliefs that guide his thinking about digital content:

I have three fundamental beliefs that inform my thinking: 1) Print advertising will never come back. There are just too many options for advertisers today and too much pressure on rates. Sadly, success in print will be measured in single-digit declines, forever. 2) Online advertising will never offset those declines nor save print. There's far too much competition online and far too much available inventory; and 3) Users will not pay for content, unless they're convinced it has immediate and tangible value. Very little journalism meets that standard today. Do we really need 57 versions of a story on Bernie Madoff pleading guilty?

That's a beautiful paragraph. Here's why:

1. He's dead on.
2. It illustrates the type of structural thinking that turns vague ideas into real businesses. We need more editors and publishers who work this way. Big ideas and grand plans cannot stand on their own. They have to be crammed into a structure -- a mental furnace that burns away assumptions. Otherwise, all you've got is brain-based vaporware. That useless, fluffy business school nonsense that gets retweeted, and buzzed, and expanded into book form. We've got enough of that.

I speak from experience with this structure stuff. I used to wander aimlessly through the "future of content" world, distracted by shiny new things and influenced by flavor-of-the-week thinking (I once thought micropayments were totally going to happen ... ugh.) But six months ago I decided to map out my own structure for all this digital disruption business. The result is this. I have no idea if it has any value as an actual business model, but the writing process forced me to hone and articulate the thousands of rants and opinions brewing in my head. Now, when I'm confronted with a new idea or perspective, I can feed it into this structure and quickly examine the various angles. It's helped me tremendously. I've got my footing now.

Fred Wilson discusses the effort behind good user comments and conversations:

But if the author of the news story, or opinion piece, or blog post, tends to the comments, replies to the good ones, signals the bad ones, chastises the loudmouth bullies, and generally runs the comment threads like a serious discussion group, a serious discussion will result.

It's an issue for the news industry because tending to comment threads is not part of a journalist's traditional job. But I would argue that it is now and they ought to get busy doing it. For one, the journalists that do it and do it well will be better read. And they'll be better informed. They'll get tips in the comment threads. They'll get constructive criticism that will help them do their job better. And they'll get leads on new stories before others will.

I'll add this: The tipping point for comments is when users stop talking to the author of a piece and start conversing intelligently with each other. Reaching this commenting utopia requires an inclusive mindset from the original author/writer/poster. You have to value discourse, not just top-down pontification.

Never underestimate financial motivation:

The Netflix Prize contest has been hailed as prime example of "prize economics" and the crowdsourcing of innovation. Prize economics refers to running a contest to generate a new innovation at less cost than an in-house research and development effort, and crowd-sourcing refers to using the proverbial wisdom of crowds to accomplish a task. Netflix has said that $1 million would be a bargain price for an improved recommendation engine, which would increase customer satisfaction and generate more movie rental business. [Link included in original post.]

The Netflix Prize -- and similar contests -- take a much-needed, practical approach to crowdsourcing by injecting clear motivation into the process. A big fat check is bound to attract a committed corps, but other rewards, such as esteem within a specific community or job opportunities, may also work (may ... successful crowdsourcing and community creation often requires a lightning-in-a-bottle moment). What I appreciate most about the Netflix Prize is that, unlike most forms of citizen journalism and community building, it clearly answered the question: "Why would anyone do this?".

In a refreshing break from the wailing and moaning from the business side of content, Bill Mitchell offers an in-depth look at a dynamic storytelling form he calls "Next Step Journalism":

It's a process -- call it Next Step Journalism -- that will shape more and more of the news we need from around the block and around the globe.

Journalists have relied on a process approach to writing for years. The Next Step Journalism process practiced on the Neda story began with an event and is characterized by the collective sharing and enhancing of information ...

... Deconstructing the Neda story reveals seven elements of this kind of storytelling -- some more in need of professional journalism skills and values than others. In describing what's involved in each elements, I'm struck by a common thread: the importance of collaboration. [Link included in original post.]

As Mitchell illustrates later in the column, journalists can use social media tools as a starting point for deeper research and reporting. Sources are everywhere, you just have to be willing to look.

Robert Scoble's new venture, Building 43, is using the Web's naturally distributed format to build community:

Our "Building 43," though, is not a place. It's not even a website. It's a decentralized community for people fanatical about the Internet. You'll find us on Facebook, on Twitter, on friendfeed, on Ning, and lots of other places too.

Scoble's Building 43 announcement is enthusiastic but vague (and what's with the unlinked URLs?) so it remains to be seen how he and his partners at Rackspace will develop the business. Nonetheless, I love the idea of creating a decentralized community through established platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Ning, etc.). We did this with O'Reilly's Tools of Change for Publishing -- combining a blog, Ning community, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and an annual conference -- and I was thrilled with the results. People gathered around their preferred platform: some folks used the blog, others congregated on the Ning community, and some found Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook most useful. This aggregate model helped us discuss our core topics with a decentralized and engaged user base.

"Distributed community" runs counter to current advertising models -- you're no longer pushing audiences into your sites with your advertising. That's why I'm a fan of next-generation content efforts like the Guardian's Open Platform and Politico's content sharing network. Each of these projects tweaks the connection between audiences, content and advertising by acknowledging the essential rule of Web community development: audiences can go where they want, when they want, so you need to meet them on their terms, not yours.

Hand-Picked Related Links:

• Scoble's New Thing: Building 43
• Guardian Open Platform Associates Ads with Content, Not Containers
• Politico Expands Content Sharing Service
• Target, Serve and Adapt: A Simple Model for Audience Development
• The Realities of Big Web Traffic and Advertising