YPG Invited to NYU Media Talk Series
On Tuesday, October 26, 2010, YPG was invited to be a part of the NYU Media Talk series hosted by The Center for Publishing at NYU-SCPS. Over 40 YPG members attended “The Case for Media Optimism: What’s Working and Why.”
The panel was moderated by David Carr, a writer for The New York Times. David’s humor and insightful questions drove the event and kept it interesting. Panelists included Dennis Crowley, Cofounder and CEO, Foursquare; Steve Grove, News and Politics at Youtube (Google); David Eun, President, AOL Media and Studios; and David Karp, Cofounder and CEO, Tumblr.
As the title suggests, this was a panel focusing on the positive, discussing what’s exciting in media and what type of ideas are succeeding. Carr exclaimed that we are no longer “on a toboggan ride to hell” and that “it’s a great time to be in business.” He noted that nowadays no one asks for permission to build things. Yes, college students should have great resumes and internship experience, but they should also expect to hear, “Show me what you’ve made. Show me what you’ve built.”
Each panelist was asked a myriad of questions concerning what has worked in their business model and what’s driving their success. Company highlights include:
• Tumblr: Smart companies have used it as an auxiliary channel for the super engaged. Fun number: 1.5 billion page views a month.
• YouTube: Focused on building the audience even after being bought by Google, but is now delving more into monetization. Fun number: Lady Gaga was the first to reach 1 billion YouTube views.
• FourSquare: Has established a data set that hasn’t existed before. Fun number: Over 5 million registered users.
• AOL: At a time where companies started investing in robots and machines, AOL stayed strongly invested in people. Fun number: Homepage gets 15 million uniques a day
Brevity is being used as a new way to access more content quickly and be able to filter through it to exactly what we want. Should people in the “business of words” be afraid? David Karp says, “No! They just need to hustle.” People who are truly passionate about what they write will be able to leverage an audience.
To see a video of the event, please go to http://www.scps.nyu.edu/areas-of-study/publishing/news-and-events/media-talks/case-for-media-optimism.html.
