I recently had a discussion with Corie Lok from the Boston hub about the future of media. Ah, small talk. One of the things that came up in the discussion was how to increase traffic to a given site (such as Nature Network, for instance… nudge, wink, etc) so as to increase advertising revenue. It’s all about the Benjamins, n’est pas?
One thing that I suggested was a partnership between NN and, say, the BBC. Now, I have no idea if the lions in charge of either parent company have any interest whatsoever in sharing their toys. But what if they were? What if, either during a broadcast or using their web portal, the BBC science group were to direct their viewership to a shared feature that is being discussed at NN or another of the Nature blogs? Nature could then return the favor by featuring links back to BBC for the featured item or other items on its homepage. This would hugely increase the publicity of a given site and have the happy consequence of getting a larger portion of the public engaged in the scientific discourse.
This kind of media partnership is certainly gaining legs over at ScienceBlogs, where they have partnered with Bloggingheads.tv to produce so-called diavlogs that pit one character against another in a video face-off.
Seems to me this is a format that was custom built for many on here (Dr. Richard Grant comes to mind) and could be a useful tool to hash out ideas in a fun and (hopefully) productive manner.
I’m curious to know what other people think of this kind of strategic partnership. Is it folly, destined to dilute the content and character of the site? Or is this a fine way to increase perspective and make a little money for the cause at the same time?
This partnering sounds like a good idea, but NN’s target audience is mainly other scientists, so the Beeb might not be the best partner. I guess if Corie could find a high-impact journal that would want to collaborate then … Nah. None of them would go for it.
I got the idea for something with the BBC when I was spinning through the Science section on the web and realizing how sparse it was.
Although the BBC is decidedly large market and NN is really just for the science community, could there be a joint venture that is a side project for NN? This would maintain the integrity of the scientist-centric blogging community while providing a chance to do a little public outreach. I know this is something that I and many other on here are passionate about. Just thinking out loud, of course.