(seen in Mediapost’s OnlineMediaDaily this morning)

In order to succeed in the long run, content producers must acknowledge the importance of blogs, portals, and aggregators in connecting with their audiences, according to a new JupiterResearch report, “Networked Media: Thriving In An Intermediated World.” The report points out, for example, that 57% of 18- to-24-year-old Internet users get their news from portals versus 21% from cable news sites–and online users now trust portals nearly as much as traditional news media.

“To thrive on the Web, news sites must become more network-focused and aggregate content from other sources while distributing their own content through intermediaries,” said David Schatsky, president of JupiterResearch. “By paying closer attention to the tendencies of the end user, these sites will be able to evolve and meet the needs of a wider online audience.” “Not only must content producers embrace intermediaries to serve their own audiences and reach out to new ones” explained JupiterResearch analyst Barry Parr, but “they should exploit opportunities to become intermediaries for their core audiences.”

What it means: I think the recommendation above applies to most (if not all) content producers. First, they need to become curators of content (aggregation within editorial guidelines) in addition to creators of content (dixit Ted Shelton). Second, as the web is much more fragmented than the offline world, it is critical to atomize the content to distribute it to other web sites to increase the total reach.