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Posted 7:02 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
What Happened to the Mug Shots?
Steve Outing on weblogs
This "group weblog" format for E-Media Tidbits is just a few days old, so I'm still tweaking it. You'll notice that I got rid of the photos of our writers that accompanied each item the last couple days. It had occurred to me that they would get repetitive for regular readers, but decided to try them out. This afternoon I got a message from a reader saying that she felt annoyed by the repetition. She was right; the photos are gone. Meanwhile, if you want to know more about any Tidbits writer, just click on their name for a bio — and photo.
Posted 6:47 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The NBA Knows Who You Are
Steve Klein on online sports
The National Basketball Association wants to get in your face online. The Wall Street Journal Online's David Sweet reports that the NBA is "unifying personal data on millions of its fans," allowing the league to market to customers through the Web and wireless devices with "pinpoint accuracy." California-based software company E.piphany will compile names, addresses, and ticket-purchase preferences by late spring. Visitors to NBA.com and related sites will see personalized windows offering discounted merchandise and fan-loyalty programs. Wireless users will receive ticket offers. The NBA expects to have data on more than 20 million fans by next season. As the National Hockey League likes to say, Game On!
Posted 6:39 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Is Internet Time Slowing Down?
Andrew Nachison on online advertising
The newspaper business is famous for its copy-cat mentality. Newspapers look to other newspapers for ideas on how to boost sales, improve the product, or cut costs. The business model itself is sound, profit margins are generally obscene, so innovation is rare and even more rarely perceptible. There was a time when it seemed like the Web was different. Wildly, permanently different. Every day brought not merely a new twist to an old idea, but a new idea — an eBay, a Napster, MySimon, Priceline, Sidewalk. Slowpoke media, like newspapers, seemed doomed. Today, times are tougher, venture capital is scarcer, and we've got some history to reflect upon. First-to-market no longer seems quite as powerful an argument as it once was.Should all this add up to a take-it-slow approach on the Internet? It seems to me that the creative slowdown is hitting at exactly the wrong moment, just when we've figured out that some things don't work and that we need some fresh ideas. Bring on the fresh ideas! Case in point: online advertising. You may have read, here or elsewhere, of the new opt-in e-mail approach recently announced at Silicon Alley Daily, a great newsletter covering the digital economy in New York City. If you receive the newsletter by e-mail you now must be willing to receive a weekly e-mail advertisement. CNET has raised some eyebrows with its new large-format Flash ads, which the New York Times has already pledged to incorporate into its next site redesign. AdWeek has a nice roundup of what's going on in online advertising.
My question is: why are these changes taking so long? For most Web sites, banner advertising has been failing for, well, as long as it's been around. If it isn't working on your site, why are you sticking with it? What does it take to convince advertising-supported content publishers (hello online newspapers) that they've got to try something radically different? Same question on the content side and, as long as we're talking about failure, the entire vision and business model.
Posted 4:57 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Bob Knight Gets Granular
Steve Klein on sports content
Guess who's playing in the Sandbox these days? Would you believe Bob Knight? The former Indiana University men's basketball coach has agreed to promote Internet game producer Sandbox.com's NCAA tournament pool, according to Scott Newman of Bloomberg News. Newman quotes a source as saying Knight will be paid $55,000 for commentary, game-by-game predictions, and to fill out his own NCAA tournament bracket on www.itsmadness.com. Admits Sandbox COO Bill Carey, "We were surprised we could get him." Bet the NCAA, which can't control (and never could) Knight, is surprised, too. Media Metrix analyst Christopher Todd said Sandbox will "get a lot of people who'll want to claim they're smarter than Bobby Knight."Last year, Sandbox offered $10 million for a perfect NCAA tournament bracket (which no one completed successfully), and with the same $10 million offer and Knight, Carey hopes to attract more than a million players. So who does The General like one month before the tournament? Well, Stanford, Duke, North Carolina, Michigan State, Kansas (kind of sounds like the AP Top 5 to me), but he also tosses in Boston College, Virginia, Iowa State, Illinois and Florida. Let's check back in a month.
Posted 3:21 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Sleazy Marketing: Flaks Hitch Ride on Napster
Amy Gahran on P2P
Today's Salon.com includes an article about a new marketing practice that really irks me. Apparently, "hard-drive snooping" is the latest twist in online "astroturf" (marketing or advocacy masquerading as grassroots activity). Napster is making this easier — maybe they're throwing a bone to appease the music companies? And Napster's privacy policy is so complicated, I can't really tell whether they're disclosing this activity or not.See "The Napster parasites," by Janelle Brown. Here's an excerpt: "Peer-to-peer (P2P) networks in which Net-connected individuals make the contents of their hard drives available to the general public are no longer being used just by music fans to swap illicit MP3s; they are also increasingly being used as a savvy promotional tool and a market research database by record labels, musicians and entrepreneurs who are trying to figure out better, faster ways to sell music. In fact, a whole new crop of market research companies is springing up online — call them Napster parasites or, more politely, symbionts — eager to take advantage of the wealth of personal data that can be mined from hard drives all over the world."
Posted 11:47 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Resurrection of the PM Paper?
Kerry Northrup on Internet's impact on print
Want still more evidence of how the Information Economy is turning conventional publishing wisdom on its head? A newspaper war has broken out in Melbourne, Australia. John Fairfax Holdings Limited has launched the Melbourne Express to counter the new commuter daily titled MX from Rupert Murdoch's Australian division, News Limited. Both these boys already publish traditional morning dailies in the city and environs — The Age and The Herald Sun, respectively.So what new turf are they each now trying to claim? Of all things, the PM market. Yes, the same PM market that for at least the past two decades has been considered a newspaper dead-man's land in most countries including Australia and the United States. But in Melbourne, it is now seen as a potentially lucrative and untapped arena full of commuting city workers in the attractive 18-34-year age bracket. One recent article explained that things were ripe for such a development because "Melbourne does not have a dedicated afternoon newspaper." If that is the justification, there are certainly a lot of other venues around the world prime for a similar breakout of publishing hostilities.
Posted 7:15 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
E-books Should be Cheaper!
Steve Outing on e-books
Watching the book publishing industry try to understand e-books is frustrating. Too many in the traditional book trade seem to think that e-books should be priced the same as printed books — and that, in my opinion, is a terrible mistake. But Simon and Schuster/Pocket Books is doing "the right thing" by offering the e-books of M.J. Rose, In Fidelity and Lip Service, for $4.95 during the month of February. Normal e-book price for these titles is $13.95 — the same as the print editions.Rose (who is a fellow writer for E-Media Tidbits) is quoted in this Wired News article: "People are much more willing to read on the desktop when it doesn't cost them a lot. This is the best thing we can do to use e-books to introduce readers to our work. We should price them accordingly." Right. The industry needs to encourage digital reading of books. Same-as-print pricing sends the message, There's no reason to buy an e-book reading device.
Posted 4:08 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Hip to Hypertext
Andrew Nachison on digital stories
The January/February issue of Poets & Writers includes a series of articles on electronic literature and the impact of digital media on the fiction business. If you're interested in how creative artists have experimented with digital story-telling, it's a must-read, and if you're involved with online content I don't know why you wouldn't be interested in studying these works.
Posted 2:37 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Read About the Energy Crisis – at PG&E's Web Site
Paul Grabowicz on journalism ethics
The San Francisco Chronicle reported recently that California's energy crisis has produced a surge in visits to Pacific Gas & Electric Company's Web site. Was this disintermediation — people bypassing online media to go directly to a corporate site for information?It turns out that PG&E's home page features a pop-up window with scrolling headlines that link to news stories at media sites like the Chronicle. I didn't see any stories critical of the utility company, and the news headlines are interspersed with links to PG&E press releases. So is this disintermediation? Reintermediation? Aggregation? Deception? ... Confusing times.
Posted 12:58 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
E-mail Them Anything — Yes, But ...
Rich Gordon on what's wrong with traditional media content
Steve Outing's column of a couple of days ago covers the St. Petersburg Times' plans to create very granular, ultra-personalized e-mail alerts. I suspect there are many publishers, in new media and traditional media, who would read it and say, "That sounds like a great idea."But the problem for most traditional publishers is that their content simply isn't ready for this kind of initiative. Most traditional publishers — or broadcasters, for that matter — simply haven't built editorial systems that store content in a structured form (database, XML, etc.) that makes it possible to "slice and dice" in the way the Times proposes. I haven't seen this topic discussed much in the online news or e-media community, but about a year ago, I gave a presentation ("Is Your Content Web-Ready?") to the Inland Press Association on this and related topics. Feedback is welcome at richgor@northwestern.edu.
Posted 12:05 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Newspaper on the Net: David Beats Goliath
Katja Riefler on online "newspapers"
An interesting debate is going on in Germany about who may name itself a newspaper and who not. The court in Cologne (OLG) just allowed the very small online-only publication Regioblick to advertise its publication with the slogan "The Newspaper on the Net" ("Die Zeitung im Netz"). RegioBlick therefore succeeded for the second time against the "Aachener Verlagsgesellschaft" that publishes the two major local newspapers, Aachener Zeitung and Aachener Nachrichten. The judges did not follow the argument that readers would be misled by the slogan because they'd expect a newspaper to be also available in print.The decision is surprising to the print publishers. RegioBlick offers most of its local content only to a very small number of paying subscibers. (150 people pay 5 Euro a month, according to founder and publisher Dieter Cohnen; 24-hour access to the site costs 0,20 Euro a day.) The reporters and editors don't get a salary. But still the site exists since January 1999 and is updated seven days a week.
Posted 12:08 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Rivals Makes Friends With Yahoo!
Steve Klein on online sports
Rivals.com, a network of more than 300 team and affinity sports sites without a big media partner, has signed a two-year distribution deal with Yahoo! Under the agreement, Rivals will receive a logo and a link on all of Yahoo's team-sports pages, according to an article by Terry Lefton of TheStandard.com. Rivals, which is usually among the top 10 sports sites, expects a traffic boost; Yahoo gets increased exposure among Rivals' hard-core fans who support its mostly unofficial team sites.Lefton writes that "with the slowdown in online advertising, Rivals is among many sports sites trying to shift from an ad-supported revenue stream to more of a hybrid model. Last year, ads accounted for 75% of Rivals' revenues, whereas this year's projections have advertising producing about 50%, with subscription fees, e-commerce and direct marketing accounting for the rest." Look for more content sites to follow Rivals' hybrid approach.
Posted 12:03 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Want This Newsletter? Then Read These Ads!
Wireless Reporter, an e-mail newsletter by the publishers of Silicon Alley Reporter, has come up with an interesting new money-making scheme. As its publisher, Jason McCabe Calacanis, explained in a message to readers today, the e-publication will soon start sending out a weekly e-mail message from an advertiser. If you receive the free newsletter, then you'll receive this weekly piece of e-mail advertising.This is somewhat akin to selling your e-mail subscriber list to advertisers — but with a twist. The ad e-mails will be delivered by Wireless Reporter, so the advertiser does not have possession or direct use of the publication's list. Calacanis emphasizes in his note to readers that his company will never share subscriber information with advertisers. But, he also makes it clear that the price to the reader for receiving the free newsletter is to agree to receive these weekly ad e-mails. He writes, "Simply put, these dedicated e-mails will provide us with the resources to continue to give you the deepest and most insightful coverage of the wireless industry's trends, top news stories, and key players."
Posted 2:26 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Yet Another Internet Content Flop
The last major byline at eCountries.com will apparently be Simeon Kerr on the Israeli election. InternetContent.net's Andrew Stroehlein was the first to report that eCountries had folded. CEO Donal Smith, formerly of the Financial Times, and president/publisher Johnathan Schmidt announced to their staff on Wednesday that investors had withdrawn financial support and that the site, with around 50 permanent staff members and offices in New York, London, Dublin, and Hong Kong, could no longer support itself.This is yet another example of a business-to-business marketplace model with strong editorial content and news analysis about global economic development going belly-up. eCountries was among the media covering the recent Davos World Economic Forum. Syndication partners included ABCnews.com and Yahoo.com.
Posted 12:15 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Get It in Writing and Keep It In E-mail
M.J. Rose on freelancing
In this tale of getting ripped off is a moral every freelancer should pay attention to: document your dealings and save your e-mail. Freelancer Stacey Chase is suing a People editor, claiming that the magazine stole a story that she pitched and then published it without her byline — and without paying her for her work."People denies stealing ideas, but a series of e-mails entered into the court record by Chase offers a rare glimpse into the exploitative editorial process at the most profitable magazine at Time Inc.," writes Cynthia Cotts for the Village Voice.
Posted 11:55 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
CNET to Cut Staff by 10%
Jade Walker on the content downturn
According to the Associated Press, CNET plans to cut 190 positions, or about 10% of its staff. Half of these employees were laid off on Tuesday — the rest get to bite their nails and wait for the axe to fall over the next few weeks. CNET cites lagging ad revenues and an uncertain market environment as reasons for the lay-offs.
Posted 11:32 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
E-mail Them Anything and Everything
My weekly Editor & Publisher Online column proposes something bold for news sites — to set up systems that will allow Web users to receive any content they wish as a regular e-mail delivery stream. No news site has yet done this to the point of giving users complete control over what gets delivered. But a Florida newspaper, the St. Petersburg Times, is building just such a system for its Web site, which is likely to be ready sometime this year. I've long thought that this is a great idea. All I have to say is, it's about time someone tried out this model. Infobeat has used this model for years, but news sites have shied away from it. Hey, news Web sites are floundering; why not give this a try!
Posted 9:51 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Redneck Spell Check
Writing in Exquisite Corpse, Brian Kimberling waxes poetic on spell check and the art form it will become. "Whole sociological portraits can be drawn with the spell-check; it is a short time now before it gets touted as the new new art," he writes in an article that will send you to your computers to play the game.Instructions are simple. "Anyone can do it," says Kimberling. "All you need is a few related words and a computer. Suppose you type in Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and Mao. Word 97 knows them all. Try Ghandi (sic), however, and you get a red squiggle underneath. Good guys have no place in the modern cultural consciousness. Your computer knows baddies Lenin and Trotsky, but not peace lovers Lennon, McCartney, and Starr."
Posted 7:03 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Content as King (or Not): A Historical Perspective
Andrew Odlyzko, a mathematician and researcher for AT&T, has produced a fascinating article, "Content Is Not King," that looks at the amount of money spent on content vs. the amount spent on "connectivity" or telecommunications. One can disagree with his conclusion — "Content has never been king, it is not king now, and is unlikely ever to be king" — and still be impressed with the historical sweep of the article, which incorporates examples from the early days of radio as well as the 19th century U.S. Post Office. As someone who's trying to put technology and media into perspective for today's undergraduates (and as a former history major), I find that books and articles that put today's events into historical context are awfully valuable.
Posted 6:48 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Calacanis: Big-Box Ads May Annoy, But They're Good
Silicon Alley Daily's Jason McCabe Calacanis has written an important commentary about the controversial "big-box" ads that have begun appearing on CNET's News.com. Yeah, he admits, they are extremely annoying, and noticeable — and that's probably good for the advertisers, since standard Web banners are so easy to ignore. Calacanis has some insightful quotes in his article:
- "CNET's innovation should be commended because it will clearly push users to the point of either paying for content to get rid of the ads, or forcing them to agree to sit through full-screen interstitials before reading a story. The latter is the most logical progression, as I'm still convinced that users, even business users, would rather consume ads than pay for content."
- "It is clear to me that CNET, a perpetual innovator in the industry, is simply preparing and, perhaps more correctly, training users for the inevitable: Web-based commercials. In a short period of time, CNET (along with NYTimes.com, RedHerring.com, Upside.com, and I'm sure even the Silicon Alley Daily) will simply play a nice 15-to-30-second commercial when users come to websites, and again after every five or 10 pages of content. These ads will be full screen, interactive, and you will not be able to close them like pop-ups or ignore them like banner ads."
- "Either you pay for HBO and you get to watch The Sopranos without interruption, or you choose to watch Friends on NBC with commercial breaks. The Internet will be no different within the next 12 months, and I, for one, am happy about it."
Bravo, Jason!
Posted 6:08 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Amy Debuts 'Feminews' E-newsletter
Amy Gahran on cool new content
I've just launched Feminews, a new, free, ad-supported e-mail newsletter. Feminews focuses on how women around the world are involved in, or affected by, the stories in today's headlines — and it goes far beyond what are usually considered "women's issues."Also, yesterday's Broadcasting & Cable Magazine includes a column by Russell Shaw ("Avoiding the Ax") which concerns how staff cuts may affect the quality of content in the broadcasting-related Internet space. (The piece includes extensive comments by me.)
Posted 4:11 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Democratic Style Guide
Jade Walker on online style
All discussion lists for writers eventually end up on the topic of style. Is it Website or Web site? E-mail or email? Because there is no definitive style book out there for online content providers to follow — and new terms seem to pop up every day — specific style differs depending on each site's editorial judgment. The Writing That Works Web site asked writers from the United States and Canada to complete the 10th Annual Writing Usage Survey and came up with some interesting results. (Looks like I'll be revamping my own style guide again!)
Posted 4:00 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Get Ready to Pay for Content
How do you make content pay on the Internet? Everyone asks the question, but Gerry McGovern, CEO of Irish-based Nua, thinks that he has the answer — and a timetable. Writing in his weekly column, "New Thinking," McGovern says that there will be an evolution over the next five years to Web-only publishing for specialized content. And that, he says, will bring an end to much of the free content on the Web as print publishers establish revenue streams through their Web publications. "On the Web we live a great illusion," he writes. "We have become drunk on free content, believing that the party will never end. Well, a lot of parties are over, and the free content party will soon be over too. The reason why so much content is free on the Web is because it is leeching off the current high profits in print publishing."
Posted 3:42 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Introducing the NEW E-Media Tidbits
E-Media Tidbits has been published by Amy Gahran and me since mid 2000. We've just changed the format to include the writings of 12 individuals (including Amy and me) who are experts in the fields of online content/journalism/publishing. Each day (Monday-Friday), members of this group will post short items about fascinating things that they run across, or thoughts, opinions, and insights they have. All of our writers are well known in the field of online content and media. In fact, we chose them because they are the sharpest minds in the industry. (Click here to see bios.)We hope you enjoy the new model of E-Media Tidbits, and the contributions of our panel of expert writers.
Posted 12:40 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Amazon Wants to Help You Sell Content on the 'Honor System'
If it was good enough for Stephen King, maybe it's good enough for you. Amazon.com has started to offer writers and other content creators the ability to collect voluntary payments for their content — just as author King did for his The Plant e-serial, in which online readers were asked to voluntarily pay for installments of the work that they downloaded from King's Web site, and Amazon collected the payments on his behalf. As M.J. Rose explains in her column for Wired News today, authors with content to sell need only place a box on their site which leads customers to a payment area on Amazon.com. Amazon will take a cut of 15% of the voluntary-purchase price, plus 15 cents (with a maximum commission of US $50). Amazon is calling this "The Honor System." If you're willing to trust that your customers will pay up, this is a nice solution to accepting payments for those authors who don't want to hassle with credit card merchant accounts. —Steve Outing
Posted 11:52 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Thinning Continues
Here in the U.S., it looks increasingly like the economy is at the cusp of recession. The Internet economy is already there. And the content sector of the Internet economy is perhaps hardest hit. The latest casualty is Voter.com, which has been considered a leader in the online politics space. Executives of the site, which features a mix of news, discussion, and community, decided yesterday to shut it down after failing to raise additional investor money. 45 employees in New York and Washington, D.C., will be laid off. (At its peak, the site had 100 employees.) Voter.com had raised $22 million and was aided by the presence of celebrity political journalists like Carl Bernstein. In the current environment, that wasn't enough. Here's a story about Voter.com's demise from the Boston Globe. —Steve Outing
Posted 12:11 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Problem With Flash Ads
In one of the discussion lists that I participate in, we've been jawing about the big, animated ads that are appearing on CNET's News.com. (See two items below this for another comment about News.com's new ad formats.) Lots of folks don't like the ads because they're so intrusive, and because the large animations make it difficult to read the editorial content that surrounds those ads. I've got a solution: Advertisers, when they use large, animated Flash ads, need to include a "Stop Animation" link or button on the ads so that Web users can turn off the animation if they wish. This would be respectful behavior on advertisers' part. Advertisers: Do this or expect to see browser plug-ins created and used that will block Flash-animation ads. —Steve
Posted 12:05 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
iVillage, Women.com Merge in Complex Deal
In what is being interpreted as a "desperation move," iVillage.com is buying Women.com, resulting in (pardon the pun) the mother of all women's sites. As Inside.com reports, the complex deal appears to be a wash when it comes to money, since funds from iVillage will turn back iVillage's way when Hearst Corp. invests in it. Hearst owns a sizable chunk of Women.com. This is all part of the consolidation of the Internet media industry resulting from the Internet downturn. Only the strong will survive. —Steve Outing
Posted 1:35 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
CNET's Big Ads: The Backlash
CNET's much-bigger ad banners have generated significant backlash; complaints are that they are simply too intrusive. (See this story which contains one of the big Flash-animated ads.) I think this is predictable, and that reaction will calm down after the novelty wears off. I also expect to see other sites adopt similar models and start to get away from the ubiquitous-but-ineffective 468 x 60 banner ad standard. Here's an article from Ad Week that explains the reasoning behind the controversial move to bigger and more intrusive Web ads on CNET's News.com site. Something's got to change in the Web site industry; we simply can't survive on revenues from banner ads in a format that has proven itself to be a failure. —Steve Outing
Posted 1:22 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
e-Awards and p-Awards
Inscriptions Magazine, a Web site and e-newsletter for writers, is holding a contest for best online writers (e-writers) and best print writers (p-writers). Editor Jade Walker (who will soon start contributing to this weblog) is calling the awards the Inscriptions Engravers Awards, and award categories include Favorite: Online Writer; Online Columnist; Print Author; E-book Author; Print Publisher; E-book Publisher; Online Editor; News Web Site; E-zine or Newsletter; and Writing-Related Web Site. Subscribers to Inscriptions are eligible to vote. (And I'm honored to have been nominated in the Favorite Online Columnist category for this weblog, E-Media Tidbits. ... Hey, vote for me!
) —Steve Outing
Posted 12:45 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Web Syndication Tool 'For Dummies'
This week I released a short "bonus" edition of the Content Spotlight newsletter. It features an article by me about an interesting new Web syndication product from an Amsterdam-based startup, OOiPTech. The company's OOiP/Share product is particularly useful for small e-publishers who don't have the technical resources to come up with Javascript includes and other necessities of syndicating their content online. The emergence of this sort of technology is becoming increasingly important, because Web syndicates (like Screaming Media and YourNews) have made moves recently to stop carrying content of small e-publishers. Now the "little guys" will have to syndicate on their own. —Steve Outing
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