Friday, June 22, 2001

Posted 3:34 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

More Bad News for Content Sites

Paul Grabowicz on news media online
McKinsey & Company has published a report on the performance of dot-com companies, concluding that things are improving somewhat — except for content sites. The survey of 200 e-businesses found that 20% of them are now making an operating profit. But "most media and content sites are going from bad to worse," with decreased visitor retention, declining advertising revenue per user, and an even bigger drop in subscription revenue per user.

And while the e-commerce sites of existing businesses are generally doing better than Internet pure plays, for content companies the situation is reversed. Online-only sites have the upper hand because of a "clearer focus on the needs and behavior of online visitors," according to the report.

Posted 12:55 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Buzzword Watch: The Outernet

Steve Outing on what's next
Here's a word you'll be seeing more of: Outernet. The Outernet is the coming network of screens that we'll find everywere — at gas pumps; on airline seats; grocery checkouts and ballpark beer stands; etc. Advances in small-screen technology will allow marketers to reach us with digital messages just about everywhere. (Expect screens in public restrooms, too; there's no escape!) This article in Business 2.0 explains the trend.

Posted 11:20 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

I Didn't Ask for This Subscription!

Steve Outing on unethical e-mail publishers
Has this happened to you? I find myself with an increasing number of free e-mail newsletter subscriptions. Trouble is, quite a few of them I never requested; I've been signed up without my knowledge. In my case, I'm not getting oddball stuff like "Poodle Fanciers e-Weekly," but rather e-newsletters that are relevant to my interests — so these unscrupulous e-publishers are getting my e-mail address from sites and e-publications that I already have relationships with. I'm not sure there's a solution to this (short of unsubscribing, of course), but there is a nasty trend among an increasing number of e-newsletter publishers of in effect spamming in order to get new subscribers. And some e-publishers are renting out their mailing lists without taking care that they won't be used unethically. For shame.

Posted 10:39 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

A Women's Portal That Works?

Carla Passino on IsabelPreysler.com
With the recent layoffs at Ivillage and Women.com and the earlier demise of Phys and Swoon, the writing seemed to be on the wall for women's Web sites. But the downturn has miraculously spared Spanish women's portal IsabelPreysler.com, according to Ciberpais, the Internet supplement of newspaper El Pais.

The brainchild of society doyenne Isabel Preysler, the site is a crossover between a typical women's e-zine, with the customary fashion, beauty, cookery, and interiors articles, and a personal home page complete with naff pictures and the story of Isabel's life. I suspect that Isabel herself is what makes the portal attractive to both users — who get to see the behind-the-scenes life of a celebrity — and advertisers, who benefit from an implicit product endorsement. With advertisements ranging from make-up to jewelry and food supplements, IsabelPreysler.com seems to thrive. Will it last?

Posted 10:32 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Ready for the 2012 Olympics?

Steve Klein on online sports content
It's probably a little early to start planning for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games, especially since they're just under 4,000 days away and we don't know where they'll be. Eight American cities would like to host those games, however, and Mike McAllister of the Dallas Morning News has a fun column that ranks the online efforts of each bid city's organizing committee. Some of his conclusions:

• The gold medal goes to New York City, which features a sharp musical introduction (using Flash) and features past NYC Olympians posing in various urban settings.
• The sliver goes to Tampa, which has a terrific venue map and an artist's rendering of the Olympic Stadium.
• And bronze goes to Dallas, which offers an English-or-Spanish option.

None of the sites is doing much of a job updating Olympic-related news, however. Writes McAllister of the Dallas site: "Under the 'What's New?' section during a recent visit to the home page, the main element was a report on the U.S. cycling team trials held, ahem, a year ago last April in Frisco." And that during a week when the U.S. Olympic Committee was visiting Dallas to check out its bid!

Posted 10:24 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Dial PDF for Single-copy Sales

Vin Crosbie on 3rd-generation online publishing technologies
The Norwegian national daily, Aftenposten, discovered the demand for an Adobe Acrobat (PDF) edition one day during January when production difficulties prevented distribution of its print edition. Three thousand readers downloaded the PDF edition, even though Aftenposten hadn't marketed or advertised it. Although the history of Internet publishing is replete with examples of publishers being late to notice consumers' trends in new media, Scandinavian publishers are among the world's quickest to see and adapt to trends. Aftenposten is now testing this discovered market by selling its single PDF editions, with payments taken via mobile phones in a system set up with the Telenor Mobil telephone network in Norway.

Posted 10:13 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

WAP Revival and Content Strategies

Norbert Specker on new m-services
The Industry Standard reports on the new open source standards for wireless Internet services, as promoted and represented by the dominating GSM association (597 million users in 169 countries). The key goal is to emulate i-modes' success under the new label "m-services." As the industry is hungry to recuperate the billions spend in 3G licences and networks, the extended standard, based on WAP, is being pushed so as to be available on phones sold around Christmas.

What does that mean for content providers? If experience can be trusted, the important content and news brands might try this strategy: 1. Ask a hefty price of the service provider you will choose after all of them have courted you before Christmas. Close deals fast (high flat fee and/or paid advertising commitment of service provider, 6-12 month contract). 2. Keep price high after initial contract (year 2) by agreeing to share some of the marketing efforts through your own media, but in addition ask for a revenue share. Reassess the market. 3. Band together with other top brands and dictate sharing/distribution deals with all of the service providers in your market.

In their eagerness to be part of the game, the big news brands have not been very clever at step 1 in the past. Fact is, the industry will come begging, this time more than ever. Too much money is at stake to stop half way.

Posted 10:05 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

What Kids Are Doing Online

Paul Grabowicz on Internet demographics
Want to know the future of the Internet? Then check out the latest survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project on "Teenage Life Online" (pdf version). Some highlights: 73% of American kids 12-18 use the Internet, and three-quarters of them said they would miss the Internet if they could no longer access it. And 74% of the kids online have used instant messaging (compared to 44% of adults).

The report is packed with such statistics, but perhaps the most telling item is an excerpt from a 16-year-old's e-mail about her typical online session: "[First, I] see who's on from my buddy list, check my e-mail and erase messages from names I don't know, instant message my friends, research something on Yahoo for homework, and go to the Washington Post Web site for news updates."

Thursday, June 21, 2001

Posted 7:11 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Mobile Commerce Has Trends

Norbert Specker on mobile content
To get us all excited, the mobile communications industry is using m-commerce as the buzzword. IDC took a shot at the key trends in the next 12 months and as nobody knows where it is going, their guess is a good as anybody's. I particularly liked their first item on the list: "Mobile Commerce and Internet Connectivity Hype Will Peak. Hysteria surrounding mobile Internet will be driven largely by carriers and vendors." That belongs to the category of "famous first trends." In a item further down, U.S. content providers get a pat on the shoulder as content is perceived as the entry point to commerce, also in the mobile field. Hear, hear!

There is a serious issue connected with this statement, and that is: How much are carriers willing to pay for differentiating (aka, quality) content? In the mobile world, content providers are usually rewarded through revenue sharing. The quality content providers in Denmark have banded together to demand a higher share from the carriers. (In many other markets the carriers managed to play quality content providers against each other, hence driving down content providers' margins.) Results are still outstanding.

Posted 6:12 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Oh, Screw It — It's Their Name!

Steve Outing on media modesty
The popularity of the Web site FuckedCompany.com has made things awkward for those writing about the Internet industry gossip site. Do you take a modest position and call it F***edCompany.com, or F*****Company.com, or F@#!edcompany.com, or what? An amusing article in the Web site of the Asian American Journalists Association tackles this weighty topic. Writer Gordon Mah Ung notes that the most obtuse reference to the site was found in the San Jose Mercury News: (expletive)Company.com. Also in the Merc, it was once referred to by its IP address, 216.150.6.70. Oh, good grief. Less interested in propriety are the technology magazines Industry Standard, Business 2.0, and Red Herring. They each publish the real name, offensive or not. My opinion? It's implied in the first link of this item.

Posted 5:07 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

PDF or LIT as the Future Online Markup Language?

Vin Crosbie on PDF vs. LIT
Howard Finberg of the Digital Futurist Consultancy has a a very good article in Editor & Publisher magazine about publishing Adobe Acrobat portable document (PDF) files to personal digital assistant (PDA) devices (Palm Pilots, Handsprings, and hand-held Windows CE devices). Read it to learn why graphically rich languages, such as PDF, once screen-mapped and hyperlinked, should supplant HTML as the online publishing markup languages of the future. For over two years now, half of my consulting company's work has been helping organizations use PDF to publish newspapers and magazines or research online or on portable devices such as PDAs and eBooks. Yet, despite all our and our clients' PDF experiences, I disagree with Howard and think that the new Microsoft Reader (.LIT) format, which is aimed against Acrobat, will dominate online publishing. Almost as graphically capable as PDF files, LIT files are smaller and more manageable. More importantly, the newest versions of Microsoft's Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Publisher applications will allow users to create or read files in LIT format, a marketing advantage Acrobat can't match in homes and offices worldwide.

Posted 2:31 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Web Radio Sings the Blues

Steve Outing on online music
Katja Riefler's item below about Everstream shutting down its Web radio service is a sign of what Jane Black reports in her Business Week story, "Web Radio Pioneers Sing the Blues." Online radio start-ups are waging a losing battle to become profitable, Black says, as the obstacles they face are huge. While Internet radio is already popular, and poised for tremendous audience growth (as Internet radio begins to reach automobiles and home stereos), the eventual Web radio winners are likely to be existing traditional radio companies. What the failure of the pure-play online radio model probably means is that Internet radio will be as commercial-laden and awful as most broadcast radio. How sad for listeners.

Posted 11:21 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Silent Newspaper Web Sites

Katja Riefler on Web radio and ASP solutions
Would you shut down your Web radio service that has a substantial number of users? Probably not. But about 160 newspapers who had partnered with Everstream Media didn't really have a choice. The company stopped its service and announced that it would focus on ad delivery for the digital cable industry instead. The shift in strategy was foreseeable since last November, when newspapers were offered new contracts that would have billed them for listening hours instead of just sharing ad revenues. Many rejected that, for they couldn't see how to finance the service.

So, did another unviable, ad-based business model die? I'm not sure. A lot of newspapers that experiment these days with multi-channel publishing ask themselves whether they could afford at all to do business with external partners that offer pure ASP solutions. They see it as a high risk that the partner could go out of business one day and they will be held responsible by their users. This fear — warrantable or not — seems to grow into an enormous obstacle for new market players and their solutions, as good and professional as they might be.

Posted 10:29 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

New Dems Have an E-Genda

Steve Klein on a technology agenda
The New Democrat Coalition, a U.S. centrist group of Democratic representatives, has released its third annual E-Genda outlining legislative priorities in high technology for the rest of the legislative session. The E-Genda supports wireless spectrum management and calls for the creation of a national chief information officer to advise the executive branch on technology policy. It also supports privacy legislation supported by industry groups and legislation to help bridge the digital divide, including two programs slashed by the Bush administration budget, the Technology Opportunities Program and the Advanced Technology Program.

Posted 10:21 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Still Free

Andrew Nachison updates a tidbit
Patrick Phillips, who compiles IWANTMEDIA, a site I check regularly, notes that the New York Times blowout about AOL that I mentioned in an item yesterday is still available for free. See yesterday's item for more about it. (Thanks, Patrick.) Yesterday, I provided a link to the archived version, which costs $2.50 to download. My search did NOT reveal the free version. I checked again this morning, just to make sure I didn't miss the free link. Again, my search came up with the "premium" archive version, and no freebie.

Shouldn't a site search, or any other online tool, be as trustworthy as the site's content? Now, it seems, we've got to read the fine print and depend on word-of-mouth to know whether a box marked "Search" is really a search designed to help the user, or a manipulated marketing tool designed to help the publisher earn $2.50. Feedback? Send to: anachison@americanpressinstitute.org.

Wednesday, June 20, 2001

Posted 4:10 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

New Lease on Life for NUA Internet Surveys

Carla Passino on the purchase of the Irish Web site
Online information resource NUA Internet Surveys has been acquired from receivership by IT publisher Scope Communications Group. The future of the Irish title — which provides in-depth coverage of Internet trends — looked bleak when its parent company, software developer NUA, went into receivership on March 27. While the receiver marketed the company's assets, editor Kathy Foley continued to publish Nua Internet Surveys, but very few readers would have placed a bet on the publication's survival. Rescue came in the unlikely form of Scope, which bought NUA Internet Surveys to complement its online offering, technology portal TechCentral.ie. It is encouraging to see that, even in these days of online content gloom, reputable journalism still has a value.

Posted 3:37 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Beware of Government Bearing Gifts

Norbert Specker on the Canadian broadband dream
Candid Mathew Ingram of the Globe & Mail provides the counterpoint ("Broadband initiative is a bad idea") to industry minister Brian Tobin's dream of a Canada linked by broadband (as reported in a Steve Klein item posted earlier today).

Posted 3:33 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Cyber(information)wars

Norbert Specker on information warfare
Information warfare is done by governments; done by companies it is called public relations. Obviously, the Internet offers an extensive new battlefield (PR challenge?). For our European readers I would like to point out a symposium (use link "cyberwar") on the cyberwar between Israel and Palestine that will take place in Munich on June 29. The issue has received little publicity in Europe and the program, also including a European perspective on information warfare, looks very interesting.

Posted 12:46 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Excite Closes European Portals

Katja Riefler on new New Economy victims
Consolidation due to insufficient advertising sales is said to be the reason why the USA-based portal Excite announced that it is going to shut down its Web sites in Germany, France, and Spain in July. The sites in Italy and the UK are supposed to continue their services. The 20 employees already have been handed over their demissions. As a portal and search engine, Excite never got as popular in Germany as its competitors like Yahoo or Lycos, although it had some important content alliances with German media like ZD-Net Deutschland. Excite in Germany also had to struggle with declining reach among Internet users. According to Jupiter MMXI, 3.4 % of the online population visited Excite.de at least once in April 2000. In April 2001 it had only been 1.9%.

Posted 11:21 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Business As Usual

Andrew Nachison on media coverage
Here's another way the biggest media companies dominate our lives: This morning's version of IWANTMEDIA included links to 18 stories about AOL Time Warner. In one of them, Brian Lowery of the Los Angeles Times notes a crucial gap in what the New York Times had to say about AOL in its June 11 first installment of a series called "Media Giants." (You'll have to pay US$2.50 to read it.)

Seth Schiesel of the NY Times wrote about AOL's desire to deliver a "smorgasbord" of subscription services to every home in America. It was a typical business section story, pretty dry, with the obligatory charts and graphs and a focus on AOL's CEO, Gerald Levin. As Lowery pointed out today in the LA Times, the story said almost nothing about ordinary people, like the two-thirds of Americans who do NOT subscribe to HBO, or the peons glossed over as casualties of aggressive cost-cutting by the likes of AOL.

Posted 10:36 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Canada Has a Broadband Dream

Steve Klein on broadband distribution
A recent Canadian National Broadband Task Force report calls universal access to broadband Canada's "new national dream." Industry Minister Brian Tobin compares a 2004 deadline to Canada's original national dream to link its coasts by railway in the late 1800s.

An article by Steven Bonisteel in Newsbytes points out that around 4,800 of its 6,000 communities are outside of urban or suburban areas. "Without appropriate government involvement," Tobin is quoted as saying, "many rural and remote communities might not have access to the private sector's (infrastructure). We have to wire this country coast to coast and give every community an opportunity to participate in the information economy. Broadband is the transcontinental railway of the new millennium. Just like the railroads, it bridges the geographic distances of the vast country in which we live to connect Canadians to each other."

And how much will it cost to realize this dream? About $4 billion Canadian dollars to deploy broadband to all Canadians by 2004.

Posted 10:33 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Content Summit News

Steve Outing on content conferences
Fellow E-Media Tidbits contributor Norbert Specker has found a new partner for his annual online media conference (held each November in Zurich, Switzerland). Norbert's Interactive Publishing shows date all the way back to 1994, and last year he expanded the program to be called the Content Summit and included several satellite events. Content Summit is now partnered with Messe Schweiz AG, a major Swiss conference organizer with significant European industry muscle. (Among its shows: Comdex Europe.)

Tuesday, June 19, 2001

Posted 7:54 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Internet in Britain

Norbert Specker on online usage trends
Which? Online has been researching the Internet behavior of the British since 1998. The newly released numbers see overall penetration at 36% (up 9% from 2000). The item that got the report on E-Media Tidbits was the following quote: "The main reason for 'regularly using the Internet' last year was e-mail. This year it's been replaced by 'Education and research'. The rapid increase in text messaging coupled with the fact that, given the choice, two-thirds of Internet users prefer face-to face as their preferred means of communication (up from 36% in 2000), may indicate that what has been touted as the 'killer application' of the Net is undergoing a change." Paul Kitchen, head of Which? Online, daringly predicts the death of e-mail. Not so fast. However, the often-mentioned success of SMS indicates that mobile connectivity is way more important than fixed-line connectivity.

Posted 6:46 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Snubbed by the ONA? Slashdot 'Em!

Josh Fouts on recognition for small-scale journalists
Last year's Online News Association Online Journalism Awards were at least somewhat notorious for their lack of attention to small-scale journalism sites. This year, Slashdot's Robin Miller has launched an effort to give small-scale online journalists a chance at recognition. Miller has offered to pay the awards fees for five "deserving stories published by sites that couldn't otherwise afford it." Miller also notes something that a number of other online journalists noted last year: the ONA fee is double that of the Pulitzers! This reader, for one, is curious to know how the ONA Web site is faring after being Slashdotted — i.e., bearing the weight of a readership that's been known to crash even the strongest of Web sites.

Posted 4:19 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Not On MY Web Site!

Steve Klein on online sports content
So much for convergence. When baseball "Iron Man" Cal Ripken Jr. of the Baltimore Orioles told Washington Post sports writer Dave Sheinin that he would be retiring at the end of the baseball season, it was only mid-afternoon on Monday. So how were Sheinin and the Post going to protect that increasingly rare print treasure, a scoop, in this era of instant news with almost eight hours until the newspaper's first edition. "I wanted it off the Web site," Sheinin told Tony Kornheiser on the Post sports columnist's ESPN talk show Tuesday morning, and "until 2 p.m." if possible.

Despite having one of the best newspaper related Web sites going, the Post ignored the shared branding opportunity and sat on the story, waiting until 11:30 p.m. when the first edition rolled off the presses and the local television sports reports were finished before putting up the story on its own Web site. Ripken, for the non-baseball fans among you, broke Lou Gehrig's long-standing consecutive-game streak of 2,130 by playing in 2,632 straight games, almost 17 seasons, before voluntarily ending the streak on September 20, 1998.

Posted 11:38 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Sports Leagues Play Hard-to-Get

Steve Klein on online sports content
Sports leagues are "bulking up their presence on the Web," according to Anna Wilde Mathews in a recent article in the Wall Street Journal. The secret to their success? Hoarding important content, particularly video, audio webcasts, and behind-the-scenes access. "Would I like some of that stuff? Of course," says John Skipper, ESPN Interactive group senior vice president and general manager. "I think I can manage my relationships with the leagues so I can get what I need." Media sites, Skipper says, offer broader reach and a perceived impartiality.

Posted 11:18 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Get a Day Job, Online Punk!

Steve Outing on online content unprofitability
John Scalzi is feeling pessimistic about online content. (Aren't we all?) In one of his regular "Whatever" columns, he suggests a likely solution for many online content providers: Get a day job. That's right, it just may be that online content sites will not ever become viable media businesses (as evidenced most recently by the failures of Suck and Feed). But if that turns out to be so, the Web will remain a valuable medium for publishing. Many talented content people can continue to use the Internet as an important and far-reaching publishing tool, but they'll make their money in other ways, Scalzi suggests.

That's a dark view, and I'm not ready to join Scalzi's camp yet. But staving off depression in the current environment — online ad drought, Internet users steadfastly refusing to pay for content, etc. — is tough.

Monday, June 18, 2001

Posted 6:35 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

NBA's Stern Looks at Broadband in the Long Term

Steve Klein on online sports profitability
In an interview by The Standard's Terry Lefton with David Stern, the NBA commissioner has this to say about making money in sports on the Internet: "In narrowband, we can do it in things like e-commerce and fantasy sports, but our business model is obviously different from things like CBS SportsLine. The broadband adoption rate will probably be more accelerated than cable. People were talking a lot about cable TV in the '70s, and it really wasn't significant until the '80s. I don't view broadband as a short-term economic panacea, but in the long term, it could be another thing that keeps the gravy train going."

Posted 1:34 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

Cue:Cat on Its Ninth Life

Steve Outing on ad scanning technology
I've long thought that the Cue:Cat personal digital scanner is a lame idea. The devices are used to scan codes on product packaging, in ads in printed publications, and on TV, which then are used by consumers to get directly to advertisers' Web pages (instead of having to remember a URL you've seen on a TV commercial or in a print ad). The Dallas Morning News reports that Cue:Cat's maker, Digital Convergence, let go the majority of its 225-person staff on Friday. It's surprising that the company lasted this long before the axe fell. Do we really need new gizmos that serve little purpose but to feed us more advertising? The company has not adequately explained why we need what it offers, or should care.

Posted 12:31 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

The Scoop on Online Sports in Europe

Steve Klein on online sports content
Van Dusseldorp & Partners in association with Ivents Iquipe has issued a report, "Harnessing the Potential of a Visible Audience," in conjunction with a conference in Amsterdam earlier this month that examines the growth of the European online sports industry and the activities of established sporting organizations, pure-plays, and related gaming/betting businesses. Among the conclusions:

• Europe shares a passion for football and Formula 1 racing.
• Secondary sporting pursuits vary per nation, highlighting the need for localized business models.
• Europe, particularly Scandinavia and Italy, is poised to become a key wireless content market with over 70% market penetration by the end of 2001.
• France, Spain, and the UK are emerging as dominant marketplaces in both digital television and interactive television.
• Sports content (SMS, score flashes, 3G highlights, betting) is expected to drive many of these applications and will likely eventually divert revenues away from online players.
• Sports clubs, federations, and events (like Wimbledon) with strong brands and loyal fan bases are likely to benefit most from new media developments.
• Nearly two-thirds of pure plays are utilizing advertising as a primary revenue model, with advertising income accounting for more than 75% of revenues.
• E-commerce has generally under-performed, with content syndication emerging as a key secondary revenue source. Other revenue models include paid subscription for multi-media content.

The report is available for purchase in hard copy format.

Posted 2:06 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below

iSyndicate's Bad News

Steve Outing on Web syndication
Rumors have been swirling in recent weeks about iSyndicate, once one of the top two players in the Web syndication space (along with Screaming Media). Now we know the story: iSyndicate is filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and its assets are being acquired by online syndication company Yellowbrix. iSyndicate CEO Joel Maske sent an e-mail to his customers Sunday night explaining the situation. He writes, "Our intention is to move through this reorganization process as rapidly as possible, ensuring that content providers who are owed money will be paid from the assets of the sale of the company as quickly as possible." (Let's hope that's true, but I'll believe it when I see it.) Here's a Q&A document explaining these developments.