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Posted 8:54 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
E-Media Tidbits Is on Vacation
Steve Outing on this weblog
The writers for E-Media Tidbits are all getting a well-deserved break the week of July 2-6. The weblog will resume its Monday-Friday publication schedule on July 9. (And I'll resume my writing duties on July 16.)
Posted 6:39 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Inside.com Reveals What It's Worth
Paul Grabowicz on online subscriptions
Inside.com will begin charging $3.95 a month to access its content — down from the $19.95 it had been charging for premium services. The move comes as Inside also is dropping free distribution of its content via Yahoo!, according to a CNET report.
Posted 1:05 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Going for the Right Mix
Carla Passino on FTMarketwatch's new business model
Pearson PLC celebrated the first anniversary of its financial newswire, FTMarketwatch, by announcing that it will broaden its business model. "We have discovered that by producing and owning our own content we have a unique commercial weapon which provides another revenue stream to offset variable advertising revenues," said Zach Leonard, chief executive of FTMarketWatch. "As a result, our current revenue allocation has evolved to 60% advertising and 40% non-advertising."In February 2001, Pearson had already announced its intention to diversify the revenues of its financial portal, FT.com, away from advertising into other revenue lines. Since then, it launched AskFT, a pay-per-inquiry research facility accessible online and by phone, and paid-for WAP service FT Mobile Gold. But it is the successful FTMarketwatch model — a mix of advertising, sponsorship, and syndication revenues — that Pearson is likely to roll out to its other online ventures. Watch for more British content providers to follow the lead.
Posted 10:17 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Recognizing Excellence Online
Jade Walker on awards
The deadline for the Online Journalism Awards is July 16, and many Web writers and editors are searching through their archives to see which stories deserve recognition. Sponsored by the Online News Association and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, the annual awards seek to honor excellence in English-language Web journalism worldwide.If you're thinking about entering, be sure to read Sreenath Sreenivasan's article, "Content is King." As administrator of the awards, Sreenivasan knows exactly what stories the judges are most likely to choose as compelling examples of good journalism.
As for me, I'm still debating with my checkbook. A $100 entry fee for a contest that offers some recognition but no monetary prize may be a bit out of reach.
Posted 10:07 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Free Lunch for Everybody
Katja Riefler on content management systems
If the current trend continues, low-budget news sites soon could enjoy content management systems that rival the best money can buy today. That is part of the conclusion of Ben Sullivan's new story at Online Journalism Review. He provides a very good overview of currently available systems and new developments. Have a look.
Posted 7:45 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Tasini Win: Moral, Not Financial, Victory
Steve Outing on the aftermath
It's looking like the Tasini v. New York Times Co. win for the freelance writing community is only a moral victory, not a financial one. Publishers are digging in their heels, and the concept of paying out money to writers for past use of their work online looks unlikely. As for future use, most publishers want to grab online rights up front. For writers, it's sign away online database rights or else don't work with us. This report from Wired News summarizes the situation nicely.It's sad that the relationship between publishers and freelancers is so bitter, and there's so little respect. As a freelancer, I tend to side with the Tasini victors, and wonder why major media company executives treat freelancers with such disdain. After all, freelancers' content is vitally important to many magazines and newspapers. You'd never know it by publishers' statements in the last couple days. And I have to wonder why so many big publishers plead poverty (we can't afford to pay for online rights) when it's well reported that the industry is hell-bent on increasing profit margins to 20-25%.
Posted 7:29 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Still Wary of Microsoft
Rich Gordon on today's appeals court ruling
Today's partial reversal of the Microsoft antitrust verdict is getting widely covered (and well-covered!) in such places as the Wall Street Journal, Industry Standard, and C|Net. But if you want a clean, crisp — and short — summary of what the ruling means, I don't think you'll do better than Dan Gillmor's eJournal weblog on Siliconvalley.com (technology news site of the San Jose Mercury News). Dan is a long-time friend, and a must-read among technology aficionados around the world. In a couple of screens, I think Dan manages to get to the heart of the matter. His opening: "Microsoft and its acolytes are purring with delight today, at least publicly. But they didn't win the overwhelming victory that you're hearing about. Not even close."
Posted 10:57 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Mossberg's Column (for Free)
Steve Outing on Smart Tags
In my item below this, I cite Walt Mossberg's column about Microsoft shelving Smart Tags. Non-subscribers to WSJ.com can read the column free here.
Posted 1:56 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Intelligent Move: Microsoft Shelves Smart Tags
Steve Outing on Microsoft's latest controversy
Microsoft had been planning a new feature in its upcoming Windows XP operating system called "Smart Tags," but has announced that it is shelving the idea because of massive criticism from Web content providers and site owners. The Wall Street Journal's Walt Mossberg reports in his Thursday column that Smart Tags will not be included in the OS or in the next version of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser. The wave of criticism came because the feature would allow IE to turn any word on any Web site into a link to Microsoft's own sites and services, or to any that Microsoft favors.Microsoft executives appear surprised that content owners would object to their scheme. I think this episode demonstrates the significant divide between the geek culture of the world's dominant software company and the culture of content creators and publishers. To journalists, it's incredible that Microsoft executives couldn't foresee how this would offend and frighten them. The Microsofties are smart people, but they've got a lot to learn about content. (Here's Mossberg's column, but you'll need a WSJ.com subscription to read it.)
Posted 3:30 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Power of a Personality
Steve Outing on the Cue:Cat
I've never been a fan of the Cue:Cat personal scanner, and I wonder why it took so long for the dubious concept to fail. Writing for the Wall Street Journal, Elliot Spagat offers a simple insight into Cue:Cat creator Digital Convergence's remarkable success at raising money ($185 million!) for a silly concept: The sparkling, persuasive personality of company founder J. Jovan Philyaw. One investor ($28 million) is quoted as saying of Philyaw, "If you haven't seen him, it's worth the price of admission." That's an expensive ticket. Think of what Philyaw could have done with a concept that wasn't flawed from the start.
Posted 2:17 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
What are Third Generation Online Publishing Technologies?
Vin Crosbie on publishing trends
The First Generation of online publishing technologies were proprietary online services: The Source, CompuServe, Prodigy, GEnie, Delphi, and InterChange for consumer users, and LEXIS/NEXIS, MedNet, WestLaw, and Dialog for professional users. None of those systems were interconnectable and content providers had to pay each system's owner to reach each systems' users. The Second Generation was the Internet publishing technologies: FTP, Archie, Veronica, Gopher, WAIS, Web, PQA, and WAP. These are "Open Source," non-proprietary technologies — technologies with which a content provider could reach any user of the Internet without paying any system owner. Neither the First nor Second-Generation technologies used display devices specifically manufactured for reading textual layouts; all use either cathode ray or LCD horizontal video displays or else tiny PDA and cell phone LCD vertical screens.Now, a Third-Generation of online publishing technologies is being born. These use "Open Source" technologies in new wireless, portable devices that are specifically designed for reading textual layouts (most Adobe Acrobat PDF or Microsoft Reader LIT files, screen mapped and hyperlinked) and have high-resolution screens. Examples are the Siemens SimPad (which will be marketed in the U.S. by Microsoft), the Honeywell WebPad, and similar devices from Sharp, Panasonic, and Thomson Multimedia. I believe these devices will the future of online publishing. Look for them in consumers' hands within 12 months.
Posted 2:06 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Forget the Internet — Its Just Another Channel!
Katja Riefler on strategic changes in media companies
The Internet is changing, isn't it? If you visit this year's media conferences you hear well known buzzwords: convergence, multiple media integration, system integration, media mix. But they are used in a different manner than last year. No one seems to see the Internet as a seperate medium any more. Everyone talks about cross-promotion. Yes, there still will be content exclusively produced for online — as much as necessary. But please don't think about the best possible content for the Internet. Think in multiple channels. Attract customers everywhere with content that fits best.Most important is the brand. Here in Germany the pioneers of this development are the privately owned TV stations. By far the most successful Web sites belong to the RTL-Group (owned by Bertelsmann). Until yesterday, they had always offered additional information and interactive features to existing TV formats on the Web. Now for the first time, they are going to present the German version of the kids series "Angela Anaconda" two months before the start on TV. Additionally, they will show comic strips in their print magazine, "Toggo." A general shift in strategy?
Posted 12:21 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Internet Content Shows, InternetContent.net Gone
Steve Outing on content industry downturn
The Internet Content conferences and the Web site InternetContent.net have died. Organizers First Conferences of London have succumbed to the collapse of the online content segment and killed off what had been a successful conference series. Last year, Internet Content West (Los Angeles) and East (New York) each attracted 600 paying attendees; the West show this year (held in early June) saw only 35 paying attendees. The losses were too great and the company decided to stop the hemorrhaging.The InternetContent.net Web site, which also dies as a result, was edited by Andrew Stroehlein, who is a fellow contributor to E-Media Tidbits. Internet Content managing director Karen Gold says there may still be hope of resurrecting the conference series and Web site when the online content industry picks up again — which she still believes will happen. (And I concur.)
Posted 12:04 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
How Arrogant and Short-sighted!
Steve Outing on Tasini decision aftermath
As David Kirkpatrick reports for the New York Times, some newspaper and magazine publishers are poised to remove thousands of articles written by freelancers from online databases as a result of yesterday's U.S. Supreme Court Tasini v. New York Times Co. ruling, which favored freelancers. The Times will be removing 115,000 articles by 27,000 writers from Nexis-Lexis and other database services — which will deal a crippling blow to the completeness of the archives. Well, that strikes me as a rather stupid and short-sighted response. C'mon, publishers, be rational about this. You lost the case, now deal with it appropriately and life goes on.Jonathan Tasini has suggested a rational solution: Negotiate with his National Writers Union and its already-created clearinghouse for licensing electronic use of freelancers' work, which could deal with all this previously published freelance work. This would resemble music industry clearinghouses already distributing fees to musicians and songwriters. That's surely preferable to destroying the integrity of online publication archives — which is a 5th-grade response by publishers when things didn't go their way.
Posted 11:22 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Read It and Weep
Steve Klein on Internet threat to newspapers
More bad news for newspapers. According to an article in Newsbytes, a study by Content Intelligence Group will show that the Internet poses a long-term threat to newspapers because of the way people use the Web to obtain information. The study found that nearly 60% of people expect their Web usage to increase, but fewer than half expect their usage of newspaper Web sites to increase. The study also showed that people with the most Internet experience used the Internet more for news other than local. "The Internet is stealing audience from all media, including TV, radio, magazines, and newspapers," said John McIntyre, managing editor for Content Intelligence.Where newspapers are successful, according to the report, is in delivering local content. "People go to newspaper sites for local news that they cannot get anyplace else," said McIntyre. Newspapers also earned high marks for trust. Respondents, especially readers under 25, said they trusted newspapers more than Internet news sources. Of people under 25, only 18% read a newspaper every day. That figure rises to just 19% among those 25 to 34; 37% of people 35 to 44 read a paper every day; 45% of those 45 to 54; and 62% of those 55 and over. The study also found a demographic gender split: 41% of males said they read a newspaper every day compared to only 29% of females.
Posted 11:16 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Want to Reach Your Customer? Wrap the Ad!
Katja Riefler on a new technology for e-mail advertising
Expect advertising when you get e-mail from a friend. Perhaps you'll have to get used to it. The new Admail technology from Melbourne-based Revo Networks places advertising within the body of a message regardless of its origin. There are no filters yet to prevent this new form of spam. The promoters hope that users will be more likely to open the message and hence be exposed to the advertising offer. I'm not that sure. How many successful business models do you know that are based on annoying people?
Posted 11:11 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
American Publishers Are Cheap
Steve Outing on syndication
Here's an interesting tidbit from Online Journalism Review's interview with David Wallis, proprietor of premium online writing syndication service Featurewell: "Q: What percentage of your buyers are foreign? A: Sixty. Q: That's a lot. A: That's the business of syndication. The same story that will earn you $50 in America will earn you $500 in Europe. I'm always surprised at how cheap American newspapers are, so I'm focusing on the international publications."
Posted 10:09 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Publishers: Get a Clue at Supermarket Scanners
Vin Crosbie on 3rd-generation online publishing
What if at a supermarket you had to use MasterCard to pay for vegetables, Visa to pay for meats and poultry, American Express to pay for beverages and liquids, and paper money and coins to pay for soaps and household products? Ridiculous, yes. But the insularity between the newspaper, magazine, and book publishing industry sectors require absurdities like that when you pay for their Web site (and often e-book) content online. Newspapers want consumers to pay with Qpass and Clickshare. Magazines want them to pay with systems like Zinio. And many booksellers want them to pay via Adobe Glassbook, GemStar, or Microsoft Reader.The solution for this digital content checkout nightmare isn't to wait for any one billing vendor to vanquish the others, but for publishers to place standardized digital codes on any content they want to sell. These standardized digital content codes — International Standard Book Number (ISBN) codes for books and International Standard Serial Numbers (ISSN) for periodicals — are universally recognized for printed books and periodicals and operate the same way that the Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) codes placed on all supermarket products allow any product to be checked out and transacted via any billing vendor (any credit card or cash).
Posted 9:46 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Chew on a Dingaloid
Steve Klein on online interactive concepts
ABCNews.com has a new online concept for you to chew on called CUD. It is a single-page, themed, online magazine with a heavy emphasis on interactive elements. There are the usual polls, quizzes, lists, and chat features, but the site's most interesting innovation is what it calls "dingaloids" (and no, you can't find it in the dictionary between dingaling, dingbat, or ding-dong). Dingaloids are small graphics that provide additional comments within the CUD page. The site provides them to start, but users can provide feedback that can become dingaloids. By rolling over a dingaloid with your cursor, a fun message appears.This week's theme: "Why do we marry? What's the point of going through all the fuss and expense just to move in with someone?" You'll find dingaloids galore.
Posted 9:43 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Read the Full Tasini Decision
Steve Outing on today's ruling
There's no shortage of coverage of today's Supreme Court Tasini coverage. (See items below this.) If you want to read the full decision, here it is.
Posted 1:27 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
They Still Set the Rules
Steve Klein on Tasini ruling's impact
Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in favor of freelancers (see item below), the question becomes one of whether contract content workers — be they writers, photographers, or artists — have the courage of their convictions. Will they refuse to sign contracts that sign away their rights to additional compensation by publishers for work that has been included in Internet and CD-ROM databases? According to the New York Times' own story posted online shortly after the decision was announced, it sounds like business as usual: "Since the mid-1990s, however, publishers have generally required freelance authors to waive their copyright in any electronic republication. So this case ... had little implication for current practice in the publishing industry."
Posted 11:42 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Freelancers Prevail in Tasini
Steve Outing on U.S. Supreme Court ruling
Word came this morning that freelance writers prevailed in the Tasini v. New York Times Co. case. On a 7-2 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the appellate decision, which held that the Times did not have the right to include freelancers' work assigned for print publication in electronic databases without the writers' permission. Compilation in an electronic database is different from other kinds of archival or library storage of material that once appeared in print, the justices ruled. This, I don't need to tell you, is an important milestone in the history of online publishing.Coverage of this story will be everywhere later today. Here's an early story on the Supreme Court decision on NYTimes.com (ironically enough, written by an Associated Press reporter; original Times coverage of the story will no doubt come later in the day).
Posted 11:16 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Simply Put: Your Site is Delivered
Vin Crosbie on HTML e-mail
A Web publishing executive asked me, "If I deliver my site's pages as HTML e-mails, doesn't that mean I won't generate page-views and banner ad exposures because people won't have to go to my site to view those pages?" Though that seems a logical question, the facts are as follows: Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser is built into Microsoft' Outlook and Outlook Express e-mail software and into Qualcomm's Eudora 4 e-mail software. Netscape's Navigator browser is built into Netscape's Communicator e-mail software. HotMail, YahooMail, and other Web-based e-mail systems operate entirely through browser software. So, any Web page seen in HTML e-mail software is a browsed page. Your site's Web server automatically counts that as a page-view; your site's ad server automatically counts any banner or tile ads on the HTML e-mailed page as exposed ads. A Web page sent by HTML e-mail is a browsed page because all HTML e-mail software contains a browser. The sole difference is that the HTML e-mailed Web page has been delivered to that user, rather than that page awaiting the user to visit and find it on your site.
Posted 11:00 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Click on This Banner, Or Else!
Carla Passino on clickthrough-boosting antics
Can a business become so hungry for cash that it resorts to coercing its customers? Web mail provider Another.com has changed its logout system to force users to click on banner ads before they quit the service, reports Amy Vickers in the Media Guardian. In a ploy that smacks of sheer desperation, the company informed its users that, from now on, their accounts will remain open hence making their private messages accessible to family and friends until they click on a banner. "One extra click from you will help us make sure that you continue to get everything on the site for free," writes Another.com in its notification to users. "We feel that is a pretty good deal and is not really too much to ask."
Posted 10:53 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Webrings and Cams
Norbert Specker on search engines
CompletePlanet.com tracks the "Deep Web" — that part of the Web that usually does not recorded by search engines, as it consists of all the documents that are created "on the fly" (of documents that are, for example, created on most search engines when displaying a search). However, many of those "on the fly" documents get accessed much more often that stable Web pages. The average deep Web site receives 50% more traffic than a typical surface site (according to the summary of technology provider BrightPlanet.com) and is much more linked to by other sites. Yet it is transparent to classic search engines.In the deep Web, webrings are extremely popular. And one of the most popular of those popular rings is the webcam ring. So if you have a webcam on your site, hurry and do the right, free thing, and sign up.
Posted 10:47 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Lingering on Sports Fantasy
Steve Klein on online sports content
Although ESPN.com continued to dominate online sports sites in unique viewers for the week ending June 17, according to Nielsen/NetRatings, with an audience 1,906,000, perhaps the biggest surprise is No. 8 Commissioner.com, a fantasy sports site. While the average amount of time a visitor spent on ESPN.com for the week was 6:34, the average user spent nearly 30 minutes (29:42) on Commissioner.com, nearly three times No. 2 CNNSI.com at 10:36. Rounding out the top 10 for unique audience was No. 2 MLB.com; Sportsline.com, 3; NASCAR.com, 4; CNNSI.com, 5; NBA.com, 6; NFL.com, 7; USOpen.com, 9; and Sports.iwon.com, 10.Also interesting: the continued ascendency of league and sports sites. Sports fans, it seems, may still like ESPN, Sportsline, and Sports Illustrated, but they don't necessarily want or need someone else's filter when they're digesting their sports news and information.
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