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Posted 3:25 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Expecting a SuperGame.com?
Steve Klein on online Super Bowl advertising
When cultural historians look back on the dot-com boom and bust of the late 20th century, they might want to examine an online time capsule (just because the money dried up didn't mean the Internet died) from the Wall Street Journal, Time magazine and Ad Age. The Wall Street Journal, never one to ignore the business significance of a sporting event, provides a scoreboard on the 19 dot-com start-ups and technology firms that dominated the advertising during Super Bowl XXXIV in January 2000 at the height of Internet exuberance. HotJobs.com is back this year for a fourth go at it, but need I say more that Pets.com and its sock puppet mascot won't?Of the 19 such advertisers, three are "goner" than the Los Angeles Rams (does their move to St. Louis qualify as an acquisition?): the aptly named OurBeginning.com and Epidemic.com, and (of course), Pets.com. At more than $2 million a pop for a 30-second spot during that game, you just couldn't feed the public that much dog food online forever. Not everyone died, of course. The St. Louis Rams, champions of that long-ago 2000 Super Bowl, are back to play the New England Patriots.
Not-So-Super Advertising
If you can't remember who played or advertised in last year's Super Bowl (for the sports challenged, the Baltimore Ravens defeated the New York Giants, 34-7, in a game almost as forgettable but not as cute as Pets.com), Time wakes up the echoes with these memories: "The '90s have not just ended; they have been repealed. ... This year, the dot-coms were all but buried, like Jimmy Hoffa in the end zone." And finally, AdAge.com provides a scoreboard of sorts of stories of the 2002 advertisers, pointing out that this year, there's plenty of competition for advertising dollars from the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and the World Cup later this spring.
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Posted 11:07 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Be Big or Be Gone?
Andrew Stroehlein on dominance of the big online outlets
Last night's National Press Club panel on "The State of Online News" — part of NPC's "Club Cyber Cocktail Lecture Series" — was by many accounts an interesting evening, and though I wasn't there, I am told the mood was generally upbeat, despite our industry's difficulties of late. But a friend of mine who attended did make one unhappy observation: the event, she said, with panelists from MSNBC, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, reminded her of the overwhelming strength of traditional media players in new media. The message, she felt, was: "Unless your journal is part of a well-designed multi-media platform — i.e., connected with radio, TV, and a major newspaper — you are kind of screwed."
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Posted 11:01 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Online Communication Lessons from Congress
Steve Klein on e-government
Talk about a digital divide. Have you checked out Congressional websites lately? As reported in a story by the Washington Post's Juliet Eilperin, the Congress Online Project, which is funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts, evaluated the websites of all 605 House and Senate member offices, committees, and leadership offices. Conclusion: only a small minority of offices boast sophisticated sites; the majority are unimpressive. 90% got grades of C or below.The best sites, according to the project, correctly identify their audience; provide up-to-date, targeted content; offer opportunities for interaction; are easily used; and employ creative innovations. Party affiliation, says Eilperin, "is not a reliable indicator of Internet savvy." The website for Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-New Mexico), for example, features a map of New Mexico that provides constituents with easy access to news releases related to where they live, as well as special sections targeted to students, educators, businesses, first-time visitors, and frequent visitors. House Republican Conference Chairman J.C. Watts (Oklahoma) attracted 1.7 million visits last year to his site by allowing visitors to create customized versions of the page, providing links to hot topics, and posting an online discussion board.
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Posted 10:57 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Great News Resource
Norbert Specker on web archives
This isn't new, but it's an incredibly useful resource that you might not know about: a list of newspapers' archives complete with the information about the scope of their archive and the cost of accessing them. (The list is mostly of U.S. papers). A helpful benchmarking resource. (Tip o' the hat to fellow Tidbits contributor Nora Paul for bringing this to my attention.)
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Posted 10:37 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Newspaper Readers Help Shape Stories in Progress
Paul Grabowicz on online journalism
The San Francisco Chronicle is expanding an innovative reader interactivity program called "Two Cents," in which people are contacted by reporters about story topics on which they have expertise and serve as "sounding boards for stories in progress." Reporters use e-mail to query the readers, 250 of whom have already signed up for the program.
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Posted 7:39 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Robo-Journalist Technology
Rich Gordon on new tools for journalists on the road
For some time, I've heard speculation that many journalists will one day be expected to bring back text, images, audio, and video from a story they cover. I've been skeptical of this idea, for two reasons: 1) Shooting good video requires different skills than traditional print reporting. 2) Trying to do it all at once inevitably means that something has to suffer. But there certainly are times — such as military coverage and news in remote locations — where it may not be possible to send a full broadcast crew.
The New York Times has an interesting package today, pegged to the coverage of the military action in Afghanistan, on the tools available for journalists who want to send video from remote locations. The article clearly shows the limits of today's technology, such as videophones that connect to a satellite at dial-up speeds — so live shots are limited to "talking heads." But it also shows a glimpse of the future: an Albuquerque, New Mexico, reporter named Bob Martin who spent six weeks in northern Afghanistan. Using consumer-quality gear, he said, "I literally had a television studio and all my field equipment occupying half my backpack."
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Posted 2:24 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Micro Ads Are Coming
Jeppe Kruse on online advertising
As the idea of so-called "micro ads" or "text ads" grows in popularity, interesting discussions are popping up all over the Net. Micro ads work like real banner ads, but are smaller and consist only of text, making them less annoying than the rest. (See the community weblog MetaFilter for an example.) They are cheaper, as well. Prices range from Google AdWords' $10-$15 for a thousand impressions and down to $2 or $3 for the same number of impressions on some weblogs.It remains to be seen if this new concept will change online advertising as we know it. But several interesting people are weighing in right now, discussing pros, cons, and how-to's. For those who wish to learn more, there's a Yahoo group dedicated to micro advertising, and a good introduction to the phenomenon can be found in this article at Internet.com.
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Posted 1:09 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The New SFGate
Steve Outing on news site redesign
SFGate, the website of the San Francisco Chronicle, has a new design. You can see an explanation of it on this tour of the home page. (You be the judge: Is the new look of the home page an improvement over the old?) 'Tis the season of redesigns. (See recent item on WSJ.com's new design.)
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Posted 12:44 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
E&P: A Monthly?
Steve Outing on print vs. online coverage
As reported by the New York Post today (second item in Keith Kelly's column), rumors are that Editor & Publisher magazine is considering switching to monthly frequency, from weekly. Now, I've long been a freelance columnist for E&P Online, but I'm not privy to inside information to confirm or deny that rumor. However, I will say that if it turns out to be true, parent company VNU will be smart to retain E&P's stature as the leading journal of the newspaper world by: 1) using the website to fill in the gaps, covering breaking news throughout the month; and 2) promoting the heck out of the website in the print edition, so that readers know not to give up on E&P as an industry intelligence source. (Yeah, that may sound self-serving. But it's advice I'd give any weekly news publication in similar circumstances.)
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Posted 12:03 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Disintermediation: Round Two
Paul Grabowicz on new media journalism
In the early days of the Web there was a lot of speculation that writers might "disintermediate" the media by publishing directly to readers online. Now in the wake of the dot-com collapse, the idea may be back in vogue. San Francisco Chronicle reporter Dan Fost writes about dot-com refugees like Rafe Needleman, who did Red Herring's Catch of the Day column, and Jimmy Guterman and Mark Glaser, who helped produce the Industry Standard's Media Grok, who are keeping their columns alive as e-mail newsletters or websites.
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Posted 4:56 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Would You Be Foolish Not to Pay?
Steve Outing on charging for online discussion
The Motley Fool next month will begin to charge users who want to read and post to its investment discussion boards, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. That's a pretty aggressive move, even in the current climate where many e-publishers are experimenting with charging for content. But charging for discussion is less common, and a harder sell. The culture of free that exists online certainly affects content, but it's even stronger for online discussion. The Motley crew may just be acting foolish by implementing this strategy. The danger is that the boards dry up as users find other free places to talk.
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Posted 2:56 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Newspapers Fail to Meet Internet Challenge
Paul Grabowicz on online publishing
Harvard Business School professor Clark Gilbert is doing a study on how newspapers responded to the "disruptive technology" of the Internet. His conclusion: newspapers recognized the threat but then tried unsuccessfully to apply the traditional print business model to this new medium.The study found that "sites that separate their online organizations from the newspaper were more than twice as innovative [as] sites that remained integrated into the newspaper. More importantly, these sites gained 60% higher market penetration!" Gilbert summarizes his study and his thoughts on what newspapers should be doing in an interview in the Harvard Business School publication, Working Knowledge.
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Posted 12:16 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
What's Your Name?
Steve Outing on CNET's name confusion
Earlier today as I was editing Vin Crosbie's item (below this), I stumbled when he mentioned CNET. What the heck is the correct spelling of that company's name? You'll understand my confusion if you look at the CNET.com home page. Note the red logo used throughout, which reads "c|net"; and note that elsewhere it's referred to as "CNET" or "CNET.com." Advice to CNET (if that's your preferred name): get rid of the "c|net" logos. You're confusing us.
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Posted 11:54 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Is Your Website Turbocharged? Not Interactive?
Vin Crosbie on true interactivity
Is your website turbocharged? Your marketing department might cheer, yes, but your engineering department will remind you, no. Connect a turbine to your web server and you'll have the worst hard-drive crash in history. The prefix "turbo" actually means something, although marketers misuse it to mean almost anything un-turbocharged that they want to falsely hype as having almost turbine power. Similarly, the adjective "interactive" is nowadays in danger of misuse. However, interactive does have an official definition: The Journal of Communications affirms Dr. Jonathan Steuer's definition that "interactivity" is "the extent to which users can participate in modifying the form and content of a mediated environment in real time."Interactivity, by definition, is two-way and gives publisher and reader equal control over the content and the form in which that content is seen and heard. Almost all newspapers, magazines, and broadcasters operate websites nowadays, but precious few of those sites are interactive. That is truly a misuse of new media and its opportunities. (Dr. Steuer wrote the definition in 1993, metamorphosed during 1994 into Jonathan Steuer, a co-founder and the online tsar of HotWired, and in 1995 help found CNET — all sites the caliber of which most media websites have little progressed beyond.)
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Posted 11:40 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Chinese Portals In Tussle Over Plagiarism Charges
Madan Rao on an intellectual property squabble
Two titans of the Chinese Internet industry are set to come to blows in the courts, with Sina.com taking legal action against Sohu.com for allegedly plagiarizing its content. According to Sina, Sohu has long copied and plagiarized content like mobile-phone short-message services, finance, and sports. Sohu has issued a statement calling the accusations "groundless" and "ridiculous," and threatened reciprocal action against Sina for its own alleged plagiarism. The two firms and Netease.com are listed on the Nasdaq market and known as China's "Big Three" Internet firms, with about 30 million registered users and heavy reliance on online advertising and paid services like SMS for mobile-phone users.
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Posted 11:33 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
More Online in UK, But ...
Andrew Stroehlein on Web access in the UK
According to a competition review released yesterday by Oftel, the UK telecommunications regulator, the last 12 months have seen a rapid rise in the number of UK households with Internet access. While 30% of UK households had access at this time last year, that figure has now jumped to 45%, or some 11 million homes. Still, of those 11 million, only 4 million homes have unmetered Internet access, and although Oftel's report focused on narrowband dial-up Internet access, not broadband, it's clear the situation is not ideal.David Edmonds, director general of telecommunications at Oftel, praised the regulator's behavior in a press release, proclaiming: "Action by Oftel, notably the requirement on [British Telecom] to offer wholesale unmetered Internet access, has helped to put this flourishing market in place." But there are many here in the UK who feel Oftel moved far too slowly in forcing reluctant providers to offer unmetered access to their customers. Years of excessively high phone bills tend to stick in the memory.
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Posted 11:27 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
No Shocker: Newspaper Job Ads in Danger
Peter M. Zollman on classified ads
The Media Audit, a Houston research company, is out with a report that says readership of newspaper classifieds is down, and that newspapers face challenges in maintaining their business if they don't respond to the threat. Now there's a shock!And, the report says, employment advertising is the sector that is most under siege. Shock No. 2, right? The report is based on statistics from 67 local markets, but the news release was short on specifics about the study's methodology. Regardless, it offered a couple of important tidbits (whether you believe them or not):
1) Most people are using employment ads either on the Web or from newspapers (print editions), but not both.
2) "Unfortunately, some dailies still think — or hope — that the Web is a passing fad. That thinking could be fatal.""Statistics" like those from this report, and projections of what's going to happen during the next few years, should generally be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, whether you believe the numbers or not, the findings and conclusions are worth considering carefully.
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Posted 7:13 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
More Than I Needed to Know
Steve Outing on e-mail news alerts
Of the various e-mail headline news alerts produced by news organizations, there's quite a range among them in terms of the threshold of what constitutes news worthy of an alert. I seldom hear from the New York Times e-mail alert; I more regularly get alerts from MSNBC.com; and I hear from Yahoo! News a lot. Actually, Yahoo! breaking-news-alert subscribers get too much news; its threshold for importance is set way too low. For example, this afternoon Yahoo! News sent out the headline, "Doctor removed benign, skin lesions from Ashcroft's right ear." Note to Yahoo!'s news editors: that ain't front-page news. (If I was still working as a news editor, I doubt I'd even publish something so inconsequential.)Here's what would be really nice for Yahoo!'s and all the other e-mail news alert services: a user-defined "news threshold setting," which a subscriber could set depending on personal preference. Low setting: only the biggest stories (perhaps only one e-mail alert sent out a week); medium setting: the top one or two stories per day; high setting: significant news, but not every story that comes across the wires (maybe 4-6 headlines per day). I also like the idea of applying e-mail alerts and the user threshold to niche news (say, news about the Olympics).
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Posted 3:03 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Repeat After Me: It's a 2-way Medium
Steve Outing on true interactivity
Here's an interesting quote from a Dotcom Scoop interview with Rusty Foster, founder and owner of Kuro5hin.org, an online community site covering technology and culture: "I think that in time, more people will come to assume that the net is a two-way medium. People like me already think that way. I'm already annoyed every time I have to use a site that only works in the downstream direction. There are more people like me every day. I think eventually the collective pressure will force even the corporate media into the realization that they're using this medium wrong, and they'll start to open it up." Yep. He's right. Who's listening?
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Posted 1:09 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Reinventing The Internet...
Katja Riefler on SMS chats on TV screens
Communication is popular. Just look at chat rooms on the Internet or the use of SMS messaging among mobile phone users. Real time breaking news reports also are popular. In Germany, people like to watch them on "Teletext." TV viewers who own the right equipment can switch to read text-only news about all kinds of topics on their TV screens, whenever they want. (Have a look at "RTL-Teletext" on the Web.) The TV station RTL II now has announced that it will merge those services: Teletext viewers shall soon be able to chat and to interact on TV by sending SMS messages by their mobile phones (paying the operators 20 cents per message).But why invent the most complicated, time consuming, and eye-hurting way to interact you can imagine? Michael Medlin from RTL-II Teletext has a simple explanation: "Only about 25% of the German households have direct Internet access. The combination SMS/Teletext reaches 75% of all households. All services that have been successful on the Internet can be more successful on Teletext and SMS."
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Posted 1:00 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Wacky Way to Use Google
Rich Gordon on "Googlewhacking"
Remember the early days of the Web, when it seemed like every day people discovered something cool and wonderful, and when the geek community kept finding crazy ways to have fun online? Sometimes I think those adventuresome days are gone forever, but Search Engine Watch has a fun article today about the newest online sport: "Googlewhacking."The idea is to come up with a combination of search terms that produces exactly one search result on Google. Chris Sherman of Search Engine Watch explains the rules and includes links to several pages where Googlewhacking fans are gathering. Just in case you were looking for more ways to while away the hours. ...
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Posted 9:32 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Say Your Prayers
Steve Outing on e-readers
Are church-going Christians ready for the e-bible? A company called Godspeed Computing thinks so, and it's rolling out its Christian-focused e-readers. Basically, the company's eBible is a variation of the e-book readers that are already on the market (and NOT selling like hotcakes). The idea is that while sitting in a church pew, instead of pulling out that ragged old hymnal or bible from the shelf in front of you, you use the eBible instead. It will also store and play MP3 files of Christian music, is a searchable Christian study tool, etc. M.J. Rose writes about it in Wired News today.Good idea? I doubt it; I predict the eBible will be a flop, because it's too one-dimensional of a device. The only way you'll ever see church-goers singing hymns with the cueing of an electronic device is when all-purpose e-readers become popular — portable devices that do a wide variety of things. Users of those devices who happen to be church-going Christians might buy software e-bibles. But a hardware device devoted to one purpose? Godspeed will need more than prayers to convert more than a handful of faithful.
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Posted 8:46 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Sledgehammer Superstitials to Hit Online Users
Vin Crosbie on online advertising
The behavioral psychologist Abraham Maslow once noted, "When your only tool is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail." Unicast, a New York online advertising technology firm whose name infers anything but interactivity, today unveiled what might be the banner ad version of the sledgehammer. Its "Superstitial" is a 300-kilobyte ad that rises to cover approximately two-thirds (550 x 480 pixels) of the computer screen with up to 20 seconds of "rich media" advertising. Despite the Interactive Advertising Bureau's recommended 100-kilobyte maximum size for interstitial and pop-up ads, Universal Pictures and ADiamondisForever.com have agreed to advertise with Superstitials; DoubleClick has announced its support of Superstitials; and among the networks and publications that have announced that they will run Superstitials are About.com, Business.com, BusinessWeek Online, ESPN.com, Excite, FastCompany.com, Fodors.com, Inc.com, Kiplinger.com, Maxim.com, Sportsline.com, Office.com, PCWorld.com, Reel.com, Terra Lycos, uBid.com, Weather.com, and Zagat.com. Does anyone besides me remember when the majority of what a person saw on a computer screen was the Web content that he'd gone to see?
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Posted 6:45 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
TV Sites Being Held to Higher Standards
Steve Outing on television websites
TV websites used to get away with sloppiness and mistakes without getting too much criticism, but that's changing, writes Cory Bergman of Lost Remote. Newspaper sites, he contends, have long been held to a higher standard than TV sites. But now that television sites are being relied on more for news, reader criticism and intolerance for mistakes is increasing. But TV-station sites do make more mistakes, and that's a fact of life. They don't get edited copy from their newsrooms the way newspaper sites do — broadcast scripts usually have to be rewritten or tweaked for online use — and most TV sites have minuscule staffs. Life ain't easy in TV Web land.
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Posted 8:01 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The New WSJ.com: More Personal
Steve Outing on website redesign
The website of the Wall Street Journal has debuted its expensive redesign. From an initial, cursory review, I like what I see. The site has added extensive personalization features. Configure your home page to feature the content you want, from articles on specific companies, industries, etc., to columnists, to a nifty personal portfolio tracker. Personalization is hardly new, but it's important, and this redesign does a nice job of creating a handy individualized site (one that's worth paying for, in my view). From your personal view, you can also manage your e-mail subscriptions of WSJ.com content. I've played around with the personalization tools enough to know that I'm impressed — though not enough yet to identify any holes in the revamped site. What do you think? Click on "Discuss" below.
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Posted 7:55 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Universal Knowledge
Norbert Specker on archiving the Internet
Brewster Kahle and his Wayback Machine entered the limelight in November after a quiet struggle on the sidelines since 1995. When history, as on Sept. 11, is made, people stop to see where they came from. Archives gain renewed interest. An excellent interview by Richard Koman on O'Reilly gives a detailed background to both Brewster's motivation and how the content of 20 million books can be stored/retrieved on only $80,000 worth of equipment. A good read.
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Posted 7:30 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Put on Your Mouse Ears
Steve Klein on online sports content
Now that the National Basketball Association has reached six-year agreements with ABC, ESPN, and AOL Time Warner, you'll be able to watch NBA games on ESPN, Turner Network Television (TNT), and a new AOL Time Warner/NBA jointly owned national cable sports network beginning with the 2002-03 season. What does that mean for online? To begin with, AOL becomes the NBA's preferred interactive services partner (translation: expect online/offline cross promotion). ESPN and the NBA have reached separate agreements calling for extensions and expansions of the pre-existing agreements covering ESPN.com and SportsTicker that coincide with the length of the TV agreement. The ESPN.com extension includes expanded video highlight rights featuring personalized, high-quality video clips for ESPN Broadband, which provides original programming for cable modem users. Joint interactive TV initiatives include video highlights and real-time data. ESPN.com fantasy game initiatives include distribution on multiple platforms, including wireless. "This agreement goes to the strength of our company," said Michael Eisner, chairman of the Walt Disney Company. "Disney is about delivering great programming through a wide range of platforms."Worth noting: In 2003, ABC Sports will carry the Super Bowl, the Stanley Cup Finals, the NBA Finals, and the BCS Championship game. For ESPN.com competitors like SportsLine.com, that isn't exactly Mickey Mouse news.
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