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Posted 6:36 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Times' Safire Questions Convergence
Steve Klein on the threat posed to news media
Columnist William Safire of the New York Times questions whether the urge to converge has really led to "the happy marriage of news and entertainment content with the computer, wireless telephone, and video — all supposedly lowering prices to consumers with no restraint of trade or news." Safire suggests that the creation of media empires has diluted the mission of the acquired companies. He points to the case of Disney's recent decisions regarding ABC News, including the threat of replacing Ted Koppel's "Nightline" with the David Letterman show (if Disney can entice the comedian from CBS).Writes Safire: "(Disney's) misbegotten purchase of a news medium allows it to prostitute ABC News' journalistic mission to conform to the parent company's different goal." Safire compares the concentration of media power to the concentration of governmental authority, which the Constitution prevents with a system of checks and balances. "Why, then, should we supinely go along with the seizure of economic power by today's triopolies and duopolies on their march to becoming tomorrow's monopolies?" he concludes.
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Posted 5:01 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Try Enforcing This One
Andrew Stroehlein on the road
Last year's new media law here in Kazakstan would seem at first glance to be a great mark of respect for Internet journalism, as it places Internet sites on equal footing with other mass media. Then you realize this means that Kazak websites are required to register with the government just like print and broadcast media, and it doesn't sound so great. Are even personal websites expected to comply? Technically, yes, but the media law, as with many laws here, is applied rather arbitrarily, so there hasn't been a mass wave of closings of unregistered sites. But the government can always play that card against a website if it wants to.
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Posted 11:14 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Bigger Ads Are Growing
Steve Klein on online ad formats
There's an interesting item in VentureReporter.net on the trend toward larger online ad formats. According to a new study by online research firm Jupiter Media Metrix, the three most typical formats for large ads — "skyscrapers," "squares," and "rectangles" — have increased their share of all online ad impressions from 4% in April 2001 to 9% in January 2002. The study reports that the number of large-format ad impressions grew 185% over that same period, from 2.0 billion to 5.7 billion. The standard Web banner ad (468 by 60) is hardly dead, however, with a 50-52% share every month over the past year. Jupiter Media Metrix has issued a press release detailing the the trend on the larger ad formats.
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Posted 11:11 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
O Home-Delivery Pitch, Where Art Thou?
Peter M. Zollman on selling subscriptions and targeting links
A stunning development: For the first time in as long as I can remember, I opened a page on NYTimes.com and something was missing — a 50%-off pitch for home delivery of the Times. Oh, the "home delivery" button was still there in the left-hand navbar, but the offer at the bottom of the page (and almost always at the top as well) wasn't. Instead, there was a link to the Times' new employment site — a logical connection to an article about lost jobs and unemployment.Still, I was disappointed. For more than two years, I've told audiences and readers that the Times has had remarkable success selling print subscriptions online — one of the many benefits to interactive media services that newspaper publishers tend to miss or ignore — by placing a prominent subscription offer on every page of NYTimes.com. The site has become the newspaper's most cost-effective and productive circulation sales tool. So while the targeting of the link/ad on this page was smart — I miss my subscription offer link. And I hope the link to the New York Times Job Market is as productive for the Times as the home-delivery pitch was (and probably still is, on all of its other pages).
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Posted 11:10 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
NTT DoCoMo Goes Public In UK, USA
Madan Rao on mobile Internet services
NTT DoCoMo, Japan's leading mobile communications operator, is now listed on the London Stock Exchange as well as the New York Stock Exchange. The listings are intended to help finance options to sustain its global expansion plans. DoCoMo currently has 40 million subscribers in Japan for its mobile content services like i-mode and FOMA (the 3G service), both of which will be introduced in Europe and the U.S. through partnerships with local operators like KPN Mobile, E-plus, and Hutchison.
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Posted 6:37 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Live Fee – Not Free – or Die!
Steve Klein on making online content profitable
The Washington Post's Leslie Walker gives the slowly growing trend of paid online content a belated thumbs up in her ".com" column. "This may go down in Internet history as the year millions of people started paying for online content," Walker takes notice. "My digital radar shows a blip of activity in electronic subscriptions, enough to make me think real online businesses are finally being born." The column includes a chart that samples subscription services, including American Greetings' three websites ($12 annually), Consumer Reports ($24), EDiets ($5 a week), and Wall Street Journal Interactive ($59).Walker makes an interesting conclusion: "All of this must disappoint those who believe the Internet's essence is about the free sharing of information." Maybe before the dot-com bust, Leslie, but certainly not today, when a viable business plan has proven to be as necessary in the online world as it is in the bricks-and-mortar world.
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Posted 6:30 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Exorbitant Bills: Backslash for E-payment
Katja Riefler on an online rip-off in Germany
What would you say if you got a US$300 bill from your telecom provider for having surfed the Internet for 1 minute? This sounds ridiculous, but it happened to a lot of consumers here in Germany recently. According to Süddeutsche Zeitung (in German), police are investigating some 30 websites, most of which specialize in providing websites with funny content for kids. To see the comics or other parts of the site you have to download a special software application that will disconnect your current Internet connection and dial a "0190" number without your notice. The telephone bill will raise up to 1000 Euro within minutes. It's difficult to delete the dial-up program.It won't be easy to punish the providers — they claim that they had text on their sites that warned about the costs. It is quite easy and not very expensive to order your telephone company to disable any connection to "0190" numbers, which are also often used by adult services for payment. But the really awful thing about this kind of betrayal is that it unsettles the already loose faith of consumers in paid online services at all.
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Posted 12:16 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Monster Is Coming to Your Neighborhood
Peter M. Zollman on online employment services
As if newspapers didn't have enough to worry about in the field of employment advertising, a monstrous new competitor is going after local markets. You haven't heard of "JobMatch" yet — but you will. It's from Monster.com, and its first local market rollout will be in Cincinnati (the No. 26 market in the U.S.), where Monster has hired seven sales reps to build out the new site and business. If it's successful, and Monster founder Jeff Taylor promises it will be, Monster plans to roll out in 100 new U.S. markets within a year or so. It's registered JobMatch URLs in markets as small as Houma, Louisiana. (While Jobmatch.com is registered to an Israeli company, TargetMatch Ltd., Monster has registered hundreds of locality-based "jobmatch" URLs, such as houmajobmatch.com and jobmatchhouma.com.)Why a separate URL? Monster has found in research that it's considered for high-end jobs like tech positions and engineering jobs, but not for mid-range and blue-collar jobs. JobMatch will target those jobs — which have always been newspapers' "sweet spot."
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Posted 11:28 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Journalists, Against a New Internet Law
Eva Domínguez on a freedom of speech controversy
A new law that the Spanish government recently announced to regulate Internet activity has brought on a big controversy. Information Society Services and E-Commerce Law (LSSI-CE), which will arrive at the Congress in a few days, is intended to ban spam and secure e-commerce transactions. The intention may be good but the ways proposed to accomplish it have been criticized harshly. One of the more critical aspects is the introduction of the ambiguous term "competent authority" — who will hold the power of closing a website. But nowadays, judges seem to already be that kind of authority, since they can do so.Many Web users consider this law a way of controlling what cannot be restricted: the Internet. Journalists have branded the LSSI-CE as a "serious attempt against freedom of speech and a threat to the right of information on the Internet," as well as "an attack" to journalism. For that reason, the Journalists Union Federation (FeSP), which groups five unions from all around the country, wants to bring the debate further and get all the profession involved.
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Posted 10:50 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Here's One Way to Speed Up Baseball
Steve Klein on online sports content
Everyone complains that Major League Baseball games are too long — almost three hours, on average. All that fidgeting by the pitchers and hitters, and pitching changes galore these days when complete nine-inning games are definitely the exception. That isn't about to change, but MLB Advanced Media, the interactive media and Internet company of MLB, is adding a new baseball video service to its starting lineup for the 2002 season: MLB.com Condensed Games. There's even a marketing campaign: "Not Just Baseball, Fastball!"Fans will be able to watch every hit, run, and out in a game (about 85 pitches worth of action), resulting in a 300k video stream for a complete ball game running about 20 minutes. Condensed Games will be available about 90 minutes after every game exclusively through RealNetworks RealOne player.
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Posted 12:27 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
ConsumerReports.org: It's No. 1!
Steve Outing on paid online subscriptions
Consumer Reports reported on Wednesday that it had surpassed 800,000 paying subscribers for its website, making it the most successful periodical publisher's paid site. (WSJ.com is not far behind.) The largest paid-content Web enterprise appears to be that of American Greetings, which operates three e-greeting card paid sites (AmericanGreetings.com, BlueMountain, and eGreetings) with a combined subscriber base of 1.1 million.
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Posted 7:22 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Rooting Out the Real Olympic Winners
Steve Klein on online sports content
Who were the big online winners at the Winter Olympics? According to Aaron Schatz of the Lycos 50, Canadian clothing company Roots saw searches boom thanks to its design of both the American and Canadian outfits for the Olympics. Roots searches are up 500% since the Olympics began a month ago.But what about the athletes? Here are the top dozen Olympic athletes searched over the two-plus weeks (Feb. 8-24): 1) Jamie Sale (figure skating, Canada); 2) Apolo Anton Ohno (speed skating, USA); 3) Michelle Kwan (figure skating, USA); 4) Anni Friesinger (speed skating, Germany); 5) Sarah Hughes (figure skating, USA); 6) Sasha Cohen (figure skating, USA); 7) Jeremy Bloom (freestyle skiing, USA); 8) David Pelletier (figure skating, Canada); 9) Alexei Yagudin (figure skating, Russia); 10) Timothy Goebel (figure skating, USA); 11) Picabo Street (skiing, USA); and 12) Catriona Lemay Doan (speed skating, Canada). Hmmm: Seven of the top 12 were figure skaters. And not a curler among them!
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Posted 6:41 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Flash Training as a Good Investment
Martha Stone on multimedia
User access of video and audio on news websites pales by comparison to Flash multimedia presentations and photo galleries. Even as broadband access and usage rise, it is Flash and photo galleries that have captured the interest of news Web users, according to many online news site managers I've interviewed. Kinsey Wilson, editor of USAToday.com, for example, said, "We have found Flash incredibly powerful as a storytelling tool. We've gotten a very favorable response from users, and few if any complaints about not being able to download." In fact, an animated Flash graphic created in the aftermath of Sept. 11 terror attacks showing the flight path of the four planes got about 3/4 million pageviews, second only to the USAToday.com home page, in January 2002. Also in January, USA Today combined its print and online graphics staffs to maximize efficiency and convergence possibilities. Photo galleries reportedly were some of the most accessed Olympics content on USAToday.com, MSBNC.com, and TBO.com, to name a few.
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Posted 6:31 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Users Aren't Happy
Norbert Specker on Slashdot's paid model
So nobody, apparently, is happy with Cmdr Taco's subscription scheme for Slashdot.org, as the close to 2,700 comments (at mid-day Wednesday) reveal. They present a telling cross-section of elements to consider if you toy with the idea yourself. Robert Loch at Dotcom Scoop provides a shorter rant including the key particulars, such as: "taking something away instead of adding something that is worth paying for"; "punishing those that contribute the most"; "nickel and diming instead of proven flat fee model"; and "acting before you are ready."
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Posted 12:15 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Nokia on What to Expect on Your Handset: Entertainment
Jeppe Kruse on mobile Internet services
Realizing that the hype on new technology has pretty much died down here in Europe, Finnish mobile phone manufacturer Nokia now advertises forthcoming products, technologies, and possibilities itself. TV commercials from Nokia tell us that, soon, we'll be able to use mobile handsets to transmit music and movies via the Internet. Since the existing European media haven't picked up on this and don't really care to cover it, Nokia spends a lot of money hyping the technology. It even has an entire website devoted to it: The Feature.But mobile streaming could also be a possible source of revenue for traditional media. Think news broadcasts or just plain old news, maybe accompanied by pictures and sound, services which could be much more successful than the entertainment-based ones, if launched right. This would be an excellent service to commuters and busy executives, but of course the question remains: Will they pay?
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Posted 12:10 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
8,500 Free E-books
Norbert Specker on relevance of an old project
Well, it is the texts we are talking about, not the sleek (and momentarily hiding) eBook devices. For the texts mentioned here, any old Palm Pilot (or other PDA) will do. The Gutenberg Project is as old as Deep Purple's Montreux Vision of "Smoke on the Water." (Before I lose you, that was 1973.) Since then, 8,500 free classic books in the public domain have been made available for download via the Internet. So this is a little reminder to freshen up on Jules Vernes, Goethe, and Alice in Wonderland — and to make sure that this laudable project stays on the surface.
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Posted 11:57 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Following Suit in Kazakstan
Andrew Stroehlein on the road
The big Internet story here in Kazakstan is that the president's son-in-law is suing one of the most important independent media voices on the Kazakstani Internet. Rahat Aliev, husband of President Nursultan Nazarbaev's eldest daughter, Dariga, is demanding financial damages from from Internews Kazakstan, the local branch of a multi-national NGO (non-governmental organization) dealing with the media in the newly emerging democracies. Aliev claims that Internews Kazakstan libeled him in an article outlining his media interests in this country.Most people here find it difficult to understand exactly why Aliev chose Internews for his lawsuit; indeed, for years, many websites dealing with this region have detailed the Nazarbaev family's extensive stake in national radio, TV, and print media. Perhaps he is just looking for something to occupy his time after losing his job as No. 2 at the Kazak security service, an event generally seen as a rap on the knuckles from his father-in-law, the president. In any case, the trial looks set to entertain the Kazak Internet community for the next few months at least.
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Posted 3:33 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
PDF Subscriptions Since 1997
Norbert Specker on digital publishing
While announcing that the printed version in PDF format can now be bought online on a day by day basis, the Nederland Dagblad, a small Dutch daily newspaper, also points out that a PDF subscription via e-mail has been available since 1997 (echoing earlier first-mover claims).
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Posted 1:45 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
When Links Go Bad, Porn Happens
Steve Outing on side effect of dot-com crashes
When the dot-com economy went sour last year, lots of websites went out of business — and so many URLs that once worked no longer do because the domain names owned by the defunct companies were abandoned. An interesting thing has happened since then: Porn sites re-registered lots of the abandoned domain names, and redirected the traffic that they continue to get to sex content. This works for the porn sites because there are so many links throughout the Web to the defunct websites. (I learned this from today's edition of SearchDay.)Here's the lesson: Check your site's links to external content. If you link to a site that's no longer around, it's possible that the link could now point to a porn site. I don't think you want that.
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Posted 1:20 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Allure of the Mixed Model
Carla Passino on FT.com's latest move
FT.com will start charging users for access to archive material and financial information, reports NetImperative. The move hardly comes as a surprise, given that FT.com's publisher, Pearson plc, has long advocated adding new revenue streams to its advertising mainstay.I often question the revenue potential of pay-per-view, which risks making a site so much less appealing to the eyes of prospective advertisers, but for once it may match expectations: FT.com has enough unique content to entice paying subscribers — and it will retain enough free news to attract the volume of eyeballs that keeps advertisers happy.
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Posted 11:53 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Jaroslovsky Departs WSJ
Steve Outing on an online news pioneer
Rich Jaroslovsky, online pioneer and winner of this year's EPpy award for outstanding individual achievement, is leaving the Wall Street Journal. Next week, he'll join Ziff Brothers Investments in New York. He most recently has been senior editor for the Journal, and before that managing editor of the WSJ Interactive Edition. Jaroslovsky also is the founding president of the Online News Association, and says he will continue to serve on the ONA board of directors even though he's leaving the online news business.
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Posted 11:21 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Net Was Mainstream ... Last Year!
Peter M. Zollman on stale data in Pew Internet Survey
The Pew Internet & American Life Project has published an interesting report about how the Internet is becoming an increasingly mainstream part of American life. The novelty is wearing off, especially for long-time users, and it's becoming just another communications tool — albeit a tool that's growing in popularity and value. But has anyone else noticed that the report, released March 2, 2002, is based on interviews conducted in March 2001? While we understand the need to analyze, review, and edit the data, in a fast-developing field like Internet usage it's more than a little lame to release a major report 11 months to a full year after collection of the data. Couldn't they have typed just a wee bit faster?
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Posted 11:11 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
This 'New Media' is Real-ly New
Rich Gordon on RealOne
Last week's Fortune magazine had a good piece on Real Networks' RealOne service. "Truly interactive TV is beginning to seem, well, real," writes Brent Schlender. I have to admit, I was vaguely aware that this service was rolling out, but had not tried it myself. Now that I've seen it, I have to say that I'm impressed. I've been looking for years for good examples of real "interactive multimedia." RealOne comes closer to that goal than anything I've seen to date.Unfortunately, I doubt that RealOne will be a business success. Real Networks faces an uphill battle getting people to even be aware of the service — let alone be willing to download a new media player (Real doesn't have Microsoft's advantage of being able to ship it with an OS) and sign up for a paid service. (RealOne costs $9.95/month; there's a 14-day free trial.) But when interactive TV becomes a reality in the U.S. — which it will — I think it will look a lot like RealOne.
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Posted 7:35 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Parade's Supplementary Site
Steve Outing on print-Web convergence
Parade, the ubiquitous (in the U.S., at least) Sunday newspaper supplement, has debuted its redesigned website. The emphasis is on supplementing the magazine, by offering additional content related to the print content — such as online games and quizzes based on print stories, and Web features like the "Best Casserole in the USA Content." I doubt you'll go ga-ga over the new site, but it does do a decent job of extending the printed product by offering extras on the Web. As a pure destination site, it's weak. Parade has such a strong brand in the old world, by taking this site seriously it should be able to build an online business that attracts a huge audience and even makes money. The emphasis must be on original content for the Web, executed in ways not possible in print. I wonder if such an old old-media company can pull that off.
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Posted 7:05 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Salon Premium + Clickshare = Slashdot
Norbert Specker on paid-content models
In a cross between Salon Premium and Clickshare, the ultimate nerd log Slashdot (reminder to self: visit more often) is going new places, Newsbytes reports. As advertisers demand more ad space, Commander Taco is introducing a Salon-styled "no adverts subscription." The twist: the subscription amount depends on bundled pageviews. Each 1,000 pageviews will cost US$5. Rob Malda, who is CmdrTaco, says "all but the most rapid readers should get their fill for about $20 a year."
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Posted 1:19 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Why Newspapers Need the Web
Carla Passino on print sales and online success
A strong online presence has a positive impact on newspaper copy sales, reports Media Week. A study by media agency Starcom Motive indicates that British newspapers with popular websites (more than 100,000 unique users) saw a 5.4% increase in sales — against a 3.5% fall for newspapers with weak or no websites. "There is clear evidence that good newspaper Web sites help shore up sales," says Starcom Motive. "They do so, in our view, by building brand equity." It's as good reason as any for media companies to keep investing in the Web. (Also see Steve Outing's item last week about a similar study.)
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Posted 1:12 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Wrestling With Paid Content
Rich Gordon on three pioneers' prognostications
The Wall Street Journal's Kara Swisher interviews three journalists whose websites have survived the dot-com shakeout and economic downturn. Michael Kinsley (Slate.com) and Larry Kramer (Marketwatch.com) are optimistic about the future of online advertising. "I think a lot of us are still sticking with the original plan that quality content that attracts solid audiences and selling ads against that idea will eventually win, which is not exactly a new idea for media," says Kramer. Michael O'Donnell (Salon.com) sees subscriptions as critical to future success. "We tried everything, but what we found was that people are more willing to pay for plain old good content and do not want bells and whistles," he argues. This lack of innovation is lamentable, Kinsley says: "I think that no one, including me, has really come up with a new way to present journalism, using the medium in really cutting-edge ways."
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Posted 11:58 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Flash-y Political Cartoons
Steve Outing on animated Web content
Most cartoons on the Web mirror cartoons in print: they're static. Given the multimedia characteristics of the online medium, it's surprising that more cartoonists haven't experimented with animation. Well, take a look at the daily political cartoon from the Berlin newspaper Netzeitung's website. It's animated, using the software program Flash. Bravo! What a great idea to push political cartooning to a new level. I'd like to see more cartoonists experiment with Flash. It could open up a new wave of creativity in the editorial cartoon and comics worlds.
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Posted 11:33 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
It's Time to Play Ball on MLB.com
Steve Klein on online sports content
Now that spring training is underway and the start of the Major League Baseball season in North America is less than a month away, MLB.com is introducing some new features, according to a story by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Brett Longdin. To begin with, more than 350 spring training games will be webcast live for free — but that's just to whet your appetite. The audio feed returns to a subscription-based service once the regular season begins. Last season, 115,000 subscribers at MLB.com and 400,000 at RealNetworks, MLB.com's streaming partner, subscribed to the regular-season service. In some cases, a foreign-language version is available.As a result of a partnership with WhatIfSports, a sports simulation company, MLB.com will offer a subscription-based game where fans can manage baseball players from 1893 to 2001 — all on one roster. It's kind of cool, really: Each subscriber manages an $80 million payroll and fills a roster of 15 position players and 10 pitchers. The fantasy game is available for a 162-game season for $9.95, or you can choose to manage six teams for $49.75. Updated box scores, league standings, and league leaders are available immediately after games have been simulated. Just imagine an outfield, for example, of Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, and Willie Mays — and you don't even have to worry about them getting along!
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Posted 11:21 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Opening Up Uzbekistan
Andrew Stroehlein on the road
Rumor here on the streets of Tashkent is that the Uzbek authorities may be about to open up the current monopoly on global Internet access. As discussed in a recent article in Online Journalism Review, at the moment, there is only one company, UzPak, which is legally allowed to provide Internet connections to the outside world. (Of course, some other companies do it illegally.) But the authorities have been looking at this issue afresh and are apparently now considering allowing more ISPs to provide access to foreign sites. Many here would welcome the move, saying it is the single most important step for promoting the Internet in this post-Soviet republic.
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