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Posted 7:18 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
European Parliament Rejects Laws 'Blocking' Objectionable Content
Vin Crosbie on censorship
The European Parliament has overwhelmingly voted against forcing Internet service providers to "block" websites featuring content deemed objectionable to some European Union member countries. The parliaments and legislatures in some of those countries had been considering measures that would force ISPs to "block" consumers' access to sites advocating Nazism and hate groups. However, in a show of support for self-regulation of ISPs, the European Parliament voted on Thursday 460 in favor of and 0 against (with 3 abstentions) self-regulation for ISPs.
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Posted 4:11 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Blow to Cookie-Cutter Web Design?
Steve Outing on the Real Cities brouhaha
As you may have read over on Jim Romenesko's MediaNews, the Fort Wayne (Indiana) Journal Gazette is not happy with Knight Ridder Digital's new publishing system. (Seriously ticked off would be a better description.) The JG's manager of news technologies, Tom Pellegrene Jr., wrote a scathing public criticism of the Real Cities "Market Leader" technology, which restricts design choices on his paper's website. His online users resoundingly hate the new design, and so do Pellegrene, his staff, and his newspaper bosses. But they're in a contract to be part of Real Cities because of the JG's joint operating agreement with the News-Sentinel. The JG is independently owned; the N-S is a Knight Ridder paper.When I interviewed Pellegrene earlier today, he complained that the cookie-cutter design forced on Real Cities affiliate newspaper websites by the new Knight Ridder Digital publishing system is akin to another entity dictating how his newspaper's front page is designed. He says he doesn't know what will happen, and hopes to get a response to his complaints from KR Digital executives. (As of mid-day, Pellegrene hadn't heard a word.) His primary goal: to get back the ability to reinstate his site's old design, or some variation. Asked if the JG would seek to sever the relationship with Knight Ridder Digital, he wouldn't rule it out.
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Posted 1:34 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
You Get What You Pay For
Steve Klein on premium e-mail services
As a university instructor whose students tend to use Hotmail and Yahoo! e-mail rather than their school accounts, I know just how dependent they are on these free services. But the time is coming — and coming soon — when everything but the most rudimentary of e-mail services will cost something, according to a story by Farhad Manjoo on Wired.com. As free e-mail services feel the pinch of advertising slumps, customers are being encouraged to pay for premium features. Both services are likely to start charging for speedier, more reliable services; for better anti-spam filters; for technical support; and for more storage space. (A lot of my e-mails to students bounce because they don't regularly clean out their mail boxes.)Not surprisingly, customers are not rushing to pay for premium services. Smaller providers like TerraLycos, Oddpost, and Another.com have been trying to capture premium subscribers, but according to Ethan Diamond and Iain Lamb of Oddpost, once consumers decide to pay for e-mail, they prefer a name-brand service. Given that Yahoo! and Hotmail combined have hundreds of millions of users, small companies like Oddpost may lack the leverage to compete against the e-mail giants. My students are not going to be happy.
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Posted 11:12 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Who Controls Customer Information?
Rich Gordon on some new developments
A couple of interesting developments on the topic of privacy and customer relationships: First, Microsoft has retreated from its effort to create "My Services" (previously called Hailstorm), an Internet-based repository of customer information. (This was first reported by Mike Ricciuti of News.com in February.) The supposed benefit to consumers would have been to allow them to access Web content and services from any computer without having to re-enter their personal information. But prospective corporate partners didn't want anything to do with it. Said one analyst, "They ran into the reality that many companies don't want any company between them and their customers." Of course, Microsoft is still pitching its Passport service, which has the same goals — and similar potential to position Microsoft as an intermediary between customers and online content/services.Meanwhile, Yahoo! has sent its registered users an e-mail designed to get them to accept a wide variety of e-mail solicitations (and even the "opportunity" of snail-mail and phone offers!). Having just received the e-mail this week, I must say that it's not a sterling example of straightforward communications. I'm sure many people ignored it. But this user, at least, told Yahoo! to keep its solicitations to itself.
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Posted 11:05 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
European Women More Efficient Than Their Men Online
Vin Crosbie on the genders online
Although my Spanish girlfriend has long told me that women are more efficient users of online than are men, I hadn't believed her until I read a recent Jupiter Media Metrix report about European women. "The research has highlighted that whilst women spend less time on the Internet each month than men, they use their time more effectively, shopping, organizing travel, banking online, and sending e-greeting cards. Whilst men also carry out these tasks online, they also find additional time to browse, read content, and download applications." Jupiter estimated that the number of European women online grew by 29% during the past year, but that their men still outnumber them online (25 million versus 40 million). The report adds, "Spanish women spend the most time online, favoring instant messaging sites and file sharing, both of which are time-intensive applications." ... I've got to go! She wants to use my cable modem connection again.
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Posted 7:09 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
'Paying for It' Report: Nonsense
Peter M. Zollman on paid online content
The jury is still out on the "pay for content" plan that newspaper publishers want so desperately to impose on their Web efforts. But this jury of one has reached a verdict on The Media Audit news release (mentioned here earlier this week by Steve Outing) about subscription efforts in Tulsa and Albuquerque, and the verdict is, "Are they nuts?" The Media Audit is a respected research company that does good work — so this news release and "research" of two isolated sites is doubly appalling.The contention is that at the Tulsa World and the Albuquerque Journal, audience reach in the market went up when they closed off portions of their websites and started charging. Reading the news release carefully, however, you note (a) the subscriber numbers cited are embarrassingly low; (b) the access figures include the local free access; (c) there's no indication whether the reason overall access grew due to increased use of the Web, or increased promotion — the most likely reasons; (d) the conclusions reached, while carefully couched, are in no way reflective of the facts; and (e) there's no discussion of the methodology or survey size. Credit The Media Audit for writing a decent news release — but not for a meaningful review of the situation.
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Posted 6:28 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Weblogs ... On Video?
Rich Gordon on the future of blogging
Economist James D. Miller suggests that we're now in "the brief golden age of independent blogging." He argues that a number of trends, including the maturing of online advertising, will lead the best bloggers to join "branded, heavily advertised websites." One of his more interesting suggestions is that as broadband proliferates, bloggers will have to go multimedia — and will not be able to do so without access to more resources. "Surfers will undoubtedly prefer the bells and tassels of sexy high tech sites to static text-based blogging pages," he writes. This brought to mind that tech writer and TV producer Robert X. Cringely is working on plans to add a downloadable video component to his PBS online-only column. (Read his first and second columns on the topic.) We might debate whether his column is a weblog (he generally includes Web links but not in the body of his column). But it's an interesting idea.
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Posted 1:56 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Oh My, Canada
Steve Klein on Canadian connectivity
Canadians often feel that they get short shrift in the U.S. press. But a story by Charles Mandel on Wired.com points out that Canadians are leading the U.S. in wired homes, with 60% of Canadians online compared to 52% of Americans. Fast Forward 3.0, a report from the Canadian E-Business Opportunities Roundtable, also points out that despite the large online population, only 17% of Canadians shop online compared to 27% in the U.S.Analysts point to several reasons for the disparity, including population diversity, cultural differences, and problems shopping online at U.S.-based companies. But it goes both ways: During the Winter Olympics, I tried to buy a Canadian team sweatshirt on the Roots clothing site and was not successful. "There are a lot of obstacles to purchasing over the Internet in Canada that don't apply to Americans," says Shirley-Ann George, a government program executive with IBM Canada and a member of the roundtable support team.
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Posted 12:42 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Is 'Blogger' a Word?
Steve Outing on language usage
In Rich Gordon's item below, he uses the term "blogger" to refer to those who publish/write weblogs. He also points to an article that uses the same term. But is blogger really an acceptable word? I ask because Blogger is also the name of a commercial service that many people use to publish weblogs. (We partly rely on Blogger for this weblog.) Calling a weblog publisher a blogger is akin to saying "Would you please xerox this for me?" The word blogger is now so widely used, many in the Internet world equate it with the generic weblog, not the specific company Blogger.There's no firm style edict yet on this. So what do you think? Should we use "blogger" or "weblogger"? Have your say by clicking "Discuss This" below.
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Posted 12:33 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Blogger's Code of Ethics
Rich Gordon on weblogs and traditional journalism
John Hiler of Microcontent News continues his thoughtful writing on the weblog phenomenon with a fascinating exploration — titled "Are Bloggers Journalists?" — of the relevance of traditional journalistic ethics to weblogs. He struggles with the simple facts: that bloggers (a) are not objective and (b) don't have editors. But then he concludes that "amateur journalists" (bloggers) sometimes have to do real reporting, and can learn from the standards that traditional journalists have set for themselves. (He links to a variety of journalistic ethics codes to make his point.) Finally he starts drafting a Blogging Code of Ethics (and, of course, seeks other bloggers' input).
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Posted 12:18 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
How Do You Want to Pay?
Jeppe Kruse on micropayments
Note to self: Keep an eye on www.valus.dk, the website of the Danish micropayments network (which is not operational yet). The network, which is launched by a coalition of the largest Danish Internet media, has been covered here earlier. A recent letter to potential partners (in Danish) describes how the micropayment model works and which payment options users/customers have: The pre-pay options include payments via credit card, Internet banking, purchaseable cards with a set value, and person-to-person transactions. The post-pay options: transactions via the centralized payment network PBS, and invoices. This is definitely the most ambitious (and most centralized) micropayments network I've seen to date.
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Posted 6:53 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Strategy Trumps Technology
Rich Gordon on the future of Google
I've always believed that applying technology in innovative and ultra-useful ways would be one of the keys to successful online publishing. (And I've lamented how few online publishers actually take advantage of technology to do more than publish traditional content to the Web.) Here's a scary fact, courtesy of the New York Times: Overture.com (formerly Goto.com), which sells its search results to the highest bidder, is bringing in five times as much revenue as Google, which has the best search technology, the largest database, the cleanest interface, the fastest site, and search results that are ranked purely by relevance rather than commercial considerations. "People rave about Google. But as a business, it will take an awful lot for them to catch up to Overture," one stock analyst says. Overture makes its money by sharing its revenue with sites (like AOL, MSN, and Yahoo!) which use Overture's search results. It's an irresistable business model for other portals, which are desperately looking for revenue. And it's one more example (Windows, VHS/Betamax) suggesting that good business strategy will often defeat superior technology.
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Posted 6:15 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
They're Back!
Steve Outing on dot-com advertising
Beleaguered but surviving dot-com companies are starting to advertise themselves again on television, according to an article from the Wall Street Journal. This signals a resurgence of Internet companies, and lower advertising prices because of the general media downturn. The dot-com survivors can take advantage of the lesser competition and the lower costs of marketing. ... But please, Internet companies, no more sock puppets!
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Posted 12:11 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Wireless Content: They'll Pay for It
Steve Outing on subscriptions vs. advertising
A Newspaper Association of America-sponsored survey of wireless users released today concludes that consumers probably would pay for premium wireless services, such as classified advertising alerts. They also want quick hits of information that's pertinent to them, but don't want to have to search for it. Survey participants were critical of wireless advertising. The survey would seem to indicate that there is revenue potential for newspapers with paid wireless content services — perhaps more so than on the Web, where consumers expect most everything to be free — but advertising will be a challenge. The best bet is that wireless revenue models will rely more on money for content and services, while the Web will rely mostly on advertising.
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Posted 11:28 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Austrian Dailies Battle With Digital Facsimiles
Vin Crosbie on online publishing
Two competing Viennese dailies have begun offering digital facsimile editions, each newspaper by different means. Die Presse last week became the the first German-language daily to offer digital facsimile editions from NewsStand.com's centralized, online newsstand. Single copies of Die Presse cost 1 Euro to download, with discounts available for quarterly subscriptions. Meanwhile, digital facsimiles of Der Standard are available as part of a test directly from that newspaper. Der Standard is using a private-labeled version of Olive Software for the test, which began in February.In the U.S. magazine publishing sector, Ziff Davis Media on Tuesday announced that it would begin offering digital facsimiles of PC Magazine thorough Zinio's centralized online newsstand. No date was set for that launch. (I should note that Zinio's president and COO was the original editor-in-chief of PC Magazine and that Zinio has a former Ziff Davis executive on its board.)
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Posted 11:10 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
3G Wireless Internet Wars Begin in Japan
Madan Rao on evolution of mobile services
Two versions of 3G wireless Internet technology are now up and battling it out in Japan: NTT DoCoMo's FOMA (Freedom of Mobile multimedia Access) services based on W-CDMA (launched late last year), and now KDDI's CDMA2000 1x network. A third service will be launched later this year by J-Phone, part of the Vodafone network. NTT DoCoMo has more than 40 million customers nationwide, followed by KDDI with 15 million, and J-Phone with 12 million. Device considerations like battery life, dual-service features (for non-3G coverage areas), and multimedia content will play a key role in determining market success for 3G wireless services.
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Posted 10:29 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Analyze Your Liability
Jade Walker on Web-based legal aid
The University of Texas offers a useful site for online publishers to bookmark and peruse when copyright and libel questions arise. The Crash Course in Copyright gives a decent background on fair use, digital copyright, and online licensing. The school also offers a great Copyright Tutorial. To determine the libelous nature of a story, it couldn't hurt to use the Libel Checklist. Of course, if questions still exist after a complete analysis, contact counsel for legal aid.
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Posted 8:25 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
U.S. Circuit Court Decides a Web Framing Case
Vin Crosbie on online publishing law
Remember the controversy about websites that frame other sites' content? A newspaper law attorney in Washington, D.C., says that a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit decision should be read by every webmaster who becomes framed. According to Alice Neff Lucan, the court's three major rulings were: 1. Framing another website's reduced photographs is not a copyright infringement because the use is "transformative," a term that Lucan says every webmaster should learn. 2. Framing advertising around another website's full-sized photographs is a copyright infringement. 3. Offering the full-size images for display is a copyright infringement in and of itself, whether or not any member of the public actually views the copyrighted photographs.The case in question involved a professional photographer who discovered his site's photographs being framed by another site. Lucan offers a more detailed analysis of the ruling at her own website, NewsLaw.
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Posted 6:52 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
$5 Million From Astrology Purchases
Steve Outing on paid content
Interesting tidbit from Silicon Alley Daily: The CEO of iVillage, the women's website network, said at an event yesterday that last year it brought in $5 million in revenues from paid online astrology content. That's 11% of all of iVillage's revenues. From horoscopes! iVillage has been aggressive in recent months at attracting more subscription revenue, though it's still dependent mostly (80%) on advertising.
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Posted 2:43 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Audience Comes Despite Subscription Walls
Steve Outing on paid online content
OK, what do we make of this? The Media Audit reports today (in a press release) that newspaper websites in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, have actually increased their in-market visitor numbers despite going to paid-subscription models in mid-2001. This means that at those sites, non-paid visitors are still coming to the sites in substantial numbers. Both sites offer some free content, but most of it is behind a subscription wall. A Media Audit executive says, "The research makes it pretty clear that the switch to paid access can be made —at least in some markets — without damaging the long term prospects of the site."I'm skeptical. I think we'll see those numbers go down after the local audiences in time realize "there's no there there" on the sites, unless they pay up.
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Posted 2:19 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
SND.ies: The February Winners Are ...
Steve Outing on interactive content
The Society for News Design has announced the February winners of the SND.ies, the monthly multimedia content awards. This time around, the website of the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, which has a talented graphics staff accustomed to winning awards, won for two of its non-breaking multimedia Flash graphics: breast cancer and soccer. For the first time (in this 2-month-old contest), an American site won an award: NYTimes.com in the breaking news category, for its photojournalists' views of Sept. 11 presentation.
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Posted 11:07 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
It's So Annoying!
Katja Riefler on pop-up download advertising
Advertisers have to be creative to reach their audience. That's OK with me. But what Gator and other companies are doing now in order to distribute their software is really annoying. Ads-as-downloads are the latest ploy to help aggressively distribute technology to a wider audience. This technique is as frustrating as the strategies of adult sites that install expensive dialers to their victims' PCs or open up multiple pop-up or pop-under windows users can hardly get rid of. The visitor of a site with these new download ads may for example see a pop-up box that appears as a security warning with the message: "Do you accept this download?" If the consumer clicks "Yes," an application is automatically installed. The Adserver provider L 90 is said to have offered customers this kind of advertising, which may work with inexperienced users but will frustrate them and hurt the responsiveness to online advertising in the long run.
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Posted 12:43 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Why Newsrooms Need TiVo
Steve Outing on a handy tip
Lost Remote had a handy tip this week about TiVo personal network recorders. (If you follow my writing, you'll know I love TiVo.) Turns out that they are great for Web operations of television newsrooms (or other newsrooms that post video from affiliated broadcasters). Instead of Web producers having to wait for a newscast to be over to pull a clip, they can simply use their TiVo to turn video around almost instantly, without having to stop the recording. That can save 30-60 minutes in valuable publishing time, points out Lost Remote. Cool!
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Posted 7:55 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
High-Speed Interactive Journalism
Steve Outing on audience feedback
Technology columnist and weblogger Dan Gillmor (of the San Jose Mercury News) wrote an important item a couple weeks ago. I just now spotted it, but it's still worth sharing in case you missed it, too. Gillmor tells the story of sitting in a conference audience and posting to his eJournal weblog (using a wireless Internet connection) on what one of the panelists, SkyPilot CEO Duncan Davidson, was saying. When Davidson ended his remarks, he sat down on stage and tapped at his laptop. During the Q&A session at the end of the hour, Davidson announced a correction for something Gillmor had moments ago published. Gillmor says he had a "whoa moment," realizing how profound was that near-instantaneous exchange between journalist, source, and audience. Now that's interactive journalism.
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Posted 7:39 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Copyright and Convergence
Katja Riefler on French journalists and Australian media ownership
Remember Tasini? There still is a long way to go until all issues of copyright in the digital age will have been settled. In France right now there is a dispute between unionized journalists and the La Voix du Nord newspaper group, which the writers have accused of using their work online without their personal permission, even though their unions have negotiated an online clause in their working contracts, according to the Ifra Trend Report.This week's Ifra edition is also worth reading for issues concerning media convergence. In Australia, a bill that would set standards for cross-media ownership in that nation may, in fact, outlaw convergence. And although print-broadcast-online convergence is largely seen as a model for larger-market concerns, it might also work for smaller media operations, for example the 19,000-circulation daily Lawrence Journal-World (in Kansas).
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Posted 2:25 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Change Jobs, Take Your Sources
Steve Outing on a foolish lawsuit
Here's a story from last week worth noting (in case you missed it): two paper-products trade news organizations have ended their legal tiff over reporters who left one employer to go to work for another, then used sources they regularly used on their former jobs for the new employer. Paperloop dropped its legal case against ForestWeb, which suggested that Paperloop's former reporters weren't entitled to use sources they cultivated when on the job at Paperloop in their new jobs with ForestWeb. The case was widely viewed in the journalism profession as having the potential to set a dangerous precedent if it had gone to trial and Paperloop won. Fortunately, Paperloop gave up. Good. It was a frivolous lawsuit.
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Posted 1:30 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Kirch Media Collapse Affects Online
Katja Riefler on the fall of a German media giant
The media in Germany have discussed it all over and over in recent weeks: one of the country's biggest TV players, Kirch Media AG, which controls several successful commercial television stations in Germany, among them Pro Sieben and Sat 1, and holds the exclusive rights to broadcast many films and big sporting events like the 2002 and 2006 soccer World Cups, is in big financial trouble. Now the local court in Munich confirms that the company has filed for insolvency. Affected is not only Kirch Media, the main holding of the Kirch Group, as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports, but also the pay TV venture Premiere, which has been struggling for its life in the past years but never got close to reaching profitability. No one can tell yet what this means for the German TV landscape and the affiliated websites that attract many million visitors each month. At the Internet section of Premiere, already 15 of 36 employees have lost their jobs.
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Posted 1:16 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Trouble With the Paid Web
Steve Outing on fee-based online contnet
Wall Street Journal columnist Tom Weber addresses the wave of fee-based services and content on the Web of late. (Read the column.) His conclusion: "Now that dozens of sites have rolled out fee-based services, we can see what the invoiced, itemized future looks like. And? It's a mess." Weber expresses what I've been concerned about for some time: as more and more fee roadblocks pop up in the Web surfing experience, Internet users will be slowed down by the cumulative effect of so many sites asking for money. Folks, this won't work. Online consumers will quickly become fatigued (psychologically and financially) by the constant barrage of requests for their money — and no one will win. Without some Web-wide system that recognizes a user at all (or most) sites, and a common payment scheme across all, and ideally a system where a consumer can buy access to many sites at once, this "new" fee-based Web is headed for failure.
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