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Posted 12:52 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Can Spain Meet Broadband Content Demands?
Eva Domínguez on audiovisual products for the Internet
Despite Spain's high consumption of streaming content on the Internet, the country's media are not yet ready to provide quality content for broadband networks. That was one of many concepts discussed during the Internet Global Conference which took place this week in Barcelona.Some speakers, such as Jordi Escalé, director of e-commerce for Terra Networks, complained about the lack of good content created for high speed bandwidth users. Others, such as Miguel de la Ossa, general manager of Cirene, pointed out that there is a need for integral technical solutions for transforming, editing, archiving, analyzing, distributing, and managing rights of audiovisual content. For some, rich media content can be the spur that the media industry needs -- and for many, it will work only if comes with a clear business model.
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Posted 12:44 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Should We Give Up on Advertising?
Rich Gordon on McKinsey's predictions
The latest issue of The McKinsey Quarterly says that increased broadband usage will drive up page views but won't do much to help sites that rely on advertising to cover their costs. The exceptions: sites that have low marketing costs becuase they draw traffic from associated sites (are they thinking of Slate?) and those that "have low content costs because they rely largely on repurposed content" (I suppose that could mean newspaper "shovelware" sites). McKinsey sees broadband mostly helping entertainment businesses -- those that offer online games and those that use the Web to market "offline entertainment." Obviously, if McKinsey is right, the future is dim for ad-supported business models. But I wonder if they've adequately taken into account the promising new forms of online advertising that are being tried -- such as those that use video, allow users to interact without leaving the page the ad is on, or follow users through several pages on a site (like New York Times Digital's "surround sessions.")
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Posted 12:02 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Tampa Tribune Offers Electronic Edition (Shhh...)
Peter Zollman on pathetic promotion
The Tampa Tribune is the latest newspaper to announce that its complete printed edition is available electronically through TBO.com, using the services of NewsStand.com. The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and other newspapers offer similar services through Olive Software.But why is the Tampa Trib so timid about promoting the service? Look at TBO.com for the link to the new edition -- but bring your magnifying class. And look very carefully. There it is, waaaay down near the bottom, in the "More from TBO.com" box. (The Little Rock paper launched it correctly, with pop-ups and a big display.) Jeepers. It's the same problem as the newspapers that accept classified ads online, but then don't promote the service anywhere. What are they all so afraid of? That people will actually find and *like* these new ways to communicate?
Posted 2:15 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
A Real (Cities) Hit, or Not?
Steve Outing on a Knight Ridder controversy
In my most recent Editor & Publisher column, on how content management systems are resulting in a decline of online news site design, I quoted Knight Ridder Digital executive Bob Ryan as saying that when Knight Ridder newspaper websites were converted to its new content management system (which gave all the sites a uniform, bland design), there was no significant change in user traffic. The online editor at one Knight Ridder paper says there's been a big drop in traffic to his site. He wrote to me in a private note: "Our site's traffic has experienced a 40-50% drop. We've experienced small, single digit rebounds, but overall, we're still running 40% below traffic from the month prior to the move to the CMS. Also, user backlash was extreme."
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Posted 11:25 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Corporate Bloggers: An Oxymoron?
Steve Outing on weblogs
Weblogs have gotten so popular that the inevitable is happening: they are going commercial. As Wired News reports today, corporations are starting to publish their own weblogs. The Wired article cites blogs created recently by MacroMedia targeted at developers using the company's Flash software tools. What's interesting is that the Flash weblogs are not published on MacroMedia's website, but rather using other weblog-hosting services. This makes the weblogs seem less like corporate shilling and more like something useful. I suspect that most companies that try this strategy will fail, because they'll make the weblogs a marketing tool. If they can keep the sales talk out of it and welcome dissenting views about their products, corporate weblogs can be a way to foster company-customer interaction.
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Posted 10:58 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Web Second Best for Decision-makers
Andrew Stroehlein on B2B media
Business decision-makers prefer to get information about their sector from print B2B magazines over other media, according to a new study, "The Essential Medium: Decision-makers' usage of B2B magazines," commissioned by the UK-based Periodical Publishers Association (PPA) and conducted by NFO WorldGroup. It found that 87% of business decision-makers use print B2B publications regularly to keep up-to-date in their sector. Websites take second place, however, at 71%, and, perhaps more importantly, online sites are well ahead of conferences (54%), national newspapers (46%), and general business magazines (42%). Somewhat surprisingly, "other online services" (i.e., e-mail newsletters) scored a depressingly low 28%.Those surveyed strongly agreed (79%) that print business magazines and the Internet complement each other. Still, as the study says, "it was widely felt that it is easier to read articles on paper than on the screen, and that an advertisement in a printed publication is more likely to be read than one on the Internet."
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Posted 3:37 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Scotland Funds Development of 'Cookie-less' Online Monitor System
Vin Crosbie on online privacy
If you're an Internet user whose stomach gets agitated from being forced-fed website "cookies," you'll probably choke over news that Scotland's main economic development agency is funding the development of a "cookie-less" system that reportedly can install itself on a user's computer and can even monitor a user's keystrokes. The governmental agency Scottish Enterprise is funding such a system being developed by the University of Strathclyde's Electronic and Electrical Engineering Department.Dr. Lykourgos Petropoulakis there heads a research team that has created an online "sensor" program that "can collect almost any item of information and is almost impossible to detect," according to a printed report in Business A.M. during March and an online report yesterday at The Register. The latter warned that this system could arrive unannounced in a user's computer as part of a bank's client software, or be rolled out for security and monitoring reasons to all users of a company's PC network, or be sent to Microsoft Outlook users as a spam. The University of Strathclyde stated that "safeguards to prevent misuse of the software will be developed at the same time as the program itself."
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Posted 3:29 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Make Your Users Click
Katja Riefler on election coverage
In Germany, national elections will be held on September 22. It's a big story for online news websites and the race is on, as you already can see, for example, at Bild.de and Sueddeutsche.de. The concepts for coverage are quite different and will probably differentiate even more. Will interactivity make the users click? Or Flash? Or videos? We'll know more after September 22.
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Posted 1:38 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
E-mail This Ad
Steve Outing on a smart idea
Many websites include "e-mail this story" links, but I bet you haven't often (or ever) seen an "e-mail this ad" link. But you know what, that's a great idea for Web ads. Advertisers should include e-mail links, so that Web users can send ads they find interesting to themselves (to look at later) or others. It's common to be surfing the Web, spot an ad that maybe looks interesting, but you don't click on it because you don't want to interrupt what you're online to read. Since Web ads often rotate, I've sometimes tried to go back to where I saw an ad that was of interest, only to find it's no longer there. The e-mail feature is smart — for consumers and for advertisers. (This idea popped up on the Online-News discussion list; Robert Spears gets the credit.)
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Posted 1:21 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Cable or DSL?
Steve Klein on broadband choices
Cable or DSL? DSL or cable? Which broadband service is best for me and the likely standard in the coming years? I hear that question all the time, and now we have an answer — maybe. Cable modems will rule the broadband age, at least for the next five years, according to a research report from the Yankee Group. DSL technology will remain second because of regulatory hurdles. Other broadband technologies, such as satellite, will lag far behind, according to the report from the Boston-based research firm.By the end of 2001, 60% of U.S. homes were equipped for cable modem service, 45% for DSL service. The report also predicts that broadband growth will cannibalize the market for dial-up Internet access and that America Online, MSN, EarthLink, AT&T WorldNet, and other Internet service providers will become more active in broadband.
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Posted 12:04 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Aaron Schatz Knows Lots
Steve Outing on the Lycos 50 trend guru
Aaron Schatz writes the Lycos 50, a weekly list and analysis of the top 50 people, places, and things that Internet users are searching for on the Web. In this position, the former disc jockey and market research analyst is someone who's gotten pretty good at predicting cultural trends based on consumer behavior using the search engine Lycos. The Lycos 50 is a feature that journalists should watch to help learn which way the cultural wind is blowing. SearchDay has published two articles on Schatz this week: today, an interview with Schatz in which he predicts this summer's trends, and Monday, a report of a Schatz speech at the Search Engine Strategies conference.
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Posted 11:19 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Pure Internet Content
Juan C. Camus on an experiment from Chile
What does content "just for the Internet" look like? Felipe Ossandon, a journalist from Chile, has an answer. It is a weekly column that is published through Emol.com with personal thoughts about life, friends, and the city. Ossandon explains that this is an experiment begun during a song festival, when his boss asked him for an exclusive column for the website. He remembers: "I had the idea to set up a text with a lot of links to weird images that are enforcing or in opposition from the text itself." The results of the experiment are published with the name of "Linkodormo," where the content is defined as "digital stories." There you can see a frameset with the text in the left frame and the photos on the right. Ossandon even explains that you can't print it — because it's strictly meant for Web surfing. It's worth a look.
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Posted 6:27 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Why Would Anyone Pay for Newspaper Archives?
Steve Outing on revenue models
Most newspapers charge for downloading articles from their Web archives, and have for some time. But as search and library guru Gary Price notes, there's little reason for most of the public to pay. Many public libraries these days offer free access to broad, deep publication databases. (Example: my local library databases in Boulder, Colorado.) Oddly, much of the public seems to miss the fact (so far) that if they have a library card, they can use these services — and get free, full-text access to thousand of newspapers, magazines, etc. If more people realized this, would they pay $2 or $3 per article at a newspaper website archive? Not likely.As the public wises up (it'll happen in time), newspapers should reconsider paid Web archives. Sites like the San Francisco Chronicle's SFGate.com will start to look smart; it's long kept a free article archive and made money from the traffic to the archives.
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Posted 5:49 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Portals Looking for Transparency
Juan C. Camus on Internet advertising
Seeking more online advertising, this Monday saw the debut of work by the Asociación de Medios de Internet (Internet Media Association), which is a group of portals in Chile interested in more transparency in audience data numbers. Pablo Iensen, a spokesperson for the group, said that expected growth on ad investment is 14%, for a total of US$4 million, during 2002. He also said that all the websites of the group will be measured by Certifica.com on page views, unique visitors, and number of user sessions. The numbers will be published monthly on the group website.The new group is comprised of two telco portals (Terra.cl and 123.cl), two main television networks (Televisión Nacional and Canal 13), two ad brokers (Ad2Win and Publired), a major news publisher (Copesa), a dot-com developer (IlatinHoldings), and a white and yellow pages portal (Publiguias).
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Posted 10:48 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Arrogant Media Companies
Steve Outing on the trouble with dinosaurs
I hope you caught Dan Gillmor's column on Saturday. He tackles, in blunt terms, the "stupidity," "greed," and "paranoia" of some big media companies — which he aptly terms "dinosaurs" — in trying to limit how consumers control what they watch or consume. His examples include Belo saying that others on the Web can't link to anything other than its sites' home pages (discussed here last week), and entertainment companies disabling the fast-forward function on DVDs during pre-movie commercials and saying that TiVo users are "stealing" when they skip commercials when watching TV programming. Both stances are arrogant, stupid, and naive. Such corporate policies treat consumers as though they are to be controlled, when these companies should be figuring out how to utilize new technologies in a way that they can profit as well as provide what consumers want. Fighting consumers is dumb business strategy. (Also see Rich Gordon's item below, which touches on this topic.)
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Posted 10:27 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Beyond the Simple Link
Steve Outing on "bi-directional" hyperlinks
Everything on the Web is up for review, including the basic hyperlink. The latest innovation is the "backlink," also known as the "bi-directional" or "reciprocal" link, which is demonstrated by Disenchanted.com. Every article on the site carries links back to the pages elsewhere on the Web that point to them. The reciprocal links are done automatically and are free. Disenchanted.com editors visit all pages that point to them, list them on the site's home page, and sometimes write short notes that accompany the returning link (to tell a Disenchanted.com visitor what to expect if they click on a reciprocal link). Explore Disenchanted.com to see this linking concept in action. Or read this article by Jon Udell on the O'Reilly website. (Thanks to John Garside for pointing this out to me.)
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Posted 9:58 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Copyright: The Stakes Are High
Rich Gordon on developments involving "intellectual property"
At first blush, the latest controversy over copyright (a judge's ruling that SonicBlue must turn over data on customers' use of ReplayTV personal video recorders) may not seem to have much relevance to journalism. But it's just one of many skirmishes (remember last week's discussion of the Dallas Morning News' linking policy) in the war over copyright in cyberspace. The problem is, most of the legal wrangling is driven by the entertainment industry — whose problems in cyberspace are very different from those of news/information providers. Laws or court decisions driven by the entertainment industry (which wants to limit access to content that people historically have paid for) are unlikely to solve the challenges facing the news/information industry (which needs to increase the audience for content that historically has been subsidized by advertisers). In fact, I'd argue that if the law of copyright in cyberspace is driven by entertainment companies, information providers may be hurt badly.Here are a couple of interesting pieces I've read on this topic recently:
In "Hollywood vs. the Internet," Mike Godwin points out that the battle is moving from the courts to Congress, as big entertainment companies try to force electronics manufacturers to include components that limit users' ability to save and duplicate content. In "The Copyright Crusade" (PDF format), Andrew Frank of Viant provides an excellent overview of the technologies involved in online file sharing and estimates that hundreds of thousands of movies are exchanged daily via the Internet.
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Posted 9:48 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Paying to Starve
Jade Walker on freelance writing
The life of a self-sustained freelance writer just became more difficult. According to a recent study conducted by the National Writers Union, freelance writing rates for print magazines have declined by more than 50% since the 1960s. In response, some starving scribes have opted to save their postage costs by e-mailing queries and writing for the Web. Now, one online magazine is charging its writers $10 to review article submissions. Emily Hancock, editor of Moxie Magazine, described the newly adopted "reading fee" as a way of training writers to send more professional queries."Our decision to charge a reading fee is an effort to get authors to take their work seriously instead of just shooting off something they happen to find in a journal. It is an effort to get them to choose carefully among the pieces they have written instead of emptying their writing drawer and sending us the whole 'box' of them at once," Hancock stated in a letter to Wooden Horse Publishing. If Moxie opts to publish your work, you'll get your $10 back, a free book, and a chance to "win" $100 — a jackpot prize generated by the reading fees of those snookered writers whose articles didn't make the cut. Good luck trying to pay your rent with that check.
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Posted 9:59 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Model for a Mobile Internet
Madanmohan Rao on Japan's mobile success
What new business models, content strategies, and alliances has the mobile Internet unleashed in markets like Japan? "The Mobile Internet: How Japan dialed up and the West disconnected" by Kobe University professor Jeffrey Lee Funk is a good place to start. In a nutshell, the wireless Internet exploded in Japan due to a superb positive feedback loop between the initially chosen content, mobile device capabilities, phone prices, packet networks, business models, and user targeting. The key lessons, according to Funk, are to view the mobile Internet and fixed-line PC-based Internet as complements to one another and not substitutes; to begin with simple content and applications (unlike complex ones, which is the mistake made in the US and Europe); to grow the mainstream market with young users first and then business users; to first increase reach of the medium and then richness of the medium; and to innovate in the areas of new content partnerships and m-payment services. (See full review at www.electronicmarkets.org.)
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