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Posted 3:42 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Right Idea, Wrong Approach
Rich Gordon on CNN's new personalized news service
Personalized news is always talked about as one of the most exciting possibilities for the Web -- and there's even a recent book arguing that personalized news is a threat to democracy. CNN is the latest to try a personalized news service: CNN Newswatch. For $6.95 per month, you can use a downloaded application to view customized/personalized news. I looked at it and said, "It looks just like PointCast!" (If you don't remember your ancient-Internet history, this was the pioneering "push" service that pumped news content into a PC screensaver. It was *the* hot topic for Internet publishers back in 1997.) And, in fact, the technology behind Newswatch comes from Infogate, a descendant of Pointcast.I'm skeptical that a streaming news application is the right concept for personalized news, though. What I *really* want is a once-a-day email with links to stories I'm interested in, based on criteria that I specify (and, ideally, that are modified based on my behavior -- the stories I decide to view). I don't think this service exists. If it did, I'd pay for it -- and I suspect I'm not alone. If you know of a service that you think is worth checking out, please tell me about it.
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Posted 3:37 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Free in Print, Free Online
Eva Domínguez on free newspaper strategy
One of the reasons many Spanish newspapers are thinking about -- or already are -- charging online is that they believe they cannot give away for free what is worth one Euro on paper. But this is not the case for one of the newest players on the newspapers field in Spain. "Metro" is distributed for free on print, therefore the Web cannot cannibalize it. This paper, which is published in Madrid and Barcelona and its is founded by Scandinavian capital, launched its website some weeks ago. At the moment, the content online is the same that on print. "Metro" is being published in many European cities and is starting to settle in other continents. The company has come across strong opposition abroad, especially in Paris.
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Posted 3:31 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
More Competition in Catalan
Eva Domínguez on new public TV and radio sites
The public television and radio of Catalonia, a region in the northeast of Spain, are contributing to the growing number of online news services in the Catalan language. They have just launched two news websites named after their main news services. The public broadcasters want to take advantage of the brand awareness that they have in Catalonia -- therefore, Telenoticies.com is the name of the TV site and Catalunyainformacio.com is the name of the radio site. The two projects share the same content and the same production team.
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Posted 9:51 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Linking Legalese
Norbert Specker on linking cases
The law is less boring if put into a readable account. So check out FT.com's Reasons to think before you link for an round-up of old, new, and possible linking cases in the U.S. and the U.K.
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Posted 9:38 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
'Dirty' Database, Take 2
Peter M. Zollman on livid librarians
As mentioned earlier on Tidbits, some news librarians are livid about Knight Ridder newspapers sending "dirty" feeds, straight from the copy desk without any annotations, corrections, page numbers, etc., to databases like LexisNexis -- instead of waiting for a librarian-proofed version. While there may be some self-preservation at work here, anyone who's ever worked on a newspaper copy desk will understand the difference between a feed from the desk and a compiled, edited feed. And now some of the news librarians are raising the question: Is Knight Ridder alone in this relatively new practice? Or are other papers/groups doing it as well? Barbara Semonche, library director at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill School of Journalism and Mass Communication, who runs the [newslib] list, has compiled comments from the Knight Ridder thread here . It's definitely worth a read. (And a tip of the hat to Barbara for making it available to all.)
Posted 12:44 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
An Editor's Worst Nightmare
Peter M. Zollman on flesh-peddling
A shadow in a front-page photo (or was it really was a fire victim's private parts?) was an editor's worst nightmare this week at the Rocky Mountain News. Now you can read the editor's note and buy a copy of the paper (for 100 bucks!) on eBay.
Posted 12:30 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Classified Network Collapse
Katja Riefler on the end of a newspaper partnership in Germany
Do you think the worst Internet woes are over? Unfortunately this seems not to be the case in Germany. According to Kress Report, the big German newspaper classified network Versum.de is breaking apart. Seven of 10 member publishers are said to be leaving the company, and the staff will be reduced from 60 to 8 employees. The collapse is due to lack of revenue. The members of the company couldn't agree on a new business model that has been in discussion for several months. Versum, with its verticals Immoversum, Motoversum, and Jobversum, started in March 2001 and aggregated one of the biggest ad databases in Germany in each of its categories. But it failed to attract a large audience. Its former member publishing houses represented more than 80 German newspapers.
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Posted 4:42 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Survey: More Newspaper Websites Profiting
Vin Crosbie on the business of Web publishing
At the World Association of Newspapers annual congress in Paris last month, Innovation International Media Consulting Group presented an insightful survey of 429 newspaper websites, including 118 from the U.S. and Canada. It says that 38% of the North American sites report profits and another 26% were at least breaking even, up from 25% and 25% respectively in 2000. 36% of sites were still losing money, but that's an improvement from 51% in 2000. Two-thirds of the North American sites reported increased advertising revenues during the past 12 months, despite an economic recession. But these trends toward profit weren't achieved without pain: 44% of the North American sites suffered staff cuts, most chopping more than one-fifth of their ranks. Only 15% increased staffing.The North American newspapers' site traffic also steadily increased: 11% attracted more than 500,000 visits per week and 35% more than 100,000, up from 5% and 19% respectively in 2000. But the most heavily trafficked sites aren't necessarily the most profitable; the sites with medium traffic volumes are. Worldwide, profitable newspaper sites more often don't charge for access to anywhere but archives or special services. Only 4% generate more than 10% of their revenues from visitors. (Note: I've been waiting most of this month to write here about this survey, but hadn't because I'm not able to cite a hyperlink directly to the survey — Innovation's own Web servers don't respond. If you also can't access their site, Presstime magazine offers a good overview of this survey.)
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Posted 2:47 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Why a 'Dirty' Database Feed?
Peter M. Zollman on news archival
There's a fascinating if somewhat disheartening discussion going on over on a news librarians' e-mail list, Newslib (registration required), about the database feeds being sent by Knight Ridder newspapers to databases like Lexis-Nexis. KR used to provide databases with a "clean" feed, with a great deal of annotation, clean-up, corrections, page numbering, and edition/zone marking, sent from its news libraries by librarians. Now, either due to staffing cuts or the need for expediency and fast delivery, many or most of the KR papers are sending a dirty feed, direct from editing desks.News librarians are hopping mad. They feel — despite protestations from Ken Doctor, VP of content services at KR Digital (which "owns" the feed to the databases) — that KR is providing a data feed that is vastly diminished in value, and not of archival quality.
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Posted 2:35 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Value of Tracking and Testing
Rich Gordon on Kelley Blue Book's site-design practices
Anne Holland's ContentBiz site has another "don't miss" case study — this one about Kelley Blue Book. Every element of its seemingly simple home page has been optimized to (1) make it usable and (2) drive traffic to the sections of the site that make money. For instance: the link allowing users to get a price quote for a car originally said "Buy a New Car." Kelley's team tested 20 different alternatives to find the language that got the most click-through's: "Free Online Price Quote." Kelley used a company called NetConversions to do more detailed testing — creating multiple test pages and monitoring users' clicking and scrolling behavior. The case study has some great examples of what Kelley found and how the company redesigned key pages as a result. I was unfamiliar with NetConversions before reading this. Given the great need to understand what users are doing on your site, and the limited data available through server log analysis, its services seem worth checking out.
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Posted 2:29 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Archiving Dot-Com Business Plans
Paul Grabowicz on online companies
David A. Kirsch, a business professor at the University of Maryland, has set up a website where he hopes to archive business plans of online companies, including the many that failed in the dot-com crash. Kirsch is asking Internet entrepreneurs to send in copies of their plans for posting at the site. The San Francisco Chronicle did a story on Kirsch's project.
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Posted 11:33 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Moonlighting Serenade
Steve Outing on online media resources
In this weblog I've mentioned some great new resources for those of us interested in online media. There's Rafat Ali's PaidContent.org, which is brand new, and John Hiler's Microcontent News. From my perspective, those are both great sites that help me keep up to date on two areas of intense interest: paid content models for online media and weblogs. What's scary about both those ventures, though, is that they are being produced by individuals who are not getting paid for their efforts. Both Ali and Hiler have "day jobs" (tech website editor and software consulting company owner, respectively). How long can they keep this up? Let's hope both of them figure out how to bring in some money to keep their online publications going long term.
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Posted 11:01 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Ad Effectiveness Vs. Annoyance
Vin Crosbie on online advertising
Business 2.0 features a chart ranking the effectiveness and annoyance factors of various types of online ads (banners, interstitials, surround sessions, etc.). You might be surprised by which type has the most effectiveness with the least annoyance.
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Posted 6:21 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Blogging for Bucks
Steve Outing on a new paid-online-content resource
Rafat Ali has launched a new weblog(/resource/opinion site) focusing on the issue of paid online content. PaidContent.org is "going to be much more than the supposedly similar TheEndofFree site," Ali says. The site is still in its formative stages, but there is several days worth of content up now. The purpose of the site/blog is "to bring the business strategy and technology parts of 'subscriptionable' content." (Ali is managing editor of Silicon Alley Reporter and writes frequently about new media issues — including paid content.)
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Posted 12:21 PM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Tablets Are Coming ...
Rich Gordon on new display devices
Tablet PCs using a new version of Microsoft's Windows XP operating system will be available in November. Interestingly enough, although Bill Gates has been talking up tablets for years as a pen-based computer — without a keyboard — most of the products hitting the market will have keyboards and function as both tablets and conventional laptops. PC Magazine weighs in with a detailed evaluation, including a timeline of previous (failed) tablet products. Columnist Michael Miller has been using a demo model and provides his assessment: "a bit of a curiosity ... (but) surprisingly practical." Most of the focus in the coverage so far is on the tablet as a tool for hand-written notes, but if these devices become popular, they could become an important new distribution channel for both Web content and "digital download" editions like those from NewsStand, ActivePaper, and Zinio.
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Posted 11:33 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
Already Downloaded and Printed Out for You!
Vin Crosbie on Internet publishing humor
Cartoonist Wiley Miller thinks he knows of a business plan by which publishers can deliver intact, pre-printed editions of pre-downloaded content for sale at newsstand prices.
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Posted 11:25 AM US Eastern Time | perma-link to item below
The Bloggers' Blog
Steve Outing on weblogging
Interested in the weblog phenomenon? (If you're a publisher, you should be.) A new weblog about blogging debuted this week — compiled by Hylton Jolliffe of Corante. Corante on Blogging is a new area on Corante.com, a website that is trying to figure out how weblogs can become a viable business. Jolliffe "believes blogging (is) more than mere fad and that what will flow from it will have major implications for media, marketing, distributed thinking, and business in general." I'll agree with that — though none of us quite know yet where this is leading.
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