Archive for July, 2007
What if FT.com went free?
July 31st, 2007 • Business, Media
Tags: Business
The air is rich with theories as to next steps for the Wall St Journal, now that it’s under Murdoch control. Not least, many are wondering if it should ditch its subcriber model, and let its stories go free-to-air.
The noise has also promted others to wonder on the effect on FT.com. From PaidContent:
Also, the subscriber numbers for FT.com are minuscule, relatively: “FT.com currently has 100k online subscribers (vs. c900k for WSJ.com) paying GBP 6 per month.
Even assuming a worst case scenario where all these subscribers were lost, there would only be a GBP 7 million impact, suggesting only 1 percent downside risk to group profits.
Separately we believe that the FT remains a trophy asset and that Pearson would be able to crystallise significant value, should they decide to sell.”
paidContent.org: If WSJ.com Went Free: Effect on FT and FT.com; CEO Ridding Allays Concerns
A journalist’s guide to crowdsourcing
July 31st, 2007 • Journalism, Social
Tags: Journalism, Social
A useful take from Robert Niles at Online Journalism Review on established media using the power of crowds to supplement news stories.
In a true crowdsourced project, information is not verified manually by a reporter between submission and publication. Which inspired concern from many traditional reporters.
A well-designed crowdsourcing project, like a well-edited newsroom, can discourage bogus submissions while minimizing their influence if accepted. Here are my suggestions to avoid bogus data in a crowdsourced project:
* Request the reader submit personal identification along with the report. On “Accident Watch,” readers must be registered with the site, which requires e-mail verification, in order to submit a report. The earthquake project requires a zip code and requests a reader’s name, phone, e-mail and street address. Asking readers to identify themselves sends the message that you take this project seriously and that you wish them to do the same. Obviously bogus ID allows you to flag bogus records for deletion with ease.
* If your project publishes individual reports, provide other readers with an opportunity to dispute or verify each individual report. The empowers your readers to help clean your data for you.
* Even if you are publishing data only in aggregate, be aggressive about encouraging readers who dispute that data to add their report to the database, as more data should help move the mean toward the true value.
Social Networking stats show huge growth
July 31st, 2007 • Social
Tags: Business, Social
comScore has just released figures showing the rapid global expansion of social networking sites. If you watch this space, most of the figures are predictable, with Facebook up by an absurd 270 per cent over the previous year. Not every social site is a worldwide phenomenon: Bebo, for example, is Big In Europe, while Orkut is Large in South America.
Social networking behemoth MySpace.com attracted more than 114 million global visitors age 15 and older in June 2007, representing a 72-percent increase versus year ago. Facebook.com experienced even stronger growth during that same time frame, jumping 270 percent to 52.2 million visitors. Bebo.com (up 172 percent to 18.2 million visitors) and Tagged.com (up 774 percent to 13.2 million visitors) also increased by orders of magnitude.
You can get more analysis of the news over at Brand Republic.
How to win using smaller steps
July 31st, 2007 • Business, Internet, Media
Tags: Business, management
Thoughtful piece by Guardian Unlimited supremo Neil McIntosh, prompted by the lack of outcome from The Economist’s Project Red Stripe. McIntosh uses the success of the iPod as the basis for an argument that success can come via seemingly small steps that, taken in the right sequence, can form a much larger whole.
The lessons for news organisations? We needn’t make innovation hard by insisting the end product is always huge and/or high-profile. We shouldn’t think that innovation is something that can be outsourced, either to a small team or to a software vendor (the latter being a surprisingly popular choice for many newspaper publishers). And we needn’t necessarily worry that we’re not having enough ideas. If you ask around, you’ll probably find it’s not ideas we’re lacking. What’s tricky (I know - this is my job) is capturing the best ideas, mapping them to strategic goals, and delivering them in a way that makes them successful.
Complete Tosh, by Neil McIntosh: It’s hard to see the future from there
RIP, Business 2.0?
July 31st, 2007 • Business, Media
Business 2.0 May be Closed By September
Real shame if this is true. Report suggests that the title suffered from lack of focus from the Time group.
The uber-rich Men In Black
July 30th, 2007 • Business
The Most Powerful People You’ve Never Heard Of
They’re right: I hadn’t heard of a single one of them. But then, I never did mix in the right circles. I certainly didn’t have dinner with Warren Buffet the other night.
Readers to design front covers
July 30th, 2007 • Media
Tags: Design, publishing
What a nice idea. Penguin Books get together with teen social site Piczo, giving its younger users the opportunity to design covers for a host of classic books. The cynical could accuse Penguin of tapping into a cheap source of creativity. Me? I’ll get my 12-year-old on the case this evening…
Newser: nice, but not so new
July 30th, 2007 • Best sites, Media
Perhaps I’m just in a grumpy mood. I’ve just come across Newser, a new news aggregation site much in the mould of DayLife and Newsvine. I went to the About page, looking to discover what made this newcomer special. Here’s what it says:
Newser does the reading for you. Newser selects the day’s most important and most talked about stories from the 100 top news sources. In succinct, lively summaries, Newser’s editors distill articles and opinion pieces, telling you what you need to know, what you want to know, and where to go for the best coverage. You can’t follow 100 news sources, but we can follow them for you.Newser is the first online news service to fully leverage the Web and is creating the first major news brand native to that medium.
OK, I am having a very bad day. ‘…Selects the day’s most important and most talked about stories…’. Isn’t that what an editor does? ‘You can’t follow 100 news sources’. Yes I can - I have Google Reader.
I am being a misery. In fact, Newser is pretty smart, and is visually very strong (although I still prefer DayLife for its depth and context). I suppose I wonder about the role of news aggregators such this, when the quality of news from the sources is so high.
Say goodbye to the big guns
July 30th, 2007 • Search
The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, August
Not a number? A free man? Excellent. Then declare this week ‘I’m Going To Be Radical And Try A Different Search Engine Week’. You’ll feel different. The family will notice a new you. And in a small way, the world will become a slightly nicer place.
Either that, or you’ll realise that Yahoo!, Google and Live dominate the search market because they’re faster and more accurate than everything else. Damn you, Darwinism.
Ballmer does the iPod dance
July 30th, 2007 • Life, Strange, Technology
[youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIk4qTKmKzE]
Remember Steve Ballmer’s ‘Developers, developers, developers’ moment of madness from last year? Here’s the Apple remix…
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