Results matching “paying the price for”

The mobile news market in the US will soon be ripe for mass consumption, according to Robert Samuels, Director of Mobile Products, Mobile Web, Messaging, Games and Alternative Platforms at The New York Times.

"It's been a runaway success," said Samuels, speaking of the growth of the Times' mobile site. "Numbers will continue to grow, there is a lot of industry dynamic supporting this."

The Times' mobile site, which drew 500,000 page views in January 2007, received over 10 million hits by December of the same year, and soared up to 19 million views in May 2008.

Although "most of the consumption on our site is through high end mobile devices so far" such as BlackBerry phones, Treo mobile devices and iPhones, the market is rapidly growing for the mass market, especially amongst commuters.

Generally speaking, the consumption patterns are similar for the online and mobile editions: business and politics are very popular, as well as blogs or most-emailed stories. "But amongst the mobile applications we've been rolling out, some of them are particularly tailored to the mobile user such as the mobile user real estate listings," said Samuels, which enable users on the go to receive listings based on specific criteria such as number of bedrooms, price...

"In America, I think the general web browsing for the mobile site has been at an advantage in terms of user behavior and pricing over SMS products," said Samuels.  All the Times' text message alerts link off to the mobile site to encourage users to browse it and read the whole story.

According to Samuels, text messaging will continue to grow for specific uses, such as stock listings or weather forecasts (see this study about text messaging and mobile usage), but "the predominant, long-term mass consumption, will be more than likely be browsing just because that's such a dominant behavior here in the US," he said. Still, "Text messaging for content adoption will grow in the US, we are simply well behind other markets like Europe and Asia."

As of now, the Times' hasn't created any position dedicated to editing or rewriting content for mobile consumption. "I don't think we'll hire specific people to tailor content for mobile per se," said Samuels.

However, most mobile articles are slightly edited upstream in the production process, to make headlines appropriate for mobile devices - for example, an E-hed for mobile can be made to stand alone without a picture, or pictures can be cropped to fit the device.

Is mobile news more adapted to local news outlets that can send out locally relevant alerts to users? "I think it is most definitely appropriate for them but by no means exclusive for them," said Samuels. National brands can also establish themselves on the local mobile news market. In the second half of the year, Samuels plans to roll out restaurant listings, in addition to its show time and weather services.

The Times is also developing news alerts for scheduled news events, such as the Olympics or the presidential elections in the US. For the Olympics, users can sign up to receive various updates including postings from the Rings blog, Top-10 medal count charts or the schedule of events.

While most of the Times' mobile news alert services are free, its mobile games and products will remain paid-for for the foreseeable future. "Through experience and industry research, still the model of paying for a mobile game is something that users are willing to engage in," said Samuels.

Source: Robert Samuels, Director of Mobile Products, Mobile Web, Messaging, Games and Alternative Platforms at The New York Times

21,000 new subscribers have signed up for TimesSelect since The New York Times has made its paid-for service free for academics. How does this affect considerations of online business models, and does it mean the upcoming TimesReader will be successful?

Editor of the London Evening Standard Veronica Wadley says that readers are returning to the paid paper, after a period during which they read and evaluated London’s other freesheets.

Since August 2006, three new freesheets, 24 Timer, Nyhedsavisen and Dato, have been launched in Denmark. That brings the total number of free papers up to 5, for a country of only 5 million inhabitants. Christina Ove Holm, journalism analyst and writer for Nyhedsbrevet Danske Presse, spoke to the Editors Weblog in an interview about the ongoing ‘freesheet war’, considering the effects it had on the traditional newspaper industry, the benefits and inconveniences for the population, as well as the future for free papers.

Yahoo has been arguably the Internet leader over past years, however stock price is down 35% this year. Bambi Francisco at Marketwatch writes that Yahoo was an innovator in social media but had a timing issue allowing MySpace, Facebook and YouTube to dominate the market.

In what appears to be another attempt to be innovative, the New York Times is joining forces with Microsoft to develop an electronic newspaper reader called Times Reader that will try to capture the feel of reading the print version. The operative phrase here is "attempt to be innovative." Still, there is at least one positive development for the newspaper industry in this attempt.

News Corp. is in the market for acquiring next-generation Web companies that could be integrated into its increasingly popular social networking site MySpace. 

America’s cable industry was up in arms last week over a report by the Federal Communications Commission that found subscribers would save significant amounts of money if they were given the option to subscribe to only the channels they want. Obviously, such a report isn’t appealing to traditional media that has depended on subscription packages for so long. But to most consumers, the concept is probably pretty appealing.

So what can the newspaper industry learn from this “a la carte” idea?

Whew! What a turbulent year for the newspaper industry. One would think that after so many developments, positive and negative, that the storm would be ebbing. But 2005 may be just the beginning.

Below are eight trends that the Editors Weblog feels will have major effects on newsrooms in 2006:

1. Print/Online integration becoming the norm
2. Threats against investigative journalism growing
3. More transparency needed
4. Breaches appearing in the free news ideology
5. News agencies competing with newspapers
   
6. Social networking: advantages for newspapers
   
7. Mobile TV threatening mobile news
8. News organizations becoming entertainment companies

Explanations are followed by links to previous related postings. 

Please feel free to comment and add your own ideas.

Happy New Year to all!

 

The speculative sale of American newspaper giant Knight Ridder, or break up thereof, does not only reflect years of newspaper circulation slides and huge profit margin demands by shareholders. More relevantly in today's new media world, it demonstrates the original carelessness of the newspaper industry in underestimating the effects the Internet would have as well as the difficulties newspapers currently face in racing to catch up.

Major news organizations are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of integrating citizen contributions in their news. But will the MSM eventually begin to compensate for its readers' content?

Steve Outing thinks that "It's almost time to pay up for Citizen Journalism." 

If our last posting about the obstacles in the way of online newspaper success made you curious, below are a few ideas for the future of online business models. The results will ultimately benefit journalism.

Vice President of advertising for the Newspaper Association of America, Mort Goldstrom made a quote in an article about Craigslist at SmartMoney.com that deserves some attention. He said, "I think that newspapers have been very quick to adapt online."

Mr. Goldstrom is definitely too quick to pat newspapers on the back.

If our last posting about the obstacles in the way of online newspaper success made you curious, below are a few ideas for the future of online business models. The results will ultimately benefit journalism.

Vice President of advertising for the Newspaper Association of America, Mort Goldstrom made a quote in an article about Craigslist at SmartMoney.com that deserves some attention. He said, "I think that newspapers have been very quick to adapt online."

Mr. Goldstrom is definitely too quick to pat newspapers on the back.

If our last posting about the obstacles in the way of online newspaper success made you curious, below are a few ideas for the future of online business models. The results will ultimately benefit journalism.

Vice President of advertising for the Newspaper Association of America, Mort Goldstrom made a quote in an article about Craigslist at SmartMoney.com that deserves some attention. He said, "I think that newspapers have been very quick to adapt online."

Mr. Goldstrom is definitely too quick to pat newspapers on the back.