Results matching “blogs to sharing revenue”

The buzz keeps growing and growing around tablets - electronic devices with a touch-screen interface, e-reader capabilities, as well as web browsing among others.

Rumors about Apple's tablet, or the iSlate, as it is now being called, have been gaining momentum as the elusive and innovative device that is supposed to look like a bigger version of Apple's iPhone, prepares to launch early this year.

Several other big high-tech players have also lined up to present their own versions of the slate. Just this last Wednesday, Microsoft unveiled the Hewlett-Packard yet to be named tablet at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

The BBC, who yesterday announced a new initiative to grant the general public access to professional media training resources, has also revealed it will expand the content available on its news website by linking to rival sources via an aggregation-like system, reports The Independent.

The move comes after accusations headed by News Corp's chairman and CEO for Europe and Asia, James Murdoch, that the corporation, in choosing to remain free, is flooding the market and preventing competitors from expanding online and charging for their content.  The new plan would reportedly see links to commerical websites added at the end of BBC stories.  

CNN and The Spectator have announced this week that they will both charge for the use of their new iPhone applications. With news organisations far and wide scratching their heads over how to generate revenue in the new digital age, both publications have taken different approaches in setting up their paid app subscriptions.

The Spectator, which paved the way for it's application by restricting some of the free content available on the magazine's website- is charging 59p for access to it's weekly issue as well as a searchable archive of 200 older editions, the BBC is reporting. Users can choose to pay 59p each week, or subscribe for thirty days for £2.36.

Fwix offers an uncomplicated service: it aggregates local news from newspapers, blogs and other sources, aiming to offer users an up-to-the minute guide of what is going on in their area by filling the gaps in what a local newspaper could offer on its own.  The Editors Weblog recently spoke to Darian Shirazi, the 22-year-old founder of Fwix, to find out more about what the site offers to news fans and what its goals are for the future.

"I think what we're offering is the ability to fill out the content in local newspapers with content that's written by bloggers in a local area," Shirazi explained. As newspapers suffer from falling advertising revenue, they might no longer be able to cover all verticals; hence Fwix combines local newspapers' news with content such as restaurant or movie reviews from blogs into one city feed. It is a real time feed, as, Shirazi put it, "things that are happening seconds or minutes ago are de facto more interesting than what was happening days ago." There are currently 77 different cities to choose from.

Fwix displays a headline linked to the original article, along with a snippet from the story, as permitted by fair use regulations. If a reader clicks through to an original article, it will take them to the content-producer's website but the page will have a Fwix banner across the bottom, allowing the user to quickly return to Fwix or share the article. The site also shows readers the 'Top Trends' of the moment and an Activity section indicates the articles that members are reading and sharing.

Shirazi originally built a simple version of the service for his personal use, as he wanted to stay in touch with what was going on in his city while he was travelling. "I realised that there was no good place that had all the information, from art exhibits to crime news, to events to new issues in politics," he explained. "I used it myself for a while and I really liked it. Then I thought, other people might like this. So I built it."

Sharing and connecting

If users would like to associate their activity on Fwix with their Facebook or Twitter accounts, they may sign in via these services and then if they choose to share a story, it will appear on their Twitter feed or Facebook profile page. Shirazi has no plans for Fwix to create its own account system: "that's not necessary, and it's a battle we are not willing to wage." Rather, he explained, "we levarage ecosystems that help people share information and then provide the news." A Fwix profile page saves everything a user reads, but they have the option to delete whatever they would like. "Really the profile is just for you to keep track of what you've shared and what you've read."

Reporting

Fwix is waiting for approval from Apple for its iPhone application, which would allow a citizen journalism element to be incorporated into the site as users would be invite to report news. The app will provide a 'report' button which users can click on when they see something that they think is worthy of attention. A camera will then pop up and the user can photograph and describe what they want to report and send it to Fwix. On the site, a pin on a map will show the user's precise location when they reported the news. The reported news would go straight into the activity section and into the individual's profile, and will be automatically vetted before it enters the main feed. The vetting process judges credibility based on the existence of similar reports.

The company plans to allow users to report from other devices in the future, but not from a web browser.

Monetisation

As yet, making a profit is not Fwix's main goal, Shirazi said. For now, it has funding from BlueRun ventures. However, when it does start to monetise, local advertising will be its revenue stream, he specified. Local businesses "are really looking for places to advertise," he stressed, "there will always be ad dollars out there." He sees a gap in the market that Fwix could fill: "the only places for local businesses to advertise right now are those like Yelp.com and there are way more ads than there is space," he explained.

What's in store for the future

The site just came out of beta. Fwix's current goal is simply growth, Shirazi said, meaning getting more people using the service. Currently the site has about 400,000 unique visitors per month and via widgets on other sites, the content network reaches about 8 million. There are about 8000 publications whose content is aggregated. Shirazi would like to expand the service internationally, but said that here is no telling when this will happen.

Fwix clearly provides a useful service for those who are looking to keep abreast of what's going on in their local area, and Facebook and Twitter users are likely to find the ease with which they can share stories appealing. Twitter's new geo-tagging capabilities might provide competition, depending on how developers take advantage of this. Fwix could also help local news outlets by sending traffic to their websites, although of course as with all aggregators, there is always the possibility that people might visit Fwix.com rather than their local newspaper's home page if it provides a more comprehensive service. Local blogs with fewer visitors are likely to appreciate the extra exposure that Fwix offers. What Fwix offers is not groundbreaking, but services such as this are changing the way that people access news as consumers move away from traditional news reading habits.

The Apple iPhone 3GS, premiered yesterday at Apple Inc's Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco, boasts an array of important new features for the newspaper industry and journalism at large. Perhaps most pertinent is the development that content can now be purchased from within iPhone applications. This new functionality presents newspapers with the opportunity to employ subscription and micro-payment structures to monetize the delivery of their content to their mobile phone readership.

Given the recent developments in the newspaper industry, such as the 'secret' meeting held in Chicago organised by the Newspaper Association of America to discuss how to monetise online content, it seems the question is no longer whether papers will begin charging online, but when, and how. And with regards to the iPhone 3GS, will they allow readers to continue to access their content for free, maybe making it harder to shift them to a pay structure in the future, or will newspapers seize this opportunity and begin charging readers as soon as the new OS is released?

Silicon Valley start-up Attributor and a group of online publishers have partnered to form the Fair Syndication Consortium which aims to help publishers receive a cut of the advertising revenue generated on sites which have reproduced their content. Companies such as Google or Yahoo operate advertising networks that broker advertising to websites, and the group hopes to persuade these and other players to give them a share of the ad revenue.

Attributor Corp currently works with companies such as the AP and the Financial Times to track their text, audio and video content. If it is found that someone is using it inappropriately, the news outlet can request that it is taken down. Now, however, Attributor intends to use its technology to keep the content up, but with a share of ad revenue going to the publisher. "What we are saying is maybe there is a middle ground," said Attributor's chief executive Jim Pitkow. "If people are taking full copies of your content - why don't you take a revenue share?" Attributor would go direct to the offending company and demand a cut of the revenue.

The Financial Times group yesterday unveiled the launch of a new search engine called Newssift aimed at business professionals. Rather than scouring the entire web, the tool will give users access to relevant databases, as well as filtering articles from a wide array of international business news outlets, including professional sites, opinion pages and blogs.

Success of the Web? Try Newspaper Values With a New Twist
Caroline Little, Adviser to Guardian News & Media and former CEO and publisher of Washington Post/Newsweek Interactives, United States:

"Keep one foot rooted in the core journalism values of the core product, and one that happens to be delivering the most revenue, and with the other, stretch as far as possible to try new things in this new medium."

"The news websites share the same journalistic values as the newspapers, but the web folks also are working in a medium that's indisputably different, one that requires trying new things and sometimes going down in flames," she said. "Fear of failure can be debilitating. All we have to lose by being too conservative is everything."

On Monday, European Union antitrust regulators announced that they are looking into the proposed advertising deal between Google and Yahoo!.  Plans to launch a "preliminary investigation" were announced in mid-July.

Under the ad revenue-sharing deal, Google will provide Yahoo with ads that will run on Yahoo's search site for a share of the profits.  The deal is limited to Yahoo's US and Canadian sites.  However, this does not mean that the probe into the proposed agreement will be limited to the US and Canada because the deal will inevitably affect European competition.

According to Reuters, companies ruled to be in breach of the EU's competition rules can face fines of up to 10 percent of their global revenues.

Critics claim that the deal will force newspapers to become even more dependent on Google by handing over control of 90 percent of paid search and content advertising.  

In a statement released yesterday by WAN, "Perhaps never in the history of newspaper publishing has a single, commercial entity threatened to exert this much control over the destiny of the press."

Newspaper Association of America, which is a member of WAN, has issued a statement confirming that its board has taken no position on the proposed partnership between Yahoo and Google.

Sources: Brand Republic, CNet News, New York Times, Reuters

In the days after the 61st World Newspaper Congress and 15th World Editors Forum, the debate was still raging:
Will print products remain the core business model of the newspaper industry in the long-term?
Will digital platforms become newspapers' primary source of distribution and revenue?
Or will both print and digital work side by side to sustain newspaper journalism?
Guardian Comment is Free columnist Roy Greenslade and World Association of Newspaper CEO Timothy Balding sounded off on the topic.

Greenslade struck first. Having attended the conference, he pointed to what he considered a divide between publishers and editors and their respective conference programs; "The congress, the publishers' conference, was dominated by the upbeat statistics about the good health of newspaper sales, newspaper launches and newspaper profits"... "Yet all the discussions at the editors' forum were dominated by how to deal with the decline - whether rapid or gradual - of newspaper circulations and the accompanying flight of advertising as people turn their backs on newsprint in favour of the internet."

Balding responded by noting that, on the whole, global newspaper industry figures are positive. Circulations are up in 105 nations and stable in 31. Paid titles are up in 85 countries and stable in 83. But this doesn't stop at print. The Congress, Balding pointed out, gave many examples of traditional publishers succeeding in the digital realm and shared multimedia strategies with their colleagues from around the world. WAN continues to do "absolutely everything we can to make sure that our publishers and our editors receive the best and most reliable information about digital developments and the best success stories on their successful exploitation," said Balding. The association does not "pretend... to know the digital future."

Perhaps the real divide comes not from the publishers and editors at the World Newspaper Congress, but rather from developed and developing nations. It is no surprise that in the United States and many countries in Western Europe, print newspapers are experiencing declines in circulation and profit margins. These papers have had trouble making up for lost revenues on the Web. On the other hand, newspapers in developing countries such as India and China are witnessing huge growth and will continue to do so for years to come. Their digital offerings and revenues will also increase as Internet and mobile penetration rapidly spread.

The essence of the Congress, is to bring papers from these nations together. It is the platform where they share ideas; new ways to create and distribute content, strategies for reaching new audiences, and creative ways to make money in print and online. And sharing ideas between different markets will ensure that the newspaper industry, in both developing and developed nations, will continue to flourish.

Digital Journal has relaunched its citizen journalism site, where regular contributors are now eligible for a share of the "moneypot," an initiative comprised of advertising revenue.

Being the first online community to share a portion of revenue to users distinguishes Digital Journal from competitors such as Newsvine and Norg.

The initiative applies to news stories instead of blogs, journals, groups, photos or video. Also, rather than the popularity of individual posts, the initiative calculates the number of news stories uploaded by each citizen journalists.

That system is interesting since it could encourage quantity instead of quality, but the Digital Journal board must approve the work of each citizen journalist who wants to be paid, in order to check spelling and grammar, as well as to judge the journalist's ability to "find and research relevant news,"  according to Journalism.co.uk.

The site has reportedly doled out $38,000 to citizen journalists.

Source: Journalism.co.uk

On Monday, The Baltimore Sun launched b, a free daily newspaper and website, which targets readers from 18-34, similar to parent Tribune Co.'s RedEye. They had announced developing 'b' in February as a step to broaden the Sun's audience in times of "declining revenue and increased competition," according to the Baltimore Sun website.

The first 40 page issue featured a cover story of reader's photographs shown at sites around the city, and included a section of reader "rants" and opinions. The first issue had 75,000 copies, distributed in 1,000 bright orange boxes in 1,400 drugstores, convenience stores and athletic clubs in metropolitan Baltimore. Also, about 70 volunteer employees handed out "samplers."

"It really is going well," said Timothy J. Thomas, vice president of business development, who expects distribution to grow to 100,000. "They're kind of flying off the shelves."

Steven Duke, associate professor of journalism at Northwestern University, said similar young adult-targeted newspapers, such as RedEye, have succeeded by distributing in places where young readers congregate.

He acknowledged that the economy presents challenges for new publications. For instance, the free daily BostonNOW was just shut down due to economic reasons.

With a staff of about 20, the tabloid newspaper and website has a focus on news, sports, entertainment news, blogs, and listings geared to its readers. A third of its content is planned to be reader-generated material. The tabloid also has content-sharing agreements with local radio stations WTMD-FM and WNST-AM. Online readers will have to opportunity to upload photos and videos.

"This truly is a daily conversation with our target audience," said Brad Howard, b general manager.

Sources: Editor & Publisher, Baltimore Sun

Must-read. AJR's Senior Editor Carl Sessions Stepp has noted that while news remains as valuable as ever, journalism is certainly changing as daily newspaper circulation has declined every year since 1987.

Is it time for newspapers to panic? It could be, had Stepp not come up with an expansive list of very good editorial and business ideas for newspapers.

Instead of cutting everything, from staff to newspaper sections, Stepp argues that newspapers should be creating a product that is high quality and indispensable. Journalists need to embrace arriving technologies and make their articles more exciting. But how?

Here's a list of Stepp's ideas, more or less in his words, that could help newspapers recapture "domination of the overall information market":

-  A four section daily paper with journalists and readers sharing and discussing news together.
Section 1: a "dynamic, definitive guide" to local news featuring digests, analysis, listings, links, columns and audience contributions; excerpts and synopses of top content appearing elsewhere; and an annotated guide to the top material concerning international, national, regional and local news, sports, business and arts.

Section 2, the most important local, national, and foreign news, fully updated and differentiated from earlier Web copy.

Section 3, an in-depth package that changes everyday, which would present serious, investigative, quality journalism, not available anywhere else.

Section 4, all the expected features from crosswords to comics, plus new ones including reader creations.

- An online information superstructure built around a double home page, with an easy toggle back and forth: one screen for an orderly display of news and other content, the other a portal-type screen offering a master index of anything useful and appropriate for your audience, with more choices, more services and a nontraditional license to experiment.

- A new, more conversational tone, both online and in print, including staff and outside blogs, behind-the-scenes essays from staff members and a higher proportion of analysis and explanation.

- Archives and galleries with a more user-friendly format like Google or Yahoo! that cluster content by precinct, neighborhood or topics. Searches that index advertising or searches programmed to answer questions such as where a movie is playing or when the school board will meet.

- Expanded interactive guides to movies, shows, concerts, galleries and other arts, with amazon.com-like reader reviews and interaction.

- Real-time online traffic and weather blogs.

- Contests every day for the funniest, weirdest, most helpful or most outrageous local images, audio and video.

- Tournaments, online and in-print, pitting local individuals and teams against one another in solving puzzles, predicting sports or election outcomes..

- Online book clubs and discussion groups on local sports, religion, relationships and more.

- Original uploaded programming, in which readers Web-cam their neighborhood news, read political commentary, offer Leno-like stand-up comedy bits on the news and debate key local issues.

- A complaint forum, directed toward local government or business, in which editors or audience choose which questions have merit and pose them to local authorities.

- A local records center, providing agendas and minutes of every significant meeting in your area; text or links to as many public records as feasible; and your homemade community databases such as local sports stats, crime maps, home values or restaurant menus.

- Greater capitalization on the treasures of your archive; readers can develop and download scrapbooks featuring every article, photo or other mention of themselves and their families in your library; or publication and sale of special in-depth or feature reports drawing on your archives and research capabilities.

- A help-needed feature, a sort of super-classifieds, that lets readers pose questions, seek products, evaluate services and possibly engage in transactions from which you share the profits.

- Moderated forums and advice segments for personal finance, health, travel and other subjects.

- New products and revenue sources: frequent-visitor points, premium services (such as customized news delivery, conferences featuring star journalists, first crack at ads and coupons, local discounts), neighborhood magazines, daily auctions (lunch with the editor!), grants from nonprofits, vastly upgraded searching services and search-related ads, customized magazine and book-length reports on key topics.

- Staging regular creativity meetings throughout the news organization and in the community.

- Hosting an ongoing online suggestion box with prizes.

- Spend real money by giving $100,000 to three or four of your smartest people and challenge them to design something breathtaking.

Read Stepp's article for more of his ideas.

Source: AJR

“Use your readers’ collective intelligence”

Newspapers, radio, magazines, and many more traditional media could all learn from Skyrock’s successful transition from being a radio broadcaster to generating more than 50% of its revenues through digital – thanks to one of the world’s most popular blog platforms. In the following, founder and CEO Pierre Bellanger advises the press to use its readers’ collective intelligence – even to unite in order to do so.



From traditional media to social network

Undoubtedly, traditional media insiders have jealously eyed Skyrock’s journey, at a time when many of the most digitally-innovative papers still garner less than 10% of overall revenues through digital operations.

A few mouth-watering figures for Skyrock Blogs (henceforth referred to as ‘Skyblogs’), which targets the younger teen population, unlike Facebook: to this day, Skyblogs counts more than 22 million subscribed users, 14 million active blogs and 5.3 million profiles. The site is the world’s 17th site globally in page views, has more than 20.2 million monthly unique visitors, and counts a whopping 1.8 billion comments, 22.5 million videos and 400 million pictures. The platform was launched in 2002.

The main difficulty when trying to create a social network is reaching the critical mass of users that will lead to a snowball effect. Skyrock is currently the most-listened-to radio station among its target audience, 13-24 year-olds. So cross-promotion with the radio station helped Skyblogs’ original expansion initially. “The dynamic and the existence of the radio helped” to grow the social network.

So much so that in 2006, for the first time, Skyrock generated more than half (51%) of its revenue digitally and less than half through its traditional channel, the radio station. However, Skyblogs and Skyrock radio are considered as two distinct subsidiaries within the same parent company: one is an entertainment media channel, the other is an independent social network. Unlike many social networking experiments by newspapers, Skyblogs was considered and managed as an independent Web 2.0 venture, rather than as a new tool to complement the traditional media.

The digital world: newspapers must use the collective intelligence of readers

Is it too late for newspapers to harness the power of the Web and social networks?

Said Bellanger: “As did all traditional industries, the press perceived the Internet as a new way to do the same thing,” as a new distribution platform to publish the same product – instead of conceiving how deeply the Web could change the actual work of journalists and newspapers. “This turned out to be an extremely modest usage of the possibilities enabled by the Internet,” he said, acknowledging that “it’s easier to create a company than to change a company.” When the printed press was first invented in the 1500s, people initially simply thought of it as a new tool to produce copies of the Bible.

Newspapers mustn’t necessarily try to create Skyblogs-like social networks, and previous attempts at creating their own have had mitigated results (see USA Today). However, they must use the power of networks and users if they want to be successful online.

“Newspapers stayed for a long time in this logic of distribution, depriving themselves of one of their essential assets, which they had never previously used: the collective intelligence of their readers,” said Bellanger. In the digital age, this becomes as important as the brand name and editorial service they provide.

Use the collective intelligence of your readers. If the Financial Times were able to channel the input of its millions of business-minded readers, it would win. “To put to contribution the intelligence of readers is a real solution for the press,” said Bellanger.
Newspapers must rebuild themselves around the public debate, said Bellanger, and force themselves out of the temptation to produce ambient news.

Newspapers have begun this transition, by opening comments and platforms for user blogs, but remain timid when doing so.

For example, most user comments – when these are enabled – are simply listed below the actual article, in no particular order or hierarchy. And comments seldom have permalinks (a Web-specific address), which could enable users to share or refer to specific comments: in other words they are still considered as mere add-ons to the journalist-led story.

Bellanger’s argument may be demoralizing for many journalists and editors: to an extent, his vision of the Web puts users’ collective input on the same level, if not higher, as content produced by journalists. However, this content still requires journalistic expertise to be organized and transformed into an add-value resource.



The online business model: traffic compensates for lower CPM

All newspapers are still struggling to find a viable and profitable business model online. The average online user still typically brings in 10 times less ad-revenue compared to the print reader. But according to Bellanger, if newspapers can build up adequate social networks that bring in twenty times more traffic, then they hold the solution to their online business model.

But don’t newspapers run the risk of saturating the market if they all attempt to launch their own social networks?

Not at all, said Bellanger, because the Web is full of nano-networks, which can be built around the sharing of experiences and common interests, however small a community. This in turn can lead to targeted-advertising and higher CPMs. The ‘secret recipe’ for the press is thus to offer an online platform that can group their readers in nano-networks, whether around car-tuning, Japanese cooking or better, major public debates.

About Pierre Bellanger and Skyrock

Skyrock Radio was founded in 1985 by Pierre Bellanger, son of a French newspaper editor who was also co-founder of the World Association of Newspapers’ parent. Bellanger thus grew up amidst stenographers and the smell of print presses: he has also participated in studies about newspapers’ future commissioned by the French government.

Source: Pierre Bellanger, CEO Skyrock

The Los Angeles Times traces back the evolution of newspapers’ view of bloggers. In the past, they “wanted nothing to do with bloggers,” but now newspapers “are posting and plugging them and even sharing advertising revenue.”

For many major dailies, the current trend of newsroom integration seems like a natural evolution nowadays. The Editors Weblog has regularly showcased best examples of newsroom integration and has advocated that papers follow the trend. Yet many, if not most, newspapers continue to function well while keeping a non-integrated organization. So the question is: do papers have to integrate? In this first piece of a three part-series investigating non-integrated newsrooms, the Figaro.fr managers explain to the Weblog how online fits in the group’s strategy.

Widgets, small bits of software that users can add to personalize their Web space, are slowly making what could be a significant impact on online marketing, although many advertisers have yet to catch on.

Not only is there a marketplace for blogs, they sell well. Young blogs are being auctioned on specialized websites, and ‘web estate agents’ are buying them at more than a tenfold price.

The New York Times has added a new service making it easier for users to link and post stories on social news and networking sites Digg, Facebook and Newsvine. Linking buttons were added this morning but will not be available on Time Select articles, newspaper's premium content offering, staff blogs or wire stories.

Copiepresse, the organization that helps protect the copyright of French and German-language publications in Belgium, has issued Microsoft with a "cease and desist" letter, demanding the removal of its member publications' content from the MSN website. Copiepresse recently won a court case against Google over the same matter.

Microsoft and the NYT's future news reader made news at a meeting of U.S. editors recently in Seattle but let's please first concede that it is vaporware - it doesn't exist in a form availble to customers.
In contrast a few weeks earlier at INMA in Chicago the folks at Press Display were quietly showing some serious upgrades to their digital delivery technology that can help editors and publishers today.
The most stunning to my eye was the real-time user feedback that publishers can collect and analyze for free. (see graphic)

Also discussed.

• Web 2.0 - what does it mean? 
• Why it's 'Me' Media, not 'we' media 
• Why did Rupert Murdoch buy a Karaoke site? 

In our last posting, we looked at how news reading on the Web is changing and how news production must change with it. It seems that newspapers on the Web will play the role of aggregators, linking readers to the best reporting, commentary and analysis. But if this is to be the case, there are some consequences that will change the dynamics of newspaper news.

Many newsreaders may have been surprised this morning when they awoke to a completely revamped New York Times website. As for all new things, it may take a little getting used to, but overall, the Times appears to be on the right path; its numerous new features take significant steps towards the future of online news production and reading.