Personalization is quickly becoming a key concept in the world of online news. A new study discovered, however, that most readers are reluctant to actively personalize content, preferring to let someone else do the editorial selection.

The Guardian's Roy Greenslade highlighted a recent study by journalism academic Neil Thurman, titled "Making 'The Daily Me': Technology, economics and habit in the mainstream assimilation of personalized news." The key finding of the study, which was preceded by two years of research, was that readers are far less enthusiastic about news personalization than many think. The whole study can be read here.

According to Thurman, "active personalization," such as homepage customization, grew only 20%. Meanwhile, "passive personalization" in the form of news sites filtering and recommending articles based on browsing behaviour, grew by 60% over the same period. The research also suggested that readers are generally unable to accurately predict their news preferences.

Thurman also noted that during the research, The Washington Post, The Sun, The New York Times and The Daily Telegraph all stopped marketing their "My Page" services - a confirmation that readers have been slow to start using the possibility of personalizing their news.

According to Steve Herrmann, the interactive editor of BBC News and one of the editors interviewed for the study, the "time and effort to personalise something" would put off all but a "relatively small number of people".

Thurman singles out Trove, The Washington Post's endeavour in news personalisation, and predicts hard times for it and other similar services. Trove is only one of many news personalization sites that have lately launched. In light of the study's findings, it will be interesting to see how well they fare.

The study's results would confirm the suggestion that there are two groups of online news consumers forming. There are those who appreciate the effortlessness of a news organisation doing the editorial selection. And then there are heavy news users, who know what kind of news they want and like to choose their news sources themselves. According to Thurman's study, the latter group seems to be smaller than many believed.

Sources: The Guardian

When Google changed its search algorithm last month, Demand Media took a serious hit. According to a comparison by Conductor, the search visibility of Demand Media's eHow site dropped significantly, which explains why the company saw a notable drop also in stock value. The rumours around the company were so pessimistic that it was forced to issue a statement defending its finances.

The California-based Demand Media, which according to Reuters has 13,000 freelancers writing to its sites such as eHow and LiveStrong, is now taking measures to step up the content of its sites. In an interview with MediaShift, Larry Fitzgibbon and Jeremy Reed from Demand Media described the course the company is next taking. Some of the changes sound very much like steps towards a more traditional journalistic model.

First, Fitzgibbon acknowledged that eHow, which relied on user-generated content, had had hard time keeping the quality of articles up to the needed level. Much of the material was inconsistent with editorial guidelines, particularly when compared with the content produced by the site itself. In an attempt to improve the user experience, a lot of the site's content will be removed or put through a vetted editorial process. Yahoo! reported that Demand said it plans to hire more-experienced writers to deliver articles of up to 850 words, paying up to $350 for these in an effort to improve quality.

Second, there will be a new emphasis on feature content. Fitzgibbon and Reed saw this as essential in providing a satisfactory experience to all visitors - something they feel the site has not always been able to do before. Feature content is also hoped to attract advertisers, offering more possibilities for brands, for example.

Investors seemed impressed by Demand Media's plans: Yahoo reported that the company's shares saw a significant rise.

The fate of Demand Media is of great interest for many, as the company is, as described by MediaShift, the "Exhibit A in content farming." There have been suggestions that content farming poses a threat to journalism. But in light of Demand Media's situation, a more pertinent question seems to be: can a sustainable business model be built around content farming?

Sources: Conductor, Demand Media, Reuters, Mediashift (1), (2), Yahoo

As the battle between native and web apps rages on, newspapers and magazines wanting to expand to digital publishing have to make some tough decisions. Fortune seems to have faith in web apps, as the magazine launches today, May 5th, its web app Fortune500+, AdAge reported. At first, the app will run on computers only but will soon work on tablet browsers as well.

The appeal of web apps is easy to understand: unlike native apps, built for a single platform, web apps work cross-platform as they run inside the web browser. Opting for a web app, thus, makes it possible to reach the maximum number of readers with only one version of the app.

AdAge's article notes that the list of web apps is growing, albeit slowly. Although many magazines have chosen to publish exclusively for the iPad, few have so far developed web apps. "I think you'll see that more and more apps will go this way," said Daniel Roth, managing editor at Fortune.com. Despite the slow pace, HTML5 powered web publishing seems to be gathering momentum, the people behind OnSwipe, for example, being very strongly in favour of web apps.

Fortune is also planning on releasing "native" versions of Fortune500+, expected by the end of the year. The magazine decided to start by focusing on the web app rather than developing apps for different systems at once, as it allows the app to reach the widest possible audience simultaneously. There is also one obvious benefit of not publishing for the iPad: Fortune now avoids dealing with Apple's App Store and giving Apple a cut of any sales. Lately, Apple's treatment of app developers has been a couse of discontent for some publishers.

The free version of Fortune500+ is described as a Fortune 500 dashboard and toolkit that will provide company descriptions and ranks, details on financials and management, customizable stock charts and live related headlines. A premium version, priced at $9,99 a year, offers further features.

Some warn that although developing an app that works on all of the tablets in the market is a compelling possibility, there are drawbacks. "The problem is it doesn't take full advantage of each individual platform. You end up with a mediocre product across all platforms as opposed to a superior product on individual platforms," warned Raven Zachary, president of Small Society, an app developer for iOS devices. He estimated that it would take years for web apps to catch up with dedicated ones.

The results of the ongoing struggle between native and web apps will have a profound impact on the future digital media landscape, and the outcome is hard to predict. In February, Nieman Journalism Lab reported one technologist saying that the picture of the direction of digital publishing should be clearer in one years time. But as experience is everything, the option of starting to build up expertise as soon as possible seems also reasonable.

Source: AdAge, Nieman Journalism Lab

When the iPad was released a year ago, it was immediately clear that the device offered enormous possibilities for news organisations and publishers in general. With Apple promoting its App Store heavily, it seemed natural to turn to apps as a way of publishing on the iPad. Now, however, as the limitations of that approach are becoming apparent, other options are increasingly discussed.

The buzz around HTML5 has been growing for some time now. Jason Baptiste, CEO of OnSwipe, is one of the advocates of HTML5: in a recent interview with GigaOM, Baptiste noted that HTML5 makes it possible to create web pages that are up to par with native apps in terms of visual appearance and user interface.

Publishing content on the Internet, instead of developing dedicated apps, Baptiste said, would solve one of the main issues publishers have with the current tablet market: to make their publications accessible with all of the devices out there, they have to develop a version for each of the platforms available. All tablet devices naturally have adequate web-browsing capabilities, making HTML5 content free of compatibility issues.

Cult of Mac's Mike Elgan discussed some of the other reasons Baptiste has given for publishing online. Firstly, publishing on the Internet permits a smooth integration with social media, as content can be accessed very easily through Twitter, for example. Secondly, distribution expenses would be lower, as no intermediary is required to distribute content. Putting eBooks and other content online also enables those titles to show up in web searches, resulting in an increase in traffic.

OnSwipe turns websites into a tablet-friendly form, and the process is, according to Baptiste, very quick and easy. It is already available to bloggers on WordPress.com. The company could have licensed its platform to publishers but chose to do something more ambitious: "We decided to give the software away, and have as many people publish in an infinitely customizable way, and we would build a thread that pulls them all together," Baptiste said. The aim is to turn the publishing tools into a kind of ecosystem. Part of it is the function of saving articles for later reading, which makes it possible to provide recommendations based on what people choose to save.

OnSwipe is also concentrating on advertising possibilities, wanting to give advertisers tools to turn their existing advertising campaigns into app-style pages. As TechCrunch noted, OnSwipe has been successful succeeding in arousing investors' interest, and the year-old company seems to be off to an interesting start.

Die Zeit and the Center of Public Integrity, for example, have also utilised HTML5 in creating app-like sites, and many more are expected to follow suit. Could it be that apps are just a phase in how people consume news on tablet devices? Does HTML5 represent the real future for mobile news?

Sources: GigaOM, Cult of Mac, TechCrunch