By most conventional measures, Britain’s newspapers look doomed. Young readers are abandoning them for the internet and television. The Daily Express and the Daily Mirror, both tabloids, have shed about two-thirds of their circulation since the mid-1980s.
There are nine national daily papers with a circulation of more than 200,000. And advertising has migrated online more quickly than elsewhere. Since 2009 more advertising money has been spent on the internet than on newspapers, according to ZenithOptimedia, a marketer. British papers receive no government funding (as is the case in France, for example). Indeed, they face a fearsome state-sanctioned competitor in the BBC.
Read more at The Economist
Saturday, January 22
Assessing Wikipedia
How the online "temple of the mind" became the go-to site for looking stuff up.
Wikipedia was not the only online encyclopedia to be launched around the turn of the millennium. Along with Nupedia, there was an interlinked database called Everything2 where anyone could submit an article but no one could edit others' submissions. There was also H2G2, a playful miscellany inspired by Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Before those there was Britannica, which had gone online quietly in December 1993. Microsoft's (MSFT) CD-ROM based Encarta, which was neither collaborative nor originally online, was seen as the primary digital threat to traditional encyclopedias like Britannica because it was given away free with new PCs.
One of Wikipedia's loudest critics is co-founder Sanger.. laid off when the dot-com bubble burst. In 2006 Sanger started Citizendium, a competing wiki-based encyclopedia with "gentle expert oversight" and contributors who use their real names. At the same time, analyses of Wikipedia's accuracy have generally found that, while it's occasionally wrong, it's not much more wrong than traditional encyclopedias.
Read more at Business Week
Wikipedia was not the only online encyclopedia to be launched around the turn of the millennium. Along with Nupedia, there was an interlinked database called Everything2 where anyone could submit an article but no one could edit others' submissions. There was also H2G2, a playful miscellany inspired by Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Before those there was Britannica, which had gone online quietly in December 1993. Microsoft's (MSFT) CD-ROM based Encarta, which was neither collaborative nor originally online, was seen as the primary digital threat to traditional encyclopedias like Britannica because it was given away free with new PCs.
One of Wikipedia's loudest critics is co-founder Sanger.. laid off when the dot-com bubble burst. In 2006 Sanger started Citizendium, a competing wiki-based encyclopedia with "gentle expert oversight" and contributors who use their real names. At the same time, analyses of Wikipedia's accuracy have generally found that, while it's occasionally wrong, it's not much more wrong than traditional encyclopedias.
Read more at Business Week
The Art of Advertising on Twitter
Ad.ly, the online ad agency, has a huge celebrity stable that posts tweets and pulls in up to the six figures
The celebs earn a flat fee per tweet that ranges "from $1,000 to mid-five figures," says Gullov-Singh. With more than 5.6 million followers, reality TV superstar Kim Kardashian collects "in the ball park" of $10,000 per tweet, he adds, "but her price keeps going up. The most effective ones can get six figures a year, and in some cases six figures a quarter."
Twitter is testing its own advertising service, which could compete with Ad.ly for the attention of sponsors. A more direct competitor is four-year-old Izea. The Orlando company began by promoting brands on blogs and last year expanded to Twitter. It now has a network of more than 100,000 tweeters who promote products for anywhere from 10 cents to more than $2,500 per tweet, according to CEO Ted Murphy. Some celebrities or their managers negotiate directly with the sponsors and avoid using intermediaries such as Ad.ly.
Ad.ly is backed by $6 million in venture capital and was founded by 24-year-old Sean Rad, a serial entrepreneur. The company is diversifying into other social media sites. It recently began offering what it calls a celebrity bundle, in which brand promotions appear not just in celebrities' Twitter streams but also on their fan pages and in display ads on Facebook.
The bottom line: Ad.ly operates a network of more than 5,000 celebrities willing to shill for brands through their Twitter accounts.
Read more at Business Week
The celebs earn a flat fee per tweet that ranges "from $1,000 to mid-five figures," says Gullov-Singh. With more than 5.6 million followers, reality TV superstar Kim Kardashian collects "in the ball park" of $10,000 per tweet, he adds, "but her price keeps going up. The most effective ones can get six figures a year, and in some cases six figures a quarter."
Twitter is testing its own advertising service, which could compete with Ad.ly for the attention of sponsors. A more direct competitor is four-year-old Izea. The Orlando company began by promoting brands on blogs and last year expanded to Twitter. It now has a network of more than 100,000 tweeters who promote products for anywhere from 10 cents to more than $2,500 per tweet, according to CEO Ted Murphy. Some celebrities or their managers negotiate directly with the sponsors and avoid using intermediaries such as Ad.ly.
Ad.ly is backed by $6 million in venture capital and was founded by 24-year-old Sean Rad, a serial entrepreneur. The company is diversifying into other social media sites. It recently began offering what it calls a celebrity bundle, in which brand promotions appear not just in celebrities' Twitter streams but also on their fan pages and in display ads on Facebook.
The bottom line: Ad.ly operates a network of more than 5,000 celebrities willing to shill for brands through their Twitter accounts.
Read more at Business Week
Peeking into the Future of Tablets
Sure to draw most of the attention at the conference is a torrent of new tablets from Asus, LG Electronics, Motorola (MOT), Toshiba (TOSYY), and many others—each hoping to replicate the success of Apple's (AAPL) eight-month-old iPad. The stakes of the emerging tablet wars are huge. Apple has an early lead, with an estimated 10 million iPads sold in 2010, and is likely to keep it. But analysts believe the market is set to explode. The research firm iSuppli predicts 57 million tablets will be sold in 2011 and 171 million in 2014. "These companies aren't trying to steal away from Apple. They are betting the overall pie will expand," says Richard Doherty, research director at the Envisioneering Group, who estimates that more than 100 tablets are being introduced at CES this year.
As with smartphones, Google (GOOG) and its hardware partners, including South Korea's LG and Motorola, are in the best position to loosen Apple's grip. At CES, Google was expected to demonstrate a forthcoming version of its mobile Android operating system, called Honeycomb, customized for tablets. Microsoft (MSFT), too, was expected to preview a version of its operating system that will run across all types of devices, from phones to PCs and tablets, and is compatible with low-power, mobile-device chips called ARM processors.
The bottom line: Roughly 100 tablets are being introduced at this year's CES. They're becoming a viable alternative to PCs.
Read more at Business Week
As with smartphones, Google (GOOG) and its hardware partners, including South Korea's LG and Motorola, are in the best position to loosen Apple's grip. At CES, Google was expected to demonstrate a forthcoming version of its mobile Android operating system, called Honeycomb, customized for tablets. Microsoft (MSFT), too, was expected to preview a version of its operating system that will run across all types of devices, from phones to PCs and tablets, and is compatible with low-power, mobile-device chips called ARM processors.
The bottom line: Roughly 100 tablets are being introduced at this year's CES. They're becoming a viable alternative to PCs.
Read more at Business Week
Friday, January 21
Location-Based Social Media
Like the social media companies Gowalla, Foursquare and Loopt, Scvngr is largely reaching the people in their 20s and 30s who frequently use their mobile phones to flag their presence at a specific spot, and to notify friends of their location. While millions of people have signed onto such sites, it is estimated that just 4 percent of smartphone users in the United States have tried these services, with a mere 1 percent using them more than once a week, according to the most recent Forrester Research survey.
Using digital to drive up clientele has yet to become widespread. Melissa Parrish, chief author of the Forrester Research study, noted that registered users were “still a drop in the bucket” compared with the number of people reached by text and other mobile connections.
Verizon Sues FCC
Less than a month after the Federal Communications Commission adopted an order aimed at keeping Internet service providers from blocking access to certain Web content or applications, Verizon asked a federal appeals court on Thursday to overturn the new rule. Verizon is arguing that the F.C.C. exceeded its authority, and violated the company’s constitutional rights. The challenge, which was widely expected to come from at least one of the big Internet service providers, sets up what is likely to be a lengthy legal battle over the rights of broadband companies to run their networks without government interference.
Read more at the New York Times
Read more at the New York Times
FCC Wants TV Broadcasters to Give Up More Airwaves
With mobile networks expected to handle 35 times as much Internet traffic over the next five years as they do now, the Federal Communications Commission worries that the nation's wireless system will bog down under the strain, and has proposed a plan to repurpose spectrum now reserved for television channels. But the broadcasters - still smarting over having to surrender spectrum two years ago for digital television - say they need those airwaves to compete with their flashy new rivals with products such as live mobile TV.
In all, the FCC is proposing a voluntary auction of about 120 megahertz of additional television spectrum - but it would take at least a year for the agency to get permission from Congress and cooperation from hundreds of stations around the country. Much of that spectrum, between channels 31 and 51, isn't being used, but some broadcasters fear existing programming on those channels could be moved to less attractive swaths of airwaves.
Telecom and high-tech companies support the FCC's plan, which would be the federal government's fourth major rollout of airwaves for cellphone use. Most recently, it sold $20 billion of spectrum in 2008 for high-speed Internet networks that are just now being rolled out by Verizon Wireless and other carriers. But the demand is expected to strip even that supply.
Each mobile Internet user is expected to use four times as much data by 2015. A streaming video gobbles up about 100 times as much bandwidth as a phone call - and new technologies are coming fast.
Read more at Washington Post
In all, the FCC is proposing a voluntary auction of about 120 megahertz of additional television spectrum - but it would take at least a year for the agency to get permission from Congress and cooperation from hundreds of stations around the country. Much of that spectrum, between channels 31 and 51, isn't being used, but some broadcasters fear existing programming on those channels could be moved to less attractive swaths of airwaves.
Telecom and high-tech companies support the FCC's plan, which would be the federal government's fourth major rollout of airwaves for cellphone use. Most recently, it sold $20 billion of spectrum in 2008 for high-speed Internet networks that are just now being rolled out by Verizon Wireless and other carriers. But the demand is expected to strip even that supply.
Each mobile Internet user is expected to use four times as much data by 2015. A streaming video gobbles up about 100 times as much bandwidth as a phone call - and new technologies are coming fast.
Read more at Washington Post
Thursday, January 20
NPR’s Facebook page
They swear like sailors, but boy, they’re smart.” That’s how NPR strategist Andy Carvin described the 1.4 million fans who comment and share stories through NPR’s Facebook page. The page — originally created by an NPR enthusiast from the UK — is one of the more popular media outlets on Facebook.
Carvin talked about NPR’s approach to Facebook last night as part of an ONA-sponsored media event at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto.
“We have better comments on Facebook than on our own site,” Carvin said, in response to an audience question about whether NPR was reluctant to divert audience engagement from its own homepage to an outside site.
In part, Carvin said, that’s because comments on NPR.org tend to be highly political and polarized, and because comments sections are also constantly beset by spammers.
But Carvin also emphasized the importance of audience expectations. “They still see our site as mainly dedicated to consuming news,” he said. Facebook, on the other hand, is a web venue in which people are used to chatting with their family and friends. The result, Carvin said, is that conversations on NPR’s Facebook page can become surprisingly intimate.
The referral traffic on NPR’s Facebook page has grown from 1.5 million to 4.5 million pageviews a month, Carvin said. While that traffic used to result largely from fans clicking on links that NPR posted, now as much as half of it comes from links that fans decide to share themselves.
NPR’s Facebook page is a complement to, not a substitute for, other kinds of NPR news consumption.
Read more here.
Carvin talked about NPR’s approach to Facebook last night as part of an ONA-sponsored media event at Facebook headquarters in Palo Alto.
“We have better comments on Facebook than on our own site,” Carvin said, in response to an audience question about whether NPR was reluctant to divert audience engagement from its own homepage to an outside site.
In part, Carvin said, that’s because comments on NPR.org tend to be highly political and polarized, and because comments sections are also constantly beset by spammers.
But Carvin also emphasized the importance of audience expectations. “They still see our site as mainly dedicated to consuming news,” he said. Facebook, on the other hand, is a web venue in which people are used to chatting with their family and friends. The result, Carvin said, is that conversations on NPR’s Facebook page can become surprisingly intimate.
The referral traffic on NPR’s Facebook page has grown from 1.5 million to 4.5 million pageviews a month, Carvin said. While that traffic used to result largely from fans clicking on links that NPR posted, now as much as half of it comes from links that fans decide to share themselves.
NPR’s Facebook page is a complement to, not a substitute for, other kinds of NPR news consumption.
Read more here.
Tablet Boom in 2011
44.6 million. That's how many tablet computers will be shipped worldwide this year - more than 2.5 times as many as in 2010, according to estimates from research firm IDC.
Read more at the San Francisco Chronicle
Read more at the San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday, January 19
Lowest-Selling Debut Album of All-time
This week, Cake has the No. 1 album on the Billboard chart. (BuzzFeed says it) made it there with the lowest-selling debut album of all-time: “Showroom Of Compassion” sold just 44,000 copies in its first week. In March of 2000, 'N Sync set the record for the biggest-selling debut of all time with “No Strings Attached,” which moved 2.4 million copies.
Under Pay Model, Little Effect Seen on Papers’ Web Traffic
Steven Brill’s Journalism Online experiment, which developed a system that allows newspapers to charge their most regular online visitors, has analyzed its preliminary data and found on average that advertising revenue and overall traffic did not decline significantly despite predictions otherwise. The sample size of Journalism Online’s data was small — about two dozen mostly small- and medium-size papers that had been charging readers for several months — so divining any potential pattern for large newspapers is difficult.
But the initial findings showed that newspapers found success with a pay model by setting a conservative limit for the number of articles visitors could read free each month, and by making clear that most readers would not be affected. L. Gordon Crovitz, a former Wall Street Journal publisher who is helping run the project, said one lesson to be taken from the numbers so far is that readers were willing to pay for some, but not all, content online. Consumers “will pay for the few news brands they really rely on, if they use them a lot,” he said.
Read more at the New York Times
But the initial findings showed that newspapers found success with a pay model by setting a conservative limit for the number of articles visitors could read free each month, and by making clear that most readers would not be affected. L. Gordon Crovitz, a former Wall Street Journal publisher who is helping run the project, said one lesson to be taken from the numbers so far is that readers were willing to pay for some, but not all, content online. Consumers “will pay for the few news brands they really rely on, if they use them a lot,” he said.
Read more at the New York Times
Monday, January 17
Court: Filmmaker Not a Journalist
Documentary Filmmaker Doesn’t Qualify for a Journalist’s Privilege, a Court Says
A federal appeals court has ruled that Joe Berlinger, a filmmaker who was ordered to hand over footage from his 2009 documentary “Crude” to the Chevron Corporation, cannot invoke a journalist’s privilege in refusing to do so because his work does not constitute an act of independent reporting.
Mr. Berlinger’s film chronicles a lawsuit brought by a group of Ecuadoreans who say that the Lago Agrio oil field — initially run by Texaco, which Chevron now owns — polluted their water supply, and he has been locked in a legal battle against Chevron for months.
In May, the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that Mr. Berlinger would have to give his raw footage, about 600 hours of it, to Chevron. The company said the material would show an improper collaboration between the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the Ecuadorean lawsuit and an expert appointed by the Ecuadorean court as a neutral party.
Read more at the New York Times
A federal appeals court has ruled that Joe Berlinger, a filmmaker who was ordered to hand over footage from his 2009 documentary “Crude” to the Chevron Corporation, cannot invoke a journalist’s privilege in refusing to do so because his work does not constitute an act of independent reporting.
Mr. Berlinger’s film chronicles a lawsuit brought by a group of Ecuadoreans who say that the Lago Agrio oil field — initially run by Texaco, which Chevron now owns — polluted their water supply, and he has been locked in a legal battle against Chevron for months.
In May, the Federal District Court in Manhattan ruled that Mr. Berlinger would have to give his raw footage, about 600 hours of it, to Chevron. The company said the material would show an improper collaboration between the plaintiffs’ lawyers in the Ecuadorean lawsuit and an expert appointed by the Ecuadorean court as a neutral party.
Read more at the New York Times
AOL Bets on Hyperlocal News
Over the last year and a half, AOL, the former Internet colossus, has spent tens of millions of dollars to build local news sites across the country through Patch.com. Patch has already set up shop in nearly 800 towns. By the end of this year, it expects that to be in 1,000 — each one with an editor and a team of freelance writers. Traffic on individual sites is low; former editors say that the average post attracts just 100 views and that they considered 500 page views a wild success. But the overall traffic is growing quickly. In December, Patch had just over three million unique visitors, 80 times that of a year earlier, according to comScore. Yet over the years, a number of so-called hyperlocal news sites have failed, and the idea is largely unproved financially. For example, Backfence, a hyperlocal forerunner that invited readers to contribute articles, closed after it was unable to attract enough users and advertising.
Patch’s competitors also include Examiner.com, a news company of local sites that is controlled by the investor Philip F. Anschutz, as well as neighborhood news blogs. Patch has hired hundreds of journalists, each equipped with a laptop computer, digital camera, cellphone and police scanner. The journalists, which AOL calls local editors, generally earn $38,000 to $45,000 annually, and work from home. They are expected to publish up to five items daily — short articles, slide shows or video — in addition to overseeing freelance writers.
Patch’s competitors also include Examiner.com, a news company of local sites that is controlled by the investor Philip F. Anschutz, as well as neighborhood news blogs. Patch has hired hundreds of journalists, each equipped with a laptop computer, digital camera, cellphone and police scanner. The journalists, which AOL calls local editors, generally earn $38,000 to $45,000 annually, and work from home. They are expected to publish up to five items daily — short articles, slide shows or video — in addition to overseeing freelance writers.
But several plagiarism cases have tarnished Patch during its brief history. One journalist posted a photo from a rival site, and then denied it, while two freelancers published articles that were at least partly copied from other sources. A person familiar with the matter, who could not speak on the record about personnel matters, said they were all fired.
Read more at the New York Times.
For Magazines, a Bitter Pill in iPad
The (magazine) industry is discovering a lesson already learned by music labels and Hollywood studios: Apple may offer new opportunities with its devices, but it exacts a heavy toll. Magazine publishers argue in particular that limiting magazine sales on the iPad to single issues (except in a handful of cases) has hamstrung publishers from fully capitalizing on a new and lucrative business model.
“If you look at the Apple store,” said David Carey, president of Hearst Magazines, which offers five publications on the iPad, “the most common reason that people give an app a low rating is that it lacks a subscription option. They want to subscribe, and they don’t like the idea of paying $4.99 a month.”
Many applications cost almost as much as a printed copy of a magazine, a difficult concept for consumers to get their heads around.
In addition to limiting magazine sales to single issues, Apple has declined to share consumer data, meaning the Hearsts, Condé Nasts and Time Incs. of the publishing world know nothing about the people who are buying their digital magazines.
While they are far from writing off the iPad, publishers are eagerly awaiting the development of new tablet technologies from Google, BlackBerry and others that could at least give them some leverage.
Tablets, they believe, offer magazines a do-over in digital form. The picture quality can be far better on a tablet than on a computer screen; the ability to create multimedia, interactive storytelling is greater; and there are more opportunities for advertisers to innovate.
Read more at the New York Times.
“If you look at the Apple store,” said David Carey, president of Hearst Magazines, which offers five publications on the iPad, “the most common reason that people give an app a low rating is that it lacks a subscription option. They want to subscribe, and they don’t like the idea of paying $4.99 a month.”
Many applications cost almost as much as a printed copy of a magazine, a difficult concept for consumers to get their heads around.
In addition to limiting magazine sales to single issues, Apple has declined to share consumer data, meaning the Hearsts, Condé Nasts and Time Incs. of the publishing world know nothing about the people who are buying their digital magazines.
While they are far from writing off the iPad, publishers are eagerly awaiting the development of new tablet technologies from Google, BlackBerry and others that could at least give them some leverage.
Tablets, they believe, offer magazines a do-over in digital form. The picture quality can be far better on a tablet than on a computer screen; the ability to create multimedia, interactive storytelling is greater; and there are more opportunities for advertisers to innovate.
Read more at the New York Times.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)