New York City's venerable alternative newsweekly, the Village Voice, has launched a redesign of its Web site that places all content into seven major sections, which will be updated daily. Executives believe the changes will help increase the site's online ad revenues by 50 percent over the next year.
"In print, of course, The Village Voice is a weekly," said Kara Walsh, VP of The Village Voice Online. "The redesign helps us continue the transformation of our online presence to that of a daily. Our goal is to increase our number of unique users, pageviews and impressions through a better advertising environment that will increase our overall ad revenues."
It's not the prettiest design I've seen, but it does manage to get a lot of editorial content onto the home page, and provide decent navigation through the sites various sections.
Digg
CommentFriday, December 17
Udell introduces "ScreenCast", a webcast product demo
Jon has been playing around with various media formats in his reporting, but he is now finetuning a new form -- ScreenCast.
ScreenCast is a one-on-one product demo between Jon and the product
vendor. Jon asks the product manager questions while the product
manager shows screenshots of his product in action. Jon then records
the dialogue and the screenshot action in a webcast. He comments on the
webcast in his blog and links to the full media file. Site visitors can
then watch Jon's interview and see the product in action.
This is a very compelling use of Internet technologies on several different levels. He is interviewing vendors, blogging his thoughts in a discussion format, and capturing a tangible experience of the vendor's product. This is an amazingly engaging way to publish and a very powerful format for reporting very difficult concepts.
Jon is on a roll and will clearly keep refining this powerful concept.
This is a very compelling use of Internet technologies on several different levels. He is interviewing vendors, blogging his thoughts in a discussion format, and capturing a tangible experience of the vendor's product. This is an amazingly engaging way to publish and a very powerful format for reporting very difficult concepts.
Jon is on a roll and will clearly keep refining this powerful concept.
Monday, December 13
Interesting article on building traffic to blogs
Tuesday, December 7
Bloggers complain Google News is favoring mainstream media
There have been more and more complaints in the blogosphere about
Google News bias that favors certain media outlets and certain topics
unfairly. The algorhythm is likely to undergo revisions over time, but
it seems to me that many of the claims are accurate or at least
valid...Google News favors major media outlets over blogging ventures.
From Wired:
From Om Malik:
From Wired:
Q: Why not just filter out the opinion sites?
A (Krishna Bharat, chief scientist for Google News): Google News' focus is on diversity, and that's where the real added value is. It's a bit like a bookstore that takes content on a single subject and puts it all on the same shelf. People use Google News to complement their favorite source, like CNN. You come to Google News when you want a wide range of articles - in both opinions and style - on that subject.
From Om Malik:
Here is a list of Tech Weblogs on Yahoo. No mention of Scobleizer or Russell Beattie’s or for sake of argument my own weblog. Google News will willingly bring in news from known blogs, like the ones mentioned before, but not from individual blogs, even if they are breaking news stories, and have more content than some of the aggregator-blogs. Google News rejected my big to get included in their Google News program, even though they include other blogs with more “pro” names.
Wednesday, December 1
Mark Glaser says online media business moves too slow
This piece from OJR's Mark Glaser is an interesting list of
requirements of the online journalism environment he wants to work
in...and he wants them now! From PressThink:
I put out this call in the hope that someone who really does get it will finally get out from behind his or her keyboard and start the media company I want to write for. I am now convinced that the movement by established media companies, or even by their online or digital divisions, is glacial at best when it comes to changing business-as-usual.
Rich media spending to be next wave after paid search boom
From eMarketer:
As the paid search boom crests, the next wave of online advertising is building. Rich media ad spending grew by nearly 37% in 2004, and growth rates of more than 25% are projected for the next three years.
The barriers to rich media growth are rapidly falling as advertisers learn which rich media formats work best for their goals, how to implement rich media-based campaigns and how to track the results of the online portion of their campaigns. As a result, the market is becoming increasingly valuable for advertisers, agencies and Web publishers alike.
"Blog"--M-W Word of the year
Google News Problem with Satire
Evidently, Google's machine editors can't deal with satire so well ...
Wednesday, November 24
TrackBack and Pingback supported by CNET News.com
New CNET announcement:
CNET News.com is pleased to introduce support for TrackBack and Pingback as additional tools to help readers follow the flow of interactive content. Anyone linking to a CNET News.com story who sends the proper notification will get a link back in return.
TrackBack and Pingback links are records of links made to CNET News.com pages. A publisher sends a ping (or notification) to CNET News.com that a link to the CNET News.com page has been made. CNET News.com records that notification and builds a page including all the notifications, with links back to the linking site. More technical details.
CNET News.com is incorporating TrackBacks and Pingbacks to help readers see the broader context and commentary around stories reported by CNET News.com. Reader can continue to post comments directly in TalkBack, found at the bottom of CNET News.com story pages.
Why newspapers should be afraid, very afraid
From Wired:
Don't think for a minute that young people don't read. On the contrary, they do, many of them voraciously. But having grown up under the credo that information should be free, they see no reason to pay for news. Instead they access The Washington Post website or surf Google News, where they select from literally thousands of information sources. They receive RSS feeds on their PDAs or visit bloggers whose views mesh with their own. In short, they customize their news-gathering experience in a way a single paper publication could never do. And their hands never get dirty from newsprint.
The Post experience merely mirrors the results of a September study (.pdf) by the Online Publishers Association, which found that 18- to 34-year-olds are far more apt to log on to the internet (46 percent) than watch TV (35 percent), read a book (7 percent), turn on a radio (3 percent), read a newspaper (also 3 percent) or flip through a magazine (less than 1 percent).
Monday, November 22
Freaky geek tattoo
Tuesday, November 16
The free vs. subscription debate
Bambi Francisco weighs in on the ad vs. paid online models on MarketWatch:
By contrast, if paid content continues at the same growth rate as the first half of the year, it will reach $1.7 billion in 2004, and register a growth rate that's less than half of online advertising's.
So now that the Web has been commercial for about 10 years, can we conclude that the online advertising model for news is a better mousetrap than a subscription-based model? Apparently . . .
AlwaysOn Network, a news and information site started by Tony Perkins, who previously founded The Red Herring magazine, has been largely free. The media company just launched a paid subscription service for $49 per year.
But even Perkins would agree that, "subscription money is a beautiful thing, but in the end, media is media."
If an online media outlet can get both, "[it's] all the better," said Perkins, who said that he's attracted 1,000 subscribers to his paid service since it was launched earlier this month, the same time as the quarterly magazine, Blogozine . . .
As Perkins puts it: "Ad-supported free content is the Trojan Horse. Once everyone shows up, you figure out different ways to turn them upside down and shake out all the pennies in their pocket."
Online content spending up 14%
From MediaPost:
Consumers in the United
States spent some $853 million for paid online content during the first
half of 2004, reported the Online Publishers Association yesterday.
Entertainment-related categories experienced the greatest gains, and
led an overall 14 percent year-over-year swell. The Online Publishers
Association's "Paid Content U.S. Market Spending Report," covering the
first and second quarters of the year, was conducted by comScore
Networks. Eleven percent of U.S. Internet users paid for content in the
second quarter of this year--and 11.2 percent did so in the first
quarter, according to the OPA.
Entertainment/lifestyles paid content spending--led by music, which grew a remarkable 78.3 percent to $182.8 million--bettered business/investment spending in the first quarter of 2004, according to the report. Sports, including "fantasy" sports games--where fans can orchestrate their own season play-- grew by a notable 68.7 percent, while games increased by 27.4 percent.
Entertainment/lifestyles paid content spending--led by music, which grew a remarkable 78.3 percent to $182.8 million--bettered business/investment spending in the first quarter of 2004, according to the report. Sports, including "fantasy" sports games--where fans can orchestrate their own season play-- grew by a notable 68.7 percent, while games increased by 27.4 percent.
Thursday, November 11
Press Release: IDG's InfoWorld Picks TACODA's AMS for Behavioral Targeting and Audience Management
NEW YORK, Nov. 9 /PRNewswire/
-- TACODA, the online industry pioneer in behavioral targeting and
audience management, today announced that IDG's InfoWorld Media Group
has signed an agreement for InfoWorld, the leading weekly
business-to-business technology brand, to use TACODA's Audience
Management Service (AMS).
Friday, November 5
More mainstream press on RSS
From Businessweek:
While RSS could help media titans sell more ads and keep users loyal, the technology could undermine the giants, too. RSS levels the playing field between upstarts and the established media, since news readers don't distinguish between blogs like Gizmodo, which covers consumer electronics, and publications such as PC Magazine. Some believe RSS could make online media even more fragmented than it is today, setting off a struggle for ad revenue. The biggies claim their brands will insulate them against upstarts. Says Catherine Levene, vice-president for product, business development, and strategy at New York Times Digital: "We think people will still come to [our site] for our editorial judgment."
So far most online merchants haven't embraced RSS. But the potential exists for Web stores to alert customers that they now have that snazzy blouse in aqua. Web-savvy outfits, including Amazon.com (AMZN ), Apple's iTunes Music Store, and the Netflix DVD-rental service already use RSS to alert customers to new music or movies. Analysts expect travel, apparel, and financial sites to start testing the technology early next year.
Monday, November 1
The year blogs entered mainstream media
From The Independent UK:
When it is all over, editors and reporters will finally have a moment to reflect on everything that was different about this presidential campaign. What they are likely to conclude is this: the traditional outlets, whether it is CBS News or the New York Times, mattered less. New forces nudged voters' sympathies and even drove the traditional news agenda.
This was the year when the mainstream media outlets unexpectedly found themselves looking over their shoulders at the internet and, perhaps most surprisingly, at the new armies of political bloggers.
Friday, October 29
Why Google is a publisher's biggest competitor
From Internet.com:
The World of Google has become the 900-pound gorilla for supplying the best technical information. When we survey our engineering audience, they start by googling for some product information. While we would like them to first go to our own Web sites, the reality of the situation is that Google is their default home page.
Thursday, October 28
Free WSJ.com
From News.com:
The Wall Street Journal Online, a bastion of subscription-only news on the Web, has begun giving away some content.
In recent months, the business news outfit has been sending nightly e-mail to bloggers, or online diarists, to offer up several daily stories free so that they can point to or link to them from their Web pages. And on Nov. 8, the company plans to remove its paid wall altogether for five days, for the first time in 7 years, according to the company. . . .
Media analysts say WSJ.com may want to test out being an ad-supported site.
Wednesday, October 27
Madison Avenue Ponders the Potential of Web Logs
From The New York Times (via Tom Sullivan on TechWatch):
The biggest fear is an uncontrolled message slipping out, said Steve Rubel, vice president for client services at CooperKatz & Company in New York, a public relations agency with clients including the Association of National Advertisers, J. P. Morgan Chase and Wendy's. "Do they allow comments or do they not? Is there an implication if it is a publicly traded firm? Who is the one who should blog for us? How might that choice be received in the company?"
"Ultimately this will all work out," said Mr. Rubel, who writes a blog called Micro Persuasion (www.SteveRubel.typepad.com), focusing on the effects of blogs and other embodiments of "participatory journalism" on public relations. He also consults with the Association of National Advertisers on matters including its two blogs (www.ana.net/blog).
The Internet Bullshit Generator
Here are a few samples from this classic jargon site:
- engage efficient e-markets
- facilitate cross-media infomediaries
- brand turn-key models
- engage efficient e-markets
- facilitate cross-media infomediaries
- brand turn-key models
Wednesday, October 20
Traditional ad agencies moving into search marketing
From ClickZ:
While a recent JupiterResearch study found the majority of search marketing, approximately two-thirds, is done in-house, the researchers also found demand for agency involvement is increasing. It's this involvement the search media players want to encourage.
"So many of these mainstream online agencies -- typical online agencies -- just haven't really gotten into search yet," said Nate Elliott, an analyst with JupiterResearch. "The little SEM shops have had a free hand, and some of them have gotten pretty big off of that."
More recently, search engines say they have begun seeing more interest from interactive and traditional agencies.