Social Media Rulemakers Are Wrong
Here on Ricochet, I look for examples, commentary and sparks of ideas that can be applied to online journalism. The thing is, we’ve been doing it in one form or another for about 10 years and still, online news sites are so far behind in taking advantage of the Web medium.
Most sites are trying is to engage readers through participation — inviting users to comment, rank, post their own photos and video, etc.
Doing so produces a double-edged sword. On the one hand, users like it because they like being able to vote and point to their stuff on a site that has brand recognition — and even to then find themselves mentioned by name in the traditional platform.
But I’ve heard editors, CTOs, BizDev people and advertisers say that being able to count and quantify the audience and its behavior allows them to refuse to invest in or even kill projects when something doesn’t get sufficient traction.
Chip Griffin at Media Bullseye suggests that those who judge a blog’s success according to the so-called rules of social media should think again.
With so many newspapers now offering a plethora of blogs, news directors and editors should reconsider the terms of success as well.
(via Chris Brogan)
Media Consolidation: Is It Too Late to Stop the FCC? Is There Any Reason To?
The Senate Commerce Committee spent a good portion of today quizzing FCC chief Kevin Martin about proposed changes to media ownership rules.
The FCC board will vote Dec. 18 on whether to allow a newspaper in any of 20 of the largest Nielsen DMAs in the country to own a broadcast outlet (either radio or TV) in the same market.
On the face of it, Martin’s proposal looks very reasonable. It looks like the FCC chair is concerned about ensuring there’ll be lots of local news. It looks like he’s concerned that there’ll be outlets owned by women and minorities, who, it’s assumed, would make it a priority to cover news relevant and interesting to those populations.
But two FCC commissioners, Michael J. Copps and Jonathan S. Adelstein came out against Martin’s proposal in a brief joint statement. (Note Copps and Adelstein are Democrats, while Martin and the other two commissioners are Republicans.)
The non-profit organization Free Press took a closer look at the possible implications of the rule change, and they’re worrisome. If you think Free Press is making wild, alarmist interpretations, remember: Media companies who want to buy up outlets retain smart, creative lawyers whose job is to find the means to their clients’ ends. (Check out Allan Sloan’s breakdown of Sam Zell’s complicated Tribune Co. purchase, for example.)
Perhaps there isn’t anything we the public can do at this point. And perhaps consolidation is a necessary reality of the business. But not everyone is ready to roll over. Influential senators concerned about what’s happening recently passed the “Media Ownership Act of 2007.”
Unfortunately, the Act looks mostly like another layer of bureaucracy, but perhaps that’s all we have for now. Free Press has been building up a campaign to urge the full Senate to pass the legislation. They’ve got a petition going and they’ve posted a YouTube video that has highlights from some of the most popular — yet meaningless — broadcast clips out there to point out how Big Media isn’t necessarily interested in quality content.
Times of London Revises Mobile Site
The Times Online has a new ad campaign touting its revamped mobile site.
I pointed my cell phone browser to www.timesmobile.mobi, but so far I’m not impressed. It’s just one clickable banner ad at the top plus a list of links and linked headlines and a few fingernail-sized photos. (Ooo. “Fingernails.” Perhaps I’m coining a new term here for supersmall graphics.)
Somehow, I was expecting a richer experience, story summaries under the linked heds at least. A link to weather, traffic, sports and games. (Admittedly, at the bottom of the page there’s a link to the football, er, soccer page.) And since so many Internet-enabled phones can play sound, how about some audio?
I’ll check back in another week or so to see if perhaps I visited too early. In any case, the site could be better.
Google Needs Good Content
Scott Karp at Editor & Publisher has written a post that follows on something I’ve been discussing with others offline: Google has a vested interested in ensuring there’s “good” (or at least popular) content on the Web.
Google bought YouTube last year and now wants to make a lot of money to pay off the purchase and sustain its business. The problem so far has been figuring out how to make money off other people’s content, whether copyrighted or just weird or bad. Google couldn’t put audience clusters together and advertisers freaked out.
Then in May, Google opened up its YouTube ad revenue stream to select partners — people who put original content on the site and attracted big subscriber numbers and pageviews. Here, finally, were the audience clusters advertisers were looking for.
The content partners, mostly big media organizations like Perez Hilton, CBS and National Geographic, have done well enough that YouTube announced Monday it is opening the ad stream to anyone living in the U.S. and Canada. (International users will get their chance soon, YouTube says.)
You still have to apply to be a partner, of course, but for anyone who’s got a knack for making short films, Web serials, vlogs or product ads, this is a chance to finally make some money.
Karp makes some excellent points about the intelligence of Google’s strategy. It’s sharing a small slice of its ad revenue pie with original content creators — avoiding the copyright infringment trap — while generating tremendous user loyalty and quantifiable audiences — something advertisers like — based on trusted brands and using the company’s core competency: search.
Since most of all content on the Web is found through search, you could say all search engines that depend on ad revenue have a vested interest in good content on the Web. For a news organization, however, the trick is figuring out how to siphon off more of the ad revenue stream.
Many of the larger news organizations and wire services have partner deals with the Big 5 search engines. What would happen if media collectively changed the terms, as Sam Zell suggested during a speech at Stanford Law earlier this year?
Sam Zell Plays Santa
Sam Zell, soon to be owner of the Tribune Co., makes his own holiday presents for select friends and he’s got a website to prove it.
The 2007 gift isn’t up yet (of course) but you can see the music boxes that play songs with his original lyrics from years past.
