TheWayoftheWeb

Content and Digital Marketing Specialists

publishing

The two digital publishing models of the near future

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Two approaches to digital content creation and publishing are taking hold – and sadly neither of them are equivalent to the way most traditional publishers are set up.

The first is the ‘battery farm’ approach – as seen by aol. and several companies targeting content creation for primarily SEO purposes. Gather as many writers and journalists as you can keep in a warehouse, and get them to churn out as much content as possible for as many places as possible. And in the case of some companies, develop and use tools to see what people are actively searching for at the time to create the right content to capitalise on that interest (e.g. Yahoo).

The second is the ‘blogger’s niche’ approach. Start projects with just one or two people trialling an idea, see if it works, and if sustainable, built into a network model which can mean virtual offices and teams spread out wherever someone has an idea for niche content which could work. This is where you’re more likely to find great writing and insight in terms of longer, more thoughtful articles by people who can wax lyrically about their subject. See the likes of b5media, Techcrunch, Mashable, etc, etc.

The problem for traditional media companies is that they’re not geared up for either of these plans. They might have large numbers of content creators, but these people are grouped around specific products in the magazine industry, for example. The groups are too small to churn out content – and aren’t geared up yet for producing content for anyone else. Meanwhile they’re too large to use the network model – only the very smallest print magazine editorial teams are anything near compact enough, and even then the infrastructure and processes already in place mean it would be easier to scrap it all and start again.

This is all assuming a business model predominantly based on advertising revenue, which requires increasingly low costs in order to drive any profits. Other production method will exist hand-in-hand with different business models. But they will need to be created around the new business model, rather than vice-versa.

Add descriptions to your Twitter lists…

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Adding a description field to Twitter list creation is a simple change which has rolled out today, but it’s a useful one.

Not only does it allow you to provide context to people who will view your list (Without creating a list title as long as a book), but presumably it will also be indexed to be searchable, enabling better list discovery. At the moment I’m seeing a huge number of lists created, often with plenty of duplication of topics and titles, and very few followers for each one.

A searchable description field aids this somewhat, although it may mean there’s a land grab to be the first with the best description for a topic – and that there will be consolidation around lists, with a long tail distribution curve in effect.

But it also shows that the evolution of Twitter is continuing, and the team aren’t about to take a break after rolling out Lists and the new Retweet feature (the Beta trial has just reached my account, and I haven’t really reached a conclusion about it yet!)

Given that the Suggested User List is being radically overhauled, user lists and descriptions look set to play a more prominent role in the Twittersphere, and the real-time web it inhabits.

Valentino Rossi wins 9th world title – lessons for everyone

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Valentino Rossi secured his ninth world championship title yesterday, cementing his position as the greatest motocycle racer of all time.  He’s claimed titles on five different types of motorcycle (125cc,250cc,500cc two strokes and 990 and 800cc four-strokes), lapped 0.5 seconds slower than Michael Schumacher in an F1 car and won events in a WRC rally car.

What’s also important is that since 2000, when Rossi arrived in the premier class on a 500cc GP motorcycle, he has been teamed with probably the best chief engineer in motorcycling, Jeremy Burgess, and a tightly-knit pit crew who followed him from Honda to Yamaha in 2004 as he became the second rider in history to retain the world championship after swapping bike manufacturers.

And Rossi has even picked up some notable tech fans in Robert Scoble and Dave Winer.

Having spent a decade watching, reading about, and writing about Vale’s amazing success with Jeremy Burgess, I think the pair share three approaches which apply to success in any situation:

5 Ps – Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance:

Valentino was lucky enough to have grown up with an ex-GP racer dad, Graziano, and from an early age was able to practice on two and four wheels – often racing around local gravel pits with various racers in a go-kart, this gave him a great preparation in handling a vehicle which is sliding around – something you can notice as he often laps fastest towards the end of the race when everyone should be suffering with tyre wear. He’s also able to change his riding style to accomodate this, and Burgess famously said he can tell on which lap a photo of Rossi has been taken by the way he’s moving his body to adjust to the tyres.

K.I.S.S – Keep It Simple, Stupid:

A lot of riders have been overwhelmed by the amount of adjustability on a GP bike – particularly those who have transferred from the rival World Superbike series. JB, who also helped fellow motorcycling legend Mick Doohan to five world titles, and Freddie Spencer to a further world crown, is famous for telling it like it is, and keeping a tight focus on what needs to be done.

M.I.L.L.F – Make It Look Like Fun:

I was hoping this would end up as MILF for search traffic, but there you go – one of the key elements of the fanatical fame and support that Valentino has achieved is that he has always come across as easy-going, likeable and having fun.

His post-race celebrations have calmed down in recent years, but included costumes, props, and even nipping into a trackside portaloo on one occasion. He’s also known for enjoying the racing itself and often claims to have enjoyed a hard race which ends with him in second, than an easy victory – and famously once he managed to oversleep and miss the morning practice session at a Grand Prix!

But all of this masks someone who is incredibly dedicated and hard-working to achieve what he wants both behind the scenes and on the track. He’s lauded for his test and analysis numerous changes to the motorcycle at once, when most riders would struggle. And at the same time he plays a psychological game with his rivals, managing to push riders like Sete Gibernau and Max Biaggi into mistakes over the years.

I’d embed some examples of his on-track exploits, including the famous collisions with the likes of Gibernau and Biaggi when needed, but in attempting to be nice to the copyright holders, I have to acknowledge they’ve disabled embedding their Youtube channel (like idiots).

If you’re interested in more insight into both Rossi and Burgess, I highly recommend Valentino Rossi: MotoGenius by Matt Oxley (Disclosure: We both worked for MCN around the same time although our paths rarely, if ever, crossed). And for more insight into the psyche of world champion motorcycle racers, including their relationship with ‘flow’, I’d also recommend his The Fast Stuff: Twenty years of top bike racing tales from the world’s maddest motorsport.

Why newspapers will need 1000 true fans…

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Newspapers will need to focus on their ‘1000 true fans’ when they switch on paywalls, judging by a survey released today by Paid Content UK and Harris.

The survey has appeared in response to plans by Rupert Murdoch and others to start putting news content behind a paywall, and reveals that if their favourite news site started charging, 3/4 of people claim they’d find another free site – only 5% would pay to continue reading.

And ironically, it’s younger readers who are more likely to cough up some cash than the older users – the 35-44-year-olds are the ones most likely to go elsewhere- although the middle class readers are most likely to pay.

Now that doesn’t have to be bad news for newspapers, if they can provide something that is worth subscription payments which make up for the lost readership.

The problem, as identified by Matt Thompson at Nieman Reports, and covered by Karthika Muthukumaraswamy at Online Journalism Blog (OJB), is that the majority of online news lacks in depth and detail what it gains in ‘24/7 access, real-time updates, increased transparency, and multiperspectival discussions’

In fact ‘The home page of almost every popular news site looks like a commercial for news stories other than the one you’re reading’.

The problem isn’t the internet itself, which is what the OJB article ends with – Thompson uses the example of Wikipedia to form great long form articles and stories, whilst Muthukumaraswamy picks out the New York Times, CNN, the BBC and The Guardian as examples of news orgs producing great standalone features.

The problem is one of perception by news teams.

The online format has always been taught as following the ‘hard news’ example – get the story across as quickly and in as few words as possible. People don’t have the time or patience to read more online, so hit them with hundreds of brief news items and they’ll flit about like a moth in a well-lit kitchen. The same thing we’ve seen advised for blogs, online video, and has been supported by the rise of microblogging.

But that’s wrong – as you can see by the success of full-length novels on mobile phones in Japan, for example.

Many, many people are now accessing the web by an ever-increasing number of devices, and as the digital familiarity has increased, we’re looking for increasingly different things.

Meanwhile newspapers heading behind the paywall will have to flip their editorial approach as quickly as they flip their business model. They’ll need to provide depth, detail and context to justify payment, using editorial teams which have been cut back more and more to try and survive on display advertising. And I haven’t seen a huge number of Murdoch titles hiring staff, for example. In fact, it appears to be AOL that’s hiring! (1500 writers is a clear indication of intent).

The paywall model will be doomed for exactly the same reason that most display-ad model newspaper sites were doomed – a lack of understanding of the fundamentals of online journalism. Almost 10 years ago I saw a competitor site switch to a paywall model and heard many people ask how they could survive – and at the same time those people were imagining a world in which the print news team would seamlessly move across to an all-conquering website.

Meanwhile hundreds of blogs and websites were springing up on a daily basis by starting small and experimenting their way into growth and editorial staff – the exact opposite of businesses which closed small-scale publications and dismissed any launches which didn’t look likely to drive an immediate huge audience with a corresponding need for staff and resources.

A handful of news organisations will make it through the next few years, whether by spreading themselves far and wide, or by engaging totally with their 1000 true fans to the degree that they can secure repeated subscriptions. Any that don’t commit fully to one of these directions, and achieve it to their maximum potential, are going to fail to crawl out of the swamp and evolve digital legs.

Is any magazine company leading the way digitally?

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Does any magazine company have a clear strategy for their digital business? Viewing it from the outside, there seems even less chance of picking who will be successful in the future.

Dennis Publishing seemed to be leading the way with online mags Monkey, iGizmo and iMotor, but has gone on to buy The First Post and  bit-tech.net. Now it’s buying Kontraband, which has been around for 10 years, and has seen unique users decline from 10 million to 3 million as online video has solidified around the likes of Youtube and the BBC iPlayer.

Integrating video from a Dennis-controlled site into the other properties might make sense – after all, the various outlets guarantee a certain number of views, and there won’t be a need to share revenue with Google/Youtube.

Future Publishing is adding an online album club costing £3 a month for Classic Rock to let people read online reviews and download advance copies of the accompanying albums.

Meanwhile Conde Nast is closing Men.Style.com to focus on a new GQ.com website, Businessweek is up for sale by McGraw-Hill, and my former home at Bauer Media has been pretty quiet on the digital front since relaunching Aloud.com and shuttering Ditto.net (which has now been removed entirely from the internet).

So what seems to be a wise move?

Dennis expanding their portfolio seems logical, especially as they can now experiment to see whether their own revenue from Kontraband makes more sense than the bigger marketing potential of Youtube, and whether they can entice their 3 million unique users with some text to accompany their videos.

Conde Nast aligning their online and offline titles is also a good move – too often companies have tried to build portal sites which incorporate a number of magazines – to hide costs and a lack of content and resource – and have ended up trying to establish new brands whilst confusing audiences.  And there are some really viable alternatives…

What don’t make sense?

I’m not entirely convinced by an online album club – granted the Classic Rock audience are more likely to be familiar with an album club than torrenting MP3s, but is there enough to justify £3 in the face of memberships for the increasingly familiar Spotify and Last.fm? Plus the music labels are making their own moves to become content providers, along with the artist themselves.

Having worked on Ditto, obviously I’m biased about it, but as it was pretty much quiet on the staff/development front, it seems strange to save some minimal server costs.

Oh, and I’m still not tempted by the print UK edition of Wired. Besides the obvious ‘geeks on the internet’ issue, I’d have rather seen a larger U.S. edition which included more UK coverage and content to boost awareness of UK companies, and to go further to justifying the cover price.

Any less confused?

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