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Tag: Google News
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Weekly Top 5
This week's top news has Angry Birds, Zynga's acquisitions and valuation, Twitter for Mac, Twitter mobile website, Lady Gaga, its deal with NTT DOCOMO, Android's security fix, Market Update, Samsung bringing Gingerbread to Galaxy, ViewSonic's Honeycomb tablet, Facebook's lawsuits, Places function
ality, non profits resource center, Bing's integration, Google's News Near You, expandable stories, Journalists Memorial Channel and the YouTube100.
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P.S: That was also my 50th by-line in Bangalore Mirror đ
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Even distribution
The per second and per character billing wars happening in the Indian mobile space now, made me consider whether its beyond a price thing – a need for consumers to slice and splice until they get exactly what they need. I see a parallel in the flow of content too, something I discussed earlier.
Which explains why I tweeted that I was still watching with great interest, the results of Murdoch’s arachnophobia, though it will take months. (despite having some fun with irobot.txt, and Walled Street Journal đ ) Now that’s a subject on which everyone’s had an opinion, so I’ll refrain. (though I’ll share the interesting Bing Theory) The other part of his announcement, where he wants to be paid for content, will obviously depend on the quality of content he can give, and whether it can be found elsewhere for free.
Meanwhile, as a believer of the link economy, I should’ve logically said that News Corpse was the future, but I refrained. The reason was that for me, the complete mechanics of content distribution is still in an evolution stage. I wrote about brand content distribution last week, and I’m exploring similar thoughts on information in general, especially when i see studies on sharing trends like these (via Social Media Explorer), which I still think is a good indicator despite the inherent skews in sample/methodology it might have. The specific part that interested me being the low shares of Google channels and Twitter, and the larger understanding (reminder) that the web is much bigger than the social media savvy crowd. While Google News has become a great aggregator, there might be other distribution mechanisms that can be developed, keeping a paid model in mind.
Media has long served as a distribution platform for brand communication, so its obvious that any effect on media would also force brands to think differently from what they’ve done so far. It means seeking and understanding various smaller ecosystems that are bound to develop, where media itself would be different from what we see now. In essence, brands would have to slice and splice their content to reach various audiences. Again, one can’t completely rule out the possibilities for Murdoch with niche specific audiences.
Meanwhile, I had a good debate recently with Surekha on social media’s usage by brands- product/brand centric vs communication centric approaches. This great post (via Surekha) sums it up quite well. My contention was that ‘buzz’ (for lack of a better term) could be generated without a communication centric agenda, if brands/products were serious about social media and approached it from a business design perspective. Communication centric approaches would tend to see networks as broadcast platforms and the focus would be on ideas and execution, which may quite often be platform centric, with less thought on how sustainable it is in the long run, especially if all parts of the organisation are not aligned to a different way of working that’s required. Also, in addition to the spurious ROI methods which are evolving, my issue with communication – centric approach is best described by Godin in Hammer Time (every function (PR/Advertising all bring their own hammers to nail social media) and Rex in “If Advertising is your middle name, your surveys will always suggest the solution is….
(Update: Thanks Dina, for sharing this)
Digital Strangelove (or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Internet)View more documents from David Gillespie.It led me to wonder if brands’ usage of  FB, Twitter etc as broadcast platforms, also contributes to the way these platforms are evolving – from the concept of digital sub-prime crisis that Umair Haque has written about recently to the kind of hiring that brands do. (In this context, the Ad Contrarian’s 3 Distinctions post is also worth reading) Taking it further, is that why (simplistically put) instead of collaboration and easy interoperability, there is the scenario that Tom Reilly very interestingly describes in ‘The War for the Web‘ – war between natural monopolies (search, social networking, classifieds etc) for adjacent areas.
I’m hoping that like with all things web 2.0, the community will turn both the fights in a direction that is beneficial to itself, and we won’t be left replacing one system with another that develops with the same principles.
until next time, choosing sides đ
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Flipping news models
Google’s Fast Flip has been receiving quite a lot of attention these days. Based on the Google News model of aggregation and categorisation, Google has partnered with quite few sources including BBC, BusinessWeek, Washington Post, New York time, to name a few, which shows previews of their pages on Fast Flip, but looks exactly like they would on the source site, almost. We’ll come to that in a bit. The stories can be accessed basis sources, sections and the other parameters we are used to – recent, most viewed, recommended etc. Oh, yes, much of it is the user interface, that lets you ‘flip’ through the content, ‘like’ stories, and you can click through to the source site, if you want to read the full story. It has its rough edges, and is far from being any sort of killer to anyone, but its a damn good start, much better than any interface that any publication has brought out so far. On the revenue front, there are contextual ads on Fast Flip itself, and Google will be sharing revenue with newspapers. It is interesting to note that the previews of the source sites do not include ads. So if I am able to read a story completely in the preview, (which in many cases I am), I wouldn’t go to the source site, nor would I see/click the ads there. This is potentially an area of conflict, since the (shared) revenue from the one ad that’s displayed on Fast Flip cannot compare with the revenue from the source site. Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to a time when perhaps, Google Reader will have a similar interface. đ
In the last few weeks, this is the second instance of Google engaging with publications and ‘helping’ them create a revenue stream. The first instance was Google sending a proposal for micropayments, in response to a request for paid content proposals from the Newspaper Association of America. As per an NYTimes blog, this would be an extension of Google Checkout. Google is only one of the companies that have sent a proposal, and the list includes Oracle, IBM, and Microsoft. The system is of course in its early planning stages, and the business model has a 30-70 split (Google-publisher). Though Google still doesn’t believe that paying for content will be the remedy for newspapers’ woes, it still has a vision of a premium content ecosystem, which includes five key features that combine the Googleâs e-commerce, search, and advertising platforms.
While Google is described by many as the single largest threat to newspapers, its definitely not the only one. From new hyperlocal community sites (eg. Patch) to remnants of old giants (AOL’s Digital City, Yahoo Local) and from new age media entities like Huffington Post to new and varied kinds of aggregators (Guzzle.it, OurSignal, MeeHive, Thoora) different services are catering to the different needs that newspapers used to satisfy. The important aspect is that the new entities are well versed in leveraging the latest tools and collaborating with those who can add to their utility value. A good example would be the tie up between Huffington Post and Facebook for HuffPost Social News. Social sharing, real time are changing the way news is being consumed. I recently read about The Twitter Times, which creates a customised ‘newspaper’ by checking the links from people you follow, and the popularity of those links. Even while massive changes are happening online, and affecting the lifestyle of individuals and society at large, newspapers are still grappling with how to evolve new business models. (a good, albeit dated read on battle plans)
There was a short but interesting discussion on Twitter a few days back, where Surekha brought up the example of PressDisplay’s business model (aggregation of various newspapers and consumers pay for access) to ask whether a DTH kind of model would work for newspapers. I didn’t think it would. The only other distribution network for television content is the local cable guy (ignoring the web for now). But ‘news’ and even the ‘features’ content can find its way to the consumer through multiple sources and media – TV, web, mobile, and multiple sources within that. The entry barriers have fallen drastically. Scarcity model vs Abundance model. Keeping in mind the cost that newspapers incur in creating the content and the incremental value that they give the consumer, how much would a consumer pay a newspaper aggregator, and how much would the newspapers get out of that. Yes, Press Display will make money, but ask newspapers to survive only on that revenue or even that plus web advertising, and it would be a tough task. This is why newspapers are finding it hard to negotiate this transition stage (discussed earlier) because its not one answer and its definitely not a common answer. Again, as I’ve discussed here earlier, there are inherent differences between news gathering processes in the print and online space – batch processing vs real time processing. It calls for a (albeit cliched) leaner meaner structure, not just for operations’ sake, but also perhaps from a profitability perspective.
The more I think about it, the more I realise that its not just processes, there is a cultural angle to this. As Terry Heaton points out in “The Web’s widening stream“, the knack of creating and facing disruptive innovations. We’ve discussed David and Goliath before, David becomes version 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 faster and faster, each version better than the other (because he fixes the bugs in 1.1, 2.5 etc) while Goliath reels because it can’t even figure out the answer to 1.0. His strength has become his weakness – scale, and he doesn’t have a culture that encourages moving fast, learning from mistakes, being open to changes amongst other things. In fact, newspapers have been lazy and guilty of doing the exact thing that Seth Godin warns about in “Flipping abundance and scarcity” – putting free on top of a business model, and now rapidly trying to change it.
I don’t think India is impervious to these changes, the time frame will vary because of several factors – technology adoption delays, vernacular content to name a couple, but as I keep repeating, its no time to be complacent. From Rediff and Instablogs which have evolved their own news collection systems to hyperlocal players of different kinds – governance based like Praja, Citizen Matters, local businesses review based like Burrp, and several other niches, the different domains of newspapers are being challenged. More importantly we’re increasingly getting used to ‘streams’ – FB, Twitter etc. The principal revenue model of newspapers has been advertising (as opposed to circulation), they have been the medium to reach audiences, with the most basic of audience filtering. The radical change (as Heaton points out) is that advertisers can be part of the stream themselves, with such filtration techniques that they can target an individual if necessary. So, for newspapers, if the advertiser won’t pay, the reader has to. The reader , meanwhile has figured out that on the web, he has an abundance of choices.
until next time, stop press?
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Broken News models
The Iran crisis once again brought the present day tools of news gathering into the limelight, even while highlighting the inadequacies of traditional media. From real time tools like PicBrk to spoof ads and stories, the tools became the focal point of the protests. It was as much about changes in news gathering as it was about the ability to share, both in real time, a skill that traditional is yet to pick up, in spite of ‘breaking news’ on television. The significance of Twitter’s contribution can be gauged from the fact that the US government asked Twitter to postpone its scheduled maintenance so as not to disrupt the flow of news from Iran. The inability of traditional news gathering and distribution systems to come to terms with real time media consumption, and their usage of social media as yet another broadcast medium was highlighted at the 140 Characters Conference (#140conf). All this makes me consider, yet again, the future of traditional media systems and conglomerates, especially newspapers.
A few days back, I read about the Associated Press issuing social media guidelines to its staff – not to show political affiliations, or post views on contentious issues among other things. The ‘best’ part is that they also have to monitor their profile to ensure that comments by others do not violate AP standards!! Ahmadinejad Press? Here’s the policy in its awesome entirety.
It’s been quite a fun week, with a speech by Dow Jones Chief Executive Les Hinton – also the publisher of the WSJ, adding to the amazing show of perspective. He described Google as a giant vampire that was sucking the blood of the newspaper industry. Now, I have reasons enough of my own to be cross with the omnipotent Google, but even assuming that it is a vampire, who showed them the “X – blood here” sign in the first place? While Google states that its mission is to give readers more perspective by aggregating news from different sources, and even directs clicks to the newspaper sites. Newspapers argue that these clicks are nowhere near to the visits (and revenue) that they’d have gained if people came directly to their websites. They also have a problem with ads appearing on the side when people search for news. (Source) I have actually not come across those, and Google News definitely doesnt have them anyway.
That is context enough for an interesting article I saw on Adage – ” Why ‘Going Galt’ isn’t the solution for newspapers”. The article is in light of the digital startegy of The Newport Daily News in Rhode Island, that’s closing its ad supported site and selling digital subscription only. John Galt, meanwhile, doesn’t need introduction for Ayn Rand readers, but if you are asking “Who is John Galt”, catch up here. In this context, it means that newspapers stop creating content for aggregators to pick up and make money. As the article points out, its chances of success is only when it deals with news that’s not commodity – could be specific locality/genre where there aren’t competitors. Its quite easy for newspapers to stop Google from taking its content – a 2 line code, as has been pointed out regularly.
Cody Brown has an excellent article which shows the inherent differences between print and online, in terms of how news is processed. To summarise, print uses batch processing, where news and rumours are sifted through, verified and reverified and the crux is the final output and the credibility of the publication. The web, uses real time processing, it works like a gigantic wiki, everyone contributes, the crowd corrects, and the final output is of relatively less importance. The flaws of one become the benefits of the other. Batch processing finds few takers in the age of real time, and as this article points out so correctly, Twitter is the fastest way to get informed, or misinformed. This explains why I see stuff on my networks, and immediately move to a rediff/Google News to immediately verify from a trusted source.
So newspapers face a double whammy. On one hand, its news creation is facing obsolescence in the face of changing media consumption habits, and on the other hand, it cannot find ways to make enough revenue out of the content that it ‘painstakingly’ produces. There are of course, traditional players who are bucking this, but as this article makes a case for, there can only be one Apple, who is an un-Google. I am still trying to fit in this understanding with the David – Goliath model. Apple operates so differently from Google, that it would be easy to summarily dismiss them as non-competitors, but there’s more to it. That’s for later, but the idea seems to be not to be a better Goliath, but to be the best David and play by rules that would take Goliath enough time to figure out, for David to finish the game.
A small note on the Indian scene. We are perhaps a few years away from the mess that US newspapers are in,  But consider, a Galt stance would’ve been possible a few years back, but with players as diverse as Rediff and Instablogs having a mechanism of reporting, it would be a folly to even try now. Rediff has built services and business models that doesn’t leave them to the mercy of making money out of news. Instablogs is also figuring out revenue models, at obviously lesser costs. Technology and faster news delivery platforms will appear, its inevitable. Newspapers in india need to replicate their real world credibility online very fast, understand ‘real time’ game rules, and evolve radically new business models if they don’t want to repeat the US scenario. For “âNews doesnât break, it tweetsâ, the TC article credits Paul Saffo as saying.
until next time, notice how many newspapers have ‘Times’ in their name? Real time? đ