Tag: Rediff

  • 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 ““News doesn’t break, it tweets”, the TC article credits Paul Saffo as saying.

    until next time, notice how many newspapers have ‘Times’ in their name? Real time? 😉

  • Minding Languages

    A few days back, Ajit Balakrishnan, CEO of Rediff.com, stated that there is no evidence from the last ten years of the internet business that users want online content in Indian languages. He cited the example of Rediffmail, which is available in 11 languages, but apparently, users prefer English 99% of the time. He further said that most young people were using internet to send messages, download music, view pictures or videos, none of which is particularly language related, and that virtually 90 per cent of the content is not text based. It sparked off an interesting set of comments, and a response post from BG Mahesh, CEO of OneIndia.

    While I perhaps agree that extrapolating language mail use to the entire language content need of a population may not be very accurate, I’d still have to say it is a kind of dipstick. I remember using Rediffmail in malayalam, having some fun with it, much like Google News in Malayalam, and then promptly forgetting about in a few days, and going back to the English content that i regularly use. (No, I’m not saying that I represent the language content need of the average Indian net user. 🙂 )

    Meanwhile Mahesh’s post raises at least a couple of great points – “users wanted to ‘read’ our content and very few wanted to write in the language”, and whether UGC should be the yardstick for measuring the need of language content. I would relate to that, to an extent.

    I’ll just try to recount a few experiences on the consumption of language content. I subscribe to Malayala Manorama at home, but don’t read it online. I used to follow a couple of Malayalam blogs, until a few months back. I am quite a heavy net user, and my content needs are more than satisfied by the English stuff available on the net. At this point, I cannot think of a kind of content that’d enthuse me to consistently consume it in a language  other than English. Another interesting thing I’ve come across in bangalore, is the amount of people who speak fluent Kannada, but can’t read or write it. It is in two digits, but I can’t be sure its a representative sample.

    Judging from the JuxtConsult 2008 India Online report, India has 40 million urban users and 9 million rural users, and the top 5 activities are Email, Job Search, Chat, News and Sports. It also states that

    Users of ‘vernacular language’ websites are up to 34% from last year’s 12%, (although 28% prefer English as the language of reading online, only 34% users are visiting vernacular websites regularly, indicating the lack of content online)

    I think that the average urban user would be keen on using English (he’s either comfortable with it, or aspires to be) Even with increased penetration into rural areas, the mindset that ‘English is the path to advancement’, which I have seen around me a lot, might make English a preferred language, more than the regularly spoken one. Also, unlike print, and television, which are more passive media (read/ remote click), the net is a more active medium, because it requires some navigation for the user to make full use of it. (links/downloads etc) I think its fair to assume that the width and depth of content available in English will always be more than that of other languages. It might have helped if India had one language, but it does not. Does that mean that there is no market for language? There is a market, which is why Google (including search and Orkut), MSN etc as well as Rediff, OneIndia etc are in the space, and a banking entity like Barclays offers its website in Hindi, but I doubt that it will ever explode or be the driver for growth or be the major beneficiary of the internet’s rural penetration (when that happens). I have a feeling that the catch 22 situation will last – not enough users to warrant content and not enough content to warrant usage.

    until next time, I could also end up eating my words…. in malayalam 😀

    PS. Interesting Update (via Medianama) – Rediff to communicate in 22 Indic languages. Ahem!!

  • News..yes. Papers?

    Rupert Murdoch recently stated that the doomsayers predicting the end of the newspaper industry are off the mark. According to him, online readers also need news form a source that they can trust, and that’s what newspapers have always been doing. He agreed though, that newspapers would have to change from the ‘one size fits all’ approach to cater to readers’ demands. He mentioned his plans for WSJ, to offer three tiers of online content: free news, a subscriber-level service, and a third “premium service” of reader-customizable “high-end financial news and analysis.”

    The newspaper, or a very close electronic cousin, will always be around. It may not be thrown on your front doorstep the way it is today.

    On the whole, I tend to agree with him. However, I also feel that newspapers would be missing the point,  if they see this as just a change of platform. Its a mindset change, not just in terms of news delivery, but also in the way they approach business. After all, even the biggest names, like NYT , Gannett (publisher of USA Today) , are not in the pink of financial health.

    Before we get to that, a few varied ‘heritage media’ (print) trends. On one hand, we have publications like Christian Science Monitor and PC Magazine and many others switching to a primarily online only presence. On the other hand, the NYT opened up a couple of APIs, releases an AIR based news reader, the Guardian buys PaidContent, and offers full text RSS feeds, the Financial Times’ new site design resembles a blog, and some magazines are even rolling out Instant Messaging functionality. Over to India, Live Mint and Business Standard have recently launched podcasting (via WATBlog), India Today added Cosmopolitan to their existing list of digital properties and Business Standard has launched a branded Instant Messenger – BS Buddy (via Medianama). In essence, newspapers and magazines seem to be looking a bit more seriously at making the transformation from real to virtual.

    So this is a good question to ask – what’s the next step for news? To start with, they could take a good look at this list of 10 things that every Newspaper/Magazine site must do. This itself would be completely against a few things that they’d consider sacred – most notably, link sharing and responding to comments. Broadly, I’d imagine it to be a two pronged approach

    • figure out how to deliver their content on digital platforms, and that might even lead to changes in the kind of content they gather, and the way they gather it.
    • figure out a business model that can leverage the content they have – subscription/ advertising/ both.

    First the content aspect. A lot of publications have been experimenting with citizen journalism. They’d do well to check out tools like CoverItLive. Instead of randomly adding a ‘blog’ section to the website, make it work. Get enthusiastic journalists to blog. Get regular bloggers to do guest columns on specific topics of their interest. Promote them and the content they add to the site. This would help them being aggregators who also serve niche interest communities. What is equally important is to bring about a systemic approach to making journalists regard their story as just a start, and getting them to take ownership of making it a conversation. There are advantages in it for them – new story ideas as well as a better understanding of their readers. Yes, Twitter can help in the conversations too. These changes in news gathering techniques might very well change the quantity and quality of newsroom staff. This makes a great case study.

    The business aspect. I read a a very insightful article on how the entry of print publications into the digital medium will change the balance of power and wealth in the link economy. This process has already started. But before that, I think they have to see themselves as news sources, rather than just the newspaper on the web. This would influence how and where they position their ads, and would help them deliver better value to advertisers, as well as readers. While on this subject, I think online ad networks that include newspapers (with various editions and publications) along with independent blog/ blog networks that complement/add on to their content, might make sense. I remember NYT making a sort of conglomerate in association with 3 other newspapers, sometime back. There are other business models too. For example, there are community funded reporting services like Spot.us. (via RWW) Do check out this link for a very radical approach.

    Though readership of dailies (with very few exceptions) continue to drop, I don’t think newspapers are in their death throes in India. But should they wait for that? A good brand takes some time to build. There’s a reason why more people in India visit Rediff and Yahoo and even the web 18 properties than Indiatimes/ Times of India group properties. I’m hoping to see something like Instablogs join the big league soon. Brand loyalty in the real world need not translate into brand loyalty in the virtual world, especially when you’re dealing with a (by now) commodity called news. And as newspapers would know from their real experiences, once readers are used to a certain way of consuming content, it’s difficult for a competitor to sneak in. It would pay well to learn from mistakes – of those aborad who might have waited too long to transform. After all, what doesn’t kill you doesn’t necessarily have to make you stronger. And I’m not sure if newspapers would like to be part of the thin end of the long tail of news consumption, with pure play web entities occupying the head.

    until next time, save paper, save the environment 🙂

  • The In thing

    A few days back, I had written about wanting to see an internet entity’s brand campaign. And within a few days, as if on demand, the in.com TV commercials started appearing. In case, you haven’t chanced upon them yet, take a look here, and here. These two have highlighted two aspects of in.com – music and gaming. The others are news, mail, search and videos. The ads throw up stats of users who have been enjoying these services.

    Though my first brush with them left me highly dissatisfied, I have always liked the vertical properties they have built up over a period of time. I use Money Control and Compare India quite a lot, but that’s only 2 of the entire set that includes IBNLive, Biztech2, Storeguru, IndiWo, Bookmyshow, Yatra, Jobstreet, Cricketnext, Poweryourtrade, commodities control, Tech2, Buzz18 and Josh18. While I sometimes feel that a few of the properties overlap hugely on the service they provide and the target audience, it is quite a formidable line up. And perhaps that is what led to their reach being higher than that of the Times Group’s internet properties and only behind Rediff’s as far as Indian entities go. According to this article, In.com is already #7 in India’s portals list, and is planning to have job search, real estate search and bars and nightclubs search. Here’s an interesting post that throws some new light on those numbers.

    The site is quite different from the other portals, perhaps because of the rich interface, and, at a basic level is a massive meta-aggregator, which collects news from its own services as well as other prominent sites. To this is added a structure that builds in crowd choices, and all this creates great differentiation. The ‘reverse’ strategy of building verticals (sub brands) and then aggregating (flagship brand) is interesting, but unlike what I’ve seen in a few banners, I think “India’s homepage” is still rediff, and it will take some effort from Network 18 to topple it from that place. Its a simple recall factor, I am so used to rediff.

    Meanwhile, they are doing a lot of interesting things by way of association. The Bigg Boss tie up result is a great example, which to me is also a pointer towards some smart integration thoughts – Colors, on which Bigg Boss airs, is after all, a Viacom 18 channel. The other smart integration is MTV’s Youth Icon, MTV being another Viacom 18 venture. If this is done on a continuous basis, with more network channels, and a bit more push is given (in context) on the channels, I think In.com has a great future ahead. Will Roadies 6.0 will get to play a part soon?

    I also wonder what the role of the email service will be, after all, Rediff’s popularity was based a lot on that. It definitely has some very good features. Other than a 10 GB mailbox, linked messages, and the now common friends import from other mail services, it gives a ‘social’ touch to the service by allowing the user to share and promote content,  rate and comment on stories, add feeds and bookmarks, thereby making a customised ‘start’ page for life on the net. It is quite tempting, when compared to many other services. 🙂 But again, the lethargy factor is quite strong here. GMail and GTalk is so ingrained into my virtual life!!

    But in spite of all that, In.com has great potential as a horizontal portal and if they can continue the integration with their mass media properties and provide good service on the net, there’s no reason that they should not replace Rediff as India’s premium internet home brand, and set a benchmark on how the same entity can be a cutting edge player in traditional and new media.

    until next time, I’m in 🙂

  • Yodel Tales

    I’ve always wanted to catch a big web entity’s brand campaign. No, Zapak and Rediff are not included because those were more product feature led campaigns, mail or to a lesser extent-gaming (because that was more a concept). I did find a few instances of ambient advertising from Zapak interesting though. Unfortunately the same cannot be said of any rediff ads. It is disappointing because given Rediff’s eminent status among Indian sites, it would be great to see it create some brand ads based on the Indian internet scene, and to cement its position. Having said that, Rediff has created a lot of this equity already, so maybe they don’t feel a necessity.

    So, I was happy to note that Yahoo is planning a campaign in India (via Ideasmarkit), though again, its product centric- Yahoo Search. You can catch the TVC here. The idea is to show that sometimes every second matters, and Yahoo Search gets you results faster. Taking this further, Yahoo hopes this will make the audience choose them as the start page. This move is understandable, in a market dominated by Google’s search. But I’d say that Yahoo could’ve thought of a much more creative way to say this, than making fun of a man’s speech defect (stammering)

    That being said, Yahoo seems to be taking India very seriously, since they have even launched (in limited beta) a social network targeted at the college going audience in India – SpotM (via TechCrunch). It has SMS integration with anonymous chat that will let users correspond via SMS without revealing their phone number. The other key development is the testing (again limited beta) of a new front page. (via Contentsutra) I like the fact that Yahoo is acknowledging user needs – the fact that they are emphasising apps from Yahoo and from third parties, including a dashboard with a way to view email from multiple providers, also gives me a perspective on confidence in their own content and services. 

    So I’ll have to wait to see that brand campaign. I would’ve loved to see the Yahoo purple campaign in India. The idea lends itself to a variety of activities, most notably on Flickr. I wonder though what’s the status on the city specific sites that Yahoo came up with sometime back. I, for one, thought it was a pretty neat idea. Let’s hope Yahoo hits a purple patch in India soon. 🙂

    until next time, Y!