Robert Niles: September 2011 archive
Looking to increase content sales and revenue? Debundling will be the hot growth market
September 27, 2011
Imagine you're going shopping.You've found just the sweater you want. It's the perfect style, color and size. But you can't buy it. It's not that you lack the money - you've got plenty. (Hey, I know I'm writing for journalists here, but go with me on the hypothetical, okay?) The store won't sell it to you - unless you also buy a pair of pants, four pairs of socks, a dress shirt, a blouse, a pair of cowboy boots and some stilettos, too.
Not into clothes? Okay, we're online journalists, so let's go shopping for hardware, instead.
You've found a sweet Macbook Air, with just the specs you want. But when you go to check out, you find that in order to get the Macbook, you'll also have to buy a Sony Vaio, an HP tower, a 17-inch monitor, four mice (two USB and two wired) and an old Zip drive, too.
Stinks, doesn't it?
That's the way I feel when I consider breaking down and ordering cable TV after not having it for more than a decade. Sure, I'd like to watch The Daily Show and the Colbert Report now and then without waiting until the next morning. But I don't want to pay for hundreds of channels just to get those two shows on Comedy Central, BBC America, Current, IndyCar races, Northwestern Wildcat games and whatever Colts and Broncos games are on ESPN or the NFL Network.
That's also the way I feel when I hit a newspaper paywall when I just want to read a story a friend posted to Facebook or Twitter. Why should I pay for a bunch of stuff I don't want, just to get a few things I do?
Bundling is the sales model for gatekeepers. Control the pinch point connecting content with the audience and you can profit from both sides - content providers pay you (or substantially discount their price) to get access to your audience and the audience pays you (or watches your ads) to get access to the content they want.
So long as you control the only road between content and audience, you're golden.
Of course, gatekeepers don't control media anymore, do they?
ESPN might have the legal right to restrict viewership of Monday Night Football to subscribers of cable providers that carry the network. But a darknet of Slingboxes and offshore video servers allows anyone with some search skills and a little patience to watch the game without paying for cable. If the commercial market won't provide the options people want, the pirate market will.
The pirate market vanishes (or, at least, diminishes greatly) when the alternative people want legally appears. Forget for a moment what iTunes did to the mall record store. Let's not forget what it did to darknet music sharing services, too.
Want to make money from content online? Position yourself to deliver the unbundled content that consumers want. More...
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The power behind the changes at Facebook, and what it means for news publishers
September 23, 2011
The new version of Facebook is:a) a powerful upgrade that gives users the ability to fine-tune their news feed, seeing only the updates they care about, and finally muting the noise from friends with whom they really aren't that close.
b) a classic example of developers over-thinking their product, creating an incomprehensible jumble of updates in no apparent order, instead of the simple stream of posts we were used to seeing on the Facebook home page.
The correct answer (IMHO) is, c) both.
Facebook's changes to its users' front pages illustrates a classic developers' dilemma: How do you balance power with simplicity in an application? Facebook's added plenty of new features in this update, empowering users to take more control of the way news from friends and followed pages is displayed. But in doing so, Facebook's created default settings that are leaving too many of its users confused, frustrated and angry. (Thursday night Facebook addressed some of those criticisms by adding a link to jump down to the most recent stories, bypassing Facebook's selection of the "top stories.")
All this is before the public launch of its new Timeline feature for users' profile pages, now available to developers and select few other Facebook users.
Count me among the Facebook users initially ticked off by the changes. After confronting the unholy mess of my Facebook feed, I tweeted: "I like Twitter because, unlike FB and G+, it shows me all the updates from those I follow, in simple chronological order. Is that so hard?"
But curiosity (or masochism) kicked in and I decided to poke around the "new" Facebook. I soon discovered that I could alter the "weight" that Facebook gave to posts from each of my friends, choosing to get "All Updates," "Most Updates" or "Only Important" updates from each friend. I also can opt out of getting various types of updates from those friends, including their comments and likes on other posts.
Unfortunately, the user interface to make these changes stinks. More...
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COPPA: What happens when a generation ignores a law?
September 20, 2011
The United States Federal Trade Commission is seeking public comment on amendments to its rule implementing the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act [COPPA]. While, as a website publisher and a parent, I'd love to see some changes to COPPA, the FTC's proposals don't come close to level of reform this law needs.If you're not connected with the legal side of your news website, here's a reminder about what COPPA is, from the FTC:
The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requires that operators of websites or online services directed to children under 13, or those that have actual knowledge that they are collecting personal information from children under 13, obtain verifiable consent from parents before collecting, using, or disclosing such information from children. The FTC's Rule implementing the COPPA statute became effective in 2000.
Under FTC's current rules for COPPA, website publishers must get offline consent from a parent before collecting any personal identification information from a visitor under age 13. Getting offline consent, such as a written or faxed letter, then merging it with an online record, has proven to be such a hassle that most websites now simple bar registration to anyone under age 13. That's been the policy at my websites ever since COPPA went into effect, and it's the policy at major social media sites such as Facebook.
The proposed amendments to the FTC's COPPA rule are intended to make obtaining parental consent easier. But some of the FTC's proposed "solutions" - including a live videoconference with a parent - won't convince any website publishers to open registration to preteens. Like the old requirements, they're just too labor-intensive for the highly automated world of online publishing.
As a parent, I understand the intention behind COPPA. Many parents don't want their kids wandering the Internet unsupervised. But by effectively closing the social Web to preteens, COPPA has had the unintended consequence instead of simply encouraging kids to break the law. More...
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Five myths I hope you don't hear at ONA 2011
September 16, 2011
Here are a few of the industry myths that I hope you will not hear during the Online News Association conference in Boston next week. The ONA's done a good job over the years of inviting more speakers and panelists who are grounded in "real Web" experience, minimizing the number of speaking slots for print-side executives who'd rather pine for the days of their lost monopolies. Still, people who look at the Internet through an opaque sheet of newsprint still show up at ONA, and other industry conferences. These are a few of their favorite lines, ones that I invite you to ignore, or, if you're looking for some fun, to challenge.Myth 1: You can't support a publication on online advertising revenue.
When you hear this line, here's what the speaker really is saying: "I can't support my publication on my online advertising revenue." Just because one manager hasn't figured it out doesn't mean that the solution doesn't exist. If you want to seek foundation support, great. Go for it. But don't fool yourself for a moment into believing that "non profit" means "no money worries." Non-profit is a tax status, not a business model. You'll still need to find sources of income, and in the non-profit world those sources come with many more strings attached than advertising contracts have.
Myth 1 is often followed in the same comment by Myth 1.a: You can't make money on AdSense. Again, what the speaker is really saying is: "I can't make money on AdSense." People who say this typically make the lazy mistake of thinking that AdSense provides incremental revenue each time it displays on a website, so they stick it into every ad slot on the site they can't sell themselves.
Well, if your local or small-scale advertisers didn't want to pay to deliver their message on a page, what makes you think that the big industry pros who are placing multi-million-dollar AdWords campaigns want any part of those pages, either? Slapping ads on pages that don't convert causes Google to cut your payment on pages that do. Adding extra AdSense slots to your site can actually decrease your revenue. The key to AdSense is to limit its deployment to pages that will attract interested readers who will click through to big-dollar advertisers. Never use AdSense as remnant inventory. Use it as a tool to attract ads to pages of interest to national and global advertisers you can't reach with your local sales staff.
Myth 2: Readers have short attention spans, so you must break up your content.
Readers only appear to have short attention spans because the media revolutions of the 20th and 21st centuries have left them bombarded with content options. They must make decisions within split seconds about which content to read or watch and which to ignore. More...
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Apps vs. eBooks: Where can newsrooms and journalists make the most money?
September 13, 2011
How much time do you or your news organization spend developing apps? What's your return on that investment, and by that I mean - how much money are you making on app sales and from direct advertising on those app platforms?Now, how much are you spending on developing eBooks for your newsroom content? I'd be surprised to find a newsroom that's spending even half of what its devoting to app development on eBooks. In fact, I have yet to find a major newsroom that devoted more than a token amount of time and money to eBook development. (If you're in newsroom that is spending time building eBooks, please let me know. I'd love to tell your story on OJR.)
Here's why you should consider amplifying your investment in eBook development. Here are the prices of the top 20 paid apps in the iOS app store, as of last night:
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$2.99
$0.99
$0.99
$1.99
$1.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
$0.99
Now, here are the prices of the top 20 paid eBooks in Apple's iBooks store, for comparison:
$9.99
$14.99
$12.99
$2.99
$12.99
$12.99
$0.99
$9.99
$12.99
$1.99
$12.99
$11.99
$14.99
$14.99
$12.99
$3.99
$14.99
$9.99
$12.99
$14.99
In which market would you rather try to make money? More...
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The news entrepreneur's dilemma: Which comes first, the money or the audience?
September 9, 2011
Reporters who would like to escape the annual threat of newsroom layoffs often ask me how they can get started running their own news websites.They're not so much worried about the technical steps in starting a website business. And the journalism doesn't bother them one bit. What concerns them is the money.
"How can I raise enough money to start my own website when I don't have a website yet?"
It's the chicken and the egg question for the digital age. Which comes first - the money or the website?
Here's the answer - the audience.
Let's remember what people are paying for when they fund a publication. It's not the wonderful journalism or your personal awesomeness as a human being. They're paying for the opportunity to reach your readers. And that's true for non-profit funders and as well as for-profit advertisers. A non-profit has no interest in funding great journalism that no one reads and never makes a difference in any community.
So, as always, it all remains about the audience. Show people with money that you have an audience they wish to reach - and they'll show you their money. Don't, and they won't. More...
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Which social media tool is the right one for PR professionals?
September 6, 2011
This past week, an email from a media relations rep got me thinking again about the ways that social media is changing how journalists and PR people work together.The email announced plans for a new ride at a theme park (which is one of the beats I cover on my personal websites). Now that's all good, except that the park had posted the same announcement on its Facebook site three hours earlier.
Perhaps the park had sent the email at the same time as the Facebook announcement - email delivery is not instantaneous. But media professionals ought to know that by now. Getting the email hours after I'd posted my own blog story about the announcement made me feel like the PR rep had wasted his time, and a little bit of mine, as well.
Maybe the company was trying to reach reporters who don't follow the park's Facebook feed. But anyone who covers a beat ought to be following the Facebook and Twitter pages of the major players on that beat. The email blast would be for reporters with a more casual relationship with the park - people who might be convinced to write about it from time to time, but who don't actively cover it. That email wouldn't - and shouldn't - be for me.
All this points out how the presence of social media on the scene can change the way that media professionals operate.
Facebook, Twitter and websites allow news sources to communicate directly to the public. But working with news reporters allows sources to connect to a broader audiences - ones beyond those individuals so dedicated to hearing the business's message that they 'Like' a Facebook page or bookmark a website. After all, businesses need to grow the customer base, and ignoring news publications would limit their ability to do that.
So we, journalists, still matter. Which is nice.
But when a business decides to break news via social media, that ought to change the way that the business communicates with professional media, too. PR pros ought to consider the strengths of various media of communication, and tailor their messages within each of those media.
The email blast to everyone on your contact list really isn't the best use of that medium anymore (if it ever was). Use email for non-instant communication - never for breaking news. A smarter use of email in this case would have been to give beat reporters a heads-up that the Facebook announcement was coming, telling us the specific time of the announcement and an idea what to expect. Then, the park could follow up with another email to the other reporters, the ones who might write about the announcement, but who wouldn't blog it right away like I and others on the theme park beat did.
Based on this and many other experiences interacting with media relations personnel, here is one reporter's thoughts on the value of various communications media to PR pros. More...
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How evolution works, and why that matters to journalists
September 2, 2011
Many of us have talked about the evolution of the news industry in the Internet era. But what do we mean by that?I can't speak for others in the field, but when I talk about news industry evolution, I'm talking about a version of the same evolutionary process that occurs in nature. And the best description of that process I've found is in Carl Sagan's delightful book, "Cosmos." Sagan writes about the Heike Crab from the Japanese Inland Sea, crabs with patterns on their carapace that look very much like a samurai warrior.
"Suppose that, by chance, among the distant relatives of this crab, one arose with a pattern that resembled, even slightly, a human face. …Fishermen may have been reluctant to eat such a crab. In throwing it back, they set in motion an evolutionary process: if you are a crab and your carapace is ordinary, humans will eat you. Your line will leave fewer descendants. If your carapace looks a little like a human face, they will throw you back. You will leave more descendants. …As the generations passed, of crabs and fishermen alike, the crabs with patterns that most resembled a samurai face survived preferentially until eventually there was produced not just a human face, not just a Japanese face, but the visage of a fierce and scowling samurai. All this has nothing to do with what the crabs want. Selection is imposed from the outside. The more you look like a samurai, the better your chances for survival. Eventually, there come to be a great many samurai crabs." ["Cosmos," p. 26]
Sagan described a process of artificial selection, one guided by the decisions of mankind. Natural selection happens without human input and can take millions of years to change a species. But artificial selection can change a species within relatively few generations. (Sagan cites the domestication of animals as examples.)
Still, even that is a long process when compared with a single human lifetime. Contrary to Republican belief, evolution doesn't mean that creatures instantly mutate from one species into another. This takes time. More...
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