Here is a video interview I did today with AOL CEO Tim Armstrong in Germany–really!–where we both were appearing at a digital marketing conference.
In it, the former Google (GOOG) exec talked…
This is a list the 10 most popular mobile websites (in terms of unique visitors) in different countries according to Opera.
| INDIA | UNITED STATES | RUSSIA |
| 1. google.com 2. orkut.com 3…. |
From a 5-star jail to another made just for two prisoners, meet some of the most unique jails in the world.
Newspapers' Plea: We're Still Relevant!-Minyanville
Newspaper executives hope that keeping it local will keep them in business. “What newspapers do best is deliver the local perspective,” Susie Ellwood, chief executive officer of the Detroit Newspaper Group and the Detroit Media Partnership, said Tuesday during a panel discussion held as part of Advertising Week in New York. Making the news relevant to local readers means newspapers will continue to deliver key consumers to advertisers. But there are huge challenges ahead.The Pew Project for Excellence in Journalism reports that declines in print newspaper circulation, which began to accelerate in late 2003, deepened in 2008. Overall, newspaper circulation fell 4.6% daily and 4.8% in Sunday issues for the six-month period ended September 30, 2008.Still, total daily circulation was 48.4 million and Sunday circulation totaled 48.8 million, making newspapers an effective way to reach a broad audience in a single advertising buy. Page views of newspaper websites were up 25.2% in the survey period. On average, unduplicated Internet readers added 8.4% to a newspaper’s readership in its home market.
Like other media, the basic question for newspapers is: Who sees the ads and actually responds to them? Current measurement techniques are imprecise, but that may change as electronic delivery becomes more important to newspapers. E-readers, such as Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle DX will allow newspapers to know who sees the ads and to better measure response. Sony (SNE) offers a competing product and Apple (AAPL) is expected to launch its e-reader in 12 to 18 months. One disadvantage: So far, e-readers don’t offer color and advertisers may not be enthusiastic about making their pitch on a screen that has all the emotional snap of a monochromatic computer at the Department of Motor Vehicles.E-readers are often pitched as the next big thing, but it’s not yet clear that newspaper readers will adopt them in huge numbers. Newspapers, the original portable media, are cheap, easy to use, and not damaged if dropped. E-readers are expensive, fragile, and using one on a train or a bus in a large city may invite theft. Don Meek, president of Tribune 365, says some critics overlook a basic strength of newspapers: their ability to deliver ads or sample products to every residence in select areas, typically portions of upscale zip codes.
Local and mobile marketing firm AgendiZe has raised $1.3 million in funding from French investment firm Entrepreneur Venture. The Montreal-based company previously raised roughly $2.2 million…
This guest post was written by Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg. It is the first in a series of posts he’s writing about the decisions a young entrepreneur needs to make when she/he is first…
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more and more of these sites are appearing, its more validation that no matter what certain people might think. LOCAL is big and getting bigger…
PS>they could do better…
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actually they are more like Zvents, Zipscene and Zvents vs. the authors suggestions. The key are still for any of these services is content, enough of it, quality,…
We normally leave all-things-gadgetry to our sibling blog, Gizmodo, but office supplies are one territory we can’t resist. In the spirit of our Supercharge Your Workspace week, here’s a look…
Newspapers: What Would You Pay For?
There’s a bunch of news and interesting writing around the forthcoming efforts to charge for content (specifically online newspaper content). A recent study conducted by The American Press Institute and ITZ Publishing/Belden Interactive, involving 118 online interviews, finds various attitudes and strategies among the majority of news publications that are moving toward a paid model.
Here’s the top-line summary of the research from Media Buyer and Planner:
- 58% of publishers said they are considering charging for content, but 49% said they have no timetable in mind for how that will play out.
- 12% said they plan to charge for content by the end of the year, 18% said they will do so in the first quarter of 2010, and 10% said they would begin charging by the beginning of next summer
- 10% currently charge for some portion of the web content
The models under consideration:
- 38% say they will limit full access to stories to monthly subscribers
- 28% say they will likely offer monthly subscriptions as well as micropayments for individual articles
- 15% expect to offer monthly subscriptions, micropayments, and “day passes”
- 19% expect news articles to remain free but that they will produce content specifically for the website which would be behind a pay wall
- 9% say they may adopt a system which would make visitors pay separately for each story they want to read.
What these charts above say is the following:
- The mostly likely strategy is a free homepage with headlines and content snippets. Full article access would be paid
- Single article micropayments is the top monetization strategy
- Top objectives of paid strategy: 1) preserving print circulation, 2) new revenues
Allan Mutter focuses in on the contradictions and hidden pessimism of the report:
A bare 51% of the newspaper publishers in the United States believe they can charge successfully for access to their interactive content, according to a survey released today. The other 49% of publishers either fear that pay walls will fail or just aren’t sure.
The survey, which was conducted for the latest in the series of industry conferences this year studyng how to monetize the valuable content most newspapers give away for free, shows that publishers who are worried about charging for content have good reason to be concerned.
A great deal of the public discussion around pay walls in the newspaper industry, I believe, is to condition the public regarding the idea that they’ll soon have to pay for online news content. Most people will be reluctant to pay for what they have been able to receive for free but there might be success in holding on to print subscribers this way. If everyone goes to paid simultaneously it will have a greater chance of success.
PaidContent summarizes results from some of the newspaper sites that currently charge for online access. The conclusion is that they’re mediocre performers and subscriptions have been generally lackluster.
Online newspapers are going to have to balance circulation and ad sales because ad revenues will take a hit from a pay wall strategy like this. The NY Times abandoned TimesSelect because it calculated it could make more money from ads than subscriptions.
What would you do if you were running a traditional news organization? Would you go to a paid strategy? How would you execute?
