A few months back Edelman Public Relations and the blog search engine Technorati announced a partnership. The gist of it seems to be that Edelman gave Techorati some funding to fast track the expansion of Technorati into other countries.

Due to Edelman’s recent troubles, some folks are raising questions about the propriety of the deal.

Me? I’d prefer that a search engine I use not take money from a PR firm in the business of molding public opinion (note that this comes from someone who does interactive PR). People love Google because they trust it and it works. They trust that the results don’t contain any human bias.

By cutting this deal, Technorati opens itself up to criticism that they are tweaking their results to help Edelman and its clients. It rasies questions I wouldn’t want raised if I was Technorati.

What do you think?

For the first time (I think), a piece from our blog was highlighted on the news aggregator site, Techmeme. A lot of people criticize Techmeme as being elitist and thus boring, since it only tracks a small number of high profile blogs and online media outlets. Jeremy Zawodny sums up the criticism pretty well in this post:

“TechMeme is a useful service for many people. I used to be one of them. But I lost interest a while ago when it became far less useful for discovering stuff on that long tail of blogging. Anymore, a small subset of blogs (and increasingly non-blogs) hog much of the attention. That happens to be exactly what I’m not looking for most of the time.”

Personally, I find it reassuring that our blog is included since we are most decidedly NOT a part of any elite blogging club. It is also reassuring that the post that was highlighted from our blog was a substantive look at the magazine websites and not one of our more frivolous posts. If I had to pick a single post from the last month or two to highlight, it would have been that one.

Of course, it is a lot harder to criticism something when you are included in it….

Screenshot from Techmeme.

TBG has recently completed a research study called "Analyzing the Presence of Magazines on the Internet". In the wake of success surrounding our previous newspaper study, "The Use of the Internet by America's Newspapers ", we decided to conduct similar research on the magazine industry. Our study reviews the websites of the top 50 most circulated magazines in the United States and evaluates them based on the presence or absence of various Web 2.0 features. After finishing the research, it became clear that magazines are not making use of Web 2.0. Despite their failure in terms of Web features, it should be recognized that magazines have taken on a more effective general strategy than newspapers when it comes to the Internet. Instead of replicating printed content online, as newspapers do, magazines have made efforts to publish unique, Web specific, and easily digestible materials on their websites. In this way, magazines are using the Internet as a supplement to, rather than a replacement of, their printed publications. Magazine websites limit their article content and focus on pushing customers to purchasing printed subscriptions. Here are some key findings from our research:

• The most common online feature offered by magazines is RSS feeds (48 per cent). All of the RSS feeds offered by magazine websites are partial feeds. In addition, none of the magazines are including advertisements in their RSS feeds, while just 28 per cent of magazines divide their RSS feeds into different sections.

• Message boards/forums are offered by 46 per cent of magazine websites. This seemingly old-fashioned form of communication is extremely popular on magazine websites, particularly on the sites of women’s magazines.

• 38 per cent of the magazines require registration to view all of the site’s content. While this feature is only present on 23 per cent of the nation’s top 100 newspaper sites, it seems that magazines are still heavily reliant on website registration. It must be noted, however, that newspaper and magazine online registration is very different. The large majority of the magazines we investigated allow users to view article content free of registration. However, to participate in forums, registration is required. This seems to serve as a mechanism for monitoring content that people post on message boards rather than to collect demographic information, as is the case with newspapers. Thus, this 38 per cent figure largely represents magazines that require forum registration, not registration for the purpose of reading articles.

• 40 per cent of the magazines offer at least one reporter blog. Readers can comment on 17 of the 19 magazine blogs, while eight reporter blogs offer blogrolls, or external links to other blogs.

• Video is an offering on 34 per cent of websites.

• Just 14 per cent of websites use podcasts and bookmarking; eight percent allow comments on articles; and six per cent use tags.

You can read the report in its entirety here and view our data sheets here Please take a look and let us know what you think!

The Wall Street Journal ran an article entitled, “Is It News…or Is It an Ad? ” yesterday about the appearance of in-text ads on major news sites.  In-text ads appear as an underlined key word or phrase within an actual article.  If a user mouses-over it, an advertisement related to that phrase appears as a layer above the content, obscuring part of the text temporarily.

The article spends some time discussing the ethical concerns about tying advertising so closely to content and how this blurs the separation between editorial / news and advertising. Perhaps a more important point, one that was also included in the article, is that the contextual targeting of such advertisements can be way off the mark.

I personally think that the ethical dilemma is nearly moot regarding such ads.  The problem of contextual correctness is a potentially larger barrier to their success and a greater threat to personal sensitivities.  If an ad for, say, Viagra, appeared in an article about the Korean nuclear crisis in a sentence that reads, “DPRK’s impotent missile program has yet to produce an ICBM capable of reaching the mainland US” I think that neither Pfizer nor the readers of the article would appreciate it.

In my opinion, solving the context problem, which will occur eventually as natural language processing improves, will make in-text ads one of the most effective formats for advertisers and add value for consumers by placing the right product and information in front of them at the right time, and in the right place.

Steve Outing from Editor and Publisher wrote a good column yesterday about the progress newspapers have made in transitioning to online strategies.  He gave the industry a B- for their transition efforts thus far.

Here is a quick summary of his main criticisms of newspaper websites, all of which I agree with:

• Not enough are using video.  Based on our study, 61 of the top 100 newspapers offer video on their websites.  That number seems ok, but the truth is that many newspapers offer video as an afterthought.  It is rarely a fundamental part of the overall strategy.
• Better blogging still needed.  Newspapers are blogging (80 of the top 100 according to our research), but Outing believes papers should focus more on breaking news in their blog strategies.
• Classifieds still stink.  Outing rightly points out that classified ad sections at newspapers are stuck in the 1990s.
• Not enough interactivity.  In my opinion (and Outings), this is the big one.  In a nutshell, newspapers need to use their website to foster two way communication between readers and journalists.

Personally, I’d give the industry a C and add the following as additional areas of improvement:

• Work with your local blogging/podcasting/vlogging community.  Newspapers need to figure out ways to effectively incorporate user generated content into their offerings.
• Focus on local and special interest content.  Too many website emphasize generic national and international AP content that folks can read anywhere.  Newspaper should highlight their own original content - that is where they add value online.
• Give users different ways to discover site content.  Let users view your homepage based on the most viewed on content in addition to the traditional editorial view. 

You can read Outing’s piece here. 

[Via Techmeme]

Jeff Jarvis points to an interesting post by Chris Riley that compares the editor-controlled content on the BBC homepage to the content on the BBC Most Popular Now page, which is determined by usage patterns of site visitors. He found editors and users were in synch in the stories they chose 37% of the time.

Reading this reminded me to write a about the Most Popular feature on the New York Time’s website. I am not a voracious reader of the New York Times but like to check in on it every few days. I do this not to catch up on the “latest news” so much as to read some of the great long form pieces they churn out on a regular basis. I read the Times more like a magazine than a newspaper.

The Most Popular tool is a great way for me to pretty quickly find the most interesting articles to read. Look at some of the stories they are highlighting today:

• Gilded Paychecks: Lure of Great Wealth Affects Career Choices - A story about how professionals such as doctors are pursuing profitable alternative career options.
• What It Takes to Make a Student - A long piece that looks at whether “teaching poor children to act more like middle-class children help close the education gap.”
• Holiday Books: 100 Notable Books of the Year - Great list of the best books so far this year.
• One Spoonful at a Time - A very moving article about a mother’s struggle to get her anorexic daughter healthy.
• ‘Yours Truly,’ the E-Variations - Article about the hidden meaning of sign offs in email messages.

To me, the Times homepage is less interesting. It features links to articles about the big international news stories the day (which I’ve already heard about elsewhere), a bunch of business stories and some regional stories I’m not interested in since I’m in DC.

The Most Popular feature isn’t perfect - there isn’t an RSS feed to subscribe to or a way to view the most popular stories by topic (I’d love to drill down further). But for me it is a great way to quickly discover interesting Times stories I would probably have missed otherwise. The fact is the readers of the the Times are pretty smart folks and do a great job of identifying interesting content.

On Friday, our pro-bono client the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project (MAIP) launched a redesigned and revamped version of its website, www.exonerate.org.  MAIP is a member of a network of non-profits around the country that works to provide legal services for people wrongly imprisoned for crimes they did not commit.  The Project uses DNA evidence to exonerate and clear the names of people that are victims of shortcomings of the US judicial system. 

By embarking on a new Web program, MAIP hopes to spread awareness of DNA exonerations and garner support from interested lawyers, students, volunteers and professionals.  To do this, MAIP has integrated a blog, online volunteer and contribution forms, and methods for supporters to take action on behalf of the project via the Web.  The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project depends on the assistance of volunteer students and lawyers, so be sure to check out their website and consider lending a helping hand. 

Some interesting tidbits about the MAIP site:

• Our design and programming teams worked together to build the site entirely in WordPress. One of the problems MAIP had with their past website was that content became outdated and links to news stories died as the years passed.  We tried to battle this problem by setting up the Innocence Project so that they can control what content appears on their site and develop the ability to change their website as they see fit.
• The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project plans to communicate with volunteers and supporters via their blog.  Check this site for updates on exonerations, case information, and guest blog entries from board members or people the project has helped in the past.

We wish the folks over at the Mid Atlantic Innocence Project the best of luck with their online program–they are a great group of people who are doing exceptional work for those who need help. 

As a designer, I’ve struggled as how to best contribute to our blog. Most web design articles speak to people who aren’t designers and tend to focus on the obvious. I don’t intend to add to that.

So I decided to attempt a redesign of the USA Today homepage as companion piece to our recommendations to the newspaper industry. Senior designer Jei Park and I sat down and figured if we’re going to talk the talk, we might as well start walking as well. A couple of notes:

(1) In putting this together, we included every element of the current USA Today site. We wanted to come up with something that could actually be implemented, not something so conceptual that it could never see the light of day. In other words, we didn’t take the easy way out.

(2) We chose USA Today because it is the most circulated paper in the country, and which has had the same design for a couple of years. The point is to show what we think these things should look like. As a designer, the last thing I’m interested in is criticizing the work of other designers. That isn’t the point here.

(3) We want to hear your thoughts. If you like it, say so. If you hate it, say so. If you have changes you’d like to see, say so. If you think we’ve missed something, say so. We intend to act on the feedback and come up with a revised version in the next few weeks that takes into account what you have to say. The goal of this is to start a conversation about what newspaper websites should look like.

The design process almost always happens behind closed doors. Let’s see what happens when we get lots of good feedback from cross section of smart people. Click here or on the image above to see the full view. You can read Todd’s explanation of the features presented here. Tell us what you think.

I found an interesting tidbit of information today on the Magazine Publishers of America (MPA) website, which provides circulation trend data and marketing information for magazine publishers and advertisers.

MPA provides a list of 36 magazines that have active profiles on MySpace. Basically, these profiles give magazines an outlet for reaching out to tech-minded teens and young people on a personal level.

The MySpace pages of these magazines usually consist of a blog, a profile picture that depicts the most recent magazine cover, video content, featured music, and LOTS of comments. For example, on the Cosmopolitan and Maxim pages, there are over 20,000 and 46,000 friends listed, respectively. These magazines and others have created huge online communities not on their official websites, but on their MySpace pages.

Some of the most developed of the MySpace magazine pages are the pages for Teen Magazines, like CosmoGirl and Seventeen. These sites have links to interactive content on their regular homepages, and feature quizzes and games to engage their teen MySpace audiences.

In a report by Kat Haddon, “A Changing Business Model for a Virtual Phenomenon“, which is featured on the MPA website, the author gives a detailed explanation of the history of MySpace as well as suggestions for ways in which MySpace and other social networking sites can turn their huge audiences into profitable business models. Kat finishes her report with the following quote:

We trust the media we know, and we explore the media we don’t know. But with all our focus on new media, we seem to be forgetting the most important medium: people. Real-life community is an integral part of MySpace’s new proposed business model, because it has the potential to open doors for the future of marketing by bringing us back to real-life relationships.

It seems like magazines understand that the structure of news and media is changing, and some are trying to take advantage of this shift by offering online supplements to their printed content. While newspaper websites tend to be redundant when compared to their printed versions and other news sites, magazines sites supplement their print editions with original content on the Internet. What I’ve noticed from conducting my current research about magazine sites is that while the homepages of magazines don’t offer a lot of geeky Web 2.0 features, they have created a significant amount of content that is easily digestible and fits the format of reading on the Web. I think the presence of magazine MySpace pages is a great example of how old media can reach out to new media audiences without expending a lot of cash or effort.

Here is a list of the magazine MySpace pages features on the MPA website: (more…)

There is an interesting conversation taking place over in the United Kingdom about the value of newspaper blogs. Andrew Grant-Adamson, a journalism professor at the University of Westminster, started the debate with this a post asking “What is the Purpose of Newspaper blogs?”

Adamson-Grant followed up by looking up the Technorati rank of the blogs for two of the UK’s largest newspapers (the Times and the Telegraph). None of the blogs at these two papers ranked particularly high in Technorati (meaning not that many sites link to them). To put it in perspective, our blog, The Bivings Report was listed higher in the Technorati rankings than any of the UK newspaper blogs.

If you concede that the Technorati rankings are an accurate measure of traffic and influence (which is highly debatable), does that mean these newspaper blogs are failures? And if traffic isn’t the goal, what is?

Robin Hamman, who heads up the blog program for the BBC, has written a great post outlining reasons for newspapers to blog beyond traffic. He wrote another good post on the subject today.

I won’t write too much on this since I pretty much agree with Robin’s takes (1 and 2).

But I will add that if the goal of newspaper blogs is solely to generate more page views (and thus ad revenue), the ones I’ve read are going about it the wrong way. For that to work, you’ve got to follow the Gawker/Weblogs Inc. model. That means you’ve got to actually break news on your blog and commit to posting 3-4 entries a day, every day.

If it’s not a pure page view play, I think the Malcolm Gladwell model is a great one to look at. Gladwell uses his blog to expand on his New Yorker pieces and write the occasional rant. He doesn’t post that often, but when he does it is always interesting.

I suspect most newspapers are aiming for the Gladwell approach, in which case traffic is certainly important.  But more important is the extra value brought to engaged readers and to the journalist/bloggers themselves.

Andrew and I spent a couple of hours today at a panel discussion on “Trends in Political Blogging” hosted by Edelman and the Institute for Politics, Democacy and the Internet. Here are some semi-coherent thoughts from the event:

(1) Three representatives from Wal-Mart Watch (probably GWU student volunteers) were passing out flyers at the event about the whole Wal-Mart/Edelman fake blog fiasco from a few months back. This doesn’t seem to be going away.

(2) The panel started out by summarizing some new blog stats from a survey performed by StrategyOne, the research arm of Edelman. The survey, entitled “Blog Readership in the USA,” was conducted in September (I can’t find a link). Here were the parts of the study I found interesting:

• 27% of adult Americans read blogs once a week (that is 60,193,913 people for the math majors).
• 34% of American Influentials* read blogs once a week.
• 28% of Americans that read blogs have taken a public action as a result of something they read on a blog (16,854,295 people).
• 49% of American Influentials have taken action due to something they read on a blog.
• People who read blogs are more likely to be politically active (sign petitions, attend public meeting, write a politician, etc.).

*Influentials are losely defined (by me) as the 10% of society that drive trends.

These stats confirm what anyone reading this already knows innately - that blogs can lead people to take action and that the people reading and writing blogs tend to be more influential and publicly active than those that don’t. Still, it is good to have more ammunition.

(3) The panel itself was pretty much what you would expect from one of these things (lots of good anecdotes but nothing mind blowing). Some tidbits:

• I enjoyed hearing Bill Allison from the Sunlight Foundation talk about the efforts of his organization to use the Internet to clean up government. They are doing good work.
• Jacki Schechner from CNN’s Situation Room said that CNN listens to blogs and adjusts accordingly. She said CNN had changed programming after being heavily criticized by bloggers for seemingly only covering stories about “missing white women.” She also emphasized that blogs can make news without the Mainstream Media and that in some ways her job was simply to amplify and expand on stories already reported on in the blogosphere.
• Robert Moran from StrategyOne mentioned that the rise of political blogs is good for conservative and liberal politicians but bad for moderate candidates in both parties, since swing voters are not really participating. He thinks blogs can potentially play a big role in a close Presidential primary that is largely decided by Party activists, as opposed to a general election decided a larger group of folks. A great point.

Anyway, the panel got my brainwaves moving a bit, which is all you can really expect from one of these things.

While doing some new research today, I discovered a few websites with some interesting features.

Sports Illustrated’s website has a function that I’ve recently seen popping up on the Web on rare news sites, such as the Washington Post. In the set of tools provided for each article, the site gives you the option to “facebook” an article. This enables you to add the article link directly to your facebook profile and share it with all of your friends. I think this is a great idea. Personally, I have not begun using external bookmarking/news sites such as del.icio.us and Digg simply because I think they’re a little inconvenient. To me, a useful Web feature is something that combines new content with my already-existing online routine. Using a social bookmarking site would require me to set up a whole new account and would add another website to the list of URLs I check every day. This ability to “facebook” an article, however, lets me send new content to a site I already am in the habit of checking. Maybe this is just laziness on my part, but sometimes I feel like these news aggregator sites (and other social networking sites, as well) add more work to my Web routine. This “facebooking” option gets rid of that extra step.

This appears to be one of many new Facebook widgets and applications recently added to the social networking site (GigaOm has a post about it here). These widgets are extremely diverse in nature, and range from InTunes, which allows you to share playlists and see what music your friends are listening to, to the FBook Birthday Exporter, which allows you to export all your friends birthdays to a CSV file. There are 6 pages of random kinds of plugins, some of which are very creative: creating friend maps, rating people’s profile pictures, trading books, finding great local restaurants, tracking stuff you’ve lent out to friends, and coordinating vacations with friends can now all be done through Facebook. Check them all out here.

Another feature I discovered is on the US News & World Report site. If you recall our newspaper study, I mentioned in the research that the Washington Post has a “Who’s Blogging?” function, which works with Technorati to feature popular bloggers on the Post site that have linked to a Post article in a blog entry. US News & World Report has a similar function, the “Blogosphere Snapshot”. This type of cooperation with bloggers is a great way to encourage discussion on a news site without actually allowing people to comment on articles. It may also add to a news site’s traffic by encouraging bloggers to link to a site with a “Blogging Snapshot” rather than to a website that does not offer this feature.

Anyway, this is nothing ground-breaking, but I’ve seen so many awful newspaper sites lately that I got excited when I found a couple of publications that seem to be doing their Web strategies correctly.

The DC Examiner has an article this morning about the use of blogs by Washington-DC based non-profits. The article highlights the blogging efforts of our client, the Washington Area Women’s Foundation, and features a quote from me as well.

I’m of the opinion blogging is a no brainer for non-profits:

• It’s inexpensive. You can get a basic blog for free. And it is really not that expensive to hire a professional (like us) to put together a custom blog for you and help you get the most out of it..
• It’s easy to do. Technology has gotten to the point where anyone with basic computer skills can post. So anyone in your organization can quickly write posts.
• It’s a great way to tell a story. Many non-profits are doing great work, but nobody knows about it. Blogging is a great way to share your triumphs and struggles with the world.  You’ll reach people you wouldn’t have reached otherwise.
• It’s a great way to raise money. If your blog is done well, people will read it and more people will learn about your organization. And if they believe in what you are doing, they’ll make donations.

Now that this year's Senate races are over, I wanted to take a quick look and see how our political bloggers fared in the election.  It turns out that out of the 26 total campaign blogs, 13 were for winning candidates and 13 were for losing candidates.  This factoid surprised me because I expected the Internet would play a more effectual role in this cycle's elections.  

Joe Lieberman (I, CT), who recently defeated democratic candidate Ned Lamont and his netroots, recently described his triumph as a "victory of the mainstream over the extreme".  This statement, along with his explanation of political bloggers, appeared in a November 9 article in the Hartford Courant:

In response to a question, he had trouble describing how the energy exhibited by the bloggers and other Lamont supporters might contribute to politics. He saw many of them as 'destructive.' 'There's too much venom in our politics. There's too much hatred,' Lieberman said, adding that his comment applied to both parties.  

 

We’ve spent some time here encouraging folks to move away from a generalized approach to content and toward niche content.

Jeff Jarvis just wrote a post about the struggles Time Magazine is having with its generalized content approach. Here’s a key snippet:

“I think that general-interest magazines may well be fated to fade away. General-interest anything is probably cursed. For the truth is that interest never was as general as editors and publishers thought it was, back in the mass-media age. Old media just assumed we were interested in what they told us to be interested in. But we weren’t. We’re proving that with every new choice the internet enables.

Yet special-interest magazines — community magazines, to put it another way — have a brighter prospect — if they understand how to enable that community.”

Anyway, it’s a great post. Anyone interested in the future of magazines (or media in general) should read it.