Boycott Technorati?
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?
Magazine Study on Techmeme
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.
The Presence of Magazines on the Internet
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!
In-Text Ads – Ensuring Contextual Appropriateness
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.
Editor and Publisher Gives Newspaper Websites a B-
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.