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The future of magazines

There has been a great deal of chat recently about how newspapers and magazines can upset the 'economy of free' model and start charging for their content. Of course, this has been a hot topic for years but the meteroic rise in accessing such content from mobile devices maybe gives the debate a different twist.

This film from Time Inc (with the Wonder Factory) shows how Sport Illustrated Magazine could look if it was experienced through a mobile tablet device. There is nothing particularly revolutionary here (sound with pictures, video in content, rich advertising, sharing content with friends, an interactive partner to TV viewing) but it seems sensible and realistic. It also makes you realise how a mobile tablet device would bridge the gap nicely between a smart-phone and a laptop for consuming longer-form content like digital magazines or newspapers.

However, It will be interesting to see whether the publishing industries can take advantage of innovation in mobile devices and through content-delivery platforms to convince consumers to put their hands in their pockets.

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State of our Blog: November 2009

:: By Michael E. Rubin, Social Marketing Manager

At the beginning of every month, I like to post the "State of our Blog" and share some of our internal stats. We can't share everything, of course, but there's enough here to salivate any of you metrics-minded visitors.

Other Relevant Data for November 2009:
Total Posts: 18
Total Comments: 9
Average Page Views per post: 211.8 (an 11% increase from October 2009)
Average Comments per post: 0.6

More about Michael:
Twitter: @merubin
LinkedIn: Michael E. Rubin 

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Video Soon to be No. 1 Real Estate Marketing Tool

via smallbusinesssem.com

Video will soon surpass photos as the most sought after media in real estate search. Not only do we recommend using video to showcase properties we think agents *NEED* to start a weekly podcast showing off their current properties and target that podcast at potential buyers

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AOL's Content Factory: Cutting Edge or Crossing the Line?

"Content is the one area on the Web that hasn't seen the full potential. Hopefully, we will spark a revolution of people doing content at a different scale," says [AOL's] Mr. [Tim] Armstrong, a former advertising executive at Google.

AOL is betting it can reinvent itself with a numbers-driven approach to developing content, based on what Web-search and other data tell it is most likely to attract audiences and sponsors.

wsj.com

As more of AOL's content play is revealed, it appears that Tim Armstrong's strategy is focused on leveraging actionable data from search and ad sales to create pre-sponsored content channels via low-cost freelancers and an editing staff directed at least in part by algorithms. Yes, it sounds a little '1984,' but the one discussion we should not have is, "Should this or shouldn't this be?"  The fact of the matter is ... it is.

And even if we don't agree with the entire approach, there are elements of this plan that could allow traditional media companies to add more value to their web content that, as of yet, has not been able to replace the declining revenue of its offline properties. 

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Alertbox: Content consumption on the web vs. TV, what to consider

Another awesome article form Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, especially the stats on how many decisions we make online vs. when watching TV which has serious implications for online advertising and website usability.

Today, of course, we're in the opposite scenario: everything we write competes with trillions of Web pages, all a few clicks away. As a result, most people actually read very few words on the Web.

The velocity of media consumption has increased dramatically. Readers no longer linger over lovingly described passages detailing a lord's style of dress. They click here, they click there, they click everywhere. But they don't stay.

People's consumption of print media is different than their use of websites, leading to the many differences in designing for print versus the Web.

Compared to TV, the Web also has a much finer granularity of user control:

When watching TV, you make one decision every 30–120 minutes: pick a show or movie to watch, and then it's lean-back time. Ah, easy.

When surfing the Web, you make a decision every 10–120 seconds: leave or stay on this page; leave or stay on this site. Where to click now? Where to click next? A bit stressful.

Adding up all these differences explains the fast pace of Web use: the velocity is much higher than we see for TV use.

Read the original Alertbox article here
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/media-velocity.html

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The New Allison Weiss Album - Was Right All Along

Ever since i got onto tumblr and found out about allison weiss from the default music player on the test theme pages (great exposure btw to get featured like that) i have loved her music, passion and small content producer spirit that she has. she really is a one woman army and i love her track 'i'm ready' from one of her previous albums. she has the new album out now 'was right all along' and i'm looking forward to picking that up when i have the fundage to grab it!

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Agile, content management and content strategy

I attended some interesting presentations and a round table on agile web content management this morning, run by Vyre and featuring speakers from Gartner, the National Trust and Indigo Blue.

  I'd never heard of agile before I started at uSwitch, so it was good to hear other people singing its praises, just as all the developers I work with do.

  During the round table, we were asked to identify whether we saw ourselves as 'business' or 'IT', which I thought was interesting bearing in mind that at work we've been trying to break down that distinction, under the tongue-in-cheek banner of 'one team one dream'. I think it's a good idea to try to get away from that division and incorporate everyone who's working on the same project into one workflow, because after all, we're all trying to get to the same end goal.

  It was also interesting to hear someone ask for opinions about where the content team should sit within their business. It's a tough one, because I feel like content exists somewhere inbetween marketing, commercial, search and development. I do think it can be helpful to have content in the middle of it all, actually, rather than sitting in one specific area, although maybe there is a danger of losing sight of an overall content strategy by falling into the role of a support act for for other areas around the business. 

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Eye-Gouge Aftermath Shows How Social Media is Changing Sports

:: By Lauren Adduci, Client Strategist

On the afternoon of Oct. 31, college sports fan Shawn Walsh noticed an attempted eye-gouging of Georgia's Washaun Ealey by Florida's Brandon Spikes. This particular act had upset Shawn since he felt the refs had not caught it and the announcers had failed to mention it.  Instead of sitting back and letting the incident pass with just a few grumblings, Shawn took action. He rewound it, recorded it and uploaded it to Twitter.

• Shawn the tweeted a link to the video directly to ESPN's Mark Schlabach and Stewart Mandel (see screenshot above).
• Within three hours, the video received more than a 1,000 views and made its way to Twitter's “Currently Popular Twitvids.”
• The video views only grew from there (garnering more than 19,000 views) and helped bring national attention to the act.
• More than 30 videos of the play eventually ended up on YouTube, but it was Twitter that had greatly accelerated the speed from which word of mouth spread.
• Two days later Spikes was suspended.

Spike's suspension is proof that with the rise of social media, fans are becoming empowered. “Fans always believed they were part of the process, but now with new media they are part of the process," said David Carter, executive director of the USC Sports Business Institute in a Sports Illustrated article about the incident. "They've gone from being engaged by face painting and supporting their team to being influential activists in getting the word out not just about what's going on with their team, but also with rival teams."

"Social Media is Today's Instant Replay"
While the possibility of becoming influential activists can be exhilarating for fans, it can become difficult for schools and conferences, since this can turn into a PR nightmare. "Social media is today's instant replay," said Kathleen Hessert, a media-training consultant whose company, Sports Media Challenge, counts the ACC, Conference USA and the Big Ten Network among its clients. "If something wrong happens and blows over, an entity like a conference or school can say 'We'll deal with it quietly.' But with social media, it's becomes almost impossible. When fans' voices become so loud the entities can't ignore it, it provides a different component to their decision-making."

Bottom Line
By this time next season, most schools and conferences likely will have staffers fully dedicated to monitoring social media during and after games to defuse potentially toxic situations. At least, that's what SEC associate commissioner Charles Bloom envisions: "I could see having a person on social media advocating the positive points of what went on in that game, and seeing what other people are posting and defending your program."

Learn More
Shawn Walsh's original Tweet
Related Sports Illustrated article

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Is Bing's content preview a bad thing?

I’ve just seen a demo of some of the new features of Bing, and the one thing that the people in the room seemed most interested by was the content previewer, which essentially scrapes some of the content from a page that comes up in search results and allows you to read it before you click through, as you can see here:

 

 

 

From a user’s point of view, I think it’s great – there’s no need to go back to the results time and time again because you’ve enede up on a page that wasn’t actually relevant, because you can see more or less straight away whether something’s what you were after or not.  However, a few people questioned what sort of effect this could have on traffic.  For quite a few searches, all the information you need would be contained within that preview, so you’d have no need to click through, for example if you searched ‘What is an IVA?’...

 

 

 

The question is answered straightaway – which is user-friendly, but not great for anyone hoping to target that search term. 

 

I think if this feature were to catch on, some sites may well see a drop in traffic, but it might be compensated for by an increase in the quality of the traffic that does make it to the page. People will have a much better idea of what content they are going to see, and as suchmetrics like time on page, bounce rate (and potentially even conversion) could improve.  Take an exmple from the site I work for: 

 

 

If someone’s looking for a new ISA, the content the previewer gives away isn’t what the customer was looking for, but instead it acts like bonus meta data, without the strict character limit you get with title tags and meta descriptions, so a user can get a proper flavour for your content and incentive to click-through. 

 

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The Title Says It All. From Wired. Hi-Def DSLRs May Be Cheap, But Talent Is Priceless.

via wired.com

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