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Web natives and journalism

Thursday | May 8, 2008 | 5:37 pm  

The Journalism Iconoclast » Web natives need to lead Web operations: “I mean honestly would you stick a bunch of Web people with little print experience in charge of a print publication? I guess if you wanted to fail you might consider that a viable option.

Let’s be real here: Web operations can only thrive when they are staffed by people who get the Web and enjoy using the Web. These are people who categorically prefer the Web over print publications. If this doesn’t describe your journalism organization, then you are doing something wrong.”

He gets my +1

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Business, Journalism, Management, MarsDraft

What is Web 2.0 and why do (some) journalists fear it?

Friday | April 25, 2008 | 5:50 pm  

I thought the guys from the O’Reilly Insight Group did a really good job of summing up what “Web 2.0″ is:

• Listening - To your customers, readers, partners, etc.
• Participation - Joining into the conversations and relationships that those folks are having, and letting them participate in your conversations and relationships.
• Transparency - Opening yourself up, being honest about mistakes
• Ongoing inquiry - Continually asking your audience about what they’re looking for from you, ways to improve, etc.

Don’t those four points sound an awful lot like things that are core to journalism?

• Listening - To your sources, to your readers.
• Participation - Providing information to create better participants in a democracy. Participating in the society via an Op/Ed page.
• Transparency - Isn’t it every journalist’s goal to make as much of the public and private sectors transparent to the community they serve?
• Ongoing inquiry - Beat reporting, investigative journalism. We are an industry of ongoing inquiries.

So if “Web 2.0″ and journalism are so similar, then why are so many journalists afraid or hostile toward “2.0″ features on their Web site and “2.0″ sites in general?

I don’t have an answer, and the Web doesn’t need any more speculation, so I’ll just put that question out there and hope some smarter folks have answers.

Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Business, Journalism, Management, Technology

Early Web 2.0 braindump

Thursday | April 24, 2008 | 7:05 pm  

I thought I’d take advantage of the slow Wednesday afternoon to try and collalesce some thoughts from the first two days of the Web 2.0 Conference

• There are a lot of suit-types-with-PCs here (as opposed to geeks-with-macs). I’m guessing that means that the “enterprise” is starting to pay attention to all this stuff if they’re sending execs, product management folks, etc.

• OpenID & OAuth are being talked about. A. Lot.

• OpenSocial is as well, to a lesser extent.

• Data Portability is on a lot of folks’ minds.

• It seems like a lot of folks are hoping that OpenID + OAuth + OpenSocial + Data Portability + As Yet Unknown Social Graph Provider == Facebook killer.

• The social web is broken. That is, unless you like re-accounting, re-friending, re-profiling, re-usernaming and re-passwording with every site you go to.

• If you’re trying to convince your enterprise to adopt social/Web 2.0 features, then get them a copy of Groundswell, it’s written by some folks from Forrester so it has that shiny veneer of expensive consulting. (I’m being a little too hard on them, they did have some good and interesting points and compelling data).

• Web 2.0 is a stupid term. However, if it gets translated as “talk with and then listen to your customers” then it might worth having yet-another-buzzword. Snarky comment: Uh, maybe I’m just in the wrong generation, but why is this such a difficult concept for companies to grasp?

• Clay Shirky is a smart guy. (Clay, where’s the RSS at?). Traditional media will continue to see a decline in usage as each new generation of Internet users becomes more participative. If you don’t allow your consumers to become creators, sharers and commentators of your content, then watch out.

• Jonathan Zittrain is also a really smart guy. As computing moves into the cloud (can we come up with a better metaphor) there are some real and serious legal issues to consider. If the government or a mega-corp doesn’t like your application hosted on EC2/Google App Engine, what’s more likely: they help you in your legal battle to keep it alive -or- they suspend your account to avoid a costly lawsuit.

• The mobile Web is broken and is a bad idea. One Web, one set of standards is the only way to have an even remote chance at replicating the success of the “Desktop Web”.

• Yahoo, Google, Amazon, Facebook and others are to Web 2.0 what Microsoft was to Web 1.0 — they want you to develop on their platform and be locked into their API. Smart developers will remember that the only API we need is HTML/HTTP — play in their gardens (walled or otherwise) but live on the Web.

Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Business, Programming, Technology

Online ads are priced right

Monday | February 25, 2008 | 8:28 pm  

There’s a good interview with the CEO of an online ad firm at Silicon Alley Insider that raises a very good point about Internet advertising rates:

Moore: The fact of the matter is the Internet has been either dramatically underpriced or offline media is dramatically overpriced. Right now a reader of the Wall Street Journal might be worth a dollar, but for someone reading the online Journal you get a nickel. That’s 20 to 1 offline versus online pricing. You need 20 online readers to replace one offline reader. So when you talk about pricing overall I think the web is dramatically underpriced already.

(Via O’Reilly Radar.)

While I think most of us in the Internet publishing business would like to think ads are underpriced, my gut says no.

• Unlike print, very few folks go online specifically for advertising
• Those that do, go to a business’ Web site directly, or to a free listing site.
• Studies show that users are in a “seek” mode most of the time online, so they’re likely looking for the content that’s near the ads
• Eyetracking studies confirm that users very rarely look at the ads once they’ve found the content their looking for

Long term, the Internet is going to prove disruptive to the traditional display advertising model — users can get to advertisers’ information directly without the middleman of a content provider.

What does this mean for content publishers on the Internet? What business model(s) will emerge to reign supreme?

I. Wish. I. Knew.

Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Business, Technology

Yelp.com missing the boat on RSS

Monday | February 11, 2008 | 1:57 pm  

So Yelp is uh, totally missing the boat on RSS.

They’ve got a a page listing their meager RSS offerings.

I’m not sure why they’re rolling feeds out city by city, in most systems if you’ve built in the ability to serve RSS feeds it shouldn’t need extra effort to apply that to a different set of data.

For the cities where they do have feeds, it’s rather disappointing:

You can’t get a feed of just restaurants, or just stores.

I’m not sure why they haven’t allowed users to create an RSS feed from any arbitrary search within their system. That’d allow folks to limit by content type, neighborhoods, cuisines, etc.

In this day and age it strikes me as odd that such a (shudder)Web 2.0-ish(/shudder) company would not adopt RSS thoroughly.

(I know it’s like the pot calling the kettle black, but I’d argue that we’ve really expanded our RSS offerings at work and we’re trying to get better. But, hey, who would call a newspaper a (shudder)Web 2.0(/shudder) company?)

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Business, Technology

For journalists, it’s less about business, more about audience

Monday | February 4, 2008 | 1:35 pm  

Yelvington is talking about a bias against the business side of journalism and a class called Business and Future of Journalism.

I would tend to agree that too many members of the Fourth Estate are phobic when it comes to dirty words like: profit, return on investment, and revenue.

I applaud the idea behind teaching more journalists more about the business side. Why wouldn’t you want to know everything there is to know about your profession — at the very least it’d make it easier for you to argue a point to management.

If you can’t know it all, know your audience

If you don’t have the time or the interest to learn about everything, then the most important thing for aspiring and practicing journalists to learn about is the audience.

In my limited travels it strikes me that a lot of journalists either don’t know, or don’t care about the audience research being conducted. The “don’t know” camp can be helped, but the “don’t care” camp scares me. If we’re not here to write, shoot, design and code for our audience… then who are we doing it for?

If you write a perfectly crafted, exquisitely shot and artfully arranged multi-part public service piece about your local government abusing it’s power but no one read it, did you every really serve the public?

(Snarky comment: If we’re not serving the public, and we’re not making money then what are we doing?)

Obviously the business of journalism can’t be summed up as “get lots of readers, get lots of page views” — niche products, advertiser interest and the long tail all serve to make it more complex than that.

However, if you can only know one thing shouldn’t every journalist in a newsroom know about their audience?

In my twisted brain it’s easier to express the idea in code:

while profit > 0:
    knowledge = conduct_user_research()
    newspaper.staff.improve(based_on=knowledge)
    profit = newspaper.revenue - newspaper.cost
 
    if profit = None or knowledge = None:
        raise GameOverMan

Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Business, Journalism, Management

Human nature vs. good business sense

Tuesday | October 2, 2007 | 9:40 pm  

I was home sick the other day with an awful sinus headache and stomach flu.

About the only bright side was that I got to watch Battlestar Galactica on DVD.

I thought to myself, “Boy this is a really great show. It’s a shame they never put it on NBC in the summer as was rumored on the Internet.”

Then I caught myself. Here I am enjoying a fine, fine television show — the visual and dramatic equivalent of a fine bourbon) or scotch — and yet I somehow think it’s a shame it wasn’t put on an over-the-air network for mass consumption.

Which got me wondering — does human nature, at its very core, conflict with what is sometimes good business sense?

Humans are social animals. It’s one of the characteristics of our species the enables us to do so much good, and harm.

Allow me to list some common business idioms that fit within that framework:

• Grow a larger audience

• Add more employees

• Add more clients

• Attract more investors

And yet there are plenty of times and plenty of businesses that could probably have been better served by:

• Focusing on a tight, niche audience

• Keeping the same number of staff and enabling them to work smarter/harder

• Keeping the same number of clients and improving quality or revenue-per-client

• Stayed self-funded, or not gone public and avoided the associated detrimental market pressures that come with those “growth” routes.

Nothing terribly insightful here, I suppose.

Just got me wondering if that primal instinct to grow/expand our social network — even cloaked in a business setting — leads us to judge the first set of points as “sexy” and the others as “wimpy.”

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Business, Management

Best sig on AIM today

Tuesday | May 16, 2006 | 5:05 pm  

“The user-generated content would create the site.” (via Laura)

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Business, Journalism, Web design

Amazon’s crummy messages

Thursday | June 2, 2005 | 12:31 pm  

Erica and I were looking to switch cell phones and providers, so we decided to go with the Amazon Razr deal I mentioned.

Thus started a descent into madness.

Maybe I’m being a bit harsh, but given how well Amazon usually designs their systems, the process of ordering a cell phone with service can be a bit daunting.

Not long after we placed our order, we got this note from Amazon:

There has been a delay in processing your wireless order. We apologize for this inconvenience. We are waiting for a final determination of service eligibility from the carrier. Unfortunately, Amazon.com is unable to process a wireless order until we receive approval from the carrier.

At this point, you do not need to take any action. Routine delays of a day or two are not uncommon if carriers are experiencing high volume or system issues. …

And that’s where I stopped reading the note. After all, like most people, I scan my e-mail looking for the important info. I closed the note knowing this:

1. My order with Amazon is delayed
2. Because they’re awaiting final approval from Cingular
3. Cingular has to do a credit check (this is mentioned prominently while doing the order)
4. I don’t need to do anything

Great, I’m a lazy American — I’m good at not doing anything!

Apparently I should have taken that more to heart. A few days later, I checked the status of my order on Amazon’s Web site.

This is what I saw:

You can click the link to read the full message. But what it says is:

1. I haven’t been approved
2. I need to cancel my order
3. “We cannot proceed without some action on your part.”
4. In five days, if I don’t do anything, they’ll cancel my order.

That, my friends, is one of the worst error messages I’ve ever seen.

Let me get this straight… I need to cancel my order, Amazon can’t proceed without action on my part. But, if I don’t take any action, they’ll cancel my order.

Being a bear of very little brain, I canceled my order like I thought Amazon wanted me to.

Then, a few days later, figuring I’m going to have find another phone/plan/provider I re-read my e-mail from Amazon a little more closely. And I discover this nugget of wisdom (emphasis mine):

Until this is resolved, it is possible that the information in the “Your Account” section of the Amazon site will incorrectly indicate that this order requires your attention and may direct you to cancel - please disregard this until we get more information.

A jigga-what?

So I reordered my phone/plan. Got the same note, got the same error message, did nothing. Now my phone is on its way.

Amazon, what the fuss? (iTunes)

In an effort to be constructive might I suggest the following changes?

The first and most defensive thing would be to not have a message saying I need to cancel my order, when I don’t.

Absent that, your initial note should say this:

1. There has been a delay in processing your wireless order.
2. We are waiting on your carrier to complete a credit check
3. Do not take any action
4. If you check your order status on the site it may prompt you to cancel. Do not cancel your order.
5. If your credit check is declined we will inform you and cancel your order
6. If you have any questions you can contact our Cell Phones Specialists at 1-800-201-7575, Monday through Friday 10am to 7pm EST.

A six-point e-mail is much easier to skim/read and digest than a six paragraph message with nearly 300 words.

Finally change your “error message” to accurately reflect the status of my order!

Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Business, Web design

Getting simple

Wednesday | May 18, 2005 | 12:49 pm  

I’ve had a lot of design thoughts floating around my head lately.

At work I’ve either been designing the UI or commenting on the UI for several projects and my goal has been simplify, simplify, simplify.

Then today, I stumbled across Simpley Done, a blog written by the author of Whitespace.

Wow, talk about simplicity. I like the idea of showing one post on the homepage. In this age of RSS and search, how much do you really have to push “out front.”

News sites are especially burdened with this “out front” mentality, newspaper sites moreso, since they’ve got the cultural baggage of “above the fold” from their analog edition.

Newspaper sites should seriously consider cutting back on the number stories they load up out front, in addition to the number of ads, promos, etc. Less really is more, especially on the oft-crowded computer monitor.

From the content side, if you offer up sane RSS feeds and a good search, folks will find what their looking for.

From the revenue side, if you have one — hell, one large — ad spot on the homepage, you can charge more for it and you’ll probably see better click rates on it. (Assuming it doesn’t annoy the hell out of the user, which seems to be de rigeur in the Web adversiting biz today.)

Thought of the day: Why don’t newspapers index the ads they’re serving online, along with their print ads (which should be online, anyway), so they can be included in search results along with articles?

On a personal note, I’ve been meaning to redesign my (blog)[/] for some time now. I’ve been iterating through mental sketches for a few weeks now — yeah I should actually sketch the thing on paper, but rapid mental sketches have been with me since my newspaper design days — and I think it’s time I actually start working on the damn thing.

Permalink | Comments (0) | Categories: Business, Journalism, Web design