Archive for August, 2007
Are Newspapers screwed? The debate goes on…
August 16th, 2007
The ‘newspapers are screwed by search engines’, conversation spiked again this week, thanks to a couple of posts by former Wall Street internet analyst Henry Blodget, the most recent of which was yesterday, as reported by Jack Schofield on Technology Guardian today.
I’m not going to revisit the same conversation about Google reaping the rewards of newspaper content, or as Jakob Nielsen put it in Jack Schofield’s piece last week: Google “takes a big percentage of the money. The web is a web, and that is good, but companies invest a lot of money in creating content, and the money goes to Google for indexing it.”
True, fair play to Google, an opportunity has been identified and grasped. In my humble opinion, the same needs to happen with our newspapers.
The environment has changed, the rules have changed. Evolve now and there is a good chance of making it, but evolution will be painful and all-encompassing. The business model needs to radically and totally transform to reflect the move to free content.
Whilst it would be foolhardy to suggest that the newspaper industry can forget its print versions now, it is equally foolhardy to remain blinkered to the change that is happening, by believing that a traditional approach to news will work online.
Blodget very eloquently describes the possible remedies in his obvious conclusions section.
Furthermore, blaming this change on those that stand to gain the most achieves, well, nothing other than continuing to delay the change.
Nokia feels the negative PR effect
August 15th, 2007
The impact PR can have upon a company’s share price is dramatic, and this morning Nokia felt the effects when over half a billion pounds was wiped off its stock market value after admitting that 46m of its mobile phones were at risk of overheating.
Shares in the mobile phone manufacturer dropped by nearly 1% following the announcement, losing €0.21 to €22.42. This knocked €821m (£557m) off its market capitalisation.
According to reports, Nokia waited until 100 reports of phones short-circuiting had been received, before issuing a statement. One only has to do a quick Technorati search to see that the blogosphere is rife with negative commentary about the admission, which arguably didn’t come soon enough…
BBC iPlayer highlights UK’s data capacity problems…again
August 13th, 2007
The lack of data capacity in the UK is back on the news agenda today, and it seems the blame is being laid firmly at the BBC’s door…or to be more precise, the BBC iPlayer, which could eventually eat up too much capacity. Seems a little harsh to me, but first the facts:
The BBC’s iPlayer is based on peer-to-peer technology, meaning files are mainly distributed between users rather than being served by a main host, which of course increases the capacity required significantly, and passes the cost to the ISP.
In addition, on-demand services such as The BBC’s iPlayer and Channel 4’s 4oD, offer longer programmes at higher quality, which can be 30 times as bandwidth hungry as YouTube, according to a Tiscali quote on The BBC.
Okay, I’m getting the picture now. All these nasty broadcasters and start-ups are utilising the web to offer better quality services. How very dare they. They have the audacity to utilise the web for publishing their content, the very cheek!
Okay, maybe I’m being a bit unfair. I realise the ISPs can only work with the infrastructure in place and that the broadband structure in the UK cannot cope with the amount of data that users are demanding. However, it is a bit frustrating considering we’re not getting the broadband speeds we’ve been paying for, according to the latest research from Which? (The Times has the story), and now we’re told there isn’t enough capacity to support content delivery.
At the end of the day, this wasn’t a surprise, the increase in online video, the surge in UGC and different types of content distribution have been on the horizon for some time. If the network can’t deal with the capacity required, is there an open forum between the broadcasters and the ISPs to manage the capacity? Is it a case of too little too late? Or are we just bumbling along throwing more and more data at an aging network without any sort of structure?
A few practical solutions would be appreciated.
Google, Google and more Google…
August 9th, 2007
This morning in my daily news swoop I’ve come across three Google news stories that have really tickled my fancy. So here is a quick Google news roundup for those interested, in no particular order of importance:
1. Top in the Viral Video Chart today is an SBS Q&A with Google CEO Eric Schmidt. The footage covers his response to the question “What does Google see Web 3.0 to be?” Although arguably the question is a bit premature, his answer is very focused on the evolution of web-based applications that can be used across any device, and will be “distributed virally, by social networks, by email…”.
2. Time magazine is reporting on how Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, the most visited reference site on the Internet and the second most visited domain after a Google search, is planning to take on Google. He believes search is in need of transparency rather than “black box” algorithms to determine what results are presented to users, and his Grub project proposes an open source distributed search crawler index that feeds off participants’ idle computer power. Ultimately he is hoping to create a better search experience by combining a computer algorithm with editors who monitor what results should be returned for any given search. But as Time asks, “can a viable search engine rely on the altruistic motives of its volunteer keepers?”
3. Techcrunch covers Google’s newly announced feature that will allow people to comment on Google News stories. Comments will only be accepted from a “special subset of readers,” which includes people and organizations who are part of the story. The initiative seems time intensive on Google’s part - read here to learn more about how it will work.
60% of newspaper readers find online more convenient than print
August 7th, 2007
The AOP’s Dual Consumption Survey has been published today, summarising usage and attitudes across its member sites and their paper equivalents.
To put this into perspective, the AOP surveyed 26,926 people, across 37 sites, including the likes of BBC, BSkyB, The Economist Group, FT.com and GCap Media, so it’s certainly worth a look.
I can’t link to the survey, as it’s only accessible to AOP members, but I can offer an overview of the headline stats:
Overall, 60% of newspaper readers found online both faster for locating desired content, and more convenient than the print equivalent.
This was in contrast to magazine readership, where only 48% of respondents preferred the publications’ website for ease of access, suggesting news consumption is one of the key reasons for an online bias.
Both newspaper and magazine readers displayed strong belief in the online versions of their chosen titles, with 81% of newspaper respondents and 74% of magazine respondents considering print and online platforms to be equally trustworthy.
It seems today is the day for online newspaper-related reports, as The Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS) media sector report, has also been published. This is a widely respected US media forecast, and it shows the US online advertising market will grow by more than 21 per cent per year to reach $62bn in 2011.
This will make it bigger than newspaper advertising in the US, which is expected to total $60bn in 2011, a milestone which the UK will achieve significantly sooner, possibly even this year.
The FT has the full story.