Garrett Goodman

Rethinking Gamification for Quality News

2013-04-23T14:31:21-04:00

If good game design aligns positive feedback with user objectives to create intrinsically rewarding experiences, then where has the gamification of news websites gone wrong? And, how can we rethink it, putting the user experience first?

Up till now, the "gamification" of most news websites has involved tacking on a points system, throwing in some badges and maybe a leaderboard, in an attempt to entice users to do things like comment prolifically (Huffington Post), or contribute photos and videos (CNN's iReport). The hope is that by providing positive reinforcement for these actions, users will be encouraged to become regular contributors to the reader community. And so, the gamified experience will increase their loyalty, and improve the overall quality of interaction on the site, hopefully resulting in more visits of longer durations.

That's what publishers would like to see happen anyway, and it has worked to a certain extent for some. But do these virtual rewards actually align with the objectives most readers have when they visit a quality news site? Does earning a badge actually amplify an action that is already intrinsically rewarding? Let's take a moment to rethink this dynamic from the user's standpoint, and not according to what behavior the news organization would like encourage.

Limited to Participants Only

If we look at the classic participation inequality rule-of-thumb, also known as the 90-9-1 rule, which says that 9% of a community are occasional contributors and 1% are hyper-contributors, then that leaves a whopping 90% of visitors who are not there to participate. In the words of Dr. Michael Wu, Principal Scientist of Analytics at Lithium, this 90% "read, search, navigate, and observe, but do not contribute", meaning they are not going to be "enjoying" most gamified news experiences, because these actions don't generally earn them rewards.

However, each community develops its own participation dynamics, and many now view the 90-9-1 rule as outdated, partly because participation has become so much easier, with photo uploads and commenting being everyday activities for many. A BBC Future Media study found last year that the distribution in the UK was closer to 23% passive visitors, 60% easy participators, and 17% intense participators. And yet, even by this rate, about a quarter of visitors would be left out of traditional gamification efforts aimed at rewarding participation. And this is one of the limitations of news gamification strategies today: they are often, by design, only reaching readers who are participating.

A Fundamental Reader Objective

So, let's take the case of quality news sites, like the BBC, The New York Times, The Economist, etc. If not every user goes to one of these sites to participate, is there a fundamental objective every visitor shares? Something that we can realign the game dynamics with to reach a maximum number of readers? Now, I don't have any data to back this up, but I don't think it's a great leap to say that fundamentally, reading quality news is about being better informed. So, why not align the rewards of a gamified news experience with that goal? Why not notify readers about how much better informed they are, thanks to their activity on your site? In thinking this concept through over the past few weeks, I've taken to calling it KnowledgeBase.

KnowledgeBase: A Gamified Reader Activity Hub

Just last week the Financial Times updated its iPad web app with a slew of new features, one of which was an activity hub called My FT that shows a reader stories they've recently read, ones they've "clipped", and recommendations based on their reading habits. It's another smart use of data from the FT.com team, and also a prime candidate for a little injection of game dynamics.

Image credit: The Next Web

Imagine that the recently read column on the right got a little more detailed, where stories were grouped by topic or vertical or even country. That would allow readers to see at-a-glance what types of stories they were consuming most, which could be quite interesting in its own right. More importantly though, it would then allow us to employ a progress bar to display how much of the day's edition had already been read in each category. Progress bars are very effective tools to encourage the completion of a task, you've probably fell victim to their efficacy already on LinkedIn, when prompted to complete your profile because you're already 80% done. In this newsy context though, the progress bar would indicate how well-informed you were on the day's events in any given vertical, and here's why that could be quite powerful for readers: finishability.

A Lost Print Concept Goes Digital with Game Dynamics

The notion of finishability comes from the traditional newspaper reading experience (I first heard about it from Tom Standage, Digital Editor at The Economist), here's the basic idea: if you read an entire issue of The Economist, you have a sense of satisfaction when you finish it, largely because The Economist promises you expert analysis on major world events each week. It's an intrinsically rewarding experience to finish an edition, because that satisfaction, that sense of accomplishment, is related to self-improvement; you feel that you've made yourself a smarter person and are up-to-date on important current affairs. But with the average digital reading experience, that finishability is much less apparent (unless we're talking e-paper editions). So, what if we used game dynamics to bring that finishability to the digital news world, again aligning the rewards with the objective of being better informed?

Here's what I'm imagining: how about bringing it to your attention when you've read 75% of all The Economist's coverage on the Middle East from the past week? It doesn't have to be screamed with an auto-post to Facebook you can't figure out how to turn off, or a patronizing badge that follows you around wherever you comment. A nice little toast alert that disappears after 3 seconds would be sufficient, like the popups you see in Facebook in the top right corner. Let's imagine a simple message is triggered:

You've viewed 80% of all our Business coverage from the past week. Only 12% of our readers have also accomplished this. Here are the 5 stories you didn't get to yet =>

This notification could then lead to The Economist's KnowledgeBase hub, where readers could see what they've accomplished, and get personal recommendations for what to read next. Although we would be employing common game features here (including notifications for accomplishments, progress bars and community rankings, and missions), the experience wouldn't necessarily feel "gamey" and inauthentic for the reader, as many current gamification efforts do. This is because the game dynamics would all be related to the fundamental reader objective of being better-informed, and it would help them further enjoy, and better accomplish, this intrinsically rewarding experience of finishing a comprehensive collection of content. Emailing a photo to newsroom is not an intrinsically rewarding experience. Realizing you've read more about International Business news than 88% of Economist.com readers however, that can make you feel pretty smug.

Gaming Even Further

So, if the overall mission for KnowledgeBase players is to be better-informed, with the MY FT style hub acting as the central dashboard to map their progress, then we can develop the game layer out further by using minigames and real-world rewards. In the video game Mario Party, players progress through the board game and complete minigames. News quizzes could be the minigames for KnowledgeBase, to let readers test their own knowledge in a given vertical for different periods in time (last week's business stories, major Middle East events last month, etc). Each question could be linked to an article, presenting a fun and engaging way to breath some life into a news site's archives, and offering readers yet another way to work towards the overall goal of being better informed.

A further possibility is allowing users to keep track of their quiz performance by amassing expertise in a particular topic. This would be similar to how players increase skill levels in video games, by completing tasks and amassing experience points.

"The Sims" game lets players earn different skill levels.
Image credit: Pimlak

So instead of 106 Athletic and 329 Cooking as we see on the right, readers might instead attain an expertise rating of 106 in Finance News and 329 in Football News, related to their performance on quizzes. As true experts emerged in the reader community, they could be of course recognized with real world rewards, such as leading and moderating a debate on their topic of expertise, or being a section editor for a day. Another reward that could be quite meaningful to readers, despite being virtual, is getting recognition in a newsletter or on the site for being a top performer of the week (which might be judged in terms of either reading habits or expertise earned, or a combination of both).

Likely Limits

One of the main challenges for gamification in a quality news context is that it can feel very juvenile, somewhat patronizing, and not at all serious. This is largely a function of the common design motifs used, with cartoon-like badges and bright, playful colors like in the above screenshot. Of course, each publication and news site has its own brand image and relationship dynamics with its reader community, so how "gamey" the whole experience feels really must be determined by each organisation, and designed accordingly. But think about it, LinkedIn using progress bars doesn't feel "gamey" does it?

With the right UI (user interface) and some very smart design, I see KnowledgeBase working well in a quality news environment, because it would resonate with a reader's primary objective of getting better-informed by encouraging activity that is already intrinsically rewarding.

Sadly, the main obstacle to realizing this concept requires a more macro shift. There is an overwhelming need today for publishers to evolve their relationships with reader data, and begin a) amassing more of it, and b) making intelligent use of it.

Other Ideas That Merit Exploration

The KnowledgeBase concept is something that has taken shape over the past few weeks, and the deeper I develop it out, the more opportunities I see. Here are some things I haven't yet worked into the basic idea that I think merit some extra brainstorming, and I invite you guys to share your ideas in the comments.

- KnowledgeBase, as I've described it above, is designed for a single site. Might it work better as a cross-site experience?
- How could more imaginative news games figure into KnowledgeBase, beyond simple quizzes?
- Could social sharing and influence be incorporating into the game design?
- What appealing ways could we visualize the data for a user's KnoweledgeBase dashboard? Maybe with a geographic map?

Reader Flow and the Article Gateway

2013-04-01T11:11:47-04:00

As more and more traffic comes to news sites sideways through shared links and search results, news organizations have begun reworking their article pages to act increasingly as the beginning of a reader's journey, and not the final destination.

Earlier this month the New York Times announced that it was redesigning its website, starting with the article page. In the same week, a news startup competing in the SXSW Interactive Accelerator, announced to the audience that "the article page is the new homepage." Both these incidents illustrate how news organisations are rethinking the reader journey in light of an established trend: visitors are increasingly arriving at websites via links directly to articles, and bypassing the traditional entry point of the homepage. Publishers who recognized this phenomenon early and designed their sites accordingly, like Mail Online, have seen enormous success in growing traffic. And now, some news sites are taking that approach further, such as Mashable, which has added a social element to guide readers deeper into its site.

The Grey Lady's New Style

In the prototype shared by NYT's marketing team two weeks ago, an animated preview shows a minimalist new article page design, as it will appear both on desktops and tablets (different designs for different devices is important!). For anyone accustomed to reading the Times online, perhaps the most obvious change to the article page is the new freedom from those pesky forced page breaks. In an interview with The Verge reporter Tim Carmody, NYT's VP of Search Products Rob Larson explained: "We've found that the levels of engagement in terms of time spent and depth of reading increase when it's on a single page".

Another important element is the addition of a navigation shortcut in the top left of the page, which effectively gives readers all the functionality of the traditional menu bar in a header, but shrunk into a nice expandable icon.

It's a great adaptation of the space saving design found in mobile apps, and serves to make all of the Times' sections and subsections easily accessible from any article, without overly crowding the reading experience. Interestingly, users can customize this menu with section shortcuts, allowing for the sort of personalization that was traditionally reserved for homepages on news sites. And in terms of designing the article page to be the starting point of a reader's journey, recommended stories have now been given more emphasis with what Carmody describes as "a structured navigation box suggesting more related stories or sections, tailored to each page." Content recommendations are one of the most powerful elements of an article page's design for increasing pages viewed per visit, and although the Times seems to be handling this themselves, a number of startups have emerged to help publishers little and large both generate and display story recommendations.

You Might Also Like: Over $100 Million in Funding

Earlier this month at the SXSW Interactive Accelerator in Austin, Texas, a new player in the content recommendation space competed for the News Technologies prize. Contextly is a San Francisco based startup founded by veteran Wired editor Ryan Singel (@rsingel), that plugs into a publishers' CMS to intelligently generate recommended links that relate to each individual story (sounds like what NYT is doing, right?). I sat down with Ryan after his pitch to learn more about how it works.

Pitch from @contextly - claims to provide truly relevant related links - "each story is now a homepage" says @rsingel #sxaccelerator
— WAN-IFRA (@NewspaperWorld) March 11, 2013

One thing that Contextly does differently from other recommendation solutions like Taboola and Outbrain(which Worldcrunch uses), is allowing for greater editorial control over the related stories, Ryan explained. This is accomplished by actually integrating the Contextly technology into a journalist's workflow within the CMS, so that related links can be chosen by the journalist while they are writing a story. For example, Contextly can monitor all the links that have been embedded in a story, and use those as the basis to fill the "read more" box that appears under that article. The idea being that this allows news organizations to show off their expertise, and provides readers with a clearer way to dive deeper into a topic starting from the article page. Ryan also clarified that while Taboola and Outbrain offer publishers a way to generate extra revenue by displaying promoted external links within their related stories widgets, Contextly is all about keeping readers on your site and "turning drive-by visitors into loyal readers".

What's particularly illuminating about the content engine opportunity is the amount of money being invested in the space. The CrunchBase pages for Outbrain and Taboola show a total of over $100 million raised between the two startups in the past five years. Internally developing the technology and algorithms to produce highly relevant links is something most publishers will probably not invest in, and so there is clearly considerable potential for these third party solutions that plug into publishers' sites to do the job for them. One news site that has, however, worked closely with a design team to develop their own highly successful method for luring in fly-by readers is the UK's clickbait king, Mail Online.

The Science Behind The Sidebar of Shame

Mail Online, website of the British tabloid The Daily Mail, overtook The New York Times in March last year as the most popular English language online newspaper in the world. In August of last year, Mail Online broke the 100m unique browsers a month barrier. In January this year, Mail Online averaged just under 8m unique browsers each day... that's 38% higher than one year ago. Of all that traffic, "more than half of the Mail's page views come not from the homepage, but from click-throughs elsewhere on the site." And this ratio not unusual, compared to other news organizations. "Sixty percent of our audience is not coming through the homepage, so already the majority is not experiencing the homepage," Raju Narisetti, who was with Wall Street Journal at the time, told Adrienne LaFrance at Nieman late last year. At Worldcrunch, only about 10% of visits begin with our homepage, and it only accounts for around 12% of our page views.

"Mail Online breaks just about every web design rule in the book," - Jakob Nielsen, Usability Expert

In an interview last month with Brand42, the design team behind Mail Online, Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan at Co.Design highlighted some important elements to the mid-range paper's success online. The redesign already dates back to 2008, but due to an early understanding of reader flow, Brand42 and Mail Online have managed to establish a site design and user experience that is still ahead of the curve five years later.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, much thought and effort was put into developing the Mail's infamous sidebar, which has an average of nearly 70 stories and accompanying thumbnails on any given article page, Campbell-Dollaghan revealed. As the Brand42 team described it, "we created a radically different information architecture, allowing more flexible entry points and journeys through the site"; one manifestation of this is the sidebar, which Campbell-Dollaghan calls an anchor that pulls readers into the next story. By packing such an enormous amount of suggestive photos and enticing titles onto an article page, editors are able to propose a multitude of content journeys to readers, preventing dead-ends (and earning Mail Online record-breaking traffic numbers). Other more recent redesigns from news sites have taken this approach even further, including Mashable's addition of social sorting to story recommendations on article pages.

Bringing a social homepage to every article

When tech blog Mashable released its redesign on Dec. 4, 2012, much of the coverage focused on the new responsive design, but what really caught my eye was the new article page. In a post from Mashable's founder, Pete Cashmore, the three keywords he uses to describe the new design are: social, mobile, visual. He goes into detail on some of the thinking and new features associated with each of those three tenants, but for the sake of focus we will look solely at social.

Mashable's new homepage is divided into three columns (three on a desktop computer, two columns on a tablet, and one on a smartphone), that same design layout is also used for section pages. Here's where it gets interesting: instead of pulling some elements from traditional homepage design and working them into the article page, Mashable actually puts an entire section page under each article, with infinite scroll in all its visual glory.

Furthermore, where most news organizations chose to display thematically related stories with their articles, Mashable takes this a step further by dividing story recommendations into columns according to their popularity and how much they've been shared to social networks. Cashmore explains: "Stories begin in a column called "The New Stuff". If they are about to break out on the social web, they progress to the middle column, "The Next Big Thing". Those stories with the most social engagement move to "What's Hot"." (Interestingly, when the site is viewed from a tablet, the two columns show the titles of "New" and "Rising", the latter seemingly a combination of both "The Next Big Thing" and "What's Hot". When viewed from a smartphone, the single column is just called "New".)

Not only does this strategy provide readers a virtually endless amount of ways to continue their journey from any article within Mashable, it also allows for Mashable to keep displaying an unlimited number of ads as readers continue to scroll further and further into the section archives. We've yet to see any figures on how this has increased readers' time spent and page views per visit, but Mashable's redesigned article page provides another intriguing example of news sites adjusting to address the importance of sideways traffic to their sites.

Two ways forward

The role of the news site's homepage as the digital equivalent of a newspaper's front page, that is to say being the definitive entry-point and guide to fresh, important content, is loosing relevance. Search and social referrals have fundamentally changed the way readers find content, and many website visits are now beginning at an article page and branching out from there. Many elements of The New York Times website redesign indicate an appreciation of this shift in reader habits, and the fact that the redesign has begun with the article page in itself might be the ultimate indicator. The millions of dollars being poured into startups that help publishers better entice readers to consume more of their content with related links widgets on article pages is also a strong indication of the potential value in harnessing this shift. And we can see from Mail Online's outstanding traffic figures the very real value in treating article pages more like homepages by using them to showcase a multitude of stories to prevent dead-ends. Mashable's approach may indicate the near future of article page design, with the incorporation of social sorting to article recommendations and full section pages underneath all stories.

The editorial significance in laying out a homepage or section front has not changed, but as the individual story page continues to evolve into being both a gateway and a destination, we can see from the above examples two different ways news organisations are responding to the opportunity. For the moment, sites seem to be choosing between more editorial decision making on article pages or data-driven automation of story recommendations. Very soon we will likely see more publishers embrace a combination of the two, with the best performing stories getting extra editorial attention for article recommendations while the rest of the stories get the algorithmic treatment.

Responsive vs. Adaptive Design: Which Is Best for Publishers?

2013-01-10T17:50:10-05:00

Although the differences between responsive and adaptive design are nuanced for the non-developer, the distinctions are increasingly important as publishers see more and more traffic come from mobile devices.

There are two similar buzzwords flying around the digital media space right now, and to the uninitiated, responsive and adaptive design might seem like interchangeable labels for the same tech. They are both, after all, methods to optimize web content for mobile consumption -- a challenge that publishers must face if they are to adapt to today's news consumption trends.

A recent Pew Research study shows that mobile users are not just skimming headlines as once assumed, but "many also are reading longer news stories -- 73% of adults who consume news on their tablet read in-depth articles at least sometimes, including 19% who do so daily. Fully 61% of smartphone news consumers at least sometimes read longer stories, 11% regularly." So, having established the importance of offering a site well-adapted for mobile use, the question is: What's the best way to go about getting there for publishers, adaptive or responsive design?

In an attempt to fully understand what distinguishes the two methods, I've been asking experts in media, mobile development and PR from three countries to describe the methods for me in layman's terms. Perhaps unsurprisingly, each had a slightly different explanation, and it turns out that what's best for publishers depends on what they're trying to achieve with mobile.

There are a few ways of comparing the two methods:

The Client-Server Distinction, Simplified

One of the easiest ways to understand how responsive and adaptive design differ is to consider it in terms of how the website is delivered to a device.

Responsive design is client-side, meaning the whole page is delivered to the device browser (the client), and the browser then changes how the page appears in relation to the dimensions of the browser window.

Adaptive design is server-side, meaning before the page is even delivered, the server (where the site is hosted) detects the attributes of the device, and loads a version of the site that is optimized for its dimensions and native features.

As you might guess, a major difference here is in where the work is being done. With responsive, the device itself does the work with media queries to display the re-sized images and optimized layout, whereas with adaptive, the server does the work and delivers the page already optimized.

This is how the distinction was described to me by Ilicco Elia (@ilicco), who is the former head of mobile for Reuters and currently heads up mobile at Digital Agency LBi in London, and his colleague Lorenzo Wood (@lorenzowood), CTO at LBi. If you hadn't heard of LBi, they recently worked on the Sony Mobile rebranding and delivered a fully responsive brand homepage at sonymobile.com.

Breakpoints

After a recent conference in Paris, I got the chance to pose the same questions to Julia Beizer (@juliabeizer), head of mobile at Washington Post. Beizer's team has been working on some responsive web design (or RWD) projects, and just recently launched this participatory site for Obama's 2013 Inauguration event. During our chat in Paris, she broke down the differences in terms of breakpoints.

The simplified explanation is that breakpoints are used to specify when a site layout will change when the browser window reaches certain dimensions.

Looking at a site that uses responsive design, as you drag the corner of your browser window to resize it, you will see the site shrink until it reaches a breakpoint, and then the layout of the site will reload differently to better suit that smaller screen size and new browser dimensions. Give it a try with Bostonglobe.com, can you spot how many breakpoints there are?

With adaptive design, the layout for a specific device type will be loaded right off the bat, so there's less of the fluid transitioning between breakpoints, as the right version should already be displayed for whatever device you're accessing the site from. You can test it by going to CNET UK from a few different devices if you have them handy.

Generally, publishers will design different layouts for their site for a minimum of three types of devices (mobile, tablet and desktop). However, as I mentioned above, the team behind the Boston Globe responsive website defined 6 breakpoints that correspond to "smart phones, dumb phones, tablets, laptops, PCs, etc".

Four versions of Boston Globe's responsive design site. Credit: mediaqueri.es

Ethan Marcotte (@beep), who first coined the term "responsive design" in a 2010 article on A List Apart, and also worked on the Boston Globe responsive site, describes changes in layouts according to breakpoints:

In short, we're moving from a three-column layout to a two-column layout when the viewport's width falls below 400px, making the images more prominent... Now our images are working beautifully at both ends of the resolution spectrum, optimizing their layout to changes in window widths and device resolution alike.

The Right Solution for Your Mobile Strategy

Like all tech decisions facing publishers, the solution to the responsive vs. adaptive dilemma depends largely on the strategy, and the decision should be made with the publisher's specific outcomes in mind. The CTO of dotMobi, Ronan Cremin (@xbs), did a nice job of categorizing the two types of outcomes publishers are often seeking with their mobile web strategies:

trying to make an existing website work passably well on mobile devices or,

building a mobile experience from the ground up.

For the first lot, Cremin suggests responsive design, and for those looking to harness the extra capabilities mobile devices offer (geolocation, touch gestures, compass, accelerometer, etc) to build a mobile-first experience, he suggests adaptive design.

In my conversation with Elia at LBi, he highlighted that responsive is not always the answer for publishers. He suggested that the best solution can be a combination of both methods:

Detect the device, "adapt" the page on the server and send down the smallest amount of code you can get away with, while allowing the page/code to "respond" to the small variations in devices -- i.e., do both!

Baptiste Benezet (@Ba_B), CEO at French mobile development firm Applidium, had another word of advice about the responsive vs. adaptive question. After a panel discussion where major French media houses discussed the future of mobile news, Benezet told me that before even getting into the "front end" design challenge, "publishers need to sort out their 'back end' content management systems, and moreover their API, to give them a standard way to work with their content." Only with a strong CMS and API can publishers actually arrange their content into multiple layouts for optimal consumption across a range of devices.

The Bottom Line

If a publisher chooses to use responsive design, they should have a strategy of designing for mobile constraints, ie. not assuming a site will by default be accessed from a desktop computer, and progressively enhance up to the optimal experience. As Elia suggests, "load small/mobile images first then replace with larger images designed for broadband/desktop experience." It's like coding for the lowest common denominator: a small screen and a slow internet connection.

If a publisher chooses adaptive design, it can allow them to go further with optimizing the mobile and tablet experience by taking advantage of the extra features these devices have to offer like accessing location and using touch gestures. Plus, serving the best version of a site to a user can cut down on loading times, further improving their experience. That would explain why, of the Alexa top 100 global sites, 82 percent use some form of server-side device detection to serve content on their main website entry point.

As Beizer put it in an email:

The larger point here is that, sure, there are technical differences between adaptive design, adaptive layout and responsive design. For publishers, the technical differences aren't really the point. The goal is ensuring content is optimized for our audiences no matter what device they're on. And that's why we're so excited about the possibilities with these approaches.

Further Reading

The definitions and distinctions I've provided above are meant to give you a basic understanding, they are by no means comprehensive, as this stuff gets much more complicated. If you'd like to dive deeper into the realm of responsive design, adaptive design, progressive enhancement, resolution independence and the like, here is some suggested reading:

The story behind Boston Globe's responsive site, told by the team that built it

The original article on responsive design from the man who coined the term, Ethan Marcotte

A tasty analogy for the concept of progressive enhancement (HT @juliabeizer)

A comparison of adaptive sites vs. responsive sites (HT @talkingnewmedia)

A visual collection of websites using responsive design, with examples of their breakpoints

FT's Paywall and the Twin Revolutions

2012-11-21T12:08:05-05:00

The Managing Director of FT.com revealed to me some of the lessons he's learned from thinking retail, and shed light on the next big challenge for FT's paywall after mobile.

The Financial Times made media headlines in June 2011, when the business paper launched an HTML5 app and began selling subscriptions to readers directly via mobile web, opting to avoid the hefty 30% cut Apple requires for doing business inside its virtual gated community.

This was part of a larger shift in the FT's digital strategy, Managing Director of FT.com Rob Grimshaw explained earlier this year, which involved rethinking the operation as more similar to that of a retailer, and considering the reader as more of a customer. In a call, Grimshaw revealed to me some of the lessons he's learned from thinking retail, and shed light on the next big challenge for FT's paywall with the twin revolutions of mobile and social.

Lessons in Retail

"Customers are very demanding" - Rob Grimshaw (@r_g), Managing Director of FT.com

The FT's choice to pull out of the App Store game* closely paralleled its earlier decision to start selling subscriptions to and through its website. As Grimshaw puts it, "It's a process of disinter-mediation really. We used to distribute our product by selling to wholesalers, and we sold it to retailers, who then sold it to the consumer. What we've done online is bypass the wholesalers and retailers, and gone direct to market".

The advantages of creating this direct relationship with readers, ie. cutting out the middle men and getting much more precious user data, also required new skills. "Customers are very demanding" Grimshaw pointed out, and so the FT had to develop a very effective customer service operation, which was something the company "didn't necessarily need" in the pure print days. Add that to the new infrastructure required for billing, payment, customer relationship management, and suddenly the once print-only news operation does indeed start to take on online retailer characteristics.

Unsurprisingly, Grimshaw's inspiration for how to act more like a retailer did not come from his peers in the publishing industry. He looked at the likes of Amazon, Tesco, Zappos, "companies that had built their businesses around dealing with customers online and marketing to them effectively". It was an experience that was "transformational" for Grimshaw, and part of what led to the FT's deep understanding of the value of reader data, and its impressive success in combing it with cheaper marketing channels like email to "tremendous effect". In July this year, digital subscriptions overtook print circulation for the first time.

Twin Revolutions for Paid Content Online

With the current flood of paywalls (the number doubled in the US last year), there is plenty of variation on price points and metered models. What I asked Grimshaw to speculate on was, what will the paywall look like 1 year down the line? What is the next big thing going to be for paid online content at the FT?

Grimshaw explained that his big focus initially had been how to make this content portable, and how to give the user a smooth experience accessing their subscriptions with the same credentials across a wide array of devices? In the twin revolutions of mobile and social, this was the first objective, allowing readers to take the content with them physically. And the FT has had considerable success, with more than 280,000 people around the world reading the FT on more than one channel daily: 14% of its total global audience. Mobile now also accounts for 15% of new subscriptions, and 25% of the traffic to FT.com. Having accomplished physical content portability, Grimshaw's next challenge was to allow readers to take the content with them virtually.

There is a fundamental limitation all online publishers share in Grimshaw's opinion:

"In order for us to make money right now, we need people to come to us"

He suspects that as people become more reluctant to leave their ever more encompassing social environments online, they will want to increasingly pull things into their world. So this is what Grimshaw and FT.com are working on, exporting monetisation to other platforms, be that Facebook, Google+, or any other social platform. Just as the HTML5 app makes the FT experience portable physically, Grimshaw wants to make the brand experience (plus the advertising and subscriptions businesses that go along with it) portable virtually.

* NB: The Financial Times still offers an Android app through Google's Play store, and has recently released Windows 8 application with free unlimited content for a limited time.

French Media Talk Difficult Future of Mobile News

2012-11-19T11:13:52-05:00

From news radio networks to respected newspapers to pure players, French media find mobile "difficult" and "complicated".

This morning at a hip co-working space for startups in the heart of Paris, leaders from the French media participated in a round table discussion of the future of the media on mobile. The panel was moderated by the associate dean of the Journalism School at Sciences Po, Alice Antheuame (@alicanth), who defined three themes for the morning:

How do we consume news on mobile in France?

What editorial strategy should we put in place for this consumption pattern?

How do we organise our teams around this editorial strategy?

The panel participants represented a varied cross section of the French media, with both established players and relative newcomers.

Edouard Andrieu, Head of digital product development for daily newspaper Le Monde (@EdouardAndrieu)

Yann Guegan, Associate editor at online news outlet Rue 89 (@yannguegan)

Olivier Friesse, Technical director of new media at public network Radio France (@noisetteprod)

Baptiste Bénezet, CEO at mobile development firm Applidium (@Ba_B)

How do we consume news on mobile in France?

Amongst the panelists, there was general agreement on the habits of mobile readers, with audience peaks at around 7 in the morning, then again at lunch time around 12, and a final smaller peak as readers get off work around 6pm. This was true for all but Andrieu at Le Monde, who pointed out that the paper's news alerts, sent in the form of push notifications, are now primary drivers of mobile traffic, and so mobile consumption no longer follows the standard patterns. Andrieu elaborated on this alerts strategy, describing a system Le Monde has that allows the team to chose whether an alert is also accompanied by a sound or not. The paper therefore sends silent alerts to readers during the night and early morning, he added. This is an interesting way for Le Monde to reach French expats who are consuming its journalism in other time zones, and something worth considering for other global news brands.

For Radio France, alerts also play a big role in its strategy, however Friesse was quick to flag up the significant delay his team has tracked between sending a push alert, and it being received by RF's 8 million mobile users. According to their data, it takes 2-3 minutes to submit an alert to Apple, and anywhere from 20-30 minutes for Apple to push that alert out to the recipients. Rue 89 has not integrated push alerts into its mobile strategy yet, although Guegan said the outlet would not be using pushes for breaking news like the other panelists.

This first theme finished up with Andrieu sharing that although results show the mobile audience is younger and more urban, he's skeptical of the stats, and thinks it's too early to tell exact demographics. What they have been able to determine is that mobile readers scan many titles quickly, but some spend even longer reading individual articles on mobile than online. This seems paradoxical when the general assumption is that mobile consumption takes place while users are mobile, leading to more skimming and less deep dives into content.

What editorial strategy should we put in place for this consumption pattern?

From a production standpoint, mobile has changed the timing of Rue89's publishing, as it tries to keep a balance between what readers "need" to be informed of in the mornings, and what readers "want" to read about in the evenings. The editorial team also had to change their news cycle, which was previously in line with regular office hours, because they realised that mobile readers were checking for updates before they got into the office, and still seeing headlines from the night before.

Both Andrieu and Guegan, one from an established media group and the other from a younger news operation, admitted that their apps were more or less simple feed readers for their journalism produced for the web. At Radio France, there was a similar parallel, "we try to preserve our radio programs in their original formats and not segment them", explained Friesse. There seemed to be a pronounced lack of innovation on the panel when it came to rethinking news production for a mobile audience. Bénezet of Applidium made a powerful comparison to describe the situation:

"I think publishers are committing that same error with mobile now that they did in the early 2000s: just taking newspaper articles and putting them online." - Bénezet of Applidium

Refreshingly, the panelists weren't shy in discussing their failures with mobile apps. Andrieu mentioned a sports-themed app released by Le Monde that "had an unexpected complexity that made it very hard to maintain". Friesse spoke of a special app Radio France released for the French elections that didn't attract the size of audience they were hoping for, although users that actually used the app consumed a good deal of news. Bénezet mentioned how contributing content, be it photos or text, is still difficult for users of mobile apps due to the limitations associated with touch screens.

How do we organise teams around this editorial strategy?

Aside from the mention above about the slight shift in the news cycle for Rue89, this question wasn't really addressed. Instead, Antheuame tried to coax the panel into revealing some figures about the costs and time associated with developing mobile apps. After a healthy amount of evasive maneuvering from the panelists, Friesse finally revealed that the budget for redoing the Radio France app for 3 OS's was €500,000 with a 2 year time to market. Bénezet also shared that the France Télé app took about 3-5 months to develop, "but it's complicated", he added.

When asked by an audience member if the panelists could share traffic numbers for mobile versus online, the speakers were even less forthcoming. It seems none of them had prepared those figures for the panel called "the future of the media on mobile".

Take aways

Despite some lack of transparency from the panelists (let's chalk it up to competitive instincts and the perhaps more traditional French media culture) there were some important points made, and collective issues surfaced.

The key word of the discussion had to be "difficult", or "complicated". It seems many of the panelists had trouble with their mobile operations in general, whether this was finding novel formats for mobile news, developing applications in a timely and cost-effective manner, or going beyond the basic features of a "feed reader" style app. Another area of complication was responsive design, a topic which has recently become popular amongst major media houses internationally. Surprisingly, the panel did not touch on responsive design organically, it was raised by a question from the audience, to which Andrieu responded, "It was *extremely complicated* to be responsive and maintain good performance. " Andrieu rightly continued that Le Monde is currently exploring responsive design options, but performance is the priority.

All in all, there wasn't much discussion of the future of the media on mobile platforms this morning, but more of a focus on the obstacles the participants faced in getting where they are today. While I was hoping to hear an enthusiastic discussion about the bright future of mobile news from these media outlets, what we got instead was perhaps to be expected. After all, these panelists come from a particularly troubled media industry, and a country where not a single national daily newspaper was profitable last year despite close to €1.2 billion in government subsidies.

Local Publisher Engages and Monetizes Across Platforms

2012-10-31T17:49:24-04:00

A regional newspaper publisher in the UK is using reader photo contests to engage its audience and attract local sponsors across its print and digital outputs.

The region of Suffolk in England is a beautiful place. Its striking golden wheat fields, idyllic coastal scenes, towering cathedrals, and rolling seas of purple heather are the stuff of desktop wallpapers that transport you away from the daily grind.

So when two Archant newspapers in Suffolk invited readers to share their shots of its beauty, unsurprisingly, it made for an easy case of audience engagement. What's more, the early involvement of the publisher's marketing team ensured a thoroughly clickable online gallery was also a revenue generator, by partnering with public services agency Amey to sponsor this engagement in the form of a contest. This a great case of editorial and commercial units collaborating to make reader participation pay.

Natalie Hoodless (@noodles13), Archant Suffolk's Digital Publisher, shared some lessons from this initiative and her experience heading up reader engagement for the past 6 months on Archant Suffolk's iWitness24 platform. iWitness24 is a community site devoted to the readers of Archant papers across the UK, where they are invited to share their photos, videos, and stories with their local papers and other readers. Hoodless told me that of late, the East Anglian Daily Times and the Ipswich Star (Archant's Suffolk papers) have been publishing two to three reader photo spreads per week in print and online from iWitness24 contributors. (full disclosure: Archant is part of a group of European news outlets using Citizenside's community-news platform, the Reporter Kit. I do business development at Citizenside.)

To appreciate the engagement and monetization Archant has acheived, it helps to understand that this initiative, and a subsequent sponsored contest called Star Pets, both function across multiple platforms.
(disclaimer: if you click that pets link, you're likely to lose a good half hour of your day)

The anatomy of a cross-platform photo contest

Newsprint
Teasers in the newspapers announcing the contest entice the traditional print audiences to participate for prizes.

Email
Next, emails are sent to registered members of the papers' community site, with strong calls to action and links directly to the upload page.

Social Media
Once a few contributions come in, a social media campaign reaches out to the connected online readers. Hoodless has found that using reader entries in tweets to ask for similar content was an effective way to build out the contest, as it lead readers to think "I can do a better picture than that!".

Former #Felixstowe nurse has shared her memories of #1987 storm. Read her account here suffolk.iwitness24.co.uk/en/texts/news/... and share your own memories
— iWitness24Suffolk (@iWitness24suffk) September 17, 2012

iWitness24 (online and mobile)
The social links all point to a contest page on iWitness24, which combines a gallery of all entries, rules of the contest, and of course a big upload button to encourage more participation. Android and iPhone apps for iWitness24 also allowed for reader participation on the go in the form of votes, comments, and uploads.

Main Site
Selections of top entries are then gathered on the main newspaper websites to broaden participation even further, and encourage readers to vote for their favorite photos using a premium SMS service that costs an extra £0.50 per vote (on top of network charges).

Print, again
For the Star Pets contest Archant planned for a final tie-in with print: "All submitted photographs will be printed in a special supplement to be published by the Star later in the year."

Who benefits?

Readers
As with any photo contest, there will be a winner or winners who feel the biggest benefit from participating. But due to the open and cross-platform nature of these contest, every participant benefits from a chance to share their pride about their town or their pet. The photos submitted don't hide in an editor's email inbox, they are displayed in SEO-friendly glory alongside other similar photos, and give interested readers a chance to discover, appreciate, and discuss in a community space.

In fact, when I asked Hoodless if anything surprised her about the experience so far, she mentioned the comments. "They're really supportive comments," she said, "where users talk about technique and lighting and lenses. It's a real community."

Archant
When Hoodless first began working with iWitness24, she was hoping it would be primarily useful for spot news coming in from users of the mobile app. What she realised was that as the 3G coverage was dire in the area, much more content was coming in in the form of scenic and wildlife photography.

So, when the marketing department began discussing a sponsored contest, Hoodless saw the clear fit with the iWitness24 platform. It was already designed for photo sharing with an established member community, and instead of dealing with a mess of emails, editors could save time as "the captions online go straight to the paper".

Sponsors
When it comes to sponsors, Hoodless was candid about the advantages of a platform like iWitness24.

The beauty of iWitness24 is it's idiot proof [for advertisers]. It's a great platform to advertise on because we get so many views and it's a great way to target an audience of animal lovers and photography.

If you look at the above anatomy list, sponsors for these contests are getting branding in print teasers and supplements, contest pages and online galleries, and via email and social media campaigns. That's considerable reach to a wide range of readers.

Not editorially relevant, right?

When considering audience engagement for news organizations, it is not uncommon for those of an editorial persuasion to speak dismissively of pet photos and sunset shots. It it true that this content is perhaps not as valuable from a news point of view as the Hudson plane crash photos, or eyewitness snaps from the London Riots. However, in order to quickly receive, vet, and distribute that breaking news content sent from readers, news organizations need to have the correct infrastructure and processes in place. Photo contests require very similar processes and technology.

Running photo contests is like practice for that unforeseeable event for readers too. By getting the audience used to participating with an easy contest topic, readers will be better prepared when news does unfold in front of them, with the instinct and the know-how to quickly upload straight to the newsroom. It's a way of hooking readers for lasting, valuable engagement.

How Local Media Earn Extra Through Events

2012-09-24T15:41:59-04:00

Local and regional media houses are using their events strategies to earn extra revenue and build their brands. Is this alternative profit generator worth closer consideration from struggling news outlets?

Here are some things you might not know about editorial events:

The Economist has a global operation devoted to organizing conferences that pulled in £10 million last year.

The Chicago Tribune will produce more than 100 events this year, with up to four happening in a week.

Swedish regional newspaper Norran was able to double sponsorship revenue from one client through events.

Philadelphia startup Technically Media generated 40 percent of its revenue from events this year, up from only 12 percent last year.

Commercial Benefits to Reaching Out

In a recent look at efforts of news organisations to extract revenue from audience engagement, I highlighted one use case focusing on events from Swedish regional newspaper Norran. The paper's former editor-in-chief Anette Novak (@anettenovak) expanded on that for this post, explaining that she saw an editorial events department as "one of the units within a media house that has the best chance at growing its revenues."

Anette's Novak's three major benefits of hosting editorial events
1) Brand building

2) Relationship building (both with private and business clients)

3) Staff training (if you are used to meeting crowds, talking in public, you are less prone to sitting in the newsroom -- it's out in the streets that we find the news)

The events Norran hosts are very community-focused and perhaps a bit unorthodox, including "love-bombing" schools in the area with sports equipment -- "to make 'la rentrée' a little bit more fun," and inviting local hockey teams to teach the immigrant community how to skate. They form a strong component of Norran's larger strategy to offer what Novak says Google and Facebook never will, the nice-neighbor or girl-next-door relationship with readers.

We changed our vision in 2009; the old one was that we should always be first with the latest news from the local scene. Now it says that Norran connects people and ideas and together we strengthen the region.

An Extension of Publishing

For paid daily Chicago Tribune, events offer an opportunity to better engage with their readers and "have a connection that goes far beyond the written page, the website or the mobile app," Joycelyn Winnecke, the paper's vice president and associate editor, explained to the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA).

In 2010, the Tribune launched Trib Nation, an events unit similar to The Economist Conferences but actually run out of the newsroom, which organizes everything from intimate author talks to the stage show Chicago Live broadcast on the radio. Much like Norran's ice skating lessons that provide a service aiming to improve the lives of it readers, the Tribune has a series of workshops under the TribU name, on topics like the art of growing blog readership, or the basics of Twitter. There are five different event series in all organized under Trib Nation, the full list can be found in an article on INMA by Winnecke.

"We really see this an extension of our journalism and as a new platform for 'publishing,'" Winnecke told WAN-IFRA.

This extension of journalism is not only effective at engaging readers, attendees consistently say they find the programs enriching and appreciate the Tribune for hosting them, shares Winnecke, it also provides parallel revenue to the traditional advertising + circulation model. Just as ads run in the newspaper and readers buy the paper, so do sponsors support the events and attendees pay for tickets. Perhaps most encouraging of all, Trib Nation is a profitable business, with an expected revenue in the high seven figures for this year.

The Value in Taking Online Conversations Offline

Technically Media, the technology news startup founded in 2008 by three graduates from Temple University, has an unexpected approach to generating revenue, considering its focus on tech communities in Baltimore and Philadelphia. I spoke with Brian James Kirk (@brianjameskirk), a co-founder at Technically Media, who explained that in a search for revenue models, the online publisher learned quickly that display advertising was not what resonated with sponsors or customers. "In such a web-connected world, people want real-life experiences, connections, and introductions," Kirk shared. And thus a strategy emerged around organizing conferences to connect corporate sponsors with local entrepreneurs, beginning with Philly Tech Week in 2011.

In a recent Nieman Lab article by Adrienne LaFrance (@AdrienneLaF), Kirk estimated that event revenue accounted for about 40 percent of the startup's annual total, and was the primary factor in making it a profitable business. When asked if there was something particularly unique or innovative about Technically Media's offer to sponsors, Kirk responded "we love that we can very clearly point a sponsor to its impact on growing those connections [in the tech community on-the-ground]."

Apart from the typical branding that comes with any event sponsorship, the startup's two websites (Technically Philly and Technically Baltimore) also offer an added editorial impact through their coverage of the local events. And so Kirk has found a model he thinks attracts sponsors precisely because they "understand that they are supporting a journalistic enterprise that shines a spotlight on the community."

From Local Startups to International Publishers, Events Are Working

While news media worldwide struggle to adapt their business models and innovate to fill the gap left from declining print advertising and insufficient online advertising, a diverse array of old and young media outlets have found a viable strategy in organizing events. The types of events differ along with the media who host them: The Economist organizes prestigious conferences full of thought leaders with high ticket prices, regional newspaper Norran hosts skating classes for immigrant communities, metro daily Chicago Tribune arranges "conversations about the future," and online publisher Technically Media hosts free-to-attend events to spotlight the local tech scene. What's more, the benefits cited by these media go beyond simple revenue to actually improving their core product. As Winnecke puts it, "it really brings the reader deeper into the process and ultimately makes our journalism more relevant."

However, organizing events does not generally fall into the average editor's skill set, and clearly the task takes a considerable amount of time. So, it is important for media to determine whether the advantages of an events strategy (monetary or not) are sufficient to justify the costs in time and manpower. The editorial team must have sufficient support from the commercial side for marketing and sales if events are to be successful, and staff enthusiasm is essential.

As a follow-up, you might be interested in How the Economist is Making Millions through Events and How "Snow Photos" Hook Readers for Lasting Engagement.

Top 8 Quotes on Open Journalism

2012-09-18T18:10:21-04:00

Earlier this month, the World Editors Forum, part of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA), released a report on "Open Journalism". The 17-page study looks at innovators in the practice of open journalism, and includes interviews and original research for each case study. Here are the highlights, the full report can be purchased on the WAN-IFRA website. (A free executive summary is available too.)

1) Alan Rusbridger from The Guardian on what open journalism is
Twitter: @arusbridger
Site: guardian.com

"Open journalism is journalism which is fully knitted into the web of information that exists in the world today. It links to it; sifts and filters it; collaborates with it and generally uses the ability of anyone to publish and share material to give a better account of the world."

2) Richard Willner from Archant on putting community first
Twitter: @richywill
Site: iwitness24.co.uk

"[it is essential that traditional newspaper companies] put their audience first and return to the heart of their communities," whether through initiatives like iwitness24 or just by getting more reporters out on the street. "And a more connected audience means a greater chance of satisfying advertisers."

3) Riyad Minty from Al Jazeera on citizen media
Twitter: @Riy
Site: aljazeera.com

"[If] you're not embracing digital platforms, not only as a distribution tool, but more importantly as a news gathering tool, you're going to be left behind"

4) Mark Johnson from The Economist on the strength of the brand in building community
Twitter: @majohns
Site: economist.com

"So the advice is, work out what's distinctive about your brand then work out how you can translate that into social media...Our flagship community feature, as an example, is the Economist Debate. That's an Oxford-style online debate which takes a full two weeks to finish. It generates a lot of discussion on our sites and indeed on social media and around the wider web. So the long and the short of it is, if you ask for a lot from your community, you will find that you get a lot in return."

5) Matt DeRienzo from Journal Register Company on transparency and the Newsroom Café
Twitter: @mattderienzo
Site: registercitizen.com

"To have a relationship with someone you need to trust each other, and to have trust you need to be transparent. That's why we opened our doors."

6) Nikolai Thyssen from Dadgbladet Information on asking the right questions
Twitter: @nikolaithyssen
Site: information.dk

"Many journalists understand that readers have useful knowledge, but they also get very disappointed every time they look at the user comments that their journalism provokes. They hear about the wisdom of the crowds, and all they see is bickering. So, we must be doing something wrong. Usually we ask our users for their opinion. We ask them to be commentators on our agenda. This is an attempt to ask different questions: instead of 'What do you think?' we're asking 'What do you know? What have you learned? What insight can you share?'"

7) Paul Lewis from The Guardian on using Twitter as a reporting tool
Twitter: @PaulLewis
Site: guardian.com

"Is it possible to properly verify snippets of information that come to you from strangers in 140 characters? Absolutely not," says Lewis, "and that's not what we do." But he explains that Twitter
proved invaluable in directing his coverage of the unrest. "I might say 'where do I go in Hackney? Or Camden? Or Birmingham? Or Gloucester?' and I would get about 20 or 30 replies, of which 75% were in agreement," he explained, "now that doesn't mean that I'm going to publish that there were riots in that particular street where everybody tells me to go, but it can inform my reporting in the sense that it can direct me to that street and that's where I see the riots."

8) Juanita León of La Silla Vacia on reader involvement throughout the story
Twitter: @lasillavacia
Site: lasillavacia.com

"Around a third of our stories are suggested by readers. As soon as we publish a story, they 'edit' it for us by commenting if we have made a mistake, have chosen the wrong angle or have used an inappropriate title. They distribute the stories they like on Twitter and Facebook. They are our focal point and our axis."

What comes next?

As can be gleaned from the thought leaders' ideas above, the practice of open journalism is not a step-by-step exact science. Rather it is a loose framework that many news organizations are experimenting with in an attempt to improve their relationships with their audiences through transparency and collaboration, and thus improve their core products: the journalism. Perhaps largest amongst the challenges in practicing open journalism is creating a clear business case for it. Luckily, there are already a few examples that can point us in the right direction.

How The Economist Makes Millions Through Events

2012-08-23T17:02:08-04:00

In a time of acute financial struggle for most media houses, weekly newspaper The Economist announced record profits and record circulation for last year. In the group's 2012 annual report, editorial events was cited by numerous managing directors as an important part of the publication's strategy.

This is a closer look at The Economist Group's event strategy: how it fosters audience engagement, generates millions in revenue, and attracts new readers.

An Award-Winning, Multi-Million Dollar Business

To understand the importance that events play in The Economists's operation, it is useful to note that conferences are organised by a business unit with staff separate from the newspaper called Thought Leadership & Events. Marc Koskela (@MarcKoskela), Head of Marketing Operations for Thought Leadership & Events, said in an email interview that the division hosts between 90 and 100 events a year around the world, with editors from the newspaper chairing the majority of the events. Each region has its own website with a calendar of upcoming events that offer "privileged access to thought leaders". Last year's Economist-organized The China Summit was named China Conference of the Year at the Asian Conference awards.

In the group's 2012 annual report, Economist UK's Managing Director Nigel Ludlow highlighted an increased demand from sponsors for new ways to engage with customers, and how events have been used to effectively answer that demand. "Revenue across these areas grew by 7 percent," Ludlow added.

The Economist Asia's Managing Director Tim Pinnegar also mentioned, "the use of social media around these events has been noteworthy, amplifying significant audience participation and engagement." Koskela elaborated, detailing two ways that social media improve the events:

Firstly they turn our events from being a one-off 8 hour experience to a forum where discussions can last much longer. They also make the events more inclusive - for example our Technology Frontiers event in March had 250 people in the room but through social media, and in particular Twitter, it reached almost 2 million people.

Tickets to these events vary anywhere from free to £1200, so revenue from ticket sales alone is likely to be considerable. But add in corporate sponsorships, and the total annual events revenue is around £10 million ($15.9 million), Koskela revealed. That represents just under 3 percent of The Economist Group's annual revenue, but still presents a very strong case for other news organisations looking to find new revenue streams.

Online Events Combine Sponsorship With Audience Engagement

The Economist's event strategy also involves a number of sponsored virtual events which are handled by the newspaper staff. The Economist's Community Editor Mark Johnson (@majohns) explained the online strategy, which includes about 25 debates a year that each last for two weeks, and regular Twitter chats, saying "We also do a monthly chat on Twitter led by one of our journalists -- we've started getting sponsorship for that as well."

For the online debates, the publication invites two experts to argue for and against a statement, who are moderated by an Economist journalist. In a push for audience engagement, readers are encouraged to participate by voting for the most convincing argument, resulting in a winner at the end of the two week debate. An example topic: "Cybersecurity -- A hyperconnected world is more rather than less secure." In this case, the debate page was sponsored by Akami, which also had an opportunity to offer its stance on the topic (though clearly separated from editorial). By providing an audience-engaging format for the structured exchange of expert opinions on current affairs, The Economist has created an attractive package for corporate sponsors who often have a stake in the discussion.

Courting New Readers With Local Lectures

Aside from acting as an extra revenue source, the importance of hosting events for a publication's image should not be underestimated. They present a chance to build credibility, and showcase journalistic talent and expertise. For The Economist's international editor Edward Lucas (@edwardlucas), organising local lectures was an ideal way to "harness the authorial firepower" of Economist journalists.

During a phone call, Lucas explained that the free-to-attend lectures, hosted at Fernandez & Wells cafe in London, offered a chance to "recruit new readers who don't know we write about more than economics". And because the Economist Authors Talks have been held on Thursday nights, attendees get the added bonus of walking away with an early edition of the next Economist issue, which comes out every Friday.

"I'm a great believer in feedback journalism," he said.

Lucas likes this format because "it gives readers a chance to interact more with the journalists," something that he hopes will help widen the appeal of the brand. For the moment, the sessions are hosted in the cafe of a friend of Lucas, and the authors aren't paid for their time, but as Lucas pointed out, it's a great chance for the cafe to sell coffee, and the authors to sell their books. And with free giveaways and interesting topics like Russian espionage, The Economist can make its brand shine.

Up Next: Editorial Events for Local Media

As The Economist case has shown, there are many advantages to having a strong events strategy as an international media house. However, the challenges of growing readership and securing extra revenue streams face all media, from global to hyperlocal. In an upcoming post, I will focus on case studies for successful event strategies for local and regional media, with examples from the U.S. and Europe.

If your publication is doing big things with editorial events, I'd love to hear about it!
Send me a tweet @garrettgoodman

How Behavio's Smart Metadata Could Help Verify Amateur News Photos

2012-06-25T12:03:35-04:00

Technology from the Knight News Challenge winner Behavio could provide valuable insight to journalists when fact-checking user-generated content.

This Monday six winners were announced for the latest Knight News Challenge, which focused on the topic of networks. One of the winners rewarded $355,000 was an open-sourced Android platform called Behavio, which "turns phones into smart sensors of people's behaviors and surroundings."

The technology, which emerged from founder Nadav Aharony's (@nadavaha) project at MIT Media Lab, proposes to create a software development kit for apps that would allow individuals to explore data about their lives, by tracking their activity through the multiple sensors now present on most Android smartphones.

As Behavio's website explains:

Your smartphone is sensing dozens of signals right now. Things like location, movement, app activity, radio networks, devices around it, and much more. These simple signals, put together, can be used to infer much more interesting and useful things about us, our environment, and our communities.

One use of this "smart metadata" can be seen in a mockup from Behavio, in which a photo is shown with a superimposed layer of information gathered at the time of capture. Journalists who deal with amateur eyewitness images will be familiar with metadata, as this information (things like date and time stamps of a photo, as well as the make and model of the device it was taken with) can be extremely helpful in the fact-checking process. At Citizenside, we've even been able to analyze details of extracted metadata to determine if a file has been copied from a Facebook gallery, and then provide a link back to the gallery where that photo originally appeared. All this is done to determine that the files are originals and authentic.

However, the "smart metadata" gathered using the Behavio technology could potentially provide journalists with a game-changing amount of new information about the conditions under which a certain image was captured. Factors like the amount of ambient noise, the weather conditions, the speed at which one was moving, and a list of nearby devices would shed so much light on the situation a person was in that it could become much easier to determine whether they were present at the event, and whether the event actually took place as they described.

With its Knight Challenge winnings, Behavio plans to build out a software development kit, which will allow developers to create Android apps to tap into the multiple smart phone sensors for a variety of uses, something that until now has been very difficult to do. Ahrony explained in an interview with Andrew Phelps (@andrewphelps) of the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard: "When the big organizations do this, it's usually closed-source ... so small developers end up doing everything from scratch."

As obtaining this "smart metadata" becomes easier, it will help to inform not only journalists who are fact-checking eyewitness photos, but a range of professionals from the health and sciences fields on crowd dynamics and tracking epidemics. A number of other interesting ideas for what can be done with the Behavio platform can be found in the above-mentioned article from the Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard.

This is What Comes After Audience Engagement

2012-06-12T04:57:18-04:00

Money. Money is what follows audience engagement.

After a busy conference season in the European media world (five conferences in four countries in four weeks), one thing has become increasingly clear. News media are cooking up some healthy engagement and participation in their online communities.

Whether it's through crowdmapping dangerous cycling routes in London, crowdsourcing fly tipping photos in Norfolk, or using "applied game dynamics" to attract and retain a network of eyewitnesses, there are now many thought-provoking use cases for news media practicing "open journalism". (here's a great collection of use cases from Storyful's Claire Wardle, @cward1e)

What there is not, however, is a clear list of ideas for how to fund this kind of open journalism.
So, I've collected some here for those interested in pursuing audience participation, and finding a way to make it pay.

Progressives
Andrew Miller, CEO of the Guardian (arguably the media house leading the push for open journalism), explained the business case for open journalism at the Digital Media Europe conference in London:

Open delivers progressives, forward-looking individuals who are curious about the world and embrace change and technology.

Progressives, Miller believes, are a particularly attractive demographic for advertisers, both locally in the UK and globally. However, as we know, the Guardian is in a pretty unique situation commercially, and thus can afford to wait more patiently than most for this strategy to start paying off. (You can download a summary of Miller's presentation for the cost of a tweet)

Events
A more concrete opportunity for funding media's community efforts was shared by Anette Novak (@anettenovak) at the Newsroom Summit in Hamburg. In her presentation titled "7 new colleagues in the newsroom - that you didn't know you needed but should have hired yesterday", the former editor of Swedish regional newspaper Norran highlighted a number of positions related specifically to the community. One she mentioned has a very clear business case, Editorial Events Director. She explains:

Saying you want to do something good for the region gets sponsors excited and they often pay more. We doubled revenue from an advertiser over one year doing this.

The idea of hosting events is not new for news organisations, although perhaps it is underemployed as a revenue generator. And I suspect that of those news media that do organise events, many haven't taken a very collaborative approach to covering the event. There is a great deal to be gained by inviting the reader community to participate in an event, then encouraging readers to share their experiences (photos, videos, highlights, reviews). It can give the news organisation fresh content to drive traffic, and make readers feel their contributions are valued, thus leading them to become more loyal contributors. And if the event is pro-region, as Novak suggests, it can also attract new sponsors to spend more money. (Teaser: I'm putting together a list of ideas for community-oriented editorial events for an upcoming post)

Collaborators
Other titles from Novak's new newsroom colleagues list included Chief of Crowd Creativity and Community Journalism Educator. The thinking is, that by better directing crowd contributions, and educating them on how to contribute high quality content, the editorial operation can produce richer journalism in collaboration with its audience.

Richer journalism is perhaps not a business case in itself, but more involved, more loyal readers who consume and produce more news, can be tracked and potentially monetised. In fact, it's something Aron Pilhofer (@pilhofer), Editor of Interactive News told me The New York Times is actively tracking right now, they're quantifying just how much more valuable a collaborating reader is than one who simply reads. And they're finding that there's not one funnel of engagement, but multiple engagement trajectories.

One of my clients, Archant Regional, is even using collaborative journalism to secure its future readership. Here's Richard Willner (@richywill), Audience Relations Developer at Archant Norfolk:

The aim of iwitness24 is to not only capture reader content but to make our audience genuinely feel a part of our news-gathering process...This is all about developing a strong, loyal readership base that will stick with us into the future because it feels totally engaged with our newspapers.

Locals
At my last conference of the season here in Paris, I heard a first for monetising community journalism when Felix Bellinger of Axel Springer presented Hamburger Abendblatt's Mein Quartier project. For a full write up of the project, read Rachel McAthy's (@rmcathy) piece on Journalism.co.uk, but here's the gist: Abendblatt invited 25 students and volunteers to cover 7 local neighborhoods in the German city of Hamburg. For this first phase of the project, the content was made available for free outside Abendblatt.de's premium offer. In phase 2, editors will join the volunteers to report from all 104 districts of Hamburg.

And here's the kicker: Bellinger explained that this local content is a unique offer from Abenndblatt.de, and so will go behind the paywall. Yes, for the first time I'm aware of, user generated content will actually be packaged with professional journalism as a premium product. There are also plans to release a book at the end of the year with all the reports from Mein Quartier, which is yet another way to collect a little revenue back from community journalism.

Success by design
If audience engagement initiatives aren't conceptualised and executed in collaboration with the commercial department, tracking their commercial success becomes an afterthought. If a strong business case is to be made for open, community-oriented journalism and audience engagement, the key is simple: get a commercial person right in there with the community managers and social media editors. Encourage them to work together to monetise the content contributed, and connect sponsors with the community in ways that engage. (Watch us discuss this on a Columbia Journalism Review panel called The future of news: collaboration)

The challenge of using audience engagement to drive revenue is being met head on by some forward-thinking media. And just like the paywall dilemma, there is no one-solution-fits-all answer. Perhaps the best way to explore these new revenue opportunities is to follow the advice of the founder of Google News (as tweeted by BBC's Online Editor Steve Herrmann @BBCSteveH):

For your next read I suggest this inspiring list of ideas for new revenue streams for news, from Steve Buttry's (@stevebuttry) blog The Buttry Diary.

Pure Players Often Can't Cope

2012-04-20T08:19:20-04:00

A report released today from the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) at Oxford University has found that online-only news sites are struggling to cover their operation costs.

The report, titled "Survival is Success," shares findings from nine case studies of pure player news organizations from Germany, France and Italy.

Interestingly, the research of authors Nicola Bruno and Dr. Rasmus Kleis Nielsen suggests that being successful in the online news world is as challenging for the smaller, and often more agile, start-ups as it is for the major media incumbents.

Nicola Bruno, who will be speaking at the International Journalism Festival next week, said in a press release:

"European journalistic start-ups need to look for inspiration beyond well-known
American examples like The Huffington Post or Politico. Although these models may work in a very large media market like the U.S., they won't necessarily work in smaller markets in Europe."

The report suggests that among the many challenges facing pure player operations, the two most formidable are the domination of legacy media in the online news market, and the domination of online advertising by giants like Google, which make it very difficult for smaller players to generate enough revenue to cover their operating costs.

As someone working inside the pure player start-up environment, much of what Nicola and Rasmus have found rings true about competing with the majors.

When Citizenside began in 2006 as an image bank for professionally-verified amateur content, there was very little direct competition from similar players, but of course the photo editors were choosing between our eyewitness's photos, and those from the traditional news agencies.

Our strength has been in growing a global network of 80,000 eyewitnesses, and developing the methods of social news-gathering to collect images from areas regular journalists can't reach. This approach is what attracted the AFP, the third largest news agency in the world, to invest in Citizenside in 2007.

And it is our technological partnerships with major media houses that have proven to be our biggest revenue stream. This strategy allows us to grow our image bank with the content received by our partners, and multiply our newsgathering capabilities by leveraging the established brand presence of our partners like Metro France, RTL, and Archant. Plus, it also means a regular cash-flow from licensing fees for those using our Reporter Kit to power their news communities.

So, in the case of this start-up, we learned quickly that the path to success involved partnering with the industry incumbents and not competing directly.

The full "Survival is Success" report is available on the RISJ website.

How 'Snow Photos' Hook Readers for Lasting Engagement

2012-03-27T10:19:06-04:00

While on a ski holiday enjoying a bit of snow last weekend, I caught some coverage of the Guardian Open Weekend event.

One quote in particular snapped me out of my vacation mindset. It was from a Journalism.co.uk article by Sarah Marshall (@sarahmarshall3) called How the Guardian's community of commentators contributes to the story.

"The Guardian wants to build a returning community, Oliver said, beyond asking readers to 'send in pictures of snow'."

I recently wrote a blog post about how Archant, a major regional publisher in the UK, has been Crowdsourcing for Snow in 3 Steps to engage its local audiences and make them feel part of the reporting process.*

I completely agree with Laura Oliver (@LauraOliver), a community manager at The Guardian, about the importance of building a returning community. But I see the "send in pictures of snow" as an important early step in building that community.

Looking at engagement through the lens of game design

If we look at engagement through the lens of game design, something we're firm believers in here at Citizenside, the "send in pictures of snow" prompt is like level 1 in a video game. You don't just get thrown straight into level 10 without getting the hang of things. Good games walk you through how you can interact as you play. (You see this approach with many mobile apps these days too, like in Pulse) In order to build that active and loyal community, it's essential to attract new members with an easy way to begin. Missions like sending in pictures of snow are a way to motivate members to engage, and creating missions regularly helps reduce churn.

...it can be rather daunting to engage

There's another thing to consider, and it's something publishers often overlook, but it can be rather daunting to engage with a respected newspaper. I remember Ed Walker (@ed_walker86) of Trinity Mirror mentioning this at the International Journalism Festival last year. He said that the vote button on a comment is an easy way for readers to engage. If they can't think of something sufficiently witty or informative enough to leave their own comment, at least they can vote for one they like. Sending in photos of something simple like snow can be understood in the same way.

A vital step along the way

So, it's not that photos of snow, sunsets or pets are of particularly high editorial value, but they don't indicate a low quality of audience engagement. Sending in snow photos is a specific and achievable challenge that familiarizes new users with the process of participating in newsgathering. It's a vital step along the way to building a returning community. Because if you only focus on those who are already highly engaged, you're severely limiting your reach with these sorts of open journalism efforts.

For example...

Last winter when France was experiencing hellish weather conditions, TV news station BFM TV asked its viewers to send in their videos of how snow was affecting their towns. Within one week, 10,000 new members had registered on its community site. At the height of it all, the station was receiving an average of 64 videos an hour for an entire 24 hour period.*

What's important though from an editorial standpoint is what came next.

In the two weeks that followed, BFM TV received two exclusive eyewitness videos (one of a bank robbery and one of a shoot-out) from members who had just signed up the week earlier to share their videos of snow.

So BFM TV used something simple like "send your videos of snow" to introduce the idea of contributing to its audience, and those new contributors then returned to the community with highly valuable editorial content.

* Full disclosure: Archant and BFM TV are part of a group of innovative news media outlets across Europe using Citizenside's Reporter Kit, and setting the stage for the participatory future of the news. I am International Coordinator at Citizenside.

n0tice: The Guardian's New SoLoMo Reader Community

2011-11-02T19:00:00-04:00

The Guardian, the UK's second most-visited news website, has a new spin on building community amongst its readers called n0tice.

A few days ago Matt McAlister, the Guardian's director of digital strategy, invited me to join the private beta and have a look around. Here are eight things you should know about n0tice.

1) N0tice brings together elements of the traditional coffee shop noticeboard, a healthy dose of geolocation, and some pretty nifty personalisation options.

N0tice is a community forum where members can post three types of content: news reports, events, and offers. The content you see is arranged according to your location, and users can set up their own custom noticeboards within the community.

Besides custom sub-domains and some basic design tweaking (background, font, text color, etc), Matt explains in a blog post that on their own noticeboards, members will also have the option "to customise the content using some filters like following people, tags and locations, though that feature is still being developed."

2) Designed for mobile first and desktop second, n0tice is built on HTML5.

Thanks to HTML5, the experience of browsing and posting to the community is great, no matter which device you are using (I tested it on my MacBook Pro and Android Nexus S). This also means that your location can be automatically detected (if you allow it), so you arrive on a page with events, news, and offers sorted to within a five-mile radius of your whereabouts.

One drawback to the HTML5 build, however, is that it's currently not possible to upload a photo or video to go along with your n0tice post when using the mobile version.

3) This seems to be the Guardian's answer to Craigslist's utter domination of the online classified advertising space.

Classified sales used to be a major revenue stream for newspapers, but this has been in a steady downward spiral since Cragislist fundamentally changed that market when it emerged in the late 90s, offering a free online space for the public to post ads.

"The support n0tice provides should come in two forms: new approaches to open and collaborative journalism and new revenue streams," McAlister explained to HowDo.

4) The key difference between Craigslist and n0tice is the latter's inclusion of a "citizen journalism" aspect by allowing users to post local news as well as ads.

How exactly this potential new wealth of news content will be used by the Guardian in its newspaper and main website is still unclear. The Terms and Conditions state the usual legalese about "an unconditional, irrevocable, non-exclusive, royalty-free (unless otherwise agreed with us) worldwide licence to use, publish or transmit...your content in any format and on any platform."

When I asked Matt how the paper might take advantage of the n0tice community news, he responded, "We haven't developed any specific plans for integrating with Guardian products and services, yet. But it could be a really useful platform for some of our open journalism efforts."

5) The Guardian plans to make money from n0tice by allowing users to pay for premium posts for better visibility (similar to Twitter's promoted tweets).

For regular usage n0tice is completely free, whether you are browsing, posting news reports, or placing a basic ad.

For better ad placement, the FAQs explain how "Featured positions are sold based on region size and duration so, as an example, if you want to be certain of premium position on all pages displayed within a one mile radius the cost is £1 per day."

6) There are also plans to license the n0tice technology as a white label product.

Sarah Hartley, community strategist at the Guardian, told Journalism.co.uk that n0tice "could potentially work just as well for hyperlocal community bloggers in northern England as it could for cricket fans in India or birdwatching groups in Oregon".

The "community solutions" space is already packed full of competitors, even with outfits offering services specifically for the media like Citizenside (full disclosure: my work for Citizenside involves setting up strategic partnerships with media houses, and Matt and I worked on a past collaboration together). While many current offers are based around users sharing content, n0tice's new combined approach with classifieds, citizen journalism, plus an events calendar will likely be its unique selling proposition.

7) A game layer is involved, and there's space for badges on the profile page.

The use of game dynamics in news communities has become more and more prevalent as online operations begin to realise how powerful they can be for engagement when applied intelligently.

Matt explained to me how n0tice makes use of a badge and reputation system:

"We'll use the badges for some playful types of things that reinforce positive and constructive behaviour. We could obviously do things like offer badges for consistently submitting posts that the n0tice community finds interesting, for example. Those kinds of things will also help people develop a reputation on n0tice. Once that starts to take shape then we can improve information discovery for everyone on the network."

Here are some other examples of game dynamics used for citizen journalism as detailed by the Columbia Journalism Review.

8) The community moderates itself, and more.

There are some interesting ways for visitors to provide feedback on a report (that's what news items are called on n0tice), besides your standard "report abuse" button. Users can offer input in three categories (interest, importance, and accuracy) with a single click, making this first tier of engagement both extremely easy and potentially very useful. This information could be used by the Guardian to help sort what news from n0tice gets brought to the attention of its journalists for larger stories.

On the other hand, comments to reports are called "updates", which might actually prevent interaction from some readers. I've already experienced this myself, as I wanted to leave a note on a friend's post but refrained because I didn't consider it an update to the story. It will be interesting to see how that affects engagement.

Matt explained how these features are designed to require minimal involvement of Guardian staff. "We're tying to create a space where positive and constructive behavior is rewarded so that the community can take care of itself. Our job is to ensure that the platform is useful and that nobody gets hurt. Otherwise, we hope to stay out of the way."

It is still too early to tell which of n0tice's uses will be best taken advantage of.

One blogger from Manchester in the UK has begun using n0tice as a live blogging platform, reporting local political goings on through the beta community.

As a professional in the field of building communities around news organizations, I have to tip my hat to the Guardian's new initiative. N0tice nicely integrates the SoLoMo (Social Local Mobile) aspects that are all the buzz right now. At Citizenside, we believe that the 4th key element that's missing from many online news communities today is gaming, and so we often speak of our own SoLoMoGa approach. Judging by what Matt told me, the Guardian has plans to include some game dynamics too, making n0tice an exciting and well-rounded newcomer onto the scene.

Whether it gets picked up most widely as a location-aware Craigslist killer, or an organ for interest groups to organise with the communal events calendar, n0tice presents a new way for readers to interact in an online community, or, as Matt puts it, "a really really old one reinvented for the new world."