November 2007 Archive

The NYT:Times Reader a model for success in online news. But will it last?

November 20, 2007 | Written by Stephen Downs

Yes, that's right, the New York Times Times Reader is a successful presentation of a newspaper in a digital format. First off, it is easy to navigate and search. It uses a browser layout, with a home page that is a realistic cross between tangible newspaper and interactive website. Content features are given priority based on their relevancy and timeliness, they are surrounded by beautiful photography and leading stories populated from the various sections of the site. Atop the Times Reader is a navigation scheme directing users to click through to different sections.

So, what is so different from this and the NYTimes, or the Post, or Google news or etc. etc. etc (insert any news based web service)?

Not much! Except for the fact that you have to pay. That's right. At the cost of $15 a month or $165 a year you too can receive this service.

Sure, you will have the following tools available, which are otherwise not on NYTimes.com:

• Graphic representation of stories you have read in comparison to unread stories.
• Right-clicking the headline to display a list of topics covered in the story.
• Text size is adjustable and scalable.
• The ability to highlight text passages, apply and save your own notes to them.
• Right click to open up the story's web edition.
• You can also download the latest version of the paper to your laptop and read it at your leisure, online or off.

Despite this unique functionality, the Times Reader is still not meeting the mark. The NYTimes.com site continues to offer more content, including videos, audio, commenting features, Web 2.0 and the like. The Times Reader has not yet reached this point. On top of which, in an era where WiFi is becoming more and more prevalent, eReaders of this nature are quickly becoming a thing of the past as users can simply link up to any local wireless network.

So, much like its predecessor, the exclusive, subscription-only content of the paid site TimesSelect, I do not believe the Times Reader will be around much longer. In this era of digital piracy, who in their right mind will pay for a digital version of news? Let alone anything. Particularly when it's simultaneously available for free.

There is no doubt that the mobility of information is the future for interactive media. To this point I commend NYTimes in their efforts. However, the paid version of the Times Reader is in effect a road-block to these ends.

A recent insert promoting the Times Reader caught my attention and as a result I decided to sample the free trial.

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I Hope There is More to Facebook's Monetization Strategy (continued…)

November 14, 2007 | Written by Yan Shikhvarger

Last week I profiled a very ordinary example of a marketing program on Facebook. This program that did not take any advantages of what Facebook really is. A different story this week... There is a great example of a Microsoft program that fully takes advantage of the social network.

Microsoft's "I'M" program is a contest to get the most users to join a social cause and to use Microsoft instant messenger program. The first organization to 50,000 members would get $50,000 from Microsoft. The organizations are all well-known and include The Red Cross, Sierra Club, The Humane Society, etc...

The Humane Society reached the goal first and got the prize, but Microsoft got exposure for every cause - not just for The Humane Society. Such a marketing program is a perfectly tailored for Facebook because of Facebook's so called "social graph" approach, which is an incredible awareness-generating tool. If one person joins, then all connected friends see this action and the message goes viral. And of course, Facebook wisely surrounded this with videos, message boards, friends networks, etc...

So not only is this a great example of a marketing program, but it also clarifies its offering vs. a pretty much every other "publisher." Facebook and Google are really in a different league by offering communications/marketing opportunities that are tied to the actual purpose of visiting that site AND these sites also have truly massive reach. You don't really visit other sites to for the purpose of seeing ads and that is also why click through rates have been dropping.

Coming back to the original statement of "is there more to Facebook's monetization strategy," the answer is a resounding "yes!" It is in putting together custom communications programs that leverage what Facebook is and what it has.

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1. Sponsored message that appeared right on my profile

2. Click on the sponsored message explains the initiative and the causes

3. The winning organization

4. Resulting community

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I Hope There is More to Facebook's Monetization Strategy

November 7, 2007 | Written by Yan Shikhvarger

It seems the company receiving the most positive coverage recently has been Facebook. It is being hailed as the "new Google" and the dominant social network that got 30M unique visitors last month. The only common concern has "what is Facebook's monetization strategy?"

Today, there was a small glimpse of a monetization tactic, which I hope will be avoided in the future. It involves a recent promotion for an upcoming movie National Treasure. It appeared on my personal news feed and invited to "Join The World's Biggest Treasure Hunt." However, clicking on the link simply took me the home page of the movie website. How is this different than any simple banner ad on any other website? There is nothing special about a site that can offer more ad inventory. What is exciting about Facebook for marketers is that it offers an opportunity to create programs that leverage what Facebook is - a social network. That treasure hunt could have been some kind of widget that works within Facebook and allows one to invite friends, send them free gifts, connect to the Flixster widget, etc... That is what Facebook users expect, while a simple banner ad or text link could have been placed on any other website.

Hopefully there are other monetization strategies in the works both from Facebook and from marketers.

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404:Error. Problem. Page not found.

November 5, 2007 | Written by Stephen Downs

Perhaps the single most important page in a web development project.

What happens when your tenured, learned and invested consumer/user decides to return to their favorite and often desired page that they have bookmarked? What happens when a relaunch sends all your hard earned, invaluable inward links to a new spot? The answer: What happens is you just created a very annoyed and very lost user, the affect of which can leave your user with a sour taste for your brand. You better believe that if one person is experiencing this, many others are as well.

But don't worry, all is not loss. You fortunatly have one trick up your sleeve: 404.

Four steps to a successful 404 page:

1. Descriptive text: explaining the recent changes on the site. Be upfront, announce a relaunch or reorganization of content - honesty goes a long way in clearing up the frustration of a lost user.

2. A clearly defined link to the sites homepage. By clearly I mean prominent, obvious, in my face. Placed in an area of high prioritization in a web users "F" shaped reading pattern.
Why not add design here too?

3. A link to the full sitemap (which in theory is representative of your complete site offering and is easy to use - more on sitemaps to come) or even include a top level site map on the 404 page

&

4. Perhaps most important and yet little used, is a large area of real estate dedicated to the sites internal search functionality. Afterall, statistically users are accustomed to using this functionality to find their content need why make them find this elsewhere on the page than the main body?

The take away here is provide your users with to tools to get them out of the mess you created, its the least you can do.

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Getting Bloggers to Blog

November 1, 2007 | Written by Yan Shikhvarger

Anyone tracking or regularly reading this blog may have noticed the decreased frequency of postings. This is a very common dilemma for corporate bloggers who really want to blog but somehow do not do it in reality. Before trying to solve this issue let's single out the causes. I believe there are two issues that must be overcome:

1) How to generate relevant and meaningful blog topics
2) How to find time to write posts

Internally we are trying to remedy these issues with the following tactics:
1) Generating blog topics
- Hold a weekly brainstorm with all of the bloggers
- Distribute trade and news publications
- Allow bloggers to specialize and truly learn certain verticals (healthcare, technology, viral, mobile)
- Create regular columns that are not actually "new topics" but still function as a new posting like a "weekly new trends brief"

2) Finding time to write posts
- Actually assigning blog topics from the brainstorm to specific bloggers
- Setting deadlines
- Carving out time 30min for collaborative writing sessions
- Offering prizes and rewards
- Making quantity of posts a part of performance reviews (that one is a joke)

One good thing is that effectiveness of these strategies is pretty simple to measure....

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