Newsweek has embraced trackback. Working with Technorati, they are providing a list of the most-blogged stories on their site, as well as trackback links on stories themselves.
This is something of a revolution–if a couple of years late. Other publishers should copy it. I’ve been ranting for more than a year that news organizations are ignoring the amazing metainformation that bloggers create for free.
There are still some kinks to be worked out. In checking out these pages, I noticed that some loaded very slowly, while the message “Waiting for mp.technorati.com” appeared at the bottom of my browser window.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.
Category: Analysis
Time for publishers to rethink aggregation?
The other day, I talked to the person who manages the feeds for a large daily newspaper.
The conversation turned to private-label newsreaders, which has become something of a mini-trend among newspapers this summer. This person told me, “I get a call every two to three weeks from somebody who has the best new private label newsreader. But I haven’t seen one that has great functionality.”
I’ve never been a fan of publishers getting into the business of writing or distributing any software that is not absolutely essential. Why lock yourself in when there is so much grassroots innovation in feed-reading going on right now?
However, I’m beginning to wonder if news publishers in particular shouldn’t be offering feed aggregation on their sites — particularly on their homepages.
With Google and My AOL testing RSS on their personalized pages, and My Yahoo already strong in the market, it may be time for publishers to contemplate aggregating one another.
But that may require rethinking licensing in a way that will make everyone’s head hurt.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.
Denver Post launches RSS reader for late adopters
The Denver Post has launched an RSS reader called News Hound “powered by NewsGator“, with a ton of feeds from their site.
News Hound emphasizes Denver Post feeds over others, and pre-filtered feeds over ones that the user chooses. You can add feeds from other sites in News Hound, but it’s a three-click process to add a feed that is not on their list. The good news is that I couldn’t seen any attempt to limit competition. While they weren’t easy to find, craigslist feeds were included when you search for feeds that mention Denver.
The News Hound application window itself is a nonstandard window that cannot be resized and devotes as much real estate to navigation as to information.
There’s an ad on the News Hound window. This doesn’t necessarily bother me, except there are plenty of ways for readers to get their feeds ad-free.
News Hound promotion page doesn’t mention “RSS”. (Thanks to Steve Outing writing at Poynter for noting this.) I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing. RSS is a file format with a geeky name. This is clearly a product designed for medium and late adopters.
RSS lends itself to this kind of experimentation. After all, it makes no assumptions about how its information will be displayed by the reader. And it’s clear that the average reader hasn’t discovered the advantages of RSS feeds. A lot of early adopters haven’t jumped on this particular bandwagon yet. For those reasons, I think that News Hound is an interesting experiment.
But I’m still left wondering whether the average newspaper reader wouldn’t be happier reading their feeds on My Yahoo or Bloglines, or one of the existing RSS applications, if someone would show them how.
FOOTNOTE: I was involved in naming and launching an email alert service called “NewsHound” for the San Jose Mercury News in the early ’90s, which I know the folks at Poynter recall. I don’t remember whether we ever trademarked the name.
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.
One reason RSS makes publishers anxious
Publishers are still struggling understanding the meaning and implications of RSS syndication. Can they harness the power of syndication without winding up in the harness themselves?
This anxiety is illustrated by a dustup in Romenesko’s journalism weblog today. The LA Times (along with the Guardian) is beta testing Consenda’s private-label newsreader software.
This led the LA Business Journal to report, “Conceding that online readers want a smorgasbord of news rather than a limited menu, the Los Angeles Times is developing a new Web site that would include content from The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and other rival news sources.”
Well, not exactly. And the Times is understandably sensitive about the subtle distinction between creating an aggregation site and distributing RSS software (which will apparently feature contextual ads). The LA Times replied in a letter to Romenesko that no, they weren’t planning a site. They were going to distribute newsreader software.
Rather than let the matter die quietly, editor of the LA Business Journal emailed Romenesko, blaming the LA Times PR machine for blinding him with copy.
So let me get this straight — the Times is not using content from other news sources but it offers us a chance to “get perspective from other news sources.” Huh?
Seems like the PR department might not be in sync with the new media department.
This back-and-forth illustrates a problem that could vex only publishers. Can they welcome newsreader users while keeping other websites from aggregating their news? Can they distribute an ad-bearing newsreader while working themselves in a lather over other sites that sell ads on pages that contain their headlines? Is there any meaningful difference between an aggregator site and a newsreader? Is it a difference that you could explain to your mom or a PR copywriter — or a newspaper editor, for that matter?
Originally published on my blog at JupiterResearch.
Big-time newspaper buys material from pretend journalist
I just made interesting sale.
Back in September, I covered a murder in Coastsider. I was first on the scene and got some great photos of the crime scene and Sheriffs at the site.
The story itself is lurid and heartbreaking. The central character, Charles Loo, is a resident of Singapore. Last week, I got a call from the Straits Times in Singapore. They wanted to buy photos that I had posted on Coastsider for use in the paper.
I’m not certain there’s anyone left who still questions whether bloggers can be journalists. At the same time, most pros still use demeaning term “citizen journalism”.
I don’t know what “citizen journalism” means, but I don’t think it’ll be too long before we can just erase the word “citizen” as a meaningless qualifier. After all, professional journalists become so objective that they’re not citizens any more?
Where are the open source news feeds?
As my strategy for Coastsider develops, two things become clear: the focus of the site must be ruthlessly local, and I would love to have a general news feed.
The local focus is key. I’m simply not running stories that don’t directly impact my local community. That not only gives the site its character, it makes a lot of decisions about what to include and what not to include a lot easier.
But I also know that it would improve Coastsider’s role as a daily habit for my readers if I had news headlines on the site. The problem is that no general news feed that I would want to run (NY Times, BBC, NPR, Washington Post, Yahoo, Google, etc.) can be featured on a commercial site.
I sort of get that rationale, and I expect it to change as we become more comfortable with syndication. But I’m not sure what to do in the meantime.
It seems to me that it would be possible for sites like mine to pool their resources and link to interesting state, national, international, business, and technology stories. These links could be aggregated and filtered and delivered to participants. The closest thing to this now is the most-linked list on Technorati, but it’s a little raw and also not available for syndication.
This would be a great open-source project. It’s well-defined, doable, and would be a great resource for the community.
The Univac as metaphor
My friend Dustin sent me a note I wanted to share:
I saw these quotes in different media sources and thought you might
appreciate the way they illuminate Hollywood’s understanding of technology:
“This is an interesting way to start my career at Disney,” Mr. Ovitz said he
replied, adding that “My mind was spinning like a Univac trying to figure
out” what to do.
— Ovitz’s Testimony on Disney Tenure Portrays a Thwarted Deal Maker, The Wall Street Journal, 10/27/2004
“In fact, the official count ended up being 442 electoral votes for
Eisenhower and 89 for Stevenson. Univac had been off by less than 1%. It had
missed the popular vote results by only 3%. Considering that the Univac had
5,000 vacuum tubes that did 1,000 calculations per second, that’s pretty
impressive. A musical Hallmark card has more computing power.”
— In ’52, huge computer called Univac changed election night, USA Today, 10/27/2004
Does the Online News Association understand online news?
The finalist list for the Online Journalism Awards confirms my suspicion that Online News Association’s idea of a small site (fewer than half a million unique visitors a month) is way too high.
Belo, the Orange County Register, Congressional Quarterly, Ventura County Star, PBS, WBUR, and the Fresno Bee are all nominees in the small site category.
Coastsider serves a community of 30,000 souls. I will never have the resources to compete the smallest of the organizations. I’m stunned that the Online Journalism Association so strongly favors corporate journalism, whether for profit or not. They’re completely missing the revolution.
Is security a feature or a bug in voting machines?
I was listening to a story about yet another stolen election in some faraway country on NPR and I wondered if political corruption in nominal democracies is having an effect on voting in the United States.
All markets are international. Including the market for voting equipment. If you were selling voting equipment to a typical third world government, would absolute security and reliable audit trails be considered a feature or a bug? Could you justify selling an unhackable version in your home market and a hackable version overseas? Would you want to maintain twice as many SKU’s, one set hackable and one not?
I’ve looked around a little bit and I can’t find any information on the size or potential size of the global market for voting equipment. But I’m beginning to wonder if the potential of selling voting equipment in undemocratic countries is affecting the quality of the equipment manufacturers are willing to sell us here.
I don’t know of anyone who has written about this. Perhaps someone should.
Why Google will destroy Yahoo
I love Yahoo. I think they’re good people and they have a terrific product that they’re making better every day. But Google is beating them at their own game.
Yahoo owns Overture, which arguably invented keyword advertising, the online ad segment with all the momentum right now. I am buying ads for a small regional site at five cents each on Google, with no monthly minimum. Yahoo will sell me those same keyword clicks for ten cents and a monthly minimum of $20.
Yahoo owns the number-two webmail service (after Microsoft’s Hotmail) and it’s very good. Until recently, Yahoo mail offered its users 2 megabytes of storage for free. Google announces (and still has in beta) a webmail service that offers 1,000 megabytes of storage for free. Yahoo responds by raising their limit to 100 megabytes, more than enough to keep their existing customers, but only 10% of what Google is offering.
Yahoo and Google are both great companies and I’m happy with my relationship with each of them.
But keeping your costs low is key to success on the Web, and I think Google has figured out something about keeping their costs low that even Yahoo (whom I’ve always thought of as cheapskates) can’t seem to approach.
Should we be worried about Yahoo?