Internet | Samuelson's Media

January 22, 2010

News in the Internet Age

Filed under: News,Opinion,Technology — Tags: culture, ebooks, internet, journalism, micropayments, new york times, publishing, tablets — Garth @ 6:11 pm

For years now, newspapers have been trying to figure out how to finance news journalism in the internet age. Or, as it is more commonly put, “get people to pay for news online.” For a time, it seemed like micropayments would be the solution, but the profitability of online payment transactions relies on the rule of fewer transactions, larger amounts. It is far easier to move a one-hundred dollar bill than ten thousand pennies.

But beneath it all there was a deeper issue; we have been trained on the internet to search for news, and search algorithms rely on spiders, or automated or robotic browsers, to follow links and search content. Paid content may sit behind a wall, disallowing both robots and humans from finding it. The converse is that which is searchable is accessible.

Then there is the issue of what the subscribers do with the information. In traditional print, there was some limited oversight in reprinting and republishing and redistribution, mostly because of the cost and effort required of such things. On the internet, you can go to the public library, log in, and start a blog on blogger and publish to the world. Even before this, it was fairly inexpensive to get your name out there, with a bit of know-how.

This all adds up to the concept that if you do not offer the news that you may have paid to compile or write for free, someone else will. Indeed, early on some savvy writers such as Drudge took advantage of free distribution to gain immense popularity while newspapers were still struggling to figure out what the internet was, much less how to maintain their current business through the changes it would impose.

The New York Times has suffered no less than any from this unwelcome disruption, and their recent actions show that they are still trying to figure things out:

The news that The New York Times will start charging for access to its website broke over the weekend, but now it’s officially confirmed. As anticipated, one of the world’s most recognizable newspapers will be introducing a metered model, meaning they will “offer users free access to a set number of articles per month and then charge users once they exceed that number.”

There are various comments, both by the author and by his commenters regarding the situation. It is always a touchy subject. Some like to get their news for free, and would never pay for it. Others see the ebook tablet – Kindle and so forth – as a possible route for rescue of the newspapers.

Either way, the internet offers no help; the information on the internet is in practice not free to produce or distribute (there used to be time and rate limits on internet, if you can remember back that far…!) but the scale of the internet combined with the ubiquity of computers distributes that cost. If it had come around 50 years ago out of the blue, the $500-$1000 for a computer alone would be enough prevent illusions of it being free of cost. Those of us who grew up with computers had our first use for ‘free’ as it were; with our parents or guardians paying for both computer and internet access.

The way I see it, if we set up a system to reliably pay for journalism, we prevent two things: The first is invasive and pervasive advertising, and the second is outright begging. It’s a cultural thing. Will my generation adapt?

December 12, 2008

Social Media: What the Heck is this Stuff?

Filed under: Marketing,Opinion,Technology — Tags: advertising, communication, facebook, internet, myspace, Social Media, social networks, trends, twitter, web 2.0 — Garth @ 4:26 pm

We love social media. It’s a way to have community across many miles, and to connect with customers who we’d never otherwise hear of. ‘Social Media’ might be a new term to you (certainly it was at a time to all of us,) so I’ll explain what I mean.

Wikipedia says,

Social media are primarily Internet- and mobile-based tools for sharing and discussing information among human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, telecommunications and social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio.

That’s pretty much it. Social media services let us share information using the internet. Unlike a blog (like this) or email, they are a common place – a website usually – where discussion takes place. Sort of like those Roman forums. (Unsurprisingly, one of the earliest social media services, which is still around, is called a forum.)

Now, most services focus around being able to communicate quickly, and to be able to get a ‘community’ view of everyone you’re connected to. That is, you will be able to see a summary of what your friends have been saying or doing. All services nowadays have privacy settings that allow things you do to be restricted or even private. Many services also double as publishing tools, allowing your updates or posts to be viewable and searchable across the web.

I’ve used a number of these in my day, and they vary greatly in popularity and in features. Some that are around now include Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Bebo, Plaxo, LinkedIn, Identi.ca, Plurk, Hi5!, Mashable, Orkut, Friendster and quite many more. (For a list of popular social networks, this is a good place to look.) Some sites that weren’t social networks became so over time (Flickr, YouTube) and there are even aggregation services (FriendFeed, Ping.fm) that allow you to send or see posts or updates from different social networks in one place.

As for actual daily usage, there aren’t great statistics yet, but there are in almost all cases dedicated users of all of these networks. How do you figure out what network to get on? Usually you get invited by a friend. Because, that’s why you’re on there – to communicate. Services like facebook and orkut offer ‘groups’ which represent common interests among their users, and even more you can create ‘events’ and send invitations through the service. Usually you get updates of your choosing through email, because perhaps you don’t log in all the time.

The thing that is most interesting to us, and even as customers of others, is the ability to express interests. Sometimes you come to a web site and you see a banner ad – maybe it’s for computer servers. But whatever it is, it is rarely something you’re looking for or even interested in. Most of what annoys us about ads – junk mail is all about this – is that it is all about stuff we don’t want or couldn’t care less about. However, with the ability to express interest in things either by writing out a series of interests or by making one’s self a ‘fan’ of different products or businesses or people – it allows advertisers themselves to stop wasting time on people who don’t want their product anyway. And believe me, never seeing another ad for male enhancement (at least until I’m 60) sounds good indeed.

Mostly what’s in it for all of us is connectedness. Plus, for us men out there, something that automatically reminds you when somebody’s birthday is coming up saves us a lot of trouble. (Now if it could only remind us of anniverseries.) I don’t know that they are the center of our political and social life (yet) but they certainly have shown themselves to be anything but a fad.

The only question that remains at the end of the day is, which ones will stand the test of time? Recent news suggests that the social media trend is lasting, but some services are going to either be changing or disappearing for good.

What’s my favorite service? Easy, compadre: it’s Twitter, hands-down. Ron’s a big fan, too.

Have a great holiday, folks.

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