Social Networks Grow Up

What do we really know about the use of the technology we now take for granted and part of everyday life. Who uses Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Linkedin, SMS, Blogs and what drives their usage?

An interesting article in the New Your Times raises many questions about the user demographics and use of this new communication world.

New technology often is first adopted by the young and then permeates to the older generations and we assume the young drive adoption of technology. According to comScore, today’s new ‘must do’ service Twitter, has a demographic that consists of only 11% of its users being teenagers. It appears that Twitter may have buck the trend. We have already reported on Ivy Bean who twitters and is 103!

What is becoming evident is that the older generations that are driving the real growth of social networks today. Today teenagers only account for 14% of MySpace and 9% of Facebook and we doubt very many use Linkedin. Forrester Research have issued a report that claims that the use of social networks by people aged 35 to 54 grew 60% in the last year.

So we have to now understand what people use these sites for and how and what they communicate.

Is the drive in older users merely a ‘catch up’ and a need to be hip, or is it driven by wider social aspects such as the need to belong to communities, find kindred spirits and express views? Teenagers tend to be more social and live in school and social communities, often with a wide range of friends and communicate on a one to one basis. However, this is often not the case of older generations who now have the opportunity to connect with others they may have never met otherwise.

One would assume that the older generations would be more concerned about privacy and having their feelings, thoughts openly available to what some may say are total strangers, but a look at many members pages shows a willingness to share and express.

If social networking services are to be part of the publishing marketing mix these demographics and social needs need to be understood and not assumed. What will drive the older audience? What is the key to engage with them? Does it require a tight vertical perspective or interest which will probably demand more than just books, or can it survive on a generalist pitch and book alone? We see the re-emergence of the social network sites BookRabbit and Sellstudentsstuff.com and we ask what is different this time?

The World According to Associated Press

The Associated Press is to create a news registry to protect their online content from copyright violations. The organization has already issued and then backed down on DMCA take down notices to bloggers who had linked to the AP, used their headlines or paraphrased AP stories.

AP’s proposed new registry, will attached AP content to a digital-permissions framework which will be actively monitored. Today each article and in the future, each picture and video, would have a digital “wrapper,” data invisible to the consumer. The software would also send signals back to AP, letting it track use of the article across the Web. Created and managed the Media Standards Trust, the new system allows the organization to gain proof of what it defines as violations in order to enforce its copyright policies.

Some see it as an attempt to lock up the news, others a rewriting of 'fair use' by the back door.

The New York Times reported Mr Curley, AP’s president and CEO, “If someone can build multibillion-dollar businesses out of keywords, we can build multihundred-million businesses out of headlines, and we’re going to do that,” The goal, he said, was not to have less use of the news articles, but to be paid for any use. Search engines and news aggregators contend that their brief article citations fall under the legal principle of fair use.

News aggregators like such as Google News have licensing agreements with AP for the use of its material but not for general Internet searches that turn up news articles. Is the right to link to articles using a brief snippet of extract from that article, or the original headline on the article now fair use or subject to payment to AP?

At a time when the Newspaper industry is clearly struggling this would appear a classic ‘finger in the Dyke’ and draconian approach. Read this interest article, 'NYT Co.’s top lawyer doubts that aggregation is a copyright issue' and discover some of the potential legal issues and a transcript of an interview with NYT’s legal council.

Update Comment received from Matthew Cain, Media Standards Trust

I saw your blogpost regarding AP's recent announcement and wanted to clarify a couple of things.

The AP news registry and tracking features were not "created and managed by the Media Standards Trust". Instead, the Media Standards Trust, working with Sir Tim Berners Lee's WSRI, have created an open source draft news microformat (road signs, if you will) for readers to identify the key attributes of a news article. Far from being invisible to readers, this appears as a box at the end of an article and helps the reader distinguish news from PR and identify things such as:
* who wrote the story
* the location of the story
* any principles under which it was written

More information is available here: www.valueaddednews.org

AP have developed additional set of features which helps them monitor and track articles. The Media Standards Trust has no involvement with this.

I would be grateful if you could amend your post accordingly.

Looking at the World Through a Lens

The New York Times has launched a large-format photo blog to showcase photojournalism projects. The blog is aptly called Lens, draws on the prestige of the paper. The blog has no dedicated staff and no budget for photography. It will showcase work shot for the Times’ print edition, personal projects by Times photographers, wire service photographs, and work provided for publication at no cost.

The Times promises to also highlight "the best work of other newspapers, magazines and news and picture agencies." According to the site, images from the Times pictorial archives, said to number in the millions of images dating back to the early 20th century, will also be shown.

You can expect us to ask you for your photos on some topical subject or theme," notes Times blogger David W. Dunlap.

Lens has an Adobe Flash interface that lets viewers view images using arrow keys and allows them to display photographs full-screen without the clutter of menu bars. You can view all today's images and makes reviewing the news through a lens very interesting. Well done for something very different

Making Your Mind Up or Not?

Apparently by some divine intervention, or stab in the dark, The New York Times will decide by the end of June how to charge content and what content it will charge for. So what are the options that they are considering and what will it mean to their readers the news and the future of the paper?

But in the same week it announced its charging review it also announced that is changing the way it delivers online news to its readers, in rolling out its new Times Reader 2.0 desktop application. The app is built on the Adobe AIR platform, offering a desktop readers news by categories in easy-to-read columns. The important difference will be that the days news is downloaded at the start of the connection , obviating the need to be online to read it. Each section of the paper is represented in the Times Reader 2.0 and appears on the same day it would appear in print. It also provides the user with the opportunity to browser the paper and happen on stories they way they would with the physical paper. It also supports video and crosswords.
The Times Reader 2.0 will be included in the cost of a print subscription. Otherwise, interested readers can download the Adobe AIR application and read the news for a subscription rate of $3.45 per week.

So what about these other options and why the mixed stories. The New York Observer claims that in its report that Executive editor Bill Keller told a staff meeting last week that one includes a "meter system." The user roam freely on the Web site until hitting a predetermined limit of word-count or pageviews, after which after the meter starts and the reader is charged for every movement thereafter. This is obviously fraught with negatives; the user may be prepared to read under the limit then switch off, alternatively set the meter too high and the reader will never pay. The second proposal is a membership to the community. “You write a check, you get a gift and access and join the club. Again how do you plan on such a club having the right appeal for the right numbers to join? It is reported that Kerr said that once the decision is made it may take some time to implement that a pay model may be applied to The Times' mobile Web site first before the Web site as a whole.

So either we have contradicting stories in circulation or NYT is tapping the keyboards whilst Rome burns.

Magazines on Demand

Back in October last year we cover the Magcloud magazines on demand from Hewlett Packard.

Today we share with you a video from The New York Times which shows the construction of the fashion magazine 'Bare' and how vanity publishing may work in the on demand world.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2009/03/30/technology/internet/20090330-MAG-AUDIOSS/index.html

Newsprint has Many Challenges and Maybe a Kindle 3

Price Increases

As it tries to grapple with industry-wide a significant drop in advertising revenues and circulation, The New York Times is expected to announce a newsstand price increase in the coming days. The market predicts that the New York Times could increase its price 25% from $1.50 to $2.00 for Monday to Saturday editions and 20% from $5 to $6 on Sundays. A bold move and a bold increase, especially considering it raised its cover price of its Monday to Saturday editions by 20% or 25 cents to $1.50 only last year.

The NYT is not alone in price increases with the Wall Street Journal raising the cover price by 50 cents in each of the last two years and the Financial Times implemented 50 cent increases in US cover prices in 2005, 2007 and 2008. The Boston Globe raised its weekday cover price to 75 cents from 50 cents and is expected to rise to $1 within the city and $1.50 outside Greater Boston. The Sunday Globe will rise to $3.50 in the city and $4 elsewhere.

iPhone Free

Despite charging for its website and print version, The Wall Street Journal has a new iPhone application that is free. The technology platform to enable the app to be charged isn’t live yet and may not be up until the second half of the year! It will be interesting to watch them wean free users onto subscriptions but until then the content remains free on both their Blackberry and iPhone apps and charged elsewhere.

More Closures and Lay Offs

The New York Times is planning to notify federal authorities of its plans to shut down the Boston Globe and the newspaper could cease to exist within weeks. The paper's circulation has dropped 14% in the last six-month period and is expected to lose $85 million this year. If union negotiations fail to deliver additional savings then the axe may fall and its fate follow that of the Rocky Mountain News and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

Kindle 3?

On the Digital front, Amazon has announced that will hold a press conference on Wednesday morning at a Pace University building New York. What is special about the news conference? First its on the site of the old New York Times offices and secondly its is widely predicted the announcement will launch K3, a Kindle with a larger screen.

Why a bigger screen and why the Pace location? Again it’s widely predicted the K3 is their answer to the newsprint and magazine sector – a larger screen Kindle. Amazon needs to head off Plastic Logic and the rest of the larger readers and try to capture those digital subscriptions today and not wait for others to take them. Are the NYT involved or merely a spectator -we will discover on Wednesday.

Kindle Text to Speech - Make Your Own Mind Up

We came across two interesting articles which are worth reading about the Amazon text to Speech conflict with the Authors Guild. We believe the case is far from proven and the only winners will be the lawyers, the losers will be the consumers, the authors and those trying to move the industry into the 21st century in a sensible fashion and not follow the chaos of other media sectors.

First is an interview between the Guild’s Paul Aiken and Engadget, ‘The Engadget Interview: Paul Aiken, Executive Director of the Authors Guild’.

Second an essay posted in the NYT and written by the President of the Guild Roy Blount Jnr. ‘The Kindle Swindle?’

How we can differentiate between the Kindle as a dedicated book device and other electronic devices such as PCs that have text to speech as a feature, or the future smartphone, is highly questionable. When you change the typeset font, size, pagination, are you breaking rights? Does every file format need to be specified and rights against it agreed in advance? When I read a book on a PC and use text to speech is that ok? If I read a book out loud but through a microphone and amp is an infringement? Remember all the rights that the physical copy gives you today that the digital copy doesn’t.

What is fair use and is this about rights or money? If the later how will you determine the usage on a downloaded file? If you merely slap on a supplemental charge for a feature you may never use, can’t monitor and is accepted by all all poor file quality, is that what we call fair?

Some would suggest that this debate, like others, is based on emotion and not logic.

We will soon have kids wishing to grow up as rich lawyers when they grow up!

Newsprint and Magazines Under Threat

So we read this week of major shifts in the world of Newsprint and magazines which by themselves may not mean much but collectively show a potential big problem for those reliant on advertising spend. Today all sectors that are reliant on a shrinking and fickle spend which is being spread across an increasing number of media. Television is already reeling from decreasing spend which effects production and investment, which in turn impacts viewing figures, which results in reduced advertising revenues. A cruel and clear circle.

The big news was obviously the filing of bankruptcy of the Tribune Group which includes those iconic brands Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Tribune. US advertising revenues are expected to fall by some 5.7% and the tribune group are not the only newsprint group feeling the pinch. The New York Times is considering potential asset sales and is in discussions with lenders. Its New England newspapers – including the Boston Globe and its 17 per cent stake in the Boston Red Sox baseball team are potential sales.

Newsquest, the UK regional news group and UK arm of US publisher Gannett plans to close 11 newspapers in the north-west of England in the face of declining revenues.
The magazine market is also in deep trouble as they not only depend on advertising but its recent growth has been fueled by a greater percentage of ‘non-renewable circulation’ than previous and this now combined with reduced reader demand has impacted circulation profitability. The advertising decline and increase in paper and postal costs exposes the whole magazine model.

Reed Elsevier can’t sell its business magazines division which includes Publishers Weekly and Variety. Such is the scale of the issue Newsweek is considering cutting 1.6 million copies from it’s current 2.6 million rate base. The newsstand sales of Newsweek and Time have fallen some 40% in the last four years.

American Media, the publisher of Star magazine and the National Enquirer moved a step closer to filing for bankruptcy when it failed to meet it deadline on interest payments. Cutbacks at Condé Nast Publications have been announced.

But against all this doom and gloom comes the New York Times ‘ TimesWidgets’ , a new service that lets you make embeddable widgets for your iGoogle homepage, blog, etc., of New York Times homepage headlines, blog posts, movie reviews, and more than 10,000 topics. We doubt it will stave off the debt knocking on their door but it keeps the technicians busy and doesn’t even carry advertising today!
Just when you thought that should cover it we read that Google Book Search now archives millions of pages of magazines from the likes of New York Magazine and Ebony to Popular Mechanics.

You can browse different covers of a magazine, select a specific issue search it or turn the pages complete with the original adverts, zooming in and out and even subscribing to the magazine. Google Map has been integrated to show all the places mentioned in various issues, with links to the pages where those places are mentioned.

So we are seeing the demise of newsprint and magazines as we knew them and the changing spend in advertising. We are also seeing the rise of the omnivore across all media sucking in content in its attempt to dominate all. The big question all the archival quest leaves us to raise is one of who will create the future articles, features, pictures, books when they have the destroyed the ecosystem that creates them today, or do they want that as well?

Digital Decision Time?

It was interesting to read in today’s New York Times their article ‘Amazon Accelerates Its Move to Digital’. It comments on Amazon’s digital push into music, TV, DVD, audio and of course books and reports on their early progress.

The most telling statement was right at the end and was that it took Amazon five to seven years to build its business to maturity and that they expect that digital will be similar. This focused approach should be an alarm bell to all those who are sitting on their hands saying that digital books will not happen or that the investment is too high to justify today. These same statements were rife in the mid to late 90’s when many said Amazon was not a sustainable business, would go bust and that there was little return just high cost on the Internet.

Although there are always exceptions, market domination and channel power rarely happens overnight or by accident. Entering a race late may save some cost but also often looses revenues and market share. Perhaps its time for those who are waiting or making noise and little investment to realise that its decision time.

Worth a Visit

The New York Times today covered the Las Vegas CTIA Wireless 2008 show and showed us some of the latest phones on offer.

We would not wish to say more than recommend the article http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/04/technology/04phone.html?th&emc=th where you can also link to see video of three of the latest phones at the show.

Anyone who still believes that there will be dedicated reading devices take note. The technology world is shrinking and converging fast.