Can digital content be innovative?

Media companies are gearing up for the U.S. Presidential election coverage with strategies that have never been deployed before: Highly-trained multimedia journalists and high-tech equipment will power some of the most compelling and dynamic journalism the world has ever seen across platforms. Where are newspapers in that race? Can they really use the digital tools they are given?

In the second session of WAN’s World Digital Publishing Conference: Digital Revenue Gold Mine in Amsterdam in October 15-16, 2008, Eric Scherer, Director of Strategic Planning and Partnerships in Agence France Press, Stijn Bus, manager business development and salesin iRex Technologies, Hans Peter Brøndmo, CEO & co Founder, Plum Software, and Stéphanie Stutz, Web and Mobile Product Manager in ViaMichelin covered the topic of digital content innovation.

How important are graphics for the publications?

Eric Scherer spoke about visual journalism – when a picture is worth 1,000 words. He underlined the iconic turn in trends and the rise of digital story tellers. As advertising is moving towards web the images become more and more important. In order to reach the audience media companies have to become more and more visual.

Mr Scherer gave many examples for newspaper companies to think about. Below are only some of them.

CurrentCity.org creates interesting visualisations (on the picture below are visualised SMS activity around New Year’s Eve in Amsterdam (left) and cell phone traffic in Amsterdam on Queen’s Day):

“New Yorker” proves with its every front page that each event can be shown by an image. “New York Times” shows infographics instead of or with the news very often. On the website of the “Boston Globe” animation maps can be found where users can do experiment with geographical scenarios considering the possible outcome of the US election.

Here is another way newspapers could visualize air traffic, for instance, on their websites:

MSNBC uses a tool which enables the viewers to not only watch the debates between Obama and McCain but also to choose different issues and see what the candidates have to say on these matters.

Media companies should follow these trends in order to attract the readers because newspapers are no longer the main players in that area. 10×10 application shows exactly how to bring 100 words and pictures that can define the present events.

CurrentTV, which partnered with Twitter, covers the US presidential news debates live. This is news, something newspapers live from. Another interesting example is an application EveryMomentNow.com. It is a web based application that measures the popularity of the candidates in the American presidential rally. This application in its graphic form could be used by newspapers as well:

Other tools like 2008 election quiz, quite popular on Facebook, or the PerspeTV are based on images of different sources as well. Knowing that readers / users could be attracted by graphics, newspapers should make a use from that information.

What possibilities can e-paper bring?

Stijn Bus was speaking about the digital publishing on electronic paper. After 2007, when first digitally published newspaper available commercialy on the e-paper, a growing interest of publisher in that technology is expected.

E-paper brings reading comfort that no other device has:

• readability,
• ability to read under all circs (outside),
• no flickering, backlight or eye strain.

The e-paper / e-ink devices have now improved mobility thanks to the low power usage, and light weight. They are also very thin.

The speaker noticed however some cons of the described deveices. Among those cons are the facts that:

• LCD is faster than electronic ink display,
• electronic ink devices are relatively expensive,
• color electronic ink is not yet commercially available,
• electronic ink proves not to be the best match to display moving images.

But it is evolving. Despite the huge investments in e-ink devices, the prices will gradually go down. The devices will eventually be equipped with technology such as bluetooth or wi-fi.

E-ink and e-paper open as new platforms to be considered by newspapers in their strategies. According to the speaker e-paper is better than other platforms (web and mobile) due to paper experience, interactivity and mobility. It is better than web because of mobility, and better than so far known mobile technology because of its readability.

Making websites social

Hans Peter Brøndmo and Stephanie Stutz spoke about making websites social.

Nowadays nobody makes websites anymore – people do web aplications. New technology combined with ubiquitous access create a social computing revolution.

The worldwide share of online time is as follows:

• communications (22%),
• social connections (16%),
• entertainment/leisure (14%),
• shopping (8%),
• business education(8%)
• Other (35%).

Most people consider social networking as facebook, myspace. There are more – business networking – linkedin, plaxo. The new term is evolving – information networking. The media companies should think about making information more social (Twitter, Google, Plum).

Stephanie Stutz spoke about ViaMichelin – leading travel information site. Most visited in Europe – 35 million visits per month, 20 million u.u. per month. It is an expert in travel, tourism and gastronomy. It changed to a colaborative web 2.0 site: with ugc, social sharing activities, user dialogue and information exchange.

Via Michelin wanted to engage users, Plum helped them empower the “My Trips” application (comp. Google Maps, Trip Advisor, and local search). The idea was to create a community of interest.

What they have learned while building a community:

• Make it simple – reduce barriers of entry
• Dialogue – start engaging now to learn what works for your community
• Distribution – plug into the social web (blogs, facebook, twitter) – search engine optimization is the key. Sharing and collaboration drives viral adoption.

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