Lara Ankersmit

Lara Ankersmit, Publisher Online Media, Telegraaf Media, Netherlands, spoke spoke during the the second session of WAN’s Readership Conference in Amsterdam in October 16-17, 2008 about Telegraaf’s experience within partnership with social network Hyves.nl

Social media means people having conversation and interactions. Hyves.nl is the most popular social network in Netherlands (similar to Myspace.com), and “Telegraaf” managed to partner with it. Whilst social networking is mostly about sharing thoughts, blogging and interactions, the “Telegraaf” in that case helped create a content for Hyves.

2 cooperations of “Telegraaf” with Hyves (online games) proved to be a success.

1. Euro 2008, a fantasy football game, which was hosted on Hyves had almost 170.000 participants. It was a poll game where users where predicting which country would win the Euro 2008 Championships. Editorials from Telegraaf were connected with Hyves. Users of Hyves had a possibility to choose their friends in their social network and play the game with them. The game brought a lot conversation about sports.
2. Olympic games in Beijing. Again, editorial stuff from the sport section provided Hyves with content. The journalist who blogged from Beijing was also published within the game’s webpage.

The main results from the games were:

• 170,000 registrations (only 40,000 from “Telegraaf” site)
• Almost 45% of players joined the game because of the recommendation from a friend on the social site.

Such projects appear to be a strong value for advertisers:

• strong branding based on the sport event
• combined with editorial authority
• more than 170.000 registrations with email addresses
• branded content with links and widgets

What “Telegraaf” had to organize:

• Special blog from Beijing
• Journalists from A’dam produced content for Hyves
• In China access to olympic games at Hyves
• Partnership with Hyves
• Open social technique (finding a programmer)
• email newsletters

What “Telegraaf” learned:

• viral marketing works (send-to-a-friend gadget)
• for sponsors, first see, than believe
• As a newssite Telegraaf can provide social network with content
• Big (sport) events are the perfect vehicle (but also bring a lot of competition)

WAN Digital conference - photo by Emiel Muijderman

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.

Eric Scherer

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

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

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

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.

”Fast Company” magazine publishes an interview with MySpace cofounders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson.

The social networking company has been acquired by Ruper Murdoch’s News Corp. for $580 million in 2005 and has been then facing a fierce competition from another site Facebook - the latter has 124 million users worldwide according to comScore vs. 115 million of MySpace.

DeWolfe and Anderson claim that ”MySpace is no longer a social network at all, but a ’social portal’: a global, content-rich hub with a social component.”

Why is it important to be seen as a portal? ”Some 90% of online-advertising spending goes to big portals,” DeWolfe says. ”A much smaller chunk of money goes to more experimental buys or social media.”

Some other quotes:

On sophisticated marketing deals that MySpace brokers:

”When McDonald’s wanted to revive its classic “two all-beef patties” jingle, for instance,MySpace quickly wrangled up-and-coming talents in a range of genres to create their own versions, then opened up a contest for user-generated versions, including videos.
For State Farm, which was looking to connect with younger customers, MySpace hooked the insurer up with a summer concert series called Projekt Revolution starring Linkin Park and other bands. The campaign runs many levels deep: from a branded presence at the concerts; to a sponsorship of the Projekt Revolution concert site, complete with live-concert footage (and no State Farm logos in sight); to a lightweight gaming site; to a strictly business State Farm site that can connect a Linkin Parker with an insurance agent.”

On competitive advantages over Google:

”While Google may dominate the search market, it isn’t close to MySpace in terms of detailed information about what users do and consume — the holy grail of targeted marketing. MySpace’s social-advertising initiative, called HyperTargeting, launched about nine months ago, and is its version of the ‘we know who you are and what ads you’ll like’ voodoo. ‘Click-throughs on these ads are up 300%,’ DeWolfe says.”

”At about 60,000 uploads a day, it is becoming a popular alternative to YouTube. (MySpace had some 55 million unique video viewers in May 2008, according to comScore Video Metrix, versus 82 million for YouTube.) Aside from user-generated videos, MySpaceTV has a huge universe of professional-grade content, from Fox shows such as The Simpsons; to mini-episodes of ’80s sitcoms; to National Geographic programs; to an election site called MySpace Impact, which offers broadcast coverage from MSNBC and NBC.”

On the music business as their ripest opportunity and how they can compete with Apple’s iTunes:

” ‘When we first started MySpace, we were a site that a lot of bands, tastemakers, and influencers immediately gravitated to,’ DeWolfe recalls. For musicians trying to make a deal with a major label, or just fill up a venue, it became a perfect way to self-promote and digitally mingle with fans.”

”MySpace Music… the venture — which was slated to launch in September but at press time had yet to name a CEO — will offer the major labels their best hope for a significant competitor to Apple’s iTunes store. DeWolfe is quick to say that isn’t the point.

‘We didn’t set out to annoy Steve Jobs or compete with him,’ he insists. ‘This was not conceived as an iTunes killer.’ Anderson points out that iTunes itself isn’t much of a moneymaker, anyway: Apple is really a hardware company, not a media company, he says, even if iTunes does control about three-quarters of the digital download market. And Jobs has burned a lot of bridges with the labels, especially over his reluctance to embrace variable pricing — charging more for newer or more popular music. MySpace may not want to kill iTunes — it says its music site will actually boost iPod sales — but the labels wouldn’t cry if it happened.”

On the relations with a proprietor:

”Two [MySpace] founders insist, life is good in the house of News Corp. ‘I don’t think you can name one company that was acquired where the founders were still there after three years,’ says DeWolfe. Anderson agrees: ‘We’ve never felt cornered or pushed into something we didn’t want to do.’But clearly having Murdoch, along with News Corp. COO Peter Chernin, at your elbow can be a complicated experience. ‘When we told Rupert we had launched in the U.K. and were planning on three more international markets,’ DeWolfe recalls, ‘Rupert said, Why not make it 13?’ DeWolfe asked for more staff and had a toehold in 13 countries about 60 days later. (MySpace now operates in 29 countries.)”

”Jeff Berman… MySpace’s president of sales and marketing… tells me, ‘Last time Rupert was here, he sat right down, put his feet up on the coffee table, and just asked me what I was doing.’ Berman answered. ‘Then he asked me why I was doing that instead of all the other things I could be doing.’”

”Murdoch wandered over to a junior developer, pulled up a chair, and got an impromptu lesson in coding. ‘He was so inspired that Rupert took such an interest,’ says the kid’s boss, senior vice president of technology Jim Benedetto, ‘that he basically didn’t leave the office for four days.’ ”