Archive of TheNextWeb.org
Written on January 8, 2009 – 2:14 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Bloggers VS Journalist. It is a popular discussion during Internet Conferences.
Old media VS New Media? Who is right? Who is wrong and who has a future left?
Fact is that newspaper audiences are declining and so is advertising revenue.
Which brings us to Superman. Do you think his blogpost will make it to the Digg front page?
I hope you like that post!
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Written on November 11, 2008 – 3:05 pm
Paul Vereijken, Next Web Journalism & Media editor
The Financial Times just launched the first stage of their redesigned website. The homepage is coloured pinkish just like the newspaper itself and the website is made much more simpler. Other parts of the website aren’t redesigned yet, but that will be done in the future, writes British newspaper The Guardian. But is it just me or does the renewed website really looks and feels kinda like a blog?
Redesigned FT.com
Written on July 29, 2008 – 7:29 pm
Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor
Its not a question whether newspapers are depended of their online services anymore. It seems that newspapers are making the switch to digital, and that income can be found in advertisements rather then subscription based income. An example is English business paper Financial Times, that recently reached an important tipping point – The newspaper currently have more online then printed readers.
According to Financial Times owner Pearson the daily circulation of the business newspaper has been 350.000 readers for a long time now, but the site ’s online visitors have tripled to half-a-million in just one year.
The increase in online users is the result of a successful digital strategy of the media company; the news company introduced a policy that enforces the frequent readers, that read more then five articles to subscribe to the site. Income from online visitors is generated with advertisements. The digital subscriptions and online advertisement counted for 20% eight years ago but increased to 63% of turnover this year.
I read the Financial Times almost everyday, and I really like to read the paper on my way to work, like many others I actually like to read from paper. But I guess that the Kindle, iPhone and other E-paper gizmo’s will be making digital newspaper reading more convenient in the future. You’ll never know, soon you might be asked: “Mommy/Daddy, can you tell me again about the time when you were reading printed newspapers?”
Written on July 2, 2008 – 11:31 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
About a month ago I reported that Belgian newspaper publisher Copiepresse demanded that Google should pay €49 million to compensate for the damage listings in Google News had caused them. A weird case, and not just because Copiepresse can easily prevent these listings. What struck me the most was the old-fashioned attitude of the Belgian media company. Call me naive, but I expected the executives of traditional media companies to be visionary enough to realize Google News brings them nothing but traffic. Was I shocked back then, now I’m really amazed by the next step of Copiepresse: they’re suing the EU’s news aggregator NewsExplorer.
This aggregation service from the European Commission wants to help visitors to grasp cultural differences among the EU by showing articles from all countries concerning the same matter. This unique piece of technology is a bit too modern for the Copiepresse conservatives, who prefer officials that use scissors and scrap books to collect the latest European news - behind closed doors. Just imagine helping out citizens by publicly organizing news.
Forgive me my cynicism and lack of respect for traditional business models. It’s just plain frustrating to see a large media company trying to destroy an emerging world of news and information. Copiepresse fails to see threats to their business models as challenges and tries to keep us in a bygone age of information.
There are only two positive notes here: the court has tossed out the case, based on jurisdictional grounds (so there’s hope for Google too), and what goes around, comes around. A company that only sees threats in the digital revolution, will find itself dismantled in a few deccenia. The only thing that bothers me about that, is the waste of journalistic talent.
Written on June 22, 2008 – 9:08 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
When you favorite blog or news site has a slow day, you might wanna turn to different news sources. A good alternative is Eufeeds, this site is fed by 500 hundred feeds from European newspapers. People from 28 different countries can check what their nations’ journalists are writing about.
When you see a headline that arouses some curiosity, the article opens in a fancy Ajax layer - you know the type: inner screen pop-up that fades the original site away. A selection of countries is easily made with the collection of flags in the top.
There’s one minor problem though: most Europeans speak only two languages - their native one and some English. Of course some exceptions can be made, in Dutch high schools for example, students can learn French, German, and Spanish as well. But for most Europeans, an integrated translation tool would be essential.
When you think of it, this page is just a Netvibes universe on steroids. Or an European Alltop rip-off. However, when you’re in the need of some news, and you need it fast, eufeeds.eu is the place to go to.
Written on June 6, 2008 – 9:50 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Although I’m not a big fan of live blogging - I would rather write an article right after the presentation — I do admire the team behind CoveritLive. They’re making blogging more mainstream by building bridges between traditional media and new media. Its easy UI, good functionality, and no-nonsense approach make it easy to convince people to get some live blogging 2.0 going on. The Liverpool Daily Post for example, showed its readers how a typical day in the editor’s room looks by live blogging for 17 hours. These English journalists are pioneers, but they’re certainly not the only ones exploring the new frontiers.
Belgium newspaper La Libre used CoveritLive to keep worried tennis fans up to date during the Justine Henin retirement announcement. American regional television stations have warned their viewers for tornadoes and wildfires and collected eye witness accounts from across the disaster area. These news media only had to place a widget on their site. After that it was just a matter of doing what they’re payed for: report. Users can browse to the site and look up the widget. That’s more accessible than, for example, a Twitter feed as it doesn’t look too abstract for less-experienced Internet users.
Lowering the barriers of live blogging
With its growing popularity, CoveritLive has found the resources to add some new features that improve its accessibility.
- Users can now add their own logo to the widget and adjust color, fonts and whatnot so that the CoveritLive screen blends in with the rest of the site.
- CoveritLive has added dedicated media servers, attached a one GB outgoing pipe and improved the compression technology of the pictures so that users can live post pictures without too much hassle.
- There’s a new support center which will help less-experienced web users to set up and run a live blog
- Every self respecting hip Web 2.0 service adds an iPhone client, so does CoveritLive.
There’s an advantage for journalists
Apart from its accessibility, another reason for the success of CoveritLive is that it simply fulfills a need of journalists: live reporting without any hassle. They don’t need blogging software for writing editorial pieces, as they can just use the existing content management systems. But those programs weren’t build for quick reporting. So that’s why they now embrace a technology that most of them have maligned for quite some time.
Written on February 16, 2008 – 1:08 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
After spending two days in the city of love and buying Valentine’s presents, the wildest ideas about love pop into your mind. At least in my experience they do… so here’s one! On my way to Paris I read an article in my favorite newspaper that said it started a dating service. Nothing special, since every newspaper in the Netherlands has its own dating service. They were just a little later.
Starting a dating service as a newspaper makes sense if you think about it. You choose a newspaper because you feel most comfortable with its political signature, tone of voice, cultural supplement and of course its brand experience. The newspaper I read for example is aimed at a young cosmopolitan audience, discusses broad themes instead of just the hottest news and highlights interesting and semi-intellectual stuff to do. If I were looking for a girlfriend, I would definitely want a girl who has the same ideas about what’s important in life and the world. So the perfect girl for me would probably read the same newspaper.
That’s where the dating service comes in. I could just browse through profiles of girls, without worrying whether she open for semi-intellectual stuff of not. Makes perfect sense to me. I mean, somebody who reads The New York Times would never date anyone who started the day with The New York Post. It goes for magazines too, a FHM man doesn’t want a high-brow New Yorker reader to spend his life with. Right?
If you think of it that way, blogs could easily start dating services as well. They discuss a specific hobby, passion, business or sports team etcetera and differentiate from each other by using a different tone of voice and design. If you’re an eligible bachelor in London, it mustn’t be that hard to meet an attractive tech-minded girl (correct me if I’m wrong guys), yet when you live in Liverpool you might need some help finding one. Wouldn’t it be great if a TechCrunch UK dating service came to the rescue?
Moreover, blogs have a big advantage compared to newspapers since they allow interaction between readers. You can judge on beforehand whether you like his or hers opinion on certain matters. Want some diversity? Check out an article that discusses an important topic and see if he or she has as totally different view on things.
One doubt about dating on blogs, I’m not sure about the man/woman ratio though as male readers are probably still a majority. Anyway, let me try to give you an idea what I’m talking about, here are some stereotype readers. Feel free to drop your experiences in the comments.
- TechCrunch Chick: she’s pretty straight-forward, would love to live in the Valley and is always looking for opportunities to come up with THE perfect business idea. And as no other, she knows money makes the world go round.
- VentureBeat Gentleman: killer-guy, working his ass off and likes to cut through the chase. One you thing must know ladies, he checks the business news every 15 minutes.
- Valleywag Queen: he/ she gossips the day round and has an radar for rumors. Great to drunk with, since he/she is a great story teller and knows how to crash a party. Don’t let your guard down though.
- Mashable Man: Girls, you sure gonna love his elegant and charismatic appearance. Yet after a while, you might feel a bit neglected since he’s always busy with meeting friends and keeping social contacts intact.
- ReadWriteWebWoman: Highly intelligent lady who likes to get to the bottom of things. Although her punctual and structured approach to life might start to get on you nerves.
- Loogic Guapa: For all of you who are looking for that Spanish temper, the Loogic guapa is your chick. If only all her friends wouldn’t speak Spanish all the time.
Written on January 29, 2008 – 9:02 am
Tessa Sterkenburg,
Since online user generated content is picking up, newspapers get continuously slashed for their inability to adjust to modern times and the demise of the old media was predicted. Now it turns out that the old-fashioned publishers are still going strong.
Newspapers were late to the game because, for years, they had near monopolies and fat profit margins, and therefore weren’t pressured to innovate. In 2005, all newspapers were still earning most of their profits from the print versions, and young people turned away from papers, leaving newspapers with a declining reader base, and declining revenue potential.
Last week The Newspaper Association of America announced that a record number of readers visited U.S. online newspaper sites last year. The number of unique visitors to newspaper websites rose more than 6 percent to a monthly average of 60 million. Monthly visits climbed 9 percent in the fourth quarter from a year ago.
So, all is going well then and newspapers are finally becoming innovative news sources online. Indeed newspapers are making steps in the right direction. They are embracing RSS feeds and video, ask their best journalists for their online versions, make more content available for free and there is even some collaboration. I can’t help noticing however, that this news comes together with reports that the biggest growth group online today are the baby boomers… coincidence?
Maybe not. The Wall Street Journal recently announced that they will not go along with the trend and hold on to their subscription model. The reason: it pays them good money. Not only in subscription fees but particularly in advertising revenues. Their well-defined paying user group of affluent 50-year old male decision makers turns out to be an attractive group for advertisers. Great model.
Unfortunately, as a new generation of decision makers is approaching, it might not last.
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The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
