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Long live the King! Was a time when the Internet
created raw fear in old media. Executives were unable to understand
the technology, afraid that their business of many decades would
go down. Ultimately, the dotcom boom went bust, giving a respite
for the old media giants! But meanwhile, many old media giants like
Time Warner agreed to merge with new media upstart AOL in a lop-sided
deal where Time Warner shareholders lost heavily.
As
it turned out, new media is essentially new technology & possibilities
- which is in continuous search of content. And old media is nothing
if not a content generating machine.
Content is king. Long live the king!
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The
Story of Naples Daily (Circ. 57,000)
Naples
Daily is published locally from Naples town (Florida, U.S.A.),
with a fixed population of around 20,000 people. Naples Daily
boasts of a circulation of 57,000! But that is not its claim
to fame.
This newspaper is better known for its recently redesigned
web-site www.naplesnews.com.
Naples Daily's site offers online video, podcasts & blogs.
Add SMS alerts for local high school football games. And (soon-to-be-webcast)
videocasts of the day's news.
And you have a news channel, mobile news alerts & community
news portal rolled into one. In harmony with a provincial
newspaper !
All thanks to the initiative of one Rob Curley who incidentally
expects $5 million revenues from www.Naplesnews.com.
(Mr. Curley is reportedly creating a local golfing portal
which will focus on local players - just like the major sports
channels cover Tiger Woods!)
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In Search of Content
Most
successful new media are aggregators - based on sourcing content
from others. Take Internet search engines like Google & Yahoo! -
both based on sophisticated techniques of scouring the world wide
web to aggregate content. It is the technology & 'first mover' advantage
which is to their great advantage. But this advantage has no value
without content.
Today, Google is trying to leverage its dominant position in the
search engine market to sell advertising to all & sundry. While
competitor Microsoft is consolidating all its online services like
email, instant messenger & of course Internet search - so as to
be in a position to offer to display targeted commercial messages
(ads) to its subscribers.
Same Content, Multiple Usage
Newspapers
are the original news aggregators & publishers. Radio & TV followed.
But it has taken many years for newspaper company executives to
understand the real threats & nature of the Internet.
Fortunately for old media owners, today the picture is clear. 'Old
media' content can be re-used in multiple ways - be it mobile phones,
podcasts or web portals.
Supplementing
Old Media
New
media content like blogs can supplement & extend newspapers. While
podcasts, mobile news alerts, could be new versions of popular newspaper
columns, with the possibility of yielding additional revenues.
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Digital
Cash Cows
There
is a lucrative revenue stream of online ads from popular online
sites. This can be further supplemented with revenue from
e-commerce. And of course, there is revenue from Google's
AdSense, which rings the cash register each time surfers click
on ads served by Google on its pages.
Traditional media giant New York Times (NYT) purchased About.com
In 2005 - probably it's first entry into a non-traditional
news site. About.com has content which is written by knowledgeable
writers called 'guides', making it a real competitor to NYT's
content - only in this case, the function is more supplementary
than competitive.
With over 30 million unique visitors per month, About.com
with its consumer oriented content, took NYT right to
the top in the online news business - with a real potential
to get repeat readers. And with the backing of NYT's huge
content creation machine, the future is wide open.
Three old media giants, Knight Ridder, Tribune & Gannet,
have jointly bought 75% of Topix for an estimated $50 million
in 2005. This is in addition to CareerBuilder.com - a jobs
classified site, ShopLocal - a web shopping portal and Classified
Ventures - an online classified ads company.
The Washington Post acquired online magazine Slate (from Microsoft
in December 2004) to expand its (online) audience.
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Web
Classifieds
Most newspapers have accepted that the web offers a vastly
superior platform for classifieds that the print medium. The smart
ones have created their own classifieds.com properties and even
migrated (retained?) their clientele to the new properties.
One of the largest "free" online classifieds is Craigslist.org -
a popular community site that people use to barter, search, buy
& sell. eBay is another, more commercial barter site which works
like a paid online classified site. Both offer the user a chance
to engage in online conversations & instant bids as well as the
possibility of closing deals in real time. None of this can be implemented
in the print medium.
(Incidentally, both sites started with products/services which were
generally not advertised in local papers. And have since 'graduated'
to cover everything under the sun!)
Consumer
Generated Content
And finally there's consumer generated content. The new societal
mores involve extreme mobility and wide access to technology. In
fact, the available technology makes it easy to copy a segment from
any TV show and share it with others. (Not to mention news portals
& web-sites.)
Until there's copy protection on TV, a TV tuner card, editing software
& an Internet connection is all that is required for consumer generated
content.
Just like blogging & podcasts, consumer generated content will play
a significant role in future media plans.
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