Category Archive

Doing consulting work in the newspaper industry has keyed me into one of the major problems for newspapers as they transition online.  They don’t use web designs that are user-friendly.

If you were to look at the recent redesign by our local Charlottesville daily, The Daily Progress, you might, from a consulting standpoint, believe the site is a well-designed site.

It has all the bells and whistles, flash intro pages, monetization spots, widget partnerships, tags, featured readers, etc. The problem, and most of my peers agree, is that a site like this is horribly difficult to navigate. I do appreciate what the Roanoke Times (a close by award winner) has done with their site design, but still as a casual reader, the amount of content and the complexity of the layout scares me and most anyone else away.

Site design should be about minimalism and simplicity. Why? Users have the worst ADD on the planet right now and it’s going to get worse as they are bombarded with more and more online content. I do have evidence to support this.

Take a recently published study titled “Not quite the average: An empirical study of Web use.” I highly suggest you read this PDF if you are involved in web design. The authors studied detailed browsing patterns of 17 to 30 year olds. My favorite finding is:

More than 17% of all new pages were still visited for less than 4 seconds, nearly 50% were shown for less than 12 seconds and 11.6% were displayed for more than 2 minutes (median: 12.4s). However, a fifth of the 11.6% were visits of over 30 minutes to up to 5 days—most of these events are most likely created by unattended browser windows that were left open in the background of the desktop.

50% of page views are for less than 12 seconds!? That hardly gives your site enough time to read the article, let alone hundreds of menu and widget items.  It sheds some light as to why twitter has gotten so popular recently: simplicity wins when there is too much information.

How do you balance simplicity and user design elements for your site?

Don MacAskill recently ranted on how much of a closed community traditional print media companies impose on their users. While I would agree that some if not most large media groups are seriously lacking the insight necessary to monetize today’s generation of consumers, it is a little too early to say that all traditional media is doomed.

Gannett and Tribune recently invested more capital in MetroMix, the Tribune’s original foray into the hyper-local scene. While the site may not have the best functionality or user interaction, it is a good start. You cannot ride the subway in NYC without seeing their ads plastered all over the inside of the trains. The question is not how traditional media companies will succeed or participate in the web 2.0 space, but when. These companies are sitting on a large regional or national footprint and an executive guard that does not understant how publishing content online can bring in revenue.

Web 2.0 Is Not That Obvious To Most

For most of us it sounds very obvious, we see the online space as unlimited “print” real estate….pages upon pages of space to throw edgy content and targetted advertising. So its obvious right? Not as much as you would think. Do any of you remember trying to teach your parents, mostly successful business men and women, how to use a computer? Even to this day they struggle just doing basic things on the internet. They are definitely not part of the Digg Nation.

Imagine how the executives at Print Company Inc feel when they hear Facebook, created and run by a 20 something Harvard drop-out is going to put them out of business very soon. They will come around because they have to. Zell did not buy the Tribune because he believed in a rejuvination of print media, he has an idea (we assume its a dam good one), of how to leverage this vast media empire in today’s world. I would be very shocked if upon hearing about the Digg mis-functionality on the LA Times website Zell brushed it off his shoulders as if it was nothing.

Tech M&A Is Not Always The Best Strategy

Acquisitions are one way to enter this arena, but once a Media News or a McClatchy acquires a hot up-coming web 2.0 property, then what? You have a sexy sirloin and no one to supervise the grill…that is to say, the staff on hand that understands the technology and how to leverage it across the existing properties is not there. Online ad-sales folks are in high demand right now, and for good reason. Someone inside those companies needs to really understand the power of users, their attraction to content and how to charge advertisers for it. Looking back, it would have made more sense for Double Click to have been purchased by one of the old print companies than Google. Imagine the power of having access to that online-ad sales force!? Perhaps there are something Mastercard can’t buy.

Herd Mentality

I think that a sudden panic attack will happen sooner than later. Just looking at how much better the internet has become in the past year in terms of delivering relevant content, we should expect even more ad dollars to shift online than we saw in 2007. It is at the point the point where a web 2.0 love bug bites the print guys, where they start acquiring as much as they can; headcount, aggregators, bloggers, startups, you name it. You are all marked. I mean at this point it’s either them or Google.

Robert Steele is the craziest keynote speaker I have ever seen. I can describe him as a combination of the following
• Steve Ballmer (jumping up and down on-stage)
• Jack Bauer: he is apparently an ex-CIA spy
• Chloe O’Brian: ok, another “24″ reference, but he did start the first Hacker conference in NYC in 1994
• Oh there are so many more references…but this guy is speaking at a mile a minute

Open Source is the New Black
Robert takes the traditional “open source” notion to a new level. At first glance you must think this is regarding software: Microsoft Vs. Linux. Instead we have an inside-out view of the world…

Robert is calling for transparency in worldwide governments via technology empowered denizens. This is a pretty provocative story. He is basically telling us what we have already been doing, most in part supported by blogging technology….The citizens of the world are now able to be the Anderson Coopers and of course, Stephen Colberts of the world. It seems we have not been taking enough advantage of our newfound power to enact change.

Blogging itself wont allow the spread of information…we need supercharged broadcasting platforms. Amir Hirsh’s Collactive is one such company. Having figured out how to crack the Digg/del.ico.us/etc news ranking model, the average online user can now make his/her voice heard without having to be the Om Malik’s and Michael Arrington’s of the world.

You can view this exciting presentation here. 

Chris and Ponzi Pirillo and the rest of the Gnomedex team have prepared quite a conference for all of us here in Seattle.  I am sitting right now in the main conference room in a comfy leather chair, nice wooden desk, power points for my Thinkpad, and free WIFI (albeit a little slow…).  Kudos to the entire team for giving us the required creature comforts necessary to have a great day.

The Media Age/DeParis Redinger squad is here today to look for the next up and coming content creators and technologists.  I was very pleased to see some aggressive self-promotional behavior last night at the pre-conference mixer (thanks for the sponsorship HP). 

While in line to get a drink at the bar we met a really great guy, Todd Martini who runs Alex’s Coupons.  He started his site to help raise money to help his daughter, Alex, battle Leukemia.  I am very happy to report that she is doing just fine now.  The website was such a hit that it has turned into a full-time business for Alex.

The next person we met was Bryan Starbuck, CEO of Talent Spring.  With the rise of social networking and all of its rich promise, some entrepreneurs have been trying to create the next CareerBuilder/Monster.com.  Talent Spring will allow users to rank each other’s resumes while submitting their own to create the first peer-reviewed superstar list of exceptional job candidates for any given industry.  Will this work?  It all depends on the seriousness of the community.  The unique thing about Talent Spring is that they are already up and running.  Keep an eye on them, and in the future when they launch their beta site, PeopleAhead. 

In short, Chris threw a great party and an even better beginning to a crazy conference.  Enjoy the rest of the show.

MySpace will launch it’s News page on Thursday.

Facebook is adding classifieds.

The more traffic you have the more sense it makes to include other features that smaller, less trafficked sites have, like…

My predictions for MySpace and FaceBook for the next year:

1. Facebook will launch a job posting/resume submission feature (done already).
2. MySpace will enter the classifieds market.
3. Facebook will create some sort of viral/user promoted marketing ability for advertisers. You have to hire me to explain that one .

Yesterday, I watched the information unfold about the horror at Virginia Tech.  Today, the NYT reports that 32 people died and 15 were injured.  I attended Virginia Tech for some time and I am speechless as to what happened today.

Sometimes evil hits so close to home that you can’t really make sense of it.  From all of us at The Media Age, we are deeply disturbed and have those people involved in the incident in our hearts and prayers.

Stanford published a study with interesting findings. They are:

The more people spend time using the internet:

• the more they lose contact with their social environment.
• the more they turn their back on traditional media.
• the more time they spend working.

While the study ignored the magnitude of these impacts, I’d wager that a lot of what people do online is socialize…. so, with that being said are there any studies that try to explain the shift from offline socializing to online socializing?