10 January 2008
Things you should be thinking about doing...
Two angles on the same topic for today's blog post, the topic being "stuff you should be doing".
Yesterday
I came across a standard press release from RH Donnelley about their
roll-out of the DexKnows.com service across all of RH Donnelley's US
markets (DexKnows.com is the online repository for all RH Donnelley's
local directory information). Nothing very exciting except that the
list of features DexKnows.com offers reads like a list of "stuff
classified media publishers could/should be doing to add value to their
sites and make them more interactive". View the full list here.
My
second epiphany was an article on SEO and when/how it should be
integrated into website development. (Confession here: whilst we did
some basic SEO when we developed the ICMA site, the more I learn about
it, the more I realise we've missed; I suspect that I'm not alone.).
Read the article here and promise yourself that the next website iteration that you do, you'll take some of these recommendations into account.
Here endeth today's lesson...
|
07 January 2008
Dis-aggregating? Or leveraging?
At the risk of blogging about a blog about a blog (and so on...), there's a very interesting discussion on Online Spin that I came across over the Christmas break which started with "why newspapers had got themselves in such a mess" and has now moved on to "what newspapers need to do to re-invent themselves". (And for "newspapers", feel free to substitute "print classified products").
In short, Dave Morgan, EVP for AOL, argues that newspapers should focus on their several areas of core competence and "break themselves up" into business units which could continue to provide services to their "client", the newspaper, but would also be free to tout for business elsewhere from competing, related or even brand-new sectors to earn money to pay the bills. Morgan's examples are persuasive but the real value can be found in the comments that his blog post attracted. Several contributors were sceptical of the expertise that traditional newspaper companies had in several areas, especially ad sales, news-gathering and distribution, whilst others felt that there wasn't the potential commercial printing to generate sufficient revenue, and many argued that most newspaper companies simply didn't possess the management vision or skills to execute on the plan.
As we develop the programme for the Brussels General Meeting this May, we'll be looking at many of these areas (news-gathering aside), and asking how classified media companies can leverage their assets, develop new and profitable revenue streams, and understand how the myriad aspects of their business (both print and online) can work together to support the strategic objectives.
|
04 January 2008
Who owns content anyhow?
I just read about Robert Scoble's attempt to download contact information from his Facebook page using an automated script. This has resulted in Facebook disbaling his account for "violating the terms of service".
Facebook may have picked the wrong example to make. Scoble is a prominent and well-respected tech blogger and has clearly chose to make a point about the rights that users of social networks have (or rather don't have) over their own content. He has already joined www.dataportability.org, an organisation working to develop open standards for porting data between services, and a Facebook group has been formed to protest his expulsion from the service.
This example got me thinking about the "scraping" of classified content by aggregators such as Oodle that many publishers have long deplored. The accusation that the aggregators were "stealing our content" has withered away as publishers have realised that putting up walls and trying to defend their information silos against all comers was counter-productive and if they couldn't beat 'em, they should join 'em. And so whilst there's been no great deluge of content-sharing agreements bar a couple of direct uploads to GoogleBase, it's become clear that content wants to be free, and if we want to serve our advertisers and readers well, we need to release our content onto the world wide web and wish it well.
|
|
|