News Republic is built on a unique model: Instead of exploiting publishers’ RSS feeds, it shares revenue with them—a risky option that begins to pay off as the company lands deals with cell phone makers. Current numbers are impressive: News Republic racks up 272 page-views per monthly active user.
Behind Blendle’s facade lies a complex set of tools aimed at expanding the reach of paid-for editorial: a recommendation engine; the possibility for publishers to use parts of Blendle’s back office for content optimization; a revisited transaction system, all of which could have serious impact on the news ecosystem. Here is a peek under Blendle’s hood. (This is the second part of a series. Part one is here.)
The Dutch micropayment platform for articles is taking off in spectacular fashion. Its foray into the German market delivers another proof of publishers’ interest in the kind of business model Blendle embodies. But, down the road, Blendle sees itself as the main transactional infrastructure provider for quality journalism. In this first of two articles, we’ll look at Blendle’s key success factors.
Taking the long view, the rise of ad blockers solves many problems for the digital news industry… But for one problem: things will get worse before they get better.
When, in July 2011, LinkedIn hired Dan Roth, everyone in the media industry thought the “professional” social network was up to something big. Roth came with an impressive résumé: Forbes, Condé Nast Portfolio (a great but ill-fated glossy), Wired, then Fortune, where he served as managing editor before being poached by LinkedIn.
According to a new SecretMedia study, because of ad blocking software, one quarter to two thirds of video time ends up un-monetized. While broadcasters begin to grasp the full vibrancy of the ad-blocking ecosystem, the advertising community inexplicably lags behind.
Two weeks ago, we looked at the motives underlying Europe’s frustration vis-à-vis internet giants. To sum up: desktop and mobile traffic completely captured by the likes of Google, Microsoft and Facebook; anemic access to venture capital and smaller expenditures per student, especially in tertiary education.
It takes less than ten people to assemble the famous pink printed edition of the Financial Times. The “carbon-based” team recycles the editorial produced all day long by the 600-person newsroom—with some deadlines adjusted to fit the newspaper’s closing.
An analysis of download times highlights how poorly designed news sites are. That’s more evidence of poor implementation of ads… and a strong case for ad blockers.
At a time when the information world becomes increasingly shallow, journalists ought to join forces with experts. The alliance would bring deeper knowledge to journalists and sharper story-telling to eggheads.
New mobile internet trends have caught my attention this week. Today, we look at their impact on the news business. (1)
Until now, mining good journalism from the web’s depths has been done from the top. Over the last 13 years, looking for “signals” that flag quality content has been at the core of Google News: With a search engine scanning and ranking 50,000 sources in 30 languages and 72 editions, its inventor, the famous computer Scientist Krishna Bharat, has taken his extraordinary breakthrough to an immense scale.
On the ad blocking front, the situation keeps getting worse. Until now, the media industry pretended to ignore the problem, perhaps waiting for a miracle cure. This might turn into a long lull.
Circa, the clever smartphone news app, failed to live up to its promises. Its impending buy-out stems from the inherent weakness of the smartphone advertising market, from Circa’s inability to catch up with evolving reading habits, and from an insufficient editorial proposition.
At last October’s introduction of the new iPad Air, the creators of a clever iOS app named Replay were invited on stage. To get there, they went through a selection process that illustrates Apple’s perfectionism—and hidden application sophistication.
Last week, we looked at the pathetic Dailymotion saga. Once described as “one of the best French startups,” Dailymotion was funded, in large part, with public money; then put on life support by Orange; patriotically protected by two economy ministers; and finally sold to media conglomerate Vivendi. The transaction did little to mask the company’s (and the board’s) lack of a real strategy.
No one should be happy with the sale of French video streaming Dailymotion to Vivendi. Not buyers, nor the the startup’s management team—and certainly not the venture capital community.
The digital media odyssey’s latest chapter: According to a March 23rd New York Times article, half a dozen news organizations are currently in discussions with Facebook for a distribution deal. Cited as candidates for the experiment: The NYT itself, but also BuzzFeed, the National Geographic, and even Quartz. (No one actually confirmed the information.) Under the putative deal terms, instead of simple links, Facebook would host media content. In exchange, the media would get a cut of the ad revenue generated by the arrangement.
Airbnb has every reason to enter the news services sector—and to threaten a broad range of media/services such as Trip Advisor or Yelp.
When it comes to the most basic form of news delivery, facts keep piling up in a way that makes native apps seem more and more questionable. Here is why it’s worth considering a move back to mobile sites or web apps…
Recent annual reports and estimates for the calendar year 2014 suggest interesting comparisons between the financial performance of media (either legacy or digital) and internet giants.
Last year Richard Gingras and Sally Lehrman came up with the Trust Project (full text here, on Medium.) Gingras is a seasoned journalist and the head of news and social at Google; Lehrman is a senior journalism scholar at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University in California.
Digital media are stuck with bad economics resulting in relentless deflation. It’s time to wake-up and make 2015 the year of radical—and concerted—solutions.
About four million people marched Sunday across France in support of the 17 people killed in last week’s terror attacks. France is in a state of shock—the emotion is overwhelming, and the concern is growing as everyone realizes the size and depth of French Jihad networks.
