For this year’s last Monday Note, I chose to share a few interesting topics I followed in 2014. I expect many of them will stay relevant in next year’s news cycle. Here are my picks, in about 40 links.
On the grounds that it represents a major economic threat to their business, two groups of French publishers are considering a lawsuit against AdBlockPlus creator Eyeo GmbH. (Les Echos, broke the news in this story, in French).
Thanks to digital, news publishers thought they could build a direct relationship with their customers. Recent deals signal the opposite.
From valuations to management cultures, the gap between legacy media companies and digitally native ones seems to widen. The chart below maps the issues and shows where efforts should focus.
A recent Bain & Co survey paints Europe’s digital future as squeezed between the explosive demand of emerging countries and the dominance of US-based internet giants.
With its idea of creating “iTunes for the press,” Blendle rattles the news industry’s cage. In spite of blessings from the New York Times and Axel Springer, the shiny new thing might just be a mirage.
Google’s recent Search Box feature is but one example of the internet giant’s propensity to use weird ideas to inflict damage upon itself. This sheds light on two serious dangers for Google: Its growing disconnection from the real world and its communication shortcomings.
The news media sector have become heavily dependent on traffic from Facebook and Google. A reliance now dangerously close to addiction. Maybe it’s time to refocus on direct access.
The era of news media based on single product is over. In every field, diversification is mandatory, but yields will vary. Decisive prioritization will make a big difference.
Corporations are tempted to take over journalism with increasingly better content. For the profession, this carries both dangers and hopes for new revenue streams.
Most media organizations are still stuck in version 1.0 of linking. When they produce content, they assign tags and links mostly to other internal content. This is done out of fear that readers would escape for good if doors were opened too wide. Assigning tags is not exact science: I recently spotted a story about the new pregnancy in the British royal family; it was tagged “demography,” as if it was some piece about Germany’s weak fertility rate.
Ten years. That’s how far away in the past the Google IPO lies. Ten years of explosive growth for the digital world, 10 gruesome years for legacy media. Here is the lost decade, revisited in charts and numbers.
The modern smartphone is seven years old and yet, when it comes to designing mobile applications, we are still barely scratching the surface. Today we’ll see how harnessing technology already embedded in a phone can unleash great potential.
This is the second part of our Mobile facts to Keep in Mind (see last week Monday Note–or here on Quartz). Today, a few more basic trends and a closer look at healthy markets for digital news.
By the end of 2014, many news media will collect around 50% of their page views via mobile devices. Here are trends to remember before devising a mobile strategy. (First of a two-part series.)
