Remember when iTunes was released way back in January 2001? Really, do you remember? At it’s launch Steve Jobs was confident. He knew what he was giving us and how it might transform our music listening and buying habits. At the unveiling at Macworld Expo Jobs said: “iTunes is miles ahead of every other jukebox application, and we hope its dramatically simpler user interface will bring even more people into the digital music revolution.” With that straight to the point statement the landscape for the music industry and other associated creative industries changed.
These industries didn’t know what lay ahead. Ten months after iTunes was introduced, on October 23rd, Apple released the iPod. Eighteen-months later in April 2003 – while the music industry was doing battle with file-shares, Apple opened it’s iTunes store. And within six years Apple had 70% of worldwide online digital music sales, making iTunes the largest digital music retailer.
Steve Jobs was hailed as a saviour of the music industry. He had a vision and made it work. Today, the news, media and publishing industries are crying out for a saviour that can help rescue them from the catastrophic situation that they find themselves in. Sales down and advertising at an all time low.
Some have tried, amongst them Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, who in November 2007 launched the Kindle, a popular eReader that gave Amazon customers in the US access to an initial catalogue of over 88,000 digital titles. Today, there are more than 300,000 titles, including subscriptions to newspapers.
The Kindle has hype. It sold out quickly and had the support of Rupert Murdoch. Yet, the Kindle and it’s successors didn’t have the magic that Apple had, nor the practicality that is designed into every Apple product.
In the background though, Apple and Amazon are facing the monopolistic might of Google – a true online mammoth, which is looking to digitise the world’s books and create a vast online library. With a court hearing in New York next month, Google is hoping to legally confirm a deal signed last year with US authors and publishers. In the deal, Google would set up a Book Rights Registry and position itself as a PRS-style (ASCAP to our US readers) entity for writers and publishers. Some believe that this should not be allowed.
Yet this deal has forced many in the news, media and publishing industries to really have a look at how they operate and how they must make the most of the internet.
Yes, the Google Books deal would allow people to search books through it’s search engine, but it would also set up a model for making money from publishing, possibly through eReaders and the like. It might also create new income streams for the news and media industries, which have been suffering since customers started to switch online, where news has available free for years because publishers wanted a slice of the online advertising pie. Sadly, as I said in my previous post, they set themselves up for a tough time, dependent on advertising income, which plummeted when the current recession hit.
And why is this Google Books deal relevant to news outlets? Well, Google has reached a settlement with book publishers in the US and news and media companies might be hoping that the online giant will hear their talk of paywalls. What they need is for Google to play ball and start paying for listing their headlines and first paragraphs through its very popular Google News aggregator.
And it appears that Google is willing to play. In an eight-page response to the Newspaper Association of America request for paid-content proposals, Google revealed that it was developing a micro-payment system for paid-for-online content.
In the document Google outlines its vision for a “premium content ecosystem” that includes subscriptions across multiple news sites, syndication on third-party sites, accessibility to search and various payment options, including small fees for access to individual pieces of content (known as micropayments).
Google says that: “While we believe that advertising will likely remain the main source of revenue for most news content, a paid model can serve as an important source of additional revenue. In addition, a successful paid content model can enhance advertising opportunities, rather than replace them.”
It confirms a Google’s vision for “a premium content ecosystem includes the following features:
· Single sign-on capability for users to access content and manage subscriptions
· Ability for publishers to combine subscriptions from different titles together for one price
· Ability for publishers to create multiple payment options and easily include/exclude content behind a paywall
· Multiple tiers of access to search including 1) snippets only with “subscription” label, 2) access to preview pages and 3) “first click free” access
· Advertising systems that offer highly relevant ads for users, such as interest-based advertising”
The payment system, which is described as being in production, would help and confirm News International’s plans to charge for access to it’s content online within the next 12 months. Or at least it gives us a clue of how paywalls might work.
Currently most news outlets only make money online from advertising, while print makes it from both from sales and advertising. The exceptions here being titles such as The FT, The Wall Street Journal, as well as other online subscription based outlets. The industry is starting to see how valuable it could be to have committed subscribers accessing their content.
Publishers meanwhile are starting to stand firm against Google’s News aggregator. In Italy, the Italian association of daily newspaper and periodical publishers, claim “members news sites receive no compensation for the news picked up by Google News Italia and if they do not appear on a Google search they are denied access to thousands of potential ‘visitors’ who generate advertising income. ”Google argues that it helps newspaper websites make money through online advertising and does not misappropriate content.”
With its Google Books operation and details of it’s plans for a micro payment system using Checkout, one has to assume that Google is looking to safeguard its position and transform the news, media and publishing industries just like Jobs changed the landscape for music. After all, “Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful. This applies to all information – paid and free.”
And Google is planning to replicate the model that Apple develop with it’s possible initiative with news, and possibly Book. Hidden in the document Google confirms that a revenue split would be comparable to “Apple’s models on iTunes and AppStore and consonant with experiments being currently conducted on YouTube.”
The question is, with rumours of an Apple Tablet, could Jobs undermine what Google might be planning?
Apple has done it before and it has the infrastructure to do it again and be the knight in shining armour for a beleaguered set of industries.
The media landscape is changing, and it’s changing fast.
'Journalists And Social Media: What PRs Should Know' event overview
Saturday, November 28th, 2009Laura Oliver, Nic Newman and Julio Romo
Nic Newman summed up the impact that social media is having on journalism when he said that based on volume and time spent on site, “Facebook was six times bigger than CNN.” People today spend more time on social networking sites than on news sites, with industry commentators citing this to highlight the reason for the supposed death of news and quality journalism. For others though social media represents an opportunity – a resource that adds value to journalism, which is why the Chartered Institute of Public Relations Greater London Group (CIPR GLG) wanted to host an event to discuss how social media is re-shaping journalism and the news industry.
For this debate we were delighted to welcome Nic Newman, the BBC’s Future Media and Technology Controller for Journalism and Digital Distribution and Laura Oliver, Editor for Journalism.co.uk.
Nic had just returned to the BBC after three months at the Reuters Institute for The Study of Journalism at Oxford University where he wrote a paper on ‘The rise of social media and its impact on mainstream journalism.’ A document that gave insight into how social media was being adopted and used within the BBC, CNN, The New York Times, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph.
As has been well publicised, the reach of news organisations has been in decline for many years, ever since publishers implemented a business model that gave away its content for free online so that they could get a slice of the at the time new revenue from online advertising. Of course as we now know this strategy ended up ‘cannibalising’ revenues from print, broadcast and other news focused incomes as consumers stopped buying newspapers and magazines and moved online where news is free.
The double-whammy came with the rise of social media, as people moved to Facebook, Twitter and the like and stopped visiting news websites. And it was through these ‘herds’ – their friends and followers – that people started to get the breaking news stories that for so long had been the preserve of news outlets.
While some industry commentators saw social media as the final nail in the coffin for quality journalism and the news industry, others viewed it as an opportunity, as it confirmed the belief that through social media journalists could ‘better reach out to people who know more about a given subject.’
Social media expert Clay Shirky says in Newman’s report that ‘you trade speed for accuracy’ by getting updates from Twitter. And this is what the news industry is now focusing on, accurate and in-depth reporting.
The BBC’s user generated content (UGC) hub on an average week processes over 10,000 email comments, 1,000 still images and 100 video clips. Staffed by 23 people the hub can access breaking news images and stories, supporting news producers for programmes such as the BBC’s Ten O’Clock News. They also act as a contact point for people with stories to tell – a case of this was when it was contacted in February 2009 by an HBOS whistleblower. Social media is a platform that links people with quality news.
We were told by Newman and Oliver that social networks allows journalists to find and tell better stories and engage with new audiences. I asked if this meant a reduced role for PRs as journalists could go ‘straight to source’ through social networking channels. “No,” we were told. Just as journalists could use social networks to gain facts, insight and case studies, PRs could and were bypassing the media and taking their messages direct to their audiences. Oliver added that, “PRs would always be involved in the conversation.” The right to reply we should remember is to a certain extent enshrined in journalism and the editorial guidelines of many news outlets.
Newman pointed out that “as if to add insult to injury, these new networks and individuals are also acting as a check on traditional media, questioning our accuracy and standards, and forcing transparency.”
Oliver confirmed that outlets are having to be more transparent. I asked if social media is opening journalists’ notebooks. “Yes,” was her answer. In Oliver’s case, and from what she knows from journalists in nationals and business-to-business titles, there is a lot of sharing of links through social bookmarking sites and the like. Links that allow people to build a better picture of a journalist and their ‘beat.’ It also allows readers and PRs to build better relationships with them, which can only be a good thing.
But how is social media being used in journalism? Laura Oliver confirmed that journalists now use sites to gain opinion and case studies on stories that they might be working on. People can be found on networking sites discussing most subjects and this is invaluable to journalists. These people are consumers, potential customers and stakeholders. They share thoughts and knowledge with other people. If they complain about a bad experience with a brand, they’ll share it, and journalists will hear it and if it’s newsworthy enough report it
Journalists and media outlets know that people carry mobile devices with which they can stay in contact with their networks. They know that people can now compliment a story that they are working on as these devices can capture images and audio.
The new tools of the trade for journalists include Tweetdeck, Facebook, Audioboo – an application that allows users to post and share audio files. Newsrooms I am sure also have the ability to monitor conversations through Viralheat, a social measurement platform that covers hundreds of viral video destination sites, Twitter, and millions blogs & websites.
News outlets like the BBC for example use Twitter to get case studies for news packages about any story. Newman gave the example of how the BBC Ten O’Clock News wanted case study that related to an engineering story that they were putting together. News producers asked Technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones if he could help. Rory obliged by putting a call for help on his Twitter feed. Within minutes his request was met by numerous offers of help, one that was local to London was used. It was that easy and by the look of it not a PR in sight!
As PRs we have to remember that thanks to social media journalists have better access to the opinions and comments from consumers and stakeholders. Social media is not just a platform for technology story, but a platform through which people can have conversations about any given subject.
The one thing that is certain is that social media is here to stay. It is even influencing journalism training and editorial control as the industry evaluates how to meet the changing dynamics of how and from where people get their news. Griffith University in Australia has even made Twitter part of the mandatory course load for journalism students.
And it is affecting how we PRs do our job. It isn’t just an add-on for monologue campaigns that we have been so used to developing. It is a platform through which our clients can better engage with current and potential consumers.
Social media is open, it is transparent. The conversations that our customers have can be seen not just by us, but by journalists that judge and hold us to account, and that does not have to be an issue.
Tags: bbc, business, cnn, communications, content, facebook, journalism, journalists, media, news, online, pr, public relations, reuters, social media, social networking, the daily telegraph, the guardian, the new york times, twitter, web2.0
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