I love reading books – and when it is time for vacation it becomes a major pleasure. But rarely do I now read books in my own language: Norwegian. The reason is simple: Only a few of them are available for e-readers!

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In analyzing digital media trends, I strongly believe in the following statement: If it can be digitalized, it will.

This is true for all media formats: Films, music, games, news, radio, TV, magazines, books, etc.  The analog formats are loosing, while the digital versions are taking over. In some markets there is a revolution, in other markets we are only seeing a slow evolution – step by step. But the direction is unmistakingly the same: Physical media products, like DVD, newspapers and paper books, will eventually disappear or become irrelevant.

As the smart Danish blogger Thomas Baekdal writes: People want digital, so give them digital.

One piece of recent news exemplified this development in a symbolically strong way: Amazon announced that is is now selling 143 digital books for every 100 hardcover books. No exact numbers were given, and there was no mention of paperbacks. Yet it illustrates a paradigm shift in the book industry, which is now feeling the power of the digital wave.  In the US digital book sales this year (up to May) has quadrupled compared to last year, according to the Association of American Publishers.

Let me get back to my own book reading habits. For me e-reading on a high quality screen has been a revolution. I use a Kindle myself, but imagine I can get most of the same advantages on a number of different e-readers, including iPad. Advantages are plentiful:

• The reading quality is as high, or even higher, than in a paper book. Just the small detail of adjusting the font size is worth a lot.
• My e-reader is light and easy to carry around. Going to the beach? I just throw it in the backback.
• No need anymore to bring a number of heavy books on vacation. I have them all in my e-reader. And e-ink screens work great in the sunshine as well (sorry, iPad, on this particular vacation user situation you cannot compete yet.)
• I can buy new books anywhere, even on the beach. Several times I have impulsively bought books after having read the review in a newspaper.
• E-books are cheap. USD 12 for a novel! Great!
• I can continue reading my books on other devices if I prefer, such as my Android phone, iPad or even on my PC.

On vacation on the beautiful west coast of Norway I enjoy reading a great novel - in English - on my e-reader while my son is fishing.

These days  I am enjoying my summer vacation on the beautiful west coast of Norway.   I bring my e-reader with me everywhere, loaded with great novels I would love to read.

But the books are all in English! I don’t have a single book in my own language, Norwegian, on my e-reader.

In fact I have almost stopped reading books in Norwegian. I find reading books on a device like Kindle so convenient that I rarely bother about getting paper books anymore. And since hardly any books in the Norwegian language are available in digital formats, I have just stopped reading them.

It is a pity, of course. And not what I really want. But convenience tends to win when it comes to digital media habits. I choose among the books that are available rather than put on an extra effort to search for the other alternatives.

Actually everything is ready for Norwegian book publishers to be have their offering available on e-readers. The major book publishers have cooperated in setting up a technical solution at the Norwegian Book Data Base – and it is all fully developed. But so far the publishers have decided not to push the “start” button. The reasons are mainly political, as I understand it: A number of issues need to be sorted out in a tightly regulated small book market. One of them is the question of value-added tax. In Norway paper books are exempt for this tax, while digital versions are charged the full rate of 25 per cent.  That makes it difficult for book publishers to offer e-books at a significant discount.

The result is that I can not read most of the books in my own language on e-readers. And because of that I choose English language books instead. Not really a victory for Norwegian book publishers, I guess.

I realize of course that I may not be a typical customer. So far, that is. I am used to reading in English and perceive myself as rather internationally oriented in my thinking. Also I belong to the small minority in Norway who has actually purchased an e-reader device.

Yet I think this personal example, as well as the speed e-reading now is growing in the USA,  demonstrate the risk publishers take if they avoid making digital versions of their work. As the whole business is turning digital, customers are not just going to wait for you. They will go somewhere else instead. And people like myself may turn out not to be so marginal after all. There is a growing group of highly educated people in Norway who find it almost as easy to read in English as in Norwegian. Many of us also use English regurlarly in our work. And e-readers and tablets like iPad are gaining ground very quickly.

Convenience wins. If you want to be a winner in providing content, you need to be sure that you offer it in whatever way is considered most convenient by your users, be it on Kindle, iPad, iPhone or whatever other device is being preferred. Otherwise your customers, like myself, will make a quality tradeoff: Ideally I prefer Norwegian. Of course I do. But for the time being I don’t mind reading in English. And boy, am I surprised! There are so many great books available in that language! And they are so cheap! I love it!

The changes are radical also from the perspective of authors:

I am actually writing a book in Norwegian myself – about Cambodia. It will most probably be published as a paper book in Norwegian early next year. For the time being it is OK that way as e-reading is still uncommon in my country. But I am pretty sure that for the next book I might decide to write, everything will be different.

For this book I am thinking the paper version first, then whatever digital versions the publishing house might come up with next.

For the next book chances are that I will be thinking digital publishing first – with the paper book as only one of several versions. The role of my publishing house probably have changed – and my guess is that I, as the author, will be more in control. In fact I may not need a traditional publishing house at all, at least not for the whole value chain.

As a writer I look forward to that. Readers should too. There will be more choices, sophisticated and compelling reading experiences, lower prices and great convenience in where, when and how you read your “books”.

The debate is always black and white: put up a paywall or lose money. But the UK Daily Mail’s website is getting so big it needn’t do either.

The Mail has chosen a different road than many media companies: It doesn’t want a paywall and it shuns newsroom integration.

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This article was written by Peter Preston, for guardian.co.uk on Saturday 17th July 2010 23.05 UTC

David Mitchell had some brutal alternatives on offer last week. You either build a paywall around your newspaper net site – or you don’t, he told Observer readers. You either make money online – or you lose it. You either think Mr Rupert Murdoch may have had a useful idea for his Times – or you excoriate him as per usual. But hang on a moment, because all this black and white stuff leaves out one discommoding part of the argument. Yes, it’s the Daily Mail.

Take the Mail in print. Around 1.9 million punters buying a copy every day, which means 4,881,000 readers scanning their favourite sheet each morning. And online, the growth from nothing much four years ago to 40,500,000 unique browsers a month is verging on the phenomenal: up 72% year on year. Through 2009, the Telegraph and the Guardian were two close competitors – sometimes ahead, often very near to, the Mail. Not now. Both still have good growth of their own, but Associated’s electronic baby – 16 million unique browsers in the UK, 26.3 million in the rest of the world – begins to hint at a different league.

Ah! Perhaps that’s because it is in a different league, say the snipers. Look at those yards of celebrity gossip and pictures on the site; this isn’t the Mail we know (and don’t much love). This is a different beast that somehow doesn’t count because it fights unfair.

Park that charge for a moment, however, and ask why the Mail’s online chief, Martin Clarke, is clearly (though pragmatically) opposed to paywalls. Because he doesn’t need them. Because the surge of traffic is bringing in advertising fast. Because he can see a moment, very soon, when his digital daily will make real profits of its own.

It’s relatively easy to reckon how that could happen since, unlike its rivals, the Mail shuns newsroom integration and runs online operations totally separately, which means that costings and revenue are separate, too. So (purely notionally, on the back of an envelope), the 25 people who sit at Mail online desks each day, boosted to 45 or so for round-the-week working, might cost an average of £100,000 each all in: say £4.5m a year. Add another £1m a month for buying pictures and syndicated tales: £12m. So put down £16.5m for annual costs – with maybe a million or three on top to pay for development and emergencies.

Can internet advertising alone bring in a round £20m to turn Mail red ink into deep black? Clearly it can. However rough and ready my figuring may be, there’s a reality to the audience numbers here, and to the rise within that of engaged readers who visit the online Mail much as they might pick up a print copy. Forty million unique browsers creates a tide of interest in the States as well as in Britain. Of course Clarke doesn’t need and doesn’t want paywalls. He’s building a nice little free earner of his own.

But back to the critics again: to those who don’t think the electronic Mail is a follower of the true faith. Which is where we reach a fork in the road.

There is no rule that says online papers must play print’s little brother. On the contrary, the most successful ones are more like inspired riffs on a print theme. Nor is there a rule that says big print sellers carry the same clout when they transfer to screen. The print Sun far outsells everything day by day but, with 20 million or so unique browsers, was trounced and trounced again by the Telegraph, Guardian and Mail before Mr Murdoch announced yet another paywall.

Why assume that the Telegraph – with 1.7 million print readers a day – must go head to head with the Mail and its 4.8 million? Why assume that the two online versions are really in such close competition either? The online market, like the print market, is beginning to set different rules for itself, to insist that quality and redtop and celeb can define different pitches (and appeals to advertisers) just as they do in the land of dead forests.

In short, it doesn’t necessarily matter that the Mail is different. Perhaps its success merely prompts other news sites to be different as well. Not one site covering all, but many sites offering alternative things. Not one site ruling the world, but many sites carving up the globe.

And once we’re dealing in niches and targeting – for readers, for ads – then paywalls become merely part of the debate: not Rupert’s (or David’s) last weapon of every resort.

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

User payment, the tablet revolution and more clever advertising solutions. Those are some of the digital media trends that are putting their mark on 2010.

In the beginning of the year I wrote the blog post “8 digital media trends to watch in 2010″.  It has been one of the most read articles on BetaTales this year and I decided it is time to update it. This is a new version of the post, in which I have included some of the developments that have proved to put a strong mark on the year.

Here are 8 of the ditigal media trends that I think are shaping 2010:

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1. Searching for new business models: Lots of experiments with user payment are taking place

Many media houses have signalled that they will try to charge customers for content. “User payment” has become the new buzz word within the media industry, and a large number of experiments have been initiated.

The wave has been headed by media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, who just put the web site of The Times behind a paywall.

Most media houses probably will not dare to go as far as The Times. Rather many are trying to find solutions where the most loyal readers are paying. One example is The New York Times, which will introduce the socalled meter model in the beginning of next year.

The big challenge for media houses is of course to determine what of their offerings that really provide Unique Value. There is a good thing about these experiments, though. As 2010 draws to an end, the business model of news may have gone through some significant changes. We will know a lot more about which models may actually work and which will be doomed to fail.

One thing is for sure: Most media sites need to improve their business model. Unless you are a market leader, display ads alone normally is not sufficient to run a sustainable news business online. This is becoming even more evident as display ads have become under increasing price pressure in the market. Somehow news sites will need to find additional income sources.

2. Smart phones are revolutionizing mobile web use

We are in the middle of a revolution when it comes to connecting to the web through mobile services. The basic initiator is the iPhone, which revolutionized how people use the web through mobile devices.

This trend is now being accelerated by Google‘s open source operating system Android, which is gaining speed very quickly.

The result is a radical shift in how people use their mobile phones. The apps economy is exploding and a lot of people are now using their mobile phones for tasks previously taken care of by their laptops.

3. Media sites are connecting much more closely to popular social networks

Only a couple of years back many media sites thought they could develop huge social networks on their own. This approach has largely failed. Media sites soon discovered that developing their own social networks required consistant dedication and allocaton of resources. It proved to be very hard to compete on an every-day basis with the huge global players.

Look for instance at this Alexa graph of how the once huge popular Norwegian social network Nettby has lost visitors. Nettby is run by VG.no, the news site of Norway’s second largest newspaper.

Giving up the ambition to create their own social network, a lot of media sites now instead connect to the social networks people do indeed use:   Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc.

One of many examples is Washington Post, which has introduced the concept Network News. Connecting to Facebook’s API, the news site lets its readers know of stories recommended by their friends.

We are now seeing a large number of media sites using Facebook Connect and similar tools in an effort to create engagement. The reason is simple: The the ability to create engagement and loyalty among users is a determining factor of which media sites will be the winners in the future. This is even more important as much general news have been commoditized.

The trend also forces media companies to realize that the age of one-way communication is a past. In today’s digital world media  need to be in continuous dialogue with their readers – or slowly die.

4. Geo location are becoming the basis of exciting new services

As mobile services explode, the location of users will be more important. Most new smart phones have a GPS included, and content providers will offer services which utilize where users are located at any specific time.

At the same time a number of new social networks are built around the location of its users, such as Foursquare and Gowalla.

Media sites are not necessarily prepared for this trend. Many media sites are accustomed to preparing their content primarily for print and secondarily for the web. Typically they have not added the meta data necessary to offer geo  located services. Now it is the time to do it!

5. Tablets are changing our media habits

The launch of Apple’s iPad has put high speed on the e-reading market for media companies. Media companies are running as fast as they can to come up with them most exciting news apps for the new tablet.

Apple will soon face competition from lighter tablets with even better screens, many of them based on Google’s competing Android platform.

For media companies an interesting user pattern is emerging. iPad is proving itself to be a sofa device – as many users primarily reserve it for the late night time.

And then there are Kindle and other e-ink deviced, designed to offer a very good user experience when reading books and other forms of text.

The number of e-reader devices in the market will grow significantly in 2010 – and so will also the buzz around this technology.

We are bound to see a large number of tablets and other e-reading devices launched in the market within the next year. So far iPad has taken a lead, but the landscape is still in the storm and huge changes will happen.

6. Much greater emphasis on new advertisement models

As space for display ads is abundant and prices drop, media sites are forced to spend a lot of time and money to develop more sophisticated ad models for their customers.  Advertisers demand documentation that ads actually work – and media sites are under increasing pressure to prove the effect of ads on their sites. We will probably see a lot more innovation in this area as the sites try to develop premium ad models which can offer high value both to the advertiser and the users.

7. Real-time

Delaying publishing is yesterday’s method – news and other content today is published as it happens. We are now experiencing the real-time web, driven forward by news feeds of services like Facebook and Twitter.

Users increasingly demand immediacy, a way of presenting news which is both compelling and addictive. At major news events users have increasingly sophisticated ways of following the aggregated real-time news streams from numerous eye witnesses.

This of course poses great challenges for traditional media companies as they face competition from observant amateurs at the scene of the news.

I am convinced news sites increasingly will take advantage of this real-time web and find creative ways of making their coverage evolve live and continuously as new information is being gathered. This includes making efficient use of social media and user content in the daily journalism.

8. News content continue to disaggregate

It seems to me that most editors underestimate how news content is disaggregated. Yet this trend somewhat undermines the very business model of traditional media companies with their emphasis on broad edited packages as their main product.

As a journalist it hurts me to point this out. Yet I am convinced that the content focus slowly moves from one-size-fits-all packages to the single piece of news content and associated meta data.  For many news sites today a significant portion of their users don’t even visit the front page, but go directly to a specific news article from a Google search og aggregator service.

I think there is a clear parallell to the music industry. Their basic product used to be the album, an edited package of an appropriate collection of songs. This made sense when you had to make a physical product – like a record or CD.  But as music was digitalized, the individual song took over as the popular product.

I am not saying there will not be a market for edited packages.  Certainly people will still appreciate qualified editors making a choice for them.  But content pieces will no longer only live within a broader package, but also take on a life of its own being distributed wherever users want to consume it. And media sites will be forced to make their packages much more unique and focus on specific user needs.

One of the world’s most important news sites, BBC News, has been redesigned and claims to be part of a new “global visual language”.

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This article was written by Jemima Kiss, for guardian.co.uk on Wednesday 14th July 2010 09.47 UTC

BBC News has a new look from today, the first major redesign since 2003.

It has everything you might expect from a 2010 redesign: share buttons for Twitter, Facebook, Digg, better links to related stories that provide context and a crisper, less cluttered design with more white space.

There’s also more emphasis on video, with suggested video stories in a high-profile box on the top right of every page and a bigger, better quality video player.

Predictably, there have been more than a few teething problems. The new site doesn’t seem to serve up an iPhone version, which means a “rilly rilly rilly rilly” tiny page that needs a lot of zooming in to read anything. On Blackberry, the old site is still being served up.

Journalist Louise Bolotin pointed out that the fully accessible site isn’t ready yet. “Not good enough,” she tweeted, and pointed to the BBC’s explanation that it has removed the low graphics version of the site as part of the upgrade, but that a “suite of accessibility tools” would be added later this year.

That said, feedback on Twitter has been pretty balanced.

Jordon Dias: “I know: what happened to the internet generation being one of change? If people don’t like it, they go elsewhere.”

J Templar: Where previously there was simplicity, clarity and uniformity there is now a disjointed, & ugly disunity: http://bit.ly/9YuoPe

The BBC design is conventionally safe and easily navigable for its least web-savvy users, but is definitely more attractive, graphically stronger and rightly gives more prominence to video. There’s also more white space on the home page which gives the impression that there’s less on it, and much of the grumbles have been about a white gutter on the page.

As Labour candidate Luke Pollard said in response: “New look BBC website is like new look Facebook – I hate it today but will love it tomorrow.”

That’s normally the way we react to changes on sites we use the whole time, but after a few days we can’t remember what they used to look like.

Ah, it’s all part of a new ‘global visual language’

In an introductory blog post, BBC News website editor Steve Hermann explained some of the research that informed the design:

“We talked to audience groups, held one-to-one user testing sessions, and invited several thousand of you to try out a prototype version of today’s new design. With this feedback, we arrived at the design you see today,” he wrote.

“There’s also been some major behind-the-scenes work on our production system which means we’ll be able to adapt even more quickly in future, whether to the changing expectations of our users or to new technology as it emerges.”

The BBC’s Future Media and Technology director Erik Huggers added that this redesign is the first to implement the BBC’s new ‘global visual language’ that is eventually supposed to make the BBC’s services look and feel more consistent. On the back end, the redesign has improved the content management system for journalists uploading text, images and video.

The BBC couldn’t say exactly how many people worked on the project, but confirmed that the in-design team did consult external design experts.

“At the same time as the in-house team has been working on the News redesign, we have worked with Neville Brody and his team at Research Studios on establishing a new ‘global visual language‘ to establish consistency in design and interaction across all of the BBC websites,” said a spokesperson.

So… what’s your verdict?

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

Social media is huge in Asia, but very distinct from the Western world in several aspects. Check this video for a quick introduction.

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Thomas Crampton heads Ogilvy‘s team of social media specialists in Asia. A former correspondent for The New York Times and International Herald Tribune, he now is completely dedicated to social media and advicing businesses on how they should communicate with their customers. He is considered a leading expert on social media in Asia.

This video was produced for an internal meeting at Ogilvy and gives a very quick and efficient overview of how social media is being used in Asia. Personally I find it quite fascinating as people in Asia both love all kinds of social media at the same time as there are some very clear differences to the Western world. Did you for instance know that 88 million of the world’s estimated 242 million bloggers live in China?

Three major differences stand out:

Social media is mobile

In Japan there are no less than 75 million mobile Internet users – or 84 % of the population – while Vietnam saw a stunning 846 % growth in mobile Internet users in 2009.  Half of the population in Hong Kong owns a smartphone.

Users pay on social networks

One of the biggest networks, Cyworld, makes about 200 million USD every year in sale of virtual items. Several other local brand social networks also have a high income from virtual goods.

Several strong local brands

QQ.com is used by 376 million people in China

While Facebook is big in other parts of Asia, local brands dominate in markets like China and South Korea.

Check out the video from Thomas. You may also enjoy reading his article “Social networking habits across Asia-Pacific” for additional background.

Other blogs about social media in Asia

• 6 Things About India’s Mobile Landscape (penn-olson.com)
• Facebook scores virtual currency deal in Asia (news.cnet.com)
• Thomas Crampton: Overview: Asia’s Social Media Scene (huffingtonpost.com)

After all the hype and all the disappointment, a report from Reuters Institute for the study of Journalism digs deeper into the effect of social media on the 2010 campaign.

This article was written by Jemima Kiss, for guardian.co.uk on Monday 12th July 2010 06.00 UTC

Among the many promises broken during the course of the 2010 UK general election was the contention that this was to be Britain’s first true internet campaign, won and lost Obama-style due to grassroots funding campaigns, intimate video messages and – anathema to the serious political pundits – soundbites on Twitter.

What we got was a sensational election dominated by some very traditional TV debates, while the promises of the web and social media seemed to provide an entertaining but superficial backchannel. But with two months’ breathing space since 6 May, a refreshingly thorough report by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism illustrates just how much impact social media had on the election, and particularly how the engagement of younger voters may have influenced the outcome.

Nic Newman, the BBC’s former future media controller for journalism, spent six weeks reviewing Facebook groups, Twitter coverage and the use of social media by traditional media organisations. “This was never going to be an internet election,” he says. “Social media is just another layer … it has always been there, through discussion and networks in the pub.”

Facebook dominated the media behaviour of the 18-24 age group he surveyed, with an emphatic 97% saying they used the site during the election. The same group used the web more than any other source of news – 89%, compared with 81% for TV and 59% for newspapers.

When asked how they used social media during the election, 64% said discussing events, joining a group or clicking on links from a friend, while 30% said the TV debate was the biggest factor in swaying their vote – more than TV, newspapers or friends and family.

After decades struggling to engage the youth vote, the Electoral Commission had a major success with aboutmyvote.co.uk, which recorded 1.8m visits, 40% of them from 18-24s. But does the trend for paywalls threaten to cut off a supply of authoritative, informative online news for this group? Though few sites charge for access to general news now, an accelerated trend could mean this would be the only election where wide engagement combined with open sharing of information.

“It is clearly an issue, as social recommendation becomes bigger, that some of that content will be behind paywalls, and this is not just about the election,” Newman says. “But it becomes more significant around election time, and an issue about access and the necessity to get free information.”

The challenge is to engage individuals deeply enough that they will escalate from passive viewer to active participant. Aboutmyvote.co.uk certainly succeeded to some extent, but Photoshop also helped, as illustrated by the reworked campaign posters that littered the web. Labelled “the fifth estate” of grassroots commentary and activism by the report, this trend was made even more accessible by Clifford Singer, who launched mydavidcameron.com to invite anyone to customise the latest Conservative billboards. Singer claimed 3,000 posters were made through the site, and that spreading the images through Twitter and Facebook “enabled us to contest a £500,000 Tory advertising campaign at zero cost”.

Was it a problem that so much of the backchannel commentary, particularly during the debates, was humour? Newman says analysing 1,000 tweets sent during the final debate showed 34% were jokes, with 39% definitely serious. But what matters is the quality of the commentary, not the tone.

“A lot of this was absolutely fantastic. It was like watching the debate with some of the best scriptwriters in the business – the gags came thick and fast,” he says. Politicians’ campaign trail anecdotes were so quickly and thoroughly parodied, he notes, that they were abruptly dumped.

He likens the debate to a Roman forum where everyone could have a say – “cynics and humorists heckling from the back, with activists closer to the debate making more serious interventions”.

Those interventions included the Guardian’s Richard Adams, who tweeted a link to figures on Eurozone debt levels in response to one point in the debate, while The King’s Fund posted a link to its election guide to healthcare policies.

Overall, mainstream media has learned, through experimentation during major news events, how to involve readers and use social media tools; but for politicians, this was the first election where Twitter was taken seriously – more than 600 of them were tweeting.

“Mainstream media are largely getting it right, and recognising that this is about conversation and not broadcast,” Newman says. “For politicians, this is the first election where they are really having a go and some, like John Prescott, have been authentic and posted regularly while others have been in broadcast mode, still finding their feet.”

Easy to dismiss, but less easy to master – social media is yet to come of age. But its growing influence and ubiquity, particularly among younger voters, cannot be ignored. Newman cites one of the more modest estimates, by Mori, that the voting turnout of 18- to 24-year-olds increased by 7%, above the national average of 5%.

“The complications of this new reality are that 18- to 24-year-olds do enjoy big events like the TV debates, but they are not prepared to consume political messages passively,” he says. “[Social media] puts more tools in the hands of audiences to make politicians and the media more accountable.”

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010

The digital version of The Times is now behind a paywall. Readership will drop, for sure. But will owner Rupert Murdoch still be the winner?

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The decision to put the digital versions of UK newspapers The Times and The Sunday Times behind a paywall is probably the boldest move by a media company this year. It both has the potential of changing the rules of the game for news publishers as well as proving for everyone that news no longer has any value.

Will Rupert Murdoch and  The Times succeed? How much money will the paywall bring in?

I don’t know. And I am quite confident that most media analysts have no clue either. We certainly wish we knew. But in fact we are all in unexplored territory here.

This much is clear, though: Most media companies have realized that depending on display ads alone is no longer sufficient. In fact it is not only insufficient, but quite risky as well, at least if we consider it as the only source of income.

That’s why we all hunt for user payment. We dream about a source of income that is fresh and brings in new money. What is better than eager readers staying in line to pay for our content – the very core of any media business?

There is only one problem with this strategy: Do we really know if readers will pay or not?

The question is much harder to answer than many media excutives would imagine. That is why Rupert Murcoch is so brave. He has a strong conviction about what should be the future and acts according to it. But in doing so he also puts the digital future of The Times on the line in a risky game.  Murdoch may turn out to be a media hero – or the big loser. There is a chance that The Times will fail and readers will not be willing to pay.

I have argued earlier that media companies in order to charge for digital content needs to be very strong in at least one of five areas:

• Unique Content
• Unique Convenience
• Unique Usefulness
• Unique Packaging
• Unique Experience

Please do read the original blog post to follow the reasoning of this one.

So let us look at the paywall of The Times in the context of this model.

The Times, as most national newspapers, is primarily in the general news market. They cover a broad range of issues – and claims to do so in a better way that competitors.

Does The Times offer Unique Convenience in any way? Not in terms of consuming the content. But some benefits in the Times Plus membership package, such as customized news bulletins, do give some advantage. But it is not a major selling point.

What about Unique Usefulness? To some extent – by benefits offered through Times Plus, such as discounts on books, concerts, travels, etc.

Does The Times offer Unique Packaging? I would argue not. Although the design is somewhat more “newspaper like” and with less advertisements than most news sites, I would think this is not being perceived as very distinct compared to for instance The Guardian and The Telegraph.

That leaves the two most important elements for The Times to succeed with its paywall: Unique Content and Unique Experience. Many would argue that you could find the same content for free elsewere on the web. That is largely true. Yet what is most important is not whether you could find the same information elsewhere, but to what extent readers perceive the content, perspectives and writing style of The Times to be unique.  Do readers value the fact that it is written by The Times and its journalists ? Or doesn’t it matter? That brings us to whether they offer a unique experience, which is the emotional and social component of the offering. Is there a perceived value among readers in belonging to “The Times family”?

I would guess there might be. It all boils down to how strong The Times brand is in its relationship with readers. If the relationship is strong there is a fair chance that the media company could succeed in its paywall strategy.

In any case The Times web site will not be without traffic. All full newspaper subscribers get free access, which should ensure a minimum level of traffic that will still make it interesting for advertisers.

But Rupert Murdoch is taking big risks. The first is whether the paywall actually will work. It might. The second, and biggest risk, is what it does to the longterm brand relationship to its readers.

Will a paywall over time erode The Times’ relationship with readers, especially the young ones? If so, what consequences will that have?

“The value of a media business lies in its dialogue with consumers”, argues Nich Thomas at Forrester Research.  (Also published at Paid Content) .

In the report “Creating New Revenue around Content: Find your Popcorn” he underlines a very interesting point:

“The key is not to monetize the content, but to monetize the audience”.

Nick Thomas gives the thumb up for the Times Plus concept, arguing that this is a smarter concept than just implementing a simple paywall. That may be so – as long as you have a large number of users. But will a paywall like The Times over time reduce the number of people the news company have a relationship with? And if so: What will be the price of that? In my opinion that is a very important question for the long term, especially as newspaper readers are getting older and the web sites become the most important channels news companies have to the next generation of readers. And it is a strong argument against putting up a full-blown paywall as The Times has done, which essentially means taking your site away from the Internet link economy.

Read also on BetaTales:

• Five ways to build Unique Value for paid digital content
• How newspapers offer less Unique Value than before

Summing up: The Times’ paywall is the boldest move by a major media company this year and we are all very curious to see how it will play out. I think there is a fair chance it might actually work – and for sure the experiences gained will strongly influence decisions taken by media companies all over the world in the next year. But even if the paywall pays off in the short term, the longterm price of a weaker readership base may turn out to be too high.

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Related articles by other sources

• Why Murdoch’s paywall could actually work (story-review.com)
• From distribution to link economy (baekdal.com)
• Free content isn’t a right (telegraph.co.uk)
• Rupert Murdoch Gets Shy: Tries To Hide Traffic To His Pre-Paywalled Sites (techdirt.com)
• Will the paywall work? Thanks to Murdoch, we’ll soon find out (guardian.co.uk)
• Newspapers look for ways to survive in an internet age (canada.com)

The leading Norwegian news sites seem to engage readers much more than the British news sites. Why is that?

I was spending some time playing around with Alexa.com the other day and started comparing the traffic pattern of leading news sites in Norway with similar sites in the UK.  There was an interesting pattern: The Norwegian news sites consistently seemed to engage readers more, both in terms of pageviews per visit, time spent on the sites and bounce rate.

Alexa is a leading service in measuring and analyzing web traffic and normally is quite a reliable indicator of which sites people in different countries visit.

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Here are the sites I compared:

Norway:  VG.no is Norway’s largest news site with about 1,2 mill unique visitors daily. That is huge traffic if you consider that the total population of the country is about 4,8 million.  Aftenposten.no is the news site of Norway’s largest newspaper – and has about 320.000 unique visitors daily. (Source: TNS-Gallup)

United Kingdom:  Dailymail.co.uk sees around 2,3 million visitors daily and is the largest newspaper owned news site in the UK. Guardian.co.uk sees around 1,8 million daily visitors, while Telegraph.co.uk sees 1,6 million.  (Source: ABC)

As you will see from the graphs below, some clear conclusions can be drawn:

• The two Norwegians sites have more daily pageviews per user compared to the three UK news sites
• The Norwegian sites experience significantly lower bounce rate
• Also readers on average spend more time on the Norwegian sites than the UK sites

The Norwegian sites have more daily pageviews per user

Lower bounce rate for Aftenposten and VG than for the UK sites

Norwegian users spend more time on the news sites

Why do we see this difference?

I have not analyzed the data thoroughly and Alexa data should always be interpreted more as indications than fully reliable data. Yet my guess is that the graphs give a reasonable picture of reality.

There could be several explanations. I believe the most important is that the sites operate in very different markets:

• UK news sites both enjoy a large local market as well as being able to attract millions of readers globally.
• The Norwegian market is comparatively very small and has its own language. This tend to give users fewer, but stronger newspaper brands. However, the language barrier also makes it impossible for the sites to reach significant global reach.

These differences lead to very different traffic patterns. For instance: In the UK only about one in four news sites users have the home page as entry point, according to data from Newspaper Marketing Agency.  For the Norwegian news sites the percentage is around 70 percent.

Instead much more traffic to sites in the UK comes through search than in Scandinavia, as is also indicated in the data from Alexa.

More traffic from search to UK news sites

High percentage of the traffic directly to the front page would tend to indicate strong brand recognition and corresponding loyalty, while drop-by readers from Google often will only look at one or two pages before browsing on to other sites.

In addition sites in a small language market naturally will stand out as more unique than sites operating in a global language market. Most people prefer sites in their own language, and when choices are fewer they will probably tend to stay longer on each site.

These are just my guesses. What do you think?

In digital storytelling many professional journalists would be wise to study and learn from the best bloggers.

Here are some tips.

It has struck me numerous times during the last couple of years: Many bloggers are far ahead of most professional journalists in writing well for the web.

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Here are five areas where I think many journalists could learn from the practice of good bloggers. And yes, I know I do a lot of generalizing here Many journalists are very good at this stuff – and there are some crappy bloggers out there as well. But still I think these are some valid points if you compare the typical news journalist with the better expert bloggers.

1. Linking to sources

It is a shame, really! But far too many professional journalists resist linking to the sources of their stories. And if they link, some of them prefer to link to the main page of the source, and not to the specific URL where the information is.

For an example of this sloppy attitude among many journalists you may check this story from CNN about the Chinese blogger Han Han.  There is not even a link to Han Han’s blog, even though that is the main topic of the story.

The attitude is quite different among many good bloggers out there. In fact most bloggers seem to love linking as much as they can. That makes it easy for readers to check their sources.

2. Updating information

Stories change. Sometimes errors are discovered or readers have good suggestions for how the article can be improved.

In the newspaper it is hard to make any changes – besides including a correction of errors in the next issue. This is all different on the web. Articles can be continuously updated and errors corrected immediately.

Many bloggers readily change their articles if readers point out errors. Often blog articles are being updated on a regular basis. Take for instance this blog post at baekdal.com about how Apple make people pay twice for the same book (I really recommend this blog, by the way). Not how the author has added an update after he first published the article  (and also responds to his readers comments – next point).

I think many media organizations could do much better in this regard. Content is not static and online journalism is not bound by the physical restraints of the print medium. I think that should open up for a more flexible attitude to how many articles can be continuously updated.

3. Continuous dialogue with readers

Here is a test: Go to the news site of your choice and check the comments on the most discussed news stories of the day. How often do you see the journalist herself take part in the discussion?

Then do the same test on the blogs of your choice. Are the authors talking back to their readers?

Chances are that you will find that the best bloggers are far better at keeping a dialogue with their readers than the journalists.

There are many exceptions of course. Some journalists communicate closely with their readers on a daily basis, while there certainly are bloggers who ignore this part. Yet in general I think it is fair to say that most journalists have a lot to learn from the practice of bloggers in this area.

In my opinion there are many reasons why journalists should discuss their own articles with their readers. Some of them are to get story ideas, improve quality of the discussion, correct errors and appreciate the contributions of readers.

But journalists should stay neutral and not share their personal opinions on the stories they cover, you might argue. Well, there are still many ways to participate in a dialogue even if you stick to that principle.

4. Active promotion of own your content

Many bloggers are very good at promoting their articles. Often they use both social media like Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Stumbleupon as well as other blogs.

Journalists are typically not used to taking an active role in promoting their own content. They write their articles and leave it to their employer to recruit readers for it.

Fortunately many journalists are fast learners in this area now. In the last few months I have seen many more journalists proudly sharing their own articles in social media. That’s great! Keep it up, fellow colleagues!

5. Embedding relevant content from other sources

The web is all about sharing – and this is evident among many bloggers. Not only do they quote and link to other bloggers, they are also happy to share great content by allowing others to use it.

Many bloggers are very good at embedding great content from other sources. They identify good videos on YouTube, find a relevant presentation on Slideshare or use creative commons photos from Flickr.

Often media cultures are more concentrated on just using their own content. But honestly that is limiting your coverage. I think journalism professor Jeff Jarvis has a very good principle: Cover what you do best and link to the rest!

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These are my thoughts. What do you think? Do you agree? Are there other things professional journalists should learn from bloggers?

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