I just realized that I haven’t posted much of anything to this blog for nearly 6 months.  Wow.  To end my dry spell I thought I’d talk a little about paywalls currently being considered by several large news organizations.

Let me start by saying that I don’t want newspapers to JUST survive.  I want them to prosper and grow.  I love newspapers. However, in order to prosper, they will have to make radical changes to their current business and operational models.

It’s no secret that newspapers are in an unpleasant predicament right now.  Business models that should have gradually evolved over the last decade to adapt to the current climate have instead stagnated in the last decade.  The only real changes newspapers made to their business models over the last dozen years was to raise their advertising and subscription rates.  Paywalls are certainly a radical change from that stagnation, but perhaps not the best solution available.  Putting the genie back in the bottle is a lot harder than letting him out.

Here are a few thoughts surrounding newspaper paywalls:

1. Exclusive and utterly fantastic content.

All parents think their children are unique, brilliant and precious.  However, without sounding mean, the vast majority of those children are probably pretty average.  (I know, that sounded mean, but hear me out.)

Newspapers think the same thing about their own content.  Each section of the newspaper is a precious child with perfect teeth and above average grades.

But what I think they don’t understand is that it’s nearly impossible to charge for content that can be found elsewhere on the internet for free.  If the content isn’t unique, then it has to be the best example of that content available.

Are you covering your technology section better than Tech Crunch?

Are your photo galleries more interesting than Flicker?

Are you covering your local dining section better than the dozen passionate food bloggers in your city?

Are your podcasts and videos more compelling than YouTube?

This is your competition…and they’re all free.

If a newspaper can’t answer “yes” to these types of questions, then perhaps that content isn’t a good candidate for subscription services.

2. Enterprising local bloggers

Several outcomes are inevitable when a local newspaper begins charging for specific categories of content.  For example, if the Boston Globe began charging for access to their Red Sox content, you would probably see 3 outcomes.

1. People would pay for access because they love the Red Sox so deeply, not even a paywall would stop them.  Web traffic would drop to that particular section, but the true fans would remain.
2. People would stop reading Red Sox content at the Boston Globe, but seek it out via bloggers, or other reliable news agencies.
3. Seeing a ripe opportunity, people would begin to blog about the Red Sox themselves and become competition for the Boston Globe in that category.

How many enterprising bloggers would cover niche news categories if your local newspaper decided to charge for content?  Are they any good?  Should you recruit them instead of compete against them?

This will not be a big deal in smaller communities, simply because smaller populations foster fewer bloggers.  However, larger metropolitan areas will be filled with bloggers writing in the exact same niche the newspaper covers.  And sometimes, covering it better than the paper (remember those unique and precious children?).

3. Run the numbers, it may (or may not) help

The New York Times launched their “TimesSelect” subscription service in September 2005 and filled it with unique and exclusive content that could only be read with a TimesSelect subscription.  Two years after its launch, the Times determined they could make more money by removing the subscription paywall and running advertising on the site.

By some accounts, TimesSelect didn’t fail (it was projected to make $10mil in revenue).  It just didn’t live up to its financial goals using that particular business model.  TimesSelect was conceived before the explosion of traffic that search engines like Google and Yahoo began delivering to news sites.  It was impossible to capitalize on that increased search engine traffic through a closed system that requires a subscription to participate.  The New York Times wasn’t able to foresee that explosive search engine growth.

Under normal circumstances, a newspaper will need to dig deep into the traffic and financial metrics and try to forecast how many loyal visitors they have available for subscriptions?  How many of these visitors will pay to return?  Is it enough to compensate for the drop in traffic?

Implementing simple registration walls caused about a 20% immediate drop in traffic when registration was all the rage a few years ago.  I can imagine the drop in traffic for requiring payment would be even greater.

The New York Times is currently building a paywall in which visitors “will be allowed to view a certain number of articles free each month; to read more, the reader must pay a flat fee for unlimited access.” This system will be in place by January 2011.

It will be interesting to see how this works for the Times in 2011.

In closing, I will leave you with this quote from Stewart Brand on the cost of information.  Hopefully newspapers can find a happy medium…

On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other. – Stewart Brand

(Also…my disclosure, I work for a company owned, in part, by Media News Group and they’re not responsible for any craziness I may spew on this blog. Nor am I representing them in any way.  Yadda yadda yadda…)

(Images from viZZZual via Flickr, ThinkGeek, Robot in Disguise)

iPhone applications built for specific events have brief windows of time where their content is relevant and useful to the customer.  Syfy’s San Diego ComicCon (iTunes) and the Lollapalooza music festival (iTunes) apps contain extremely useful features for time sensitive events.  Schedules, maps, personalized calendars, photo galleries and photo sharing features are contained within these apps, making them very handy for a short period of time.

The ComicCon app was released July 12th, only 11 days before the convention; and the Lollapalooza app was released July 19th, only 20 days before the music festival.

At first, I thought this was a waste of advertising dollars. Why go to the trouble of building an iPhone application that would only be useful for a short period of time? That’s silly, isn’t it?

Well, not really.  There are three excellent reasons for these “disposable” iPhone apps.

1. Usage window

Pinch Media released a report earlier this year revealing statistics they collected from 30 million downloads at the iTunes App Store.  They discovered only 5% of apps were used 3 weeks after they were downloaded (slides 12 & 13). This timing seems like a good match for event marketing. Right?

2. Engagement

Smart phones make up only 12% of the phone market worldwide. However, that small percentage of users generates the majority of engagement in the mobile world.  They are constantly downloading mobile applications, surfing the mobile web, sending emails, snapping photos, recording video, etc.

iPhone users, in particular, are extremely engaged in the mobile experience.

3. Understanding your audience

What if you could discover information about your audience that helped make your product or event better the next time? Did your concert audience enjoy the venue?  What did your convention attendees think of the hotel or the food?  A mobile application can collect that feedback from your audience and help make your product better.

If you compare these to traditional advertising vehicles like TV, radio and newspapers you’ll see why iPhone apps look like a great option for event promotion.  You can build several iPhone apps for the cost of a single minute of TV advertising.  Also, traditional advertising platforms are typically a one-way communication to the audience, while mobile applications offer an easy dialog of feedback and communication.

I’m curious.  Have you or would you ever consider downloading a “disposable iPhone app” for a specific event?  Let me know in the comments.

Video link

I’m sure I’m late to the game on this, but I stumbled upon the YouTube Reporter’s Center today and was pleasantly surprised with the content. Ultimately, the goal of this channel is to increase the number of video submissions to YouTube by encouraging citizen journalism.

This encouragement comes form veteran journalists discussing their craft.

I hope we see more of this guidance for the next generation of journalists and bloggers.

YouTube Reporter’s Center

- Dave

It’s official, Justine and I will be moving to Denver, Colorado April 30th.  We are in the process of trading our flip-flops for hiking boots and our margaritas for micro-brews.  The adventure begins in a few short weeks.

Over the past 4 years, I have enjoyed working at the Houston Chronicle more than I could have imagined.  My colleagues in the web department are some of the brightest in the industry and I consider myself lucky to have worked with them.  I have no doubt they will continue to serve the Gulf Coast of Texas and beyond with the most comprehensive news site possible.

They have an amazing passion for the industry.  It is truly humbling.

In Denver, I will be taking on a new role as the Director of Marketing and Business Development for Kaango.com, a web-based advertising platform.  I have had the pleasure of working with Kaango while at the Houston Chronicle and they are equally as passionate about their industry and products.  

They have created a best-of-breed classifieds platform to help newspapers evolve online and I am looking forward to joining them.

If I began naming names of all the people in Houston we will miss, this blog post would swell to over 50K words.  Needless to say, we have an amazing group of friends in Houston we will miss very much.  This town is full of unbelievably talented and generous people.  I will miss you all.

The good news: now you have a good excuse to visit Denver.

- Dave

Douglas Bowman, the visual design lead at Google, recently left his post to pursue greener pastures. In a farewell blog post, he cited a profound reason for leaving (emphasis mine). You can read the entire post here.

Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such minuscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.

From an engineering perspective, testing multiple colors, recording outcomes and making sound empirical judgments makes all the sense in the world.  If this is done correctly, eventually you will end up with the most effective design implemented.

However, from a design perspective, this tactic may be lacking some things the design world relies upon on a regular basis.

Intuition

Like master mechanics who are able to diagnose many car problems by simply listening to the engine, seasoned designers can solve web design problems in a similar fashion.  They can look at an obstacle or task and solve it almost instinctively.

They could, of course, perform user experience testing to dissect the problem and solve it in a very methodical way.  However, accumulated years of design experience give them an almost intuitive knowledge to see the most effective solution without much testing at all.

Serendipity

These are the beautiful accidents that designers stumble upon when looking for something else.  They may be attempting to solve a complicated navigation issue and stumble upon a great idea for handling web forms.

The world of technology and invention is rife with happy accidents that have created new products or changed humanity in some significant way.  A vital part of the creative process is lost when designers are forced to operate in a rigid environment that relies heavily upon empirical engineering data.

Could these happy accidents still occur in an environment like this?  Probably…

However, I think it is much less likely to happen.  And when it does happen, it is more likely to be ignored because the idea has not gone through the rigors of testing yet.  Or perhaps the idea was so different it didn’t get the consideration it deserves.

Google was built by engineers and has become the largest property on the internet due to the policies and guidance from these early engineers.  It would be silly to say their method of design doesn’t work.  However, this environment might not work for everyone…especially creative people who need to challenge themselves with big ideas and sweeping changes.

So, designers, what do you think?

I’m not sure how long it will be around, but Fffoundtape looks like an interesting music sharing service that doesn’t actually move files.  It only “finds” them on the internet and then makes collections of the found files online.

I suspect this will draw the attention of the recording industry much like MuxTape did.

Should we take bets on how long it will survive?

(I’m giving them 8 months, although I hope it’s much longer.)

- Dave

The only problem I saw with the service was its inability to back up files residing outside your DropBox folder.

I found a solution to this problem recently on the DropBox wiki.  The solution is brilliantly simple, but requires a short Terminal command to create a symbolic link.  Let’s say you would like to back up a folder called “Projects” that lives inside your “Documents” folder.  Open your Terminal and type the following command:

This command will create a symbolic link of your Projects folder into your DropBox. I have tested this in Mac OSX and Linux (Ubuntu) and it works beautifully.  There is a hack to make it work in Windows as well.

By the way, I’m not affiliated with DropBox in any way, I just happen to think it’s a beautiful piece of software.

If you’re interested, you can get a free DropBox account here.

If you already have a DropBox account, do you have any tips or tricks to share in the comments?

Send fewer emails.

Yep, that’s it. That’s the entire secret rolled into one sentence. For every email you send out, there is a good chance you will receive a reply. If you’ve copied multiple people in your outgoing email, you will probably receive numerous replies.

We live in a world with numerous forms of communication, yet most companies disproportionally rely on email for the majority of their contact throughout the working day. Depending upon the situation, email could be the worst form of communication to use with your coworkers, clients and business partners.

Here are some alternate forms of communication you should consider before firing up your email program: face-to-face meeting, collaboration tools (wiki, BaseCamp, Salesforce.com, Google Docs, etc), instant messaging (AOL, GTalk, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Skype, etc), social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), phone call, text Message, video conference, video chat, blog, fax and last, but not least a good old fashioned hand-written note.

Here are a few instances when email is NOT the best tool for the job.

1. When you need a simple yes/no answer. Use an instant messenger, text message or Twitter direct message. You’re in and out and nobody loses much time in the process.

2. When multiple colleagues need to edit and/or approve a document. Use collaboration tools like Google Docs, BaseCamp, a wiki, etc. Emailing a Word or Excel document to six of your coworkers to edit is shear insanity. Stop the madness. Seriously.

3. You sent an email to several colleagues and you got a reply from someone who clearly confused. Unless you are absolutely sure one simple email reply will clear up the confusion, pick up the phone and call this person. Chances are, one 10 minute phone call will prevent 3 or 4 more emails.

4. You need to sell something. Whether you’re selling a product to a client or an idea to a supervisor nothing beats a face-to-face meeting.

5. Someone just emailed you the funniest joke along with a hilarious photo of a kittens. I beg of you. If you really need to tell the world just how funny this joke is, post it to your blog. Please, under no circumstances should you forward this joke email to your entire address book.

So tell me, are there any communication tools you use (other than email) throughout the day?

Let me know in the comments.

Which toolbar would you rather use?

(Image credit – http://dezignus.com)

I think we’ve forgotten something recently.  I think we’ve forgotten how easily social networks allow us to connect with unbelievable speed and accuracy.

There was a time when connecting with old high school or college friends meant contacting your reunion coordinator.  Sending emails.  Phone calls.  Snail mail.  Or worse yet, actually attending a reunion (I’m joking…sort of).

Now, we are able to locate old friends with Facebook accounts in 5 minutes during a coffee break.  One friend leads you another – and down the rabbit hole you go to find dozens more by accident.

Well, not really by accident.  It seems like synchronicity when you stumble upon a friend through another friend’s Facebook account, but it’s not luck at all. It’s good design.

A new speed

So what if we could take this speed to the next level?  What if we could temporarily connect with individuals involved in specific events while they are actually happening?

Yes, we have the ability to peer into blogs, Twitter streams, Brightkite check-ins, Flickr photostreams, etc.  But there isn’t a mechanism to allow us to connect with hundreds or thousands of people at once.

I am talking about something like the Emergency Broadcast System, but using a temporary two-way communication instead of a one-way communication.  Since it would operate over the internet (and not the airwaves) targeting could incorporate very detailed geographic information.  It would need to operate across multiple social networks to incorporate as many users as possible.

Is this a crazy idea?  Probably.  Ok, absolutley,  but think of the amazing life-saving information it could facilitate.  Think of it as crowd-casting at the microscopic level with with gateways to networks opening and closing when needed.

What do you think?

(The photo above is race car driver Bob Burman, from the Library of Congress.  He drove in the inaugural Indianapolis 500 in 1911.)