NY Times to Put Blogs Behind Paywall
After years of debate and experimentation, the New York Times announced its decision of a pay-meter system last month. Although the switch isn’t due for more than a year, we’ve all had our questions. Last week, executives of the Times took the opportunity at the paidContent conference to answer those questions.
Unfortunately, it looks like they’re not all on the same page, especially when it comes to the many popular blogs hosted by the Times. Reports Felix Salmon of Reuters:
[Senior VP of Digital Operations Martin] Nisenholtz did say quite clearly that he expected ad revenue to go up rather than down, which implied to me that that paywall was going to be pretty porous. And [owner Arthur Sulzberger] said that “we are not trying to eliminate ourselves from the digital ecosystem”. But when I asked about specifics, it all got rather messy. It started when I asked whether the NYT’s own blogs would be counted towards the quota, and Nisenholtz replied that “our intention is to keep blogs behind the wall”.
Salmon also reports that the NYT confirmed to the WSJ that the blogs would be kept behind the paywall.
The meter system is designed to allow users to access a certain number of stories for free on the New York Times each month. For the occasional reader, that will probably be fine. However, for loyal followers of such blogs as the Freakonomics blog, it might not take long to meet your free article quota—and though there are many followers of NY Times blogs, I doubt that many of them would be willing to pay to read a blog. Salmon contends that the authors of the Freakonomics blog shouldn’t (and wouldn’t) stand for such an audience-cutting move.
RSS is another issue here: with the execs apparently confused about whether or not following a link from a third-party site would count toward your quota, they didn’t discuss whether following a link from a presumably-summary RSS subscription would count.
What do you think? Should the Times put blogs behind the paywall? Can they afford to sacrifice their readers—and possibly their blog authors?
Ask.com Puts Its NASCAR Sponsorship Back In Garage
Ask.com has ended its NASCAR sponsorship after one year. That’s according to The Sporting News, which reports that the sponsorship was actually fairly successful for Ask.com.
Jared Cluff, Ask’s senior VP of marketing, says the deal produced some measurable results in 2009:
“We saw double-digit increases in usage among NASCAR fans. With the fan cards that our [...]
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Google Goes for Browser-based Voice for iPhone
Six months after Google said that Apple rejected a Google Voice app for the iPhone (Apple maintained that the app was merely under review, a process which usually takes about a week), Google has finally decided to circumvent the ban. VP of mobile apps engineering Vic Gundotra told the Crunchies Voice would get on the iPhone “one way or another.”
Here’s another: they’re going for a browser-based Google Voice (like the rest of us are using). This option was formerly less viable, but now Google has improved the mobile version of their site for iPhone and Palm Pre users.
The controversy, of course, is that Google Voice allows users to make calls and now send text messages without charge, and without using the minutes in their carrier’s plan.
The New York Times documents the improvements:
Of course, iPhone users were always able to point their mobile Web browser to m.google.com/voice to access their Google Voice accounts. But plenty of things didn’t work right. For example, making calls was a two-step process and the outbound caller ID feature didn’t work, meaning that whoever received the call couldn’t see who was calling, which is one of the more compelling features of Google Voice. [Senior product manager for Google Voice Vincent] Paquet said that all those problems have been solved, and that the new version of Google Voice also offers free text messaging.
Naturally, Google maintains that this isn’t a strike against mobile carriers, just a response to the high demand they’ve had from mobile users with browsers capable of interpreting HTML5.
What do you think? Is this a fourth volley this month in the budding Google/Apple war? How will Apple respond?
Pampers’ Reputation Crisis Has P&G Crapping Itself
Every couple of months, we can reliably count on a big brand to help us learn a lesson about online reputation management. Today, we give thanks to P&G for today’s lesson:
The conversation starts when your customers say so, not you!
As AdAge reports, P&G has launched what it considers to be the most significant improvement in its Pampers line of diapers, in 25 years. Unfortunately, the company decided to start shipping the new diapers in old packaging, without explaining the benefits of the new pooper-protector.
Engineering this manufacturing overhaul meant putting the new diapers into the old packaging and into stores starting last summer in parts of the country. But because the new diapers had only reached a fraction of the U.S. by fall, P&G wasn’t ready to launch its campaign. Without marketing or communication, some consumers in early markets reacted strongly and spread the word virally to markets that did not yet have the diaper.
OK, who does that?
In this day and age of socially connected consumers; who launches a dramatically different product without also readying a TV, print, search, and social media campaign?
OK, maybe I’m being too harsh. Maybe P&G just didn’t realize that it was heading towards such a consumer backlash…
"Similar to our experience in the past, when you change things, without articulating what the change is about, you will get consumers who complain," said Jodi Allen, VP-North American baby care at P&G.
[Jon Stewart'esque pause]
What the…??? You knew you’d get this consumer backlash??? Then why didn’t you have a plan in place to explain the benefits of the new diaper. Why didn’t you have a Twitter channel to answer questions from concerned parents? Where was the Facebook FAQ page to explain how the product will improve the lives of parents–and their babies?
If you’d taken the time to do the above, Rosana Shah of Baton Rouge, La, wouldn’t have felt compelled to launch her own Facebook page to warn other moms…
"…they’ve slipped this inferior diaper into the existing packaging without notifying the consumer."
At this point you could argue that this Pampers backlash is just a small minority. After all, the "Bring Back the Old Cruisers" fan page on Facebook had only 20 members as of last week. But, I’d point to the fact that new parents trust the opinions of experienced parents AND this "backlash" has now reached a wider audience–thanks to AdAge, and now us.
Fortunately, P&G doesn’t plan to just sit back and let a few upset consumers have their way…
Ms. Allen believes the tone will change quickly once P&G turns on marketing support, which will include a first-ever, pre-launch buzz campaign starting this month.
OK, that’s all well and good Ms. Allen, but you should have had this in place the moment you shipped your first revolutionary diaper. Heck, two months before you shipped it!
So, thank you P&G. Thank you for being yet another mega-brand that, despite its millions in marketing budget–and expert marketers to boot–failed to realize one of the most important lessons in reputation management.
You don’t get to decide when the conversation about your new product starts. So be prepared from day one!
Social Media Darling Dell Updates Numbers
If you have spent any time around the social media circles discussing business success stories you have heard a lot about Dell. In fact, you have probably heard so much about Dell that you know that the have claimed to have generated around $3 million in sales through their Twitter efforts. Of course, this is of interest because measuring success in social media is one of the most important topics that the industry can take on.
Well, now Dell has updated their data so it’s time to spruce up those decks touting Dell’s social media success. Bloomberg reports
Dell Inc., relying on social- networking sites to drum up sales of personal computers, said its promotions on Twitter have helped generate more than $6.5 million in orders for PCs, accessories and software.
The number of users signing up to get Dell’s tweets has risen 23 percent in the past three months and now numbers 1.5 million, said Manish Mehta, vice president of Dell’s online unit. More than 100 employees send out the tweets — Twitter’s 140-character messages — over 35 different channels.
The $6.5 million number is what has been generated since the inception of these efforts about 2 years ago. So let’s face it, this is not the kind of number that makes everyone say “Wow, this is a runaway success!” since Dell is a $61 billion company. Regardless of that, Dell is committed.
“It’s a very vibrant channel for us and it’s growing aggressively,” Manish Mehta, VP of of Dell’s online unit said in an interview. “It’s not just our reach and growth that has progressed, it’s that it’s happening globally.”
Dell reaches Twitter users in 12 countries, including the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, China and Japan. Brazil’s Twitter users spent $800,000 in the past eight months, Mehta said.
Now, the industry will continue to show off Dell as an example of Twitter generating revenue and that’s fine. My question is to anyone at Dell: How much do these efforts that generates this revenue cost? What is your ROI based on the time investment of your staff etc? Once these numbers are revealed then there will really be something to talk about.
UPDATE: Article written by Manish Mehta of Dell over at the Huffington Post.
Marissa Mayer, Glamour Girl – Named 2009 Woman of the Year
In addition to her skills as the well known VP of search and user experience at Google, a wardrobe including Oscar de la Renta and Armani helped land this girl from a (very) small town in Wisconsin on Glamour Magazine’s 2009 Women of the Year list.
Marissa Mayer is profiled as a “visionary” in the magazine’s [...]
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Live Blog: Marissa Mayer Speaking At Web 2.0
Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP of Search Products and User Experience, is speaking today at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. The following is a live blog of her appearance, which is scheduled less than an hour after she announced a Google/Twitter partnership to include real-time tweets in Google’s search results.
This is a four-person panel [...]
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Social Media and Content Discovery: A Growing Relationship
While the commercial Internet age is in its teens according to linear age it has some difficulty focusing. Just when users are getting used to a world that is search engine centric there comes along the social web or social media or social networking or social (insert your word here) to truly change how people make sense of the sheer volume of data on the Internet. This change or movement toward the social web is happening at an ever increasing rate and creates opportunities as well as difficulties for those who are trying to harness this power for business.
Nielsen reports at its blog in a post from Jon Gibbs, VP Media Analytics
In the beginning there were ISPs, which then gave way to portals ― aggregators of content and links ― which then led to the rise of “search” as the dominant form of Internet navigation or, how we get to where we we’re going on the web. However, as with most forms of evolution, change is constant, and over the past two years search navigation has appeared to shift to social media.
We continue to see that social media has not only changed the way consumers communicate and gather on the Web, but also impacted content discovery and navigation in a big way. But how? Is social media taking the place of portals and search as the hub of online navigation?
Nielsen goes on to categorize people as either ‘searchers’ who primarily get their data from search engines, ‘portalists’ who use a portal site to access data and ‘socializers’ who use, you guessed it, social media to get their information. As this last group grows there could be some significant implications moving forward for everyone who is using the Internet for business.
As a result the socializer group actually feels that there is too much information on the Internet. Much more so than those who simply use search engines. Think about it. A search engine user takes it on faith (the vast majority of the time) that the entire Internet for a keyword or key phrase is boiled down to just 10 best results. Of course, if they only take their online sophistication that far then the Internet does appear to be easy to manage. Socializers, on the other hand, spend a lot more time online and hear / see a lot more than regular Internet users. It can become very noisy very quickly.
So how do they manage this? Through their online social network of buddies, of course. At this point, now the real recommendations and buying decisions are happening based on what other people, not an impersonal engine says. Hopefully, they are giving actual experience to help their online connections make more informed purchasing decisions. That’s the theory at least. Take a look at the significant differences in how socializers and searchers use various formats for information. Why Wikipedia is even part of the discussion baffles me but what do I know?
So what are you? Searcher? Portalist? Socializer? A little of all of them. Will social media displace search engines as a primary source of information in the near future? What does it mean to you TODAY as an Internet marketer? Share your thoughts and let’s learn from each other.
Shashi Seth, Another Ex-Googler, Lands At AOL
AOL announced today that it’s hired former Google employee Shashi Seth as its Senior VP of Global Advertising Products. While with Google, Seth was head of monetization for YouTube. Most recently he was the Chief Revenue Officer for Cooliris.
AOL’s addition of Seth is the latest in a series of hirings from the search industry — [...]
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NetBase Debuts “Semantic Search Showcase” With HealthBase
Netbase is an enterprise-facing software and search company that appears to have one of the most advanced search platforms in the market. Earlier this week during a briefing Netbase marketing and product VP Jens Tellefsen asserted that no other search provider in the consumer or enterprise segment was as advanced — an audacious claim.
Tellefsen went [...]
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