Google News To Reward Updates, Local Sources

SearchEngineLand.com posted today that Google News has updated its algorithm.

The two key enhancements:
1) Updates to its “news cluster” when a source adds updated or new information to a breaking story. The site doesn’t simply show the most recent publisher to post a story, but rather rewards the sources that first broke the story. Implications: more exposure for sites that stay with story; opportunity for editors to abuse this by making frequent, meaningless updates.

2) A “signal” that gives weight to a quality publisher who is geographically close the story. While a marquee news brand might dominate coverage of a big story, Google News isn’t forgetting about the little guys with deep roots at the center of the action. Implications: worthy rewards for original reporting with local context.

Google News, in a recent blog post recognizing the struggle to balance quantity and quality, assert it’s not “just about including every story; it’s about helping you find the stories that matter most to you” (hear that, Topix?). Rewarding quality local publishers and the consumer all in one fell algorithmic swoop? One more reason to put stock in news aggregators.

Don’t Think Branding, Think ‘Being Part Of The Social Fabric’

Whether you’re a television station, newspaper or radio station, you are probably obsessed with “branding.” Which makes sense, if you’re dealing with traditional media.

If your TV station is branded “News 13,” well, then you want everything you’re associated with to be branded the same way. You want your website to be News13.com and you are going to focus all of your station resources towards that co-branded site.

But that “branding is everything” philosophy doesn’t necessarily translate to the Web. Online users are less impressed with a brand, and more likely to be drawn to sites that are useful to them, no matter who they are affiliated with. It’s all about the connection to users, and to the social fabric of the web.

That point is illustrated by this Washington Post piece on AOL’s current trend of launching websites which often have no direct connection to AOL.com itself.

AOL executives say their new products attempt to capitalize on an Internet that is rapidly becoming a mix of feeds, blogs, widgets, profile pages, user-created content and other elements that are collectively regarded as Web 2.0.

“It’s really about getting a piece of the usage,” said [Kevin] Conroy, who is leading the new strategy from his office in Dulles. “You don’t just steal someone from that environment and say, ‘Come here.’ You want to be part of the social fabric.”

To a traditional local news executive, not branding something seems insane and counterintuitive to your core business. But there are a number of advantages to the idea, not the least of which is creating an extended local ad network, similar to the one AOL is creating nationally.

Beyond that mainstay, much of the new strategy involves services and products that don’t prominently feature the AOL brand. A joint venture with Telepictures Productions, TMZ is the top gossip site on the Web, according to ComScore, with more than 10 million unique visitors in October. Yesterday’s headlines included “Ballroom Battle of the Sexes” and “Britney, Please, Leave Chris Crocker Alone!” The only clue to its parent is a small “AOL News” logo at the top of the page and a few tiny links to AOL sites. Another popular site is Black Voices, the top destination for African American content, which has almost no mention of AOL. AOL has bought Userplane, a Los Angeles start-up that focuses on providing chat software to other sites, and it has a plug-in for Facebook that lets friends know when a user is online. Redskins fans can get free e-mails with the address @Ultimateredskinsfan.com through AOL. There are similar opportunities for local news organizations. If you’re in a state capitol, then launching a state politics site with integrated discussions is a natural. If you’re in a big, sprawling city, launching a site that focuses on the suburbs is a good fit.  A radio station group would be a good match for a site highlighting the local music scene, etc. There are lots of possibilities, and by not branding them with your core news organization brand, you have the chance to have a product that is lively and engaged without worrying about interfering with the mission of your newsroom.Engaging in your community’s social fabric is more than just sponsoring a Health Fair or running a Toys For Tots campaign. It’s also about connecting with people indirectly and  seeing the conversation not as a branding opportunity, but a chance to build a relationship.

User-generated only gets you so far

Who knew? Good local news coverage that people want to read depends on good journalism.

 

Steve Outing, proponent of citizen journalism and columnist for Editor and Publisher, shares an excellent cautionary tale about his experience relying on user-generated content to create a business.

 

The idea seemed solid: Create a site centered on an expert contributor (say, a climbing enthusiast who knows what she’s talking about and can write informatively) but count on energetic climbers out there to jump in and provide lots of great content. Read Steve’s post because I’m glossing over details, but fundamentally, the user-generated stuff as a whole just wasn’t good enough or consistent enough to attract a big enough audience to make a business. Too much crap, not enough real information that readers found worthwhile.

 

It will be a while before the primordial ooze of user-generated content evolves into a living, breathing reliable news provider without a strong framework of  people who are paid to find stuff out and tell the world about it.

 

The number of people systematically gathering news in an organized fashion matters. Having thousands of user/gatherers out there sending comments, photos, videos, documents and more is a tremendous opportunity. But that mass needs help. As the economic model crumbles for old-fashioned newspapers and TV stations, the old-fashioned gatherers, writers, choosers and filterers continue to have value.

Online News Consumers Are Not Depletable Resources

An article on LostRemote got me thinking. Are traditional news sites not learning from the successes of other online businesses?

iMedia Connection had an extremely interesting article about Brian Shuster a few months back. Shuster is known as the Prince of Pop-ups and he made his start on the Internet in the adult industry. The lesson that Shuster learned can be summarized in this one quote.

“The Internet works in a very counterintuitive way,” Shuster explains. “Adult webmasters like myself figured out pretty early on that they could often make more money advertising their competitors than they could selling their own product.”

Shuster believes that you can make more money steering traffic away from your site than you can by trying to keep consumers on your page. Shuster believes the Internet is a medium that rewards depth. It allows consumers to follow narrow and niche passions in-depth, and Shuster believes mainstream websites treat Internet users like a depletable resource. It does appear that some mainstream sites are learning from news aggregators like Digg.com, but the adoption is certainly not a whole hearted effort that rewards the consumer 100%.

Shuster believes that sites can only create so much original content. No news site can possibly contain enough original information to satisfy a user interested in a breaking news story or a topical news article. This is where Shuster believes sending these consumers elsewhere can actually be more profitable for a site.

The internet is not like a paid newspaper or time-slotted TV show. I can read every local news website and find every angle possible on a story or subject that peaks my interest. So in the case of filling my niche or narrow passion online, I am definitely not a depletable resource. As a consumer of news, my biggest pet peeve is when both local newspapers in Minneapolis take the same exact angle or cover the exact same Gopher sports story on the same day. Since it is easy for me to read both papers online with no added cost but time, I want as much original content on the my local sports team as possible. Right now, the best way for me to follow The Gophers is an online forum. The community members post what stories they find and everyone discusses them. That is the type of passion and depth online news sites have to tap into and provide to come out on top.

How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook

In some ways, Facebook is the ultimate enabler of “local” connections. The site allows you to connect (or reconnect) with all sorts of communities, and as this column in Information Week notes, the problem with that is you’re often connected with people you would just as soon forget.

By the time you’ve reached your forties, chances are you’re out-of-touch with more friends than you’re in-touch with: Old summer-camp chums, high-school mates, ex-spouses and their families, former co-workers, college roomies, dot-com veterans… Getting all those people back into your life is a full-time job and then some.

You’d think that Facebook would be the perfect tool for handling all this. It’s not. For every long-lost chum who reaches out to me on Facebook, there’s a guy who beat me up on a weekly basis through the whole seventh grade but now wants to be my buddy; or the crazy person who was fun in college but is now kind of sad; or the creepy ex-co-worker who I’d cross the street to avoid but who now wants to know, “Am I your friend?” yes or no, this instant, please.

This problem is something to consider as you work on ways for local users to connect with each other. People don’t always want to be found, or contacted or sold to by advertisers.

As a local news operation, one of the biggest advantages you have is trust and comfort. Keeping that bond with your users doesn’t limit your sales opportunities, but it does offer up some special challenges. The advantage for you is that you’re building a relationship with your local users that will last longer than their current infatuation with whatever hot social network is currently grabbing headlines.

Cyber Monday

Techcrunch posted an article about the high hopes for a large Cyber Monday. Experts are expecting $700 million in online sales today.

According to wikipedia, the origins of Cyber Monday date back to 2005. The term was first coined by Shop.org when research showed that 77% of online retailers reported a significant increase in sales on the Monday after Thanksgiving in 2004. I personally have not heard of Cyber Monday until this month, but evidently the day is very popular for online shopping.

Cyber Monday represents the first chance for consumers to shop at work after the Thanksgiving holiday, and it presents a huge opportunity for retailers to use advertising to drive local media consumers to their online store fronts. Seventy two million Americans are expected to being shopping (purchasing or browsing) today. If that number is accurate, it would mean nearly 1 in 4 Americans will be online looking for Holiday presents on Cyber Monday.

Don’t Count the Brick & Mortar Folks Out Just Yet

The New York Times Tech blog “Bits“ ran a great piece last week detailing how the local web is being used to drive real-world purchases, perhaps indicating that the long portended death of brick and mortar outlets has been greatly exaggerated. According to Bits, “E-commerce purchases are expected to grow a healthy but unspectacular 17 to 20 percent this holiday season over last year’s. But the Web’s influence over what people buy could be growing even faster.

Major retailers like Target, Home Depot and others have enlisted the help of Chicago-based ShopLocal.com, to enable local viewers to use their sites to complete offline purchases they’d previously researched online. According to ShopLocal’s in-house data, they’re seeing a 50% increase in online-influenced purchases when compared to 2006. According to a Forrester Research report issued last spring this type of purchase activity is expected to amount to 16% of total sales this year and be as high as 50 percent of all sales by 2011.

This kind of pre-purchase activity makes great sense for the consumer. There’s enough worry about the security of online transactions that many times even a slightly lower price or free shipping can’t overcome. In addition, by completing the transaction in person, the consumer can see and inspect the product up close. But, this type of activity can also make sense for the retailer, because the same thing can be done in reverse.

A consumer can just as easily enter a retail outlet to search and satisfy the tactile senses before going back to the computer to complete the purchase. In that scenario, the retailer has a motivated, captive audience than can possibly be sold items beyond those of which they are searching. Perhaps the retailers could also focus on the delivery, installation and service niche as an additional means to woo customers.

Is Hyperlocal Advertising Really an Issue?

Read/WriteWeb has an interesting article on the rise of hyperlocal information. The article begs the question, how hard is it to reach hyperlocal audiences? Are local businesses having trouble doing this currently? Or just online?

The article cited two ways someone might want to monetize the hyperlocal audience.

• Presidential parties could send direct advertising to zip codes that are known to be tipping points in swing states.
• The other example was local advertising. Hyperlocal web sites would enable local businesses to deliver highly targeted and relevant advertising.

The suggested solution in the article was a hyperlocal online advertising platform. The article also suggested local businesses were currently using door to door sales to make things work.

Advertising by zipcode is not new. Companies like Valpak and Money Mailer have made millions of dollars helping local businesses deliver coupons to local consumer’s mailboxes. Also, if a party or politician needed to reach a swing state they are not going to be advertising by zipcode. They will attempt to reach the largest percentage of voters by using every local TV station and major local publication within that swing state.

I think there are plenty of solid online solutions right now for local advertisers. Facebook’s new advertising platforms and solutions, Google AdWords and AdSense, SuperPages, sites like CitySearch, and let’s not forget local news publications. The issue to me is creating a simple way for local businesses to efficiently advertise online to a large percentage of their local audience while being relevant at the same time. Many local businesses do not have the time and money to plan, organize, and keep up-o-date multiple online business profiles and advertising campaigns. They need solutions to help them efficiently reach new customers online.

CBS Outdoor’s Cool Test

CBS Outdoor has got a pretty cool new hyper-local, multi-platform test going on in New York that bears watching. CBS created a free 20-block WiFi area in Manhattan using billboards and bus stops to support the zone. Anyone accessing the WiFi on laptop or cellphone gets an ad-supported home page with local and national news, sports, weather, etc., and allows users to perform uber-local searches for area businesses, entertainment options and more. From an advertising perspective, only people within this somewhat limited geographic radius are going to see your ads, so the potential for conversion–or action–on behalf of the consumer should be at a premium. Health and weather permitting, all of these consumers are practically within walking distance. A deli could post a “half off on a Reuben” ad at 11:00AM and by 1:00PM be able to see the ROI on it’s investment. Can’t get much more immediate feedback than that.

Loopt to Locate Mobile Friends

Loopt is launching a new service that will help you locate your friends with mobile phones. The new version of their software integrates with your address book, and shows your friends via a map where you are when messaging.

Currently Loopt is generating revenue either through a $2.99/month subscription plan or by being bundled in with a phone data plan. While this service brings locality to a whole new level, it begs the question how else could they make money with this service? Would bars, restaurants, coffee shops, and/or other local businesses benefit by showing up on these maps as icons? Superpages has been building an extended network for its performance based advertising and a strategic alliance with a hyper local mapping service might make sense.