A badly-conceived "experiment" recently ended when the Miami Herald stopped asking its online readers for voluntary donations to help pay for news coverage.
This had the feel of a gimmick when it began two months ago. As I recently noted, the print editions of most newspapers don't generate enough reader revenue to survive. They rely on advertising.
So it's hard to take seriously any talk about generating reader revenue to support general news coverage on the web. Alternate sources of free news are plentiful and likely to remain so.
However, Herald executives may not be entirely daft. They are continuing efforts to expand online coverage of local communities with news reported by "partners" who live or operate in those communities.
The partners apparently include a paella of local web sites, weeklies, and small dailies. The Herald is trying to attract readers without having to pay journalists and others to produce the local coverage. This might help the Herald sell more local advertising.
What do the partners get? Access to a larger audience and a share of any advertising revenue generated by the experiment. Now that is an idea that makes sense.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Monday, February 15, 2010
Google Buzz Privacy Complaints and the Economics of Social Networks
The economics of social networking favor whoever attracts the most users first, so it's no surprise Google used its vast trove of user data to create millions of instant members when it launched a social networking site.
Social networks become more valuable as more people join them, and Google's new site still has fewer users than Facebook. But coverage of Google's new social network -- Buzz -- focused instead on vehement user complaints that forced Google to make multiple changes in the privacy settings.
An estimated 176 million people have Gmail accounts, and Google made all of them automatic members of Buzz. The problem is that Google used information from each user's account to automatically make public a list of their frequent correspondents, along with information from photo albums and other tools that come free with a Gmail account.
It's the "free" part that really caused all the problems.
Google --like its rivals Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft -- routinely trolls through e-mail and other user data so it can make money that pays for "free" email and other services. Sophisticated data about who users communicate with and what they communicate about is used to target advertisements that provide the bulk of Google's revenue.
So Google's engineers might not have thought much about revealing to users some of what the company knows about each person's network of personal connections. Google probably was just trying to convince users that Buzz might be an attractive alternative to other social networking sites.
Facebook, for example, claims it has more than 400 million users. Facebook uses a business model that is similar to Google because Facebook collects information on users to sell targeted advertising. So Google cannot be happy about having just 176 million Gmail users.
Social networks become more attractive as they add members because that increases opportunities for each person to, well, network with other members. Nonmembers know that larger networks offer more chances to find interesting people. This cycle can rapidly become self-reinforcing -- increasing size makes the network more attractive, so more people join and make the network even larger.
Google appears to lag far behind Facebook in this competition. Revealing each Gmail user's network of correspondents was just an ill-advised attempt to begin catching up.
Social networks become more valuable as more people join them, and Google's new site still has fewer users than Facebook. But coverage of Google's new social network -- Buzz -- focused instead on vehement user complaints that forced Google to make multiple changes in the privacy settings.
An estimated 176 million people have Gmail accounts, and Google made all of them automatic members of Buzz. The problem is that Google used information from each user's account to automatically make public a list of their frequent correspondents, along with information from photo albums and other tools that come free with a Gmail account.
It's the "free" part that really caused all the problems.
Google --like its rivals Facebook, Yahoo, and Microsoft -- routinely trolls through e-mail and other user data so it can make money that pays for "free" email and other services. Sophisticated data about who users communicate with and what they communicate about is used to target advertisements that provide the bulk of Google's revenue.
So Google's engineers might not have thought much about revealing to users some of what the company knows about each person's network of personal connections. Google probably was just trying to convince users that Buzz might be an attractive alternative to other social networking sites.
Facebook, for example, claims it has more than 400 million users. Facebook uses a business model that is similar to Google because Facebook collects information on users to sell targeted advertising. So Google cannot be happy about having just 176 million Gmail users.
Social networks become more attractive as they add members because that increases opportunities for each person to, well, network with other members. Nonmembers know that larger networks offer more chances to find interesting people. This cycle can rapidly become self-reinforcing -- increasing size makes the network more attractive, so more people join and make the network even larger.
Google appears to lag far behind Facebook in this competition. Revealing each Gmail user's network of correspondents was just an ill-advised attempt to begin catching up.
Sunday, February 7, 2010
NBC and the myth of rational decision making
Dick Cavett's meditation on the Tonight Show train wreck is a reminder that sometimes bad decisons cannot be stopped at even the most experienced companies. And it has always been thus.
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