What are you doing right now?

Anonymity vs. Privacy

Asterpix: adds clickable hotspots to clips dotSub: adds captions to videos in dozens of

languages Live Streaming: , , , Mogulus Qik blogTVKyte

Dallas Morning News uses YouTube to put up short videos to promote their video content “Unequal Justice”

An example of courage, integrity and the value of

opening up the newspaper to have

conversations with your readers

1. Violent confrontationa. Article

2.Rules for “Pepper spray”a. Article

3.Police foruma. Article

4.City Council debate a MANY articles

1.Have a point of view

a) Energizes your readers to respond

e Readers can, and want to, help

“Soap Opera” effect

In 2005, the Los Angeles Times began a project to try to increase the level of interaction on their Editorial pages…

They decided to let the readers add their thoughts to the editorials.

In theory, it was a good idea… … but in practice…

Started at 8 a.m. June 19, 2005 By 1 p.m., June 19, 2005 the “Wikitorial” was

inundated with pornography They took down the site, and a few months

later, the editor (Michael Kinsey, a famous journalist who had built Salon.com for Microsoft) had to leave in disgrace

Political philosophy has an impact on digital philosophy

Defamation laws Initiative to limit conversation

Disastrous – users hated and evaded them They attract readers from all over the world to

debate politics So many responses, so much traffic on

Comment Is Free that the servers crashed every week During U.S. primary elections, the servers crashed

ever day

In March 2007, Alan Rusbridger, Editor-en-Chief of The Guardian:

“Every journalists here now works for the digital platform, and should consider those needs first.”

The Guardian will be a 24-hour newspaper, focused on the web

“Paper is just one of our nine platforms”

: Dictionaries Users evaded the controls by inventing new spellings for “0bsc3n1t13s”

: Deputizing Users Gangs of users voted against their enemies – who then organized their own gangs and counter-voted

: Registration by Cellphone Disposables : Two forums

For everyone – registration is normal For “trusted users”

What should be the role of a newspaper (editors, reporters, etc.) in a world where the users can so easily communicate with each other?

Losing younger readers…

What on this page would appeal to a young reader?

El Pais & GrupoPrisa

Experimentation All in Flash

“Talentos” Youth want to see what

their peers are doing When their photos,

video or songs are published, they call all their friends to brag

Navegating the site is a little confusing – you have to experiment with the buttons The generation that grew up

playing “Myst” and “Doom” is used to having to play with and manipulate every object on the screen – “not insulting”

Young people, who have grown up with the web, are accustomed to this content. It’s not controversial, it’s

just normal. And not even the most

popular.

Young users explore a website in groups, not as individuals The leaders of the group move

through the site quickly, looking for something new

They are in constant contact with the rest of the group via chat, IM, IRC, celular

What is the most powerful tool of the last 25 years, developed to allow users to control their media?

What happens when we see an ad on TV, or the program gets boring?

Human beings are amazingly adaptable. We quickly learn how long the commercial breaks are, so we can flip through the channels and return to what we were watching without missing a single second.

Once we have that control in one media, we want it in all the other media…

TiVO – allows fast-forward through commercials

BitTorrent – download the programs on TV, which have been edited to remove the commercias. Uploaded by some 14-year-old.

How can we reach these young readers, the segment most sought-after by advertisers?

My answer: Build something on the web that they want to user.

OK, so how do we know what to build to reach an audience that gets bored easily, short attention span, quickly changes the channel or clicks to other web pages?

wAsk them and maybe they will answer.

bOr… .

If you experiment – and start little by little, implementing a variety of small initiatives – then you might discover the answer on your own

In your market, what kind of website should you dvelop to reach these young readers?

Another example of the growing digital influence

From worst to first In 1997 – Circulation = 60,000

“ The paper was in a persistent vegetative, , state losing money and the only reason

’ it hadn t been killed was some kind of ..corporate inertia and laziness ”

-- Rene Naranjo, Cultural Editor

In 1997: Publisher Augustin J. Edwards del Rio embarked on “turismo antropológico” with his editors, to see how young people walked, talked, wore and thought

They returned to the office and went to work The results:

Paper edition circulation: 140,000 Website: 290,000 unique visitors 4 million page views “We base our content decisions on what that

base of 290,000 visitors and their 4 million daily opinions tell us to do. Every mouse click is a vote for or against a story.”

El País has a weekly contest where readers get to ask questions of various officials

YouTube had a televised debate where users were allowed to send in videos of their questions.

Some of the questions were quite unusual…

Best question Best answer The politicians can put their answers (and

sometimes their own questions to their constituents) on the site

F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote:“Half the world has something to say, but doesn’t. The other half has nothing to say, and insists on shouting at the top of their lungs.”

By the users…

What does a newspaper have that it can give its readers as incentives to get them to participate and have their conversations on its site? Cash? Prizes? That’s a losing game.

Find the “candy bar” that will unlock participation

What a paper has that is most of value is the imprimatur of respectability -- its presence in its market and the respect and trust of its readers. This is the “brand” of the newspaper, and the one thing that it absolutely MUST defend. It is a place where rumors are dispelled by facts. Where professionals who are trained and who have special skills ascertain (or at least try to) the truth.

Web 2.0 – The Machine Is Us/ing Every click teaches the machine…