What Role will 2.0 Play in the Newsroom

Geoff WilsonAtex

Twitter – Web 2.0 Poster Child

Conversation – The New Old Idea

“The best comments are often way better than the posts that generated them.”

– Fred Wilson, VC

Why Twitter Works

Micro-blogging platform where everyone contributes.

A reply is a comment is a post is a conversation.

Real people talking to real people cross cutting boundaries.

The API has 10x the traffic of the website.

“the amount of activity around the API has been the most surprising experience”

– Biz Stone, Founder

Newspapers – Not Quite Web 2.0

Newspaper blogs fail to increase the public dialogue

When hosted by a newspaper…80% of bloggers do not respond to comments

Almost 25% of blogs had no posts in the 5 day period

“the results of our study call into question whether newspapers are wasting valuable staff resources"

from a study of US newspaper blogsby Ball State & Nevada Universities

Newsrooms with a Web 2.0 Future

Integration

Comments

RSS

Communication

Convergence

Expanding Your Reach

The New Audience

Media – In all Shapes & Sizes

U.S. online users watched 12 billion online videos in May, up 45 percent from the same period in 2007.

comScore Video Metrix

Fred, the fictitious creation of 14 year old Lucas, has 45 million views of his videos on YouTube.

Driven by new smart phones, mobile revenue is predicted to increase 16% annually

SNL Kagan, MediaPost

Metrics – More than just circulation

Mine click-stream data.

Use search engines to track the conversation.

Show metrics to users.

Include web metrics in the editorial environment.

Provide benefit to the user and they’ll embrace 1984.

Classification

Expensive to do right – No easy solution.

Find benefits to classified data before investing in classification; start small.

Web 2.0 “cheats” and outsources to their users.

Caveats

Maintain trust in your brand.

Quality & Speed – There is a trade-off.

Business and editorial processes must change; technology is an enabler, not the answer.

RecommendationsWeb 2.0 is a two-way medium. Print ways don’t always work on the web.

It is all about conversation. Engage your readers in discussion.

Try new channels for hosting the conversation. Mobile. APIs. Devices.

Let your readers personalize their experience with your content.

Make use of the rich metrics available to drive editorial decisions.

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Questions