Last time out, I talked about the New York Times’ proposed membership plans. I like the fact that they begin to move away from charging for content and creating deeper offerings for Times fans. But, with the possible exception of ‘BackStory’, none of the things on offer are closely tied to the online news experience and they do nothing to drive or reinforce the use of Times content.
One of the problems news organizations face in attracting paid subscriptions in any form is that users are not invested in the same way they are with social Web services that are built around users’ own content. These services, while valuable to users individually, tend to become more useful as more users enroll and upload more content.
For example, users can upload photos to Flickr for free up to a specified limit. At the point a paid subscription is required, it can be more convenient (by design!) for users to pay to keep all their photos in one place than it is to start from scratch somewhere else. In addition, the more people and the more photos that are uploaded to Flickr, the more useful it becomes as a resource for users to search and be searched.
In contrast, the online news experience (whether it’s a paid model or not) doesn’t promote buy-in from users and doesn’t capture the effort users are already putting in. Harnessing user participation has the potential to transform news from a transactional product – formerly a newspapers, now atomized content – into a service that users have a stake in improving for themselves and that becomes more useful for everyone else as a result.
The biggest investment users already make in news content is comments. The best comments take more time to write and presumably reflect some knowledge or passion around the topic or event they relate to. I’m not trying to discount the value in sharing articles because social distribution is a big deal. The value produced by sharing news is not being captured very well either, but comments are more personal and represent a bigger part of our online selves.
Obviously, not all comments are informed, thoughtful, constructive or even civil, and perhaps a greater portion on highly trafficked news sites are not. But by embracing comments, I think news organizations can start to harness the investment their most valuable users are making in their services.
I don’t think any amount of higher quality or more unique content can differentiate news services, but a connected network of engaged users can. Other users are what make Facebook and Twitter so useful and even addictive, not whether they have the best features.
These things may determine the type of people that show up in the first place but quality is a prerequisite to developing a relationship with users. Network effects emerge from connecting users to each other and that is the piece that becomes difficult to replicate elsewhere.
The good news is that these things have already started to happen. The Times has TimesPeople which they even call a social network for news. Similarly, BusinessWeek has BusinessExchange which goes a step further and allows users to import and comment on non-BusinessWeek content.
However, both have a long way to go before they become fully-functioning social networks. For example, TimesPeople needs to more personal information in profiles, much tighter integration with article pages and whole host of features to improve comment threads and that is just for starters.
A comment-driven social network for news could provide the kind of platform needed to create deeper services and ultimately new revenues whether they come from users, advertisers, other third parties or all of the above.
Posted on July 30, 2009
My name is Phillip Baker and this is my personal blog about finding value in a world of free information.