New Twitter Home Page: Ready for Times Square?

It is great to see the talented designer Douglas Bowman having an impact over at Twitter, after leaving Google to join the social messaging service a year ago this month.

Bowman’s latest creation is a new home age for Twitter that signals the company’s growing awareness that it is in the content business. According to Twitter, the redesign “bubbles up” more of its real-time information, “revealing a sample of who's here, what folks are tweeting about, and the big topics that they're discussing.”

That means an algorithmic selection of top tweets that refreshes every few seconds. There is also a section of “suggested sources,” and the company notes you can “hover over any of them to see a profile summary and their latest tweet.”

There is also new visibility for trending topics, which scroll across the page, a feature that emphasizes the “live” nature of Twitter almost like it is a news ticker at Times Square.

Come to think of it, someone will probably want to grab that scroll and turn it into a real-time, albeit non-vetted, news ticker. If I can imagine it, it has to be only a matter of time…

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Fierce Debate Over Whether the iPad Will Save Print Publishers

With all of the excitement around Apple's iPad and its potential as a game-changer for print publishers, several reports have caught my attention recently.

First, some good news: Magazine websites have been experiencing strong growth over the past year. According to Digital Media Boxscores, some 120 magazine sites grew 20 to 30 percent in both page views and unique visitors in January 2010, compared to the same month a year earlier.

Titles whose sites performed especially well included Cosmopolitan, Harpers Bazaar, Esquire, Martha Stewart, Budget Travel, and Women's Health.

Just like the iPad, magazines are mobile devices. Thus, unlike the relationship between print publications and desktop computers, there would seem to be a natural synergy with the iPad.

But a number of blogger/analysts have raised questions, to put it mildly. about how much magazine publishers will benefit from the introduction of Apple's revolutionary new device.

"The iPad-will-save-our-asses craze is based on a single, flawed premise, argues Henry Blodget. (That) consumers want to read magazines and newspapers electronically the same way they have read them for centuries in print -- in a tightly bound content package produced by a single publisher.  But 15 years of Internet history suggests that they don't.

"To the consumer, the Internet is one vast publication.  No longer are consumers limited to the particular editorial tastes and packaging of a few publishers whose "books" they subscribe to.  Now, consumers can snack on content from thousands of publishers, for free, all day long.  And the iPad is not going to change that."

In a similar vein, Constantine von Hoffmanargues that the iPad will prove to be a far better platform for video and audio than for print. Of course that does not necessarily exclude today's print publishers from the party.

After all, Newsonomics reports that “The New York Times is now producing 100 videos a month.”

The Times itself has reported that lots of major advertisers are already expressing interest in the iPad, so despite all the naysayers, the media industry's excitement would seem to me to be well-placed.


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DW in the Press:

My recent appearance on KQED-FM's "California Report" discussing the controversy surrounding Google's decision to stop censoring search results in China. I was interviewed by Sarah Varney. The audio reported can be accessed here.

Welcome!

Welcome to the new home for my posts on the media business.

The focus of my work over the past several years at BNET has been to document the transition from old media platforms like print and broadcast to new media like the social web and mobile devices.

Since we are still smack in the middle of that transition, it can be difficult at times to see the patterns as they emerge behind the noise of product releases, earnings statements, and rhetorical excesses.

But that is my goal -- to identify the more significant patterns that are rushing all of us headlong into a new era for media, whether we are entirely ready for it or not.

I posted some 700 articles for BNET, and they will remain accessible going forward. As part of making sure you have easy access to the most recent posts, I am including below links to everything I've published to date at BNET in 2010.

(In the future, I hope to be able to port over my 2008-9 posts as well.)

For now, welcome to this new space, which may well prove to be a temporary home once I start searching for a new host site from which to continue this work.

(The image at the top of this post is a box of declassified FBI files from my work as an investigative reporter at Rolling Stone in the 1970s.)

David's BNET posts in 2010 (53):

Mar. 19 Viacom vs. YouTube: Copyright Hypocrisy?
"Not long before filing suit against YouTube and its owner Google in 2007 for uploading content from programs like The Daily Show, Viacom was actually trying to buy the popular video-sharing site itself..."

Mar. 19 The New Media Metric: How Shareable is Your Content?
"Study after study indicates that Americans have developed all kinds of new habits when it comes to consuming the news. But one key upward trend that tends to get overlooked in the fine print of these studies is how popular content-sharing has become..."

Mar. 17 CBS Hopes March Madness Includes Crazy Story Line
"No one is really sure how the term “March Madness” got associated with college basketball, so there’s plenty of room for speculation..."

Mar. 16 Search Not Found: Google Prepares To Exit China
"So, in a real sense, the overall development of a global system of inter-connected communications tying people together all over the world is now grinding to a potential halt in Beijing..."

Mar. 16 Online Revenues Up at McClatchy, But Print Newspapers Wither
"The McClatchy Company, which is second in size only to Gannett among the surviving major U.S. newspaper chains, has been trying over the past year to change its image from a traditional media company to what its CEO calls “a 24-7 news and advertising company that can deliver in print, online, and to hand-held devices...”

Mar. 15 How the Future of eBooks is "Up for Grabs"
"Penguin Books CEO John Makinson’s recent presentation shows why forward-looking publishers are so excited about the iPad (and other eReader formats), while the more tradition-bound remain downright scared..."

Mar. 12 Tweets Hit 50 Million/Day; Where is the Money?
"Twitter recently announced that its content volume has reached 50 million Tweets a day. But many in media are still trying to get a handle on how to best to measure Twitter’s impact, let alone monetize the social media channel..."

Mar. 12 E-Books Now More Popular Than Games in iTunes Store
"For the first time ever, the number of eBooks (27,000) has surpassed games (25,400) in Apple’s iTunes app store, according to the mobile ad company Mobclix..."

Mar 10 How Mobile Devices Offer Extended Access to News Consumers
"At the FTC’s two-day workshop on the “future of journalism” this week, Google’s Hal Varian suggested that the emergence of mobile platforms creates an opportunity for news providers to “turn online news into a leisure time activity." In other words, back to the future..."

Mar. 9 How Google's Translation Gadget Can Boost Your Revenue
"Google continues to aggressively improve one its most promising, if less-known, products — its “website translation gadget.” As we noted when the search giant launched this tool last September, it can be used to quite literally “put money in your pocket,” or — perhaps more appropriately — into your company’s coffers..."

Mar. 8 Stuck Between the Internet and eBooks, Borders Bookstores Struggling to Survive
"Just over a month after cutting ten percent of its workforce, troubled retailer Borders (BGP) has reportedly started yet another wave of layoffs..."

Mar. 5 Google's Patent Shakes Up Hyper-Local Market
"Google’s winning of a patent for its geotargeted advertising system–one basis for what makes its search engine so powerful–shows that Google anticipated the power of local long before the term hyper-local became all the rage..."

Mar. 3 U.S. News Consumers Are Media Hunter/Gatherers
"Amidst the steady flow of polls and surveys, one meta-trend stands out about how Americans are adjusting to what some call “information overload,” but what news junkies might call Nirvana..."

Mar. 1 AP May Charge For Content on Apple's iPad
"If news organizations ever hope to charge for digital content, somebody has to get the ball rolling..."

Feb. 26 Buy Now! Publishers Embrace eCommerce for Mobile Media
"As media executives grapple with the new opportunities (and dangers) presented by the transition to mobile platforms, it’s fascinating to see the realization — slowly sinking in — that ecommerce must be a central aspect of their business strategies going forward..."

Feb. 26 Google in China: Too Big to Fail?
"Six weeks after they exchanged fighting words over censorship and the prospect that Google will leave China, the world’s largest search engine and the world’s largest country have fallen strangely silent — a condition that leads me to suspect a deal may be in the works..."

Feb. 25 The Washington Post Company Thrives as the Newspaper Withers
"So, if you’re looking into a crystal ball at the Post’s future, the question boils down to this: How long will management continue to humor the decline of its hoary old newspaper?"

Feb. 24 Secrets of Google's Famous Search Algorithm
"What happens every 16 hours or so all year long, that has a significant impact on you and millions of others, but that you know virtually nothing about?"

Feb. 23 Experts Say Google Does Not Make Us Stupid
"As one who routinely uses Google Search at least twenty times a day, I’m happy to report that the overwhelming majority of experts surveyed by the Pew Internet & American Life Project believe that using the search engine is making us smarter..."

Feb. 22 Under Pressure, Apple Censors Sexual Content From Apps Store
"In a controversial move, Apple has been purging sexually-explicit and other adult-themed apps from its iTunes App Store recently. The company is acting under pressure from some customers as well as from developers, who complain that such content has reached spam-type levels..."

Feb. 22 What's At Stake in Google Book Case: Access to History
"The issues in the convoluted Google Book case are so complex and involve so many parties — publishers, libraries, states, foreign governments, academics, writers, readers, and the U.S. Justice Department — that federal judge Denny Chin is essentially being asked to decide nothing less than our collective future access to our collective pre-digital literary history..."

Feb. 19 The Winner in National Enquirer's Pulitzer Nomination: Matt Drudge
"The Pulitzer Prize Board has finally conceded and officially accepted the investigative reporting submissions from The National Enquirer for breaking the John Edwards love child scandal last year..."

Feb. 18 Amazon's eBook Share Shrinking, But the Pie is Growing
“Going forward, we can envision a scenario where Apple, Amazon, and Google eventually split the market...”

Feb. 18 Apple vs. Major Media: The iPad Stalemate
"No deals have yet emerged from Steve Jobs‘ splashy tour of New York earlier this month, where he met with executives of The New York Times, News Corp. and Time Inc. to demo the iPad. That’s because, according to details leaking out from the meetings, Apple and the major publishers remain far apart on the question of how content partnerships would work on the new mobile device..."

Feb. 16 Microsoft and Disney to Target Generation Multitask
"There have been persistent reports of high-level talks between Microsoft and Disney for some time now, though no official announcements yet..."

Feb. 12 All News is Local, and Effective, for Outside.In
"Outside.In’s CEO Mark Josephson could hardly contain himself when we spoke for the first time in more than a year today, as I asked about how his company’s “hyperlocal content and advertising platform” has been faring..."

Feb. 11 NY Times: Earnings Good, Survival Still in Doubt
"Yes, the latest earnings report from The New York Times contained plenty of good short-term news. But that only raises a much larger question: How viable will this company be in the future?"

Feb. 8 Google's Super Bowl Touchdown: "We're Lovable, Not Evil"
"...though there may be no objective way to measure the most effective advertisement at the big game, my vote would have to go to the giant search engine itself for its surprisingly touching love story of an American man who meets a French woman at a cafe in Paris..."

Feb. 4 DOJ Files Against Google Book Settlement: "A Bridge Too Far"

Feb. 4 Flush From Avatar, Murdoch Talks Tough Re: Ipads and Paywalls
"You’ve got to hand it to Rupert Murdoch. The Australian-born, British and U.S.-based media mogul’s empire is now so vast that he can squeeze a quarter-billion-dollar’s worth of profits out of any random quarter..."

Feb. 3 Blogging Moms Turn Macaroni Kid into an Emerging Network to Watch
"It’s axiomatic in the media business that when it comes to household purchasing decisions, it’s usually Mom who wears the pants..."

Feb. 2 Twitter's "Local Trends" a Precursor to Geo-Targeted Ads for News Media
"Twitter announced to relatively little fanfare last week that it has started tracking “Local Trends...”

Feb. 1 AP and Google Back in Business For Now; Yahoo Renews AP Deal
"There are updates today in the ongoing drama of whether the search engines at Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft will continue to pay for the right to display content provided by the Associated Press..."

Jan. 31 Weekend Grabbag: Updates from Startups Bideo, Smashwords, and Examiner.com
"Now that carbon has become the hottest commodity on the planet, under the cap and trade market administered by the European Union, there would seem to be no reason that user-generated news video and images couldn’t be aggressively traded in an online auction setting as well..."

Jan. 28 As Murdoch and Sulzberger Dream of Paywalls, Consider Poor Newsday's Example

Jan. 26 Go Down Moses,* Apple Unveils its Media Tabula Rasa
"If you believe the hype (and I do), Wednesday, January 27, 2010 is shaping up to be a momentous day for the media industry..."

Jan. 25 The True Test of the NYT's Paywall Plan Will Be e-Readers
"Since The New York Times has elected such a long runway (”the beginning of 2011,” according to Arthur and Janet*) until it erects its content paywall, there will be plenty of time to agree or disagree with the company’s plans..."

Jan. 22 The Hellman News Project Should Study Fwix Before Launching
"This just in! The non-profit Bay Area News Project, well-funded by San Francisco billionaire Warren Hellman, has announced the names of its two senior executives, which — as readers of this BNET Media column have known for the better part of a week — are..."

Jan. 20 Flat World Knowledge: The Textbook Case for Disruption
"Now that they have their first full sales cycle behind them, it’s time to check in with one of my favorite examples of a startup bent on upending a publishing industry segment that is ripe for disruption — the college textbook oligopoly, dominated by a handful of huge companies..."

Jan. 19 How Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Support Five Big Newspapers
"According to the metrics service comScore, between a third and a half of all traffic to five major U.S. newspaper sites comes from search engines..."

Jan. 18 As Hellman Project Details Emerge, KALW Launches A Local News Website
"The San Francisco Bay Area may soon sport an embarrassment of riches, comparatively speaking, in the number and variety of local news organizations competing to fill the void created by waves of cutbacks..."

Jan. 16 Post-KQED, Hellman Non-Profit Venture Plans to Tap Frazier, Weber
"BNET has learned the names of the key executives that the troubled Bay Area News Project plans to announce “later this month...”

Jan. 15 Non-Profit News Deal between Millionaire Hellman, KQED Falls Apart

Jan. 14 Scribd Brushes Off "Piracy" Charge to Emerge as Social Publishing Leader
"Way down in San Francisco’s SOMA district, just a couple floors below the spot where — until recently — Twitter was headquartered, another startup, Scribd, is also angling to become one of the Internet’s hottest companies..."

Jan. 13 Vocus Report on the State of the Media: It's Really, Really Bad
"No one paying attention could have missed the massive downswing in fortunes for traditional media companies in the U.S. over the past two years.But just in case someone did, say by hiding in a cave at Tora Bora or wherever, the Vocus Media Research Team is out with a new report today detailing last year’s carnage..."

Jan. 12 Google Throws Down the Gauntlet in China Over Human Rights and Censorship
"In one of the most stunning developments in its remarkable 11-year history, Google (GOOG) today announced that it is prepared to shut down operations in the world’s largest country, China, unless the Chinese government ends its censorship of search results there..."

Jan. 12 Google and Syncplicity Team Up to Coordinate Data Management in the Cloud
"Google announced today that it is “rolling out the ability to upload all file types to the cloud through Google Docs..."

Jan. 11 Understanding the Top Media Trends in Search and Content
"There probably is no greater point of convergence in the way people use media in our time than that between search and content..."

Jan. 9 Standoff: No New AP Stories Appear on Google News
"In a confrontation that has been building for months, negotiations between the Associated Press and Google over licensing fees for hosting the AP’s content on Google News appear to have broken down..."

Jan. 8 E-Readers in 2010: DIY or Partner With Amazon, Sony, Plastic Logic, et. al.
If you scan the many predictions for the media industry in 2010, one consensus is that e-readers will become a much more important channel for content distribution over the coming year...

Jan. 7 Google and Twitter Favor Their Own Blogs to Break News
Google’s blog output increased dramatically, reaching 423* posts for the year in 2009, a 15 percent increase over 2008...

Jan. 6 Author's Estate Accuses Google of Stealing "Android" and "Nexus" Names
"Google’s “Android” and “Nexus One” sound like great product names, but were they stolen from the late author Philip Dick’s novel that resulted in the hit film, Blade Runner?"

Jan. 4 Twitter as the Media Industry's Bellweather Company in 2010