Starting today, Kindle will allow all blogs to be published on the device. Click on Kindle Publishing for Blogs Beta
to sign up and your blog will be reformatted on Kindle in 12 to 48 hours. Prior to today only the largest blogs have been included in Kindle’s store. Read More »
Posted by Newswire |
05/14/09 | No Comments »
The Times, The Washington Post and The Boston Globe will offer reduced subscriptions for longer-term contracts on the Kindle DX. The news organizations will also sell the Kindle DX at a reduced price to readers who live outside home delivery areas, Bloomberg reports. More…
Posted by Newswire |
05/06/09 | No Comments »
A new mobile application by 3rdWhale provides information on green businesses near the cell-phone user’s location. Founded by Ron Williams, CEO who has an extensive background in media and activism, 3rdWhale is interested in forming partnerships with local media and other green-minded organizations. Read More »
Posted by Sarah Worsham |
04/23/09 | No Comments »
The plain old events calendar has gained new life online, and local media sites can use disruptive technology to take over this franchise … or lose it to a competitor. It’s easy for broadcast media or pure play online sites to partner and gain a new audience immediately for little or no upfront costs.
For local media using the same old calendar using a partner to convert to reverse publishing and better functionality should be a no-brainer. First of all, there are some cost savings from user-generated listings (although online calendars do require more content than gnat-sized print listings and a vigilant editor). But more importantly, the listings have pictures, maps, depth better upsell opportunities (from ticket sales, “featured upsells,” locationally targeted ads on mobile and display). Improvements in functionality (the ability to buy a ticket to an event and post it to your calendar with a click) are disruptive and cheap. Partnering is a great alternative to developing software. There are three companies we like: Zvents, Trumba and Eviesays. Read More »
Posted by Newswire |
04/22/09 | No Comments »
SpreedNews has a twist on iPhone application for news (versions for blackberry, android, and palm OS are on the way). In addition to the typical interface Spreed has developed the “Spreed Reader” in which news scrolls across the screen at a speed selected by the reader, much like a tickertape. Read More »
Posted by Sarah Worsham |
04/03/09 | No Comments »
Verve Wireless mobile news traffic is increasing by 20 to 40% per month on a network of 1500 local newspapers, according to Art Howe, CEO and co-founder.
Verve Wireless developed the Associated Press Iphone application (named third best IPhone application by Time Magazine this year). Since then the company has been working to supply similar news applications to local media publishers including print, television and radio.
The business model is a 70% revenue share to partnering media for sales of local ads and 50% of advertising coming in from the company’s national advertising sales. Currently large sales are topping out at $30,000 flights across the network. Some local newspapers are starting to earn revenues in the thousands with double digit growth rates.
Advertisers pay on a cpm or cpc basis, often as much as for larger sites like the New York Times regional, one of Verve’s partners.
“Let’s say you’re in downtown Philly at 5 p.m. and you’re interested in eating at a Tex-Mex restaurant. What would a local restaurant be willing to pay to send you an ad or message? Probably at least $1 or $2 per person who comes into their restaurant and buys a meal,” Howe said.
Verve’s platform includes mobile on-demand text alerts and subscriptions so publisher send on-going information, such as breaking news, traffic and school closings to users who have opted-in. When a user makes a one-time request for information, they can receive on-demand information about movies, weather, restaurants, real estate and coupons via text messaging.
“Local advertising is important because it provides useful and timely information to customers, with much higher action rates than any other type of ad,” Howe said.
With Verve Wireless’ mobile platform, publishers can quickly enter the mobile market with no upfront costs or licensing fees. Howe spent 30 years in newspapers has won a Pulitzer for investigative reporting and served a stint as president of Village Voice Media. He says he is focusing on local market publishers in part to ensure the survival of local news and reporting.
“They have to do it,” Howe said. Mobile internet usage is fast outpacing computer internet usage. A March, 2009 report release by ComScore shows 67 million computer-based internet users monthly, while mobile acquired 67 million new users in a recent month. Total usage is growing 107% monthly year versus year, compared to overall internet usage growth of 7%.
Howe co-founded Verve Wireless in 2005, with Tom Kenney, a veteran of Nokia. The network now has 1500 newspaper partners. “All media is about building community,” Art states.
“Verve’s biggest challenge for 2009 will be keeping up with the pace of the mobile industry and technology and scaling to keep up with demand.”
1 - comScore: Mobile Internet Becoming a Daily Activity for Many, comScore, March 16, 2009 (http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2752)
Posted by Sarah Worsham |
03/27/09 | No Comments »
The troubled Detroit Free Press may distribute a new mobile device as part of a subscription, according to David Hunke, CEO, Detroit Media Partnership and publisher of the Detroit Free Press.
“We plan to announce a partnership with PlasticLogic, ” Hunke said. ”We are trying to find a way to imbed a lease price for a plastic device, 8×11 inches, that weighs seven ounces.” The remarks were made during a session on future business models at the MediaXchange conference put on by the NAA.
The Detroit Free Press was one of the first newspapers to publically declare that the paper would not survive without fundamental changes. Hunke confirmed this viewpoint at the conference, but said that the new platforms could turn suffering into “liberation”.
“We may have gone from a devastated city that hit bottom so hard that it doesn’t even have a newspaper anymore to perhaps one of the most digitally connected media markets in the United States. It’s absolutely possible,” he said.
Other changes to the Detroit papers include reducing home deliver to three days a week: Thursday, Friday and Sunday. The redesigned paper will have a fixed size of 32 pages with fixed advertising positions and a $12 a month subscription price. Included in the price is a daily e-version of the paper with advertising.
Circular Central will launch April 1 and provide online versions of the newspaper’s inserts.
E-newspapers are attractive to advertisers because the ads are clickable and interactive, but nave not been as popular with readers who access information online differently and dislike download times. Hunke says he plans to use cost saving to create multi-million dollar and marketing campaigns to promote the e-papers.
Hunke said the reinvention of the Detroit papers was not just a cost cutting measure, but the result of thousands of interviews with readers in the community. He hired Ideo, a Palo Alto consulting firm, to lead the research.
“We are willing to make a franchise risk to prosper. I don’t think there is a plan B. We are absolutely not going to stop. We have a new model, ” Hunk said. “We are not trying to sell this to any of you. We are not going to sit here and die.”
Posted by Alisa Cromer |
03/13/09 | 1 Comment »
