News and Social Publishing Meet and Match
Important Details: You know what USAToday.com does. And you kind of understand what MySpace does. Now the very definition of news and social networking sites is blurring as they move closer to each other. Take recent developments:
- USAToday.com launched a major effort to bring the audience into its site. Powered by Pluck, the site offers its readers a suite of interactive tools — from commenting to story rating to creating their own profile pages. The goal is to get reader comment going (and a look through the pages of the site already shows a good start, with comments on stories ranging from NCAA Tournament picks to Michael Eisner’s foray into web show production). It’s the creation of the profile page — what Pluck calls a persona — that may be key for USAToday, which has reported that 3000-5000 users are signing up each day for profiles. Those profiles enable readers to build a kind of MySpace presence, and also give them a personal investment in using the website. USAToday is Gannett’s flagship national paper, and this effort follows on Gannett’s recently launched reader-involving Seven Desks initiative throughout its chain.
- Dow Jones and IAC announced a joint venture to develop a user-infused, social networked business and financial site. The vision is to re-use content from Dow Jones’ Marketwatch and WSJ brands alongside the audience and emerging interactive abilities of IAC’s Ask.com, Lending Tree and Match. One report suggests it’s a way for Dow Jones to go down market from the high-end WSJ and middle-plus Marketwatch brands, while reaching younger readers. Target launch date is the second half of 2007.
- Reuters announced its own finance-based social networking plans, targeted at traders, fund managers and financial analysts, which it described as MySpace for the financial community. The company said it would build on the 70,000 subscribers to its instant messaging service as a foundation for the new product.
- The BBC announced its own foray earlier in 2007, saying that by the end of the year it would launch social networking around some passionate areas of interest, including autos and food.
- Not to be outdone, MySpace — the site that made everyone notice social networking — said it was getting into….news. MySpace is actively negotiating with content providers to bring news to one of the web’s biggest audiences.
In Outsell’s Opinion: The social networking sites are becoming news sites and the news sites – USAToday, Dow Jones, Reuters, and individual papers like the Austin American-Statesman – are becoming social networking sites. It’s a natural progression: people like to share and talk about the news.
This is an inside-out, outside-in development. No one wants to lose audience. Consequently, social sites such as MySpace want to bring more content to their users. News sites don’t want readers to have to leave to share news and opinions. And both are searching for ways to monetize newer user-generated content. So a new free-for-all is on.
As Outsell noted in "HotTopics: News Publishers Move to Capture Community-Created Content for Growth", building community is a tricky prospect. In the terrestrial world, a development does not automatically become a community and so it will be in cyberspace. Active engagement with readers — not just offering tool suites — will make a big difference, as customers choose where they most feel at home. Comfortable sites will be winners in the end.