I’ve previously blogged about Facebook’s potential to help journalists and small websites like mine. Last month, Justin Osofsky, Facebook’s head of media partnerships, detailed more of Facebook’s power to help the media.
In a post titled, Working with Media Organizations to Build Social News, Osofsky unveils information on driving traffic, increasing engagement and an analytics system that website managers can use to track the number of times their posts get liked or shared—and by whom.
How much is Twitter worth? Well, according to 1,981 people surveyed by the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California, it is worth zero dollars. In a capitalist, money-driven society, some would consider this product worthless. Almost half of Internet users (49 percent to be exact) reported using free micro-blogs like Twitter, according to the report.
Jeffrey I. Cole, the director of USC’s Center for the Digital Future, tells us media folk the painful truth we already know:
Such an extreme finding that produced a zero response underscores the difficulty of getting Internet users to pay for anything that they already receive for free
Other new media tools received less-than-favorable responses about their value as well. According to those surveyed, 50 percent of Internet users never instant message, 79 percent never work on a blog, 80 percent never participate in chat rooms and 85 percent never make or receive Internet phone calls (sorry Google Voice).
So while content providers and aggregation services continue to roll out new Twitter products (Google now lets you search Twitter lists! The new UberTwitter App saves you the awkwardness of unfollowing that person who tweets too often by letting you “mute” his or her tweets!), the question is, who are these for? If reporters and editors are the only ones who get excited and use new media tools, does this mean they officially count as a distraction instead of an asset?
The survey continues to bring forth good news by exploring the level of trust people have in information on the Internet. A record-low 61 percent of users said that only half or less of online information is reliable, and 53 percent said that most or all of the information provided by search engines is reliable and accurate, down from 64 percent in 2006.
The price a consumer is willing to pay for a good or service is linked to its perceived value, according to Jerry Bernstein, the founder of St. Louis-based Price Improvement Team. So if Internet users do not trust a source, why would they pay for that information? (cue 60 Minutes ticking clock)
Not all real estate has plunged in value—the historic buildings in Oxford are still considered priceless by many who see them.
Don't be evil.
In case you did not see this when it was still “news” (as opposed to two-and-a-half-week-old food for thought), Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt offered his thoughts on how newspapers need to change and what they will look like in the future while at the Guardian’s Activate 2010 Summit:
“they’re replacing analogue dollars with digital cents, and a lot of people are losing their jobs as a result. It’s much less bad here in Britain, perhaps because of the history of newspapers here, but in the US there are unhappy people who are losing audience at a faster and faster rate.”
I’m somewhat embarrassed to admit I had never really considered the differences between newspaper cultures in the two bastions of the English language, but apparently others have. Ah, but maybe this is just an American newspaperman pining for the good ol’ days—a June 17 report from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development presented by paidcontent.org shows that UK newspapers have suffered the most dramatic circulation declines of any country outside the United States since 2007. In fact, UK circulation has fallen by 25 percent between 2007-09, second only to the US, where the decline was 30 percent. Greece (20 percent), Italy (18 percent) and Canada (17 percent) have also seen noted dropoffs.
Less bad? Sure. “Much less bad” as Schmidt claims? The data say not so much.
“What does the newsreading experience look like many years from now? I think it’s delivered to a digital device, which has text, obviously, but also colour, and video, and the ability to dig very deeply into what you are supplied with. At the moment we have readers, but it’s not intelligent enough; newspapers often tell me what I already know. We’ll have advertising products that are much more media-centric. The most important thing is that it will be more personalised.”
