Let’s forget business models and monetization — just for a brief moment. Instead, we’ll focus on one key issue: the interface, the way you access, browse, spot, save relevant information. The interface is pivotal. A good one will allow you to rope in your readers / viewers, and make them loyal to your brand, your [...]
February 28, 2010 – 1:48 pm
New world, new approaches. Australia is a vibrant, younger economy. You can feel it everywhere. It moves on, it changes, it adapts. And, in the media business, it seems to adjust pretty fast.
Fairfax Digital is, by far, the leading online group in Australia and in the region. It is a division of Fairfax Media Ltd., [...]
February 28, 2010 – 1:48 pm
Microsoft is doing the right thing: at the Mobile World Conference in Barcelona, two weeks ago, Steve Ballmer hit the reset button and announced an entirely new smartphone OS, Windows Phone 7 Series. This is fundamentally better than flogging yet another ‘’new and improved’’ rev of the aging, failing Windows Mobile (née Windows CE) platform.
This [...]
February 21, 2010 – 10:49 pm
Among Australian media executives, like everywhere else, the talk of the town is the iPad. I was in Sydney this week, giving a talk at the Media 2010 conference. This gave rise to vibrant discussions of the ways in which the Apple device could transform our industry.
Among the group of speakers, the most enthusiastic one [...]
February 14, 2010 – 11:46 pm
For publishers: How much money is lost because of stolen contents? Of that, how much can be realistically reclaimed? Before getting into numbers, an overview.
In recent weeks, I’ve gained a first-hand media perspective on anti-piracy technology. The technology is Attributor’s, and the media is Agence France-Presse, one of the big three global newswires along [...]
February 7, 2010 – 6:07 pm
I’m not through with the iPad. Actually, I’m just warming up. For today’s column, let’s focus on the perils of a closed system.
I live in a country (France) where censorship is a big deal. It comes mostly from greedy celebrities (sorry for the truism); they use a legal system that largely favors them. Often, [...]
January 31, 2010 – 5:20 pm
For a large part, the Apple tablet was seen as a potential solution for the media industry problem: a digital infrastructure for delivery and transactions encompassing a vast array of media products — instantiated in a device destined to become a de facto standard.
Many blame the media industry for not being able to come up [...]
January 31, 2010 – 5:19 pm
Let me start with an important caveat. For this I’ll refer you to a post from my favorite high-tech blogger, David Pogue. “Don’t pass judgment until you’ve tried it!” Wise counsel: three years ago, industry sages “knew” Apple had no business making a phone. Normal humans voted with their wallet.
Customers come in two categories: [...]
January 24, 2010 – 6:21 pm
Finally! The New York Times is coming out with its paid-for content strategy. A quick summary of the Gray Lady’s paywall plan: a monthly allotment of stories to be read for free and, above that, a flat fee for full access. Subscribers to the print version (including those who only get the Sunday paper) will [...]
January 24, 2010 – 6:21 pm
Last week’s note on Apple licensing generated a good flow of comments, all appreciated. I’ll respond, but not before we get Apple earnings and the putative Jesus Tablet out of the way.
I’ll approach today’s topic, mobile payments, using an Apple Store moment.
Some cables keep disappearing. In particular, the ones that connect MacBooks of various [...]
January 17, 2010 – 7:49 pm
Forget Joe Average, he’s dead. Ten or twenty years ago, analyzing audiences was much easier. Medias enjoyed well-defined and relatively unchanging target groups. For television, networks had a precise idea on who was watching what, and specialized cable outlets knew their viewers pretty well. Newspapers had their content structure sliced to fit various audiences by [...]
January 10, 2010 – 5:50 pm
The French cultural elite has come up with a bunch of ideas to stimulate the legal consumption of digital goods. The basic principles are stunningly original: subsidize and tax. These creations are detailed in a report ordered by the Président de la République to the Ministry of Culture. This is the way it works here: [...]
January 3, 2010 – 6:22 pm
No predictions, just a few of many hot topics for the newborn year.
Paywalls. 2010 could see a significant number of newspapers jumping into the paid-for option. Among the conditions to be met:
- Grouping around a toll collector. It could be Journalism Online in the US, a big media group in Europe, or even Google [...]
December 20, 2009 – 8:18 pm
What can we learn from classifieds web sites? Are there some features, strategies that could apply to online news media? On Google.fr, one of the most searched terms is “Le bon coin” (the good spot). (1) Leboncoin.fr, is a free classifieds site that ranks n°7 on the French market. It generates stunning monthly numbers:
4bn page [...]
December 13, 2009 – 4:12 pm
Could Google and Publishers one day understand each other? Frankly, I doubt it. Two weeks ago I was in Hyderabad for the dual assembly of the World Association of Newspapers and the World Editors Forums (1).
There, Google-bashing was the life of the party. As I told in last week’s Monday Note (see The Misdirected Revolt [...]
December 7, 2009 – 9:04 am
The junkies are rebelling against their dealer. The dope is the traffic, and the dealer is Google. For years, the search giant flooded the market with an ideology built on the early 2000’s, ill-fated, get all eyeballs you can, the rest (i.e. monetization) will take care of itself.
Publishers have invested tons of money, energy and [...]
December 7, 2009 – 9:00 am
Last week, we looked at the two components of the “other” French Paradox.
First, the Valley aura helps a tiny Palo Alto start-up sell its technology in France. But it doesn’t work the other way around: a Lyons high-tech company will get a polite reception but no orders from the likes of HP, Google or [...]
November 29, 2009 – 12:57 pm
Let’s rejoice: French teachers embrace the internet. Well, calm down. I’m not saying they embrace it the way I would like them to. This week saw two technological breakthroughs at my son’s Parisian high-school. The first one is a decision-support tool on the school’s website: it helps parents decide whether or not to send their [...]
November 22, 2009 – 8:48 pm
Applied to news, the web doesn’t suffer from one, but three flaws. Let’s call these the Rectangle, the Bottleneck, and the Diversion. These flaws got built into the system from the very beginning and, now, their impact has become harder to deal with. For new sites, these unforeseen aftereffects have grown to become real obstacles [...]
November 15, 2009 – 6:49 pm
I love my country. Among many things, I enjoy its business attitude. In the media sector, it is an unabashed mixture of entrepreneurship, bold risk-taking and fearless independence. You can’t spend a week here without someone telling you : “Hey, you know what? We’re about to send some of our journalists, paid by the Ministry [...]
