I’m currently reading “The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future”. It’s by Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine and an internet pioneer in the 1980s. It’s brilliant and very relevant to the news industry. Here is a highlight from chapter one. You are not late … here is the thing.…… Continue reading The Future Of News according to…
Tag: news
The competition for news sites just got tougher. Here’s why.
New products are being launched in weeks, not months… Swedish tabloid Expressen developed and launched a Buzzfeed-style news site in just 2 weeks. Detail. ITV created two mobile apps in 9 weeks, with just one designer and one developer Detail. Trinity Mirror launched UsVsThem in 5 weeks (detail)… and Ampp3d in 8 weeks (detail). Lean…… Continue reading The competition for news sites just got tougher. Here’s why.
4 lessons from the most successfull news sites
1. The two most popular news sites (MailOnline and The Guardian) have one big thing in common: they both publish massive volumes of content (hundreds of articles a day). 2. MailOnline is more popular then The Guardian. Why? Lots of pictures, especially glamorous/embarassing pictures of celebrities. Also, The Guardian is too intellectual for many people.…… Continue reading 4 lessons from the most successfull news sites
SEO, social and direct traffic
The web is fickle. Google and Facebook can change their algorithms over night. New sites like Twitter can quickly rise up and become users home for news. For a business like Metro to be robust, we need to find a balance between social, SEO and direct traffic. For Metro, over a third of traffic is…… Continue reading SEO, social and direct traffic
News sites: driving users to the homepage
If you want users to flock to your homepage then you should figure out WHY. This awesome TED talk (nearly 20 million views) explains. IMO, the why for most news is… giving people something to talk about.
5 ways to improve your news site: tips from BuzzFeed, Upworthy and Huff Post
Upworthy “The right sidebar, paired with a minimal design, increased social shares by 28%.” (source) “when we added distractions, user sharing went down” (source) BuzzFeed “People got used to this idea that you had to dumb down content to be popular. In fact you’re more likely to spread smart content” (source) Huff Post Huff Post…… Continue reading 5 ways to improve your news site: tips from BuzzFeed, Upworthy and Huff Post
The sweet spot between media and social networks
Hypothesis: Users want a combination of mainstream news (for the water cooler) and long tail (personal) news. Facebook and Twitter already do a pretty good job of this. They offer freshness and relevance. But they often lack coherence (unlike traditional media). And they lack simplicity (unlike traditional media). You have to register before you can…… Continue reading The sweet spot between media and social networks
Using the Metro API – a guide for newbies
I’m going to show you how to use the Metro API. This post is aimed at javascript beginners but i recommend you try out this fun interactive introduction first – http://www.codecademy.com/ Step One. Create a file on your computer. Call it something like “metro.html”. Step Two. Copy the HTML below into it. Open the file in…… Continue reading Using the Metro API – a guide for newbies