More pay walls – Emap makes its pitch/readers respond

There are some interesting comments cropping up on Retail Week's blog about its plan to charge readers £150 and put some online content behind a pay wall on November 13.

In the blog post Retail Week editor Tim Danaher makes his pitch to the magazine readers telling them about Emap's plans to boost its online offering with a raft of new services and explaining how this new content should only benefit subscribers.

For B2B publishers in particular this is the pitch. It is the same one that Centaur and its NMA title made this week as these titles look to protect their magazine subscriber base in a tough climate where the B2B sector has been as hard hit as any. There have been a slew of magazine closures and job losses and that pain is far from over. More magazine closures are almost guaranteed.

Haymarket Media, which owns Brand Republic, yesterday reported a 43% drop in pre-tax profits (in the year to December 31 2008).

Today United Business Media, publisher of Music Week, Travel Trade Gazette and the Publican, said it planned to reduce the number of print titles that it published as they become "complementary components of an integrated product portfolio".

"In anticipation of this market trend, we are managing our portfolio towards a smaller set of market-leading, commercially sustainable titles, each operating within an integrated product portfolio."

As for Emap and Retail week it must be nerve racking to announce all this in the same week that Rupert Murdoch revealed that his plans to introduce paid content are not on track. Questions will inevitably be raised by readers and rivals.

The comments in response to Tim Danaher's blog post are only a few in number, but I think they are indicative of the spread of opinion in the market. What is encouraging to note from Emap's perspective is that there is positive in with the negative as it asks people to pay up during a steep economic downturn.

The very first commenter seems to sum up well the issues that everyone considering such a move will no doubt be mulling. I'll bullet point:

1. I cant afford it.
2. Mr Murdoch thinking about charging is relevant, however I have an alternative to the Times website and that's the BBC which is much better.
3. He's going to read The Grocer (the rival to Retail Week) instead
4. He wishes retail week Good luck as we all do.

Clearly, Emap has already researched this and worked out that if enough of its readers will join it on its foray into paid content and pay £150. Although I wonder if it asked readers if they would switch to a rival if a charge were introduced.

Clearly, having a healthy well resourced rival that remains free could prove a major stumbling block to achieving a successful paid content strategy.

There are a few other points that Retail Week readers raised. A couple expressed interest in an "online only service if it was cheaper than the printed and digital versions combined".

This sentiment appears to echo what UBM is talking about and while the reader might what it their desire does not chime with what Emap and Centaur are trying to achieve with their desire to protect print copies and any offline ad market they have a slice of as well.


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Murdoch stalls on the road to paid content/NMA raise pay wall

First it was the New York Times and now Rupert Murdoch has hinted that News Corporation may not hit its year end deadline to implement paid content.

Murdoch, who owns the Times and the Sun, Wall Street Journal and New York Post (what a great front page; great game), told reporters that he can not promise that News Corp will meet its own deadline.

"We are working all very, very hard at it but I wouldn't promise that we are going to meet that date. It's a work in progress and there is a huge amount of work going on, not just with our sites but with other people," Murdoch said in a conference with journalists.

According to the Age when he was asked about the delay Murdoch said he was "not prepared to comment on that at all". Thorny issue.

Murdoch & Co are struck by the exact same thing that has hit the New York Times execs earlier this week when executive editor, Bill Keller, admitted that the issue of charging had proved a much tougher and more complicated decision "than it seems to all the armchair experts".

This seems to indicate that executives at both News Corp and the New York Times Company are struggling to work out which system they are going to opt for in their pursuit of paid content.

The delay will validate critics who say that newspapers are going to find it very hard to successful erect pay walls and get cash from their readers who are so used to a world of free.

The news that News Corp is delaying its decision to implement a pay wall came as its first quarter results revealed a sharp fall in operating income in its newspaper business, down to $25m in the three months to September from $134m last time as advertising revenue fell in the UK 15% and at the Wall Street Journal.

All those numbers say that Murdoch is not going to turn away or balk at the paid content conundrum. He doesn't think he can with news papers losing money like that. My bet is for some kind of limited subscription model – like the Financial Times where a certain amount of articles are given away (30 a month in the case of the FT) – or a membership club, which is something being looked at with interest by a lot of media firms including the New York Times, The Times and Guardian News & Media.

What I really wouldn't expect is micropayments. Well not in the short term at least. I'm sure the first step will be a limited pay wall option that could later be extended to something more complex.

It has been a busy week in paid content all round with real stuff happening – in B2B at least. Earlier this week Emap plumped for a £150 charge and now rival Centaur has opted to put more of the content of its digital magazine NMA (already £99-a-year with a subscription) behind a pay wall.

In a statement on its website NMA says the move is part of the "title's phased strategy to introduce a range of premium content and services to add value to bundled subscriptions".

"Like all other publishers, we're experimenting with paid-for models online," said editor Justin Pearse. "While previously lead stories from the magazine were accessible for free, we’re confident this content, together with the analysis our site provides to the industry, is worth paying for."

Next up?

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Mass layoffs begin at Time Inc/Murdoch hires (plans newspaper war)

We've already seen big cuts this year at Conde Nast now it is the turn of IPC Media parent Time Inc, which is set to announce as many as 500 job cuts today.

The New York Times reports that the layoffs begun yesterday at Time Inc when 15 to 20 sales and marketing staff were first to hear the bad news largely from Sports Illustrated.

The cuts are part of a plan to save $100m and the NY Times quotes an executive saying that the total number of layoffs as being between 400 and 500 people, which are expected to come from the news division, which includes Time, Fortune and Sports Illustrated.

Details of these job cuts are due today at 10am (3pm UK). Other magazines likely to be hit include People and InStyle and Real Simple and Cooking Light. They come after this morning's announcement of a 38% drop in third-quarter profits and a 6% fall in revenues to $7.1bn at parent company Time Warner. Revenues at AOL fell 23% ahead of a planned spin-off that is still on the cards. 

No word on how this might affect the UK business IPC Media and whether it will be asked to contribute to this cost saving target.

A note of light in this job loss darkness is that few job losses will come from the digital business, according to PaidContent.

While jobs are going at Time Inc, Rupert Murdoch is cooking up a fresh newspaper war. You just can't keep a good media mogul down. After battling in London and axing TheLondonPaper, Murdoch has decided that New York deserves his attention.

He is planning to hire around a dozen reporters in New York to cover local and state news for the Wall Street Journal in its battle to take on the New York Times and transform itself from a business centric title to one that has more general news.

This sucks if you are former Boston Bureau staffer for the WSJ. That bureau was closed. One the plus side if you are one of the 100 New York Times staffers due to be axed it might suck less presenting a fresh employment opportunity. One question that strikes me is that in its drive to be more like the New York Times, you know but to the right, will this hit its money making online subscription base. The WSJ has grown because it is errrm not a general newspaper. Could someone explain that one to me? Thanks

Elsewhere another barometer for the health of US newspapers has taken a dip. Former New York Times journalist and baseball writer, not to mention pioneer in sports blogging, Murray Chass has noticed a mass fall in US newspaper coverage of this year's World Series between the best team in baseball, the New York Yankees, who lead the Philadelphia Phillies 3-2.

On his blog he notes that 29 of the 60 newspapers that cover major league teams during the season on the road as well as at home are not at this year's World Series. That is a huge drop. Last year these papers were all there, but no more.

He quotes Bud Selig, the baseball commissioner, saying: "It’s a manifestation of what’s happening in America. I’m saddened by it. I think newspaper coverage over the years has enabled us to succeed much more than a lot of people understand so for me this is a very, very unhappy development."

These are big metropolitan newspapers including the likes of the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Chronicle, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the Detroit Free Press, the Seattle Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, who have made cuts and are no longer covering one of the biggest sporting weeks in the US suggesting more pain to come.

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Decision time in paid content (stuff starts happening)

This week is officially deemed paid content week (again), but yesterday unlike most weeks things happened. The New York Times said it was struggling to decide; Emap came out and (boldly) said it's charging £150; and a VC guy said newspapers need less than 5% of customers to pay. Bonus.

Venture capitalist Dharmash Mistry, a former MD of Emap Consumer Media and Emap Performance, told MediaGuardian that national papers "need to convert less than 5% of web audience to pay model" for the whole thing to work in a move away from solely relying on advertising revenue.

Dharmash Mistry, who is now at venture capital firm Balderton Capital, said that national newspapers need to get about 3% to 4% of their online audience to pay £3 a month. That would cover the entire annual digital advertising revenue he estimated most groups currently make.

"On a like-for-like basis, if newspapers convert an order of magnitude of 3% to 4% unique users to a pay model – at roughly £3 a month or 10% of the monthly price of buying print editions daily – you could probably generate as much in revenue as is being made from total online ad revenue currently," Mistry told MediaGuardian.

Now less than 5% seems achievable doesn't it? Well, I think so, but the question is how is it achievable? What is the system that will most easily deliver you that cash? Is it micropayments, premium content areas, members clubs or subscriptions or, you know, something else entirely.

It is this issue that has the newspaper industry acting like shot putters trying to do the 110 metre hurdles.

No clearer was this illustrated than yesterday when the New York Times took it upon itself to air the internal struggle it has been having with the issue of paid content.

Bill Keller, the executive editor, said yesterday that the issue of charging had proved a much tougher and more complicated decision "than it seems to all the armchair experts".

"There is no clear consensus on the right way to go," Kellner said, but added that the paper was "within weeks of a decision".

The New York Times has been looking at this for many months and it is finding it hard to know which way to jump. Getting it wrong could be a serious setback even for one of the world's biggest newspapers.

What keeps newspaper executives awake at night is this: if you opt for one system, invest and roll it out and then find it doesn't work what do you do then? Answers in 140 characters to the usual address please.

While one former Emap director was espousing; one newspaper wringing its hands; the B2B arm of Emap dived off a cliff. This might be for Emap a bold and elegant act, worthy of an Olympic podium place, or it might well be a rash act of folly more akin to tombstoning.

This is what it has done as reported by Media Week: it will start introducing pay walls across its magazine websites, which include Drapers Record, Broadcast, Health Service Journal and Retail Week, within two weeks and will no longer giveaway online content. Wow.

First at the plate is Retail Week. It will introduce a pay wall on November 13 with others likely to follow later.

To be honest my feeling here is, and working for a rival B2B publisher I will try to be careful with my words, good luck with that one. I don't see a lot of reasons why much of its audience would pay much at all for the news driven content on its websites.

So much of what is in Retail Week, Broadcast and the others exists elsewhere on the web. And while it covers these industries well, that isn't I think anything like enough to persuade people to pay £150 of thereabouts in this climate. I could, of course, be totally wrong, but it will be interesting to watch all the same.

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Stephen Fry and the great Twitterwave of quit (and unquit)

What a weekend. I don't mean the World Series or Liverpool sinking ever lower, but Stephen Fry's threat to quit Twitter and then withdraw it as suddenly.

It was what can only be described as a Twitterwave. It sent ripples across the Twittervse and garnered stories just about everywhere from the Sunday Times, the Sun, Guardian to the New York Times (not forgetting the Watton and Swaffham Times).

A Twitterer from Birmingham called brumplum was the source of all the consternation after he accused Stephen Fry of writing boring Tweets. "Much as I admire and adore the chap, they are a bit ... boring."

Stephen Fry fired back: "Think I may have to give up on Twitter. Too much aggression and unkindness around (he has a point: if you have nothing nice to say on Twitter then don't bother – although the bigger it gets the more some people seem to think its okay to act that way)".

He also sent a direct message to brumplum: "You've convinced me. I'm obviously not good enough. I retire from Twitter henceforward. Bye everyone."

I don't follow Stephen Fry or have any interest in him (other than liking Black Adder from way back when), but apparently he tweets a lot and people love him for it. They say silly stuff like he's a national treasure and who knows maybe he is.

Stephen Fry's threat to quit sent his followers into a frenzy like a bunch of digital jihadis sallying forth with defence and abuse in equal measures (can we send these people to Afghanistan? we'd sort out that in no time).

Comedian/actor/friend of Fry Alan Davies entered the fray and the levels of noise and abuse rose ever higher. Brumplum dude (with his ahem odd request on his blog for you to watch him on Xtube which is according to Google the home of free, quality porn videos. Nice) caught it from Alan Davies who came out with fighting talk such as:

"Anyone has a pop at your mates you stick up for them. Twittr needs to be more like Essex.If you wouldn't say it to their face then do shut up".

An admirable well intentioned sentiment, but Alan (if I may) a world like Essex would be hell and if not hell then definitely related and full of footballers and their wives. Besides, doesn't Alan Davies live in Islington? Really, I'd like that more one great expanse of North London. Awesome. Admittedly we wouldn't get much done, but it would be relaxing.

After an avalanche of well wishing tweets from his 900,000 followers Stephen Fry rescinded his threat to quit. Phew.

"Arrived in LA feeling very foolish. Wasn't the fault of the fellow who called me 'boring', BTW. A mood thing. Sunshine will help. So sorry," he wrote.

Fry has also apologised to the Brumplum who apologised back, but is stamping his foot and waiting for bruiser Alan Davies to apologise too. He might have quite a wait (apparently Davies called him a wanker, which is naughty/wrong, but what a great word). Brumplum has also picked up hundreds of followers (astutely Skinbro tweeted: "Glad this Stephen Fry business is over. Still, important lesson learned: abusing the right celebrity will get you 1000s of followers").

By Wednesday it will be over and the national treasure that is Stephen Fry and his global brand will be that little bit bigger (surely there's a documentary in this somewhere?) after this media and digital tsunami in a tea cup. I know that wasn't his intention, but hey the guy is a publicity machine.

When I started this I thought I knew what I was going to say when I got to this point (the end), but I now realise that I've sort of run out of conclusion. I was going to say something ridiculously pompous about how this is whole thing is symptomatic of the endless distraction that is celebrity and the desperate need to be part of it blah blah blah (and it is), but really I think more importantly this is another great example of how this whole Twitter thing works, how quickly it spreads and how powerful it can be.

It is so simple and yet so effective. I still don't know why people follow celebrities on Twitter, but I do at least believe that despite what some people say this whole Twitter/micro blogging thing is not going to be over any time soon. Although for Stephen Fry's sake there should be an absolute ban on people saying they are quitting and then not doing so.  

Stephen Fry, as he is a "national Treasure" gets a free pass, naturally, but that probably doesn't apply for the rest of us.

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Emerging Trends of the Real-Time Web

Mashable has a good trending piece on things to watch out for on the real-time web, chiefly: collaboration; analytics; search; and ecommerce.

Real-Time Collaboration

Whether you've had a play with Google Wave or not there is a lot of talk about it and other online services (this includes Twitter as it continues to develop) can help grow how business work together collaborative and really change the way they do business. It is a bold claim, but the potential is huge with some talking about how Wave and other similar technologies have the potential to replace "email, instant messaging, forums, wikis, blogs and even traditional publishing outlets — combining them into something we can only begin to imagine. In other words, Google is building Web 3.0 inside Google Wave".

Bernard Moon, MD of the Lunsford Group, who wrote the piece says he sees it as the tip of the iceberg: he talks about companies being able to make real-time changes to products and designs and much more.

Real-Time Analytics

As the flow of real-time data increases so will the services and applications in this space. Moon talks about a crowd sourced mobile map and traffic information service called Waze in Israel and how that has become effective by initially needing just 0.5% of the population to work. It has since launched in the US.

This came up at Media140 where David McCandless, Information is Beautiful, gave an interesting presentation on bringing together data and images. The marrying of those in real-time has so much potential. Google has Google Maps Mobile Navigation on the way that appears similar to Waze whereby "connected users act as sensors and provide live, real-time traffic information and even data updates".

Real-Time Search growth

Well it is really happening now Microsoft and Google have moved in. Looking at Bing and seeing tweets appear there is going to be very useful. Google will add its own take any day now. Have you played with Bing Twitter beta?

Moon talks about how this could offer opportunities for business using that real-time search around big events such as the World Cup or Superbowl. Monitoring such streams could easily allow highly targeted ads to be displayed alongside these real-time search results delivering exactly what people are talking about.

Real-Time Ecommerce

The one I know and have read least about. This is on the way, Moon mentions a company called Apnoti that indexes real-time pricing for consumers in the US and Germany. It allows consumers to take advantage of price changes on various ecommerce sites.

People talk about this one but some of the examples he uses such as how it could offer competitive advantage for perishable goods whereby the grocer with fresher fruit can theoretically charge or sell more by providing real-time freshness data. Maybe. But you can certainly see it working for sale of tickets and events.

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A Huffington Post for Europe

A Huffington Post style start-up news site is up and running in Germany with plans later for an English version apparently in the pipeline.

Techcrunch reports that German Web 2.0 figure Lukasz Gadowski, who was previously behind online t-shirt firm Spreadshirt.com, is one of those behind online publishing venture that is going to be a kind of Huffington Post in Europe.

It's called The European. Yes, the same name used by Robert Maxwell for his newspaper way back when, which was later revised and died several times under Andrew Neil and the Telegraph Group's Press Holdings. The last incarnation of that was when Neil relaunched The European as a website. It didn’t last long. That was, of course, way before blogging.

Techcrunch reports that the site has/will have more than 20 journalists and possible contributions from the likes of European Commission President José Manuel Barroso, German car producers association’s president Matthias Wissmann or bishop Margot Käßmann.

Chief editor Alexander Görlach, who holds 50% of the company alongside Gadowski, reveals traffic is rising (from first day numbers of "5,000 readers and 30,000 page impressions") and that first month revenues are three times bigger than originally scheduled in the business plan.

The Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau recently said in an interview that it had ruled out European versions despite being approached: "It's not an international strategy, almost every week some pretty big organization would like to partner with us,” Hippeau said.

The UK is its biggest market and it is surprising that no one has tried a Huffington Post here (and they have ruled it out themselves).

Clearly, the market is a lot smaller and a lot of our newspapers have great blogging operations, but that said it feels like there is a gap there for an uber blog or two.

Unless after the demise of the likes of Shiny Media and other blogging operations there really is no money out there for what could be an expensive blogging operation to start-up.

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Media140: personality and social media – do you need one?

The panel I chaired at Media140 in London felt like it could have run and run (it almost did) as the question as to whether "brands need a social media personality to engage consumers" or not sits at the heart of what a lot of companies are trying to do on Twitter.

If you get this wrong you fall flat and fail. Drew Benvie, managing director of 33 Digital (@drewb), said that getting that personality right was incredibly tricky, which is why there is so much "fake and fail" out there. He said that it comes down to how you use that personality and that it should come from both the brand and its people".

Part of my question was also can you in that personality mix the personal and professional -- can you give customer feedback in one breath and holiday plans in the next?

We were lucky to have Richard Baker at Virgin Trains as he does mix it the personal and professional, helping people with Virgin enquiries when they ask, but also dropping in other comments as well.

He'd told me previously that in the context of social media his emphasis was "social" and that "without a personality you can't have a conversation and without a conversation you can't have a relationship".

When he is dropping in personal or non Virgin Train related comments he is having that conversation and inviting people to respond. Maybe as a result of that, he said that people were less likely to have a go at him than the VirginTrains Twitter account.

Will Mcinnes, MD of NixonMcinnes (@willmcinnes), made a strong point about addressing the root of your brand in order to work out what is right and what is going to work or not. You can see the brands out there that have not done this, not been rigorous in examining their brand roots, as those are the ones failing. It isn't enough with Twitter and social media in general to simply launch on the world in the way you might with a single piece of marketing.

Candace Kuss, director of planning at Hill & Knowlton (@CandaceKuss), addressed this when she said that social media "it isn't just marketing and isn't just customer service" and that is what makes it so tricky. It's because of this that big companies do not always win out because they make basic mistakes.

What's been fascinating about Twitter in part is how and social media has allowed companies when they get it right to punch above their weight. This has helped brands in the US such as Southwest Air outplay the likes of the bigger and better known likes of JetBlue and Virgin America.

Several of the panellists made the point about how screwing up in social media means screwing up loudly and publicly as both Bestbuy and Habitat have found out.

Best Buy's chief marketing officer, Barry Judge, perfectly exemplified this when he got into a spat on Twitter with blogger Doug Meacham in an incident that tore across the blogosphere and Twitter. Likewise in the UK with Habitat and its intern which was mentioned throughout Media140. It only takes one time and then you’re a case study in bad practice.

Habitat did do something right, however, on its return to Twitter: it did listen. Marketing Week's Ruth Mortimer (@MarketingWeekEd) spoke about the importance of brands listening and that the voice on Twitter can not simply be about pumping stuff out.

Although countering Will Mcinnes felt quite strongly that when brands do respond listening isn't always enough.

It is a good point, brands do have to act, but increasingly I wonder if in this always on world of social media expectations are raised too high when you have such instant access? As with instant access comes the desire for instant response and resolution. Ruth Mortimer commented here that it highlighted the need to closely manage expectations.

Richard Baker (@richard_baker) said that he tries to respond and do what he can, but clearly that only goes so far. He can't fix broken trains, but he can keep customers posted. Listening might not always be enough from a customer perspective, but the importance of it can not be underscored enough.

This addressed my point as well as to whether you have a real person and a human face, such as Richard's, or you can as easily have a cute marsupial as your voice on Twitter? As long as there is understanding and the brand is listening it seems okay to have a meerkat in the case of Comparethemarket.com or the duck in Aflac's case in the US (both are social media successes stories). The Barry Judge/BestBuy example illustrates clearly enough that people as well as cute little creatures can get it wrong.

Towards the end of the panel we moved on to discuss another potentially tricky issue relating to brands and personality in social media: who owns the voice?

Candace Kuss mentioned Scott Monty the head of social media at Ford. He has built a major Twitter presence (32,000 plus followers). What he is not is Scott@Ford. Sure, Ford has other Twitter accounts, but none have become as well know as Scott Monty who is a social media brand of his own.

When Monty leaves that brand and personality he has built up goes with him and could be a major benefit to his next employer. Candace suggested that she would advise brands to go down the route that others have done (such as Dell with @Dell et cetera) where there is an association between the individual person tweeting and the company they represent.

The same is true for Richard Baker who readily admitted he had given the issue some thought of where he and his followers might end up next. Partly to address that Richard has set up @VirginTrains, but it is an account that has far fewer followers than he does personally…

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More on Media140 on BR - Chris Quigley of Rubber Republic - Twitter is like word of mouth on crack, the Peperami Animal and other tales from Media140

Print: kind of like the Titantic says New York Times publisher

It can be horrible getting caught on the hop and you find yourself answering with an off the cuff comment, which is what happened to New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr who came up with this nifty analogy for newspapers and, errrm, the Titanic.

New York Magazine were the guys on the spot. All they were asking was for a few tips for young people who want to go into journalism given the job market?

This apparently first elicited a laugh (I'm guessing a kind of nervous laugh as you might if you were about to make a lot of journalists unemployed).

"Um, what I would tell them is the industry is in the midst of a massive transition. But the core of the fundamental job is critical. We have to re-create ourselves, but the heart of what we're going to re-create is still journalism. The way people get information is changing, but the need for information will remain constant."

Then came the stuff about the Titanic. Yes, that's right the big ship that sank with terrible loss of life (was he thinking of journalists?). To be fair he could have used any ship to power his analogy and, really maybe one of those still floating ones would have been better.
 
"The best analogy I can think of is — have you ever heard of the Titanic Fallacy? What was the critical flaw to the Titanic?"

Apparently it wasn't icebergs and being a sinkable kind of unsinkable ship. No it wasn't any of this it was trying to beat aeroplanes. He explained, carefully it seems, that even if the Titanic had make it to New York it didn't matter as it was still doomed (but at least floating) as the Wright brothers had taken off 12 years earlier and invented the plane.

"We are trying to convert shipping companies to airplane companies. Same business: transporting people safely across long distances. There is still a very vibrant business in shipping. It's just not taking masses of people across the Atlantic. It's now taking families around the Seychelles, or something like that. There will still be passenger ships, but they're not going to be in the same business. So print will still be here, I believe, decades from now. But will it be the driving force? No."

So there you have it, newspapers are like holiday pleasure cruises. An occasionally thing you do once a year when you can tear yourself away from the interweb.

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Associated hits reset button as London Lite set to close

Associated Newspaper's statement this afternoon that it is likely to close London Lite, hits the reset button for newspapers in the capital. We had three papers for almost three years and now we are back to square one.

With the Evening Standard going free earlier this month it was only a matter of time before London Lite was closed.

Associated says "it has entered a period of consultation over the future of London Lite, its free London evening title, which may result in closure".

I don't think there is any "may" about it. It is tough for the 36 staff, but the future of London Lite and its employees looks sealed to me.

Steve Auckland, managing director, Associated Newspapers Free Division says that "despite reaching a large audience with an excellent editorial format, we are concerned about the commercial viability in this highly competitive area".

I'm sure they have been concerned for sometime, but with theLondonpaper gone there is no reason for it to be.

I don't remember the last time we were here with the London Daily News versus the Evening Standard aided by the resurrected Evening News in 1987, but it looks like that in London, history repeats itself. That's twice within the last few decades we've had three London papers before reverting to one.

One thing is clear we will not (as they say) see their like again. This really is an end moment in the evening/afternoon paper market in this rapidly changing media landscape. There's obviously still lots happening in other areas of the free market with Shortlist (its women's magazine: Stylist - isn't that due any day now?), City AM and TFL issuing its tender for the Metro slot.

In such a busy and competitive market it is a surprise that they lasted as long as they did, but it was an interesting battle to observe.

The free paper was a great experiment and what is perhaps most interesting is that while both London Lite and thelondonpaper are gone, they have left us with a legacy of a free Evening Standard against a desire by the rest of the industry to charge for content.

That strikes me as fascinating. Particularly given the most recent ABC figures for newspapers in the US this week that show the dire state some are in.

I've read and heard a number of people talk about the future of the Evening Standard and how they see the logic and the long term viability of it as a free title. Time will tell, but oddly I miss it as a paid-for title. I've barely seen it since it went free when previously I could pop out to the news agent outside 174 Hammersmith Road and get my copy, but no more.

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"Twitter: Unpoliced playground for paedos"

There was I under the impression there were not a great deal of teens on Twitter, when the Sun sticks on its front page this morning that the micro blogging service has become "a free and easy hunting ground for paedophiles seeking to lure kids for sex".

The tabloid claims that it uncovered this as part of a wider investigation into abuse of the ultra-successful blogging website.

It says that pornographic pictures of young girls are also freely available.

The Sun says it was shown an online conversation between a group of youngsters that had apparently been infiltrated by a pervert who asked a 13-year-old boy, who had posted a photo of himself and his sister on Twitter:

The pervert asked: "What do you like to do? Where do you like to go?"

The Sun says that the boy replied: "Are you coming on to me?"

The suspect said: "No, not at all. I'm just interested in finding out about you."

Maybe it's true, and I am sure that there are SOME teenagers on Twitter (but remember the city wake-up call? Teens don't tweet), but is it really a free an easy hunting ground as the paper says? I really don't think so although it makes a nice alarmist front page story.

As you read on in the story it looks more like the paper has made something out of maybe not a great deal, at least I hope so, as it quotes child protection expert Mark Williams-Thomas saying that looking at these tweets "I'd say the boy is being followed by an adult posing as a teenager".

Of course we've all been followed by porn bots and sites asking us to "click and see their pictures", but Twitter is pretty good at deleting these people and the other Twitter pages the Sun points to showing obscene images of Thai girls are clearly an example of that.

The paedophile thing is news to me, but I really have a problem believing it is widespread as the paper makes out. With all these advertising, digital, marketing and media types there's no room or place for the scum of the earth.

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Labour Party website not found so lacking (after all)

There's some research out this week saying that the Labour Party's policies scored poorly on Google search. This would be an issue demanding urgent attention if the research had not been skewed.

An election is rolling into view. It's going to be very interesting. Digital will no doubt play a key role in that fight and examining how well the political parties are prepared can be informative, but what has been served up this week by research firm Tamar is too basic and mechanical to be of real value. It failed to dig deep and showed the weakness of robotic research in terms of search.

Tamar's Political Search Index was designed to workout how easy it is for voters to find official policy information from the mainstream political parties online via Google and party websites. The results show the Labour Party trailing badly behind the Conservatives and the others.

It found that for a number of key policy areas including defence, environment and pensions, no content from the Labour Party's website Labour.org.uk appears in the first five pages of Google results.

On initial examination that could be quite damning…but Tamar's research only hold's up if you search for the term "Labour" and "defence" or "Labour" and "environment" if you happen to search for "Labour Party" and either of the above then the results are at the top and thus rendering null and void Tamar's conclusions.

Here's the thing: "labour" is a term to describe giving birth and workers and so when it comes to search any half smart person isn't going to combine the terms "labour" "tax", or "labour" "hospitals" as this like Tamar says returns useless results. However, using the term Labour Party makes more sense and returns more intelligent/useful results (the aim right?).

Another important point to consider here is that because they are in opposition, the Tory (and Lib Dems) website is used to carry their response to government policy. Quite a lot of the pages which appear high in search rankings aren't Tory policy pages - they are news stories or pages from the Blue Blog - for example when you search for Conservative Afghanistan Policy. The reason for this is simple: Labour is in Government. The party doesn't make policy announcements via its website -  so the issue here is a lack of relevant searchable content rather than SEO. 

None of this is taken into account and I'd argue it is a misleading headline seeking PR tactic for Tamar to send out a press release claiming "the results show the Labour Party trailing badly" when that claim is wholly reliant on interpreting the data in one particular way. Without too much effort it is pretty easy to pick apart its research. Not a great sign in this instance.

There are other issues I have with the research and its claims, which I think are largely without merit. Tamar's Neil Jackson says Google will be the first point of call for voters looking online to compare the policy positions of rival political parties.

Nonsense. The first port of call for any voter looking for informational on policy debates will be the media offline and online. From the FT, The Times and the BBC to the Daily Mirror and Daily Mail. Through in Twitter, YouTube and televised debates and that is the primary platform where the war of ideas between left and right will be played out. Those are the political trenches - that is where the Barack Obama and the Democrats won their election.

Granted, there might be a small minority who will search out and read party policy documents, but this group is not significant.

Tamar says that while all political parties are investing heavily in creating their own social networking platforms (where Labour is showing a significant lead) some "like the Labour Party need to go back to basics and ensure that their site can deliver".

But in Labour's case at least the site does deliver. Mark Hanson Labour Party new media strategist and deputy MD of Wolfstar puts it like this: "There's little evidence that floating voters search for a specific party's specific policy in order to decide how to vote.  Instead, the Labour Party has successfully focused on using its website to sign up many thousands of grassroots supporters to help them fight the campaign online and offline at the next election."

That's the point of the Labour or Conservative Party websites. The first thing that strikes you about them as a visitor is that these sites are not for your floating voter.

The front page of the Labour Party site has a big call to arms with members explaining why they joined the party, which can be posted to Facebook or to your blog. That is social media sharing in action.

Likewise the Conservative Party site has a similar bold: "Campaign, Fundraise, mobile". Neither leave you in doubt that they want you to sign up, donate and get involved. That's their raison d'etre. Policy documents are there for members and supporters, but that is only one facet of these sites.

If you look at the list of policy pages on Labour’s website, for instance, it's obviously written for people browsing so that it makes sense to readers. This is crucial as robots can only tell us so much about web strategy pretty much like this research.

If this is the first of a planned series of "Political Search Index" research from Tamar I hope round two is more informative that would always be welcome.

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Game changer: Facebook Connect

More evidence if you needed it of how powerful Facebook Connect can be from HuffingtonPost.com, which has used it to help recently surpass WashingtonPost.com.

I was looking at it recently as part of our social media strategy and how we might use it and while HuffingtonPost.com is in a league of its own in terms of the vast traffic it generates what it does has important pointers, I think, for others.

While some have queried the of what the Huffington Post has achieved CEO Eric Hippeau in an interview on PaidContent yesterday makes a good case for why it is more than noteworthy.

"It wasn't so much the Washington Post—by the way, it's also the LA Times, it’s also the online edition of the Wall Street Journal. Of the big national newspapers, there’s only two our size that are still bigger than we are: USA Today, which is a very different audience, and the New York Times, which will always be a big brand and very well read and well respected. We’re not in a race with the newspapers. We’re not in a race with anything in particular. Our goal is to establish the brand that defines news and opinion on digital platforms."

And how it did that is interesting, from a political and commentary blog to a pretty much all singing all dancing news site (let's side step the issue of content scraping/oversharing for today), with sport, culture, books and business all being added not to mention its regional editions across the US (Chicago, New York and Denver).

All this is helping it according to comScore hit 6.8m uniques in September. That's up a whopping 50% year on year.

How, in part at least, it has achieve that is through its much talked about Social News with Facebook Connect, which it only implemented in August (Huffington Post and Facebook Go “Social News,” With Connect on Steroids) and allows readers to create a personalised social networking-like news page on the Huffington Post as well as comment and share content easily with Facebook friends.

PaidContent details what Social News with Facebook Connect has meant in terms of those nitty gritty numbers and the numbers are impressive (they're big; always nice): Facebook referral traffic is up 48%; comments jumped to 2.2m from 1.7m in July (15% of HuffPo comments now come from Facebook); and Facebook referrals accounted for 3.5m up 190% percent from June and 500% from January.

Other titbits in the piece are on the international front. HuffPo still has no plans for international expansion outside of serving UK and other European users (the UK accounting for the biggest audiences outside of the US with 305,000 uniques) more appropriate ads, which it is doing via a deal with AdGent007.

"It's not an international strategy, Almost every week some pretty big organization would like to partner with us,” Hippeau said.

Facebook Connect has been described as a game changer by some and the future of journalism by others (take all and digest with a pinch of salt - but not too much).



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Brown boosts his social media reputation

It isn't all bad news for Gordon Brown. Those chumps at News International (my word of the day) might have dumped him, but his keynote speech at Labour Party Conference did much to improve his social media reputation and hit back at some of the negative coverage.

This is more from Yomego and its new social media reputation measurement system that I blogged about earlier this week. It found that across Twitter, facebook and the blogging community Brown boosted his reputation by 17 points. Considering the flak he was taking, akin to a rough night over Germany, that's an achievement. From a starting score of 42.59 out of 100, Brown moved to 59.81, according to Yogemo. 

It audited the Prime Minister’s social media reputation the week before and then again the morning after the speech was carried out and it showed that noise levels were certainly up and that sentiment levels had also improved significantly, indicating that the speech was well received on social networks.

Clearly as Steve Richards, managing director of Yomego says Gordon Brown had a lot of ground to make up with Britain’s 30m online social network users when he stood up to make his speech.

"Before he started, Conservative Party Leader David Cameron rated a score of 62.49, 20 points ahead of the Prime Minister. But both had much to learn from other world leaders, with US President Barack Obama scoring 77.79 and French Premier Nicolas Sarkozy achieving 66.15."

How important any of this will be is really hard to tell. I sometimes worry that social media is a bit of a bubble, but then increasingly we see that bubble burst into the wider world. So while I possess a degree of skepticism about the impact Twitter and blogs et cetera might have on the a general election campaign I also think that six months down the line we might be surprised.

I also agree with a lot of the sentiment appearing on blogs yesterday that the long predicted decision by The Sun to dump Brown will be less significant than some think. Time will tell.

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BBC readies social media make-over

A couple of reports around today on the BBC's social media plans saying that as soon as this weekend it will begin adding applications to support its most popular shows.

Broadband TV News says that the likes of 'Strictly Come Dancing' will get the social media treatment first and that the BBC is working on bringing in third party partners (such as buzz tracker), which cold extend to Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.

It quotes Anthony Rose, BBC’s controller of Vision and Online, speaking at the Social TV Forum in London, who interestingly talks about the status of the BBC in relation to the rest of the web.

"An island in this socially connected world is very tricky, you don't just want to have BBC friends, but also Facebook friends if you have them already, so opening it up is very important."

Sounds like a change in thinking to me. Much needed. The site also says the BBC is looking at some kind of real-time search that will allow visitors to the site to "follow" content on the BBC and from outside, which would then be delivered as a feed.

MediaGuardian has more on this and it says BBC sources have told it that that the new-look social media enabled site will be on stream by March and that the corporation is researching "what the next generation in social media will be".

It also quotes Rose, he talks about innovations such as allowing users to comment on particular moments of shows while watching and see what other users said about the same moment "or simply rate moments with 'Boo!', 'Good!' or 'Gosh!'."  Sounds like 'Strictly Come Dancing' territory to me.

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