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Can a newspaper be a social network?
So USA Today — the same newspaper that helped reshape the traditional paper business about twenty-five years ago — has launched a redesign of its website that incorporates a laundry list of “social networking” features: blogs, comments on stories, tags (keywords), voting on stories and user pages complete with uploads of photos, etc.
My iconoclastic friend Paul Kedrosky notes that much of the high-fiving about these features is “overdone,” and that USA Today has been getting some fairly predictable comments from readers about how they wish the paper would go back to the way it was (Don Dodge has more here). And that is to be expected. Let’s face it, some people just don’t like change. We got many similar comments from readers when we did a redesign at the Globe and Mail website over a year ago, and introduced comments on news stories — the first major newspaper to do so in North America (at least to my knowledge).
Paul’s concerns aside (and Tony Hung notes that Netscape experienced the same thing), I think getting more social with readers is something newspapers have to do, if they want to have a chance of avoiding the inevitable decline that legendary investor and gazillionaire Warren Buffett referred to in his recent remarks. But do readers want to socialize with their newspaper, or with the journalists who work there?
I think some do. Some may just wish to consume the news and be on their way, and that’s fine. Some folks don’t want to be social. But some may want to take advantage of networking tools, and to socialize in some way with the other readers of a newspaper, and I think theoretically a media outlet could become a social destination in some way. Whether USA Today can make that happen remains to be seen.
Further reading:
Stowe Boyd makes some good points about the new USA Today design here, including the fact that user profiles can’t include any external info (flickr streams, etc.) and the user blogs provided by Pluck have no RSS feeds or other features. The tags are also internally generated only.
Scott Karp at Publishing 2.0 says the paper should get kudos for trying. And Read/Write Web has a poll based on the title of my post.
Discussion
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Cheers
t @ dji / bh
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The thing that throws me off about the recommend feature: from using reddit, digg and others, I expect my vote to move the article up in the list. All it does it change the number next to the headline.
I understand the USAT.com editors want to retain control of their pages. But, at least in the article comments, voting for something should move it up. This way I don't have to sort through all the irrelevant or useless comments.
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And Tony, without going into too much detail (or I would have to kill you) adding comments and other social elements has definitely increased traffic, and since that in turn affects our online revenue I think it qualifies as a win-win.
Thanks for the comment, Joe.
And Mary, I think your point is a good one. People who are used to Digg-style voting are used it behaving in a certain way. Papers like USA Today will have to be aware of that if they want to incorporate similar social features.
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" An interesting comment on changes to the newspaper. Of course the Sydney Morning Herald has been doing this for over 18 months so maybe whilst downunder we are often laggard bloggers, some of our better media are leaders in new media approaches."
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Cheers
t
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And Tony, I don't know that anyone has actually published details about traffic or revenue as far as the impact of social features goes. I've come across some comments by editors at the Guardian and the BBC, but they were pretty general.
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http://antipodean.squarespace.com/aptus-strateg...
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Uh, no, taking a newspaper.com social is about building a brand, joining the 21st Century, and taking your mouth away from the megaphone.
USA Today isn't exactly the most hip and relevant stack of dead trees on the planet, so building a better brand online is one of the ways they'll survive.
Yes, there will be people who have to walk into conference rooms with publishers and spit out some traffic data (hint: comments and lists of most-recommended stories increase page views), but the value added to the brand will have a higher ROI if you're into that sort of thing.
Crap, I just said "value added" and "ROI" in the same graf. Been hanging around with the marketing folks too much...
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Say there’s a modest adoption of comments, you have to consider the significant multiple of repeat and new visitors that don't comment but come back to read comments. I reckon that the ratio of 'comentors' to those on the sidelines just reading is at least 1:50 at the minimum.
Not sure if a social network is a practical goal for a newspaper such as USAT but if you evaluate social features on a piecemeal basis, some are total winners for this demographic. Comments being most lucrative.
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I think good local newspapers already act as social networks for their communities. It's just taken them far too long to realize how to translate that to the web.
I wonder if the traffic and engagement increases will be enough to attract advertising that offsets loses incurred in the papers.
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And Karl, I think you are also right and that good local newspapers are already at the hub of a social network or community.
As for the question about whether engagement and traffic can boost advertising levels enough to make up for losses on the paper side, I think that is the billion-dollar question everyone would like an answer to :-)
Thanks to all for their comments.
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I think many readers have no particular interest in socializing with their newspaper, nor its other readers - but would like to socialize with the journalists who work there. My subscription to the Globe continues thanks largely to its columnists.
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