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Ed ito r ’s No te:
te We’re wrapping up 2010 by asking some of the smartest people in journalism what the new year will bring.
Here are 10 predictions from Vadim Lavrusik, community manager and social
strategist at Mashable. Mashable, where these predictions first appeared, covers the
heck out of the world of social media and have an honored place in our iPhone app.
In many ways, 2010 was finally the year of mobile for news media, and especially so if you consider the iPad a
mobile device. Many news organizations like The Washington Post and CNN included heavy social media
integrations into their apps, opening the devices beyond news consumption.
In 2011, the focus on mobile will continue to grow with the launch of mobile- and iPad-only news products, but
the greater focus for news media in 2011 will be on re-imagining its approach to the open social web. The focus
will shift from searchable news to social and share-able news, as social media referrals close the gap on search
traffic for more news organizations. In the coming year, news media’s focus will be affected by the personalization
of news consumption and social media’s influence on journalism.
Just like with other media entities, there will be a new competitive market and some will distinguish themselves
and rise above the rest. So how will success be measured? The scale of the leak, the organization’s ability to
distribute it and its ability or inability to partner with media organizations. Perhaps some will distinguish
themselves by creating better distribution platforms through their own sites by focusing on the technology and, of
course, the analysis of the leaks. The entities will still rely on partnerships with established media to distribute
and analyze the information, but it may very well change the relationship whistleblowers have had with media
organizations until now.
But as some established news companies’ traditional sources of revenue continue to decline, while new media
companies grow, 2011 may bring more media mergers and acquisitions. The question isn’t if, but who? I think that
just like this year, most will be surprises.
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seriously. Aside from launching mobile apps across various mobile platforms, perhaps the most notable example
is News Corp’s plan to launch The Daily, an iPad-only news organization that is set to launch early 2011. Each
new edition will cost $0.99 to download, though Apple will take 30%. But that’s not the only hurdle, as the
publication relies on an iPad-owning audience. There will have been 15.7 million tablets sold worldwide in 2010,
and the iPad represents roughly 85% of that. However, that number is expected to more than double in 2011.
Despite a business gamble, this positions news organizations like The Daily for growth, and with little
competition, besides news organizations that repurpose their web content. We’ve also seen the launch of an iPad-
only magazine with Virgin’s Project and of course the soon-to-launch News.me social news iPad application from
Betaworks.
But it’s not just an iPad-only approach, and some would argue that the iPad isn’t actually mobile; it’s leisurely
(yes, Mark Zuckerberg). In 2011, we’ll see more news media startups take a mobile-first approach to launching
their companies. This sets them up to be competitive by distributing on a completely new platform, where users
are more comfortable with making purchases. We’re going to see more news companies that reverse the typical
model of website first and mobile second.
Part of the missing piece is being able to easily get geo-tagged news content and information based on your GPS
location. In 2011, with a continued shift toward mobile news consumption, we’re going to see news organizations
implement location-based news features into their mobile apps. And of course if they do not, a startup will enter
the market to create a solution to this problem or the likes of Foursquare or another company will begin to pull in
geo-tagged content associated with locations as users check in.
Ken Doctor, author of Newsonomics and news industry analyst at Outsell, recently pointed out that social
networks have become the fastest growing source of traffic referrals for many news sites. For many, social sites
like Facebook and Twitter only account for 10% to 15% of their overall referrals, but are number one in growth.
For news startups, the results are even more heavy on social. And of course, the quality of these referrals is often
better than readers who come from search. They generally yield more pageviews and represent a more loyal
reader than the one-off visitors who stumble across the site from Google.
You already see this taking place on sites like CNN.com or NYTimes.com, both of whose technology sections
feature headlines and syndicated content from niche technology publications. In this case, it won’t only be the
reader demand for original content that drives niche publications to produce more original content, but also its
relationship with established organizations that strive to uphold the quality of their content and the credibility of
their brand. Though original content will be rewarded, specialized, niche publications could benefit the most from
the disruption.
In 2011, we’ll not only see social curation as part of storytelling, but we’ll see social and technology companies
getting involved in the content creation and curation business, helping to find the signal in the noise of
information.
We’ve already heard that YouTube is in talks to buy a video production company, but it wouldn’t be a surprise for
the likes of Twitter or Facebook to play a more pivotal role in harnessing its data to present relevant news and
content to its users. What if Facebook had a news landing page of the trending news content that users are
discussing? Or if Twitter filtered its content to bring you the most relevant and curated tweets around news
events?
The Times’ move to restructure its social media strategy, by going from a centralized model to a decentralized
one owned by multiple editors and content producers in the newsroom, shows us that news organizations are
becoming more sophisticated and strategic with their approach to integrating social into the journalism process.
In 2011, we’re going to see more news organizations decentralize their social media strategy from one person to
multiple editors and journalists, which will create an integrated and more streamlined approach. It won’t just be
one editor updating or managing a news organization’s process, but instead news organizations will work toward a
model in which each journalist serves as his or her own community manager.
Americans now spend as much time using the Internet as they do watching television, and the reality is that half
are doing both at the same time. The problem of being able to have a conversation with others about a show
you’re watching has existed for some time, and users have mostly reacted to the problem by hosting informal
conversations via Facebook threads and Twitter hashtags. Companies like Twitter are recognizing the problem and
finding ways to make the television experience interactive.
It’s not only the interaction, but the way we consume content. Internet TV will also create a transition for those
used to consuming video content through TVs and bring them to the web. That doesn’t mean that flat screens are
going away; instead, they will only become interconnected to the web and its many content offerings.
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