“While the USA TODAY Ad Meter has historically been the authority on what brands had the best, most popular commercials, this year, USA TODAY partnered with Facebook to let the more than 800 million global Facebook users share commentary online and view their favorites even after the Super Bowl Champs leave the field,” a representative tells WebProNews.

“Designed to marry the industry authority of USA Today’s Ad Meter with the social engagement of Facebook, the collaboration will open up how people discuss and rate iconic Super Bowl ads by putting consumers at the center of this long-standing annual event,” she adds. “We’ll be interested to see who reigns supreme this year based on the social vote!”

It’s still early as of the time of this writing (kickoff isn’t until tomorrow evening), but may of the ads have already been going around online. Have any stuck out to you so far as being particularly good or bad? Let us know in the comments. Then after kickoff, let Facebook know.

While this is certainly good news for Facebook, it doesn’t necessarily mean bad things for Google. These two are increasingly becoming bigger competitors, but Google, at least the search engine part, doesn’t always aim to keep users on its site. Sure, it does to some extent with things like Google Places and hosted AP articles, but the release of Google Instant this week clearly shows that Google wants to get users what they’re searching for faster. 

That’s not to say that Google doesn’t want users sticking around. I think we’ll see more direct answers coming from Google itself in its search results. Google Squared is a big part of this. 

Speaking of Google Instant, Danny Sullivan has an interesting article about the company disguising relevancy issues with the feature. Also, I have another article up about Google Instant’s effect on web history, and how it might work from the browser search box and Chrome address bar. 

Janko Roettgers at NewTeeVee points out that early demos of Google TV appear to display a Google Instant-like functionality. We should see it soon enough, as Google TV devices should be shipping this month. 

USA Today has an interesting interview with a Bing exec who talks about how a feature similar to Google Instant was built for Bing last year. 

ProgammableWeb reports that USA Today is opening up its data to developers via an API. According to Romin Irani, the newspaper hopes to raise internal awareness about its databases first, with public access and a developer contest to follow. 

Ask announced that Bloglines will be shut down October 1. " Not an easy decision, especially considering our loyal and supportive (not to mention patient) user base, but, ultimately, the right one given business reasons simply too hard to ignore," the company says.

Caitlin Fitzsimmons reports that Facebook has filed for a patent on social CAPTCHAs. The title is "USING SOCIAL INFORMATION FOR AUTHENTICATING A USER SESSION". The abstact says, "A social CAPTCHA is presented to authenticate a member of the social network. The social CAPTCHA includes one or more challenge questions based on information available in the social network, such as the user’s activities and/or connections in the social network. The social information selected for the social CAPTCHA may be determined based on affinity scores associated with the member’s connections, so that the challenge question relates to information that the user is more likely to be familiar with. A degree of difficulty of challenge questions may be determined and used for selecting the CAPTCHA based on a degree of suspicion."

We knew Windows Phone 7 would be here this year, but there is now a launch date, according to Pocket-lint, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter. That date would be October 11. 

Reuters is reporting that a judge has reinstated eBay’s 28.4% stake in Craigslist, but Craigslist still gets to keep eBay off its board. 

An interesting piece from Jonny Evans at ComputerWorld discusses how big Apple’s AirPlay is going to be for the company. This is one of Apple’s recent announcements that may have been overshadowed by some of the others, but has pretty big implications. 

Jenna Wortham at the New York Times’ Bits blog talks about a new social news service from Betaworks and the NYT. It will be called News.me and will be personalized. 

TechRadar reports that Google says Android isn’t optimized for tablets, but the Gingerbread and Honeycomb versions (the next two) likely will be. 

Michael Arrington says some ex-MySpace execs are working on a new startup called Namesake, which is in private beta. The exact nature of it is still unknown.

Would you like to see more online news publications offering content like what Demand Media offers? Share your thoughts.

It’s Not News Content

Now, Demand is not contributing actual news content to USA Today, and this is an important fact to note. Demand Media CEO Richard Rosenblatt has made it clear in the past that Demand’s content is not journalism. "Only the journalists call us journalists," he said on a SXSW panel I attended last month.

However, that does not mean that a news organization can’ find room for the kind of content that Demand offers. USA Today clearly sees some value there, without jeopardizing its actual news content. Demand is contributing content for a new section on USA Today’s site called Travel Tips, and Demand tells us this creates additional revenue opportunities for both parties.

"Travel Tips serves as a resource for travelers to provide functional tips and guidance on realistic situations," Demand Media Chief Marketing Officer Dave Panos tells WebProNews. "Readers who want practical advice, such as how to find low airfare and hotel rates, tips for traveling with kids on a business trip, etc.  The Travel Tips section is initially launching with more than 4,000 unique articles from Demand Media and a new video series featuring Rolf Potts, the well-known travel expert, to attract audiences who will be engaged around the relevant and useful travel-related content that they seek."

"To enable this kind of partnership, Demand Media has built a fully scalable platform to commission, create and deliver high value content our partners’ websites," he adds. "It leverages the sum of Demand Media’s capabilities to predict valuable content topics, commission and manage the production of unique articles and videos, syndicate the content through the publisher’s website, and optimize the traffic and financial performance.

Demand Media Content to Penetrate More Mainstream News Publications?

Part of Demand Media’s strategy moving forward is to look for partnerships with major media outlets. "This is the type of situation where everyone – the consumers, creators, media outlets, and us – all win," says Panos. "There is an interesting opportunity to incrementally grow the audience and increase revenue at mainstream media companies – in a way that doesn’t compete with what they currently do."

"Best of all, we can do it in a way that doesn’t require any investment from the media company – and that’s a welcome prospect in this economic environment," he concludes. "And on our end – we benefit from the expanded distribution and reach that these partnerships provide."

It will be quite interesting to see if more major media organizations take advantage of what Demand Media content has to offer. It may allow them to capitalize on more search engine traffic, while not having to compromise their own journalistic resources. Demand and USA Today split ad revenue from the content, and USA Today doesn’t have to pay for the content itself.

Is offering content such as Demand Media’s a good way for news companies to bring in some extra revenue? Tell us what you think.

The new site offers improved navigation and a cleaner feel with the aim of making it easier for users to find content. The new homepage loads 25 to 35 percent faster allowing users to get to news content quickly. Initially the redesign is launching just on the homepage and more changes will be visible over the rest of the site in the coming weeks.

The top part of the homepage displays main stories and unique content and includes a listing of the sites most popular stories.  Below that , there is a row of multimedia content featuring graphics, videos, and photo galleries. Further down, content is grouped by print and online-only sections to include: News, Money, Life, Sports, Better Life, Weather, Tech, Travel and Opinion.

"Over the last few years we at USATODAY.com have been listening to feedback, watching users engage with our site and analyzing usage patterns," said Jeff Webber, publisher of USA TODAY.com.

"We believe these improvements to USATODAY.com improve our home page, better serving our readers and offering new opportunities for our partners."
 

Related Articles:

>Newspapers Not Effectively Using Social Media

>Google News SEO Tips-Ranking In News Search

>Newsday To Charge For Online Access

The e-edition will launch Monday August 3 and will be a replica of the print version of USA Today but will feature additional interactive content.

The e-edition will also include a Saturday-Sunday version called USA Today Extra, the first ever-regular weekend product from USA Today.

"USA TODAY is perfectly modeled to suit all the new and emerging technologies we are seeing in the marketplace," said Dave Hunke, president and publisher, USA Today.

Dave Hunke

"We’re very pleased to be able to bring the e-Edition to our readers and we will continue to look for new platforms to grow on."

Subscribers will receive an email notification each morning alerting them to their e-edition delivery. The e-edition may be read online or downloaded to be read later. The digital subscription will be provided as a companion to home and business subscribers of the print edition.

The e-edition is also available as a digital subscription only. A one-year digital subscription is available for $99 and an eight-week trial subscription is available for $9.95.

Features of the e-Edition include:

Daily "Editor’s Picks" – Highlighting the best of the day’s content across USA TODAY’s sections.

Table of Contents – A section by section table of contents, providing direct access to articles inside the newspaper.

Videos – Online videos embedded directly into the accompanying newspaper content.

Puzzles and Games – USA Today’s interactive puzzles and games including
Crossword, Don’t Quote Me, Sudoku, Mini Sudoku, Word Round Up and Up & Down Words.

Snapshots(R) – USA Today’s popular infographic, with an interactive bonus allowing readers to actively participate in quick polling results.

Featured Pages and Thumbnails – Quick scan option to review USA TODAY featured pages like weather, markets and TV listings. A thumbnail section for each page in the newspaper.

Search – The ability to text search content and advertisement in the day’s issue and through back issues

Back Issues – Easy access to all digital back issues, available from product launch.

Text to Speech – One-button text to speech capability, allowing subscribers to have the news provided in an audio format.

Multifunction display – Read content in the newspaper format, or simply as text. Other options allows subscribers to zoom, fit-to-page, print and email.

Connect to Internet – All links throughout content and advertisements will be clickable, allowing readers to access Web sites outside the digital reader environment.

This was made quite clear to me by USA Today Communications Manager Alexandra Nicholson when I wrote a piece on the publication’s parent company Gannett’s apparent restriction of its employees’ use of social media.

"We at USA TODAY have been working extensively on our social networking efforts," she told me. "USA TODAY was the first national newspaper to offer reader comments, and we continue to expand our community tools by allowing readers to communicate with each other directly, add ‘friends’ through USATODAY.com and through social networking tools like Facebook Connect. Additionally USA TODAY has recently launched a series of moderated communities targeted specifically to our readers, this includes a recent MMA community launch."

Alexandra says that USA Today sees social networking as "a growing effort" on their part and one that they’re "taking on enthusiastically." In fact, Alexandra even found my article while doing routine "Twitter surveillance."

Now, as you’re probably well aware, the newspaper industry is struggling. USAToday however has released two interesting pieces of news about itself within the past week or so.

First, they reported that USAToday.com had over 11.9 million unique visitors in the month of April, representing a 12% year-over-year increase. Overall page views had increased 75% year-over-year, with individual page views per person going up 55% in the same period.

But that’s just USAToday online. However, a release from the publisher today claims that USA Today remains the most widely read newspaper int he US. It reaches over 3.7 million print readers daily, which is an increase of 3.4% since Spring 2008.

"USA TODAY is proud to remain the most widely read print newspaper in the country," said David Hunke, president and publisher of USA TODAY. "The most recent numbers from MRI show that more people are choosing to read USA TODAY than any other newspaper in the country, with 414,000 more print readers per day than our nearest competitor The Wall Street Journal, and 817,000 more print readers than The New York Times."

The Wall Street Journal just recently issued some social media restrictions to employees by the way. Although, to be fair, WSJ is a much more niche publication. And it’s not like they don’t engage in social media at all.

Is social media the lone reason for USA Today’s success? I will not go so far as to say that, but looking at the publisher’s web numbers alone, and the boom in social media in general over the past year, I wouldn’t exactly call it a non-factor.

"I can’t speak for the posting on Gannett Blog, but I can say that we at USA TODAY have been working extensively on our social networking efforts," says USA Today Communications Manager Alexandra Nicholson. "USA TODAY was the first national newspaper to offer reader comments, and we continue to expand our community tools by allowing readers to communicate with each other directly, add ‘friends’ through USATODAY.com and through social networking tools like Facebook Connect. Additionally USA TODAY has recently launched a series of moderated communities targeted specifically to our readers, this includes a recent MMA community launch.

Alexandra says that USA Today sees social networking as "a growing effort" on their part and one that they’re "taking on enthusiastically."

Incidentally, Alexandra found our article while doing routine "Twitter surveillance."

Original Article: The controversy never ends when it comes to newspapers and online news. It’s amazing how many debates there really are within this industry.

You’ve got the bloggers vs journalists debate, the fair use debate, and the should social media be used as a source debate to name a few. That last one is apparently even an internal debate within some news organizations.

Valleywag is pointing to a post from a blog (unofficial) about Gannett, publisher of USA Today. The post shares a memo from an editor with the company that is restricting access by employees to social networks. This example is not really about the legitimacy of social networks as credible sources. It’s more about social media in the workplace. The memo says:

It has come to my attention that some staff members are spending a lot of time on Facebook, Twitter and other social networking sites during work hours. Also, some staff members apparently are spending work time on Fantasy baseball research and other personal recreation activities.

This is not appropriate. It is not part of the job. Occasionally it will be necessary for staff members to visit these sites for work purposes, but please reserve social networking and recreational pursuits for your private time.

Is the editor wrong? Probably not entirely. Unless employees are using fantasy baseball research for actual stories, there is probably some misuse going on. But is restricting access to social networks the way to go?

News breaks on Twitter all the time. How would a writer get to it without spending some time on Twitter (or using some kind of Twitter app)? Then there is the fact that social networks are a way to contact potential leads and sources. They’re often easier to get through to people than by phone or email.

"As one reporter put it, ‘Facebook is a modern day Rolodex,’" says VW’s Ryan Tate. "Exactly, and if those infernal tele-phones had never been given out like candy to individual reporters, maybe newspapers would be in better shape today!"

USA Today does have a Twitter account, but seems to be primarily following other USAToday/Gannett accounts. twitter.com/gannett on the other hand has not been updated once, but is being held on to by some guy named Mike Pratt who loves the outdoors:

So where do you stand on this debate? Do social networks have a place in the newsroom, or do the negatives outweigh the positives? How about in other workplace environments? Tell us what you think.

My defense and love of print media is well-documented. But the following scenario seems the exact opposite of smart.

As media online and off create green properties, print media continues to fall on hard times. This has forced more than one newspaper to raise prices. What’s one way USA Today and WSJ hope to differentiate themselves?

Glossy paper.

…glossy magazine pages may indeed be more attractive to consumer-focused ad buyers. The Wall Street Journal and USA Today are now developing glossy magazines for distribution within their traditional newsprint flagships, according to company executives and media buyers familiar with the work, Advertising Age reports. …beauty, fashion and other lifestyle advertisers are happier to spend money if their ads appear on thick, glossy pages.

Each magazine will try to find overlooked editorial space to occupy, but the reality is that living — however luxurious or active — is pretty well-represented already in magazines. The real play here is creating a lush reader experience that can’t be matched with newsprint, not to mention media outside print.

More paper? Glossy paper stock may make advertisers happy — initially. But will it reverse the hemorrhage of readers moving to an online only news diet? That better be some pretty amazing paper.

You will not win applying old rules to a new game.

Comments

Tag:

The whole look and feel of the site changed dramatically, and a number of USA Today visitors found the update jarring enough to respond negatively to USA Today editor Ken Paulson’s discussion of the new networking features. Don’t say social networking or citizen journalism, though; in USA Today’s world, it’s the age of network journalism.

Many people have responded well to the relaunch. USA Today said they have increased visitor rates by 21 percent, and many have registered for the site’s advanced features. To date, over 40,000 user comments have been tapped out on their stories.

I asked executive producer Joel Sucherman of USAToday.com about the commenting taking place. As one might expect, he cited some hot-button issues as ones gathering lots of interest, like the fall of radio legend Don Imus over his commentary on Rutgers women’s basketball. Iraq and Hilary Clinton’s Presidential aspirations, both major national news topics, likewise attract plenty of interest.

It’s been the smaller stories that have pulled in the most compelling comments. Sucherman said reports on weight loss, adoption, and health, stories that by themselves aren’t on the same scale as the headliners, generate the most interesting feedback.

He cited the scandal at Walter Reed Hospital as one that drew a number of personal stories, including one from a doctor who formerly practiced at the facility. USA Today reporters have followed up with some of those commenters to further develop their observations into articles.

Our ambition is to help readers quickly and easily make sense of the world around them by giving them a wider view of the news of the day and connecting them with other readers who can contribute to their understanding of events.

Part of those changes arrive as features familiar to those who already use social networking sites. USA Today will allow its online readers to create avatars and have personal profiles, where they can upload photos, write a blog, and send messages to other users.

Their community features have attracted plenty of commentary. Mathew Ingram wrote that “getting more social with readers is something newspapers have to do.”

Such change may not be universally greeted with open arms. While Michael Arrington enthused about the new features (“These show an intelligent commitment to building community at the site.”), Tony Hung wondered if USA Today is running a little ahead of the curve:

Social features and encouragement of the audience WITH the news is all well and good. But, to what audience is this really playing to? Sure, the socialization of information is the future of news. And blogs like this one like to write about it like its the here and now, and if you

]]> http://www.webpronews.com/usa-today-goes-to-the-social-2007-03/feed 0