Legal Research

Internet Aspects of a Traditional Business

I point to the Bivings report on newspapers every year. It's an interesting metaphor for how a fairly traditional print-centric industry is adapting to change - like us

Here's the report highlights, and the chart comparing changes from 2006-2008 is below or here.

Some highlights include:

"- Newspapers are experimenting with user generated content. The study found that 58 percent of newspapers allowed for user generated photos, while 18 percent accepted video and 15 percent articles. Overall, 58 percent of newspapers offered some form of user generated content in 2008 compared to 24 percent in 2007.
- Research shows that the number of newspaper websites allowing users to comment on articles has more than doubled in the last year. Seventy five percent of newspapers now accept article comments in some form, compared to 33 percent in 2007.
- Ten percent of newspapers had social networking tools, such as user profiles and the ability to ?friend? other users, built into their sites in 2008. This compares to five percent of sites that included this feature in 2007. It is surprising that this number isn?t higher.
- Seventy six percent of newspapers offered a Most Popular view of content in some form (Most Emailed, Most Blogged, Most Commented, etc.). This compares to 51 percent in 2007 and 33 percent in 2006.
- Integration with external social bookmarking sites like Digg and del.icio.us has increased dramatically the last few years. Ninety-two percent of newspapers now include this option compared to only seven percent in 2006.
- Every newspaper the study examined featured some sort of online advertising. Indeed, 100% of newspapers provided some form of contextual advertising, such as Google Adwords. Forty-three percent of newspaper websites used interstitial advertising.
- Of the new features examined in this year?s study, we found that 57 percent of newspapers offer PDF editions, 20 percent offer chatting options, 96 percent provide local weather information, 40 percent utilize SMS alerts and 70 percent offer community event calendars.
- The number of websites requiring registration to view most content (free or paid) has decreased from 2007. Now only 11 percent of websites require registration to view full articles, compared to 29 percent in 2007 and 23 in 2006.
- All of the 100 newspapers in the study provide some type of RSS feed. In 2007 all but three newspapers offered RSS feeds."

Hmmmm, if we changed the context from newspapers to libraries, what would we think?

User generated content, RSS, no registration walls, social integration...?

Of course, newspapers have to drive revenue from their web actions and not just use (and by all reports they're not moving fast enough in finding new revenue models). Libraries job is easier - just increase use.

Stephen

Full post as published by Stephen's Lighthouse on December 19, 2008 (boomark / email).