Why the New York Times has set up a newsroom analytics team

The team was set up by Aron Pilhofer, who already runs the interactive news team, social media team and communities team, to introduce editorial-focused analysis of data

Earlier this month a newsroom analytics team was introduced at the New York Times, with the aim of establishing a better understanding of how editorial content is consumed.

The team, which currently consists of James Robinson, who moved across from the news outlet's wider analytics team, and the New York Times's Knight Mozilla fellow Brian Abelson.

It was set up by Aron Pilhofer, who also runs the Times's interactive news team, social media team and communities team.

Speaking to Journalism.co.uk at the International Journalism Festival in Perugia this week, he said that currently "we know next to nothing in the newsroom about how people consume our content, whether we're publishing in the right way, whether all the time and effort we're putting into creating these interactives actually work".

When you're spending so much time, you're putting so many resources into these projects and into these pieces you really shouldn't be publishing blindAron Pilhofer

"The only way you can do that is through analytics, understanding how people are interacting, what they're doing with your content."

He said that the news outlet has been looking into the different ways to understand this for some time.

Although the metered paywall has been in operation for two years now, this data stays on the business-side of the company, which is kept separate from editorial.
http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/why-the-new-york-times-has-set-up-a-newsroom-analytics-team/s2/a552780/?utm_source=Daily%20Buzz%20from%20eMedia%20Vitals&utm_campaign=3302c7d0e1-_nb_DB_04-26-2013&utm_medium=email

One downside of paywalls: Where does your growth come from?

paidContent reporting:
Anyone who has been following the debate around newspaper paywalls probably knows I am not a big fan of them as a strategy, for a number of reasons. While I admit they can bring in additional cash — and that can make a big difference for companies that have seen their revenue decline precipitously over the past few years — I still see them as problematic. Alan Mutter, a former journalist and veteran technology CEO, puts his finger on one big problem: namely, that they are focused more on keeping existing readers rather than finding new ones.
As Mutter (who likes to call himself the “Newsosaur”) puts it in his blog post, paywalls or subscription plans — which have been increasing in popularity to the point where a majority of the large papers in the United States now have them — seem like a great deal on the face of it. You put up a pay barrier, allow some leaks through social media, pick the number of pages that your pay “meter” accepts before triggering the demand for payment, and then sit back and let the extra revenue roll in. But as Mutter notes, it’s not quite that simple:
“All good? Not necessarily. The reason to worry about paywalls is that they severely limit the prospects of developing a wider audience for newspapers at a time publishers need – more than ever – to attract readers among the digitally native generations that represent a growing proportion of the adult population.”
http://paidcontent.org/2013/04/10/one-downside-of-paywalls-where-does-your-growth-come-from/

New revenues hold much greater promise than paywalls

Buttry Diary reporting:
My basic view about paywalls hasn’t changed since I wrote any of the pieces I cite at the end of this post. All those pieces and this one come down to this: The potential revenue paywalls will yield isn’t worth the damage they cause. And they cause twofold damage:

1. They divert energy and investment from development of forward-looking revenue streams with far greater potential.
2. They limit your audience, especially among the young adults on which any business of the future must be based.

My update is simply to share some new information that underscores (again) those points. But I’ll add this point in the international context: I don’t pretend to understand the market dynamics or cultural factors that might influence the success of paywalls in other nations. My views apply strongly to the U.S. market and culture and to a large extent as well to the Canadian market and culture. My experience and expertise beyond those countries is minimal.

New revenue sources have greater potential

The Newspaper Association of America’s revenue profile, released April 8, does not provide dollar figures for digital subscription (paywall) revenue, but says digital-only subscriptions totaled about 1 percent of total circulation revenue, which was $10.4 billion. So digital-only subscriptions totaled about $100 million.
NAA does not give a figure for “bundled” or “all-access” subscriptions, where people pay for print and digital subscriptions together, though it says revenue from bundled subscriptions grew fivefold from 2011. That’s a nearly meaningless number, since lots of places were just launching bundled subscriptions in 2011 and 2012.
Ken Doctor is an optimist about and advocate for paywalls and he projects $300 million in revenue from U.S. paywalls in 2013. That’s gross revenue, so you need to subtract the substantial fees paid to paywall operators such as Press+ and MediaPass, as well as promotion costs.
The NAA report for the first time broke out the newspaper industry’s revenues from “new revenue sources.” The specific categories cited here included two that were growing rapidly: Digital agency and marketing activities, up 91 percent during the year, and e-commerce and transactions (a service I advocated four years ago in my Blueprint for the Complete Community Connection), up 20 percent. The other three “new revenue sources” actually aren’t all that new (I guess they’re newly counted) and all were declining: events, commercial delivery and commercial printing.
http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/new-revenues-hold-much-greater-promise-than-paywalls/

Yes, The Times and Journal Are Sending You More Push Notifications

Ad Age reporting:
The country's two largest digital newspapers have been sending more push notifications to mobile readers lately, and not just because of the recent eruption in urgent national news.

The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal -- No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, in terms of U.S. digital circulation, according to the Alliance for Audited Media -- are putting more emphasis on using mobile alerts to distribute breaking news stories and promote their mobile apps.
News publishers have long considered push notifications, which pop up on phone and tablet screens, too intrusive to use more than sparingly. In recent months, however, The Journal and Times have reconsidered that stance and started using them more often.
"We felt comfortable that our breaking news alerts have been well-received by readers and that we may have been a little too stringent about what alerts we should have been sending," said Jonathan Ellis, deputy editor of digital platforms at The Times, which has revised its guidelines on the subject. "More frequently, we're asking ourselves the question 'Should this be a mobile push alert?'"
The change corresponds to in an increase in mobile readership at both newspapers. The Times more than doubled its number of unique visitors on iOS and Android devices over the last year, to 14.3 million in March from some 6 million in March 2012, according to comScore figures encompassing both app users and visitors on the mobile web. The Journal's mobile uniques increased to 4.6 million from from 2.1 million over the same time period.
http://adage.com/article/media/times-sending-push-notifications/241082/

Times Co. Profit Falls; New Subscription Model Is Set

NYT reporting:

The New York Times Company reported a decline in first-quarter income on Thursday as its executives continued to reposition the company into a global news outlet for a digital age.

The company also announced plans to introduce lower-cost subscription models, part of a broader growth strategy.

The company is remaking itself in the face of the struggles in both print and online advertising. In the first quarter, net income was $3.1 million, or 2 cents a share, down from $42.1 million, or 28 cents a share, in the period a year earlier. Income from continuing operations declined to $3.1 million from $8.7 million a year earlier.

Total revenue from the quarter declined 2 percent, to $465.9 million. Over all, the company’s advertising revenue declined 11.2 percent, to $191.2 million from $215.5 million. Print advertising at the company’s newspapers, which include The New York Times, The Boston Globe and The International Herald Tribune, shrank 13.3 percent. Digital advertising revenue declined 4 percent. Times executives attributed these advertising troubles to declines in spending by movie studios and real estate developers. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/26/business/media/times-company-reports-a-drop-in-income.html?_r=0

Jeff Jarvis reporting:

And now the news: Here’s what we *don’t* know at this hour…

I often tell my students that where they see a problem, they should find the opportunity. Well, we’ve been told over and over this weekend that we had a big problem with misinformation after the Boston Marathon bombing. Breaking news, haven’t you heard, is broken.
So I see an opportunity, a big journalistic opportunity. I also tell my students this:
* Journalism should add value to a flow of information that can now occur without media’s mediation — verifying facts, vetting witnesses, debunking rumors, adding context, adding explanation, and most of all asking and answering the questions that aren’t in the flow, that aren’t being asked, i.e., reporting. Let’s acknowledge reality: There’s no stopping or fixing that flow. What witnesses see will be shared for all to see, which is good, along with rumors, rank speculation, and the work of the New York Fucking Post, which is bad.
* The key skill of journalism today is saying what we *don’t* know, issuing caveats and also inviting the public to tell us what they know. Note I didn’t say I want the public to tell us what they *think* or *guess.* I said *know*.

http://buzzmachine.com/2013/04/22/and-now-the-news-heres-what-we-dont-know-at-this-hour/

The New York Times Paywall Subscription Growth Slows Down

Business Insider reporting:
The New York Times' online subscription business is slowing down. This chart from Quartz tracks growth on a month-over-month basis. As you can see, sequential online subscriber growth is at its lowest point yet.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-nytimes-paywall-2013-4#ixzz2Rec5pc5W

Why digital book publishers are starting to embrace data

paidContent reporting:
With more than 20 percent of Americans over the age of 16 having read an ebook in the past year, and publishers seeing more than 20 percent of revenues come from ebook sales, there’s no question the future of ebooks is bright, and the industry has a lot of potential customers.
But how exactly ebook publishers reach that audience and how the industry tracks who’s interested in reading what is less clear. A series of ebook publishers who spoke at our PaidContent Live conference in New York on Wednesday talked about the critical importance of gathering data on readership and consumption, and using it to transform the industry:
“The old eveolution of the book publishers used to be very allergic to data. And what you just heard is a very different approach from that. For us it’s about metadata and surfacing. And then rinse and repeat,” said Dominique Raccah, the publisher and CEO of Sourcebooks. “Metadata is a new term in our industry, but it really is the key.”
Raccah pointed out that unless publishers know who is reading the content, it’s hard to craft specific marketing messages or know what people respond to:
“It’s really important to know that book publishers know a lot about what touches readers,” she said. “So it’s important to help craft those messages in interesting ways.”
http://paidcontent.org/2013/04/17/why-digital-book-publishers-are-starting-to-embrace-data/?utm_source=General+Users&utm_campaign=7721b6a87b-c%3Amed+d%3A04-19&utm_medium=email

What’s the Fuss About Native Ads?

Monday Note reporting:
Native Advertising is the politically correct term for Advertorial, period. Or rather, it’s an upgrade, the digital version of an old practice dating back to the era of typewriters and lead printing presses. Everyone who’s been in the publishing business long enough has in mind the tug-of-war with the sales department who always wants its ads to to appear next to an editorial content that will provide good “context”. This makes the whole “new” debate about Native Ads quite amusing. The magazine sector (more than newspapers), always referred to “clean” and “tainted” sections. (The latter kept expanding over the years). In consumer and lifestyle sections, editorial content produced by the newsroom is often tailored to fit surrounding ads (or to flatter a brand that will buy legit placements).
The digital era pushes the trend several steps further. Today, legacy media brands such as Forbes, Atlantic Media, or the Washington Post have joined the Native Ads bandwagon. Forbes even became the poster child for that business, thanks to the completely assumed approach carried out by its chief product officer Lewis DVorkin (see his insightful blog and also this panel at the recent Paid Content Live conference.) Advertising is not the only way DVorkin has revamped Forbes...
...
At any given moment, there are about 16 brands running on Forbes’ “Voices”. This revenue stream was a significant contributor to the publisher’s financial performances. According to AdWeek (emphasis mine):

The company achieved its best financial performance in five years in 2012, according to a memo released this morning by Forbes Media CEO Mike Perlis. Digital ad revenue, which increased 19 percent year over year, accounted for half of the company’s total ad revenue for the year, said Perlis. Ten percent of total revenue came from advertisers who incorporated BrandVoice into their buys, and by the end of this year, that share is estimated to rise to 25 percent.

Things seemed pretty positive across other areas of Forbes’ business as well. Newsstand sales and ad pages were up 2 percent and 4 percent, respectively, amid industry-wide drops in both areas. The relatively new tablet app recently broke 200,000 downloads.

A closer look gives a slightly bleaker picture: According to latest data from the Magazine Publishers Association, between Q1 2013 and Q1 2012, Forbes Magazine (the print version only) lost 16% in ads revenues ($50m to $42m). By comparison, Fast Company scored +25%, Fortune +7%, but The Economist -27% and Bloomberg Business Week -30%. The titles compiled by the MPA are stable (+0.5%)...
http://www.mondaynote.com/2013/04/21/whats-the-fuss-about-native-ads/?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Monday+Note+%23273+-++The+Fuss+About+Native+Ads+--+The+App+Store%3A+Good+Deeds%2C+Poor+Communication&utm_campaign=20130421_m115825909_Monday+Note+%23273&utm_term=What_27s+the+Fuss+About+Native+Ads_3F

5 startups changing the way the news business delivers content

paidContent reporting:
It’s fair to say that the future of news consumption and media won’t look like a bunch of traditional newspapers copied onto the desktop web, and when five different entrepreneurs addressed paidContent Live Wednesday about the ways they’re bringing content online, the approaches were as diverse as the startups themselves.
However, a few themes came out of our presentations from Paul Berry, founder and CEO of RebelMouse, Jeff Fluhr, co-founder and CEO of Spreecast, Matt Galligan, co-founder and CEO of Circa, Aria Haghighi, co-Founder and CTO of Prismatic, and Josh Miller, co-founder of Branch. Here were the ones we found most compelling:

• The future of news will come from other people. This isn’t to say that the majority of the world will eventually get all of their news from Twitter and Facebook, but it is fair to say that we’ll increasingly rely on recommendations and smarter social cues from friends and respected strangers as we sort through the vast amount of information available online. This could mean something like Prismatic, which as my colleague Mathew Ingram has written, is working to combine data from social media with individual interests to create a smarter social reader for news.
• We’ll be reading all the news that fits — on mobile. 
• It’s all about the individual person and the brand they build.
• People want to talk about the news but they’re looking for smart conversations.
• Traditional advertising can’t support the future, but no one’s clear what the alternative looks like.
• http://paidcontent.org/2013/04/17/5-startups-changing-the-way-the-news-business-delivers-content/?utm_source=General+Users&utm_campaign=7721b6a87b-c%3Amed+d%3A04-19&utm_medium=email 

The Teen Transition: Adolescents of Today, Adults of Tomorrow

Nielsen reporting:
Device Ownership Determines Viewing

Within teen households, smartphones and tablets are growing faster than any other device. From Q4 2011 to Q4 2012, smartphone penetration increased by 45 percent among teens, 32 percent among adults 18-24 and 22 percent among adults 25-34.

Laptop penetration increases as teens age into young adulthood, but begins to decline when young adults enter their late 20s. Laptop penetration is highest among young adults, but all three age groups (12-17, 18-24, 25-34) have increased their laptop ownership over the past year.
...While everyone under 34 is spending less time in front of the TV, viewing preferences aren’t consistent across the 12-17, 18-24 and 25-34 year old groups. For example, teens like to watch on mobile more than anyone else. In fact, they watched 18 percent more video on their mobile phones than persons 18-24 and 46 percent more than persons 25-34, in Q4 2012. While teens are watching more content on mobile devices, they watch less video online than young adults. In fact, persons 18-24 spent almost 3 times more time watching video on the Internet than teens 12-17 in Q4 2012.
While everyone under 34 is spending less time in front of the TV, viewing preferences aren’t consistent across the 12-17, 18-24 and 25-34 year old groups. For example, teens like to watch on mobile more than anyone else. In fact, they watched 18 percent more video on their mobile phones than persons 18-24 and 46 percent more than persons 25-34, in Q4 2012. While teens are watching more content on mobile devices, they watch less video online than young adults. In fact, persons 18-24 spent almost 3 times more time watching video on the Internet than teens 12-17 in Q4 2012.

The Guardian’s new GuardianWitness app opens up reporting to the masses

TNW reporting:
Guardian News & Media, the Guardian Media Group division responsible for publishing Guardian.co.uk and Guardiannews.com in the US, has announced a new platform enabling the public to submit content directly to Guardian journalists.
GuardianWitness has been launched in partnership with UK mobile operator EE, and lets users share videos, pictures and text directly with the Guardian’s editorial team, as well as peruse contributions from other GuardianWitness users.
Though it’s launched in partnership with EE, it seems this is purely a branding/sponsorship exercise, as it’s available to anyone on any mobile network.

How it works

You can access the app via the Web, but there’s also native incarnations for Android and iOS. To contribute content to GuardianWitness, you need to create an account, either using your existing Guardian credentials, or through your Facebook and Twitter details.
The Guardian actually posts ‘assignments’, inviting users to post content based on themes – for example, when Britain experiences unseasonably bad weather. Editors set a range of assignments each week, covering news, sport, culture and life and style.
http://thenextweb.com/media/2013/04/16/the-guardians-new-guardianwitness-platform-opens-up-reporting-to-the-masses/

Getting personal: A Dutch online news platform wants you to subscribe to individual journalists

Nieman Jorunalism Lab reporting:
“It’s my own little shop, that’s what I like about it. You decide what goes in — like having your own newspaper.”
Arnold Karskens has his own channel on Dutch news startup De Nieuwe Pers (The New Press). For €1.79 a month, readers can subscribe to him and read his war reporting and investigations into war criminals. Don’t care about war crimes? Maybe some of the other journalist-driven channels — on subjects from games to France, from the science of sex to environmental sustainability, from Germany to the euro crisis — would be of interest.
De Nieuwe Pers recently launched in the Netherlands as an online platform for freelance journalists. Users pay €4.49 a month for access to all content on its app or website. But what stands out is the possibility to subscribe to individual reporters, for €1.79 a month. Think True/Slant, but with paywalls...
http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/04/getting-personal-a-dutch-online-news-platform-wants-you-to-subscribe-to-individual-journalists/

2 critical (and often missing) elements of a paywall strategy

emedia/vitals reporting:
Much of the talk of digital meters and other paid content models focuses on logistics: what’s the right price, how many free views does a visitor get, how to handle social referrals, etc. But publishers tend to overlook two key elements that extend beyond the paywall itself: promoting it and supporting it.
Marketing and customer service are critical to building and growing a paid content business. That sounds obvious, but for the most part publishers haven’t been very good at either since the dawn of the digital age. Adding meters or other subscription models to the digital experience increases the urgency to get better at both.

Marketing

Publishers need to adopt some of the practices that consumer marketers use to attract and retain paying customers. It’s safe to say that an acquisition strategy based on nagging won’t work over the long term...

Customer service

While marketing draws in new customers, superior customer service keeps them on board. That’s why publishers deploying or experimenting with paid content platforms should also be investing in the back-office systems required to support their paying subscribers.
Publishers’ customer-facing subscription management platforms have traditionally been woeful, dating back to print. Adding digital subscriptions to the mix has only increased the complexity, making it difficult for customers to link print and digital accounts or make other seemingly simple modifications. Even bigger brands like the Wall Street Journal still struggle to deliver a consistently positive experience. Want to cancel your WSJ subscription online? Trick question: You can’t. (For security reasons, they say. Ha.)
http://www.emediavitals.com/content/2-critical-and-often-missing-elements-paywall-strategy?utm_source=Vital+Guide+to+eMedia&utm_campaign=9e272f645a-eMV_VG_04_04_2013&utm_medium=email

Performance Pay Arrives for Journalism

Digiday reporting:

The economics of the digital world have created a cultural shift where some publishers are figuring out ways to compensate editorial staff based on business metrics like pageviews, visitors or even sales.

This is tricky territory, since editorial staffers have tended to see themselves as walled off from the grubby concerns of making money. But the reality of media today is the pressure to make money.  Old and new media publications, from Forbes to Complex and Gawker, deploy some type of incentive-based compensation for their editorial staff based on metrics. The upside is a business that’s all going in the same direction; the downside is a further eroding of the wall between editorial and advertising.

Gawker was an early booster of this approach, and even today it proudly touts its “big board” that keeps track of pageviews for each writer. Forbes has monthly incentive programs for full-time staffers based on a range of metrics, including how many new followers a reporter gained on Twitter that month. It has an even more ambitious program for its “contributor network,” which it calls an experiment in “entrepreneurial journalism.” And most aggressive of all is Complex, which has gone whole-hog with incentives, such as the one in which editors get paid based on certain business goals, like the profitability of their division, among other business metrics...

http://www.digiday.com/publishers/performance-pay-arrives-for-journalism/ 

The newsonomics of the Orange County Register’s contrarian paywall

Nieman Journalism Lab reporting:
By Ken Doctor: ....Hundreds of newspapers have announced paywalls, as the Register is doing and a smaller subset is embracing “membership” as a way of redefining subscription. The Register, though, is making membership more meaningful with a just-completed deal with the many-named Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Starting tomorrow, “Register Connect” members — that is, seven-day subscribers — get a perk unlike any other in the newspaper world: free tickets to Angels games. That may be an actual game-changer — giving new meaning to the idea of “all-access.”
The new offer is just part of the Register’s aggressive, contrarian approach to paywalls, which is a central piece of its readers-first, invest-in-content staffing strategy (“The newsonomics of Aaron Kushner’s virtuous circles”). It’s a strategy that reaches beyond the groupthink that has long characterized much of the industry. Let’s look at its approach, including the ticket giveaway — its pros and the cons, its potential brilliance and what could dull the strategy. Let’s look at the newsonomics of the Register’s new paywall, one run by younger, sure-of-themselves non-newspaper people. Let’s also consider how much the Register’s new approach reminds us how first-generation, how 1.0 the current pay systems in fact are. Over 2013, we’ll see twists, turns, and nuances, as even paywall stalwarts like the Columbus Dispatch and Dallas Morning News tell us about previously unannounced changes in their own paywalls.
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8672091774752856243#editor/target=post;postID=9039311787674978499

Douglas Rushkoff is right — traditional media are caught between the stream and the reservoir

paid content reporting:
Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff has a new book out entitled “Present Shock,” which is about modern society’s obsession with what is happening now, and how that obsession is exacerbated by tools and technology such as social media. In a recent interview with the Nieman Journalism Lab, he talked about what that means for media outlets such as the New York Times, and how some of these entities are stuck between catering to what he calls “the flow” of the real-time news stream and their traditional status as gatekeepers or storehouses of knowledge....
...
In his book, Rushkoff talks about the difference between “flowing information” — such as Twitter or Facebook or other stream-based sources — and “stored information,” of the kind that newspapers and books specialize in, where it is fixed in time and remains more or less unchanged. In a nutshell, the author says that newspapers are caught between trying to serve these two very different needs. And it’s not just those companies themselves, but news consumers as well:

“You just can’t use the newspaper to keep up in society any longer. And you can’t use live blogging to make sense of anything.”

Rushkoff isn’t the only one to notice this: for me, the tension between those two modes of information delivery — the real-time stream and the fixed-in-time reservoir — was best described by Robin Sloan, author and former Twitter staffer, in an essay about what he called “stock” and “flow.” Those terms come from the world of economics, where people are used to talking about stored value (such as cash and other monetary instruments, or physical resources) and the real-time fluctuation in the value of those things: i.e., the trading of currency or the sale of goods...http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/04/douglas-rushkoff-wants-you-to-quit-tweetdeck-and-read-a-book/

Flipping pages blog reporting:
...Print revenues still matter
Just for fun, I ran a poll in the Magazine group on LinkedIn. It’s totally unscientific and represents a very small sample of the group’s 40,000 members, but when I asked “How much of your company’s revenues still come from print publications?” 50 percent of the respondents said that more than 90 percent of their company’s revenues still came from print. A big majority of respondents said the largest share of their revenues were still from print.
I make no claims for those numbers other than they confirm my instinct that a lot of publishers still rely on print for a lot of their revenues. Does that mean that the magazine industry isn’t really shifting to digital. No, the shift is real. But we’re at a point in the transition when most publishers still make significant money from print and don’t make enough money from digital to ignore that fact.
My advice to any publisher trying to reverse this situation, and that’ a very smart objective, is to start where they’re at. Stop, take a breath and be very honest about what you’re doing today. If your boss or your board needs to talk up your digital numbers to impress shareholders or potential investors, let them. But you need to be honest about where you are starting from. If you have 25% digital revenues, fine, you know what you have to do.

The magazine business perches on three legs: Content, Audience and Revenue. If your print business is profitable, you’re either an incredible salesman, insanely lucky or you have these three elements in some sort of balance.
You need to achieve the same balance in digital. Too many digital projects are massively reactionary, almost panicked. “OMG! Everyone’s talking social, we need to do social!” or “Mobile is everywhere. We have no mobile. We need mobile”.
Yes, social and mobile are hugely important to magazines, but you have to do them right and right means taking a hard look at your own circumstances. What content do you generate?

• What digital platforms will your content work on?
• Is your digital audience there?
• Do you have the resources go there?
• If you go there, can you make any money?

Break down internal agendas...

http://flippingpagesblog.com/how-to-build-a-crossmedia-content-strategy-1/

Facebook 'Home' Will Be Great for Ad Data, but Bad for Brand and Media Apps

adweek reporting:

Weaker app presence for brands, and stronger data for Facebook. Those are two key reactions to Facebook's home screen replacer "Facebook Home," which was ceremoniously unveiled today with launch partners HTC and AT&T at a press conference at the digital giant's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.

The new downloadable system lets Android users customize their home screens with multiple Flipbook-like capabilities—dubbed "cover feeds" by Facebook. It also allows people to more easily digitally chat with friends while performing other tasks on a phone such as reading online articles. The avatar-looking features are called "chat heads," which accompany notifications on the home screen when someone is pinging you to chat.

The HTC First will be the first phone to come preloaded with Facebook Home. The device will be available through AT&T for $100 starting on April 12, while other Android-employing carriers like Samsung and Lenovo are expected to eventually release phones with Facebook Home. The new super app treatment will be available for tablets in several months, per the company. 

Facebook's apps such as Instagram, Camera and Messenger will be baked into the Android phones. Third-party apps from the likes of the Associated Press, Seamless, Twitter, Google Maps, etc., will be accessible—but now tucked away and requiring a couple of swipes to access. It creates less clutter for the phone owner, but less presence for those competitive third-party apps.

What Facebook Home means to advertising on mobile app networks remains to be seen.
http://www.adweek.com/news/technology/facebook-home-will-be-great-ad-data-bad-brand-and-media-apps-148394?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=04-05-2013&utm_campaign=technology_today

Digital TV, Movie Streaming Reaches a Tipping Point

eMarketer reporting:
US digital TV and movie content audiences will grow faster than previously expected due to increased viewing on tablets and smartphones, a wave of internet-enabled TVs, and greater content availability, according to a new eMarketer report, “Digital TV and Movie Streaming: A Rising Tide of Devices, Content and Viewing.”
The number of US digital TV viewers will reach 145.3 million in 2017, up from 106.2 million in 2012, according to eMarketer. The February 2013 figures represent increases ranging from 5.3% to 9.3% more than the corresponding figures in its August 2012 forecast. Digital TV viewers will cross a critical tipping point in 2014, surpassing 50% of the US internet user population.

Belkin and Harris Interactive surveyed US internet users on their willingness to replace cable TV with digital media subscriptions and found that 12% strongly agreed with the statement: “I would consider replacing my cable/satellite subscription with a streaming media subscription (e.g., Netflix, Hulu Plus) in 2013.” Another 18% said they somewhat agreed, indicating that a total of 30% of respondents were inclined to at least consider cord-cutting.

Read more at http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Digital-TV-Movie-Streaming-Reaches-Tipping-Point/1009775#OHtIPWP6IxqslGWe.99

Six Reasons Why It's a Great Time to Be in Magazine Media

MPA reporting: New York, NY (March 28, 2013) — In her opening remarks this morning at Swipe 2.0 (swipe.magazine.org), the premier digital conference produced by MPA - The Association of Magazine Media, Mary Berner, President and CEO, MPA, declared six reasons why there has never been a better time to work in magazine-branded media...
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According to AAM, just 3 years ago, only 51% of publishers were distributing their content on mobile devices. That number is now 90% with the remaining 10% scheduled to develop mobile optimized content before the year is out.  It is no longer accurate or appropriate to talk about ourselves exclusively as "magazines" which to most people connotes just print—because it doesn’t begin to measure our reach. Instead, we and others—the press, the advertising community, and Wall Street, for starters—need to think about, calculate and interpret the entire business and footprint of Magazine Media because our readers’ desire for magazine branded content transcends any one platform.
OK. So you may be thinking…so what? All media distribute content across a bunch of platforms. What makes Magazine Media so special? Why do I believe that Magazine Media will not only survive, but flourish in this wild west of a media landscape, when so many others think our best days are behind us?
Let me give you six reason--reasons informed by a huge range of third-party consumer behavior insights and proprietary research from our member companies, analysts and allied associations--six reasons why it is the best time to be in the business of Magazine Media.
1. Powerful Brand Relationships
2. Growing Consumer Demand
3. Advertising "Wantedness"
4. Print Appeal
5. Digital Opportunity
6. Content Is (Still) King
http://www.magazine.org/industry-news/press-releases/mpa-press-releases/six-reasons-why-its-great-time-be-magazine-media