Condé Nast Marries Print And iPad Subscriptions In UK

paidcontent reporting:

Condé Nast is finally allowing UK print subscribers to its magazines to access the same magazines inside corresponding iPad apps, by inputting their print subscription number to the apps.

The publisher has also become the latest to report sales hikes thanks to iOS’ new Newsstand feature - GQ +94%, Wired +169% and Vanity Fair +245% in October compared to September’s daily average sales pre-iOS 5.
Condé Nast Britain general manager Albert Read: “We have been working with Apple and Adobe  for some time to construct a simple subscription environment which we believe will form the basis of a growing part of our business in the years ahead.”
Digital director Jamie Jouning: “Ultimately this should lead to greater subscription growth.”
Currently, Wired UK has 19,134 print subscribers, GQ has 20,835 and Vanity Fair has 27,621, according to June’s half-year ABCs.
With the iOS update, Condé Nast is pricing monthly Newsstand subscriptions (rather than those linked to print) at below single-copy prices. In fact, the monthly recurring iOS price for Wired UK (£1.99), for example, is the same as in print over a year (£24).
Vogue will be out as a digital edition in early December.
http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-conde-nast-marries-print-and-ipad-subscriptions-in-uk/

‘I Am Not Incompetent’ - James Murdoch Defends Himself

paidcontent reporting:

James Murdoch’s very ability as an executive was effectively put on trial Thursday, as UK MPs investigating the phone “hacking” scandal queued up to undermine his corporate competence.

While they dealt sometimes untidy, sneery spears in his direction during his second testimony to the culture, media and sport committee, Murdoch sought to reply calmly, specifically and politely, promising follow-up answers to what he could not answer.
But the MPs’ remarks were savage indeed. They opened a frontline talking point - the extent to which C-level businesspeople should devolve managerial oversight or should have detailed awareness of their business.
Murdoch, who said his executives had not given him full information about phone “hacking” early enough, said that he “(relied) on executives responsible to go and do the things they needed to do on the assumption they would be questioned from time to time”.

Tom Watson MP
“Are you familiar with the term ‘Mafia?’,” prominent questioner Watson asked, going on to seek Murdoch’s familiarity with the Mafia’s “omertà” code of silence. It barely prompted a deviation from Murdoch’s line of businesslike responses, to call Watson’s questioning “offensive”.
“Mr Murdoch, you must be the first mafia boss in history that didn’t know he was running a criminal enterprise,” Watson replied. But Watson’s impassioned rhetoric risked spoiling what was otherwise his ongoing line of specific and forensic explorative questioning.
http://paidcontent.co.uk/article/419-i-am-not-incompetent-james-murdoch-defends-himself/ 

Gone in a Flash: How Adobe’s abandonment of Flash for mobile devices impacts news orgs

niemanlabs reporting: Jason Perlow at ZDNet broke a pretty big story overnight: Adobe is abandoning development of the mobile version of Flash Player. As the text of the announcement Perlow obtained has it:

Our future work with Flash on mobile devices will be focused on enabling Flash developers to package native apps with Adobe AIR for all the major app stores. We will no longer adapt Flash Player for mobile devices to new browser, OS version or device configurations. Some of our source code licensees may opt to continue working on and releasing their own implementations. We will continue to support the current Android and PlayBook configurations with critical bug fixes and security updates.

The writing’s been on the wall for some time that mobile would be Flash’s undoing. Flash eats battery life and sucks up a lot of CPU power — both things you might take for granted with a desktop or plugged-in laptop, but both significant concerns for anything pocket-sized. Adobe also took a long time coming out with even buggy, slow, and crashy versions of Flash for mobile, none of which ever reached a particularly high level of polish.
And all that’s before even mentioning Steve Jobs and his efforts to keep Flash out of Apple’s mobile platforms. By building a new product category that doesn’t run Flash, Jobs pushed Flash-using websites to create non-Flash equivalents or walk away from the technology altogether.
Adobe’s announcement doesn’t mean Flash is going away — its player for PCs and Macs will still be developed. But it does mean that any web publisher who was holding out for (a) Flash for mobile to get a whole lot better and (b) Apple to realize the error of its ways can now officially abandon hope. That means adopting alternatives.
(An aside: The Steve Jobs bio makes it clear that Jobs’ affections for Adobe had shrunk long before Flash-on-iPhones became an issue. In 1999, Jobs asked Adobe to build a version of Adobe Premiere for the Mac to allow a good video-editing experience. Adobe turned him down, saying the Mac was too puny a market to worry about. Apple responded by releasing Final Cut Pro and iMovie, which became huge forces in the market. “I put Adobe on the map” — by making the Mac the premier platform for desktop publishing and printing with Adobe tech — “and they screwed me,” Walter Isaacson quotes Jobs as saying.)
What’s the impact for news organizations? For their websites, Flash has had three primary uses: video, interactive graphics, and ads.
http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=8672091774752856243#editor/target=post;postID=5196267591097519218

What does ‘community engagement’ mean?

The Buttry diary reporting: 
When you tell the family you have a new job, the initial response, of course, is to congratulate you. If your new title is director of community engagement and social media, the second response is: What does “community engagement” mean?
I’ve been answering that question some since joining the Journal Register Co. (and answered the same question last year when I went to TBD to lead community engagement efforts).
Journalists aren’t as puzzled by the phrase as relatives, but I get questions from journalists, too. Some are skeptical, as journalists tend to be (and should be) of any buzzword. Some are enthusiastic about the general topic, but unsure what all it entails. Some suspect that community engagement is more about marketing than about journalism. Some fear that community engagement is one more chore stacked upon the already heavy workload of journalists in shrinking newsrooms.
My new Journal Register colleagues have been quite supportive of my new responsibilities. They are asking excellent questions about what we will be doing together to deepen engagement with the communities we serve.
I’m going to address all these questions in a series of blog posts that probably will take several weeks. Today I will provide an overview of community engagement. In coming weeks, I will dig into the various engagement techniques that I will cover only briefly here.
Let’s start with a tweet-length definition: Community engagement = News orgs making a top priority to listen, to join & lead conversation to elevate our journalism.
Update: Jeff Jarvis and Matt Terenzio said on Twitter that they thought I should have used “enable” instead of “lead” in the tweet above. I agree that enabling conversation is an important aspect of engagement (and I’d say it’s included in good leadership). But I’m not sure it’s more important than leadership. The community is pretty well able to converse already and is already doing so. But I’m pro-conversation, so I welcome this crowdsourced editing help:
Community engagement = News orgs make top priority to listen, to join, lead & enable conversation to elevate journalism.
I’ll elaborate on some key words there:
Priority. Community engagement doesn’t work as an afterthought. Engaging is hard work, and won’t get the time and attention it needs if the organization doesn’t stress its importance. More important, the community is smart and people will quickly recognize when engagement is lip service, rather than a priority.
Listen. Engagement is not mere promotion. If your engagement is all about telling the community what’s important and what you’re doing, or about gathering cheap content, it’s not engaging. You need to listen and respond. You need to change direction sometimes because you value the feedback from the community you’re listening to.
Join. You can’t expect to host all the conversation on your website or in your newspaper. People are discussing community news and issues in lots of important physical and digital places in the community. You need to join those discussions and respect the stature of others who are leading conversation.
Lead. News organizations need to be leaders in the community conversation...
http://stevebuttry.wordpress.com/2011/06/03/what-does-community-engagement-mean/

Kobo Acquired By Japanese E-Commerce Firm Rakuten For $315 Million

paidcontent reporting:

E-bookseller and e-reader company Kobo is being acquired by Japanese e-commerce company Rakuten for $315 million. The company says it will continue to expand in the U.S., while growing its international market share through Rakuten. Look for upcoming partnerships with fellow Rakuten-owned company Buy.com, as well as a Japanese-language Kobo e-reader sometime next year.

Kobo, which was founded by Canadian bookseller and retailer Indigo in December 2009, will now be a wholly owned subsidiary of Rakuten and will continue to operate as a standalone company under CEO Michael Serbinis in Toronto. Indigo, Kobo’s primary shareholder, expects to receive $140 to $150 million from the sale—a return of “over 300 percent,” said Indigo CEO Heather Reisman.

SEE ALSO: Japan's E-commerce Giant Rakuten Buying Play.com For £25 Million

Rakuten is Japan’s leading e-commerce site and has acquired a string of other such sites in recent months. The company’s “current acquisitions strategy smacks more of Google (NSDQ: GOOG) than of any Japanese firm,” writes Japense consumer market research company Japan Consuming. Last year, Rakuten bought U.S. site Buy.com for $250 million and French site PriceMinister for €200 million, and launched a Chinese e-commerce site in partnership with Baidu (NSDQ: BIDU). Rakuten bought Brazilian e-commerce site Ikeda this June, and the UK’s Play.com in September.
http://paidcontent.org/article/419-kobo-acquired-by-japanese-e-commerce-firm-rakuten/

NoW hired ex-policeman to track hundreds of people

BBC reporting:

A dossier of evidence obtained by BBC Newsnight from an ex-policeman hired by the News of The World (NoW) shows the newspaper was engaged in covert surveillance on a huge scale.

Over eight years Derek Webb was paid to follow more than 100 targets.
They included Prince William, Prince Harry's ex-girlfriend Chelsy Davy, former attorney general Lord Goldsmith and football manager Jose Mourinho.
The paper's owner News International said it was not able to comment.
Along with celebrities like football pundit Gary Lineker, relatives of stars - such as the parents of Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe - were also targeted.
Mr Webb says he is not ashamed of his actions and that he did nothing illegal.
It comes a day after revelations that the NoW hired Mr Webb to carry out surveillance on two prominent lawyers representing victims of phone hacking. One of the lawyers, Mark Lewis, is to take legal action against News International.
Speaking exclusively to Newsnight's Richard Watson, Mr Webb said that shortly after setting up his own private detective agency in 2003 he was contacted by the NoW and offered work.
He continued to work for the newspaper until it was shut down in July after a string of allegations emerged about the hacking of phones, including that of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler.
"I was working for them extensively on many jobs throughout that time. I never knew when I was going to be required. They phoned me up by the day or by the night... It could be anywhere in the country."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/15644038

BBC Worldwide focuses ecommerce strategy on personalised content and products

newmediaage reporting:

BBC Worldwide is putting personalised on-demand content and products at the heart of its ecommerce strategy ahead of a major platform overhaul.

The commercial arm of the BBC will relaunch its ecommerce platform, which includes bbcshop.com and branded sites Top Gear and Doctor Who, next year as the first phase in a three-pronged strategy aimed at using data to tailor one-to-one online content packages and physical products.
BBC Worldwide senior VP of global digital properties and ecommerce Claude London (pictured below) told new media age the broadcaster is aiming to become “more adept” at using data to understand its consumers better with the view to then delivering personalised online content and product packages.

“We are pursuing the avenue of manufacturing on-demand,” he said. “When you think of the BBC, you think of the heritage of British TV and its 50,000 hours of [archive] programming. But not all of this programming can be released in its traditional format because there is not enough demand. But we will harness technology on-demand so we can meet demand when it materialises.”
One of the ways it will explore this is to provide lists of DVDs, comprised of TV programmes that have never been released before, across its ecommerce sites. It will then encourage consumers to request if they want those compilation DVDs manufactured. “If an individual wants a certain DVD that hasn’t been made yet, we can make it and then ship it to them,” said London.
It is also planning to launch “channel-by-channel merchandising”, according to London. This will comprise tailoring online content packages to cater for the audiences of specific digital channels.
“We already know that our 15m-strong Facebook audience for Top Gear responds to different products to those people who shop on bbcshop.com so we will therefore propose different products for different channels that best fit the tastes of the different audiences,” he said.
http://www.nma.co.uk/3031724.article?cmpid=NMAE01&cmptype=newsletter&email=true