Posts FromSeptember, 2009

29
Sep 09

Outside.in Partner Roster Keeps Growing with the Addition of Dow Jones Local

Posted by camilla in Announcements / Events / General / News / Outside.in for Publishers — View Comments

seacoast online logo

Dow Jones Local Media Group, which operates community newspapers in California, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New York, Oregon and Pennsylvania, has recently partnered with Outside.in to power “Your Town” news sections on their sites.

The first site we are live with is SeacoastOnline.com, where you can find an Outside.in powered map of the Portsmouth, NH metro area on their homepage.

seacoast online homepage map

Outside.in for Publishers was also used to create Neighborhood News Pages for some of their key “Your Town” neighborhoods. Check out the Hampton or Portsmouth town pages where they have aggregated some great local content.

This partnership is a great example of how we collaborate with local media partners in smaller markets to expand our coverage and help publishers reach a hyperlocal audience.

25
Sep 09

Two new Blogger HQs and Blogger Tip #2

Posted by chrysanthe in Announcements — View Comments

We have two new o.i Blogger HQs joining the ranks with Jackson, St. Louis, and Tacoma: Charlottesville and NYC! If you use Tumblr, you can follow any one of these blogs to automatically see our posts on your dashboard, or you can visit the sites directly to see the fun video we made to highlight the blogger-outside.in-publisher ecosystem connection and the city blogroll. We’ll continually update the blogroll as new bloggers come on board–check and see if your go-to blog is featured. Let us know if it’s not there!

If you’re a local blogger in Charlottesville with your feed in our system, we’ll be syndicating your content to the Daily Progress (clicks for you!). And as you may have seen earlier, we’re now syndicating neighborhood posts from NYC bloggers to the New York Post–in all five boroughs, even! If you want to maximize the number of pages your posts show up on, be sure to follow Blogger Tip #2 (below) and geotag your feed in our system. We’re continuing the series of tips with a funny sounding but useful one. Click through to find out what it’s all about:

Blogger Tip #2: Don’t Forget geoSEO

We’re starting to feature interviews with great local bloggers using our tools on the blogger HQs, so if you’d like to be included, or if you want to recommend someone for us, hit us up here.

Get a map for your blog!

23
Sep 09

Solution for “Newsfail” Situations

Posted by camilla in General / Industry Notes & Commentary / Tips & Tricks — View Comments

Have you heard of the recent “newsfail” in Atlanta? According to the Center for Future Civic Media, there was a significant lack of coverage on the terrible massive flooding in the Atlanta area and local TV stations were scrambling to cover the story. Such big, important news and no one seemed to have been on top of it in a timely manner. What gives?

atlfloodpeachtreeparkpicture-5
Photo courtesy of the City of Atlanta, via Creative Loafing

Coincidentally, a few of us at outside.in were preparing for a business trip to Atlanta in the midst of all this flooding and disaster. I only heard of the news through an IM from a friend who asked why I was about to fly out to an area where offices and schools were shutting down and the airports were backed up like crazy. Had it not been for this message, I doubt I would have been in the know, since I don’t really follow Atlanta news and didn’t see it mentioned in my national news feeds. I would have probably shown up at the airport only to realize flights to Atlanta had been canceled or severely delayed.

You would assume that major news like this would be covered by pretty much all national news outlets. But that did not happen. I’m sure all publishers may have their own set of circumstances but one major cause that likely led to the “newsfail” is the fact that many news publishers no longer have the resources to stay on top of all the news breaking in a timely manner (especially when weather makes it even tougher to travel to the right locations). And consequently, the consumers are left to rely less and less on traditional media sources. We now rely heavily on word of mouth via Facebook, Twitter, or IM.

So, the solution? Smart aggregation. Publishers and consumers would be best served through the power of aggregation and distribution. Publishers do not need to cover every major news breaking in their metro. If there are other content producers and local bloggers that are already reporting the story as it breaks, publishers can take advantage of the content by aggregating from these complementary news sources and link out from your site. Your audience do not need to search the web to find the news. You should provide this information, even if it means the content is from an aggregated set of a variety of sources, which can provide for a more comprehensive perspective and coverage.

For local bloggers, such “newsfail” provides a great opportunity. My colleague has already written about the power and benefits of local blogs in this type of a situation on our blogger HQ site. In Atlanta, there were several blogs providing the latest updates, including rounding up tweets, on the flooding early on when only a few major news sources were covering it. Decatur Metro started blogging about this as early as 9/17. We here at outside.in think this is what the new news ecosystem is all about–major publishers tapping into the aggregated set of content and helping to drive traffic to the network local bloggers and the smaller publishers.

Whether it’s a devastating flood in Atlanta, a recent manhunt in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago (covered on the Arlington Heights Neighborhood News Page on our partner site, ChicagoBreakingNews), we believe “newsfail” should and could be avoided.

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21
Sep 09

Announcing o.i Blogger HQs + Blogger Tip #1

Posted by chrysanthe in General / Outside.in for Publishers — View Comments

Just as we’re doing in Roanoke, we’re building communities of hyperlocal bloggers in Tacoma, St. Louis, and Jackson. These sites, which we’re affectionately calling “o.i Blogger HQs” are a resource to local bloggers in those cities: to find out tips and information and connect with each other. Check out what we’re posting and join the conversation in the comments. If you’re a local blogger in any of those cities, check us out and submit your blog, and then drop us a line if you’d like to be on our blogroll.

We have a list of new cities that we’ll be rolling out, but if you want to pump your city up in the queue, write to us and let us know about the hyperlocal efforts in your city!

o.i Blogger HQ Tip #1: Go Where Traditional Media Doesn’t

As always, feel free to send us ideas, questions, or comments on local blogging!

18
Sep 09

New York Post, Welcome to Outside.in for Publishers!

Posted by camilla in Announcements / General / News / Outside.in for Publishers — View Comments

Ever since the beta launch of Outside.in for Publishers, we’ve been busy over here at Outside.in headquarters working with numerous local publishers in markets all over the country. And as we continue to talk to interested publishers and help existing partners optimize their online local experience, we often get asked the same question: “What other companies are you working with?” Thus, we recently started to announce new (and existing) partners on this blog (so be sure to check in often). Well, here’s one of our newest: the New York Post.

The New York Post recently launched a nifty redesign of their site NYPOST.com and have expanded their Local News section. There are separate sections for each of the five boroughs, and better yet, users can now drill into specific neighborhoods within each of the boroughs for hyperlocal news. You can see the Neighborhood News Pages in action whether you’re looking for Brooklyn news or the latest on Chelsea. With Outside.in for Publishers, NYPOST.com is able to provide their users with comprehensive local coverage amassed from news outlets and local blogs.

We’re excited to be working with the New York Post team and welcome them to our growing network of publisher partners.

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17
Sep 09

The News Tribune Partners with Outside.in

Posted by camilla in Announcements / General / News / Outside.in for Publishers — View Comments

Outside.in for Publishers recently added a new publisher to our ever-growing partnership network: The News Tribune of Tacoma, WA. We welcome The News Tribune, the third largest newspaper in the state of Washington serving news to the South Puget Sound area.

tacoma news tribune logoThe News Tribune is leveraging the Outside.in for Publishers platform to to power the Tacoma Blog Central, which is a curated set of blogs and other news sources in the Tacoma region. This allows them to feature and prioritize their own collection of blogs, while supplementing it with feeds from other sources. Check out their implementation of the map widgets on town pages and headline lists in the news section.

16
Sep 09

More Partners Join Outside.in for Publishers

Posted by camilla in Announcements / General / News / Outside.in for Publishers — View Comments

We are powering hyperlocal news for local TV news sites through a a partnership with Local TV LLC, which owns and manages a portfolio of 19 television stations across all major networks. Outside.in for Publishers delivers an easy and quick solution for these sites to cover every neighborhood in their markets by supplementing their content with other news and blog sources in the area and creating new local pages and inventory for additional ad sales opportunities. Some of the Local TV sites were able to go live with our product on the same day they registered for their accounts–it really doesn’t get much faster than that!

Many of these sites have put up interactive maps and headlines for select neighborhoods, while others have chosen to use a list of local headlines on their homepage. We are also seeing an increasing number of partners driving traffic to their Neighborhood News Pages with direct links in their navigation. We are paying close attention to engagement metrics to see what works for each of the partners and how we can help them execute on their local needs.

We are excited to be working with the teams at Milwaukee’s Fox6Now, St. Louis’s Fox2Now, Kansas City’s fox4kc, Memphis’ WREG and Cleveland’s Fox 8, just to mention a handful. We’ll be implemented across more sites within the Local TV LLC family soon, so stay tuned.

16
Sep 09

Google Fast Flip Misses the Point

Posted by lauren in Industry Notes & Commentary — View Comments

fast flip logo

Tech blogs were buzzing yesterday about Google Fast Flip.

The new experimental service allows users to flip through screenshots of web articles from “three dozen top publishers,” according to the announcement on The Official Google Blog. You can choose to sift through latest articles or specify a vertical or source publication—typical filtering mechanisms also available in the more traditional interface of Google News.

Fast Flip aims to speed up news consumption by eliminating the need for end users to load an entire page (including the publisher’s template, navigation, ads, and analytics tags) to read an article.

To make up for showing more than the accepted fair use summary of articles, Google will share an undisclosed percentage of revenue on the ads shown next to the screenshots.

fast flip section thumbnails

The product concept is interesting, but its execution misses the mark in two major ways:

Aggregation

As a high-touch opt-in service for publishers, Fast Flip faces an uphill battle to gain breadth and diversity of source articles. Its baseline content providers show a heavy bias toward major national and international media companies.

Under this model, users never see content from small hyperlocal or niche vertical publishers who may have innovative coverage in their area of expertise. And smaller publishers can’t easily opt-in through a form on the Fast Flip site—presumably they must contact Google via email and prove reach or name recognition to warrant the time Google would spend setting up a rev share deal and what seem to be screenshots at a custom size for each publisher (screenshots for Salon.com are 995px wide, whereas those for Fast Company are 640px wide and those for BBC are 655px wide).

fast flip section thumbnails

Improving the UX of News Consumption

Does Fast Flip fulfill its lofty goal of saving users from the sometimes-painful load times of media sites?

microfiche reader by Mosman Library on Flickr

New microfiche/film reader by Mosman Library on Flickr

The product claims to bring the experience of reading a magazine online, but the interface more closely resembles that of a microfiche machine (hat tip to Outiside.in Biz Dev VP Camilla Cho for the observation) and provides neither the physical immediacy of print nor standard web conventions to guide users through content.

By sticking screenshots of articles into a bulky wrapper, Google breaks the page layout and UI choices of each original site design. By centering publishers’ templates within the Fast Flip interface, Fast Flip often pushes the content out of prime locations where we’re used to focusing our eyes.

The screenshots also kill accessibility and interactivity. Without HTML, no one can click on links within the article, play embedded video, or enlarge photos. Users with screen readers are hosed and the weak of sight can’t use their browser settings to resize fonts.

For all those normal features of web browsing, you have to visit the original article, complete with long download time and a jarring experience of adjusting from the Fast Flip-wrapped screenshot to the original site.

We love to see innovative interfaces for news consumption, but this one doesn’t seem up to snuff. Publishers, what do you think? Is Fast Flip the kind of interface you’d like to see your readers using?

11
Sep 09

Twitter Widget of the Hour Page

Posted by Jared in Announcements / General — View Comments

We added a new page to our blog: The Twitter Widget of The Hour. It’ll display our latest Twitter Widget made with Outside.in for Publishers along with its code so that you can put it on your site. We’ll also include an archive of previous widgets along with their code and instructions to create your own.

Today’s featured widget aggregates tweets from MLB players on teams that are in the pennant race. Check it out on our new page!

9
Sep 09

National Media Companies Chase Local

Posted by camilla in General / Industry Notes & Commentary — View Comments

There’s been a flurry of major news surrounding hyperlocal lately: AOL acquiring Patch and Going.com, MSNBC snatching up EveryBlock, and just this week, we hear that The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times will soon be launching local editions in the San Francisco market. ESPN recently launched a Chicago-focused site and will soon launch in two other sports-centric cities: Boston and Dallas. Similarly, Fox Sports is planning to go after the Detroit and Houston sports fans. All very interesting news. All with the same theme: big national (actually, global) media companies going after the local market. Before you know it, every major national media company will be pursuing a local strategy.

So, why are these big corporations chasing after local? What makes them think they can enter this new space when their focus has historically been on a much broader national level? Well, the temptations are compelling, and a smart local approach actually may make sense for some of these companies at this point in time. Some factors they’re probably considering:

  1. increasing local online ad dollars
  2. changing local landscape with new entrants and incumbents, where the once-dominant local papers are facing serious financial problems
  3. demand for more hyperlocal content and news that the local publishers are not covering like they used to due to resource constraints
  4. “keeping up with the Joneses” factor: everybody else is doing it, maybe I should get in on the action too

The combination of these factors (and probably several others) add up to a big opportunity. After all, local content brings the potential of new users, improved visitor loyalty, and additional local / regional ad revenues.

But as many folks know, the online local game is a tough nut to crack.  The notion of local is personal and subjective, sources of relevant content are numerous and growing, and local ad sales presents its own set of challenges with SMBs still struggling to make the online transition. The best player poised to win this game is still the local publisher! They have the inside knowledge, the connection to the community, and the long-standing relationships with the local businesses. As long as the local publishers are willing to adapt to a new model of news and committed to innovating and working with the right set of partners, they have a leg up on their national or global competitors.

So, local publishers: Don’t panic that the big boys are out to eat your lunch. Think of this as a wake-up call that you are in a highly desirable sector full of new opportunities. And the time is now: Big corporations move slowly, so the smaller guys should be more nimble to make and implement changes. We hope many of the local publishers see this as the ideal time to reinvent yourselves and re-claim your local territory. And outside.in is here to help.

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