Posts Categorized as "Outside.in for Publishers"

14
Sep 10

Publishers, the Outside.in API is Here!

Posted by camilla in Announcements / CNN / Development & Features / General / News / Outside.in for Publishers — View Comments

As you may have already heard, we just released a brand new Outside.in Hyperlocal News API — the latest addition to Outside.in for Publishers suite of powerful publisher tools to create hyperlocal experiences easily, efficiently, and economically. We built the API for creative and savvy publishers looking to innovate ways to engage their consumers with hyperlocal news and information.

What can the API do? Quite a bit. Publishers can build and design mobile apps to custom web experiences by tapping into our massive database of more than 54,000 sources from local bloggers, journalists and mainstream sources for any neighborhood, city, state, and ZIP in the U.S. API users can filter the results by various parameters such as date, number of stories, source attributes (e.g., vertical/category, format, author type), and keywords. A few ideas:

  • Take local to the next level by bundling the right source of neighborhood news targeted at specific demographics like moms, foodies, or college students
  • Add dimension to existing personalization experiences by empowering readers to find and save news for neighborhoods they care about

What clever ideas do you have?  Get going and introduce the API to your developers: send them to check out the documentation on our API portal where they can get an API key to start playing around.

What are the benefits?

  • User Engagement & Advertising Opportunities: The API opens the door to tons of local content that publishers can slice and dice to fit their editorial and user needs, all of which create robust streams of targeted advertising inventory.
  • Reliability and Speed: Outside.in provides a proven hyperlocal platform that meets the scale and performance needs of some of web’s biggest publishers such as CNN, Tribune, The New York Post, and MediaGeneral (with more to announce in the near future). In fact, we first previewed the API earlier this year to power the local news on CNN.com and the CNN iPhone app.
  • Hyperlocal Expertise and Support: With so many possibilities to explore, our Partner Relations team is available and happy to help publishers vet ideas and provide the necessary guidance and support along the way.

How do I get started?

1.     Check out the details here and introduce your developers to the API. Have them sign up for a dev key to see what the API is capable of and take it for a test spin.

2.     Give us a shout via email to discuss any of the following:

  • Terms for a commercial relationship. (Note that the API is free for non-commercial use up to 5,000 queries per day.)
  • Enable curation on API implementations via the Outside.in Hyperlocal Publisher Dashboard.
  • Transition to an API-powered experience. (If you are an existing Outside.in for Publishers partner, we can generate a separate key for you to ensure that the API inherits your curation settings from the Publisher Dashboard.)

There is a lot to take advantage of, so start building your own unique hyperlocal experience today!  We can’t wait to see what you will create!

*P.S. Follow @outsideinAPI for the latest scoop on the API.

20
May 10

StarNewsOnline Goes Hyperlocal with Outside.in

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

Last weekend, we launched MyBackyard with StarNewsOnline of Wilmington, NC.  MyBackyard enables its readers to browse everything from news to real estate to events in dozens of neighborhoods in Wilmington.  Vaughn Hagerty, an enterprising developer at StarNews, leads the project and sings the praises of our hyperlocal platform, Outside.in for Publishers:

MyBackyard requires accurate address-level location information for items in our news feed. In addition, we need to have the option to attach more than one lat/long to a piece of content if necessary. Doing this accurately and consistently really requires a human editor with easy-to-use curation tools. We explored a few options, and Outside.in’s publisher tools fit the requirements nicely. Using them, a single editor can maintain our feeds in about 20 minutes a day.

We’re thrilled to have StarNewsOnline kick off our work with The New York Times Regional News Group and proud to have a product that meets their needs so well.

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8
Feb 10

More Big Publishers Pick Outside.in for Hyperlocal

Posted by mark in Announcements / CNN / Development & Features / Outside.in for Publishers — View Comments

Today we are announcing that publications from The McClatchy Company, Dow Jones, Lee Enterprises and The Tribune Company have selected the Outside.in for Publishers platform. The full release and details are below.

It is really awesome to see these titans of local media build their neighborhood pages with our tools for aggregation and curation. It goes a long way to helping fulfill the promise of the new local media ecosystem. Big publishers need to get to a neighborhood level to satisfy their readers and advertisers and local bloggers need more traffic and visibility. Our tools bring them all together to their mutual benefit.

We’re glad these leading sites think we’re the best choice and we’ll continue to build and improve our services so everyone wins.
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MORE PUBLISHERS TEAM WITH OUTSIDE.IN FOR HYPERLOCAL CONTENT

News Organizations Across the Country are Adding Real-time Neighborhood News to their Sites

NEW YORK, NY (February 8, 2010) – In the past 7 months, hyperlocal content and advertising platform Outside.in has formed partnerships with some of the country’s most well-known publishers, including The Miami Herald, Dow Jones Local Media Group, New York Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and properties of the Tribune Company, including Chicago Tribune, Chicago Breaking News, ChicagoNow, and the Baltimore Sun.

Outside.in launched its publisher offering, Outside.in for Publishers (OIP), in June 2009 to create targeted Neighborhood News Pages for every city, town and neighborhood in a publisher’s market. Publishers using the OIP platform can create customized and curated hyperlocal news sections, add tagged news maps, and curate the aggregated news feeds to fit their editorial guidelines.

As a result, Outside.in has extended its reach to more than 100 publishers, providing consumers, publishers and bloggers the tools needed to make neighborhood news and information easily accessible and widely available.

“People have a deep interest in the news and events that are happening in their immediate neighborhoods,” said Camilla Cho, Vice President of Business Development of Outside.in. “But the ability to create, find, organize and distribute local content has historically been a struggle for many media companies. As the media landscape continues to change, more and more publishers are seeing the value in hyperlocal content, and Outside.in provides a source of flexibility, transparency and control to get hyperlocal easily and efficiently.”

In addition to growing its network of publisher partnerships, Outside.in has added 4,000 local bloggers to its roster and has seen traffic increased to more than seven million monthly unique visitors on the Outside.in Network. Outside.in currently services 57,830 neighborhoods, aggregates and organizes over 40,000 unique feeds, and provides neighborhood information to over 100 news websites.

About Outside.in
Outside.in is the leading hyperlocal content and advertising platform. Outside.in monitors all the news, blogs and discussions on the web and dynamically maps them to more than 57,000 neighborhoods in the U.S.

Through the Outside.in for Publishers platform, publishers create customized and curated hyperlocal news sections to offer highly localized content on their sites. Bloggers can distribute their content with the Outside.in Network to build traffic and attract new users to their blogs. Advertisers are able to take advantage of quality local advertising inventory.

Outside.in is supported by leading investors including Union Square Ventures, Village Ventures, Betaworks, the New York City Investment Fund, Milestone Venture Partners and CNN Worldwide. For more information, visit http://outside.in, the company’s blog or follow us on Twitter.

13
Nov 09

More on the #NewBiz Conference at CUNY

Posted by camilla in Events / Industry Notes & Commentary / Outside.in for Publishers — View Comments

picture-12My colleague Jared provided a great commentary on this blog after the recent New Business Models for News Conference and HyperCamp at CUNY. Thought I’d add a few more thoughts from the revenue angle.

As Sean Blanda points out in his recap, and repeatedly expressed by the confab attendees, a major unmet need in the hyperlocal space is around selling. In other words, what I heard loud and clear is: “I need revenue!” As this conference re-affirmed, there are plenty of journalists, bloggers, publishers (large and small) who are producing and featuring hyperlocal content, the challenge is how does one monetize this content.

Not surprising… after all, who doesn’t want to make some money? But here is why this is interesting:

  • No real mention of the usual self-service online sales route, such as Google or other ad networks). You can read into what is NOT being spoken aloud here… Google AdSense is not enough. Generating pennies off of clicks may work for the behemoth that is Google, but not for the independent local news site. Folks are well aware of how big the local ad market is ($100B+) and appear hungry to go after some of this big pie.
  • I sensed a DIY attitude when it came to ad sales. Individual publishers want to know how to sell. Journalists may not “do spreadsheets” but maybe some will do sales? I’m usually a fan of the DIY mentality and entrepreneurial spirit, but to make local ad sales work, DIY will not cut it. Local networks need to form to provide scale and efficiency. Rather than you sell what’s yours and I sell what’s mine, how about the best person sell on behalf of everyone in the market?
  • Not every hyperlocal site or news org should have to sell. The staff of the new news organization should focus on what they are good at, and in most cases, that will not be sales. The ability to sell is not something you teach and voila: You’re now making money. I wish it were that simple. Not only does it require recruiting the right people and training them properly, but you also need to equip them with the right tools and products to sell with, and most importantly, incentivize and motivate them to sell something that is not theirs. But local sales teams that have the skills and relationships already exist. The key is how to connect them with the relevant inventory that best services the advertisers… Sounds very similar to the challenge of connecting the big media folks to the local network of bloggers.

So, what does all this portend? Well, the future is still being shaped (by some of the folks there at the conference and other thought leaders and innovators), but a few things are clear on the ad sales front: Training will not be the answer and generating meaningful local dollars will require more cooperation and collaboration amongst the relevant parties. Yes, more group hugs are in order, as Jeff Jarvis insisted. And local networks being sold by the right sales teams will be the key in this new ecosystem.

12
Nov 09

At #NewBiz, Bloggers and Mainstream Media Search for a Relationship

Posted by Jared in Outside.in for Publishers — View Comments

By the end of yesterday’s New Business Models for News Conference at CUNY’s J-School, one thing was overwhelmingly clear: Bloggers want to get their content on major media sites and major media sites want this content.  Yet, according to these two groups, there remains a big problem: How to do it?  Upon hearing this, we at Outside.in felt great because Outside.in for Publishers delivers a solution to this problem.  Let me elaborate.

The so-called Reverse Panel, a rather clever idea on the part of Jeff Jarvis put this issue in relief.  Jeff put 6 forward-thinking “Big Players” (Jim Willse of the Star-Ledger, Jim Schachter of the NY Times, Jennifer Carroll of Gannett, Goli Sheikholeslami of the Washington Post, Jim Brady of Politico, and John Paton of ImpreMedia) at the table and asked the room full of bloggers, small publishers, and tech start-ups to tell the Big Players what we would like them to do.  What do we need from them?  What could they do to make our jobs easier?

The bloggers said, “We want you to give us visibility and traffic.  When we scoop a story that you like, we want you to put it on your site and give us the credit.”  The publishers agreed, saying they want the content, and in fact, they went so far as to claim, more than once, that without taking advantage of the great journalism happening on blogs, their businesses will fail.  Everyone agreed on this point.  The stumbling block was around the How.  How do the publishers surface the blogger content on their site in a fair, respectful, and mutually beneficial way?  What does that relationship look like?

That’s exactly what we’re working on. With Outside.in for Publishers, we’ve built a platform that enables publishers to display headlines, links, and summaries of blogger content on their sites.  It generates hyperlocal ad inventory for publishers and gives traffic and visibility to bloggers. Essentially, we’re making this relationship easy.  OIP is automated yet full of opportunities for customization.  Publishers can choose the sources from which they get content.  If they’re really picky, they can even select the stories that come from those trusted sources.  The editor becomes a curator of the blogosphere; the tools are in their hands.

Many publishers have already begun their work with Outside.in for Publishers, yet of the panel members, only the New Jersey division of Gannett (represented by Jennifer Carroll) has taken advantage of the service.  So, to you others I pose an honest question: if you know you need to leverage the blogosphere, what’s holding you back from using Outside.in for Publishers?  Every day we’re improving our platform.  I encourage you tell us exactly what you need so that we can help you hurdle the stumbling block of the How.

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.

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.

picture-1

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.

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