Greetings from NAA!

Welcome back to the Digital Edge blog. This Online Publishing Update* is meant to help you catch up, as many people have been on vacation this past week. The regular (e-mail) OPU will return Wednesday, Jan. 2.

We hope your holiday season has been happy and restful! Have a great New Year!

Campaigning for Ads: How Newspaper Web Sites Can Increase Political Advertising Revenue
Political spending online may double or triple with each coming election cycle. But some analysts are unsure whether newspapers are doing enough to sell their Web sites as potential places for candidates to advertise. The report gives insight from newspaper executives and political analysts on how to maximize political campaign spending on newspaper Web sites.

Newspapers as Networks: Redesigning Around Social Media
A growing number of newspapers are dabbling in this highly personal space, allowing users to create blogs, post photos or news items, and even create profile pages packed with the same sorts of widgets and friend lists you can find on MySpace or Facebook. On sites like Racine’s JournalTimes.com and USAToday.com, user comments share top homepage billing with news content. As newspaper Web sites begin adding social networking features, publishers are taking more than a passing interest in sites like Facebook. Learn more about newspapers’ experiments in social networking in this new report from The Digital Edge. 

 

 

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AOL to End Netscape Browser Support in February; Recommends Switching to Mozilla

AOL announced last week it was ending all support and development on the Netscape Web browser Feb. 1, 2008. Netscape.com  will continue to exist as a Web portal.

 

In a blog entry on AOL.com, Netscape Director Tom Drapeau wrote, “While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Recently, support for the Netscape browser has been limited to a handful of engineers tasked with creating a skinned version of Firefox with a few extensions.”

 

Drapeau recommended switching to Mozilla Firefox – not necessarily surprising, since the past several versions of Netscape have largely drawn from Mozilla’s open-source browser and AOL has significantly supported the Mozilla Foundation for several years. AOL purchased the Netscape Communications Corp. in 1999.

 

Sources: Wired, AOL

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Consumer Technology Sales Flat During Holiday Season

Though many people who received tech store gift certificates have yet to turn them in, analysts say holiday sales of “gadgets” are flat as compared to last year.

 

“U.S. spending on gadgets was $4.5 billion from Nov. 18 to Dec. 9, according to research firm NPD, half a percent less than in the comparable period last year. Sales figures for the rest of the shopping season were not available,” The Washington Post reported. “Digital cameras topped the list of popular consumer electronics products, but sales did not grow over last year. According to NPD, camera unit sales were up less than 1 percent, while in dollar terms sales were down 13 percent because the cameras were less expensive. MP3 player sales were flat.”

 

Reasons for the flat sales season in technology included economic anxiety and consumers’ digital media saturation – many people already own digital cameras, MP3 players and cellular telephones.

 

Source: The Washington Post

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eMarketer: U.S. Online Ad Spending in 2008 to be $27.5 Billion
Despite the mortgage meltdown fallout and related economic anxiety, eMarketer analysts say online ad spending in the United States will reach almost $28 billion in 2008 – an increase of nearly 29 percent over 2007, MediaPost reported. The presidential and local elections (see the Digital Edge report “Campaigning for Ads”) and the Olympics will help.

 

Sources: eMarketer, MediaPost

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NCAA Limiting Number of Posts from Bloggers Covering Games
The NCAA last week set limits to prevent bloggers attending college games from posting too-frequent updates online. The move could hurt local newspaper sites that cover college games. The limits vary by sport -- “for example, those at football games can update their blogs three times per quarter and once at halftime. For basketball, bloggers can post five times per half, once at halftime and twice per overtime period,” CNet’s News.com reported.

 

Source: CNet

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Quote of the Day: Should Web Giants Let Startups Use the Information They Have About You?
The Internet these days is supposed to be all about sharing. Thanks to a common commitment to open access and cooperation, the data mash-ups that have defined the Web2.0 phenomenon have exploded…. But beneath all the kumbayas, there's an awkward dance going on, an unregulated give-and-take of information for which the rules are still being worked out. And in many cases, some of the big guys that have been the source of that data are finding they can't — or simply don't want to — allow everyone to access their information, Web2.0 dogma be damned.

 

 -- Josh McHugh in a Wired article on Web companies that are cracking down on screen scraping and other technologies that allow information sharing.

 

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Local.com, CitySearch Team Up
Local.com and CitySearch are teaming up, the companies announced . The partnership will increase CitySearch’s advertising reach and give Local.com users access to more reviews and information. Both companies focus on local search and directories.

 

Source: DMNews

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Limited Social Network for the Wealthy Draws Major Advertisers; Shows Power of Niches
A social network limited to 300,000 of the world’s rich and famous has attracted luxery market advertisers willing to pay a premium to reach members with specific interests. ASmallWorld.net and many other social networking sites are turning their niche audience into revenue, The Washington Post reported.

“Following the success of MySpace and Facebook, thousands of social-networking sites have popped up to cater to specific interests, backgrounds, professions and age groups. Nightclub frequenters can converge at DontStayIn.com. Wine connoisseurs have formed Snooth.com, and people going through divorce can commiserate at Divorce360.com. While such sites have fewer members than MySpace and Facebook, they form intimate communities of like-minded people. Part of what is driving the development of these sites is advertising,” according to the Post.

 

Source: The Washington Post

 

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Owens Challenges ‘Non-Wired’ Journalists to Become Digital Natives

In a year-end blog entry, GateHouse Media’s Howard Owens wrote, “I suspect there are still too many non-wired journalists in most U.S. newsrooms. Either out of fear, indifference or hubris, too many reporters and editors resist using the Internet for anything beyond the occasional Google search (and heaven forbid they ever click a search result link to Wikipedia) and a daily dose of Romenesko (and heaven forbid if you call him what he is, a blogger). That just isn’t acceptable.”

 

 

To combat this, Owens is offering an MBO (or a Manage by Objective plan) for newsroom editors and journalists. The plan includes becoming a blogger, buying and using a digital camera for photo and video and much more. Also, Owens is offering a $100 Amazon.com gift certificate to an individual journalist who takes on the plan individually.

 

 

Source: HowardOwens.com

 

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Wal-Mart Closes Video Download Site

Wal-Mart has shut down its movie and video download Web service after just 10 months, primarily because Hewlett Packard Co. discontinued the underlying technology, Reuters reported. However, Wal-Mart did not indicate it would look for new technology to reopen the site. “The giant retailer's venture into online video downloading began in February and was hailed by media industry experts as a ‘game changer’ that could introduce millions of DVD buyers to the practice of downloading,” according to Reuters.

 

 

Source: Reuters via The Los Angeles Times

 

 

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Other articles of interest:

China’s Censorship a Core Class for Journalism Students (The Washington Post)

Web Playgrounds of the Very Young  (The New York Times)

Innovative Minds Don’t Think Alike (The New York Times)

Kijiji Becomes Second Largest Classified Site in U.S., Still Lags Far Behind Craigslist (The New York Times)

Secret Web sites, Coded Messages: The New World of Immersive Games (Wired)