The many movies I saw but neglected to blog in 2009 may get a single wrap-up post in the new year, and then I’ll reconsider my policy of capturing my major media consumption. Creating rather than consuming matters to me, but I want this blog to be fun to write again, not a duty. And I want to think about things beyond books and movies. I do, but you wouldn’t know it from what’s here recently.

Happy New Year a bit early. Here’s to an engaging Twenty10.

(This is the last post of my end-of-the-year rush to capture my major media consumption before the year actually comes to a close.)

Metacritic offers a just better than mediocre 64. Two weeks after seeing the movie, I’d agree… it’s slipped a few points for me since my original reaction.

I’m impressed by the deliberate, public nature of the changes, and the aesthetic is fine, if not as iconic as yellow and green.

One design quibble: I find the lowercasing of “news” and “download.com” to be affected, especially given that text references continue to capitalize, but whatever. But I’m grateful the unnecessary reflection on the sub-brands of CNET News and Download.com was dropped from the design. News uses the CNET favicon, as it has forever. I noticed that Download.com got to keep its favicon, a slightly smaller version of this:

One navigation quibble: the tour pop-up should have its own visible, linkable URL. It’s found at http://www.cnet.com/html/cnet/tour/tour1.html. Works well on its own, without need for scrolling.

I am still waiting, however, for the change of News.com to its broader CBS usage. That team must still be hard at work, not yet enjoying pizza and beer.

My previous comments hold. The body of the home page looks fine, with no complaints. However, I find the reflection in the sub-brands of “News” and “Download.com” quite distracting, and hard to read. The Web 2.0 reflection will be very dated in the near future, too.

Download.com new logo design

CNET News new logo design…without the .com

Larger question highlighted by these sub-brand treatments: how long until CBS Interactive puts the domain news.com in the service of general news?

Today’s preview includes a .com for the download design, but it’s notably absent for news. Also, www.news.com redirects to news.cnet.com now. For too long, news.com redirected to the never-beloved news.com.com (long story…not now). For a few brief weeks earlier this year, before the CBS deal, the tech news site reclaimed its original 1996 home at www.news.com. It was quickly switched over to news.cnet.com. The pendulum of parent brands vs. individual brands swings back and forth at CNET, but it’s clear this time news.com is being prepped for bigger things.

This change makes sense, since News.com is just too tempting a domain name to limit to tech news, especially given the broader portfolio of the new CBS Interactive. But stop dribbling this change out. Get the team working on the new News.com in higher gear before these design changes dampen the, well, news.

My comments are as a fan and former employee, but no inside information.

CNET’s decision to announce a coming redesign ahead of time is admirable. It shows a new respect for how disruptive change can be to an existing audience.

Current CNET logo, in context

New CNET logo, in context (proposed)

I have a few comments, but IANAD (I am not a designer).

• New logo drops the pipe ( | ) between the letters c and n: +1
  About time! Few things confused the brand more than that pipe.
• Sticking with all lower-case letters in logo, as cnet: -1
  I appreciate the nod to the original (and current) logo, but grab the chance to change to all caps, CNET, like every single text reference in the last several years.
• Logo is updated, making the red ball more obviously a ball: +1
  I wasn’t sure about this change, but when I went back to compare, I realized how flat and dated the existing red ball logo looks… and the glow behind the current red ball isn’t fantastic.
• Color scheme drops yellow and green: -1
  Yellow and green are signature, just like the red ball. Both colors have been toned down, appropriately, over the years. Dropping them altogether? Well, if it weren’t in favor of a color scheme straight out of Axe body care products, I’d probably find it more acceptable.
• Header is taller: -1
  Only reason is to fit a leaderboard advertisement. That’s the business, of course, but… sigh.

The best news? These are just opinions about the skin. That matters, but the content inside the skin still decides whether I read or not. And I continue to, mostly via the News.com RSS feeds (choose one) and occasional email newsletters (subscribe).

Note: as someone who’s led previous site redesigns at CNET, I’m not throwing stones from afar. I can only imagine the internal discussions. I hope the transition goes well, whether with the demonstrated changes or some additional nips and tucks.

But this morning I saw an ad on Facebook that was relevant and interesting to me, and I clicked on it. It was a text ad, “Core Perform C2 Seat: The first stability-adjustable seat for the Concept2 erg. Strengthened core muscles, improved rowing efficiency, and faster boats!” View the screenshot:

I don’t actually own a Concept2 erg, but I’ve spent plenty of time on earlier models. I won’t be purchasing the Core Perform, but glad to know it exists. I assume my mention of rowing in my Facebook profile was enough to connect the dots. Not remarkable targeting, but interesting all the same.

Only caveat to the “success” of this ad? I was only visiting Facebook to accept a friend request. The site isn’t part of my daily fabric.

Technical note: Facebook uses Javascript to obscure the (incredibly long) tracking URL and display the actual destination URL (http://www.coreperform.com/product.php). That’s a nice touch. It gives me confidence to know the actual destination URL. Of course, I checked the source, and saw the actual click URL, but few would bother. I assume Google has tested this display URL replacement technique, and decided it’s not worth the extra page load time…yet.

Google News finally answers some of publishers’ questions, and promises more information in the future. Wow…I spent a fair bit of time trying to deconstruct this for News.com 3-4 years ago.

Academic PDF, which I have not yet read, but plan to: “The User Experience of Software-as-a-Service Applications” (link is to HTML abstract)

Jon Udell goes LazyWeb with “Parsing human-written date and time information, and the commenters come through, especially with DateJS.com. Not the only solution, though. I’d never heard of GATE, but looks useful. I’ve used solid implementations of this type of parsing at I Want Sandy, 30boxes.com and a few other places. Wonder how many rolled their own, or started with DateJS, GATE or similar utilities, and built from there?

Ken Norton makes his Scoble video debut in Google Announces Offline Docs. Ken, good job, but the laptop in hand was a bit tough. And now we know where this tweet came from.

During the last year or so I was at CNET, I pinged the legal team a few times about a corporate policy on blogging by employees. Didn’t happen while I was there. I realize it’s not so simple when you’re a media company — but it didn’t have to be that hard, either. So I noted the BBC’s Guidance -
Personal use of Social Networking and other third party websites, including the section on blogging. Good for them: more media organizations should follow this lead.

Speaking of British media companies, the Guardian impressed me in two ways last week. First, by creating the position of head of the Guardian’s development network with the goal of “offer[ing] data and tools for external developers.” Second, by hiring
Matt McAlister to inaugurate the role. Good luck and have fun.

Brief notes on Charlene Li’s 2008 SXSW presentation, “Social Strategies For Revolutionaries.”

Stefanie Olsen talks with John Battelle a couple of weeks ago. For when you can’t keep up with his blog, a distillation of some of the topics he covers and thinks about for FM.

I know storage isn’t free, and photos add up, but still surprised to get an email from BrightRoom telling me it’s the last chance to order some race pictures. I’ve bought a few before… wouldn’t you at least keep shots of customers, even if you dump all the other finish line photos? Of course, the email is remarkably promotional, and short on details: “Your Run Wild 5k/10k photos are going into retirement: SALE details below!” Will the photos disappear, or will you simply charge me more in the future to “retrieve” them? If you’re keeping them at all, then retrieval is almost without cost, so this feels like forced urgency. And I’m not interested or impressed.

I’ve set up my FriendFeed, but not using it yet. Definitely finding Twitter more and more interesting, and I’m now including my tweets on clock, on the home page.

Watched only one of Barry Pilling’s videos so far, but worth a link and a look.

2005 article someone (Ken?) recently reminded me about: “Wheels and Deals in Silicon Valley” I did my first racing in January, at the Early Bird, and I’m putting in some miles now in preparation for a mid-May century. Been mostly solo, though…guess I’m missing out on the deals! Any San Francisco-based riders reading?

Readership will get another boost starting Tuesday, when TheAtlantic.com will abolish the fire wall that has allowed only subscribers to the print magazine to see most of its articles online. It will make its archive accessible, too.

That’s fantastic news. I see Scott Karp shares that view. I also saw that James Fallows (a long-time foundation of The Atlantic) read the same article, though he’s living and writing in China right now. (I’m sure he’s known about it for some time, but was waiting for the public news to break.) Opening up isn’t going to change the game for The Atlantic, but at least they are playing. I don’t think any of their print subscribers will drop the paid subscription in the short-term.

Given this change, I feel the time is right to post this document from August, 1995.

At the time, The Atlantic had been on AOL nearly two years, learning a lot and trying to engage a younger audience. I was a year out of college myself, though I’d been working at The Atlantic for four years. The General Manager, the late Kim Jensen, continued to look to online as a new business opportunity. Below is what I wrote in getting the website project approved. It was an email at first, so apologies for formatting. (Side note: at the time, USNews and World Report and The Atlantic shared an owner, Mort Zuckerman, and Zuckerman also owned a print-related publishing business, AGT, which was morphing into an online shop (painfully).)

The fun/sad part? What hasn’t changed about online media in a dozen years.

The Atlantic Monthly on the World Wide Web

A few framing observations:

The WWW is a remote-control freak’s paradise. The proliferation of “channels’ envisioned for cable TV is already available on the WWW. Of course, quantity is NOT quality–our saving grace! The brand names (ESPN, Time, Microsoft, NBC, etc.) still garner much of the immediate attention. But with so many choices, and the click-and-I’m-gone mentality, the brand name sites only have a slight edge over the smaller sites. A company can appear much bigger or smaller on the WWW than its real-life incarnation. Again, this is a benefit for us; as long as we take advantage of that initial brand-name recognition, we don’t need to tell anyone about “the man behind the curtain”…our content will speak for itself.

First impressions are even harder to overcome on the WWW; since this is our chance to find a new audience, we must entice them in at the top level. The trick to return readership is earning a spot on the user’s Bookmark list (their favorite places, saved for them so they no longer need to remember the URL).

If we can make The Atlantic Monthly attractive to this audience, we will be tapping a very attractive market for advertisers. In addition to the quoted material below about professionals, the biggest online market is students, especially college students.

PERSONAL ANECDOTE: Although I had heard of The Atlantic Monthly before I started working for the magazine, I had never *read* the magazine. Once I began reading TAM, I realized what I had been missing. The WWW is our best option for a relatively cheap introduction to this younger audience.

“Computer-oriented consumers are “techno-savvy” ( O&M Direct 1994 ) with median age 35 and 77% having a college degree. The Hermes survey of Web consumers found that the median income of consumers is $50,000 (Gupta 1995), with an average household income of $67,000 which in part accounts for the premium associated with convenient, reliable information and price- elasticity in commercial transactions in this medium. There is a predominance of professional and computer-related occupations among Web users.” (For more info, see end of document.)

Exceptions to the remote-control mentality exist. Users can–and do–search for specific information quite single-mindedly. However, this information is usually VERY narrow in scope: price for an airline ticket to St. Louis, performance of a new software package, company filings with the SEC, etc. For a general-interest magazine, filling the bill for a Search, as opposed to a Browse, will be a continual challenge.

***Important explanations

REGISTRATION asks or requires the user to provide some demographic information in return for their access to the content offered. Usually, at least four pieces of information are required: name, e-mail address, username for site, and password (selected by user, of course). Additional information can be requested and/or required (postal address, phone #, subscriber to print?, etc.).

However, the longer the registration, the less likely users are to complete the process–click goes the “remote,” and it’s off to a new site. Therefore, the user is often given the choice of not entering the additional information, even though it is requested and desired.

Dave W(redacted) did a lot of looking around at publications on the WWW, checking for registration, subscriptions, and archives. Of the various publications already on the WWW, these required registration of some sort:

Pathfinder (Time, Sports Illustrated, Life, Entertainment Weekly, Southern Living, Sunset, Vibe, Fortune) Lots of content available up front, but varies by publication; more content available with registration.
PC Magazine not mandatory; free gift if completed
WIRED required for much of content, but about to be abandoned

A greater number did not; however, the list above does include many of the bigger names on the WWW.

For the tracking software currently available, registration is a requirement. Without it, we can get total entries to the initial site, but we cannot distinguish between repeat users and new users and we have little (if any) demographic information.

—->As of today, August 14, there is another possible problem. Derek T(redacted) at AGT informs me that none of the tracking software packages currently being evaluated for use by USNews and The Atlantic (and the other future AGT clients) are final products for the Windows NT platform, which AGT chose for the server.

I/Pro, one of the few companies with a commercial tracking product already released, is in beta (final testing) for the Windows NT version; the other companies are not even in beta. (AGT, for reasons yet to be determined, decided not to use Unix, the current WWW king.) Therefore, launching with tracking software in a reliable form MAY not be possible. I know how crucial this information is, and I will be pushing Derek to fill in the blanks here as fast as possible. Although AGT only bought the Netscape Commerce Server as a 60-day demo, I don’t know if they are Unix-savvy enough to switch.

Another promising product for the future, ClickShare–also not yet even in beta–has not been mentioned by Derek. I will forward some information to him tonight.

SUBSCRIPTION is functionally little different than registration, with the important distinction that users must provide more demographic information and their credit card number. The security problem has been solved, as long as users are using the Netscape Navigator browser (the free client software which commands 60-70% of the browser market). We will be designing our pages for this browser–as many others do–and suggesting that users choose to view our site through this browser. (Given our AOL base, though, we will not ignore the features of the AOL browser.) On a subscription page, we would remind users that their information is not secure unless they are using Netscape.

Once the user sends their information to the AGT server, it would be forwarded to us via encrypted e-mail. We would then pass the information along to our credit card authorization company. Alternately, we will try to establish procedure for more immediate authorization. Given that this would require (I think) another software purchase and installation at AGT, I am concerned that this immediate turnaround might not be available to us at launch. (I will be checking on this further, starting tonight.)

The cost of subscription is another dicey issue on the WWW. VERY few publications require–or even offer–subscription for access to their content. Here are the two examples most frequently cited:

NandO.net free for most services, $12 annually for everything else
Mercury Center some services free, $4.95 monthly for rest

Dave W(redacted)’s search through other newspaper and magazine sites did not find a single magazine which had a subscription for the online version.

If we do require a subscription, would we want to bundle it with the print subscription? When we talked about this, there were a lot of questions and no answers. What percentage of our current subscribers will be readers of the online version? (The AOL poll might help here.) If someone is already paying for the print subscription, are we offering enough extra to make an online sub attractive? Eventually, the answer is sure to be yes, but I don’t know about at launch. What about our AOL site? The content there will overlap quite a bit with the WWW, as envisioned right now. If we require a subscription on the WWW, we will have to change our AOL policy (sure to be a difficult move, PR-wise).

One other idea to remember: we can offer rebates on online subscriptions if users:

1) provide a further level of demographic information
2) agree to let us share the information with other companies.
Examples already exist of users being asked to trade their info as a “currency” (NewsShare).

____________________________________________________________________________

With these thoughts in mind, I think we have a fair number of options for The Atlantic Monthly on the World Wide Web (TAM on WWW). Some are more realistic for the future (which means six to nine months) than they are now. Our plans must include milestones for evaluating our current practices in the face of new technologies. With a launch on October 1, 1995, the first evaluation should be completed in early December, in time to make changes for January 1, 1996. Beyond that time, well…let’s get online first.

One decision which affects the choices below: what do we offer as our current issue? Some publications only offer certain stories, others put the current issue online late. Considering the comments we get on AOL, I am against putting any content online any later than necessary. If we must restrict access to the current issue to avoid subscription, then rotation of current articles–or simply selection–is a better option.

With only two years in the archive, I think we would be hard-pressed to sell separate access to the archive. However, that is possible, same as a subscription.

(Kim, I will have to flesh this and some of the ideas below out tomorrow.)

***OPTIONS***

1) Offer entire area for free, without registration

Right now, this is the standard option on the WWW.

With a wide range of information to choose from, users are unwilling to pay for content. As we have seen from the figures bandied about for space on Prodigy’s home page or Hotwired’s home page, advertising dollars are beginning to flow to the WWW. Currently, 1% of advertising budgets are slated for “new media”; however, this 1% is really the only broad-based outside support for WWW pages established by magazines and newspapers. (The main exception would be newspapers which also serve as Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in their local region–not an option for TAM.)

2) Offer entire area for free, with optional registration

The registration screen would be suggested at the top level (home page), and also from the other main menus (Current Issue, Features, The Exchange, The Agora … these are the current names).

Registration is viewed as a nuisance, but it is also recognized for what it is: a necessary evil if users are to continue to enjoy “free” sites subsidized by advertisers.

3) Offer entire area for free, with strongly suggested registration

No different than above, except that the registration suggestion would appear almost every time the user clicked to enter a new document/page.

4) Offer entire area for free, but force registration at the top level

Same idea, but you cannot get beyond the home page without registering.

This is the Hotwired model, which is being abandoned by that publication now that they have proved to advertisers that they have a steady audience. (my interpretation of the reasons). Hotwired launched with NO content outside the registration barrier; that switched quickly to offering some content outside the barrier.

***All the choices below have the same options for registration, with the additional level of subscription.

5) Offer entire area for free, but limit current content

6) Offer entire area for free, except for the archive

7) Offer entire area, including full current issue and the archive, for one subscription price

It will be necessary to have both a single-issue subscription and a year subscription available.

Offer entire area, with two levels of subscription

First level would enable access to the full current issue. Second level would enable access to the archive. This could be one price, or it could be transactionally priced.

GOOD ONLINE MARKETING/ADVERTISING RESOURCE

http://www2000.ogsm.vanderbilt.edu/

2.4. The World Wide Web: Attractive Demographics

Computer-oriented consumers are “techno-savvy” ( O&M Direct 1994 ) with median age 35 and 77% having a college degree. The Hermes survey of Web consumers found that the median income of consumers is $50,000 (Gupta 1995), with an average household income of $67,000 which in part accounts for the premium associated with convenient, reliable information and price- elasticity in commercial transactions in this medium. There is a predominance of professional and computer-related occupations among Web users.

SRI’s psychographic analysis of the Web population, iVALS (1995) explored the psychology of consumer choices and behavior on the Web. SRI found two Web audiences, the “upstream” stereotypical Web user comprising 10% of the US population and the “downstream” audience comprising a diverse set of groups (90% of the population). The upstream audience comprises 50% of the Web population, with a higher gender imbalance (70% male and 30% female). Members of this group, classified as Actualizers according to SRI, generally receive institutional subsidies for Web usage. These consumers are highly educated and work in academic or technical fields. Since the use of the Web is now diffusing into this group, the future growth of the Web will be determined by the downstream audience.

The downstream or the “Other Half” of the Web audience, will determine the characteristics of the Web as a mainstream medium. This group, 64% male and 36% female, is younger than the upstream half and comprised of students or recent college graduates. This group has two over-represented groups: Strivers and Experiencers. The Strivers are characterized by higher technical sophistication and a high degree of engagement with the Web. They generally receive Internet-access subsidy. The Experiencers are less enamored with the Web and hence less intense users, possibly because the Web’s form and content does not meet their expectations. The Fulfilleds, the most information-intensive of the VALS 2 segments and Achievers, predominantly female, are underrepresented in the Web population. Thus, SRI concludes that the division between Web users and non-users is primarily based on educationally acquired abilities.

PC penetration is significant (Ziegler 1995). The PC market is “young”, since 58% of PC owners have had their PCs for less than two years. One-third of US households have been reported to have a PC (up 27% from July 1994) with about one-third to one-half equipped with modems. However online service penetration remains low.

Non-representative surveys of Web usage ( Graphic, Visualization, & Usability Center 1995 ; Gupta 1995 ; Rissa & Co Oy 1995 ) suggest that users are young, upscale, educated, predominately male, and heavy computer users (more than 50 hr./wk). Note however that the results are not population projectable and the methodologies are open to criticism. These demographics suggest that Web consumers are leading-edge early adopters (Freeman 1995). CommerceNet is funding the first-ever population projectable, representative survey of who uses the Internet and why. Nielsen Media Research has been selected to administer the survey; results are expected to be available in the fall of 1995.

I wonder what else sits on this hard drive?

For instance…

I had a lot to say about TimesSelect when it was introduced in September 2005. Two years later, when the wall came down, my first inkling came from this blog post. The only place I’d really bumped into the pay wall regularly was on the mobile version of the Times, which is wonderful on the iPhone, even at EDGE speeds. The Wall Street Journal will drop its pay-wall, too, in the near future, according to Rupert Murdoch, its incoming owner. Long live advertising revenue… right?! (Note to CNET News.com — stop separating your search results for news items and blogs, especially since your blog items have surged in volume in recent months.)

RadioShift and the radio SHARK 2 combine to make me consider pulling my original radio SHARK out of the drawer. When the device finally arrived in September 2004, I was disappointed by the lack of a workable, integrated guide. Just a few months later, I noted that I had abandoned the Shark because of that gap. Since I started using the iPhone’s iPod capabilities, I actually have a renewed interest. Maybe RadioShift is the answer.

More inbox cleaning to come…