The NY Times & quest for page views
It’s always about the money, I like to say, because money is the great motivator. Now it is time to change that and say – in the world of consumer Internet media, it is always about the eyeballs that beget the page views that bring the money. That explains why the great New York Times is embracing new social news sharing sites – Digg, Facebook and Newsvine – to which its readers can submit the stories for further dissemination and discussion.
“The discussions are happening on the other sites, but there is still a way to link back to the (NYTimes.com) site,” Christine Topalian, manager of strategic planning and business development at NYTimes.com said to the Seattle PI. “So it is really to build awareness around the articles with users who may or may not have heard about the article.”
Discussions or not, it is about capturing them page views, and it is not a bad move, though I question how much traffic Facebook and Newsvine can drive to the Times. Digg is skewed highly in favor of technology stories, where the Times, well it is in New York. The fact that Times Select and staff blogs are not included in this “social news” makeover shows that the Times still doesn’t know what really gets people talking.
Still, cannot knock them for trying to do the right thing. Not like some other companies that are using dirty tricks like “pop ups” to buy traffic, and sell expensive advertising. The New York Times (there they are again) reports that Entrepreneur.com, ForbesAutos, Condenast’s Concierge.com and Heavy.com are using pop-ups to prop up their traffic.
We all hate pop-ups, but these guys have done it one better. Instead of serving pop-up ads, they are serving up their content in pop-ups. “You would hope that publishers of high-quality content would use advertising techniques that were in keeping with that,” Scott Symonds, vice president for media at Agency.com to the New York Times, said in reference to the tactics adopted by the aforementioned sites. Amen to that – but then it is about the eyeballs and the page views and the money….
I believe you deleted the word “reports” from the following sentence: “The New York Times (there they are again), [reports] Entrepreneur.com, ForbesAutos, Condenast’s Concierge.com and Heavy.com are using pop-ups to prop up their traffic.”
The Times reported this story today about these other sites. The Times has not been accused of this practice.
yikes… sorry about that. thanks for the catch george.
Back in October, I wrote about a couple of the Australian news sites being web 2.0 compliant. It was actually a post in jest, though I noted then that a one of them had already embraced the new social phenomenon, by including links to delicious, digg and newsvine.
Al.
New York Times Joins The Bandwagon of Social Bookmarking…
For instance, there is no category for content writing or online copywriting at Digg.com. With newspapers entering into the fray, more varied topics will be covered now.
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[...] that this has a lot less to do with “getting” social media and a lot more to do with trying to drive more traffic to the NY Times websites. If that’s really the plan, it’s pretty likely to fail. [...]