A smarter, greener, and more personalized news (Part 2)
This is part two of a two-part story on the state of the newspaper industry.
The first thing I do in the morning is grab my phone and read the Toronto Star’s website on my bed. I love reading the news, both print and online versions. Recently, the Toronto Star persistently had been calling me to renew my subscription. I did renew the weekend subscription, but I regretted it by Sunday. My biggest headache is the amount of unread paper piled up for recycling, and, to my surprise, since acquiring an iPhone in 2007, my reading habits have changed and I have become used to instant access of the news on my phone. So, on a few occasions, I forgot to pick up the paper by the door in the morning.
During a recent commute on the subway, I noticed a small technology shift. I saw a businessman in his 30s reading the Wall Street Journal on his 10” Kindle DX, instead of the broadsheets (which are often a challenge to read in a cramped subway). He was doing the same as I do. Every morning commute, I read the Toronto Star on my phone, but often Internet reception is not readily available in the subway. This got me thinking that there must be a better way to read the paper. How about a personalized, wireless, device-agnostic, and location-based news service?
1) Personalized and social sharing content:
The physical paper is always designed to cater to a wide range of audiences, hence the paper is usually thick and prints everything for everyone. Half of my Saturday paper is often unread. New web content is created every hour, and the old paper becomes uninteresting by the evening.
To solve the problem of excessive printing, let’s look to the Internet for some inspirations. The beauty of Netflix and Twitter is that we are our own personal content selector. Imagine a newspaper that gives you the level of personalization like Netflix and suggests similar genres or contrasting articles. On Twitter, I can filter only the journalists whom I want to “follow” or “unfollow”. I can also pick and choose what genre of articles to read. For example, I can subscribe only to the columnist Michael Geist and the political commentator Chantal Hubert. The paper connects with my friends and they can recommend other articles and be notified within the app, instead of receiving it as an email or a Facebook status update.
This is not a proposition to substitute all the editors with computers, but rather to have the readers create their own unique experiences as compared to the current indirect relationship between editors and readers. With a more democratic approach, users can find more niche journalists or articles that the print paper cannot accommodate. Readers will see it as a service, when the news is interactive, completely personalized, and filled with relevant information.
2) Instant access, and content to be delivered to all my devices:
Convenience is the key. The newspaper should push me the latest news before I pick up the device in the morning. For example, I can set to have the content pushed to my devices every morning at 7:00am, instead of having to access the web and physically downloading the content in which I’m interested. Also, I should be able to read the news even when I am out of range, as it is synchronized on a regular basis.
Make the news device-agnostic so that I can read it on my phone, my computer at work, or on a tablet. So, the news should be available on Android, BlackBerry, iPad, iPhone, Kindle etc, and the content synced up across multiple platforms.
3) Combine existing reviews with location services:
Say I am on Queen West, a trendy Toronto street. Wouldn’t it be nice to read the Toronto Star’s extensive reviews on restaurants, boutiques, and condos based on where you are using the GPS technology? Currently with foursquare, a location sharing technology, the reviews are added by average users. What sets The Star’s version apart is their brand value and large database of trusted reviews. Imagine the news can suggest the top three restaurants in walking distance, or boutique reviews, or Christopher Hume’s condo critics. It can also partner with Groupon to push coupons or cross-reference it to the profitable classified database.
4) Break news, but make it relevant:
For any breaking news that’s relevant to me, it will be pushed with a flashing icon and linked to a short update or quick video summary. I often wish the Toronto Star was the first go-to point of breaking news, rather than Twitter.
5) “Surprise me” button:
There are times I like to flip through the physical paper randomly and find the odd article, and often those are some of the best experiences of newspaper reading. A “surprise me” button will suggest articles that are normally not my personal preference.
Charge like a drug dealer.
Make the paper so good that is addictive. Give it for free to get people hooked. The free version can only follow three journalists for instance. Premium features such as exclusive Toronto Star discounts and an unlimited number of journalists could be charged at $2.99 a month and billed through the carriers as an add-on. Follow Chris Anderson’s “Five Percent Rule” – five percent of users support all the rest.
Earlier signs of this version of news already exist in iPad apps called Flipbook (See YouTube video) and Pulse reader. However, they lack offline caching, location-based services, and push delivery. Before my fantasies materialize, I will continue reading my Toronto Star on my phone on the subway, saving interesting articles one at a time before losing 3G reception underground.
Like our previous blog about The Globe and Mail, newspapers have evolved and are getting smarter and more attractive. The question remains, will these changes renew the general public’s interest in reading newspaper? Or have people changed their reading habits completely? What would your future of newspaper be like?
Meetings with Meaning
Jul 23, 2010 Ideas, New, Project Management
Meetings – everyone has them, everyone hates them, and they tend to take up more time than the allotted 30 minutes or one hour we have scheduled in our calendars. Internal meetings are the worst; you start to talk about everything on your plate, giving the purpose for the meeting less priority. Not only does this cause you to lose your focus, it also renders the meeting “a waste of time”. Losing focus in a meeting can be detrimental to the purpose of the meeting.
SJG is no exception; we have in the past fallen into this trap of internal meeting hell. Our meetings would spiral down into production details of our clients work. We would lose sight of the big picture. We would forget what the meetings purpose was. We needed a framework for our internal meetings in order to regain focus on our what was important to our company. In short we needed to think of our team as a client.
Here is a set of tools and techniques that we came up with to apply to all of our internal meetings:
- Have a published agenda: Publishing the agenda to the team shares accountability for the meeting. An hour is not a long time, and an agenda will ensure each topic is addressed.
- Set the timer: Deadlines are your friend and meeting them provides a great sense of accomplishment once completed.
- Action items: What needs to be accomplished for the next meeting?
- Ownership: Who is responsible for each action item?
- Commit to next meeting! Another deadline that will ensure your team meetings are successful.
One of the outcomes was our bi-weekly blogs. We now apply the knowledge we have with our clients to the SJG team. What can you do to make your meetings more profitable and enjoyable?
Winner of Marketing Effectiveness Award
Oct 16, 2009 New
We are honoured to announce that we are the winner of the 2009 Summit Marketing Effectiveness Awards! This is the culmination of working with our great creative team and great clients, who all focused on creating a memorable marketing experience.
The award was in the business-to-business product category and was selected from over 504 international entries. Our RFID bookmarking experience, which was created for Research In Motion (RIM), the makers of the popular BlackBerry® smartphone, was chosen.
Partnered with The Taylor Group, the RFID bookmarking experience was developed for the BlackBerry events marketing team. It provided visitors at the BlackBerry tradeshow booths a way of tagging the products and services in which they were interested. At the end of each day, the visitor received a customized email with targeted information and offers that were tailored specifically to their tradeshow visit. RIM was able to accurately track leads and determine the effectiveness of each area of the tradeshow booth. In addition, the powerful analytics allowed RIM to compare the performance of different tradeshows from year to year and across various industry segments.
For more information, please visit:
• A video demo of the RFID bookmarking experience in action
• Customer video testimonials
• Our case study
To find out more about this award or other services The St. John Group can offer, please contact Thom Rockliff at 416.504.4884.
Tags: Award, Bookmarking, Marketing Effectiveness, RFID
Welcome to the New SJG Website!
Jun 11, 2009 New
After much pondering, designing and coding we are ready to launch the new website. We have added additional projects and case studies on our site. Take a look around. Make yourself at home.
Over the next few months we will unveil some exciting new additions to our digital home. So don’t forget to subscribe to our RSS feed so we can keep you up to date on the latest adventures of SJG. We’re excited to hear what you think of our new site. Send us an email or comment on our blog. We would love to start a conversation with you.
