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For more details, check out the full press release.
We see ourselves at Topix as part of the local ecosystem of news and community, especially in towns which have a lot of usage (We have nearly a million daily page views in Tennessee, mainly in towns just like Sparta). And, we love it when stories are sourced from Topix. But we'll be damned if we let people try to find out the real identities of our users are with a FAKE SUBPOENA.
So, we salute the folks at WMSV TV, Nashville for their investigative piece on Dale Dodson, the Sparta Tennessee police officer who tried to get the IP addresses of people who posted here on Topix with subpoenas that were never signed by a judge.
While I have a lot of respect for local law enforcement, YOU HAVE TO FOLLOW THE LAW, GUYS. Want to see the evidence that in trying to get information, this guy tried to get pass the whole subpoena process?
See for yourself:
We received this hand addressed envelope in the mail:
And, here's the (again, handwritten) note enclosed. Let's check out what the Sergeant had to say:
Sgt. Dodson kindly included a "Subpoena" document. I didn't know you could get a generic subpoena form at the local Piggly Wiggly:
You'll note the lack of case number, clerk or judge's signature and the lack of any sort of official letterhead. Needless to say, we passed this on to our lawyers, and it looks like the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation is now on the case.
So. We are happy to try and work with the police, especially when they are trying to track down a murderer. We've worked with the Secret Service, FBI and myriad local law enforcement. We also take the privacy of our users seriously, and this whole episode leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth.
If you're a police officer, you really should try and present a better example. Seriously.
With in-depth coverage nationwide, Topix Aura dynamically updates local information based on your GPS location or saved ZIP code. You can easily browse a stream of the latest local information, including:
You can also browse news headlines in context via the handy News Map.
Available for every city in the country, Topix Aura is the only local app with complete coverage across the United States. Download it now!
It’s that time again. Time to cast your vote, make yourself heard, and decide the agenda for the 2010 SXSW Interactive Conference.
Last year, Chris Tolles moderated a lively panel on User Generated Content. LA Weekly wrote a great piece about it (complete with tips for how to rock SXSW).
Topix is again in the running, with a great panel on “Driving Business through Community.”
Give us the thumbs up and Tolles will buy you a drink in Austin.
The Panel Picker closes September 4th, so vote today!
The author makes a bunch of vaguely arguable points, damns the medium with faint praise, ("Twitter made the world stand up and listen" but failed to bring down the Iranian regime, so is therefore useless, is the gist of it) and in facts ends the article with a "how to use social media" guide. Likely his editor, then tops the whole thing off with the linkbait headline.
But the best riposte to this piece is none other than the actual page where the article appears. Between the the "How to use Twitter" block, and the GIANT CHUNK OF REAL ESTATE for the social network every newspaper likes, Digg, it is quite clear that the Telegraph's business practices reflect that social media is a big part of the the equation for them. There are no less than FOUR separate blocks of pixels, er , references to Twitter on the page here. Subtlety is not a concern for the Telegraph and its use of Twitter.
Obviously, this was a cynical exercise in baiting, or rather soliciting just this sort of response. But jumping Jesus on a Viagra ad, the juxtaposition of what Matt Warman states and what the Telegraph does is cause for a pretty big chuckle. (And the smart guys behind the Telegraph efforts even have the Twitter referrer on this baked into the URL).
So, pointless exercise in being wrong, or well executed pageview generator? The Daily Telegraph -- journal of Luddites, or truly the state of the art version of 2009 journalism? Vomitous applause, to Matt and the Telegraph here.
Let's take a look at the Telegraph piece and all of the myriad of social networking elements on the page (maybe 20% of the screen real estate?):
We here at Topix do pretty well with local discussions with over 140,000 comments a day, but in San Francisco, SFGate rocks, and there were over hundreds of comments on several articles on the issues reflecting what people think about the Union, and its threat to strike.
A particularly nice feature of the SFGate's comment system is the "Most recommended comments". Some of the highlights here with hundreds of "votes" behind each of these:
It is incredible that, at a time when California is really on the ropes partially because of bloated payrolls for those working for the State, these workers would even consider striking. How about a lockout followed by a last, best, and final offer, and then hire people who want to work and replace these greedy people! --sheridanw
I was really hoping for the strike because: 1... A lot of lazy jerks would get fired... 2. A lot of people who are out of work would be able to get a new job... 3. I would get to work from home! --inmyopinion
In a region where every politician of note is a Democrat, and the Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, is currying the favor of a core constituency by promising to be be a "warrior for labor", commentary on the SFGate provide a key and critical place for the public to make its opinions known about issues that a one sided set of elected officials can't touch with a ten foot pole.
I've said this before, but SFGate gets my vote for best use of comments for a newspaper in the US, for actually referring to them in its articles, and wielding their commentariat as a club against the vested interests that prevent discourse on subjects where a few really obscure the opinions of the many (homelessness, unions, club closings, etc). It's a shame that they don't use our commentary system, but I'm a big fan of a major US daily standing behind the opinions of its readers.
Bravo to Carla Marinucci for calling this issue out!
Update: I just noticed Carla wrote up an additional piece on voters, unions, and commentary sentiment here., which is also worth reading.
]]>Jason and I responded to several questions from folks from the audience, as well as from people on the web.
Anyway, here it is. Was a fun show. Jason has really built a great audience here.
]]>I guess its time for another crop of news products from journalists. Why is it that when these guys all go onto the field of battle "once more into the breach" style, they don't understand which side of the Agincourt analogy they are on. They face superior weapons and a difference in culture and ethics. They are the French in this battle. They die.
While I applaud Howard Weaver for trying to switch from defense to offense, he seems to be going off with some pretty faulty assumptions:
Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL are making more money from online content than the newspaper industry makes from everything. Many billions of those dollars are tied directly to the distribution of news and news searches, and that’s the money news companies must find a way to get.
Let’s say those online giants – call them GYMA – make $15 billion a year from news and news-related content (searches, archives, etc). I think that’s a conservative guess
Uh. No. That's just wrong.
AOL annual revenue is $4.2B, Google $21.8B, MSN ~$2B, and Yahoo $7.2B
So, since the grand total is around $36B, Google news is pretty much a non revenue products, and Google was doing just fine with little or no news results in their main index until the last couple of years. Yahoo does put news ina lot of their products, but certainly, nowhere near 50% of their advertising is sold against news, as is the same for AOL and MSN.
(Oh and last time I checked the newspaper industry advertising revenue was $37.85B)
News is a crap search product, and a loss leader, which is a big reason why Google news was in beta for years, and unmonetized, and why many news-centric searches get no ads next to them.
News is an unprofitable search. Since we at Topix are an adsense partner, and I am a downstream beneficiary to what revenues there are here, I know what kind of eCPM news brings and how hard it is to make money on aggregated "news" content.
Howard goes on to identify his view of the problem:
The problem for news companies is that Google spans the globe, and they individually can’t. Only by banding together to offer the collective judgment of thousands of journalists about hundreds of relevant stories and presenting that in web-savvy ways can they reach the scale necessary to win a share of the billions already flowing to Google, Yahoo, AOL and MSN.
So if you built a news aggregator, powered by journalists, this would somehow unlock the value and get to $1.5B in annual revenues?
NO. YOU WOULDN"T.
If that was true, Daylife, Inform, newsvine and the myriad of other startups would be actually makiing a ton of money and chewing up the pop charts. Or Digg for that matter, or the Huffington Post.
BUT THEY AREN"T, ARE THEY?
Closer to home, I have some experience in running a news site here at Topix, and having talked to Howard while he was at McClatchy (and one of our investors), I am somewhat puzzled since I actually talked him personally about the economics of news search a few years ago.
We've built a site which is,according to comScore, the #2 "newspaper" site online. We actually had a program for a while where' we'd give 50% of all ad revenues back to publishers who wanted to syndicate content to us. Didn't work worth a damn.
An old politician in Juneau once reminded me that “you can’t beat something with nothing.”
One point where I agree with Howard. We've since moved on to try and create community around our news, which is percolating along, and focus on local -- which seems to be an area where we can compete with the lack of anything else out there. The success that we're having is creating a product where Google (or the newspapers for that matter) can't, or are unwilling, to compete on even terms. (Hello no more comments on Google news).
But Jeez, why is it that all the old newspaper guys think there's some giant pile of money at the top of the trust pyramid? There isn't. All the money is at the bottom. In the muck. In the details. Where Gawker plays. Where Techcrunch plays. It's not aggregating the "top trusted content, it's owning a category and being the best and, ideally, only ones there.
Journalists don't win this game. Publishers win this game.
People who care about pageviews and winning, more than they worry about concepts like "trust".
The "bad guys" win.
I’m a real dinosaur in the news business in one respect, at least: I spent the first 20 years of my career in life-or-death competition for readers and revenues. The good guys won (that was us) and I’ve never flinched from a competitive fight since
So, while I again applaud Howard -- I'd just urge him to look with a clearer eye towards what's going on and join the right side here. Really, there is no money in building a news aggregator focused on trust. If anything, it can be a start or a loss leader for whatever your real product is. But it is NOT a strategy for direct monetization.
Trust me on that one.
]]>We had Google with their own blog post, being chased by Miguel Helft & Ashlee Vance at the New York Times (who cheekily self reported that they drove the announcement early, breaking the story after hours), followed closely by MG "Machine Gun" Siegler scooping Michael Arrington (I kid) with what was clearly the best piece of early coverage, and best headline, with the whole list being scorekept by Gabe Rivera's Techmeme.
Then, you had the masses and masses and masses of coverage.
But, take it from a guy who worked at Sun, Netscape and AOL for over ten years, and someone who was Eric Schmidt's only sales guy at the Sun's Office of the CTO for a while -- the BEST analysis of the whole shebang? The best point by point deconstruction of the Google OS announcement? Well, hand it to Danny Sullivan (the number one search analyst with a bullet) to point it out to me -- Fake Steve Jobs.
No question.
Freed from having to be a "journalist", Dan Lyons (the man behind Fake Steve Jobs) can't help himself -- he nails it. And the key here? Hyperbole and humor. The list of issues in this blog post is THE REAL LIST OF ISSUES.
Lots of people made the point about Google's focus -- but check out this bad boy:
Point five: What the fuck is going on inside Google? How much more out of control and undisciplined can this place get? How many new goddamn operating systems are they going to create? They've already got Android, and nobody wants it. Now they're going to make yet another operating system, this time out of a browser that nobody wants. What's next? A Gmail-based operating system? A YouTube-based operating system? Honestly, Google, is there anyone in charge over there? Is there anyone who knows how to criticize anything in that fucked up little Montessori preschool of yours? I mean I guess it's nice that you all get to spend 20 percent of your time dreaming up useless shit, and I guess you have to use the Montessori method and tell everyone that whatever little piece of shit they've created is just so wonderful and perfect and beautiful -- but really, as I've told Eric before, that doesn't mean you have to release everything these bozos dream up. There's a word for this. It's called "no." Have you heard of it?
The humor makes the point better than the "real" analysis out there.
Or what about Chrome's current marketshare?
Point four: You also may not have noticed, but nobody uses Chrome. I mean think about it. Do you know anyone who uses Chrome? Really? And you know why nobody uses Chrome? Because Chrome is shit. Just utter, utter shit. I mean they've got all these big brains at Google and you'd think they could make a decent fucking browser. Jesus, the freetards at Mozilla can do it. But not Google. Nope. They gave it their big best effort and what did they come up with? Chrome. It's a joke. I mean, literally, we laugh about it, except when Eric is around. But as soon as he leaves the room we all go "Chrome!" and just burst out laughing.
Seriously. It's the best thing I've read about the whole project.
So what's the bigger point here? Like Jon Stewart, when Dan Lyons starts to rock in his Fake Steve Jobs role, he actually gets to the truth in ways that all the other journalists *want* to, and ends up making his point *better* than if he had to actually use the tone and tenor of a "real" news site.
Similarly, MG's use of the Atomic friggin' bomb on his TechCrunch Post really made the point a lot better about the importance of this than the reporting from a really really good NY Times reporter, Miguel Helft. The NY Times guys cracked the story, and drove those guys at Google to put out their blog post ahead of schedule -- brilliant. But then they're trapped by the leaden prison of reporting "all the news fit to print".
And everyone else said the same thing twenty minutes later
I suppose we should be happy about the range and quality of the coverage here. In this new world, you have to be able to tell the real from the fake -- and I trust those guys at the Times, (and MG for that matter) to tell me what they know to be true.
But I'm putting Fake Steve Jobs on my list of people to read when I want to understand what's going on. Nice job, Dan.
]]> ]]>Mark posited that with 40MM monthly pageviews, and $560k of revenue (half is which is from a network of blogs or some Outside.in like stuff, not part of the core site), a reasonably sized city paper could afford a staff of around 20 people.
Two problems.
Only a handful of newspapers have the 40MM pageviews. like less than 20.
And, next, you are estimating a $7.00 eCPM sitewide, and a pretty healthy eCPm for your 3rd party network revenue. Now, I'm rooting for those guys at Outside.in to deliver on this kind of revenue, but we have used every single ad network on the web here at Topix, and let me tell you, getting $7.00 sitewide eCPM on news is really really tough.
So, what's the solutuion? Personally, after talking to Tim Redmond at the Bay Guardian and Billy Jensen at Village Voice Media, I think the alt weeklies have a pretty good balance of print and online and a sales effort that makes sense for a locality, and those publications are in fact right in line with the staffing that Mark is talking about, have a good shot at selling lcoal advertising and seem to be doing ok.
But.
There's no way that your typical midtier local newspaper is getting to 40MM monthly pageviews any time soon, and that means a staff of 20 is probably going to be pushing it for a local online only publication.
]]>And I'm not talking about e-commerce (although I'm as big a fan of Zappos as anyone). I'm talking about finding out the best deals on products in my town.
Since Topix has news & community for every city and town in the U.S., it makes a lot of sense for us to partner with services looking to leverage the growing, national footprint of local audiences we've built.
But as with the news we aggregate, it can be a challenge to present these myriad partnerships in a way that's compelling and clear to visitors. In an effort to accomplish that -- for every city in the U.S. no less -- we've built a new shopping page, which gathers together our commercial partnerships in one, handy place.
This example for San Mateo, California, offers electronics and appliances from Krillion.com, clothes and accessories from Nearbynow.com, useful product reviews from Wize.com, yellow page listings, and coupons from local businesses.
Looking for a car, place to live, a pet or a date? This new page also helps visitors find our existing classified partnerships with SimplyHired.com, Cars.com, Apartments.com, Trulia.com, Oodle.com, and Match.com.
Happy shopping.
]]>But this press release caught my eye today, when it came in on the fax:
Staunton, IL is proud to host the 21st Annual Tour de Donut and 4th Annual Rib Cook-off on Saturday, July 11, 2009. The Tour de Donut is a unique bike race, in which you can eat donuts at the designated stops in order to reduce your race time. Last year, more than 850 riders participated in the race. Registration for the race is now open. In conjunction with the race, a Rib Cook-off will be occurring in which food will be served starting at 9am, with the ribs being served at 5pm. Entertainment will be provided by Five and Dimers, The Wherehouse Project, and Gumbohead. For more information visit, bebikeclub.com or stauntonil.com.
Sounds like the Bay to Breakers in SF has some competition for wacky.
]]>
Many thanks to the Topix community and CNET Webware editors for voting Topix a Webware 100 Winner in the Location-Based Services category.
The 2009 Webware 100 Awards recognize the best Web 2.0 sites, services, and applications that are leading the next wave of innovation. Webware editors received and reviewed thousands of entries. Then, the Web 2.0 user community cast more than 630,000 votes in an online voting poll which ultimately selected the winners.
“This annual listing has become such an essential resource for people who want to learn more about Web 2.0 and the many ways it can help them stay connected,” said Rafe Needleman, editor at Webware and CNET. “The Web 2.0 community and our editors ultimately selected the very best sites, services and applications that have made a lasting impression.”
The Webware editors had some kind words for Topix, specifically, "It's an ever-swirling page of news that's updated at all hours, and on all topics."
We're proud of the recognition from the CNET Webware editors, and the support from our community. You can join in on the news and community in your own town today.
For what Ms. Heffernan really shines light on is the way that journalists at publications see comments, commentary and commenters.
"Most journalists hate to read it, because it’s stinging and distracting, and readers rarely plow through long comments sections unless they intend to post something themselves."
I'll skip the knock about unsubstatiated generalizations, since I think she's right -- print and old school journalists do hate commentary. And I will give a shout out to MS. Hefferman here for what opened that paragraph:
"Someone should be paying more attention, especially since online newspaper commenters as a whole seem to have (at least) the stamina, drive and spare time to become a cogent part of online journalism."
Well, they are. Michael Arrington of Techcrunch regularly responds in the comments of his news site. And if you were following what the AP was up to, the comments were where it was at for that story, with Jim Kennedy and Arrington mixing it up. And, here at Topix, we're powering through the lack of local reporting by enabling the people to power that news themselves through commentary in over 20,000 cities and towns.
What she's missing here, and what informs the relationship here around journalists and commentary is that commentary makes the story secondary. In commentary, the original article becomes the seed of a conversation or discussion. And, the commentary is not merely some sort of add on to the article, but the main point of the exercise.
The Internet is not, at the end of the day, a distribution vehicle for your content. The Internet is a place for people to interact and participate with your content, add to it, and make something new. The people transform what they get to touch.
The article describes some of the more common behaviors in online commnetary -- the back and forth between commenters, and the observations that most commentary is written for the commenter themselves. If the article had enabled commentary, I would have perhaps pointed out that the Internet does not have "signature 'fact-checking'", or rather, it's called fisking
Perhaps more telling is her point that the fact checking "rarely potent enough to compel corrections by The Post". Maybe it's because the comments are petty and banal. Or maybe the Post (and other publications) aren't really involved or paying attention. Or both.
. And maybe nothing can — or even should — be done to curb entirely the brute urge of readers to defy what they’ve read.
Despite Ms. Heffernan's clear bias here, she gets a lot of it right, and if you care about the future of what news looks like, and why journalists and journalism will fight that future into bankruptcy, this is a great piece.
]]>News Site Unique Visitors (000)
NYTimes.com 10,942
Topix.com 6,495
USA Today Sites 5,960
WashingtonPost.com 5,829
LATimes.com 5,173
Source: comScore, Media Metrix, March 2009
The folks I’ve worked with over the past four years are smart, savvy and realize where they stand. They wanted to make sure they had a stake in a news aggregator with Google having just launched Google news. A little while into their investment, we told them that news aggregation was a great start to a business, but it wasn’t very interesting, from either a traffic or a revenue standpoint. And that doubling down on hyper local news – especially where there currently wasn’t any – was the strategy we were going to pursue.
As Robert Scoble points out in his recent post, Topix and our pursuit of a model to deal with hyperlocal news, is one of the online efforts our newspaper investors have a stake in, and also that local is a pretty major part of the future of the news busienss
While we started out as a broad-based news aggregator, we noticed that what people wanted most was news about their town. So, we moved to augment our news with comments and stories from our visitors. And today it’s great to see that our strategy has paid traffic dividends, and being the #1 site with respect to unique visitors with company like the Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times and USA TODAY is something we’re pretty proud of here at Topix.
There has been a lot of hue and cry about decisions made by the newspaper companies. Looking at the moves made by Gannett, Tribune and Knight Ridder (acquired by McClatchy), it is not like they did nothing. They created the #1 job site online, Careerbuilder, some of the largest classified sites online (cars.com. apartments.com, homegain, and the #1 local news site online – Topix). Despite what journalists think, with the decoupling of classified revenues, there is going to be a huge restructuring in the news business, and it’s going to be bloody. There’s really nothing that would have prevented most of what’s happening here.
Over the past four years, we have grown Topix with its roots in aggregation technology, to the place where people discuss the news and issues important to where the live and work. Embracing audience participation is for us the critical engine for content creation and traffic growth.
Local news is not a search problem, it’s a community opportunity.
There’s still a lot of work to do here, but it feels good to tell my board that we are their #1 most visited site.