Blogging

One of my strongest interests this year has been news and content business models, and how to pay for content that’s given away free online. As a blogger (and my professional interest as a writer, researcher, and consultant on news business models), I’m especially interested in the wave of new solutions for websites and blogs to attract money from volunteer contributors.

This weekend, Kachingle, one of the first of this new wave of voluntary-pay solutions I heard and started writing about in early 2009, debuted its service in beta. (Disclaimer.) I’m excited to finally see this concept in action, and find out if my gut instincts are correct: that some websites and blogs can make a tidy revenue stream of voluntary user donations (a.k.a., crowdfunding).

Image from Kachingle.com

It’d be great if you would “Kachingle” me, which means that you like my blog and writing enough to monetarily support it (along with your other favorite sites and blogs that will start using Kachingle). Note the Kachingle “medallion” in the upper right of all my blog pages and sign up.

Here’s the quick version of Kachingle for the first-time user:

• Via the medallion, you’d sign up for a Kachingle account
• This will entail committing to a $5/month Paypal withdrawal from your account
• That $5 will be shared each month among all sites that you like most (and are Kachingle publishers carrying the medallion)
• Whenever you encounter a Kachingle-enabled site, if it’s one you like and visit often, mouseover the Kachingle medallion so it expands, then click “Kachingle website.com”
• Your money will be distributed only among sites you’ve “Kachingled” and based on number of site visits by you

So, now as a Kachingle paying member, your money (minus Kachingle’s admin fee) will be shared by the sites you’ve “Kachingled.” No money will go to Kachingle-enabled sites that you haven’t opted to support.

I’m in touch with several other companies also looking for monetary solutions for free online content, including several operating under the crowdfunding principle, and you’ll see me test them out on this blog. Currently I have alpha versions of SurfShare and Payyattention on this blog, but both of those are still in demo mode; no money is being accepted by them yet.

I’ve tried out a couple others but took them down due to coding conflicts. As those developers get things straightened out, I’ll experiment with their services, too.

This is going to be interesting to watch, across the web. Will voluntary user/reader support represent much money for websites and blogs that try it?

I don’t think that crowdfunding is going to save the news industry, though it could become a nice extra revenue stream for web news publishers. I think that for some bloggers, crowdfunding using streamlined donation solutions like Kachingle could be significant.

So Kachingle is off and running. Let’s see the rest of you launch soon, and see what happens!

Take a look at the left column of this blog, at the top just under the masthead, and you’ll see something new. It’s an experimental counter that tracks your personal usage on just this site. [Clarification: you may not see the counter widget until you've clicked around to a story or two on this site.] Called SurfShare and developed by NewsCloud’s Jeff Reifman, in time you’ll see more sites carry this widget.

Thus, for those participating sites that you visit, you’ll get a quick visual cue of how often you view those sites. It’s valuable feedback (I think), because with all the websites and blogs that most people visit in a typical day, you may not be fully aware of which ones you frequent often. (Be sure to enable your Facebook Connect connection on SurfShare, then it will soon track you across different computers, not just a single one.)

For publishers, the SurfShare personalized, site-specific stats for each user represent opportunity to make money by identifying your most faithful and frequent visitors. I’ll explain that in a bit.

For a more complete explanation of SurfShare, read Reifman’s blog post yesterday announcing the alpha launch.

SurfShare already has some nifty features such as, for the site visitor, a searchable, auto-tagged listing of all stories viewed on participating sites, and a widget that shows which of your Facebook friends have read a story; and for the publisher, a widget that shows a specific site’s most popular pages. More useful widgets are coming, Reifman says, such as a feature of SurfShare.org that will recommend stories your friends have read.

Now, back to that money thing. I think SurfShare is a smart idea, for one reason, because it helps a site publisher or blogger identify their “best customers” and most-frequent visitors. For example, with SurfShare, Reifman soon will add the ability for a participating site publisher to take actions after an individual user has visited the site, say, 10 times, or read 10 articles.

Examples of what action a publisher might take are many:

• A blog owner might after a visitor has read 10 articles redirect to a page that says some thing like, “Hey, I noticed that you seem to like my blog! Thanks for being a regular reader. I write this blog in my spare time, and if you’d like me to continue, I’d love it if you click the donate button below and send me whatever amount you’d like to support my writing. Thanks!”
• On the opposite extreme, a news publisher might decide that once a site visitor has read, say, 10 stories that he/she should start paying, and demand signing up for a micropayment account where each article read costs 1 cent. (This might hook into payments systems like those coming from Journalism Online, BitCents, or Google Checkout, or be part of SurfShare’s future options.)
• A site owner could use the user tracking to identify the best prospects for premium memberships. For example, The Times (of London) website could offer visitors a discount on its £50-a-year News+ premium online membership after they’ve read 10 articles on the site — and if no response, perhaps an even steeper discount after 20 articles. (See my most recent blog item about Times+.)
• A news site might notice that a visitor has viewed 10 sports pages, then offer a sports premium membership or suggest an e-commerce purchase (e.g., souvenir Super Bowl book) at a discount.

There are so many possibilities for what a blog or site publisher could experiment with using this approach. While some smart media companies with sophisticated publishing and marketing systems may already have tried such tactics, SurfShare appears as an opportunity for small sites and blogs to take advantage of new revenue-generating strategies based on tracking individual users’ behavior and identifying their best and most loyal online visitors.

Installation involves add a few lines of Javascript to your site, and a Wordpress plug-in is planned. You can add your site to SurfShare and pick up the code from this webpage.

I have a bias toward rewarding frequent visitors to a specific website or blog. I’d much rather offer the person who’s read 20 stories on my food-related site in the last week a discount or 2-for-1 meal coupon from an advertising restaurant, or offer a 25% discount on a recipe book that I’ll sell them, than force them to subscribe or start paying per article. Reifman has a differing view and likes the micropayment model. But the great thing about technology like SurfShare is that we can experiment and figure out what works best.

One other thing I like about the SurfShare model is that I think the user feedback of the tracker will motivate heavy users of a site to change their behavior, which might be to financially support the site in some new way. This reminds me very much of the miles-per-gallon (MPG) indicator in my wife’s car, which is a gas-electric hybrid.

Huh? Well, I’ve noticed the impact of that MPG meter on the dash on my driving habits. My car does not have an MPG indicator. Guess what: I find that I drive more smoothly and conservatively in my wife’s car, because that MPG indicator lets me know when I’m being a “bad” driver and wasting gas. In my own car with no such indicator, I tend to drive in my more normal manner: faster, with quicker starts and stops. The indicator in her car alters my behavior.

I think that for heavy users of a particular site, seeing their personal stats could likewise change their behavior. They may be more willing to support a site knowing how much they use it. It will be up to publishers and academic researchers to figure out how best to persuade such people to part with some of their money — whether by voluntary donation, making a prompted online purchase, buying a premium memberships, etc.

A while back I installed Tracer on this (Wordpress-based) blog, as an experiment to see what people were copying from my blog entries. It’s interesting information, but I regret setting Tracer up so that it would also include a customized link request that shows up whenever someone pastes words copied from my blog.

The idea is that the person excerpting some of your article might keep the attribution line and sends links back to your blog. Fine in theory, but I personally found it annoying when I copied some of my own words and pasted them elsewhere. (I’d have to trim the link request code.)

Also, I’ve noticed a drop in my recent blog entries being picked up by other bloggers. I have no idea whether this Tracer setting discourages people from excerpting my blog content, or if it’s another factor (like getting more link referrals on Twitter and Facebook than other blogs, which seems to be a trend).

Whatever, I turned off the Tracer auto-link generator for cut-and-pastes from this blog, so Tracer is merely monitoring and telling me what content others have copied from my blog, which is fascinating information. No more annoyances.

Here’s the video promised by Cleveland Plain Dealer Impact Editor John Kroll (representing the paper’s online/digital side) having a follow-up debate with Reader Representative Ted Diadiun about some disparaging comments Diadiun made toward bloggers and Internet news sites during a previous video chat, which generated quite a bit of heat. (Original link on Cleveland.com.)

This is not one of Diadiun’s normal video web chats, but rather a debate between an Internet-savvy Kroll and Diadiun (appearing on his day off!), who while contrite about some of the things he said previously, still strikes me as in need of some education about the media transformation we’re experiencing. Since Diadiun didn’t exactly back off his use of the word “pipsqueaks,” I’ll refrain from backing off my earlier blog-item description of him as a news “curmudgeon” in need of some further education.

See for yourself. (BTW, the headline below in the embedded video is part of the video; I didn’t write it, a Cleveland.com staff member did.)

Kroll makes the point that Diadiun’s rant last week represents only one opinion of many in the Plain Dealer’s newsroom of 240, and that many other staffers there have opinions that differ from either of the two men in this video. I’m glad he emphasized that.

However, from my point of view, the Plain Dealer can’t afford to have too many people on staff with views similar to Diadiun’s. For newspapers to get through the transition to profiting in the digital world, they need to pull together as a team and figure out how best to play in the digital landscape. If there are too many folks in that newsroom with views like Diadiun’s that the newspaper is best and other media are inconsequential in comparison, the Plain Dealer doesn’t have a rosy future.

I won’t go so far as to opine that Diadiun or any other “curmudgeons” in the newsroom need to be removed, but they do need some remedial education on what’s actually happening to modern media.

Today I finally got around to fixing this blog’s RSS feeds, which got messed up some time ago when I stopped using another domain name and fouled up my Feedburner settings. In repairing the damage, I seem to have lost lots of people who subscribed to this blog’s feed. Ugh.

If you’d like to be alerted to new blog items posted by me, please click the “Subscribe in a reader” link in the left column. If you prefer e-mail alerts, type in your address in the “Receive new posts by e-mail” box and click “Subscribe.”

Thanks, and apologies for the bother if I suddenly dropped out of your RSS reader.

Since much of my attention these days seems to be on how to get writers and media companies paid on the web, allow me to pass along the latest scheme I’ve learned of. Payyattention.com (2 y’s?) looks to be promising for bloggers and individual writers wanting their fans to voluntarily pay for their work. The social aspect of the service is what makes this more than your standard tip-jar web service.

Check out the video explanation. (Sorry, can’t embed video here; that ability has been disabled by video’s creator.)

This strikes me as so funny and unusual, I have to blog it. … So earlier today I posted this to Twitter:

A short while later I notice that I’ve turned up on Columbia Journalism Review’s website on its “The Kicker” blog, where the (short) blog item is actually longer than my tweet!

I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with this; I’m happy for the exposure of my candid Twitter thoughts to CJR’s audience. It just amuses me that my 140 characters could grow into something more.

(And thanks, Megan, for referring to me as “new media guru” — although I always feel unworthy on the rare occasions that I get described that way. I have learned a thing or two about digital media over the years, but don’t yet feel worthy of the guru moniker!)

Since John McCain has stated that he doesn’t know how to use a computer, his campaign’s reaction to someone hacking into running mate Sarah Palin’s Yahoo Mail account and spreading the contents around the web should come as no surprise. (It appears that the e-mails are legit.) His campaign manager, Rick Davis, appears to be as equally clueless about “the Internets.”

In this Gawker report on the hijacked e-mails, Davis is quoted:

“The matter has been turned over to the appropriate authorities and we hope that anyone in possession of these emails will destroy them.”

Oy! Perhaps they still use typewriters over at McCain campaign HQ. Davis must be thinking we still live back in the day when the news media could be persuaded to squelch something like this. If the media decided to hold back (because, after all, this was an illegal act committed by someone, and old media probably wouldn’t touch a story that’s so ethically and legally challenged), then the public wouldn’t see the e-mails.

Sorry, Mr. Davis, but we don’t live in that era anymore. Even if your lawyers convinced Gawker to take them down (unlikely), there are copies popping up on websites all over the place, and all over the world. Any attempt at playing digital whack-a-mole with Palin’s personal e-mails would be fruitless. Many Internet users will take it as a challenge to spread the e-mails even further if you try to (pointlessly) tamp this down.

I’m not saying that I condone someone breaking into Palin’s Yahoo account. What I am saying is that now that this has happened, the McCain camp is basically screwed.

My advice to the campaign: You’ll look foolish and demonstrate your lack of understanding of the Internet if you try to get everyone to take down those purloined e-mails. You’re in a lousy place, so put your focus on dealing with the content of the e-mails, and explaining why it was OK (if you can) that Palin was conducting official business using Yahoo.

The other dilemma here is for traditional news organizations. Will they publish the e-mails? I doubt it, and I certainly wouldn’t encourage them to. But they should report on the brouhaha taking place online about Palin’s e-mail account, and can address the personal account used for official business controversy.

This is for my wife, who is trying to figure out how to use Twitter (despite that her friends aren’t on it yet). You might find it interesting too…

How Do You Use Twitter? from biz stone on Vimeo.

This is a great quote, by Dan Gillmor (via a Twitter post by Dan Pacheco):

OK, perhaps the second sentence is paraphrased, but I really like it. “‘Dog bites man’ is newsworthy if you know the man, or dog,” so nicely sums up what I’ve been thinking for some time about what many have termed “hyper-local” journalism.

Yes, dog bites man, or 5th-grader hits winning home run, or woman wins teacher of the year award at Smith Elementary are boring items to nearly everyone — but not to the people involved and the people who know them. For the latter group, it’s important stuff.

We now have the technology available online (and for mobile devices) to deliver that boring-to-everyone-but-me stuff to the right people. We don’t need to produce a weekly give-away print product filled with boring dog-bites-man stuff, because we can deliver it to the people for whom it’s important, interesting, and vital — and not bore everyone else.

To critics of hyper-local news or “citizen journalism,” I will argue that it can be powerful stuff when and only when it’s targeted well. I can envision a future — and I look forward to it — when services are available to send me news on my smartphone letting me know that the guy down the street got bit by a dog.