Thursday, July 21, 2005 4:35 PM
In a follow-up to an item
I mentioned a couple of months ago,
The Denver Post has now gone live with a free, branded news reader. Called
News Hound, the news reader can be installed in about five minutes right on your computer. It looks like other news readers out there (in fact,
Newgator assisted on this project) except for the Denver Post logo (with link to DenverPost.com, of course) and a menu that offers both pre-loaded feeds (DenverPost.com feeds, of course) and a simple interface to a directory of other feeds, including quite a few blawgs. You also have the option of adding any other feed you wish, not just those suggested or pre-loaded.
Can't you smell the change in the air? Under the old web model of Browse and Search, the online versions of newspapers like the Denver Post had to rely on visitors browsing to the website every day to scan the headlines. Or, finding the site via one of the search engines. Or, paying for online advertising that might entice a user to click and visit its site. These models are still valid. However, in these days of information overload, they have worked better for some than for others. Busy people often lack the time to aimlessly wander the web. And, for less tech-savvy enterprises like newspapers, there remains a lot of wishing and hoping (not too mention relying on and paying search engine companies) involved in these models.
On the other hand, moving to the emerging web model that blawgs and syndication technologies are helping to usher in--Browse, Search, Subscribe--online news companies have new tools to help drive readership (and traffic) to their websites. How? First, by enticing visitors to subscribe to their news and information. These subscriptions will allow for information to be delivered to inboxes, cellphones, pda's, iPods, etcetera, the second it is published. The subscribers can then scan the headline in seconds and click-through the headline to read more at the newspaper's website if interested. In practice, this will give the newspaper many chances to entice the user to visit its site, every day. And, instead of just wishing and hoping, it has a connection to that user that it can modify to try and draw more interest (better headlines, tailored content, etc.).
Even more intriguing, the Post is not stopping at merely providing the feeds to which visitors can subscribe. It is pushing the envelope much further by giving visitors the tools (the news reader itself) to subscribe. At the same time, the Post is lowering the threshold for subscribing by pre-loading feeds right into the news reader (highlighting Denver Post content, of course). News Hound doesn't force a user to subscribe to the Post's feeds, but it sure makes it easy to do so!
Taking a leap to law, I wonder how the Post's model could apply to the legal vertical? What if tomorrow, Lexis delivered a free branded news reader to its existing user base? Pre-loaded with feeds of its choosing, of course. And, did I mention there is a spot for advertising included on the news reader. Sure, users of the Lexis-brand news reader could subscribe to any feed (including those provided by companies like Thomson-West, etc) they wished, but how many would go to that extra effort if the same or similar information was already being delivered via the pre-loaded feeds provided? This is just a hypothetical, of course, but while we are on the subject, what if a company also made the free branded news reader load right into Outlook? Would a lot of people just skip browsing to various legal news websites and instead just "check the headlines," while they are checking their inbox?
Hmm. Food for thought. I don't expect the change to happen overnight, but something is afoot I think. Good stuff.