Sep/090
Connecting with Your Readers
In August, we listed some helpful online tips for small newspapers, including creating a Twitter tree of accounts, tweeting a live headline feed, posting online events, and blogging. With more and more online news publications signing up for our technology, we've decided to introduce another basic way to connect readers to your organization: user-generated blogs.
Using user-generated content can help enhance the relationship between you and your readers. Implementing social tools that your readers are already using is a great way to involve your audience and enable them to share information through photos, videos, and written posts. For example, CNN's iReport allows users to submit articles, videos, and photos that are unedited or screened before they are posted. "At CNN we live for news," states the About section on iReport. "We love talking about it. And we know that there's a whole lot more to it than what you see on TV or read on your favorite Website. So we've launched an independent world where you, the iReport.com community, tell the stories we're not used to seeing. And the most compelling, important, and urgent ones may get seen on CNN."
The best part is, user-generated photos can be added to your Image Space Media Image Manager so you'll end up with more images on your website. Not only will you build a stronger sense of community, but you could potentially increase the earnings for your site!
Sep/091
Blurring the Line Between Advertising and Editorial
Recently, many popular websites such as Fox News, Popular Mechanics, and IGN have started to use in-text advertising, a technology that turns an article’s words into mini-advertisements. When readers move their cursors over these double-underlined words, a pop-up advertisement appears and blocks some of the article’s text.
Once limited to niche websites, many mainstream news sites now use in-text advertising, blurring the line between editorial and advertising. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, journalism ethics experts believe the trend is ethically problematic and “quite corrosive of journalistic quality and credibility." A spokeswoman from Dow Jones, the organization that publishes the Wall Street Journal, stated that beyond being unethical, the ads “interrupt the reader’s experience.”
But the companies that produce these in-text ads, including Vibrant Media and Kontera, see them as “part of their continuing experimentation with different forms of online advertising.” They believe their technologies help website owners sell additional ads in a time when prime real estate on their sites is sold too quickly.
Image Space Media applauds companies like Vibrant Media and Kontera for their experimentation with online advertising technology. What do you think?