Steve Outing
In the days of yore (pre-Internet, that is), news media and corporations had clearly defined boundaries. Magazines and newspapers gave readers news and objective information. Companies tried to sell goods and services, and placed ads in magazines, newspapers and on TV as a way to sell more. Ah, life was simple then. The Internet has muddled things quite a bit.
Online, many companies now act like media entities. Not only do they want to sell you something, but they also want to inform and entertain (as a means to get you to buy more, of course).
Cyber-savvy corporations are learning to become media companies, in order to make their websites more than marketing fluff – so online users will come back again and again.
This trend is most obvious at pure online companies. For example, TheTrip.com is a successful website that helps travellers book trips online, earning its money mostly from commissions. But it also serves as a travel “magazine”. You can visit the site to get the latest travel industry news from a variety of news sources. It buys the rights to filtered travel-related content from a Web syndication company, and hosts articles on its own website. It is travel magazine and travel agent.
Traditional businesses are picking up on this idea, too. The IBM.com site contains a healthy dose of technology news so that a Web user could actually rely on the website as a portal for technology information – somewhat usurping the need to rely on traditional business media.
Online booksellers are also media companies these days. Amazon.com has a large editorial department that writes its own book and music reviews and interviews, and buys writing from freelancers and other publishers.
The books lover who isn’t put off by a commercial entity presenting “objective” articles about books can get it all from Amazon.com – reviews and books industry news and the ability to buy. There’s no real need for an independent books magazine. So what’s to become of those independent editorial print and online publications, which seek to enlighten and entertain, not sell?
Well, January Magazine (www. janmag.com), a website about books and the books world, has a solution that works. It doesn’t accept advertising and doesn’t sell books. What it does is license its book reviews and editorial content to others – including Chapters.ca, a Canadian online retailer. Chapters buys content and has a staff writing its own reviews, making its website, again, a magazine of sorts, not just a merchant.
This trend of corporations buying and commissioning “editorial” content is creating a booming new industry: Web syndication.
Its two dominant players are United States-based iSyndicate and Screaming Media. iSyndicate does most of its business selling content to corporations that want to liven up the websites they present to the public.
According to chief executive Joel Maske, companies are buying such content as weather, horoscopes and lifestyle articles, as well as news stories. A client like Fidelity Investments even buys sports content for its websites, recognising that its online audience of brokers and financial advisers has interests outside money.
Companies are looking at the demographics of their website users and figuring out what content to publish to serve their needs and desires – just as a newspaper or magazine would. It’s an interesting phenomenon to watch. The Internet results in corporations becoming more like media while some media companies start to look like pseudo- retailers, as they engage in online commerce and begin selling merchandise around their content. It’s a strange (new) media world we’re seeing evolve before our eyes.
Steve Outing is a columnist for Editor & Publisher and Writer’s Digest. He is also chief executive and founder of Content Exchange ([email protected])