Online Real Estate Technology

Rupert Murdock

There’s been a bit of discussion recently in the blog world about Rupert Murdock’s thoughts on search engines, and in particular Google, and the fact that they provide a lot of information to consumers for free that has been sourced from News Ltd publications, Rupert has always been of the opinion that consumers should pay for news or content they recieve on the Internet, just as they would when buying a newspaper or subscribing to a web site to get the content. He has even threatened to block Google from accessing News Ltd sites. So I thought I would publish a story from Newspaper Death Blog which featured a story on Rupert and search engines, so here it is for you:

“The debate over whether search engines are friend or foe to the newspaper industry continues to grow and become more complex.

Rupert Murdoch says he will really go ahead with his stated plans to remove his portfolio of publications from Google search index. Jonathan Miller, News Corp’s chief digital officer, told the Monaco Media Forum on Friday said the company would begin blocking Google’s search spiders within a few months. Miller said that Google brings in an army of one-click visitors who are “the least valuable of traffic to us…You can survive without it.” He also said Murdoch intends to lead the industry in the just-say-no campaign. A Google spokesman responded that the search engine sends about 100,000 clicks to news organizations every minute. TechCrunch estimates that Google drives about one quarter of the traffic to The Wall Street Journal.

While there’s no doubt that Murdoch is serious about drawing a line in the sand on this issue, the decision to talk about it this far in advance indicates that this is a negotiating tactic. Much as Hearst and the New York Times Co. wrung concessions from unions by threatening to close the papers they own, Murdoch may be looking to extract some kind of licensing deal from Google in return for backing down.

The Journal and the Financial Times are the only two daily newspapers that are having any success with a paid subscription model because both provide information that subscribers see as essential to their business. Few other newspapers can make that claim, which is why paywalls have been so difficult to implement.

Miller’s comment about drive-by visitors is worth noting. Publishers and auditors tend to look at traffic as the ultimate metric of success, but there are different kinds of traffic. Sex and celebrities drive page views just as they sell newsstand copies, but that kind of traffic is undesirable to most advertisers and extremely hard to monetize. If Murdoch has decided that his core base of paying and print subscribers are sufficient to run the company, he may be choosing to press his advantage while he still has leverage. The Wall Street Journal was the only large US newspaper to show any growth in the recent Audit Bureau Of Control report and Murdoch may have decided that he doesn’t need the casual visitor in order to be successful.

The Bing Factor

Media entrepreneur Jason Calacanis thinks Murdoch wants to do a deal. He suggests that the publishing tycoon could strike an exclusive deal with Microsoft Bing. This would have the win-win effect of driving revenue from Microsoft’s deep pockets while also upping the ante in the search wars. It’s an intriguing idea, and few other companies have the throw weight to pull it off.

Bing presents an interesting twist. TechCrunch reported last week that Microsoft held a secret meeting with representatives of some of Europe’s largest newspapers to discuss throwing its weight behind ACAP, a protocol that provides a variety of access controls over content. TechCrunch says Microsoft told the European publishers that it’s ready to commit £100,000 to fund development of ACAP, which permits search engines, for example, to index the full content of an article while displaying only part of it to a casual visitor. The report speculates that Microsoft may be hoping to use publishers as allies in a flank attack on Google by striking deals that give Bing exclusive or semi-exclusive access to their content.

Writer: Paul Gillin

Back in March I wrote about the closure of one of the oldest newspapers in the US, the Seattle Post Intelligencer and the move to create an online only version of the newspaper, so I thought it relevant to go back and see how the move to the online space has been accepted by the readers of the post and other newspapers that have moved to an Internet only version.

It appears that the move to Internet only versions of the newspapers has seen some very interesting growth in reader numbers, at Seattlepi.com, the online successor to the now defunct print version of Post-Intelligencer, unique visitors have grown steadily since the paper went online-only in March, and according to executive producer Michelle Nicolosi. “We haven’t lost readers”.

In the Detroit area, where readers were amongst the first to lose home delivered newspapers, readers have taken to the new Internet only versions of the now defunct papers, for example, in April traffic grew 74% to the Detroit Free Press website.

Another interesting side benefit of the move online for the papers is that downloads of e-editions, or electronic newsprint equivalents of both the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News increased seven fold when home delivery of the papers ended.

It would appear that readers retain loyalty to their local brands and are prepared to make the move with them when they move to online versions.

This trend I’m sure will be welcome news for the other newspapers that are facing closure in the US.

Hot on the news today is the reported closure of one of the oldest newspapers in the US, the 138 year old Tuscon Citizen. The paper will continue on as an On Line Paper in a modified format, but without news or sports coverage, it might as well be put to rest, although a move by the Santa Monica Media Corp to block the closure of the paper, after trying to negotiate to buy it, might see it survive for a few more days. This brings me to the recent moves at Fairfax in Australia, which has just recently retrenched a number of it’s on line staff, due to a merger with the print side.

Funny though, that only the digital staff were retrenched!!

It’s being promoted by Fairfax as a one stop solution for the companies clients and Fairfax is saying that all the agents out there are really in favour of it. I would suggest that they get to know the market just a little bit better, given that print is on the decline in Australia. It’s shame that this has started to happen, as Domain.com.au was starting to get it’s act together.

All they are really doing is protecting the print side of the business, and that for Domain.com.au is a very real shame.  

Maybe it’s time for the prospect of an Industry owned site to be raised again?

Social Media and Blogs Very Influential Communication Tool

As the first of my blog workshops is due to kick off in two weeks time, I thought I’d take a look at the impact that blogs have on the on line consumer. Sometimes as a writer, I often think about who will be reading this blog and whether the information I provide is of interest or help to the readers, and I think about who is reading and researching blogs like mine on the web.

New research available indicates that blogs are a very valuable source of information, and blogs are particularly popular with women according to research from the US. Blogs sit along side social media in popularity with 53% of the female online population who regularly participate in social media.

In terms of demographics, social media attracts a large number of Gen X&Y’s at 15.4%, with baby boomers not far behind at 13.3%. Blogs are also a powerful tool for companies to utilise to communicate with female on line users, women are more likely than men to make a purchase decision as the result of a recommendation or other customers experience reported about on a blog. In fact the figure is very high, with 85% of females surveyed said they had made a purchase decision from a blog post or the blog had had an impact on their purchase.

The other trend that stands out is the way social media usage is affecting traditional media, when asked the question about other media usage, 57% of the females responded they were reading less newspapers, 47% said they were reading less magazines and 36% said they were listening less to radio. This is higher than the general population decline in usage of traditional media in the US.

So the message for companies out there that have not yet embraced blogs as a corporate communication tool or blogging as a tool to engage and interact with the on line consumer, in particular the female market, is very clear.

Start a blog, communicate and engage the on line consumer and just as important, if you have a business, start to monitor what blogs and blog writers are saying about you and your business or brand, it could be costing you a lot in lost business, lost business that today you probably don’t know you’ve lost.

Step right up and read all about it, a little while ago I mentioned that a number of the US’s newspapers were in trouble financially and the current owners were trying to either sell the paper or would move them to an on line model. Well news today from the US is that the Hearst Corporation, owners of the troubled Seattle Post Intellingencer have been unable to find a buyer and have decided to move the paper to an on line version effective from today.

According to the paper, “the last print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer will be published Tuesday. The Hearst Corp. announced that the P-I will become the nation’s largest daily newspaper to shift entirely online.”

It will be worth watching the move as this could well be a model that other print based papers may have to follow to stay afloat. May make a few print supporters in the real estate industry here in Australia start to look at these trends.