Looking for ways to make users pay for digital content, many editors consistently make a wrong assumption: That stories from the printed newspaper have higher value than the web stories.

I have read it numerous times: Interviews with chief editors who present the fact that a story was printed in the newspaper as the very definition of users’ willingness to pay for the same story in a digital version.

• Join BetaTales on Facebook
• Join BetaTales on LinkedIn
• Subscribe by RSS

I think the assumption in most cases is wrong.  That a story has been printed in the newspaper has little bearing in itself on whether there is a willingness to pay for that particular content in digital form.

One big challenge of introducing user payment for digital content is to decide which content is premium and which content should be free.

Making this decision is very hard – as it goes to the very core of defining what type of journalism constitute real value to the readers.

The easy way out is to say as many chief editors do: The content from the printed paper is premium, the online content is free.

And why shouldn’t we think like that? People have after all through decades shown that they are willing to pay for the content in the printed paper. Therefore the argument is convenient: Let us make the same content available to them online for a charge, and they will be willing to pay.

Wrong!

But as a result of this way of thinking, most attempts at asking users to pay for digital content, for instance on iPad, so far are more or less replicas of the printed paper.

It is time to end this way of thinking.

In the long run the distinction between premium and free content cannot be defined by what has been found worthy of being printed in the newspaper. One reason is that much of the value of a printed newspaper is in how content has been packaged and put together for that specific format. As the content is being split up on digital platforms, the value proposition changes and different rules apply.

Therefore we need to find a new way of distinguishing between premium and free content – and that distinction can no longer be defined by platforms, but by the distinctive qualities in the content itself.

Why is this? Because when studying their own content in depth and trying to make readers pay online, many editors will find the following to be true:

• Parts of the content in the printed newspaper looses its value when disaggregated from the print package and presented in a digital version
• Parts of the content that has been produced “free” for the web site actually provides great value for readers – and in fact have the potential to be treated as premium content instead of free.

This being said, it is easy to understand that many news organizations have chosen a replica of their printed product as the first attempt at making users pay.  The strategy in fact makes sense – at this stage. After all readers have a clear picture of what product a newspaper is – and may be willing to pay for the convenience of receiving it in a different format. Also most newspapers are organized primarily with the printed paper as the main output.

But now is the time to move on. Premium content should be defined across platforms – and with qualities that makes it truly unique no matter where it is published. At the same time we need to take into consideration also the other factors influencing people’s willingness to pay.

Among media companies not just choosing the replica model we basically see three ways of distinguishing between premium and free content:

• The meter model – allows free access to a specific number of articles per month and starts charging after the level has been reached. This is the model used by The New York Times, which reportedly now has more than 300.000 subscribers. The meter model does not try to distinguish as much between which content is premium and which content is free. Rather the underlying assumption is that all content is premium, but that readers can get some of it for free anyway.
• The freemium model – defines some types of content as free and other as premium, depending on topics or qualities. This is for instance the model used by Wall Street Journal, Hamburger Abendblatt and the highly successful Swedish news site Aftonbladet.
• The paywall – charging for all content, no matter where it is published. This is basically the strategy of The Times in London. A

This discussion is primarily based on the freemium model. What are some of the qualities that could define premium content in this model?

It of course depends on the brand in question and how it is positioned in its market.

But I think many editors will find that they need to develop new content formats to succeed with user payment. This is necessary to make sure the content is sufficiently unique, deep, engaging, useful or entertaining to make readers think they cannot be without it.

Some of the questions that need to be answered:

• Is the content truly unique? Can you find more or less the same other places – or is this really the only place to get this type of content and quality? Is the content in a format that makes it unique?
• Is the content useful? Are readers being helped in achieving their personal goals, like getting in better shape or improving their finances? Will readers feel they will be better off in their life with the content?
• Is it engaging people?  In today’s world of social media only content that engage people have real value.
• Is it convenient to get to the content if you are willing to pay?  Is in fact being a paying customer much easier that to be a freeloader? Is the media company making it so convenient for readers that it is just “too damned easy to pay”?
• Is the payoff clear?  Do you immediately understand what extra value paying for the content gives you?  Is is deep enough? Entertaining enough? Or just another copy of what you will find on any other web site?

Newspaper readership will continue to drop in most markets in the years to come. As this happens, defining premium content in terms of whether it has been printed on paper or not will become increasingly less relevant.

We need a new definition.

So how, then, should we define premium content in the future? What are your thoughts?

Media companies hope to build solid revenue streams by betting on user payment on mobile platforms. But a look at Apple’s top grossing lists for iPhone and iPad sends a warning signal.

I was involved in launching a paid recipe app for iPhone in the Norwegian market at couple of weeks ago -and that made me follow closely the top grossing lists for iPhone and iPad.

• Join BetaTales on Facebook
• Join BetaTales on LinkedIn
• Subscribe by RSS

Apple provides three different top charts for apps: Top free apps, Top paid apps and Top grossing. While the first two rank how many apps are downloaded, the third ranks how much money the apps bring in at any time. The top apps on this list may not necessarily be the ones downloaded the most, but they still succeed in bringing in money for the developers.

What types of apps dominate the top grossing list?

To find out I went through the top 25 grossing lists for both iPhone and iPad in the Norwegian market as they were ranked in the evening on Sunday, June 12th. All apps were assigned to one of four categories:

• Usefulness. Apps that primarily help people perform a specific task
• Entertainment. Primarily games.
• Media/content. Apps that primarily are designed for consumption of news or other types of media content.
• Social. Apps that primarily are built on people connecting to each other

Top grossing iPhone apps

Not a single app on the top 25 grossing list for iPhone apps was a media app. In fact you would not find a media app among the next 25 apps on the list either.

Two of the 25 apps were categorized as “social”.

However, the two dominating categories were “Entertainment” (13 apps) and “Usefulness” (10 apps).

I noted another interesting aspect: Only one of the ten most grossing iPhone apps were priced “normally”.  That was the Hipstamatic app priced at NOK 11 (USD 2). All the rest at the top 10 carried either an extremely high price tag (4 navigation apps priced at USD 75 and above) or were free (games apps that made money on in-app purchases).

Almost all the rest of the top 25 list followed the same pattern: Either they were userpaid apps helping people achieve a specific task, like finding the owner of a car or creating music, or they were free or almost-free games apps.

Conclusion so far: To succeed in bringing in money on iPhone apps you should either try to be extremely useful or succeed in creating compelling entertainment for your users.

Here is the top grossing list for iPhone apps:

[table id=2 /]

[easyembed field="Linebreak"]

Top grossing iPad apps

The top grossing list for iPad apps in the Norwegian shows a slightly different pattern, yet more or less the same conclusions can be drawn.

12 of the top 25 grossing apps are within the “Usefulness” category, while 11 belong to “Entertainment”. Also for iPad we see some highly priced navigation apps quite high on the list. In the “Entertainment” category the main difference from the iPhone market was that only very few of the top grossing apps were free.

Two apps in the “Media/content” category made it to the top 25 grossing list.

The first was already in the third place on the list:  ”Lillesøster”, a children’s book specially designed for the iPad format and with a price tag of 5 USD.

On ninth place was Aftenposten, the news app from Norway’s largest newspaper. (Disclaimer: I work for Media Norge, the owner company of Aftenposten).

Aftenposten’s news app is free to download and could also be used for free for the first weeks after it was launched on March 31st. This has led about 40.000 people to download the app. However, since June 7th Aftenposten has required users to pay. Access is available only as a subscription and can be bought both from within App Store and from Aftenposten’s web site. There are also bundled products which include the iPad subscription. These can only be bought from Aftenposten’s web site.

It is obviously too early to say how Aftenposten’s iPad app will rank on the top grossing list in the long term. The ranking is also complicated by the fact that parts of Aftenposten’s income on the app is not reflected in App Store’s grossing list.

Conclusion for iPad: To succeed in bringing in money on iPad apps your chances seem to be much higher if you bet on meeting people’s need for usefulness or entertainment. But looking further down the top grossing list media/content apps seem to do much better on iPad than on iPhone.

Here is the top grossing list for iPad apps:

[table id=3 /]

[easyembed field="Linebreak"]

What does this mean for media companies?

Is it hopeless to charge for media content on iPhone and iPad?  Of course not. But the top grossing lists give some clear hints to what in particular drive people to pay on these new platforms. Publishers are smart to study this to see if some of the elements can be introduced in news apps as well. For instance: How do you use your media product to help people achieve their goals? What can you do to make it really useful in people’s life? Is there any way to gamify the news experience – or to use in-app purchases creatively?

The Apple’s top grossing lists for Norway will, however, not give the full picture of how media apps will do when it comes to user payment:

• Few media companies have so far tried user payment extensively. Aftenposten is the first major news company in Norway to put its iPad app behind a paywall.
• Many media companies have so far kept most or all of their user paid revenues out of App Store. Typically the users will pay for the product at the media company’s web site – and then get access for free on iPad by entering login information. As we all know, Apple is now tightening the rules for how this can be done, but so far most revenues on media apps have been kept outside the App Store statistics.

It is used in lots of board rooms these days – as an expression of the danger newspaper companies are in. But in fact the executives would be wiser to ban the word. What word? Read on.

Publishers' worry about print revenues may harm their potential in developing good business models for digital media

I have heard it used so many times in different media contexts. We are afraid of it and try to avoid the effect of it. It is a word that makes media executives sleep less at night.

It is called “cannibalization”.

Yes, we would love to build new digital revenue streams. We dream about how users will pay tons of money for our excellent and unique content. But it better not have any harmful effect on print revenues!

So the thinking goes.

To put it in another way: Digital revenues are fine as long as they do not “cannibalize” print revenues!

This line of thought influences product development, pricing strategy, marketing and editorial workflows in many media companies.

It is a dangerous way of thinking.

In fact the word “cannibalization” should be banned in media companies. Using it will only cause harm to media’s chances of surviving the massive digital transformation we are witnessing.

Did you hear me?

Ban the word “cannibalization”!

Yes, I really mean it.  Don’t allow the executives or other employees to even use it!

Why should the word be banned?

Let us start with the basic statement that I keep repeating here at BetaTales:

What can become digital, will be come digital.

Now, then: What does this mean?

It means at least two things:

• Print newspapers will at some stage be extint. We can argue about when it will happen, but the trend is very clear
• This being said, the major strategic challenge for media companies is not how to save print revenues, but how to build a successful business model for digital content

Why should using the word “cannibalization” be a problem?

Because even using the word implies a mental context that will in fact be counter-productive in producing the efficient future business models of digital media.

Let me ask you a question, all CEOs of media companies:

What do you think is the most strategic important issue to focus on for the next five year?

• Saving as much as you can of your print revenue?
• Or: Building digital revenues as fast as you can?

I have already given you my answer: You need to have full mental focus on buiding future digital business models.

I know many of you will answer that you will be able to balance both.

I don’t believe you.

In fact I think many media executives still underestimate the major challenges facing our industry. They think they can transform a business model of the past to the digital future. If that is the way you think, managing “cannibalization” makes a lot of sense.

But they will be proven wrong.

Instead I believe the winners will be those who have been liberated from their past business models. They focus primarily on how they can build a digital future, and less on how to save the print business a few more years.

I am not saying that media companies should ignore the print business, which is still the biggest revenue stream. Continue to develop the product, increase quality, lower costs and make distribution more efficient! The printed paper will be an important platform for media content for many years still.

But do not let considerations for the print product limit product development in the digital area!

Stop worrying about cannibalization!

Instead you should set your digital products free to compete in their own markets – without considerations for effects on the printed products.

There is an interesting success story to study within the media group I work for myself: Schibsted Media Group.  More than ten years ago visionaries within the corporation realized that classified ads inevitably would move from print to online.

Instead of saying that all efforts should be put into protecting the lucrative print ad revenues, they suggested to start a new company that would try to be the leading digital market place for classified ads.

A company – finn.no – was indeed started in March 2000. It set out to be the market leader in online classified ads in Norway. Prices were only a portion of prices in the newspaper. The newspapers were instructed to market the new online classified ads brand.

It is no secret that there was a lot of discussion within Schibsted about this strategy. Yet it proved to be one of the big success stories.  Finn has for years operated with an extremely high profit margin, driven by its position as market leader in online classifieds. And how did Finn become market leader? By aggresively seeing the opportunity early, before the market had developed and matured.

Today Schibsted is No. 3 globally in online classified ads, according to Businessweek. That’s not bad for a company from a small Scandinavian country.

Market dynamics in the news business are different from the classified ads – and the same rules may not necessarily apply. Yet the main lesson is the same: Make sure to focus on what will be the future!

Many media companies try to offer print and digital products in bundled subscriptions. That may very well be a smart strategy, provided that it is done in a way that will lead to a future business model for the digital media. But if the main purpose is to slow down the fall in newspaper readership without any clear plan for the digital future, such a strategy probably will fail.

I believe the mental focus in the organization is extremely important for media companies that are in the middle of a radical digital transformation.

The losers will be those who put all their energy into slowing down the digital transformation and saving the past. The winners will adapt a digital-first strategy to rush forward to build a new, smart and sustainable digital business model.

I don’t think you can win by doing both.

Therefore: Start by banning the word “cannibalization” in your company.

Here are some of the important trends shaping digital media now – as I presented them at the Media Trendy conference in Warsaw, Poland recently.

John Einar Sandvand presents digital media trends at Media Trendy 2011 in Warsaw

I was invited as a keynote speaker at the annual Media Trendy conference in Warsaw, Poland on April 14th, 2011.  The speech was about current digital media trends for about 300 media and advertising professionals and executives.

Here is a video of the presentation, filmed by the Polish media consultant Marek Miller, who was my host.

Regular readers of this blog will recognize many of the thoughts. In fact the presentation is largely based on a previous blog post I wrote about digital media trends.

You may also check out this article: How a speech for 70 people reached an audience of 4500.

• Join BetaTales on Facebook
• Join BetaTales on LinkedIn
• Subscribe by RSS

What is most important? Publishers copyright or the best user experience for readers? A fight over the iPad app Zite poses an interesting dilemma.

I have for the  last few weeks fallen in love with Zite, a personalized news magazine for iPad. Zite promises to learn from my reading habits – and serves stories that should fit my special area of interest.

To be honest I have been amazed about the accuracy of Zite. I now use it every day to follow developments in digital media, my particular area of interest. And Zite really is able to serve up the most interesting stories to me, whatever source they may come from.

Add to this that the user experience is very elegant. Ads are stripped away and I am left with the core content: Text and photos. It even allows me to share the stories on Twitter or in other social media without leaving the application.

Within a few weeks Zite has become my most common way to catch up with developments within my area of interest.

But then arrive the publishers! Time, Washington Post, National Geographic and Associated Press are among media companies protesting against how Zite uses their content. Alltogether 10 major media companies require Zite to stop using their content immediately. With good reason, it seems.

Working in the media industry myself (I am editor in Media Norway Digital) as the same time as I love the user experience of the Zite app, I find the conflict intriguing. Apparently it is an example of the media industry’s formal rights clashing with what is the best solution for their readers.

• Join BetaTales on Facebook
• Join BetaTales on LinkedIn
• Subscribe by RSS

The front page of Zite personalized magazine

Let us look at the interests of the two parties:

The user experience

Zite lets users pick topical sections that are of interest to them and then serves relevant stories from all over the web. The stories are presented in a neatly designed magazine layout. Over time Zite will learn what the users find particularly interesting and serve more of these stories. Users are also encouraged to tell Zite whether they liked a particularly story or not – and whether they like more stories from a particular source, thus assisting how the app becomes even more personalized.

To kickstart the selection of stories a user can link her Twitter or Google Reader account with Zite, giving a great personalized experience from day one.

Zite is based on web crawling – and not just aggregating RSS feeds. As default stories are presented in “reading mode” and not as the web page where it originated. This means that ads and a lot of other visual noise is eliminated, making it better for in-depth reading.

For me as a reader it is a very nice user experience. I am presented with a good selection of fresh articles from different sources and in a way that makes them very comfortable to read. I don’t have to move back and forth between many web sites, but get all the content presented in the same, elegant user interface.

I simply love it!

A note: In response to the letters from the publishers, Zite now displays the content from these media companies in “web mode” instead of “reading mode”, thus displaying all the ads as they appear on the web sites. While the media companies may be happy, this makes the user experience significantly worse.

The default article view on the Zite personalized news magazine

The publishers’ perspective

Publishers make money by either selling content to readers or by selling ads that are presented together with the content.

An app like Zite omits both those two possibilities to make money. The full content is presented to readers with ads stripped away – and the infringement on the publishers’ right is quite clear.

This is how the publishers describe their position in the letter to Zite:

By systematically reformatting, republishing and redistributing our original content on a mass commercial scale without our permission in your iPad application, Zite directly and adversely impacts our businesses. Your application takes the intelletual property of our companies, as well as the hard and sometimes dangerous work of tens of thousands of people. It depreives our websites of traffic and advertising revenue. We do not know your intentions, but your actions harm our companies and the broader media and news industry on which your application relies for its content.

For publishers it is extremely important to be in control of their own content and how it is being distributed. Most publishers depend on a model where they prefer users to come to their web site to read their content, either after having paid for it or to be the targets of commercial offers by way of ads.

Aggregation services like Googe News, Pulse, Flipboard and now Zite thus have been of great concern for many publishers, who think they should get a cut of the cake when other commercial players are making money on their content.

The dilemma: Publishers’ rights or the best user experience?

The conflict poses a real dilemma, as I see it:

• First: Services like Zite and Flipboard offer real benefits and a great user experience to readers.
• Second: Media companies are not able to offer the same user experience to the readers themselves
• Third: There is no good business model in place for media companies to make money on third parties offering services like Zite and Flipboard.

A service like Zite does not only redistribute content from media companies, but adds new value for the readers in term of selecting content in a particularly useful way. This is a different process of selection that the traditional editorial packaging:

• An editorial package will typically provide content only from one or very few sources. It will provide more or less the same package to all its readers.
• A personalized and automatic service like Zite will pick content from numerous sources and the package will be fully personalized for each individual user.

We now see how the best automated services offer a quality in selection that in many situations fit users’ need better than what can be achieved with human editorial editing.

The dilemma is quite clear: Some of the best user experiences offer no way for the content providers to make money.

What should media companies do?

There seem to be two approaches the media industry can take. They are not outruling each other:

• Protect your rights. Use legal means to stop unauthorized use of your content. Set up regulations, such as ACAP restricting distribution of content.
• Build new and universal content models allowing revenue share for innovative companies like Zite, Flipboard and others that build great content services.

One thing I am quite sure about: A strategy that only is based on fighting readers’ option to have the best user experience possible will fail!

That means that media companies either must be able to provide the best user experience themselves or partner in some way with those that can do it.

There is an obvious user need for smart and reader-friendly aggregation of content from numerous sources. Stopping people’s access to these kind of services will therefore not work. It will just make people find the content in illegal ways.  Just look at how the music industry for a long time failed to provide efficient ways for users to download music easily in a legal way, paving the way for massive illegal downloading.

In my opinion it will be an illusion to think that the media industry itself will be able to provide the best user experience in all areas.

So we need to find ways to work together with innovative companies like Zite, providing models where publishers get paid and the innovators can develop new products quickly without having to negotiate thousands of copyright agreements ahead of launching.

How can this be done?

It is a hard question – and I don’t really have any good anwers myself.

However, I do recommend that you read this blog post from Damon Kiesow at Poynter.  He identifies three possible winning strategies for media companies:

• Develop their own innovative apps
• Collaborate with developers like Flipboard and Zite to display and monetize content
• Implement robust application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow for controlled distribution of content for use on external sites and apps

The road to getting there is bumpy and whether it is possible at all is still not clear. But at least we need to find ways that will allow other parties to innovate with our content.

To conclude: Whatever the media industry does, the best option is to contribute in making sure users have the best content experience possible! Because in the long run the best user experience will always win.

What do you think?

Related articles from other blogs

• The Consumer In Me Likes Zite; The Producer? (paidcontent.org)
• Major Media Companies Unite to Serve Cease-and-Desist Against iPad News Aggregator Zite (mashable.com)
• When Media Giants Attack! Cease-and-Desist Letter to News Reader Zite Claims All Kinds of Copyright Damage (kara.allthingsd.com)
• The iPad App That Went Too Far: Media Says Cease & Desist to Personalized Magazine Zite (readwriteweb.com)
• Personalized iPad Magazine Zite Responds to Cease-and-Desist Letter From Time Inc., Washington Post (fastcompany.com)
• Publishing Heavyweights Target iPad Media App ‘Zite’ (wired.com)
• AP, WaPo, Other Big Media Companies Send Cease & Desist Over Zite App (paidcontent.org)
• Zite faces wrath of media companies (cbc.ca)

Less than a year after iPad was launched, media products for the device flourish in the Scandinavian market. Here are six media approaches to the new platform.

Scandinavia is one of the most technologically advanced markets in the world. People are quick to adopt new devices and media companies love to be in the global forefront in offering superb solutions when new technologies emerge.

• Join BetaTales on Facebook
• Join BetaTales on LinkedIn
• Subscribe by RSS

Long before the tablet was officially launched in the Scandinavian market, the first local media apps were ready. By now, just four months after the introduction, most newspapers of any significance is on the iPad in some form or another.

INMA – International Newsmedia Marketing Association - recently gathered 55 media executives for a roundtable discussion in London about tablet subscriptions. The roundtable was inspired by Apple’s change in policy over subscriptions services and what media companies might be permitted to do in their apps.

I was invited to the roundtable to give a snapshot of how media companies have approached iPad in the Scandinavian market.

In my presentation I pointed out that there are basically six different approaches:

I would think these approaches are typical for many other markets as well. Here is an elaboration and a Scandinavian example for each approach.

1. E-paper apps

The most common approach, both in Scandinavia and other parts of the world, is to make a replica of the printed newspaper.

This is done with a number of different vendors, such as Solidam, Visiolink or Newspaper Direct. Typically you can flip through the newspapers and then zoom in on articles you find interesting. In some of the apps users are given the choice of reading the articles in text view.

It seems to be a widespread understanding in the media industry that this approach will not be sufficient in the long run. Still it is considered to be the smartest first move for many media companies. It provides a product readers are familiar with, and the investment for getting in to the market is relatively low.

2. Native apps with premium content

Some media companies conclude that e-paper apps are not sufficient even in the short run. Instead the media houses should try to use the iPad platform to its fullest potential. To do so, these media houses argue, one would need to develop a native app.

In Scandinavia the Norwegian news company VG is a prominent example of this line of thinking.

Another example is the widely discussed News+ platform of the Bonnier group. This native application has been used by both Dagens Nyheter, Dagens Industri and Sydvenskan.

Tor Jacobsen, who is head of mobile products at VG, says their native application now has been downloaded 54.000 times. About half of these people use the application during a week.

- The peak hours for using the application are from 6 to 11 PM during the week and from 8 AM to 1 PM during weekends, Jacobsen says.

Average session time is around 10-12 minutes, which is significantly longer than on other digital platforms.

- What is your main philosophy behind what you try to do on iPad?

- Our philosophy is to make a third editorial product specifically designed for the tablet platform. We still have a long way to go in order to make full use of the tablet, though. For instance photos and videos work very well in storytelling on iPad. We want to improve on being even more iPad relevant and in creating new user habits for consuming content on this platform.

Jacobsen says that VG defines this first iPad year very much as a time for learning. However, he believes that they will be able to charge users for content on this platform if it is done right.

3. Multi-purpose apps

There are different philosophies about what concepts actually work for iPad.

Some argue that apps should be specific and targeted specifically at a clearly defined purpose. Others claim that it would be better if the app includes a number of different needs in one.

In Norway one of the biggest media companies, A-pressen, has decided to build a socalled multi-purpose app. The pilot newspaper is Nordlys in the northern city of Tromsø. A-pressen plans to launch a similar app for a further 17 local newspapers in Norway.

The Nordlys app includes a number of different functionalities:

• E-paper, which is a replica of the printed paper
• Touch screen version of the latest stories from the web site
• Local TV
• Weather
• News overview: Aggregating stories from both local, national and international news stories

About 2000 people have downloaded the app – and one in four of these use it every day, says Anders Opdahl, chief editor at Nordlys.

- For us it is important to deliver on our promise to the readers through our 109 years history: Nordlys shall be useful! That’s why we have decided to build many more functionalities in to the app. We believe that if we can be useful and make people stay long in the app, they will also be willing to pay, says Opdahl.

He says user sessions are almost as long as for the printed paper.

- Let us not forget one thing: Many experts talk about the iPad as a sofa device, and says this should influence how we design our products. It may be so. Still, for us the killer functionality of the iPad is that it is connected to the web. And with that follows expectations from users who have been online for almost 20 years. You have to fullfill those expectations first before trying to impress in other areas. In our opinion many media companies don’t get this, Opdahl says.

4. Web content apps

Some news apps take the content from a web site and present it in a more touch-screen friendly way. One example in the Norwegian market is Nettavisen.no.

Nettavisen is an online newspaper, with no printed version. It has always been a free product.

The app presents stories from the web site. In between the stories on the front page ads are inserted.

Head of Nettavisen, Gunnar Stavrum, tells us that 21.000 people have downloaded the app for iPad. 6000 of them use it daily.

- When it comes to user patterns, we see a small peak in the morning. Then it is relatively quiet between 11 AM and 3 PM. About 70 % of our traffic is between 5 PM and midnight. The highest peak is between 9 and 11 PM, says Stavrum.

He tells us that the ads in the app receives a 5 times higher click rate than on the web site, while average user sessions are 50 % longer.

- What is your main philosophy on iPad?

- Not to fall in love with any hypothesis we might have. We want to launch early and observe what the market and competitors do. Our task is not to prove that we are right about hypothesises, but to adjust quickly to to the market.

Nettavisen believes in HTML5 as a technological platform that can keep the door open to competing tablets.

5. Tablet adjusted browser version

The most basic product for iPad is to adjust the regular web site for tablet use. This includes removing ads and editorial content in Flash, which is not supported by Apple.

Aftenposten.no is one of many web sites that have taken this first step to make sure their products can be used on iPad without any major challenges.

6. Special purpose apps

Some media executives argue that while general news subscriptions are nice, the real value is in creating niche apps serving particular needs for the users.

One example of such a special purpose app is the TV Guide from the Norwegian news site VG.

A similar example: In Denmark the newspaper Berlingske Tidende has launched an app for business news.

The philosophy behind these apps is to take out a part of the general news product and create a product that serves a specific need among users.

Many experts argue that this is in fact the area where media companies may create the most value. General news bundles have less value in the digital world than in the analogue world. But new value can be created by using the expertise of the media company to serve specific needs in the audience. In fact media companies should move from being single-purpose companies – offering one general news product – to becoming multi-purpose companies, wide a wide offering of different specialized content offerings.


————————–
Here are some of the slides I used in my presentation about this topic at the INMA Roundtable:

Localization, platform shifts and continued fragmentation of the content market are some of the digital media trends that will shape 2011.

What are the core forces influencing digital media in 2011?  This question can be approached in a number of different ways.  I have tried to identify five trends or forces that I think will influence or continue to influence the media industry in a particular way in the year to come.

• Join BetaTales on Facebook
• Join BetaTales on LinkedIn
• Subscribe by RSS

This article, as many others on BetaTales, was written as preparation for a presentation I gave on digital media. I had the pleasure of talking about digital media trends in 2011 for about 150 communication and marketing professionals at the annual Scandinavian Futures Conference held by the Norwegian market research agency Opinion. As similar presentation was also held for the management conference of Media Norway (see the slides for the presentation above).

None of the trends are new – rather it is an attempt to sum up some of the more powerful ones. And of course: Many more could have been mentioned.

But at least I think any digital media executive should try to analyze how these five forces will influence his/her business in 2011.

The five trends are:

1. New platforms take big parts of media consumption
2. Localization
3. Disaggregation and repackaging of content
4. Everything is social
5. New business models for content

Let us go through them, one by one:

1. Mobility and platform change

E-readers and tablets are about to reach critical mass. On one end of the scale you have dedicated e-readers, like Amazon’s Kindle. Here we are already seeing a dramatic drop in prices; the cheapest Kindle now sell for USD 139. I will not be surprised if we see the cheapest e-readers fall below USD 100 in 2011. That could give these readers a boost in numbers.

On the other end of the scale we have iPad and a long line of Android-based tablets that are about to enter the market. These are multi-purpose devices that satisfy a whole range of needs among users.

Gartner has already estimated that mobile phones will overtake PCs as the dominant web access device worldwide by 2013.

Access to content is therefore no longer a limited good. People will be continuously online and expect to be able to access whatever they need wherever they may be.

As part of this we will start seeing “tablet-only” and “mobile first” media companies, as pointed out by Vadim Lavrusik at Mashable.

Parallell to the emergence of new platforms we see anincreasing number of services and products moving into the cloud. In fact many products become platform agnostic. Users expect that they can access the service on whatever platform or device they use at any given moment.

In the media industry we used to talk about print versus the web – and then we would define how our products would differ on the two platforms.

Not any more. As more platforms emerge and users consume media on several devices during the day, the value of the brand will be more important than the value of the platform-specific product.

Look at some of the most successful digital services out there now, like Facebook, Evernote, Dropbox and Kindle. None of them are platform specific. If you decide to pay for the file sharing service Dropbox, for instance, it will not be because their iPhone app is so awesome. Instead you buy a service with some specific attributes – and use this service on whatever device that is handy right now.  The core benefits of the product, like how many GBs you can store in your account, follow you across platforms. And the convenience of being able to use it on many platforms is actually a core benefit of the product in itself.

We see a very strong trend towards platform agnostic services – where a product is not defined in terms of one platform only, but as a service across all available platforms.

In this area most media companies are dragging behind. Many media executives seem to believe they will be able to sell each platform specific product individually. For instance they want you to pay for an iPad subscription as a different product than the premium level of the web site.

I believe this type of platform specific strategy will fail. Instead the winners will be those who succeed in defining product offerings that are available wherever people choose to access them. As smart phones and tablets become more common, most people will indeed consume media content on several devices during the day.  In this new reality users will expect seamless transfer of product benefits across platforms.

One important point: That products become platform agnostic does not necessarily mean that they have the same attributes on all platforms. In fact I think we are about to see that making digital versions of the printed paper will fail as a business model. Content must be presented according to the specific user situation of each platform, and the traditional broad print bundle may no longer be the core of the digital product.

2. Localization

The rise of smart phones is pushing localization services many steps ahead.

In 2010 we saw the rise of localization networks like Foursquare and Gowalla. At the same time Facebook introduced Facebook Places as its tool to encourage people to tell where they are and Google made clear that location-based coupons would play an important part of its strategy.

In short: It is time for local media sites to watch out as the global giants prepare to move into their territory.

2011 will be the year when we see services based on localization take a big step forward. People will start getting used to content and commercial offers being served according to where they are at any given time. And people will start to depend on these type of services in their everyday life.

The development will be driven by big services like Google and Facebook, which both see great opportunities in the local ad markets.

But also media companies will follow along, creating local news services targeted at users’ location.

An especially creative service using localization information is Ratio Finder. The service uses check-in information from Foursquare – and makes a dynamic map of pubs and clubs with higher than average ratio of female checkins right now.

One interesting question: Who will own the biggest database of location-based offerings in each market? I am convinced those who succeed in building such a database will make lots of money. And I think this market will be defined by the network economy, in which the market leader will have a huge benefit.

A creative example of service based on localization is Ratio Finder: http://www.weeplaces.com/ratiofinder/

3. Disaggregation and repackaging of content

As I see it, most editors seem to underestimate the powerful forces of disaggregation of content in the digital area.

And still disaggregation of content is perhaps the most powerful force influencing the traditional media industry.

What do I mean by disaggregation?

Think back a few years at the typical offering of a traditional media company, be it a newspaper or television company. At the time distribution of news and content was limited by physical restraints. In order to be able to present the news to people in your local target area, you had to package it so that it fit the needs of most of your users. It was “one size fits all”.

In the digital era these physical boundaries are no longer valid. In fact there is no longer an additional cost to speak of to present news to each user according to his/her personal interests.  News can be distributed freely – specialized for the individual user.

So we see that content is being split up into its individual pieces.

And then it is being repackaged. Sometimes it is done by the media companies themselves, but more often other agents have more at stake. Content is being repackaged in all kinds of ways. Some examples:

• Social repackaging. People use services like Twitter, LinkedIn or Facebook to receive content recommendations from friends or people they trust. For music playlists on Spotify perform a similar function.
• Repackaging by aggregation. Google News or similar services aggregate content from thousands of sources and present it according to different categories. In this way users can follow all the news on one particular topic of interest without having to look up each content source individually.
• Repackaging by search. Searching for information on Google helps users find exactly what they are looking for.
• Repackaging by human curation.  Huffington Post is in many ways an example of this, where editors summarize and link to stories from many different sources.

The huge challenge for media companies is that the main focus is switching from the edited package as the core of its offering to the individual article or content piece. I believe edited packages still will be important, but they will no longer be the only way people consume news.

For media companies this means that the content structure becomes much more important than before. In fact we can state the following:

Content without metadata has no value!

No value!

And this is a huge challenge for most media companies! In the analogue world they did not have to worry about meta data. In the digital world it has become essential for success.

4. Everything is becoming social

Social media is ingrained in more and more digital services. Therefore it is impossible to talk about digital media trends without mentioning social media.

Facebook has become the new hub for people’s digital life. More than 550 million people now use Facebook – and for many of those it has become the online starting point, replacing photo albums, address books, chats, news services, etc.

While many media companies a couple of years ago tried to build their own social communities, many of them today decide to use Facebook as the social glue around their content. In Norway this trend was illustrated by the demise of the once hugely popular newspaper-owned social network Nettby.

The social aspect of digital life spreads to more and more areas:

• Social shopping is growing, illustrated by services like Groupon and Livingsocial.
• Search is becoming social. Google is experimenting with including results from your Twitter followers and Bing and Facebook has started a partnership to make search more social.
• Social gaming has become a huge industry, as illustrated by the success of Zynga, the creator of the very popular Facebook game Farmville.
• Even ads are becoming social. A good example is Facebook’s new ad format Sponsored Stories, in which your interactions with brands online may show up in ads displayed in your friends’ newsfeed.

5. New business models for content

Almost all media companies now try to find ways to charge users for content. In this regard 2011 will be the year of experiments. The task is extremely difficult, though:

Content is everywhere in the digital world – and no longer scarce.  In addition people expect to be able to share the content they like with their friends.

Does that mean we cannot make users pay for content? No, it does not. But it is extremely important to remember that people rarely pay for just the content. Many other aspects are equally important, such as Unique Convenience and Unique Usefulness.

• Read my article: Five ways to build Unique Value for digital content

I have asked myself why user payment suddenly has so much more important for media companies. I believe there are at least two reasons:

• Media companies need more revenue streams to finance good journalism. This has been even more clear as newspaper readership continues to drop – and banner ads are loosing value by the day. The process has been helped by the financial crisis, which gave media companies a new sense of reality.
• The shift to mobile platforms for media consumptions has changed the rules of the game. People seem to be more willing to pay for content on mobile platforms – and media companies are eager to explore that.

My guess is that most attempts at charging users for content in 2011 will fail. The reason is that media companies need to completely rethink their approach to content in order to succeed. That does take some time.

But failures are what will push us forward. Only by making mistakes we will realize the steps we need to take.

And we will see some success stories. Many of them will be surprising. And they will help the rest of us to identify what really creates Unique Value for our readers. In the long term the experience will also improve the quality of journalism, as we learn more about what our readers truly appreciate and are willing to pay for.

————————————————————————-

More to read about digital media trends in 2011

• Trend for 2011: Collaborative story-telling on social media (reportr.net)
• 10 predictions for the news media in 2011 (Mashable)
• Our Bets For Digital Media In 2011 (paidcontent.org)
• Ten newsroom New Year’s resolutions for 2011 (lostremote.com)
• Seven Digital Media Trends of 2011 (socialmediatoday.com)
• My Mix of Social Media Trends 2011 (John Bell)
• Ten digital trends (ClickHere)
• Trends to watch in 2011 (sfnBlog)
• The rise of apps, iPad and Android (Wall Street Journal)

As 2010 comes to an end, it is time to sum up:

Here are the five most popular blog posts at digital media blog BetaTales this year.

BetaTales is a blog about digital media trends. I try to write about issues that will shape the media industry I work in, for better and worse. The blog is targeted at digital media professionals around the world.

• Join BetaTales on Facebook
• Join BetaTales on LinkedIn
• Subscribe by RsS

As for all bloggers, some articles receive more attention than others. Here is the list of the five most popular blog posts at BetaTales in 2010, as measured by Google Analytics.

1. Even the most eager newspapers readers in the world are dropping out

In no other country in the world people read as many newspapers as in Norway. Now readership numbers show a dramatic drop, according to the latest numbers.

But why was this blog post the most popular article on BetaTales this year? Are digital media experts, who are the most frequent readers of the blog, that interested in the fate of printed newspapers in Norway?

Maybe not. But the story was picked up by the satirical Dutch blog Geenstilj, which apparently must have enormous traffic. One small link far down in the text of a story suddenly gave 8000 visitors to BetaTales in a few hours.

Talking of linking power!

2. Eight digital media trends to watch in 2010

Written in January, I tried to predict some of the trends that would influence online media this year. They included user payment, location, real-time news, etc.

To try to foresee what will happen is always hard. So therefore: Was I right? Please read it and be the judge yourself. And don’t hesitate to tell me about your conclusions

3. Five things journalists should learn from bloggers

In digital storytelling many professional journalists would be wise to study and learn from the best bloggers, I wrote. Then I tried to give some tips to journalists.

The article created a lot of discussion in different groups on LinkedIn. It was also the most shared article from BetaTales on Twitter in the past year.  Many thought I hit spot on, other argued that I undervalued the quality of current journalism.

4. Five ways to build Unique Value for paid digital content

What really makes people willing to pay for digital content? My answer: The product must provide Unique Value by clearly fullfilling at least one of five uniqueness attributes.

Based on this blog article, the model has been presented on a number of digital media conferences during the last year, both by myself and others.

The main message is: Willingness to pay for content comes from much more than the content itself.

5. How print journalists can fall into the typographers’ trap

Many newspaper journalists are now making the same mistake as typographers did before: They ignore the massive changes affecting their profession.

It is truly amazing that they dare to do so, I argued, because in only a few years they will find themselves in less and less demand.

A far better idea is to do the digital makeover now!

————————————————————-

That was the most popular articles in 2010. What do you think I should write about in 2011?

But is the assumption valid?

I would argue not.

And I am quite sure that all the experiments in user payment will prove the assumption wrong! Many attempts at selling content or introducing user payment will fail. Sales will be minimal – and that will make media executives question what they did wrong.

The reason for this is that many editors overestimate the Unique Content aspect of their product, and tend to ignore how important Unique Convenience is in making people pay for a newspaper product. Also, the real value of a newspaper is not necessarily the individual pieces of content, but how they have been put together into a package.

Espen Egil Hansen, chief editor of the hugely successful Norwegian news site VG.no, recently in a publice debate described  a surprising challenge when the newspaper prepared its soon-to-be-launched iPad app: Many newspaper articles were just too short to work well on iPad!  He pointed out how in fact many web site articles were much longer and deeper than the print articles. Since VG based its Pad app primarily on the printed paper content, this turned out to be a practical challenge.

Why do most media executives equal premium content with newspaper content? The answer in fact is simple: They assume that the same rules for valuation that they were used to from the print business also are valid in the digital businesz.

Do not ever assume that! The rules of the game are entirely different!

Did you hear me?

I will repeat: The rules of the game in the digital business are entirely different!

What will happen then?

I am sure there will be a lot of success stories. A number of them will be big surprises to all those of us who try to follow media trends carefully. However, there will also be a lot of failuresl. Many media companies will be forced to realize that people just don’t want to buy their products. And the media executives will realize two important truths:

Truth number One: Willingness to pay for content comes from much more than the content itself! If you base your user-paid digital offerings on the content alone, like many do when they just offer a PDF version of their papier, chances are that you will fail.

Truth number Two: We have to think in new ways about what constitutes Unique Value when it comes to content! Of course Unique Content is important, but primarily as one of several elements in a broader offering to the public.

And here is the big revelation for senior editors at the big media companies: They need to rethink their content strategy to fit with the new digital reality.

Now we come to the core of why I think failed attempts at introducing user payment will indeed improve the quality of journalism

The reason is this: Editors will be surprised to discover that people were not willing to pay for their content when it was disaggregated into its individual content pieces.

After this realization comes a painful examination into what readers really value.

And this is exactly the moment when new value and opportunities are being created!

Editors will realize that much of what they considered premium only had value as part of a specific content bundle in print. Once it was disaggregated and repackaged, the content lost its value. Readers had valued the convenience of having a nice content bundle delivered to their door in the format of a printed paper for breakfast. But suddenly they now had many different options to choose from in the same user situation.

If you ever thought you had unique content: Think again! Are you really sure?

What, then, constitutes unique content?

This is the really tough question. Providing good answers is hard. Yet, that is what we need to do. Realizing (as we will) that our traditional content is not sufficient to make users pay, we must try to identify the content and associated user situations that will trigger users to pay.

And here is the important understanding: What used to be perceived as having value in the printed world, suddenly may no longer have value in the digital world. Also important parts of the “free” content on the web may have great value if it is repackaged and distributed in specific ways.

The rules of the game have changed!

Depressing, isn’t it?

Maybe, but there is also a window of opportunity. The major challenge is that you need to identify content that people will be willing to pay for.

And here lies promising future for the next phase of journalism. As editors realize that readers do not automatically want to pay for their content when it is digitalized and disaggragated, they will start to search for content with unique value for readers. That will not be abundant news , which will still be financed solely by ads, but rather content that is difficult to find anywhere else.

The creative process of identifying this content will be good for journalism. It will go to the core of what readers really value and force journalists and editors to rethink how they look at their role.

It will also bring new types of content from the media companies. It might be longer, deeper or richer.  In many cases it will be extremely well structured to make it easier to distribute quickly and smartly. Probably it will to a larger extent tend to answer questions like why and how. For sure it will involve multimedia and other new story telling techniques. And it will be “made-for-share” in social networks. Much creativity will be invested in how the content is packaged and in what situations it is distributed to the users.

We will see completely new formats, set free from the physical limitations of the newspaper. Some of the formats will be longer than newspaper companies ever made before. And we will see sophisticated integration of interactive multimedia elements. In short: Journalism might be taken to a new level!

Maybe we will see journalism going in two different directions:

• One format for free journalism. This is the event based news journalism that is designed to draw massive traffic to news sites. This journalism will be short, snappy and financed by ads.
• Another format for premium journalism. This will be longer and more structured formats and they will be trying to answer questions like why and how. Much emphasis will be based on how to package and distribute the content to specific user situations. For this content there need to be a very strong USP – Unique Selling Point.

As the market develops, media companies probably will move resources from free to paid journalism, especially if strategies for bringing in user payment are successful. And that reallocation of resources will bring about better journalism, I think.

One thing I am sure about, though: Premium journalism in the digital future will not be the same as newspaper journalism in the past.

But I think it will bring even more value to the users.

What are your thought on this?

Recently published numbers for The Times‘ paywall demonstrates how hard it will be for media houses to make users pay for digital content.

In the beginning of July UK newspaper The Times introduced a paywall of its sites. No longer users could read articles for free. Now you had to pay. Compared to many other media houses, The Times had taken a deliberate choice of a closed wall strategy.

As expected, traffic dropped dramatically – with up to 90 per cent. Yet the whole industry has been wondering how many people actually signed up for the new offer.

The Times' experienced a dramatic drop in readership after the introduction of a general paywall. Source: Alexa.com

Finally the owner company News Corporation has released some figures – and its executives hail it as a big success. We are being told that they have achieved 105.000 “consumer sales” to date. The number includes both digital subscriptions on PC, iPad and Kindle as well single-day access to the site.

Are these numbers impressive? Or are they hiding a major failure?

Let us dig a little bit into the numbers and make some assumptions. Here are five essential questions and my attempts at answering them:

Question number 1: How many active subscribers does The Times have?

According to the information released from The Times, around half of the customer sales are monthly subscriptions.  This information is actually a little odd, as the web site quotes the price of £1 for the first month and then £2 per week.  Let’s not worry about that part, though, and instead concentrate on the 50.000 monthly subscription sales. This is the number of sales so far – the actual number of active subscribers will of course be lower.

The paywall was launched in the beginning of July – and we are now in the beginning of November. That gives the paywall four months operation time. Let us assume that The Times sold 20.000 subscriptions during the first month and thereafter 10.000 subscriptions per month – making a total of 50.000 subscriptions sold. Further let us assume a monthly reneval rate of 85 %.

If these assumptions are correct, The Times currently has about 38.000 active digital subscribers.

This puts the number of digital subscribers to 7,8 % of the circulation of the printed The Times paper (circulation 486.868 according to ABC in September). My guess is that 38.000 current subscribers probably is in the higher end of what is reality. Especially the monthly renewal rate could be much lower than what I have estimated, bringing the number of current active subscribers further down.

Question number 2: How much money has The Times made on user payment so far?

Subscriptions cost £1 for the first 30 days and thereafter £2 per week – or £8 per month.

With the assumptions taken in this article, The Times so far has made £593.000 – or USD 960.000.  To this we should add around 55.000 single-day purchases with the price of £1 – a total of £55.000.  That sums up to a total of £648.000 or USD 1.050.000.

That doesn’t sound much, does it?

No.

Yet it is important to understand how a revenue model like this works as new business is being developed. As long as the number of new customers are higher than the ones not renewing their subscriptions, income will increase each month.  For The Times that will probably still happen for a few months until a peak is reached. With 10.000 new subscribers per month and a reneval rate of 85 %, as assumed in this article, The Times will reach around 50.000 running subscriptions in February and a monthly income of around  £335.000, including 15.000 single-day purchase.  That is £4,02 million or USD 6,5 million per year in user payment.

My assumptions could be far off reality, of course, as I have no knowledge of how many new subscriptions The Times sells each month and what is the monthly renewal rate. This is just an educated guess based on the sparse information given by the newspaper company and my own experience in the media business. If reneval rates are significantly lower or The Times is selling much fewer than 10.000 new subscriptions per month the income peak may already have been reached.

Users at The Times are being teased with access for only £1

Question number 3: Is the paywall profitable for The Times?

For sure not – so far. While there is some user revenue, loss in advertising revenue probably is much more. It is widely estimated that The Times has lost up to 90 % of its online traffic, at least if we look at page views. Such a traffic drop will have a dramatic effect on advertising revenue.

Only News Corporation knows the exact mathematics, of course. But I am pretty sure that advertisement income used to be much higher that what The Times now is generating in user revenue.

Question number 4: Will the paywall be a smart move in the long run?

That is far too early to say. It all depends on how the market moves, and whether The Times succeeds in getting enough people to sign up each month.

My guess, however, is that they will fail in the long run.

Here are my reasons:

• Loss in advertisement income will be too big with traffic drop of this magnitude. Probably it would have been wiser to choose a meter model, like Financial Times and The New York Times.
• It is doubtful whether enough people will choose to subscribe digitally to maintain a sufficient revenue stream. Remember that The Times operates in an English language market with lots of free content.
• Most important: Over time The Times will have an engaging relationship to less and less people. In the end that will be a major strategic problem.  The media house will see its influence diminished and also no longer have the same opportunity to monetize the user base, and not only the content, as before.

Don’t forget, however: I could be wrong! What if The Times actually succeeds? What if the experiment demonstrates that many people are indeed willing to pay for digital content of high quality? Then Rupert Murdoch has a head start on all of his competitors.  He will be the one making the big profit as payment for being early mover.

I don’t think that is what will happen. But I could be wrong. And Rupert Murdoch might be the winner – as he has been several times before.

Question number 5: Is The Times‘ paywall good for the rest of the media business?

Yes, definitely. Rupert Murdoch has taken a bold move that is making a major impact on the media landscape and maybe even readers willingness to pay. Most media companies have realized that they need to build new revenue streams in addition to display ads. This becomes even more urgent as readership of printed papers continues to fall.

Yet putting up a full paywall, as The Times has done, is a very risky strategy. Most media houses will not even dare to consider such a radical alternative at the moment, worrying that it will do major damage to their positions in the reader market. When a major media company like News Corporation is willing to take this risk with one of its biggest brands, it is an experiment that is being followed closely by the whole industry. And even if  The Times fails, Rupert Murdoch has contributed in making people more used to thinking that they actually might have to pay for content.

———————————————–

There is an interesting detail in the press release from News Corporation: The company tells that about 100.000 print subscribers have signed up for the digital subscription, which this group gets for free.  That is 20,5 % of the print circulation – or one out of five. Personally I am surprised this number is not higher.

Now I am eager to hear: What do you make out of the recently released figures from The Times? Do you agree with my analysis? Or should the figures be analyzed in a completely different way? Let me know what you think!

Related articles from other sources

• Murdoch’s London pay wall may be dead end (Newsonomics)
• W(h)ither The Times? (Emily Bell)
• It’s official: News Corp’s pay wall is a bust (GigaOm)
• Mixed response from PR industry on paywall figures for The Times (prweek.com)
• Times paywall – what constitutes success then? (guardian.co.uk)
• Murdoch’s Paywall Numbers Sound Better Than They Really Are (techdirt.com)
• Victory for paywalls? 105,000 shell out for Murdoch’s Times [TNW UK] (thenextweb.com)
• The successes and failures of the Times’s paywall (newstatesman.com)
• News Corp. Being Buried Under Crumbling Paywall (revenews.com)
• Rupert Murdoch Declares Pay Wall a Success. Is It? (blogs.forbes.com)