It has been a tough year for The Boston Globe

Last week’s announcement (more here) by the Boston Globe that they’d be splitting their news content across two properties, one of which would require a paid subscription, drew oodles of attention from the media industry. Though it’s certainly not the only attempt to resurrect the slumping newspaper business, the Globe’s strategy charts an unknown course in the new media landscape.

The plan, slated for rollout in the “second half of 2011,” will effectively split the Globe into two online brands. The current online iteration, Boston.com, will remain online with a more limited content base, while a new site, BostonGlobe.com, will host all the content produced by the newspaper’s staff and require a subscription to access. Prices for the subscriptions have not yet been announced.

In light of yesterday’s Future of News event, hosted by our crew here at BostInnovation and Pinyadda and part of FutureM, here are three theoretical scenarios the future might hold for the Globe and its two-brand strategy:

1) Tempered Success

If things go as the Globe hopes, traffic to the Boston.com domain will remain relatively stable, leaving advertising revenues for that property intact. As the editorial focus shifts more toward local communities and breaking news, increasing numbers of people will feel connected to the site, increasing community engagement, opening up new opportunities for local advertising, and increasing the amount of time people spend on the site. On the flip side, a small but dedicated customer base who appreciates more in-depth analysis and investigative reporting will slowly start to pony up for BostonGlobe.com content, along with another minority that simply must have their favorite columnist or reporter. The key to the success of this approach, in my opinion, is the Globe’s ability to provide content and services that create very significant differentiation between the two products. If a subscription to BostonGlobe.com gave me a visually appealing, ad-free reading experience and free access to a great mobile and iPad application, I’d at least have something to think about.

2) Stabilization

In the second best scenario, the change causes Boston.com’s traffic and subsequently, its ad revenue, to decline. Parts of this revenue decline are made up for by a small influx of paid subscriptions to BostonGlobe.com. The paper experiments repeatedly with a different mix of content on both properties, trying to get the subscription revenue gains to exactly offset the ad revenue declines. The result is a stabilization of revenue, but a dampening of user experience on both properties as the paper keeps turning knobs and dials trying to balance the equation. The major question in this scenario is whether or not the increased cost and resources of running two different destinations will ultimately add to the burden or product enough revenue to lessen it.

3) Continued Decline

In the nightmare scenario for the Globe, traffic to Boston.com drops sharply and BostonGlobe.com’s potential subscribers, uncertain about the value of the new destination, trickle in slowly and defect over time. The increased overhead of managing two domains and still continuing the print edition leads to a widening revenue gap that places still more pressure on an already shorthanded newsroom. Mobile experiences become victims of cost-cutting measures and overall readership continues to trend downwards as upstarts like Patch and independent bloggers take local news market share. If the outcome of the planned split is two independently good products that people like, this scenario can be avoided. But if the split produces two mediocre properties in place of the current one, the results could be dire.

Certainly, there are innumerable scenarios that could play out, and the ones above are meant to illustrate some broad reactions that could affect the Globe’s future. No matter what happens, the Globe deserves credit for its willingness to step outside the box and try something new. The company’s decision in 1995 to brand the online version separately has come full circle in 2010, and only time will tell if the attempt is successful.

For more on the Globe’s impending split, check out these great links:

Double, double: More on the Boston Globe’s new Two-Site Strategy – Nieman Lab

Boston.com’s New Strategies: Retention and Switch – Newsonomics

Make Like Boston.com and Split – Columbia Journalism Review

The Globe Mates With Itself – Bostonist

Beard leaves, paywall goes up: R.I.P. Boston.com, 1995-2010? – Boston Phoenix

Publisher Chis Mayer on the Globe’s new pay model – Media Nation

What are your thoughts on the Globe’s new model? Genius innovation, moderate improvement, doomed to failure? Leave a comment and let us know!

Here’s a quick tour of the new features and a little description of each:

(Please note: A small fraction of the Pinyadda community is using Internet Explorer 7, and we are experiencing a few issues on this browser. Please bear with us as we work through these bugs.)

New Left Hand Navigation

This area is really the nerve center of your Pinyadda interface, and we wanted to add a hefty dose of customization as well as make this component easier for new users to navigate. We added drag-and-drop organization for sites and topics,a dead-simple folder structure to help you customize your news even more, and made sure that when you follow something new your navigation updates instantly. For those of you who’ve been concerned about leaving your RSS reader behind, this update should help ease the transition. Now you can keep your organizational standards and get all the great perks that come with a system that’s been built social from the ground up.

Notifications Functionality

We know that constant email updates can get annoying. But we also know that you like to be told when something cool happens, or if you’ve achieved a cool new reward. Our solution to this Catch-22 is the new notifications feature, which lets you know when good things happen without interrupting your experience on the site. Now, when you get a private message, unlock a reward, receive a recommendation or gain a new follower, you’ll get a notification that lets you easily view the update and take action. If you want to see all your notifications, just click on the link to at the bottom of the dropdown. And don’t forget to share!

Recommend Sites, People, and Topics

After seeing so many people evangelize their favorite sites on Pinyadda,  tell us about their go-to topic feeds and suggest users your friends should follow, we wanted to be sure to provide an easy way to recommend the stuff you’re into to your friends and colleagues. Now, all you need to do is go to an individual site or topic feed or someone’s profile, click the gears button at the top right, and click “Recommend.” You’ll be prompted to select whether you want to send a recommendation to all your followers, or just to individual people (you can even enter an email address of a user not on Pinyadda). They’ll receive your recommendation in their notification tab at the top.

Redesigned Search Feature

We all have a pretty good idea of how a search function is supposed to work, and we needed to make ours do what our users thought it would. You gave us a lot of feedback on this one and the result is a simplified search box, auto-suggest feature, and redesigned results page does a much better job of helping you quickly find what you’re looking for. Whether you’re searching for articles, people, sites, or topics, just type your query into the box and we’ll do our best to read your mind. If you don’t see what you’re looking for in the auto-suggest field, just hit the enter key and you’ll be given a full page of sortable results.

Updated Information Architecture

This is a fancy way of saying we moved a few menu options to a place where they make more sense. If you’re trying to add a link to Pinyadda or submit an RSS feed for your favorite blog, you can now find those options under the Newsstand dropdown. See what we did there? The newsstand is as much yours as it is ours, and we wanted to make sure we made that clear.

While we know change is sometimes hard to deal with, we hope you all like these updates. They’re drawn in large part from your fantastic feedback and we continue to be incredibly grateful to have a such an engaged, dedicated, and thoughtful community. And please, let us know what you think! There’s a whole lot more great stuff on the horizon and we’ll be sure to share more soon.

Love,

The Yadda Squad

Become a Fantasy God with Pinyadda

Desperately trying to fill the gaps in your fantasy roster? Looking for a few sleepers to make a play for in pre-season trading? Trying to find the hidden gems in your league and come up with ways to beat them? Look no further. Whether you want to read fantasy news from around the web or just keep up with specific teams, Pinyadda’s got you covered. Here’s a quick look at five potential fantasy spoilers and everything you need to follow them on Pinyadda.

1. Sam Bradford, St. Louis Rams. Though it pains me to say it, Bradford looked sharp against the Patriots last week and has proven to most analysts that he has the skills necessary to post numbers at the NFL level. He’s not a fantasy starter, but if you can pick him up on the cheap I’m willing to bet he’s got a couple of big days up his sleeve this year, especially given the Rams’ relatively weak schedules. Follow the St. Louis Rams topic to keep up with Bradford’s progress throughout the year.
2. LaDainian Tomlinson, New York Jets. LT is getting old, but he’s not done yet. Rex Ryan’s strange coaching mojo seems to have breathed some life into the organization and it appears that Tomlinson’s buying whatever he’s selling. While Tomlinson may not get the bulk of the carries, expect him to break at least one a game for 20 or more. And don’t forget that he led the league in receptions a few years ago – he might do better than your #1 receiver on some weeks. Follow the New York Jets topic and the Jets Blog to track LT’s work as a Jet.
3. Clinton Portis, Washington Redskins. Mike Shannahan knows how to get the most out of his backs, and Clinton Portis is undervalued in most leagues this year. If he can (and his offensive line) can avoid the injury bug this year, Portis will get plenty of chances to gain quality yards and score valuable fantasy points. He’s a known quantity and offers predictable point totals during most of the regular season. The Washington Redskins topic and the Redskins Blog have you covered with all the latest on Portis, Shannahan, and the rest of the Skins.
4. Michael Vick, Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles, no matter how you slice it, are still a mess. Anyone who thinks Kevin Kolb is going to last the whole season has a better sense of humor than I do. Will Vick’s output be predictable? No. Does he have legitimate potential for a few insane weeks that could make or break your matchup? Absolutely. If you can pick him up late, do it. If you can afford to hang on to him he might make the difference in close heat down the stretch. Follow Philadelphia Eagles and the Bird’s Eye View blog in the Philly Enquirer to stay up on the latest drama in Philly.
5. Pierre Garcon, Indianapolis Colts. When you catch balls thrown by Peyton Manning, it can be easy to be overshadowed. But Garcon’s ability can’t be doubted, and though he may not yet be a name-brand receiver just yet, anyone who’s suffered a spanking at the hands of the Colts can tell you that Garcon is one of Manning’s favorite targets. He runs a lot of 15-30 yard seam routes that Manning thrives on against cover two zone defenses in the middle of the field. He’s a great pickup who’s almost guaranteed to have a decent performance every week. Follow the Indianapolis Colts topic and Stampede Blue to see how Garcon can help you score this season.

Pinyadda is your place to find all the pro football news and updates you can handle from across the web. Follow the teams you want, discuss articles with other fantasy gurus, and never miss an injury report or roster change again. For more information on using Pinyadda to help you crush it this fantasy season, check out our post on using Pinyadda to dominate your fantasy draft. And don’t forget to follow the Fantasy Football topic to keep up with the latest trends and analysis from fantasy blogs and commentators all over the internet.

1. Your browser just got a lot more powerful. What people commonly refer to as HTML5 is more than a simple update to the world’s most popular markup language. In addition to providing us with lots of new elements that makes constructing web pages easier (and makes more sense) than ever before, there are lots of ways that this bundle of innovations is making your web browser a lot more powerful. Things like local storage (allowing web applications to use the browser, instead of their own servers, for storing temporary information, in some cases enabling offline work), geolocation (it knows where you are!), and advanced javascript API’s mean that things once possible on the desktop will now be widely deployed on the web.
2. Web applications are about to be just applications. HTML was created and standardized when most websites were mostly read-only entities. HTML5, on the other hand, reflects an understanding that the web is about applications that require write access and all kinds of other user interaction. With native support for drag and drop, animation, and vector image creation using the versatile canvas element, HTML5 has all the tools you need to do some truly amazing things with web pages.
3. No more plugins. Perhaps the coolest part of HTML5 is also the part you’re likely to find in wide usage first: inline audio and video. What does that mean? The days of downloading plugins to view video and and audio content on the internet are over. It’s about time we started treating these media types as first class web citizens, and this standard really makes that dream a reality. It also means that video and audio content can be implemented much more seamlessly in web pages – no more bulky frames or outmoded modules. Just the content, however and wherever you wanted. Here’s a kickass example of how cool all this can be.
4. Mobile, mobile, mobile. All browsers, even mobile browsers, read HTML. Which means that in large part, the new standards will be supported across a huge variety of mobile devices and platforms. In devices with smaller memory and processors, there’s a lot of hope that HTML5 can reduce load times, dependence on processor-intensive scripting, and help cut down on other minutiae that can suck the life out of your battery and make the mobile experience cumbersome. And we can all agree on that
5. Style that’s fresh to death. With all kinda of new tricks and goodies making their way into the CSS3 spec, we can expect lots of really good-looking websites to be born of HTML5 and friends. Whether it’s using @font-face declarations to spice up topography, using CSS3 transitions and animations to give designs an extra kick, or simply making good use of the rounded corners, gradients, and shadows that are built right in to CSS3, designers, developers, and users will be sure to notice a lot of new hotness around the web. The added bonus? Using CSS and HTML5 reduces the need to use javascript and images in many cases, making for speedier load times and better mobile experiences.

Check out the links below for more great information on HTML5 and lots of great demos:

To keep up with the latest HTML5 news, be sure to follow the Web Design, Internet, Web Development and Web2.0 topics on Pinyadda.

Paul Irish’s Presentation at Google GTUG Campout 2010

HTML5 Rocks

HTML5 Doctor

Dive Into HTML5

These guys used Pinyadda to dominate their drafts.

As the days tick down to September, fantasy freaks everywhere are watching re-runs of preseason games on the NFL network, scouring the bottom half of rosters for potential hidden gems, and throwing loads of misinformation at their league counterparts. But for the true fantasy guru, Pinyadda can be the ultimate information weapon. Here are 5 ways to use Pinyadda to get a head start this fantasy season:

1. Follow the Fantasy Football topic. With a feed of fantasy articles this robust, it’s hard to see why you’d need to go anywhere else. Hundreds of articles and blog posts with invaluable fantasy information flow though this feed every day, bringing you the latest injury news, player updates, and strategy diatribes. Make it the first stop on your daily fantasy trail.


Select the 'Search Topics' tab from the search bar and type 'Fantasy' to find the Fantasy Football topic.

2. Follow specific NFL team topics to keep up with your key players (and your hometown favorites, of course). Did you know that every NFL team is its own topic on Pinyadda? We spent months scouring the web to find all the best news and blogs about each team and then categorized them for your easy discovery. Head over the ‘Browse’ section of the Newsstand, click on Sports, and then filter by ‘NFL Teams.’ Then follow the teams you have a stake in. You’ll never be able to say you missed a key roster change again.
   

   Using the 'Browse' section of the Newsstand, click on the Sports Icon. Once you're there, use the filter menu to select 'NFL Teams.'

3. Compete to become a Maven of Fantasy Football. On Pinyadda, we give you a way to back up your fantasy smack-talking by becoming a Maven of topics you follow. To become a Maven, you’ll have to start sharing the best fantasy articles you dig up by pinning them with comments. It may seem wrong to be sharing your best tips, but don’t forget: taunting a competitor by sharing a blog post about his star receiver’s recent suspension is fair game, too.
   

   Pin articles about Fantasy Football to become a Maven

4. Get your whole league on Pinyadda. There’s no better place to share fantasy articles, discuss the upcoming week, or talk some smack than Pinyadda. Getting your whole league to sign up makes it easy to help each other discover fantasy news, debate proposed trades. Plus, when you sign up with a group you can help each learn the inside tips and tricks of Pinyadda.
   

   Visit your Settings page and use the Contacts tab to invite the rest of your league to Pinyadda

5. Intimidate by sharing. Using Pinyadda to stay up to date on all your fantasy news is only one part of establishing your fantasy dominance prior to draft day. Strategically sharing fantasy news to Facebook and Twitter can let all your friends know that you’re not to be trifled with when it comes down to the wire. Whether it’s purposefully downplaying your number 1 quarterback’s prospects or aggressively hyping your keepers, letting the world know about your fantasy prowess can only help your game.
   

   Select the Twitter and Facebook checkboxes to automatically send your item to those networks. Make your superior knowledge obvious to the world.

Even after draft day, Pinyadda can be the key to keeping the fantasy gods on your side. With great feeds of real-time information and system that makes it easy to share the latest news and talk the freshest game, Pinyadda is your one-stop shop for everything you need to know to make this fantasy season a success.

The ongoing net neutrality debate hit a fever pitch over the last week and Google and Verizon released a “joint policy proposal” that laid out their vision for the future of the internet. It wasn’t as “open” as most people had hoped for and foreshadowed a future where large companies and content providers create – brace yourself – other internets that may or may not be subject to regulation of any kind.

While this is troubling to all of us who support an entirely open internet, it’s especially important for publishers and bloggers to understand the possible repercussions of a scenario like the one outlined by Google and Verizon.

I needed to catch up on the conversation, so I did quick Pinyadda title search for “neutrality” and was greeted with a great stream of relevant content. Here’s a roundup of some of the best links. Be sure to come and join the conversation if you’ve got something to add:

• Understanding Verizon, Google, and net neutrality - Yahoo! News
• Facebook Criticizes Google Verizon Net Neutrality Pact – Information Week
• Why Google Became A Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey – Wired.com
• Net neutrality and the Google-Verizon compromise – Christian Science Monitor
• Google-Verizon Net Neutrality Pact: 5 Red Flags – CIO
• Here’s The Real Google/Verizon Story: A Tale of Two Internets - Wired.com
• More on Net Neutrality: Parsing Through Google and Verizon’s ‘Policy Announcement’ – ProPublica

Most of coverage is fairly negative on the prospect of shadow internets that might allow corporations to control (and charge for) access to certain destinations or services. For some in the news industry, this might sound like a great way to protect their web-based content and differentiate their brands. But the truth is that measures that hamper frictionless distribution of content on the web lead to decreasing revenues, not increasing ones.

The creation of proprietary networks for content delivery leads us down a path that ends up like cable television – expensive, slow to innovate, monopolistic – with one very key distinction: there’s an alternative.

So while the command and control structure of alternative internets might be appealing to some, it belies the simple truth that internet publishing has almost no barriers to entry. When there are alternative choices (read: abundance), the power of a barrier to access simply moves people in different directions: in this case, toward different content.

What do you think about the proposed modifications of net neutrality modifications? Let us know in the comments.

The race for local news online is on.

The Boston Globe wrote yesterday about Patch.com and its efforts in the local news space, which spurred a discussion over at Media Nation about the working conditions for its editors. Patch is pursuing an aggressive strategy here in Massachusetts, with 13 local sites now up and running and 4 more planned to open shortly. But as the Globe points out, Patch is hardly alone the race to go local. The scene playing out here in Boston is indicative of a much larger battle for position in the local news space across the country, as established media outlets fight with startups and independent bloggers for the eyes of local readers – and the potentially lucrative ad dollars that come along with them. Here are five key points to think about when looking at the shift toward local news online:

Boots on the Ground

As the Media Nation piece and its considerable comment thread shows, it’s really important to find the right people for a local news site. Having a qualified and dedicated editor who’s willing to set the ship in motion is likely the hardest, and most important, aspect of creating success at the local level. He or she needs to be connected to local officials and tastemakers, understand the specific culture and mood of the locale, and have a genuine interest in keeping others informed. Every place is different, and without a thorough understanding of its ins and outs, even the most sensational content runs the risk of falling on deaf ears.

Blogging Isn’t (Always) Reporting

While incorporating posts from local blogs is a great way to embrace the existing content infrastructure and fill gaps in coverage, people still want hard news form local outlets, because it directly affects their lives. If people can’t find out about the changes in their town’s excise tax rates, or the date of a hearing on a new shopping mall, or the latest restrictions on lawn-watering, they’ll go somewhere else. It’s not sexy and it won’t make any money, but it’s what brings the audience in every day. Feature pieces and opinionated blog posts have their place, but there’s just no substitute for facts – and it takes more than one person to go out and find them.

Your Dry Cleaner Doesn’t Have an iPhone (Yet)

The potential market for local advertising is enticing, and more and more small businesses are finding innovative new ways to use the web and social media to their advantage. But not everyone gets it yet, and it’s going to be difficult to convince Mom and Pop that they should pay you to put some silly picture up that internet thing. Pageviews? CPMs? Huh? The web is creeping into small towns all across the country, and as more local newspapers shut down the presses, more businesses will go there to advertise. In the meantime, I think that lots of local news sites are going to find that the projected market numbers for local ad sales don’t match up with what they see on the ground.

Social, Meet Local

The real power of online social networks lies in their ability to connect people. As the social web matures, we’re seeing more and more melding of the online world and the real world. Services like Meetup are helping people use the web to facilitate physical interaction in the real world. Local online news outlets are in a prime position to do much the same thing. The ‘community’ that so many publishers strive to create on the web comes built-in to a local news site. Those who are successful will take full advantage of this and find ways to use their content to enable real-world connections between readers.

Location, Location, Location

Location-based services may seem to be springing up by the dozens, but we’ve only yet seen the tip of the iceberg. With HTML5 comes a whole new set of geo-location tools built right into the browser, and GPS functionality in mobile devices is quickly becoming a standard feature. The ability to determine the location of a reader opens up a whole range of opportunities for forward-thinking local news sites; everything from location-specific ads and offers to reader reviews and photos to interactive traffic maps. The possibilities are literally endless.

As we watch the battle for local news on the web unfold, it will be interesting to see how different entities approach the problem. Bigger companies and existing media outlets have more dollars to throw at the issue, and that capital will certainly help them to establish a presence. Smaller upstarts and local independents will have a harder road to walk initially, but if they can break they might just be able win the day with a more personalized feel and voice.

In the meantime, at Pinyadda we’re looking at lots of way to enable discovery of local content for our users, and we’re really excited about the possibilities that an API can make available for local publishers. As always, if you’ve got any suggestions, be sure to let us know.

1. Follow topics related to your beat – Whether you’re covering food, venture capital, sports, or biochemistry, following topics on Pinyadda is the easiest way to find news that’s relevant all in one place. Using a semantic taxonomy to ensure accuracy, topic feeds pull relevant articles from all the 4000+ sites we index in real time. In just a few clicks, topic feeds allow you to get a sense of what’s being written about your the areas you cover. You can search for topics using the main search bar at the top of the page, or visit the Newsstand to quickly browse and follow topics you’re interested in.
   

   How to follow topics related to your beat.

2. Follow the publications you compete with – Following sites on Pinyadda allows you to receive all the articles they publish in one easy-to-use interface. Instead of shuffling through a long list of bookmarks or slogging through a congested RSS reader, following sites allows you to quickly get a bead on what competing publications are writing about – and what the community is saying about it. In addition, following sites lets you see who its Ambassadors are, which is great way to find, follow, and engage people who might be interested in your content.
   

   Follow similar sites to get a feel for their coverage

3. Find and follow people who can help extend your audience - While Pinyadda can do a lot to help you find and consume content, the community is our best resource. Use the Newsstand to find and follow people who are interested in the topics you cover, follow the Ambassadors of sites with similar content, and browse the All People feed to find others who seem to enjoy reading and commenting on articles similar to those you publish. Engaging in conversation with potential readers is a great way to build up positive influence in the community – influence that can pay you back when you start to promote your own content.
   

   Find and follow people who are interested in content like yours.

4. Start conversations on your own articles or posts – As Chase pointed out last week, in the world of social media “published doesn’t mean complete.” After you publish a piece, come to Pinyadda and start a conversation about it by pinning the article. Invite a few of the people you’ve followed and ask a specific question about the post, or invite alternate points of view. Each person who joins the conversation automatically shares it with their entire Pinyadda following, allowing your content to spread quickly throughout the community, often generating significant comment threads and multiple social media shares to Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
   

   Start conversations about your posts to drive engagement and reach.

5. Get your colleagues to join you on Pinyadda – It’s likely that the content you find on Pinyadda might be useful to your fellow newsroom inhabitants. Help them get set up on Pinyadda and be sure to start following each other. Instead of sending interesting links via email or shouting across the newsroom, just pin the article to your colleagues and let them know what you think. It’s the quickest and easiest way to share and discuss content that’s relevant to your work. Great article from the New York Times about your area of expertise? Pin it. Influential blog post that’s missing a key perspective? Pin it. Funny piece from the Onion that can lighten the mood on a particularly stressful day? Pin it. The newsroom is no place for a bunch of people working in isolation, and Pinyadda was specifically designed to help people discuss the news that’s relevant to them.

No matter what your publication covers, Pinyadda can help you research, report, and distribute your content from start to finish. Set up your account to follow the topics and sites that matter to you, find and follow the people who care about your content and can help spread it, and get your colleagues set up to start getting the most of out of your newsroom’s collective mind.

Have questions about Pinyadda or need help getting started? Send me an email at austin[at]pinyadda.com for more information about how your publication can use Pinyadda in the newsroom.

D

Users end up at a landing page for all kinds of reasons, and with hugely variant degrees of preconceived knowledge about the product or service. Creating a page that speaks to everyone who visits your site is nearly impossible, but it’s a challenge that must be tackled. So how can we create a framework that allows us to think about the challenges of communicating with visitors without trying to single out each individual personality? I’m not convinced that anyone can answer that question, but there are two key aspects of the design that I’m thinking about as needs to address: emotion and information.

Emotion: Regardless of how much we like to consider ourselves intellectual beings, we’re hard-wired to have emotional responses to visual stumuli. The web, as a very visual medium, requires us to consider the way designs impact the emotional satisfaction of those that visit our pages. There’s an instant response to the overall aesthetic of a page, driven by things like color and symmetry. Designing landing pages that create an emotional response is, by its very nature, an art more than a science. But it can be tested – five second tests, word association questions, and eye-tracking are all tools that can be used to get a general sense of what creates and emotional response and what doesn’t. The thing to remember about the emotional component is that it’s the first thing triggered – long before any text is read or any language can be processed. In fact, it’s likely that the initial emotional response prevents the processing of text and language until it’s over.

Information: The other side of the equation is the need for users to be informed. If the immediate emotional response is positive enough to keep a visitor from closing the page, the cerebral aspect of their brains will start searching for clues that satisfy curiosity and setup expectations. What’s going on here? What do I have to do? What’s going to happen next? These are the questions that a user is asking him or herself when they encounter any new service or application. Answering these questions as specifically as possible is important, but over-specificity can drive people with pre-conceptions away. If the service is described as something that’s useful for people who need mustard-spreading widgets (they’re in high demand these days), then you risk driving away those who might want to use the product to spread ketchup. Beyond the language of the initial description, we want to make sure we provide enough information to keep those who aren’t convinced on our domain as they continue to consider their options. While I’ve thought before that providing fewer options for more information might lead to more conversions, in recent weeks I’ve come to believe that it’s more effective to keep someone on your domain for as long as possible, and provide them with as many chances to convert as possible. If they’re not sure, I’d much rather have them click through to a ‘Learn More’ page than hit the back button and leave me forever.

Finding the right balance between emotional response and information expectations is difficult and probably impossible to master. But thinking about the ways that people respond to the design of your landing pages is critical to creating pages that convert well and create positive feelings for people that choose to convert. In the coming weeks we’ll be rolling out a new series of landing pages that can hopefully address these challenges in interesting and creative ways, and I’ll try to chronicle as much of that process as I can.

In the meantime, what are your own thoughts about landing pages? What do you look for as a user, or if you’re a designer, which challenges do you focus on? Leave a comment and let me know what you think.

First, the shutdown. In what may be an example of the Alamo strategy I described last Friday, Gannett made the decision to shut down the print publication of one of its small UK-based papers, the Hounslow – Brentford Times, formerly the Chiswick Times. According to MediaBistro, both publications will go online-only starting this week. The decision ends a run of continuous print publication that’s lasted for over a century. Somewhat ironically, an article on the web version of the publication describes the paper’s storied history and runs a large picture of the first printed edition. We may as well get used to these announcements and start to embrace the print eulogy as a new genre that everyone should master. Whatever Gannet’s motivations, it seems like the hard reality of print economics is starting to set in for everyone.

WikiLeaks this week released over 9,000 military documents, causing quite a stir among the media elite and prompting several discussions about the place of such an institution in the larger media landscape. Almost every media outlet published about the documents and their implications for the confluence of national security, freedom of information, and journalistic integrity. It’s a debate that’s sure to continue. While my own thoughts on the topic aren’t yet fully formed, I found a wealth of great opinions and commentary in the Media feed on Pinyadda, including this great post from our friends at the Nieman Lab, this post from Dan Kennedy over at Northeastern which includes a great comment thread, this interesting comparison between these documents and the Pentagon Papers from Mediaite, and yet another great rumination on the subject from James Fallows at the Atlantic. There are tons more opinions out there and we’ll be tracking the spread of this story through our index in the coming days. Regardless of your own position on the behavior of WikiLeaks in this incident, it’s certainly an interesting study in the emergence of an important new outlet in the news industry.

On a lighter note, the season premiere of Mad Men on AMC last night saw the news media play a crucial role in the development of the acclaimed series’ plot, as lead character Don Draper’s botched interview with Advertising Age led to unrest within his fictional ad firm. The show ended with Draper taking another interview, this time with the Wall Street Journal, in an attempt to right the ship. While perhaps not the most scientific study, the episode got me thinking about the changing role of newspapers in our public relations and marketing landscape. Set in the 1960′s, the shows characters had no other choice of outlet – any large-scale public image campaign had to run through the newspapers. But what would a firm in a similar situation do today? It seems almost obvious that they’d turn to social media and the web instead of the staid print institutions of today. Instead of a single reporter sitting in a smoky room, it’d be the crowd asking questions:  ”Who is @dondraper?”

To get your daily fix of great news from around the world of media, be sure to check out Pinyadda’s Media topic. From breaking news to in-depth analysis of the news industry’s past, present, and future, we’ve got you covered.