Here’s why Pinyadda is the best way to share news on Twitter, including examples from our community:

Know the best articles and blog posts to share

Pinyadda is like your personal assistant for news and information. Instead of having to go site-to-site or do searches (and often dig) for the news and blog posts that you want to click on, Pinyadda sifts through the firehose of content for you and collects the articles and posts you’re most likely interested in. Pinyadda serves the good stuff to you in real-time, filing each article as it’s published into clean pages you can browse based on topics, sites and people you follow (click for a quick 30-sec video overview).

With Pinyadda, you know the articles you’ll be into sharing to Twitter without lifting a finger:

• Want to tweet about news on a particular topic? Go to that topic page and see articles being published about it from sites across the web on everything from your city or favorite sports team to things like celebrities, food, social media, autos or green tech.
• Want to tweet articles from your go-to sites? View a feed of what’s been published most recently from all your favorites, and if you have one site in mind go to it’s individual feed page. (Tip: Here you can even tell Pinyadda to show you only articles published from a few sections of that site. It’s great for big sites like Boston.com where you may only be interested in a couple sections, like sports and events.)
• Want to share an article that lots of people are talking about? Go to your Home feed to see what articles people you follow are sharing (we call it pinning). You can also toggle to the “All People” feed to see what’s buzzing in the whole community on Pinyadda — lots of people use Pinyadda like a digital water cooler to share and discuss articles with groups of friends and colleagues, so you can always find great stuff.

Craft engaging news-related tweets

Since people use Twitter for different reasons, we designed Pinyadda’s integration with it with flexibility top of mind. This way you stay in the drivers seat of your voice and can mold your tweets as you like. Here are examples of some of the most effective ways to share all the news goodness on Pinyadda to Twitter:

1. Share a headline. This is the most basic way to share news to your Twitter followers. Just copy and paste the headline from the feed into the comment box. It’s straightforward, easy, and gets the news out quickly to your followers. (Tip: If you you want to legitimize the source of the link, include its Twitter handle, e.g. I know Boston.com is @bostonupdate.)
   
2. Share a quote, main point, question, or data point from the article. These are great ways to shake up how you share news articles to Twitter. These often grab your followers attention better than a straight headline, and shows you’re putting some TLC into your tweets.
   
3. Add value to the article by including your own commentary. This is a great way to demonstrate your expertise, opinions, or simply add some humor to the news you share with your followers.
   
4. Direct an article to a Twitter follower. Often when we read an article we think of someone – be it an inside joke, something that will help them in their job, or is relevant to other aspects of their lives. If the person you’re thinking of isn’t as ahead of the curve as you and on Pinyadda too, include their Twitter handle at the beginning. (Better yet, invite them to Pinyadda!)
   
5. Share a discussion to Twitter. If you’re part of or come across a great discussion on an article on Pinyadda that your followers on Twitter would like, simply enter  something like “check out this great discussion about X” when sharing the link to Twitter. (Tip: Combining #4 and #5 is killer if you know someone’s really into a subject,e.g. tweeting “thought you’d want in on this convo.”)
6. Promote a site you think is great. If you come across a site on Pinyadda you want your Twitter followers to know about, simply visit that site’s page and click on the big blue “share this site” button. You can even customize the message you want to tweet out with it.
   
7. Share your profile on Pinyadda to Twitter. Want people to know what topics and sites you follow, how many followers you’ve gained, and what you’ve pinned on Pinyadda? (We like to call this your news graph.) Simply tweet out the URL to your Pinyadda profile or include it in your Twitter bio.
8. Share your Yadda shwag to boost your cred on Twitter. Pinyadda’s points system allows you to compete to earn coveted spots as the “Maven” of topics or “Ambassadors” of your favorite sites. You can also unlock fun badges (some even have coupon codes attached) just for pinning the news you’re into. For example, we teamed up with the marketing gurus over at Hubspot and you can earn their Inbound Marketing Ninja badge set by pinning inbound marketing news. You can share all this cred by clicking on what you’ve earned from your profile. Want to be the Maven of Twitter?  Sounds like it’s time to get your yadda on!
   

Connecting Pinyadda to your Twitter account is easy.

Connecting Pinyadda with your Twitter account is simple. Choose an article you want to tweet, enter text you’d like to tweet in the comment box, select the Twitter checkbox, and hit the “Pin it” button (click here for a 30-second video). If it’s your first time doing this you’ll be prompted with a pop-up to enter your Twitter username and password. Once that’s done, the text in the comment box and a unique short URL will hit your Twitter feed.

When one of your Twitter followers clicks on the link, they’ll be brought to a page with the article. If the text you entered in the comment box exceed Twitter’s 140 character limit, Pinyadda automatically truncates. Rest assured, because when your Twitter followers click the URL they’ll see your full comment.

To manage your Twitter account on Pinyadda, visit the Contacts tab of your settings. There you can even see who out of the people you follow on Twitter are also on Pinyadda.

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Do you have other examples of great ways to share news to Twitter?  How can we make sharing links to Twitter better for you? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

There are many, many sites that produce helpful content for bloggers.  How does a blogger determine which blog is right for them?  To help out our readers who blog themselves, I figured I’d dive deep into two blogs that have been indexed by Pinyadda for over 6 months: ProBlogger.net (PB) and Copyblogger.com (CB).

Since June 1st, here is some data for both PB and CB:

Chart 1: A comparison of PB and CB by the number of items indexed by Pinyadda since June 1st and each site’s Unique Users value for the month of June, 2010 as reported by Compete.com

As shown, PB has published more items since 6/1/2010 but received significantly less traffic than CB in June.   These numbers are helpful, but continue reading for more information about each site.

About

CB was founded in 2006 by Brian Clark.  By scanning the author names of roughly 25 posts, it appears there are 8-10 writers contributing to CB.  PB was started in September of 2004 by Darren Rowse.  With the exception of a handful of guest posts, it appears most of the content is created by Rowse himself.

Both CB and PB maintain Twitter handles.  Interestingly, CB’s significant lead in site traffic is reversed if you look at their Twitter communities, where  Darren Rowse (@problogger) has twice as many followers as Brian Clark (@copyblogger): 101,647 followers vs. 55,874 followers.

Site Layout

Below is a comparison of CB’s and PB’s homepages.  Recent CB articles are in the tradition center column while PB’s recent articles are aligned left.  I find CB’s interface more accessible upfront, but I found myself spending more time  on PB because of the sheer amount of information on the page.

Content

CB’s content heavily relies on list posts (like Make Your Readers Love You:  5 Lessons from Pixar and The 7 Secrets of Running a  Wildly Popular Blog), which from experience do very well with regards to traffic.  These types of posts, however, generally have a high bounce rate and do not convert article-viewers into consistent blog readers.

PB’s content has some list-type posts (like 10 Common Spelling Mistakes That Haunts Bloggers) but there is a greater variety of stuff on PB compared to CB.  Not only does PB seem less reliant on list posts for blog content, but PB has additional resources for bloggers like a paid forum and a job board.  The community at PB would have to be extremely strong and knowledgeable to justify paying for a community forum, but a job board is definitely a nice touch.

In conclusion, I hope you see the inherent value of both of these blogs as I now do.  Ultimately, you’ll probably read CB for one thing and PB for another.

Here are some more sites about blogging that Pinyadda has been indexing for less than 6 months (thus, not completely accurate data).  I will follow up with these sites on their 6-month Pinyadda anniversary.

This week, Google issued a response to the FTC’s Discussion Draft on the future or journalism in no uncertain terms. Its language paints perhaps the most realistic view of the print publishing industry to date:

“The large profit margins newspapers enjoyed in the past were built on an artificial scarcity: Limited choice for advertisers as well as readers. With the Internet, that scarcity has been taken away and replaced by abundance. No policy proposal will be able to restore newspaper revenues to what they were before the emergence of online news. It is not a question of analog dollars versus digital dimes, but rather a realistic assessment of how to make money in a world of abundant competitors and consumer choice.”

This statement, which I believe to be wholly correct, is the truth that most of the news industry has been running from as their revenue graphs dive swiftly toward the x-axis. But it does shed some light on why some smaller publishers might be willing to stick by their businesses to the bitter end. As Google’s statement hints, what we are witnessing is not an incremental shift in the publishing industry but the emergence of an entirely new model for content creation and distribution. It’s not, as many publishers seem to think, a matter of turning the knobs and twisting the dials until the money starts pouring in the door again. It’s about fundamentally re-thinking the way readers and publishers interact in the digital world. In order for existing institutions to survive, they will have to undergo a metamorphosis on a massive scale. All aspects of the business – from newsroom makeup to management strategies to distribution channels to ad sales – need to be disrupted, re-organized, and cleaned out. Excess infrastructure needs to be dismantled and discarded. Ingrained policies and procedures need to be uprooted, new skills need to be acquired.

All of this represents an investment that can be daunting for many regional publications, especially when the outcome is largely an unknown. Even if the funds to manage the transition exist, it’s likely that the revenue picture will continue to get worse before it gets better, and there are a whole host of questions that need to be answered. When do abandon the print version? Who do we need to hire and where can we find them? How should we change our newsroom? Who should we let go? And most importantly, after we do all this, how will we make money? It’s a terrifying and crippling prospect for most small newspapers, even those with the support of larger media conglomerates like Gannet and McClatchy. And it makes it easier to see why some might just be willing to stick to their guns until the fighting overwhelms them.

At the end of the day, I see three main approaches for small to mid-sized regional newspapers:

• 

  Play It Down the Middle

  The Fairway Approach – Some small newspapers make a valiant attempt to move their products online. They shift resources toward web editors and designers, start producing small amounts multimedia content, and strive to maximize online ad revenue with standard techniques like pagination and SEO. They run into competition from independent local bloggers and local content conglomerates like Patch, Everyblock, Examiner.com and others. Print costs continue to increase. Print circulation, and consequentially ad revenue, continues to decrease. Online circulation increases for a period, then stagnates. Balance sheets tilt toward the red. The newsroom shrinks as long-time reporters are asked to take pay cuts and furloughs. Print revenue continues to decline, and eventually the presses are closed. Local blogs grow in popularity and start banding together to share content and resources. And then one day, probably a Friday, the publisher enters the newsroom and delivers the final blow. The paper is dead. This is the worst case scenario. It optimizes for nothing, and while being the least risky option certainly produces the least reward. The end result is a shutdown with the most possible collateral damage.

• 

  Stay and Fight

  The Alamo Strategy – Others of newspapers in the same category decide to stick to their guns. They maintain their focus on creating high-quality, investigative journalism for print publication. They maintain an online version of the paper but do little to improve it. They raise the subscription and newsstand price of the paper. They hire additional ad sales staff, perhaps at the expense of a newsroom position. Print revenue and circulation decline, but at a slow and steady rate. The publisher makes cost cuts, most likely reducing wages across the board and cutting all extraneous expenses. Eventually, subscription services like LexisNexis and Bloomberg are cancelled. Content quality suffers. Readership and circulation declines accelerate. Revenue follows. More staff cuts. More circulation declines. Local blogs gain more ground, and the downward spiral continues. And then one day, the publisher enters the newsroom and says, valiantly, ‘It’s over. This is bad, but it was expected. People are let go gracefully. Revenues decline smoothly, and the final blow dealt with more dignity.

• 

  Make Your Own Way

  The Trailblazer Method - A small minority reacts swiftly. The presses are shut, their assets sold. Sales people and editors are let go. Reporters are pressed into hard service, producing more content in shorter periods of time. Debt is taken on to manage the transition. New blood is recruited and installed. Web developers are brought in-house. Revenues drop alarmingly but stabilize quickly. Local blogs are approached, embraced, and where possible, brought into the fold. Social media is embraced as the new distribution stream. Additional revenue sources, including premium content subscriptions, memberships with extended benefits, and paid content placements are attempted. Revenues begin to climb. More blogs are brought into the fold. Video content becomes a staple. Revenues rise to cover costs, and then exceed them. Risks taken early pay off.

The third path is the toughest one to take and few seem really willing to commit. It’s risky. It might not work, and it requires an initial sacrifice that’s tough to swallow. But someone out there is doing these things, and these publications choose to ignore these entities at their own peril. As the Google document goes on to point out:

“The ultimate solutions that will result in a new online equilibrium for the news industry …must be driven by the industry itself, working with technology providers like Google and experimenting with its customers to develop new and innovative ways of delivering the news online.”

It’s a tough world out there for newspapers, and there are lots of important decisions that need to be made – quickly – if they’re going to survive.

With our headquarters located right in the heart of Downtown Boston, most of the Yadda Squad members are pretty big fans of Boston.com, the online destination of The Boston Globe.  It is the go to destination for all things Boston – Sox, Celts, local news and events – you name it, they’re usually on it. So for our first post in the series, we’ve decided to go with Boston.com.

Many of you have heard all the buzz around Chris Nolan’s recent movie Inception.  It is a wildly exciting, action packed thriller about Leonardo DiCaprio manipulating people’s dreams and blurring the lines between reality and the world of the mind’s subconscious.  On July 15th the day before Inception’s opening, Wesley Morris, one of the Globe’s movie critics, wrote a solid review of Nolan’s flick.  The timing of the piece was a perfect way to facilitate Boston.com reader’s to go see the movie on opening weekend, so my first thought was, why doesn’t the Globe integrate with Fandango or some service to directly sell movie tickets on their site?

So after a little investigation, I found some software in the section “Things To Do” called Zvents, which lists different types of events by location, such as movies by theater, concerts, etc.  Clearly outsourcing some of the work that goes into this type of information gathering and architecture is useful, however here are a few things I think could be improved to help Boston.com see more revenue from their great movie content:

1. Call to action, buy tickets to Inception! WAY more obvious – Back when Avatar came out, not surprisingly we found from collecting data from our index that media coverage of movies correlates with box office earnings.  With that being said, I think the main monetization strategy for this piece of content is to capture the intent of the reader which is to learn about Inception, and drive them to purchase their Inception tickets through Boston.com or at least prove they drove the reader to a chosen ticket vendor.

However, the link to the Zvents listing to find showtimes and theaters is a small link in the left hand, in-text module. See the screen shot below.  This call to action needs to be loud and obnoxious.

2. If they stick with using Zvents, change the design, or just directly embed a Fandango form if possible – Assuming the Zvents call to action to purchase tickets is moved to the actual page of Mr. Morris’s review, the design provided will need some optimization.  The first image below show’s the top of Zvents Inception page which provides a brief summary of the movie, which the reader will not need because they are already getting this information from the trusted Mr. Morris. The second image provides the right information for the next step in a reader’s decision process for purchasing tickets, where to see the movie in the area and the times it is playing, but there is a serious lack of call to action buttons screaming at the user to purchase tickets.  If possible, I would directly embed a Fandango form to make the purchasing process as frictionless as possible.

Locations & times image below:

3. Give the reader more social proof that others have seen the movie – I would test calls to action to engage more users to review the movie.  While they have commenting software and two user reviews in the Zvents application for the movie, these are buried and not easy to find.  The more social proof that can be provided, the more likely the reader will be to jump at buying tickets then and there.

4. Put the purchase calls to action in multiple places throughout the article and see which one works best – Morris’s article is two pages long, so it will be important to have the call to action at different breaks in the review.  My guess is most people don’t make it to the second page, but the calls to action could be in a number of places:

• the main fixture of the right side bar.
• an in-text module at the beginning, middle or end of the first page.
• embedded above or in the user reviews/comments.

I am uncertain how realistic any of these changes are regarding how much burden they would put on the copy editors or the technical team at Boston.com but some of these tweaks could potentially lead to higher revenues.  What do you think?  Are there better ways to drive Boston.com readers to purchase their tickets from Morris’s review?  Leave thoughts/ideas in the comments below!

SO – in order to effectively and successfully move forward in developing better business models for new and old media, I decided to boil down all of the conversations, and in one moment of clarity it became obvious that what it all comes down to is ACDC.  Yes, ACDC – but not the band. While I am sure Malcom and Angus Young most certainly have some solid insights regarding the future of news, I am talking about an acronym of the points of the news process that have been thunderstruck by the digital disruption: Access - Creation - Distribution - Consumption.

So let’s break these down,

1. Access – Not long ago, there was limited access for different parties to almost every aspect of the news creation and consumption process.  ”Press conferences”, believe it or not, were actually limited to the press  rather than events that are now streamed live and directly to people anywhere in the world with an internet connection, the appropriate hardware/software and no form of any sort of press pass.  The Internet is the new press pass.

2. Creation – Typewriters, old school computers and printing presses used to provide a huge barrier to entry into the news creation process – obviously this is no more.  From Tweets, to pins, to Blogger/Wordpress, and Facebook status updates, whether you like it or not (Mom), everyone can now be a publisher.

3. Distribution – Across the country, door steps which were once the symbol for personal news delivery are becoming paperless.  News stands are less prevalent, and trucks will become obsolete (eventually) in the process of delivery news and content.  While the game “Paperboy” may not be as relevant to our everyday lives, we are all now our own forms of new-age digital paper boys, as we share links to articles and videos to our friends, family and colleagues from our laptops and phones.  The atomic unit of the news, which was once a bundled part of a dead tree with box scores, puzzles, obits, op-eds, and daily reports, is now simply a string of characters hosted somewhere in the digital abyss.  And while an average link’s value in today’s attention economy will be fleeting, it’s life expectancy is forever with the potential to travel much farther and faster than any print publication.

4. Consumption – Reading the news used to be like an event.  We even had a designated day of the week, Sunday, in which we loaded people up with more news and bigger stories.  As access, creation and distribution have all seen supply side surpluses, our demand for news and content and our consumption habits have evolved along with these changes.  As consumers, we skim numerous headlines from our laptops, on our phones and have TV or video running at the same time in the background (well some of us).  We have little loyalty to any particular publishers, and while most claim to disdain information overload, many of us would be lost without  it.

So, as we begin to share more information about the News Graph in the coming months, we want to solicit as much feedback as possible from those involved in the future of news and media.  How do you see disruption and change in ACDC?  Do you have specific cases or data to share regarding trends or potential business models for the future? Whatever it is, please share and join in our ongoing news conversation on Pinyadda!

“Eight new staff members, including six journalists, have recently joined KQED to expand KQED’s local news coverage. The results will be immediate as KQED Public Radio, one of the Bay Area’s most popular stations and among the most-listened-to public stations in the country, expands its local newscasts from six to sixteen beginning July 19. The newscasts will span the entire day from 6am to 12:30am. In addition, KQED News plans to add additional radio news reports and Interactive features in late August.”

There’s been no shortage of philosophical musing about the prospect of the NPR model emerging as a way forward for local journalism outfits, but the KQED expansion is one of the first real-world examples to watch. NPR itself has done well to manage the online transition, providing listeners and readers alike with high-quality content that works well on the web. At a first glance, the KQED takes significant cues from the NPR homepage, offering visitors the ability to listen live, find individual programming for on-demand listening, and read original content that’s often related to the other audio and video content on the site:

The newly launched KQED.org

The NPR.org hompage.

While KQED is in a unique position of strength among its NPR affiliate brethren, its ability to create value for web visitors seems to point to an emergent truth: radio and television outlets seem to have had an easier time bridging the digital transition than their peers in print journalism. And this shouldn’t be entirely surprising. After all, the web is an inherently multi-dimensional medium. Written content can coexist alongside audio and video content on the web, and when it’s done right the results are engaging and impressive. Newspapers have begun to embrace this reality and many are beginning to find innovative new ways to get multimedia content that compliments their print stories.

The KQED and NPR are focused on the same task, but with one key exception: the written content is there to support and enhance their multimedia content, not the other way around. KQED is good at producing audio and video content. They’ve learned how to create the element of ’story’ using these tools, and the experience translates well on the web. Creating written content to fill the gaps and augment these stories has seemed to come relatively easy to them. So what can newspapers learn from KQED, NPR, and the public radio ecosystem in general? In my  opinion, there are a few key takeaways:

• The internet rewards those who create rich media experiences. There’s something intrinsically delighting to human being about being able to watch videos right from inside a news article, or to hear the voice of someone else delivered seamlessly from a web page. When the web was born it was all about text. But now it’s about videos, games, streaming audio and rich interactions. Because of this, all written content, no matter how high-quality it may be, is at an inherent disadvantage on the internet. It’s no longer enough to slap an unrelated video somewhere in the sidebar. You need unit-level multimedia just to break even.
• Community matters. NPR stations have been forced to survive, in large part, on the backs of their members. They ask people to pay for content that’s important to them, and they’re able to do so because they take community seriously. They thank their communities on air. They maintain a physical presence in the community. And they often provide value for the community in the form of events, contests, and discounts.
• Real-time is real powerful. Radio has always been real time. Listeners can call into the station and engage with the programming directly, in far more personal manner than most methods we know of on the web. But because the channel for communication has always been open, radio has adopted the new models quickly and in stride, making quick use of email and Twitter to field additional inquiries and comments during broadcast. This ability to engage immediately on a deeper level is hugely valuable on the web, and the use of large ‘Listen Now’ buttons on every page of KQED and NPR’s properties makes it apparent that they understand this benefit. Finding ways for users to engage with reporters and each other in a more immediate way is something newspapers will have to get right in order to survive.

It’s hard to say if the NPR model itself will be the key for local journalism in the future, but it seems nearly certain that print publications need to adopt some of the radio spirit in order to deliver their content in a way that engages readers, creates community, and builds long-term support for their mission.

Chris graciously took some time to talk about The Electric Toolbox in our latest installment of Pinyadda’s Publisher Spotlight:

Pinyadda (P): What does the Electric Toolbox cover?

Chris Hope (CH): Electric Toolbox LAMP Blog covers a variety of topics with a main focus on LAMP programming (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) , HTML/CSS and Javascript/jQuery.

P:  Tell us a little bit about the history of your site and why you created The Electric Toolbox.

CH: I started writing my blog back in late 2003 with the intention of posting regular content, but it wasn’t until late 2007 that I really started blogging seriously. I write both to provide myself with an easy reference point for stuff I don’t always remember, basic/intermediate stuff that sometimes people don’t know about, and more in depth tutorials covering some really useful things.

P:  Who would love your site?  What type of readers need to start reading The Electric Toolbox?

CH: My blog covers a variety of topics but anyone who works with HTML, Javascript and/or PHP would benefit from reading it. Topics vary widely from pretty basic stuff to more advanced tutorials; they generally follow things I have been working on or solving a problem I might have had. More recently, I’ve found comments people have left on other pages on my blog have provided an excellent source for new post ideas.

P: How is your site/content different from those covering the same topic?

CH: I’m not really sure that it is so different from every other programming blog out there, with the possible exception of a huge variety of topics in my archive. As I’ve learned new and different technologies and ways of doing things over the last few years I’ve written about them so you find all sorts of stuff in my archive.

P: Tell us a little bit about the teams  you’ve worked with in the past.

CH: I’ve been working on websites since 1998 originally for a company I part owned and since 2003 on my own as a contractor. More recently I’ve been working on my own projects/partnerships which include www.healthy.co.nz and www.runningcalendar.co.nz as well as the ongoing work writing content for www.electrictoolbox.com.

Check out all that the Electric Toolbox has to offer here and be sure to follow to The Electric Toolbox posts on Pinyadda!

Before we dive in, the biggest takeaway from this post is that content drives the internet. If you produce compelling real content, your blog will sell itself and in no time will gain an army of supporters. People want to read stories that help them connect with the author, so let your personality shine in every story and always remember to write content that YOU want to read. If you want to read it, chances are so does everyone else.

Here’s are the top sites you should follow to learn how to become a better blogger, and someday a weblebrity like me:

CopyBlogger

This site is a great introduction to the blogging word, and provides awesome content around copywriting, SEO and online marketing.

Famous Bloggers

First take a page out of their book and increase your velocity of content. REWARD your readers by giving them more to read. Best articles on their site are around comments and commenting tips.

ProBlogger

The name pretty much sums it up here. Blog tips on writing content, finding readers, building community and using social media to grow your blog

Daily Blog Tips

Their left hand categories list is phenomenal. And the last post deserves it’s own shout out: 4 Tips to Help You Stay Focused on Your Blog.

Kikolani

The name might throw you off here, but this site tells it like it is, when it comes to blogging tips, the art of blogging and social media.

Search Engine Journal

You do want your content to get found don’t you?

ViperChill

By far the coolest name, sounds like an old school western cocktail. Awesome tips for monetizing your blog!

Quick Online Tips

There’s definitely some nonsense mixed in here, but make sure you check the How To and Blogging sections.

Think Traffic

Increase your traffic today. Seriously!

HubSpot Blog

They don’t need an introduction.

So now that you’ve got some killer blogging resources, check out the Inbound Marketing Guide, and start spreading the good word.

Do you have a personal blog? Get it up on Pinyadda and start pinning content to our awesome community!

I visited the site earlier today to get a better sense of exactly how the implementation works. After a horrific paywall experience last week, I wasn’t hopeful that the experience would be very friendly. But to my surprise the Press+ experience wasn’t all that bad. When I clicked on an obituary item, I was presented with a fairly clean modal window that helped me understand what was about to happen:

The dialog box offers me its sympathy. That was nice of it.

The dialog thanked me for visiting and even offered me its sympathy in case I had been looking for the obit of a loved one. It explained the model to me in relatively simple terms, and then asked me to either create a Press+ account or to continue reading my article. The modal window was an important part of the experience, allowing me to keep my goal of reading the content literally within site, behind an opaque overlay.

The after clicking the ‘Sign Up’ option, the modal presented me with a new screen that offered payment options.

Two payment options: $1.99 for the month, $19.99 for the year.

I didn’t really care to read the actual obituary, and even I had the prices seemed a little steep for me. But the experience itself was lightweight enough to allow me to consider the financial cost benefit without the added burden of frustration and confusion. It’s a lot different from my last experience. But it’s still a hard sell.

So why did Lancaster Online choose the obituaries section? The explanation, as reported here by paidContent.org and here in more depth by Poynter, makes fair sense. Says the paper’s editor, Ernie Schreiber, “…we chose to meter obituaries because they are unique content for us.  Readers cannot easily access them elsewhere.” It’s probably a fair point, even at first the notion seems rather grotesque. While Schreiber admitted that the meter will not, by itself, fundamentally change the revenue picture at the publication, the move was executed strategically and only after a well thought-out process that considered audience, revenue, and price. I highly suggest reading the article from Poynter in full to get a better sense of how intensely (and publicly) Schreiber thought about the process. It’s an encouraging sign, a bright spot in what has often seemed to be an industry unwilling to embrace experimentation as a vital part of its survival. Let’s hope we continue to see similar thoughtfulness elsewhere.

The obituary experiment and the Press+ system don’t, I think, mark the end of our journey toward a fully modernized news ecosystem. On average, the American local newspaper isn’t as well prepared as Schreiber’s publication, and it’s not clear that the current obituary stranglehold he’s banked on will survive beyond the rest of the paper’s relatively commoditized content  (and yes, I checked, obituaries.com is already up and running). There’s still a missing piece of the puzzle for the news industry on a large scale, and I’m still not convinced that newspapers can generate adequate revenue without a central distribution mechanism, even with systems like Press+ that can help reduce the friction of actual payment. Don’t get me wrong – getting the payment right is a key piece of the puzzle. But in a content market that’s being flooded ever faster each day, it’s not going be enough to hope the customers come to your front door every day – especially when your neighbor’s giving it away for free.

Gannet just rolled out paywalls at three of their regional papers. I found out because I follow paidContent.org on Pinyadda, which, ironically, is a free publication. After I got through the painful period of disgust/anger/befuddlement/hilarity that ensues when I hear about new paywalls being erected, I went to visit the Tallahassee Democrat, one of the sites sporting the shiny new system. It didn’t go very well.

At first glance, the site looks like every other newspaper site, replete with all the design failures and clutter that you’d expect: flashing banner ads, a confusing structure of headlines and highlights, and whole bunch of moving parts that I don’t really understand. There’s no mention of a paywall and no indication of what’s about to happen when I click on a story.

I clicked on the feature story in the top left corner, which at the time was about the race for Mayor of Tallahassee (the module rotates). So far, so good; aside from the expected clutter and the annoyance of moving banner ads, I was able to move toward my goal of reading the news on the internet. That single goal is important to keep in mind – the only thing I’m hoping to accomplish is reading a news story on my computer. Here’s what I saw next:

The paywall rears its ugly head.

Once the page loaded, I was able to see the headline, byline, and about half of the first sentence. Not much of a teaser. The items with the most visual weight are an image of a heavy padlock, a series of large, black buttons, and a bright yellow banner ad. Before we dive into the actual payment options, it’s worth noting some things about the design. The padlock image makes me feel like I’ve done something wrong, perhaps by choosing this article over another, perhaps by committing some internet sin in another life. I’m not being invited inside, I’m being locked out. People don’t like being locked out.

It’s not immediately clear to me which button I should choose, as they share identical visual characteristics. This isn’t make or break, but it takes time to read the text, weigh my options, and make a decision. It’s enough time for me become distracted from my original goal, which, I think, was to read an article about the Mayoral race in Tallahassee. After some deliberation, I chose the third option – ‘Purchase a day pass for $2.’ There is a link to see more subscription options, but I didn’t notice it while I was on the page.

As a user, this step was complicated. When the page loaded, I was presented with an unexpected result that triggered a negative emotional response. I has to decipher what was going on, consider several options, and make a purchase decision. This presents a large barrier for the average user and diverts all attention away from the original goal of reading an article. The $2 isn’t the most significant deterrent in this equation. In fact, the financial commitment may actually be the least important factor in my decision to continue beyond this point in the process.

Once I chose an option, I was taken away from the page and presented with this screen:

The form monster emerges.

As far as forms go, this one is relatively clean and accessible. I’m not thrilled about having to switch my brain into data-entry mode, but at least I understand how this page works. I just fill this out and I get to read my article, right? Not so fast.

Red ink, take one.

I’m pretty good at the internet, and I was terrible at this form. Three errors spit back on the first try. First, my username didn’t fit in the 6-13 character window of bliss. Second, my Gmail alias (which allows me to filter messages later) was rejected. And third, I mistakenly entered my full birth date instead of my birth year, as was requested. I don’t particularly appreciate being asked for my birthday (I bet you don’t either) and so the last error left a particularly poor taste. At this point I have no idea what my original task was. This one is quite challenging enough. After fixing the form, getting two more errors during validation, and then clicking submit for the third time….

Nothing happened. The form submission hung for about 60 seconds (if you look closely, you can see the loading message ‘Registering…’ in the error field at the top of the form) and never submitted. I started looking for a way out and found the only viable option to be the ‘Send Again’ option buried beneath the submit button. I clicked it and was presented with a nice-looking but terribly annoying modal window that didn’t really solve my problems. Nevertheless, I threw in my email address and clicked the button.

Error. Despite entering a perfectly valid address, the form rejected my  submission. Back to the drawing board. Let’s remember that I haven’t been asked for any payment information at all up to this point, and my incentives to abandon the process are numerous. This feels like work. Why should I have to work to give someone else money (especially for something I can get for free elsewhere!!)? But I’m an internet masochist. I trudge on. I really want that article. I think.

Finally, I get to the payment screen. Lean to the side, get out my wallet, set the card up on the keyboard, and enter the information.

The phone number seemed a little intrusive to me, and there was no indication it was a required field, so I left it blank. Should have known better. Maybe they want to call me later and see how my experience with the paywall went. I grudgingly entered the number – a piece of information I’m loathe to part with in the rest of my life – and click the OK button in the alert. Finally, it’s over. But then…

I have to confirm my information again. They’re almost daring me to bail at this point, and I sure as heck can’t remember the article I wanted to read way back at the beginning of this newspaper odyssey. But what the heck. This is surely the end.

Nope. One more step, another chance to forget why I came here, and one more screen between me and my original goal. Finally, I click the submit button of death, shut my eyes, and hope for the best.

Voila! Magic! I finally get the prize! It’s …. a 500 word article smattered with flashing yellow banner ads. I’m confused. And tired. And poorer than I was a few minutes ago.

Am I here to bash Gannet for their ineptitude? No. Is it concerning that this attempt at paid content  is the result of formally architected effort from one of the largest newspaper chains in the country? Yes. While I understand the value of reporting like this – local, public-service-based journalism that truly does improve our communities – I’m not willing to believe that I got an equal amount of value from the deal. I feel like I got the short end of the stick. And the $2 is the least important part of that feeling.

You want me to pay for content? Fine. But you’d better understand that I’m a discriminating shopper, that I appreciate customer service, and that I value my time and energy as much as my wallet. I wanted to read an article about the mayoral race in Tallahassee. It took me a total of 12 screens, well over five minutes, and two of my hard-earned dollars to accomplish that goal. During the process, I was confused, frustrated, and rejected multiple times.

I really hope that we can work with publishers, large and small, to improve the user experience that goes along with finding news online. Because there’s a generation right on my heels that won’t wait for the old guard to get it right.

Are you a publisher? Have you been the victim of a poor paywall experience? We want to work together as we build a new future for news – a future that’s sustainable, powerful, and pleasant for all of us.