1,2,3 ....WEB NEWS

Gone are the days of little Jimmy on his newspaper round, but the era of "Old Media", newspapers, magazines, television and radio remain with consumers still steadily declining in light of the "New Media", online content that revolves around the internet.


                                           An IT Crowd perspective of the internet

So how did this occur.

First there was Web 1.0 known as the "Information Web" which mimicked the old media with banner type advertising and layout. The stars here were those who could use html editors (Microsoft FrontPage, Adobe Dreamweaver), not at all user friendly or interactive, relying on hyperlinks to navigate. These were the early years of the WWW and the new users were also concerned with privacy, hence the one way stream.

As use of the web became more available, affordable and faster to wider cross-sections of the population, Web 2.0 emerged, the "Social Web". This was characterised by openness, interaction and the drive to converse, Facebook, MySpace and become Prod-Users (Axel Bruns - QUT 2005), blogs, You Tube. It has abandoned the one way hyperlinks of the past and replaced them with links to people and resources. This is where the "Old Media" companies with free online content have problems due to the ad unfriendly environment causing decreased revenue.

The next phase .... Web 3.0 also known as the "Semantic Web". Tailored to your every need and harking back to the origins of the web through meta tagging, which are basically description tags for search engines and now also the web user. Information related to user interests or questions will be immediately provided, that is so long as everyone plays by the rules. If advertisers manipulate the meta tagging users may still be the victims of unsolicited content. The other problem with hyperlocalisation is the lack of exposure to broader issues and general knowledge to an already self-centred audience.

It would appear that further to this is the idea of convergence, where eventually there will be only one technology through which this is all delivered, the mobile phone.



Knowing all of this, Google made a strange move in June this year and launched Google+ and is now wondering why this new social media site hasn't taken off.

http://business-standard.com/india/news/users-to-decide-winnergoogle-facebook-battle/447343/

News continues to be delivered free and because of this the reading audience have a sense of entitlement. Why pay?

If the public want quality investigative journalism and not just coverage of the top ten news items, then revenue must be found and the likely source is subscriptions linked to special offers, extra features or increased accessibility only available though an online subscription paywall. It would appear that the Sunday Times have thought about the "Semantic Web" and convergence with their latest offer.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-sunday-times-launches-new-android-tablet-app-2011-08-30

Cheap and appealing, this could be a winner and the future for journalism!