CCHatter

I'm a little behind with my blogging because much of my attention has been focused on a new work venture, namely our very own "official" CCH Australia blog CCHatter. We launched rather quietly last week and I think we are still in the process of finding our "voice". Currently the blog is authored by Jessica Hobson (New Business Initiatives Director) and myself, although we hope some more passionate bloggers will emerge from the woodwork. It is also part of a very exciting new partnership with Practice Source who are hosting a feed to the blog on their site.

The blog has been a very practical introduction to social media strategy and policy. We've had to ask ourselves: why are we doing this? Is it ok to talk about x? What about y? What would our comms person think about that?

At the moment we are still feeling our way through this, starting with reviewing our existing communications policies to see if they stretch enough to encompass social media channels. We are also quite keen on the idea of a set of guidelines (such as the Intel social media guidelines) that will enable rather than restrict potential communicators.

Back to "why are we doing this?" Innovation and customer focus are buzz word around Wolters Kluwer and CCH at the moment, and social media is a perfect forum to explore both. We will be listening to our customers who are already engaged online, and asking questions, debating issues and (hopefully!) proposing the odd solution. It's not going to be a "new product" blog; it will be more about the future of professional publishing and how we can move in that direction.

This blog is a first toe in the waters of social media for Wolters Kluwer Asia Pacific, and I am optimistic that it is the starting point for developing a culture within the company of listening and engaging online. Head on over and have a look; and be patient with us as we establish that "voice"!

News online - a "crisis of intellectual property"?

A study by PwC that has been reported in The Australian seems to bear out what I and many others have been saying:

A GLOBAL survey has found that readers could be willing to pay almost as much for some high-quality online newspapers as they do for print versions, particularly in specialist news areas.

The study of 4900 respondents in the US and Europe by accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers has found sport and business to be the areas in which consumers are most ready to pay for content.

This bears out the findings of CCH's "Professionals and Web 2.0" whitepaper, namely that people still expect to pay for quality content when it affects their business or professional decisions. Don't ask me why sport is the other special area, I have no interest in that particular topic!

Of course, there is a proviso to this assertion:

The survey said consumers would be willing to pay 97 per cent of the purchase price of a traditional newspaper for online business content, provided there were no free online products of equal quality on the market.

Providers of business and B2B information have been far more cautious in releasing free content, plus only a handful of providers have the capacity to research and verify the information. Small wonder then that this "specialist" area is considered of high enough value to purchase content, as opposed to standard news which as I pointed out in my previous post can now often be harvested from the eyewitnesses themselves.

I think Crikey.com have nailed the whole situation on the head with this pithy observation:

...what is happening is not the death of newsprint, but an effective crisis of mass intellectual property and copyright.

Again - what areas of information are worth investing time, IP and money? Selecting the wrong field or channel for journalistic or publishing efforts could mean saying goodbye to any kind of return on your work.

The exponential decline of newspapers

The New York times has announced its intention to shut down the Boston Globe. The decline of traditional newspapers - and the attention given to it - has escalated rapidly over the past few months, thanks to declining advertising revenue and the ubiquitous Global Financial Crisis. Australia is fairly protected from the current drama - but the reality is that the GFC has only accelerated the inevitable.

For the past decade news online has been free. This was not a problem when it was merely a supplement to print and broadcast news. But suddenly the internet is the predominant medium, and some very upset media providers are struggling to jam the cat back into the bag. According to the New York Times, possible solutions the AP is investigating are:

"to make sure that the top search engine results for news are “the original source or the most authoritative source,” not a site that copied or paraphrased the work.

The A.P. will also pursue sites that reproduce large parts of articles, rather than using brief links, and it is developing a system to track articles online and determine whether they were used legally."

I think both of these strategies are reasonably fair, as far as they go. But the reality is that an increasing quantity of news is now made available by the people who are there to witness it - on twitter, flickr, even Wikipedia updates. Yes, there is still value in quality investigative journalism - this is hard to replace. But the people who distribute this journalism need to rethink their target audiences and how they can reach them effectively. Thanks to the internet, there is no need for newspapers to be all things to all readers. There's no need to create new content to a topic when you can link to the equivalent.

Jeff Jarvis wrote a passionate and articulate response to the increasingly shrill cries of traditional media, entitled "The "speech the NAA should hear". I highly recommend it and am slowly plowing my way through the copious comments underneath it. Lots of gems of wisdom, although everyone is still struggling to answer the same question - how do we reinvent the media business model so that it is still high quality and sustainable?

The decline of the Encyclopedia: a timely object lesson?

The demise of Microsoft's Encyclopedia Encarta has unsurprisingly kicked off another round of agitated discussion about the future of traditional publishing. Neerav, a fellow librarian/social media geek, has been doing some muck-raking of his own to encourage some meaningful dialogue on the topic. He recalls an early experiment by Britannica which, if it had been continued, might have made it the default "Wikipedia":

As Mark Pesce describes in his talk The Alexandrine dilemma, Britannica online was a subscription-based reference site for 5 years until 19th October 1999 when “the online version of Britannica containing the complete unexpurgated content of the many-volume print edition was unlocked and made freely available, at no cost to its users”.

For the next few months Britannica Online became one of the most popular sites on the internet but in the face of having to service this traffic via more and more servers and escalating data transfer costs management decided to retreat into their shell, putting the content behind a paywall and charging a $7/month subscription fee. Traffic soon plummeted to previous low levels.

.......The issues they faced were not new: all online publishers have struggled to find out how they can turn high-quality content into a money-making business where profits are greater than costs.

Shifting back to a subscription model reflected a natural conservative urge by management to avoid relying on fickle online advertising income but in the end it was also Britannica’s downfall...

Talk about 20/20 vision in hindsight!

There is a reason news and general reference have been the early fatalities in the war of free vs subscription publishing. The fact that this kind of information is available in so many forms (such as the same news article being reproduced by dozens of news sources) reduces its value as a commodity. Likewise, general reference is the reproduction of (relatively) common knowledge and thus lends itself very well to being written by "the crowds".

Publishers would do well to examine their content and identify what elements are unique and what is freely available. For example, is there enduring value in providing subscriptions to court cases and legislation? Probably not when the same content is freely available on government and LII websites. BUT providing professional commentary and research tools for the same is unique to publishers and their highly qualified authors and editors. It requires time and skill and a much higher level of knowledge and analysis than your average Wikipedia article. This is not easily or freely reproduced; this is a commodity with high value. This is what publishers should be focusing their resources on.

Likewise publishers should be engaging more closely with their clients to identify what is high value to them. What do they truly seek when they turn to us? What do they see as our core offering? How do we provide it so that there is mutual satisfaction that the cost of the product (both to produce it and to purchase it) equals its perceived value?

I strongly believe that publishers (and librarians) will continue to have a role to play as stewards and promoters of unique and high quality content. But we need to listen very carefully to clients and to the general market in order to understand exactly what that content should be.

New Google features mimic professional research platforms

One of the features I have always loved about ProQuest and various other research databases is the way they recommend alternative or refined searches based on your original search. For example, the results page for a Proquest search on Knowledge Management offers around 15 suggestions for refining your search, starting with “Knowledge management AND” Organizational learning” and ending with “Knowledge AND Management development”. Similarly, if you conduct a search on the soon-to-be launched CCH IntelliConnect platform, you have the option to refine your search by options such as format or practice area.

This is very comforting when you first launch into a topic and aren’t 100% sure about your keywords. It’s also useful if you’re a touch compulsive (like me) and want to make sure you have every possible relevant article on the topic at hand. In my university days I would spend hours surfing the recommended search terms and additional subject headings on Proquest or the library catalogue.

Now Google have introduced a similar feature on their standard search. At the bottom of the search results page for “Knowledge Management” there is a collection of “Searches related to Knowledge Management”, including “knowledge management articles”, “knowledge management definition” and “information management”. These appear rather basic but as you drill down into a topic they seem to grow increasingly sophisticated.

Unlike research databases and library catalogues, Google’s related searches are algorithm-driven rather than manually indexed. If or when these algorithms will match the quality and sophistication of human indexing is a very interesting question.

In the meantime, the Google related search is a great feature to point out to less experienced searchers who aren’t sure whether their keywords are really relevant. Plus it’s a great way to wander through a topic area – just like browsing in the library.

The Commonwealth Bank wins the Twitter PR game

It's funny that I keep posting about Twitter, as I actually think it's hopelessly over-hyped. But I couldn't resist this news.com.au story about an unhappy customer's tweet and CBA's rapid response:

"A TWO-line Twitter post pushed my mortgage application from the Commonwealth Bank's "to do" list to an urgent priority.

The post said simply: "CBA f#$&ked up our loan approval so we're still waiting to exchange contracts". One hour and 17 minutes after it went live I was contacted by someone offering help to solve my problem. That person was the head of Commonwealth Bank's customer service team.

He told me the message made him "feel like crap" and the bank was only just beginning to understand how crucial social media sites were in maintaining the corporate giant's image. By 3pm the next day, my loan was formally approved."

One person who responded couldn't understand how complaints on social media carry more weight than a complaint by phone. The reason is simple. A phone complaint is witnessed only by the customer and the corporation - and perhaps a few friends of the customer. But a complaint on twitter, or a blog, or any form of social media might be read by hundreds of people, if not more. As will their favourable review if the corporation moves to fix the problem rapidly. And THAT (to be cynical) is why the CBA moved so quickly on this incident.

When corporations respond rapidly and sincerely to bad PR on social media the effect is incredible. Suddenly bad PR is converted to "wow, look how responsive and switched on this organisation is". Of course, this effect may only last as long as social media is "cool" and "new". It may not be such an unusual thing in a year or two.

New Think for Old Publishing: Tweeting audience 1, publishers 0

There has been a great kerfuffle about the "New Think for Old Publishers" panel held at the South By Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, Texis. This conference sounds fantastic, revolving around new and interactive media (I'm downloading me some podcasts from it as we speak). The panel in question was promoted as traditional publishers sharing new ideas for interactivity. But it turned into a tedious half hour of introductions followed by "now YOU tell us your new ideas for our industry".

Little did they realise that they had completely lost the audience....and that all the action in the room was happening on Twitter. I love how Michael Tobis put it:

"...almost everybody in the audience was on a pre-announced twitter channel #sxswbp. And by the time anybody in the crowd got to ask anything, most of the crowd was in a very collective and connected foul mood."

I love that twitter (and subsequent blog posts) were able to give this audience a voice (and believe me, they had plenty to say - just check out the pages and pages of chatter on the twitter stream #sxswbp). After all, many of them are bloggers and essentially moved on to the new publishing model that traditional publishers are still wrapping their heads around. I highly recommend reading some of the posts from audience members, including "New Think? Not so much" by Kassia Kroszer and "Really New Think for Old Publishers" by William F. Aicher. I'll leave you with a quote from his blog as food for thought.

The ultimate “New Think” for the publishing industry that I’ve been pushing both in book publishing, as well as in the music publishing industry is to change the mindset that publishers are in charge and the customers should trust them. Instead, publishers need to stop trying to be tastemakers and instead realize that they are ultimately administrators of extraordinarily valuable copyright-protected content that they can build a brand around. Find content or creators that already have a following (and sometimes take risks on ones that have a potential to be big), cultivate those creators and their content with your professional editing staff and then get the content out to people.

William F. Aicher, "Really New Think for Old Publishers"

Powerful stuff!

Thanks to Heidi Allen for the heads up on this topic...she is quite rightly furious that publishers emerged from this looking like they have nothing to offer in the world of new media. And we we do have new ideas and innovative plans to interact with this world...check out what Henri van Engelen has to say on Wolters Kluwer and Next Generation publishing. However, I think this event (along with other situations) clearly indicates that publishers do need to be more savvy about how they engage with the new media community.