Is the LA Times Getting Closer to “Getting It”?
Los Angeles Internet Marketing •
November 21st, 2007
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This is a follow up to my first post on the LA Times’s efforts to go “Web 2.0″, after meeting with Eric Ulken at a blogger’s event.
First off, a little disclaimer… My site is ugly, doesn’t convert, and definitely is not “cool”. So I really should have no right to criticize other companies’ efforts to “get it”. Especially since the LA Time site isn’t to badly designed. It has a pretty minimalist design, and very easy to find links.
Anyways, I was researching places to list my business locally (for free if possible!). So I figured I’d check if the LA Times had a spot for posting businesses etc. Maybe something like a Web 2.0 (a.k.a. “Hip” and “cool”) www.at-la.com.
I happened upon the subsite of the LA Times - yourscene.latimes.com, a place for people to host pictures. They use a company, mycapture.com to do a photohosting site.
To be honest, I wasn’t that impressed. What is the goal of the LA times - to create a local social network? That’s not a bad way to metamorphose a newspaper (which is an endangered way of generating revenue) to become the local hub of a city by becoming a social network.
But does the LA Times’s “YourScene” really add value to users? How do they compete with Flickr, Facebook and the rest?
Granted they will get a small percentage of their extremely active users to use the “yourscenes” to play around with the site, plus the site authors themselves, which will get them a couple of thousand subscribers, who will probably get the site at most another 100,000 pageviews a month. If you have an average CPM of $8, the grand total of revenue for the LA Times YourScene is $800 off the inventory!
But really, is there any hope for a massive popularity? What would make it “cool” and compelling enough for people to spend time there?
Plus, the mycapture service is really limited. No personal bios, no interaction with other users etc. If I the LA times would have me as their consultant, I would suggest this:
1) Strongly encourage comments and debate. I don’t have anything specific off the top of my head… I need to get paid for that type of consulting!
Here are some ideas to start.
a) create an integrated campaign in the newspaper and online that tout the LA Times as “the place that wants your opinion“. You should create a compelling tagline and story as to why. I’m not the expert at this. You guys have the resources to do that.
b) Optimize the site to say the same message, this way people who are online will be more motivated to post their opinions
c) Once you have a (partially) motivated audience, you should try to keep them, by pushing them to sign up for the site, and tout the benefits of signing up. (Having your own social profile, meet local friends, record the different comments you’ve made, get updates on areas of particular interest etc.)
2) INTEGRATE! - Instead of trying to compete with other social networks, try to add value to the subscribers. Use API’s to pull subscribers information from other social networks into their profiles on your site. That would include Facebook, Myspace and other social networks.
Additionally, you should be using facebook apps and opensocial to have user’s comments posted on their facebook profile. This will give you a viral aspect, as well allowing you to remain top of mind for all of your dedicated readers.
3) Once you’ve got those people using your site, you would want to compete with sites like LA.com or LosAngeles.com, which pick up alot on the social scene. That would get you a ton of recurring page views.
Eric, I know you love this stuff… Help the Times turn into a “2.0 Monolith”- Please?
Ohh… some self-promotion. If you (the reader - or the LA times) are interested in increasing your sales / customers, you may want to take advantage of my free 1/2 hour consultation.
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Comments
I made a little mistake. The LA Times does have a local los angeles site - http://www.calendarlive.com. But they should integrate it more.
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