Crowdynews

Top learnings for digital publishers from the Digital Media Europe Conference

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 11:40:00 +0200

On April 15, Crowdynews was present at Digital Media Europe. The conference organized by WAN-IFRA with the sub title - Get ready for the next digital impact, addressed the issues of the publishing industry and the opportunities and possibilities for innovation. Returning topics where paid content and new revenue streams.

Several large digital publishers presented their strategies, their learnings and conclusions regarding to social media, paid content and business models.

Here are the top learnings for online publishers from the conference:

Mobile First

Focus on mobile is key in online publishing. Perhaps it should even be leading. Some of the publishers are experiencing two third of their visitors coming from mobile devices. Most digital publishers are choosing responsive web design for their website and are launching apps for tablets and smartphones. The apps are in most cases completely different from the regular website. Offering a new user experience and offering special content. The paid apps are doing well however most prefer a freemium model where some content is freely accessible and some content can only be read by (paying) subscribers.

Pay walls

We have seen several strategies around paywalls. For the large digital publishers pay walls are starting to work. Where a few years ago people thought is was crazy to launch pay walls on news websites, they are now (slowly) getting used to the idea that news is not always free. The biggest learning in this field is that it only works on content that is not availlable elsewhere. If you are publishing general news, your readers probably aren’t willing to pay for your content, because it can be found elsewhere for free. It is important for publishers to find their uniqueness and their place in the news consumption of their readers before deciding to put up a pay wall with the risk of losing readers.

Thinking Customer first

“We were thinking very digital-first before, now we are thinking consumer-first,” said Frédérique Lancien, Digital and New Business Director at Groupe L’Equipe . “You need to think what consumers want before you build your offer,” she recommended.

Paul Smurl, vice-president of NYTimes.com, and Brooke Christofferson, VP if business development at Republic Media shared this thought: “to make a paid digital offer work, it’s essential to invest in quality, unique content, and identify what readers are most concerned about. Regional publishers seemed to have success with freemium models as well, offering unique local content only available to subscribers.

The panel discussion was concluded with the wise words to try, try, and try. There is no such thing as one working strategy. All publishers at the conference tried a lot of different models before they found the ones working for ~~them~~ their readers.

Social

Social media strategies become more and more necessary for digital publishers. Adding options to increase interactivity and allowing readers to discover content through social media is engaging readers. Readers are no longer just reading articles, they are distributing it for you. When digital publishers aren’t thinking about ways to improve engagement and audience participation they could be leaving highly valued opportunities untouched.The discovery of social content related to your editorial content is one way to improve reader engagement and that is where Crowdynews fits in perfectly. If you are interested to find out how we can help you to enrich your editorial content with real time social content, in a fully automated way, contact us now.

The Real-Time Conversation about North Korea

Tue, 02 Apr 2013 13:49:00 +0200

News consumption behaviour is changing. News consumers want to be up to date when visititing a news website. Partly due to social media they are now used to getting the news they are interested in, when they want it, and they want it fast.

On some topics (even a really great) editorial team can not reach the speed of the real-time news that is available trough social media. On big topics, like the situation in Norht Korea for instance, new content is available every second.

At Crowdynews we believe that social media content can never replace editorial content, but it can definitely enrich it.

We are helping online news publishers to display the real-time conversation right next to their editorial content.

The factual and researched stories still provide a solid and trustworthy basis for the visitors, while at the same time presenting them with real time content.

This is an example widget that could be placed on any news website’s North Korea topic. Note that the full screen button takes you to a full size social media page.

If you are interested in embedding this widget on your website, please contact us.

7 years of Twitter

Thu, 21 Mar 2013 14:15:00 +0100

Happy 7th birthday Twitter!

7 years ago the first tweet was sent out into the world:

just setting up my twttr

21 maart 2006

Today, 400 million tweets per day are sent from 200 million active users. In this video Twitter is celebrating the past 7 years and showing you all the highlights.

As you can see, most of the highlights are big news stories. News through Twitter travels with the speed of light, but how do you find the ones relevant for you, or your stories? That is how Crowdynews started. For over 3 years now, we are finding the relevant stories from the clutter of 400 million tweets a day.

Our #favoritenews of the weekend

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 10:51:00 +0100

As our platform collects thousands and thousands of news stories, photos and opinions, every day we see quite a bit of interesting content here in the crowdynewsroom. With #favoritenews we want to take you through a selection of our favorite pieces of content we come across every day at Crowdynews.

This weekend saw the start of a new season in Formula One racing.

Being quite the race fans ourselves, we monitored the incoming tweets as well to see what F1 fans around the world had to say about this ever spectacular event. Without further ado, here’s our #favoritenews around the opening of the Formula One Racing Championship of 2013:

Vodafone announced on thursday it will discontinue its sponsorship agreements with the McLaren F1 racing team after the 2013 season.

Morten Lundal, group chief commercial officer at Vodafone, was quoted saying:

”the way customers prefer to engage with the mobile industry [is] continually getting more sophisticated “

“We now want to focus on our own marketing engagement platform to showcase the key attributes of our brand directly to our customers, using digital interactions and live events in ways that are both locally relevant and globally consistent”

(Read more at BrandRepublic)

Red Bull Racing posted this picture on their Instagram page a special helmet that Sebastian Vettel used during the Free Practice on friday:

redbullracing

Seb’s helmet for Free Practice yesterday featured a reproduction of fellow @redbull athlete and world record breaker Felix Baumgartner’s space jump helmet. What would you reproduce if you could?

Caterham F1 team introduced a newcomer in Formula 1 and fellow Dutchman Guido van der Garde, needless to say someone we’ll be keeping a close eye on!

During the race, the Lotus team had a good laugh with their pit crew:

A 2.9secs stop - the crew don’t want to make arses of themselves #WeMissedYou #AusGP twitter.com/Lotus_F1Team/s…

March 17, 2013

Williams F1 remembered to also celebrate St. Patrick’s Day:

Wow this worked out rather well! Best picture of the day!! The Rolex girls in front of the garage @ausgrandprix #F1 twitter.com/WilliamsF1Team…

March 17, 2013

Did you have a good weekend? What’s your #favoritenews today? Let us know in the comments!

A Photo That Defines A Generation

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 11:35:00 +0100

The photo above is a perfect illustration of the current generation. Today if anything happens anywhere in the world, there is always someone with a smartphone shooting pictures or videos of the event. We all wish to capture the news, and share it with our friends on Facebook or our followers on Twitter and Youtube.

At Crowdynews we are following this trend for years now and actively encouraging online publishers to integrate the voice and images of the people.

Editorial teams are doing a great job in providing us with engaging and factual stories. But what is a story today, without real life illustrations? It’s time to team up with the world’s biggest editorial team and include the real time conversation in your stories.

Curious how Crowdynews can supply you with engaging, relevant and real-time content?
Get in touch!

Image by Michael Sohn / AP

The Facebook newsfeed redesign: Big is beautiful

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 17:44:00 +0100

Today Facebook is planning to announce a redesign of their newsfeed.
As with any Facebook-announcement, media are highly anticipating the event and of course some are already speculating on the outcome.

The redesign comes at a time the company is facing multiple struggles.

On one hand, Facebook is noticing a trend of users moving away from the service, citing ‘Facebook Fatigue’. In particular the younger users appear to be leaving Facebook in favor of other social networks to share their content on, such as Instagram and Pinterest.

On the other hand, Facebook is catering to advertisers on their network, who are looking for bigger and more photo and video content, on top of their desire for more engaging advertisements, founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told New York Times.

The team at Crowdynews will be keeping a close eye on the announcement tonight; we know all too well how the battle for Engaging Relevant Content is never won.

We would even go as far as to predict that indeed images are going to be bigger. Bigger, if not immersive imagery is something we’re seeing across most social sharing sites.

Besides following the Facebook announcement, of course we ourselves are also constantly looking for ways to improve our methods of finding, understanding, ranking and displaying content in the most meaningful manner.

Curious how Crowdynews can supply you with engaging, relevant and real-time content?
Get in touch!

Interview met Edwin Kuipers over het wereldwijde succes van...

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 09:37:00 +0100

Interview met Edwin Kuipers over het wereldwijde succes van Crowdynews met de grootste kranten van de wereld

[DUTCH] Vandaag is in het Dagblad van het Noorden een uitgebreid interview te lezen met CEO Edwin Kuipers over Crowdynews en de samenwerking met kranten wereldwijd op het gebied van social media.

Social Media Coverage Surrounding Super Bowl On Dozens Of U.S....

Wed, 30 Jan 2013 12:55:00 +0100

Social Media Coverage Surrounding Super Bowl On Dozens Of U.S. Newspapers By Dutch Crowdynews

Dozens of American newspapers publish Social Media coverage surrounding the upcoming Super Bowl with the help of Dutch Crowdynews.

One of the biggest sportsevents in the U.S., the play offs by which will be decided who will become champion of the NFL American Football competition. Crowdynews gathers and publishes all relevant Social Media coverage for hundreds of newspapers, amongst others: Gatehouse Media, Journal Register Company and Digital First Media.

“The collaboration with Crowdynews to develop the Social Media Wire allows us to bring a new dimension of urgency, communication and access to social media channels for our audience. The Social Media Wire brings more voices, more sources to our sites.” Says Jim Brady, Editor-in-Chief of Digital First Media.

“I’m very proud coverage of such an hyper-American sports festival is provided by our Dutch start-up. The whole country stops during the Super Bowl. It really is mega!” Jeroen Zanen, CCO of Crowdynews adds.

The Power Of Social Media
By using Crowdynews’ software, media companies cleverly capitalize the common popularity and the enormous growth in conversations continuously taking place on social media. A recent survey about the big game revealed just how critical staying connected is on game day. It shows that of those who plan to watch, 36% say they’ll use a second screen to supplement the game-viewing experience. And 52% say they’ll use social media during the game.

Ready to see more?
Find below a few examples of Crowdynews’ social media coverage implemented in newspapers websites:

Interested?
Are you interested in our pre-loaded, free and ready to use social media page focusing on social media content surrounding Super Bowl? Then please contact us or just include this URL in the body: http://t.co/eYQmCRGG.

(Photo: Au Kirk)

Crowdynews in Quote [DUTCH] De februari editie van het magazine...

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:43:00 +0100

Crowdynews in Quote

[DUTCH] De februari editie van het magazine Quote bevat een interview met Crowdynews’ CEO Edwin Kuipers en CCO Jeroen Zanen. In het onderdeel Pitch geven ze onder anderen hun grootste verkoopgeheim prijs en vertellen ze over hun recentelijk gewonnen Bully Award in Barcelona.

Crowdynews voorpaginanieuws op Groninger Internet Courant

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:22:10 +0100

Crowdynews voorpaginanieuws op Groninger Internet Courant:

[DUTCH] Crowdynews was afgelopen zaterdag voorpaginanieuws op de Groninger Internet Courant. De nieuwssite voor Stad en Ommeland besteedde aandacht aan de samenwerking tussen Crowdynews en tientallen Amerikaanse kranten betreffende de berichtgeving over de op handen zijnde Super Bowl in de Verenigde Staten.

Klik hier om het gehele artikel te lezen.

RTV Noord bericht over Crowdynews en de Super Bowl

Mon, 28 Jan 2013 15:02:00 +0100

RTV Noord bericht over Crowdynews en de Super Bowl:

[DUTCH] Vandaag was CEO Edwin Kuipers op Radio Noord te beluisteren over de bijdrage van Crowdynews bij berichtgeving over de Amerikaanse Super Bowl.

Klik hier om het fragment terug te luisteren en om het bijbehorende artikel te lezen.

Redesigning The News Balancing Todays Storytelling With...

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 21:25:00 +0100

Redesigning The News

Balancing Todays Storytelling With Single-Story Models

Who closely looks into the online publishing industry sees the great struggle of finding the right balance between professional reporting, citizen journalism and social media. A tussle between the actual and the factual and, as may be said, a shift in the traditional role ascribed to news publishers in general: From the watchdogs of society to the role of selector, verifier and commentator.

Syria Deeply As A Great Example
Lara Setrakian, a former correspondent for ABC News and Bloomberg Television perfectly describes the practical clash in serving an audience of people thirsty to understand more about foreign stories than just the mainstream news cycle. With the launch of Syria Deeply, she unriddles the flaws of traditional news reporting, mainly the uncomfortably opaque, lack of space for complex background stories and the absence of the possibility of participation. Syria Deeply is a single-story website functioning as a platform that fuses journalism and technology to better cover a complex story. The desire is to create a better user experience by adding context to content, made possible with the help of the latest digital tools of the day.

A Great Mix With The Right Ingredients
With Syria Deeply, Setrakian hits the nail right on the head. A fair balance between news aggregation, interactive backgrounding and original reporting is what today’s stories need. Nowadays, the access of the audience to so many news sources on the web is putting journalists under more and more time pressure, impeding the traditional journalistic process.
Including valuable social content remedies the required rapidity.
Added to that, a clear overview of the factual and the actual involving the valuable voice of the audience, encouraging to get them involved and to actually allow them to participate.
The liveliness of visual content, the immediateness of social media and the inclusion of all relevant and interesting voices related to the topic ensure a huge opportunity for all you online (news) publishers out there.

Introducing A Redesign Doesn’t Have To Be Difficult And Complex
We at Crowdynews are driven by the belief that today’s stories aren’t complete without ‘real-life illustrations’. By filtering and selecting the most valuable related content from the (social) web to your stories online we transform your website into a genuine hub that includes the conversation. Implementation is fast and easy. Giving you the opportunity to embrace participatory journalism, putting context to content and, moreover, putting the user experience first.

[DUTCH] Eurosonic Noorderslag kiest voor real-time social media...

Wed, 09 Jan 2013 11:40:13 +0100

[DUTCH]

Eurosonic Noorderslag kiest voor real-time social media integratie met Crowdynews

Vier dagen lang is Groningen het walhalla voor muziekliefhebbers en nationale en internationale professionals uit de muzieksector. Alle hotels zijn volgeboekt en overal in de stad zijn de meest actuele en veelbelovende acts te bewonderen.

Eurosonic Noorderslag is Europa’s belangrijkste showcasefestival voor Europese muziek. Eurosonic (woensdag, donderdag en vrijdag) staat in het teken van Europees talent. Op zaterdagavond vindt Noorderslag plaats: de belangrijkste staalkaart van de Nederlandse popmuziek.

Het festival leeft. Naast de uitgebreide informatie, die te vinden is op de website van het festival, wordt er druk over gesproken op de verschillende social media. Tips worden uitgewisseld, nieuws wordt gedeeld en 3fm’s Giel Beelen zoekt via Twitter leuke interessante weetjes over Groningen.

Eurosonic Noorderslag heeft de ultieme manier gevonden om deze waardevolle bijdragen te integreren in hun website. Real-time en op een veilige, overzichtelijke manier worden de meest relevante berichten getoond. Benieuwd hoe het eruit ziet? Klik dan hier.

Bent u nieuwsgierig geworden naar wat Crowdynews wellicht voor uw organisatie kan betekenen? Of wilt u meer weten over onze producten? We horen het graag!

Crowdynews Live in Silicon Valley San Jose Mercury News launches...

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 17:04:00 +0100

Crowdynews Live in Silicon Valley

San Jose Mercury News launches Crowdynews’ Breaking Burner

From now on, all relevant contributions from social media concerning the stories of The San Jose Mercury News’ website are included with Crowdynews’ Breaking Burner. SJ Mercury News is located in San Jose, California and is owned by Media News Group. Curious how it looks like? Then please have a look at their website - “Happening Around the Bay Area” to see the contributions neatly categorized. In order to see the full page Social Media Wire please click here.

Gazeta.ru Second Russian Online Publisher To Implement...

Wed, 02 Jan 2013 16:59:00 +0100

Gazeta.ru Second Russian Online Publisher To Implement Crowdynews

After the fortunate launch of the social media integration on Russian online car catalogue Quto.ru, online newspaper Gazeta.ru follows. Since last week, all relevant content from Twitter is added to the newspapers’ articles, as can be seen here.

Gazeta.ru is one of Russia’s most popular online newspapers and is viewed by approximately 8 million unique users monthly. It covers mainstream domestic and international current affairs and was launched a decade ago. Gazeta.ru combines the immediacy of a rolling news service with the quality of a printed newspaper.

The inclusion of the conversation continuously taking place on social media regarding Gazeta’s articles complements the immediacy and endorses the valuable voices on social media to it’s stories.

Online Storytelling Becomes Personal The perfect solution on how...

Fri, 28 Dec 2012 13:56:00 +0100

Online Storytelling Becomes Personal

The perfect solution on how to complete your online stories

Mathew Ingram [1] points out in a very interesting article [2] that whether you “Like it or not, real-time crowdsourced news verification is here to stay.” An enlightening message, identifying a new era in the digital revolution: From mass media to personal storytelling.

No Change Without Criticism
Some commonly heard criticism to today’s storytelling is that news now comes from unverified sources. Shout outs without a proper editing layer, a huge growth of erroneous reports. In his article, Ingram mentions that perhaps there is some substance to those criticisms, but that we should be careful with eulogizing the well known alternative: “I saw as many errors and false reports coming from other journalists — including professional sources such as CNN and CBS News”[3], he states. But despite the criticism, the benefits of this approach arguably outweigh the disadvantages, argues Ingram. And there seems no doubt the power of social is inevitable.

The Power Of Social
Our phone is always with us, and it not only is connected to the Internet continuously, it is also able to make some very good photos, even videos of a proper quality. That combination shows magic. It enables the public to become the news source. Twitter has turned into a crowdsourced newsroom, with over 500 million registered users, who are together generating over 340 million tweets and handling over 1.6 billion search queries per day[4]. Never before globally shared content was this easy to find. And Twitter shows the opportunity to shout it out to anyone who wants to hear it.

Consumers Become Participants, Readers Become Writers
We have arrived in a new era of the digital revolution: Online storytelling becomes personal. The conversation continuously taking place on social media is unavoidable. Today’s stories demand for the addition & recognition of the biggest editorial team in the world: Those who are posting, tweeting and sharing on social media. It shows that consumers become participants and readers become writers. And it doesn’t only apply on the news industry. All online publishers find their audience talking about them on Facebook and Twitter. It’s because your story is part of their life, and lives nowadays are to be shared on social media. However, social media can’t substitute online stories. But it is perfectly able to complement them.

Let Social Reinforce Your Stories
Despite the necessity of the inclusion of social media to storytelling, pointed out above, we understand that you rather exclude the mentioned inappropriate shout outs and erroneous reports to your stories online. So, what if we told you now that we have the perfect solution for all online publishers? Well, we actually do have. Crowdynews helps professionals in the publishing industry to actually physically include the conversation and the illustrations to their own stories. Protecting your content from erroneous reports from unverified sources by automated refined filtering and selecting. Our sophisticated system makes sure it only publishes appropriate content by filtering out duplicates and inappropriate content matching your online stories: we know how to separate wheat from chaff. Enabling your audience to become part of the story.

Curious how we can help your company to include the personal, in a safe and automated way? Please have a look at our website or contact us directly!

[1] http://gigaom.com/author/mathewingram/

[2] http://gigaom.com/2012/12/18/like-it-or-not-real-time-crowdsourced-news-verification-is-here-to-stay/

[3] http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/12/ryan-lanza-newtown-shooting-media-fail

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter

The Philippine Star Embraces Social Media By Including The Conversation

Thu, 13 Dec 2012 15:55:00 +0100

Today, Crowdynews went live on the website of a newspaper of record: The Philippine Star.

The Philippine Star is the most read broadsheet in the Philippine capital of Metro Manila. It has the most subscribers of any newspaper in the Philippines, and is among the top three broadsheets in the country, by circulation. Today, The Philippine Star integrated social media into its webpages with Crowdynews.

By implementing Crowdynews, tweets directly related to the subject matter of the article will become visible. On a real-time base. With the outcome that the audience is not only talking about the article, but contributing as well, by offering new information and providing new angles through their conversations.

Digital First Media Expanding Real-Time Social Media...

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 10:06:51 +0100

Digital First Media Expanding Real-Time Social Media Wire

Digital First Media, which operates MediaNews Group, Journal Register Company and Digital First Ventures, announced the expansion of the Company’s Social Media Wire, the real-time delivery of local and topical social media, news and video posts in an audience-facing newswire format, developed in concert with Crowdynews.

“When it comes to local news and information, the Social Web is invaluable. Our audiences are not only talking about the stories we produce and the topics we cover but they are adding to the conversation, offering new information and helping to find new angles through their conversations. The collaboration with Crowdynews to develop the Social Media Wire allows us to bring a new dimension of urgency, communication and access to social media channels for our audience. The Social Media Wire brings more voices, more sources to our sites.”

- Jim Brady, Editor-in-Chief of Digital First Media.

To read the full article click here.

Crowdynews live at the website of GMA Network

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 17:00:00 +0100

Crowdynews live at the website of GMA Network:

GMA Network, the leading television and radio network in the Philippines, integrated Social Media into their website with Crowdynews.

From now on, all relevant contributions concerning their websites’ content from the social media is included with Crowdynews’ products.

Both our Crowdynews widget and Breaking Burner are implemented on GMA’s webpages.

An example of the Crowdynews widget can be found here, on the right-hand side, next to the article in the news section. It shows us all relevant tweets matching the article’s content.

GMA’s sportspage is enriched with a Breaking Burner, which shows all content-related tweets, blogs, photos and videos.

The Leading Filmfestival In Asia Works With Dutch Crowdynews To Integrate Social Media

Wed, 28 Nov 2012 14:37:00 +0100

The Leading Filmfestival In Asia Works With Dutch Crowdynews To Integrate Social Media :

From December 6th till December 16th the eyes of our worlds’ movielovers are focused on Dubai: more than 160 films including 52 world premieres will be screened during the Dubai International Film Festival.

International stars including Cate Blanchett, Kevin Spacey, Colin Firth and Kristen Davis will be present during this 9th edition of worlds’ leading film festival of Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

This is the first edition the festival works together with Crowdynews, in order to include and emphasize the valuable voice of the film goers and sympathizers.

Since this year Dubai Film Festivals’ website is enriched with “Talk Of The Web” which shows a clear overview of all relevant tweets concerning the festival. Through this addition the festival completes their stories concerning events, workshops and their finest selection of cinema.