Toronto Star to introduce paywall in early 2013
by Andrew Moran (Guest contributor/Digital Journalist)
Toronto Star publisher John Cruickshank announced Monday plans to introduce a paywall structure in 2013. Complete details of the proposed plan have not been released, but it is in line with other Toronto outlets, such as the Globe and Mail.
What other news organization in Toronto is going to enforce a paywall? That is the question on the mind of many Torontonians, who have been used to reading the news on the Internet for free for many, many years.
Readers who headed on over to the TheStar.com on Monday morning may have been surprised (or not surprised depending on your aptitude on the business of media) to learn that the Toronto Star is going to implement a paywall, a measure that offers its visitors a paid-subscription for full access to its content.
“This move will provide a new source of revenue for the Star that will help support our ability to provide readers of both our print and online editions with the best and most comprehensive package of news and information in Canada,” wrote Cruickshank in the announcement. “Under the plan, most print subscribers to the Toronto Star will receive free full access to thestar.com’s content, wherever and however they want.”
Full aspects of the subscription have yet to be released, including the costs, how to register and what features readers can access.The purpose of the subscription is to generate another tool of revenues, while also providing more news stories, video content and podcasts of news from across the Greater Toronto Area and elsewhere in Canada and around the world.
“These additional revenues will strengthen our ability to invest in quality journalism, both in print and online, and provide the high quality of news, information and opinion that our readers throughout the Greater Toronto Area and across Canada have come to expect from the Star,” added Cruickshank. “They will also allow the Star to bolster its long-standing focus on delivering accurate local, national and international news that matters to our readers.”
The Toronto Star joins the likes of the Globe and Mail and National Post of Toronto outlets adding a paywall. In the United States, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have performed the same thing. If the Star is looking to make extra revenue, the New York Times posted its third quarter numbers, which include an 85 percent drop in profits.
Some of its readers have already commented that they will not pay for something that they can receive for free elsewhere. Google News offers hundreds of news agencies that provide the news of the day at no cost, such as the Associated Press and Reuters.
This article originally appeared on Digital Journal [Link]
Apple announces new 7.9-inch iPad mini, available Nov. 2
Today Apple unveiled details of its new iPad mini, at 7.9 inches, small enough to hold in one hand. It’s an incredibly 7.2-millimeter thin, weighs half as much as any iPad and battery life reaches 10 hours. The tablet will cost $329 minimum.
At the California Theatre in sunny San Jose, Apple revealed the specs of its new iPad mini tablet, available for pre-order Oct. 26.
What can you do with the iPad mini? Hold it in one hand first of all, said Philip W. Schiller, the senior vice president of worldwide marketing at Apple. As thin as a pencil, the iPad mini is similar to the Nexus 7 in terms of size and look. It weighs .68 pounds and boasts 10 hour of battery life.The new tablet features the A5 chip, HD-quality FaceTime camera, a 5-megapixel backside camera, and 802.11N WiFi.
The Wi-Fi version will cost $329 (16GB).Wi-Fi versions of the iPad mini will ship first on Nov. 2 to select countries, and the cellular+Wi-Fi version will be available worldwide two weeks later.
Also, the company announced that the iPad would enjoy an update. The new full-sized iPad will now come with a Lightning port. A6X and expanded LTE will be added to the iPad as well. Schiller said the A6X doubles the performance compared to the previous generation, and it’s priced at $499 for the 16GB version.
Apple wasn’t done. The company revealed details of the new 13-inch MacBook Pro with Retina display, with “pixels so small that at normal viewing distance, your eye can’t tell the difference,” Schiller said.
The press release states: “At 227 pixels per inch, the Retina display’s pixel density is so high the human eye is unable to distinguish individual pixels at a normal viewing distance, so images look sharp and text looks like it does on the printed page.
It boasts a 75 percent of reduced reflection than the previous MacBook Pro. It offers seven hours of battery life, Schiller said. It’s available today and the 2.5 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor version with 128GB of flash storage is priced at $1,699, he added.Then CEO Tim Cook discussed the new iMac, both the 21.5-incher and the 27-inch version. Featuring an incredible 5 mm thin screen, the computer is 80 percent lighter than its predecessor. It boasts a FaceTime HD Camera, dual microphones, over 300 nits of brightness and a new drive called Fusion Drive (128GB) that automatically places your most popular apps in the faster Flash drive.
The 21-inch iMac, at 2.7GHz processing power, is available in November and will cost $1,299. The 27-inch version, at 2.9GHz, will hit shelves in December and will set you back $1,799.
This article originally appeared in Digital Journal [Link]
Squeeze platform measures your content’s virality on social media
When we tweet or post links on Facebook, it’s hard to tell if anyone is clicking on them. Sure, a retweet and a “like” can give us a clue to the link’s popularity, but many people can click on a tweet, say, and never retweet it. How can we find out if our social media efforts are effective?
Along comes Squeeze to give us a peek into that world. Developed by Toronto-based Sequentia Environics, the newly launched Squeeze measures how many people clicked on links on various social media channels, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+. Sequentia believes the new product will make it simpler for marketers or journalists to see what actions are successful, and which need some tweaking.
“We’re shocked to learn how large enterprises on Fortune 50 list were using Excel to measure social sentiment monitoring,” says Jennifer Evans, Founder and Chief Strategist at Sequentia. “Their work didn’t tell them anything about how their content generated leads.”
Evans and her team came up with Squeeze in order to give marketers and execs a much-needed hand in learning how their social media time was being spent. Were people clicking more on infographics in Twitter, or on questions posed as tweets? Did Facebook encourage more engagement than Google+? What day delivered the best results? Squeeze wants to deliver those results, in real-time.
We tested out Squeeze for several weeks and we found the platform to be simple and powerful. We learned quickly how Facebook links seem to attract more visitors than tweets, and a dashboard nicely lays out graphics on where traffic came from. We also liked the feature showing us the best time to deploy content, from the day of week to the time of day we’d most likely see high engagement.
A channel comparison chart told us what social media outlet saw the most virality, something we often came back to when considering where to post links.
“Squeeze lets you see great analytics and how everything fits together,” Evans says. She adds many other social media channels can be integrated into Squeeze, such as an image on Pinterest (as long as it has a dedicated URL) or a YouTube video, if a link is placed in the clip description space.
Sequentia isn’t the only player in this space. bit.ly is well known for analyzing your links, but its free service is limited: it will only connect to Facebook and Twitter, and you can’t customize what channels to measure. Also, the Enterprise version of bit.ly costs minimum $995 a month, while Squeeze’s upcoming paid features will be priced at $500/month, for the top Enterprise version. For a scaled-back version at $50/month, users can get unlimited form integration (for those doing newsletters), unlimited content assets, and one year of data retention.
As social media and marketing continue to intersect, tools like Squeeze will become more prevalent for content creators hoping for deeper analytics. It’s not enough to see mentions on Twitter; to truly gauge your online performance, you need apps delivering timely info to determine if you need to send out that link to the masses.
Pew report: 23% of Americans read print newspapers, number continues to decline
The number of Americans who say they read print newspapers continues to plummet, according to a new poll from Pew Research Center. Just 23 percent of Americans said they read a newspaper yesterday, while a year ago the figure was 41 percent.
Many news lovers prefer an outlet’s website to its offline format. Pew writes “55 percent of regular New York Times readers say they read the paper mostly on a computer or mobile device, as do 48 percent of regular USA Today and 44% of Wall Street Journal readers.”
Social media plays a role in discovering news, it was reported. Around 19% of the public says they saw news or news headlines on social networking sites yesterday, up from 9% two years ago.
When looking at Americans who say they regularly read a daily newspaper, 38 percent said they do, although this percentage also has declined, from 54 percent in 2004.
An interesting sidebar is the number of Americans who admit to regularly enjoying following the news. Currently, 43 percent say they enjoy following the news a lot, a decline compared with 45 percent two years ago and 52 percent in 2008, 2006 and 2004.
Digital Journal Inc. launches /newsrooms division for brands
The /newsrooms division is co-founded and led by marketing and social media veteran, Sabaa Quao who is joining Digital Journal Inc. as Chief Marketing Officer.
“Digital Journal has seen meteoric growth in 2012 and the launch of our /newsrooms division diversifies us as a modern digital media company and positions us to own a significant piece of the social enterprise technology and publishing spaces,” said Chris Hogg, CEO of Digital Journal Inc. “Digital Journal’s deep expertise in social, publishing and marketing combined with our technology and global network of content creators means we can deliver a scalable digital media solution that is unmatched. We will now leverage these proven tools and processes to serve marketers and brands.”
Digital Journal has earned worldwide attention and praise for its role as a digital media pioneer and leader. In June 2012 Digital Journal was proclaimed one of the Top 20 most promising companies in Canada by The C100, a non-profit, member-driven organization made up of top executives of companies such as Apple, Cisco, EA, eBay, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Oracle, and venture investors representing more than $8 billion in capital. The C100 supports Canadian technology entrepreneurship through mentorship, partnership and investment.
How /newsrooms work
Digital Journal’s /newsrooms division opens new opportunities for the tens of thousands of content creators from 200 countries who participate in the company’s global network. Digital Journal’s /newsrooms division can support social media campaigns and marketing services to enable brands to grow audiences at scale, engage brand influencers and meet the pressures of 24/7 interaction that marketers are feeling. If you were to create CNN or The New York Times but dedicated to social media coverage, content creation, and publishing for and around brands, that would be Digital Journal’s /newsrooms division.
/newsrooms are an extension of a brand’s existing marketing and advertising efforts and Digital Journal takes everything a brand is already doing and adapts it to a strategy that puts content, live events and social media engagement at the forefront. This strategy harnesses the audience-growing skill of journalists, with the brand expertise and commercial inclination of a skilled marketing team.
Digital Journal’s /newsrooms begin by making brands relevant on a personal level; a content strategy becomes central to that goal by identifying the themes and content categories related to the brand. Digital Journal then combines journalistic professionalism with strong lead-generating content marketing initiatives to grow the audience and customer base.
In addition to content, /newsrooms also apply a customized social media approach to help develop a brand’s audience and engage top influencers. Applications may include covering live events, curating assigned content on specific topics valuable to a brand, using social media to disseminate news, analyzing social media influence, managing the engaged audience, and running Command Centres to ensure the brand is always on — just like a media organization.
“Brands and companies have become publishers, with little choice but to address what it means to engage 24/7 with their audiences,” says Sabaa Quao, Digital Journal’s Chief Marketing Officer and head of /newsrooms. “At the same time, companies are guardedly watching to see if their core business will be dramatically altered, damaged, or destroyed. Now with /newsrooms, brands can scale up their interaction and collaboration with influencers who are engaging with their products, in real-time.”
Digital Journal can already attest to the power of /newsrooms, as the company is a product of its own success; starting out as a Toronto-based magazine, Digital Journal used the /newsrooms approach and technology to grow from a local magazine into a global digital media organization with tens of thousands of contributors in 200 countries, reaching millions of people every month.
For more information visit digitaljournalmedia.com
About Digital Journal Inc.
Digital Journal Inc. is a global digital media company that delivers technology, content and social media solutions to brands and media companies. Headquartered in Toronto, Digital Journal is widely recognized as a pioneer and leader in digital media and in 2012 Digital Journal was proclaimed one of the Top 20 most promising companies in Canada. Boasting a proprietary digital platform and a network of tens of thousands of professional content creators in 200 countries, Digital Journal provides an out-of-the-box solution that touches every corner of the digital media industry.