28 | Magazine World | April 2007 www.fipp.com
COMMENT
WEB 2.0
Left to right: 8Box.cn is
China's latest music sharing
and discovery community,
QQ.com was founded in 1998
and the instant messaging
service platform now reports
WWEB 2.0 UNMASKEDEB 2.0 UNMASKED
having 221 million active
users, while Sina.com.cn is
China's largest web portal
Mash-ups, UGC, Collective Intelligence – these are
the buzz words on everyone’s lips as Web 2.0 provides
publishers with a huge opportunity for growth.
Danny Meadows-Klue explains
A
s the Chinese urban classes get User-generated content (UGC) but it’s about to revolutionise publishing in China
online, the balance of the world’s UGC was the first to get the headlines: billions of as much as it is in the US. Open standards in
internet population is changing, and blogs with more than two launching every second. technology have removed technical barriers and
fast. At the same time, the publishing The technologies of Blogger and Six Apart just savvy publishers have learned that the ‘two plus
models of entertainment and media websites made publishing accessible and soon we’ll stop two equals five’ effect can transform the value of
have settled into the Web 2.0 era of social calling these sites blogs and just see them as their data into a powerful audience magnet.
networking and user-generated content. That websites. Publishers need to appreciate that the
long-awaited convergence with television is online newsstand has suddenly become a very So what does this all mean for magazine
spreading from the quirky uploads on YouTube democratic place – anyone can speak and the publishers? Massive opportunity and huge
to all major broadcast networks and seasoned power balance has now shifted towards the viewer. upheaval, all in a very short space of time.
internet users are now routinely clocking up Get it right and the rewards are the explosive
more time online than in front of the TV. In Collective intelligence audience of Chinese search engine, Baidu. Get it
short, the net is topping the media charts All this user engagement gives the opportunity wrong and it’s shareholder value that collapses.
The effect of these four meta-trends for collective intelligence to be created. Wikipedia There’s never been a more critical moment in
all going through their tipping points may be the most widely used of the tools, but magazines. Looking at those trends impacting
simultaneously is being spread across the there’s a whole new generation of carefully built the industry, it’s clear publishers are savvy to the
world, and across the world of classic media. environments to help harness users’ content and rising time their audiences spend on Web 2.0:
The history of television and radio may be turn it into a structured form of knowledge. some are starting to harness TV content and a
powerful reminders that for all the dotcom few are making a serious embrace of Web 2.0.
enthusiasm, new media channels don’t Social networks
replace the established channels. However Groups of like-minded academics were forming
they do have the power to shake things up, their own social networks on the internet more
displacing the old media models with the than a decade before the worldwide web was even
new, servicing markets more effectively, invented, but a new generation of web business Danny Meadows-Klue was the publisher
forcing existing channels to take stock and models have focused on how to create the right of the first online newspaper in the UK
reposition. And this time it’s repositioning on environment for rich and repetitive audience – telegraph.co.uk –and he has been
a grand scale – the changes of the next five involvement. From shopping to dating and teaching online media and marketing
years will dwarf those of the last ten. doctors to lawyers, social networks are exploding for over a decade. He runs Digital
Take Web 2.0: This weaves together many across the web and it’s increasingly those over the Publishing Strategy Academies for
new publishing models native to the digital age of 35 signing up. It’s not ‘just for kids’! magazine publishers.
networked society and acts as a recipe for
explosive audience growth. Understanding Mash-ups danny@digitalstrategyconsulting.com
its components is a must for publishers, and The combining of data sets – like a list of
so we present a guide to this second era of restaurants from a directory, with a map from
web publishing: Google – may not seem exciting to everyone,
P28-29 Digital V2.indd 2 27/3/07 18:49:12
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