Only Dead Fish

When Every Page Is Your Homepage

"Instead of adding new flooring and fixtures, they've taken the house down to the foundation"

Reuters are redesigning their site from the ground up and the approach that they're taking with it is fascinating. Most websites (news services included) put a lot of focus on the homepage to draw people into the site in the same way that contents pages of magazines are there to aggregate, highlight, and help people navigate. It's a model that is shackled to a print-based world. Yet whilst a proportion of readers may still enter the site via the home page, an increasing number come in from search queries or content shared on social media which are deep linked into the site ("The days when you could drive a big portion of your audience to any single page? That's pretty much done"). 

So what happens when every page is your homepage? The concept of a continuously updated stream of news is central to Reuter's DNA, so it makes sense that they should adapt this into creating a digital 'river of news' where stories are contextualised within the stream, and moving from one to another is as seamless as possible.

Take a look at the site preview and you see a heads-up display of market data across the top, the roster of Reuter's opinion writers (like the usually excellent Felix Salmon) down the side, and a news stream featuring a rolling feed of news, commentary, video, photography and even editorially curated links to relevant third party articles and content. Articles feature as part of a stream of related information with background pieces, data and commentary, and are positioned in the middle of a larger stream of content ("scroll up or down and you’ll find your story’s text actually lives in a bifurcated version of the Reuters front page"). And if you're interested in following a particular issue, topic streams combine multi-format content along with the latest breaking news around specific subjects.

The whole thing is far more reflective of how content works now on the web: living as streams, dynamic not static, effortlessly multimedia, surrounded by contextually relevant information, flowing seamlessly from one piece to the next, reflective of the increasing atomisation of content. A site where every page is the homepage.

Shifting to a content model such as this isn't easy. It requires a wholly different design approach, different workflows, and an in depth and ongoing understanding of user need and behaviour. The idea of context for example, is multi-dimensional, so serving up relevant associated content requires a sophisticated and intelligent tagging system, and staff with the know-how to use it in the right way.

But this kind of approach is a far more 'digitally-native' approach to news and content that reminded me a lot of the work done by MadeByMany in redesigning the ITV News site a year ago. That too featured a continously updated multimedia feed of news that draws on multiple sources, enables filtering by story, and is largely unshackled from legacy approaches. And it's not lost on me that this approach is fantastically suited not just to social and SEO, but also to mobile and tablet. Small wonder then, that unique views on the ITV news site have risen by over 500% since that resdesign.

Once again the value has come from unshackling approaches to content and design from legacy thinking and rebuilding a modern news service from the ground up. There are one or two similar examples of other media owners following suit (the WSJ's World Stream, and Canada's Global News) but the examples are surprisingly few. It strikes me that not only will we see more news services adopting the approach, but that there are lessons here for all content producers. 

Post Of The Month - April 2013 - Nominations

Time to open up nominations for Post Of The Month. As usual I have a short starting list, which make for some good reading, but do add to these with any April posts that you've read and which you thought were particularly strong by leaving the link in the comments. I've included Antony Mayfield's Firestarters talk in this list but such was the quality I could have included them all. Anyhow, my starting four are:

The Art, Poetry & Music of Data Viz from Tom Uglow

Restructing Britain by Louise Downe

Can Agencies Innovate? from Antony Mayfield

The Lean Analytics Cycle by Avinash Kaushik and Alistair Croll

Introducing the Modern Marketing Manifesto from Ashley Friedlein

And you can add your own nominations below.

Planning for Patterns

One of the interesting aspects emerging around multiplatform approaches to content is the dissemblance in device consumption patterns. Differences occur in not just how people use different devices to access content but when. The Media Briefing had a good round up featuring the graph above showing subscriber access to the FT during the day. Desktop and laptop access (in blue) peaks when subscribers get to their desks before declining steadily during the day, and this type of access is really low at weekends. Mobile access (in orange) is almost the reverse, with a spike as people check the FT on a mobile device when the get up, and into their commute, lower usage during work hours, and then a smaller spike on the evning commute and during the evening at home. At weekends, mobile is by far the most used form of access, with a peak on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and a small one on Sunday evening. It's interesting that the FT have pointed out that much of this consumption is additive and not substitutional - in other words people are using different devices to access the FT at times when they wouldn't have before, and multi-device consumption means that they are reading more and for longer.

This pattern is replicated at the Guardian which shows a variable pattern of platform access across the day:

...and at weekends:

The implications stretch beyond distribution and platform strategy, and into a requirement for media owners to think carefully about changing workflows, and daily working patterns and commissioning processes for journalists and editorial staff.

Twitter recently released the Twitter TV Book, a useful guide to the relationship between Twitter and TV, produced using data from social analytics firm SecondSync. According to SecondSync upto 40% of all UK Twitter traffic at peak TV viewing time is about TV content. One of the interesting aspects to SecondSync data is the ability to construct ‘social profiles’ for programming showing the patterns of tweets that occur as the content is broadcast. These profiles differ by genre, demographic and time slot, and are often driven by storylines, content and on-air integration. It's all rather fascinating. Tweets for entertainment programmes are typically content led and also happen during ad breaks, those for films follow storylines and often incorporate quotes, whilst dramas often see peaks in conversation bookending episodes, and patterns for factual programming peak at key events or revelations, but may have a long-tail of discussion that stretches out beyond the programme itself. 

The granularity of this kind of data leads to some interesting possibilities. In the last series of X-Factor for example, the mentions for the eventual winner James Arthur consistently outstripped those of every other contestant through the series. In the final, the pattern of conversation (below) showed over four times the volume of tweets (and consistently higher tweet-peaks) for James compared to the runner up, Jahmene Douglas, showing how Twitter can act as a barometer for public opinion.

Unsurprisingly perhaps, the research also shows the benefit of integration (hashtags prompt and organise conversation, trends drive discovery, links help spreadability, integrating with content helps talkability) which you get a sense of seeing the profile for the on-screen launch of the #DancePonyDance campaign for Three, across five hours of a Friday night.

The interesting angle to this though, as SecondSync point out, is how the second biggest peak of conversation (in Alan Carr's Chatty Man, with under 2 million viewers) was not that far behind the biggest peak which happened when the ad premiered in Coronation Street (with 8.5 million viewers). Despite the latter having a much larger TV audience, the former had a larger social audience, showing that awareness of a programme's 'social profile' enables advertisers to optimise the positioning of creative designed to stimulate online buzz. 

Conversation is not the same as engagement of-course, but it's easy to see how this kind of data might be used not only to maximise the opportunity to create conversation, but to schedule creative with programme social profiles in mind, and optimise the scheduling of brand tweets and online content sharing to capitalise on dual-screening. A more granular understanding of the specific content within programming that is generating the most conversation also enables the referencing of popular moments or key story-line events to inform content creation. With Twitter's acquisition of Bluefin Labs, SecondSync's integration with BARB data, and with the potential to create a syndicated-standard social TV ratings metric in the form of Nielsen’s Twitter TV Rating, this space is starting to get really interesting.

The point is (again) how both publishers and marketers/agencies will need to adapt working practices and processes in order to deal with a world where content is optimised for delivery using a more three dimensional view of how and when people consume it, and where realtime feedback can inform more adaptive planning, and content adapted on the fly in response to that feedback. That may not feel like a fully formed possibility right now but its intriguing to think of the potential once (instead of traditional linear scheduling) more TV creative is ad served, which we're already starting to see the beginnings of. In that world, conversation patterns and social programming profiles could become another useful data point by which to schedule creative in far more agile and targeted ways. Automation would perhaps play a significant part in dealing with the compexity of optimisation using multi-dimensional data points, but so might smart human intuition and application of that data.

Most publishers are a way off figuring out the kind of working and commissioning processes that enable true platform-neutral creation but which are platform-specific enough to optimise based on more three dimensional consumption and conversation patterns. Brand are too. But for how long?

From AdGrads to AdMission

I'm a big believer in anything that helps support the young talent in our industry. It's one of the reasons I think Squared is so good.  Set up a bunch of young ad folk for no other reason than to provide an independent, practical resource for graduates and others who want to come into our industry, the Ad Grads blog has been posting useful resources, links and advice for over five years now. It has been looked after by Will Humphrey, who deserves some props for keeping it going. As Will says:

"The blog was originally meant to stand as a counterpoint to the dearth of Advertising advice out there. The IPA had a good fact file on agencies, but there was nothing out there that *really* showcased what life was like when getting in as a graduate."

The good news is that now that the IPA have made graduate recruitment a priority, they have smartly moved to merge AdGrads with the new site they've set up specifically for young people who are interested in working in the ad and media industry, called AdMission. The site has lots of good stuff on it including job profiles, advice on getting a job or securing work experience, interviews with Ad luminaries, details on graduate schemes and entry level jobs. I know there's quite a number of young people either in the industry already or looking to get into it who read this blog, so I urge you to check it out.

On The Future Of Feature Writing

Multi-chapter, multimedia, highly immersive digital features from publishers seem to be becoming quite the thing. The latest is the rather lovely ESPN Grantland story of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race, which follows on from their similar feature on The Long, Strange Trip of Dock Ellis. Then there was the beautiful Pitchfork cover story on Natasha Khan which wonderfully integrated text, imagery and audio.

And this example from Outside magazine, which graphically tells the story of an early ascent on Everest, is notable for incorporating third party commercial sponsorship (albeit in a pretty clunky way).

The best known example is the New York Times' Snowfall of-course, which integrated video, images and graphics in a seamless, flowing narrative. And as The Atlantic described it, did it in a way "that makes multimedia feel natural and useful, not just tacked on".

Inevitably some have lauded Snowfall and its ilk as the 'future of journalism', but others have pointed out (mostly on Twitter at the time) just how time and resource intensive such projects can be. How can Snowfall be the future of journalism, they say, when it took six months and the involvement of 16 people to produce?

I think that kind of misses the point. To paraphrase The Atlantic, Snowfall (and others like it) are not the future of journalism, but that's OK. Snowfall recently won the Pulitzer for feature writing. This kind of reader experience where one element flows seamlessly into the next is uniquely suited to longform feature content (and to creating immersive feature experiences on tablet devices), and I'd argue far less suited to punchier, news driven content. Snowfall was produced as as the result of an off-and-on project, and an almost documentary-style approach outside of the realms of that which was possible with the normal CMS.

As the skills of journalists develop, as the shape of the skillset in media organisations expands to encompass new design, video, and graphics skills, as commissioning proceedures change, as integration with third party tools improves, as CMS's develop to enable a greater, more intuitive use of multimedia content, this kind of immersive experience will only get quicker and easier to do.

In the meantime, it's a good time to experiment and learn. Andrew Kueneman, Deputy Director of Digital Design at the NYT said of Snowfall: "In the long term, we also walk away from an effort like this with many valuable lessons in design, development, team collaboration, editing, promotion, etc.—lessons we can apply going forward, and ones we could only learn while working on deadline."

So whilst this kind of thing might not be the future of journalism, it is surely at least part of the future of journalism, and a potentially quite significant one at that. This kind of mixing of traditional writing skills with techniques that are more akin to filmaking enable a far richer pallette for features writers. Given that, I'm really surprised that we haven't seen more magazine publishers experimenting with this type of approach.

HT @Mrjamescarson for the Outside link

Google Firestarters 8 - Scriberia Visual

Scriberia have once again excelled themselves and managed to capture eight talks on agency innovation in one visualisation. You can view a larger high res version of the visual here. Meanwhile Contagious magazine have done a rather nice write up of the event (including some key points from each talk). And Nadya from Dare, who was one of our speakers, has mentioned to me the half day "Innovation Stories" session being run on 16th May (at Google Campus in London) by Creative Social which should provide a good follow up to the Firestarters event and debate. More about that here.

Post Of The Month - March 2013 - The Winner

Happy to say that the winner of Post Of The Month for March is the excellent Digital Isn't Working (Yet) paper from Ian Fitzpatrick and Eric Pelletier. Well done to Eric and Ian, who are entered into the Hall of Fame. And thanks to everyone for taking part. 

Post Of The Month - March 2013 - The Vote

A smaller number of nominations this month so a shorter but perfectly formed shortlist for your reading pleasure. Our vote this month is between:

What You Know, What You Do, and What You Own by Matt Locke

Are Brands Fracking the Social Web? from John Willshire

No to No UI by Timo Arnall

The No UI Debate is Rubbish by Scott Berkun

Digital Isn't Working (Yet) by Ian Fitzpatrick and Eric Pelletier

And you can vote below:

Let's Build Something

Maria Popova once joked that it seemed as though we'd "reached a cultural point at which every time someone uses the word 'curation' in reference to content and publishing, an actual museum curator kills a kitten". Yet it does seem that curation is becoming more important than ever, and that the growing surfeit of content means that the people and tools that help us get to the good stuff quicker and easier are more useful than ever. The challenge is how we do that. For every individual there is a different view on what defines 'good', and that in itself shifts according to context. My own opinion is that combinations of different types of content curation (the three pillars being professional, algorithmic, and social) work best to get us to that place. 

One of the (many) great things about Twitter is that it's such an excellent source of great links and content. But most of us don't have the luxury of sitting on Twitter all day so it's easy to miss the good stuff. Having something that showed me the most interesting links and updates that have been shared whilst I've been away (or shared by people I follow in different time zones) would be wonderfully useful. Lots of people have had a go at this. Twitter itself has it's Discover tab and the 'Tweets for you'. Kottke created Stellar. There's aggregators like Paper.li. I'm sure all of these have their place and inevitably we will use more than one tool, but there is nothing that quite nails it for me. The closest is probably Percolate but that has since pivoted to become a business tool (and seemingly an excellent one at that).

Wouldn't it be fun to have a go at building something to tackle this problem? I was talking to James Haycock who runs Adaptive Lab about this and he thought so too, so we're going to do just that. I'm rather happy to be partnering with Adpative Lab - they are a 'skunkworks for hire', a very smart group of creative technologists, developers and data specialists that collaborate with companies large and small (including ASOS and YouGov) to create innovative new products and services (check them out). It occurred to both James and I that a service such as this would be useful for the readers of this blog so we thought we'd make the process of building it as open as possible, and involve you in helping to shape something that you could then go on to use. It will make the process fun and really interesting, and I was a fan of the way in which MadeByMany blogged the development process of the Picle app. So I'll be blogging updates as we go, and asking for feedback that can help us to create something that is as useful as possible for everyone. I'll also be including updates on my weekly email, so if you want to make sure you don't miss out you can sign up here.

I'm rather excited to see what we might build together. So far, we have a working project title - Fraggl (nothing to do with these definitions of 'Fraggle'), and have defined the problem we are trying to solve thus:

It's impossible to be on Twitter 24 hours a day. Most of us dip in and out when we have a spare few minutes. So how can I make sure that I don't miss out on the great content shared by the people I follow? I want a way to regularly see the most useful, interesting, stimulating, original and links that have been shared amongst the people I like on Twitter. And I'd like those links to be as relevant as possible to my interests.  No existing service does this well enough for me.

A one-sentence elevator pitch is: The service that ensures you never miss the most useful content shared by people who are interested in the same things you are.

We have a few ideas as to how we propose to do this which we'll share, but for now, what we'd really like to know is this:

As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated.

Image courtesy

Post Of The Month - February 2013 - The Winner

Delighted to announce that this month's winner is Martin Weigel, whose excellent post/deck on brands, humility and indifference very narrowly beat James Caig's tale of the bottom half of culture. Well done to Martin, who is on something of a roll having won last month's vote as well. Thanks everyone for taking part.