4 ms·

A new model for news is definitely needed, but is hard to figure out. At outside.in we're indexing and organizing local news across the US and have recently st

by aditya 18y ago

A new model for news is definitely needed, but is hard to figure out. At outside.in we're indexing and organizing local news across the US and have recently started partnering with national news sources (like nbc) to fill gaps in our index and to provide them with the local coverage that they're missing. Along with providing their users a new way to find and read news (by putting it on a map, for example.) Eventually, it will be a combination of both major media and citizen journalists covering issues that are important. What compounds the problem for the newspapers is that people have stopped consuming news the same way they were doing it 5-10 years ago. The internet has obviously played a big part in this, but so have changing social patterns and expectations on the part of the consumer on news availability. The bigger shift we're noticing that people are actively searching for topics they're interested in, as opposed to flipping through a newspaper, they want to see things they may be tangentially interested in ('crime', in 'Brooklyn') but had no way to get to earlier. It will definitely be interesting to see how this plays out.

brandnewlow 18y ago
It will be. True. But I fail to see how sites like outside.in are helping. My concern with what you guys do is that you've spent the last few years "indexing" everyone else's content...without hardly sending anyone to the original sites themselves. I explained this to one of your biz-dev guys a few months back, so I see no need to do so here but I'll restate a few points. I added my publication's RSS feed to outside.in several months ago. Since then, my biggest day of referrals from you guys has been 6 visitors/24 hours according to Google analytics. Big whoop. Meanwhile, how many Google hits did you get from my content? From everyone else's content? Feel free to call me wrong with data, but I imagine Outside.in is an SEO machine and that Google accounts for most of your traffic. How is this helping the publishers you "index"? It's been very, very clear from day one how it's helping outside.in. Your business-development guy told me you're hatching partnerships with major newspapers to put "publisher" content on their sites. Will those links lead back to the original publishers? Or will they point back to the summary page on Outside.in? There are now a handful of players doing this between you, Everyblock, YourStreet...even the Huffington Post with its local channels. And not one of them sends any actual traffic back to the sites they index. Meanwhile their traffic numbers go up, up, up, the VC money rolls in, and the publishers themselves keep on spiraling down. People rip on Digg all the time. But I tell you what, Digg actually sends bodies through the door. Same with reddit and other sites like this. Sure, they probably get a lot of Google hits that would otherwise go to the original sites, but they focus on sending people along to the original stories. They profit from the ecosystem of good content and then contribute back to help new sites sprout up.
- adrianh 18y ago
  I can't comment on the other sites you mentioned, but at EveryBlock, we've heard very positive things from publishers regarding the traffic we send to them. One local news outlet (not a blog) gets 20% of its traffic via referrers from EveryBlock. (I'm not sure whether that says more about EveryBlock or about that site, but still.) For at least three sites I can think of off the top of my head, we're the #1 referer -- i.e., we send them more people than any other site does. Adrian
- aditya 18y ago
  Not sure why I got downvoted, but we don't actually have any summary pages. We pretty much send all our traffic back to the bloggers, if you aren't getting traffic from us that's very surprising because as Adrian mentioned we've heard great things from most of our network. The newspaper deals we're doing also send ALL the traffic back to the blogger, check one out here: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/neighborhoods/?neighborhood_id=17972&place_id=55154 http://www.nbcnewyork.com/neighborhoods/?neighborhood_id=179... Two links going back to the blogger for every one link to outside.in! You started trolling so I had to repsond, but our goal (along with EB and everyone else in our space) is to get the content more distribution, as I said above, there is a huge gap that the major news publishers have in local news and the faster that gets filled up the better it is for both producers and consumers.

by aditya 18y ago

brandnewlow 18y ago

It will be. True. But I fail to see how sites like outside.in are helping. My concern with what you guys do is that you've spent the last few years "indexing" everyone else's content...without hardly sending anyone to the original sites themselves. I explained this to one of your biz-dev guys a few months back, so I see no need to do so here but I'll restate a few points. I added my publication's RSS feed to outside.in several months ago. Since then, my biggest day of referrals from you guys has been 6 visitors/24 hours according to Google analytics. Big whoop. Meanwhile, how many Google hits did you get from my content? From everyone else's content? Feel free to call me wrong with data, but I imagine Outside.in is an SEO machine and that Google accounts for most of your traffic. How is this helping the publishers you "index"? It's been very, very clear from day one how it's helping outside.in. Your business-development guy told me you're hatching partnerships with major newspapers to put "publisher" content on their sites. Will those links lead back to the original publishers? Or will they point back to the summary page on Outside.in? There are now a handful of players doing this between you, Everyblock, YourStreet...even the Huffington Post with its local channels. And not one of them sends any actual traffic back to the sites they index. Meanwhile their traffic numbers go up, up, up, the VC money rolls in, and the publishers themselves keep on spiraling down. People rip on Digg all the time. But I tell you what, Digg actually sends bodies through the door. Same with reddit and other sites like this. Sure, they probably get a lot of Google hits that would otherwise go to the original sites, but they focus on sending people along to the original stories. They profit from the ecosystem of good content and then contribute back to help new sites sprout up.

adrianh 18y ago
I can't comment on the other sites you mentioned, but at EveryBlock, we've heard very positive things from publishers regarding the traffic we send to them. One local news outlet (not a blog) gets 20% of its traffic via referrers from EveryBlock. (I'm not sure whether that says more about EveryBlock or about that site, but still.) For at least three sites I can think of off the top of my head, we're the #1 referer -- i.e., we send them more people than any other site does. Adrian
aditya 18y ago
Not sure why I got downvoted, but we don't actually have any summary pages. We pretty much send all our traffic back to the bloggers, if you aren't getting traffic from us that's very surprising because as Adrian mentioned we've heard great things from most of our network. The newspaper deals we're doing also send ALL the traffic back to the blogger, check one out here: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/neighborhoods/?neighborhood_id=17972&place_id=55154 http://www.nbcnewyork.com/neighborhoods/?neighborhood_id=179... Two links going back to the blogger for every one link to outside.in! You started trolling so I had to repsond, but our goal (along with EB and everyone else in our space) is to get the content more distribution, as I said above, there is a huge gap that the major news publishers have in local news and the faster that gets filled up the better it is for both producers and consumers.