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Among younger online users, Web video is now approaching total saturation. A recent Pew report found that nine in 10 Web viewers aged 18 to 29 say they watch content on video-sharing sites, and more than a third in that age group (36%) say they do so every day.
Ipsos MediaCT report finds awareness of specific online video sites is on the rise: Hulu saw market awareness increase from 9% to 41% between September 2008 and April 2009 – and YouTube saw awareness increase from 83% to 87% during that same time period. These are significant jumps.
Newsy.com’s awareness is on the rise too - users are Tweeting, sharing and embedding our videos more and more every month. We rolled out the current version of the Newsy site in April, and have made improvements every month. October is shaping up to be an exciting month - you’ll see significant changes to our content and design. Stay tuned for a some major announcements in the coming weeks!
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Yesterday, Slate unveiled
The Slatest, a thrice-daily recap of a day’s news cycles. The new site is replacing Slate’s ‘Today’s Papers’, a once-a-day summary of national news that was one of the Web’s first aggregators.
The Slatest joins a group of other web aggregators including
Newser,
The Daily Beast and
The Stimulist. These sites claim to filter and curate the news - promising the reader that they will only consume the most important news nuggets during their busy day.
Each web aggregator describes their value proposition a bit differently. The Slatest’s describes itself as ‘The most important news and commentary to read right now,’ The Daily Beast offers ‘Curated news aggregation,’ Newser invites viewers to ‘Read less, know more,’ and The Stimulist offers ‘A daily brief for the (curious) optimist.’
None of these sites analyzes a variety of video and text reports and point out the key differences in reporting. And all of these sites are text based - not offering online video, which is increasingly what Web viewers are looking for. Only Newsy.com analyzes the news, it doesn’t just aggregate it.
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Today’s video ‘Covering and Smothering Michael Jackson’ poses the question: “Did the media give Michael Jackson’s death too much coverage?”
Indeed, many, many people were glued to their computer screens to watch coverage of Jackson’s death. In fact:
MSNBC.com served up nearly 19 million streams of NBC News’ coverage of the Michael Jackson memorial service yesterday, breaking our previous record of the Obama inauguration. CNN.com says it served up 10.5 million live streams served for the day, second to its inauguration record.
To give some context to the “nearly 19 millions streams of NBC News’ coverage of Michael Jackson memorial service,” here’s some stats to noodle:
According to NielsenMedia.com
, the TV program with the most viewers for the week of June 29 was America’s Got Talent - with 13 million.
MediaBistro.com reports: The big three broadcasters bounced back during a big news week that included the death of Michael Jackson. NBC Nightly News won the week averaging 8.4 million Total Viewers and topping 10 million on Thursday night with the Jackson news.
MSNBC.com’s 19 million streams of Jackson coverage blows these other numbers out of the water. Online video, the chosen platform of Newsy.com, is gaining steam, and fast. It might not be too long before online video outpaces television altogether.
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Today YouTube launched the Reporters’ Center channel, featuring videos with journalistic advice from the likes of Bob Woodward. As TechCrunch reports, it serves YouTube’s interests well “when more and more people take up the habit of filming whatever happens in their neighborhood and upload the videos to the wildly popular sharing site afterwards.”
YouTube’s Reporters’ Center is a smart way for YouTube to build up its ‘News’ category - after all, videos of the Iran protests on YouTube last week had hundreds of thousands of views within a couple of days.
Citizen reporting impacted much of the news media’s coverage of the protests. Without the citizen-shot videos on the Internet, much of the world might never have seen the extent of the violence occurring on the streets of Tehran, particularly with the media censorship being enforced by the state.
The fact that so many people are coming to YouTube to search for news is proof that the future of journalism lies in video. Newsy, which seeks to present the essence of a news story by analyzing various media perspectives, is well positioned to take advantage of this trend.
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As news has become more abundant, its value has decreased. News consumers, especially Generation Y, increasingly get headlines from various sources online with little or no loyalty to any organization. This shift in behavior has challenged traditional media companies’ business models and left them scrambling to find a path to profitability.
In his excellent post, ‘The Future of News Is Scarcity,’ Nic Brisbourne discusses how a basic rule of economics - every abundance creates new scarcities - can be applied to the news business. The rule is good news for media companies, which are looking for new ways to make money in the 21st Century.
Why? The abundance of has created a new opportunity for providing thought-provoking analysis of multiple sources. Many of today’s most interesting and popular stories go beyond just simply reporting what has occurred – they bring in relevant context.
The New York Times experiments with this concept in its sections The Lede and The Opinionator – other successful news websites with this model include The Huffington Post for politics and TechCrunch for technology news.
Newsy.com is a trailblazer in offering consumers context with convenience - we’re the only online video news site analyzing various news sources and packaging them in one easily digestible package … because multiple sources help you decide the real story.
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Earlier this week, Information Today
featured Newsy.com as a site that makes people smarter, faster.
http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/Newsycom-Wants-to-Make-You-Smarter-Faster-53582.asp
Newsy.com analyzes and synthesizes news reports from around the world and then produces 2 to 3 minute clips that present the key highlights and nuances. Viewers come away more informed in less time - it’s context with convenience.
Like all successful businesses, Newsy.com is meeting a current demand in the marketplace. People increasingly want their news in quickly digestible bits, and more and more they want it online and through video. According to Nielsen, since 2003, the time spent on video sites has increased by over 2,000%, and the number of Americans who visit online video has climbed 339% over the same time period. News remains the #1 category type for content.
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This morning, University of Missouri’s News Bureau sent out a press announcement regarding its partnership with Newsy.com.
The release details Newsy.com’s value proposition as the first site to provide daily multi-perspective views of the world’s news and highlights how Newsy.com is an additional learning lab for the students.
It also describes how the news site design is based on research from the Missouri School of Journalism and usability testing conducted by the University of Missouri Information Experience Lab.
Read the entire release here:
http://munews.missouri.edu/news-releases/2009/0408-newsy-journalism.php
