Written by Alex Iskold and edited by Richard MacManus
I was reading a Time magazine article online today, entitled Marketing to your mind. This article was very provocative and I enjoyed reading it. But after I was done, something else caught my attention. I was surprised to see a row of 'web 2.0' buttons at the bottom of the article. Time magazine, a mainstream publication, has an impressive array of web links to these services. Is this an indication that mainstream media has caught the new social media winds? Time magazine after all did name the Web-enabled YOU as their person of the Year last year.
Whether we like it or not, media has a huge influence on us. We learn news and in exchange media gets to pitch us (gently) their points of view and their advertisements. The blogosphere has a strong hold on the minds of early adopters. However, it is mainstream publications that reach millions of people - many of whom still know very little nothing about new web technologies.
Saturating media hubs - like New York Times, PCMagazine and Business Week - with links to popular new web sites and services, is critical to achieving the threshold for mass adoption of those services. So the key question is: Has mainstream media recognized 'web 2.0' (or the read/write Web, or whatever you want to call it)? To answer this question, we reviewed the web sites of some prominent newspapers and magazines. The result is the chart below.
As seen from the chart, and perhaps surprisingly, many publications have incorporated web 2.0 services into their sites. Time magazine has a particularly impressive array, followed closely by New York Times, Washington Post and InfoWorld. Notably two publications owned by IDG, Macworld and ComputerWorld, are lagging behind. Yet even these publications recognize the power of RSS - the single most widely adopted feature. Indeed, all the mainstream media websites I surveyed had RSS feeds.
It appears that we are nearing a tipping point for the mass adoption of prominent web 2.0 services, like digg and del.icio.us. Endorsement by mainstream media opens these services up to millions of people who otherwise would either not know about them, or not take them seriously. So these are not just links, these are literally endorsements - or recognition of additional value for mainstream media.
The image above is from Dr. Barabasi's network
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And if 2007 brings massive adoption to services like del.icio.us, digg and facebook, what would those services be worth then?! Ironically I am writing this from one of the Starbucks cafes on Wall Street, which after it got burned by tech stocks in 1999 practically closed its doors to the tech IPOs. Could the mainstream adoption of these services change the minds of gray-haired men and women in Armani suits? Perhaps. What we do know is that whenever crowds come, the (advertising) money follows. Of course only time will tell, but it seems like 2007 will provide a good measuring stick for mainstream adoption of 'web 2.0'.
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Mainstream Media Usage of Web 2.0 Services is Increasing.
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Alex Iskold and Richard McManus have a great piece on Read/ Write Web titled ‚ÄúMainstream Media Usage of Web 2.0 Services is Increasing‚Ä?. The article details how many major media organizations are regularly including ‚ÄúDigg this‚Ä?, ‚ÄúTag on del.i... Read More
Read/Write Web has an interesting post looking at the use of RSS and social bookmarking (Digg, del.icio.us and Newsvine) by fifteen or so mainstream media outlets. Their post is similar in many ways to the newspaper and magazine studies we d... Read More
Yesterday Alex Iskold of Read/Write Web posted a noteworthy article on the increasing usage of Web 2.0 services by US mainstream media. He had a look at newspapers and magazines (the exception being the British BBC, of course) like New York Times, Wash... Read More
It's a bit late, sorry, but here is a summary of last week's action on Read/WriteWeb.... Faking it Lastweek's poll was an eye-opener. We asked: in your current Web activities where an identity is required (i.e. you can't be anonymous)... Read More
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This is quite possibly a stupid question, but what's the difference between an "RSS Feed" and an "RSS Subscription"? Isn't subscribing just what you do to an RSS feed?
Posted by: Josh | January 30, 2007 6:31 PMAnd these buttons are perhaps the biggest assets of these web 2.0 services.
Posted by: Emre Sokullu | January 30, 2007 6:32 PMI see reddit also quite everywhere..
Posted by: Emre Sokullu | January 30, 2007 6:34 PMJosh,
Rss feed means that a site offers one or more feeds to subscribe to.
Rss subscription means that a site offers an immediate subscription via MyWeb, PageFlakes, GoogleReader, Bloglines, etc.
Posted by: Alex Iskold | January 30, 2007 6:39 PMEmre,
You are correct, reddit is common, as facebook. I kept them out for the sake of brevity.
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | January 30, 2007 6:40 PMThanks for the clarification, Alex.
Posted by: Josh | January 30, 2007 6:44 PMInteresting check of the German market here:
http://www.notsorelevant.com/2007-01-31/german-newspapers-do-not-use-web-20-services/
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | January 30, 2007 7:13 PMI think it is quite naive to compare sites based on the number of icons they have added to their stories!
I think BBC is the most revolutionary in terms of adopting the internet as a mass media and bridging the gap between the TV and internet.
Posted by: Divya | January 30, 2007 7:25 PMI agree with Divya. Merely adding some buttons does not display web 2.0 savvyness.
Posted by: pramit | January 30, 2007 8:01 PMThe term 'web 2.0' itself will always make it difficult for us to measure mainstream adoption. Most won't be able to properly define it, and thus most probably aren't even aware they they have been partaking in the whole Web 2.0 phenomenon.
Web 2.0 is just so much more than blogs, social networks, rss, etc. Individually these technologies are far more insignificant than what they represent collectively. If we are to pinpoint mainstream web 2.0 adoption on things such as the availability of these buttons on mainstream media portals, then we should have established that case back when rss became a must, or when ajax started to reshape web usability.
The truth is, despite the media salivating over a possible story on Bubble 2.0, Web 2.0 is here to stay and mainstream adoption started a long time ago. People are using Gmail, running blogs, joining social networks, chatting on Meebo, researching Wikipedia, testing out Basecamp, etc. Life, as we know it online, is getting very good.
Posted by: Michael Vu | January 30, 2007 8:28 PMThis is welcome news, but the bigger equation is the adoption by mainstream users. While publishers are embracing the use of social media buttons, and even press releases are going social, I am unaware of any data mentioning any large mainstream user adoption in RSS and Social Bookmarking use. Not yet, anyway.
Posted by: Daniel R | January 30, 2007 8:30 PMDivya and pramit, we're not saying this shows "web 2.0 savvyness", merely that MSM are using these kinds of services more. Hence the title -- "...Usage of Web 2.0 Services..."
Michael Vu, we left behind the 'what is web 2.0' debate a long time ago thankfully ;-)
Daniel, quite right adoption by mainstream users is the key metric.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | January 30, 2007 8:46 PMMy main point is about mainstream media accelerating adoption because it acts as a network hub. I think that all recent comments make good points, but focus on something else.
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | January 30, 2007 8:48 PMI agree Alex. I was only talking about what MSM can do to make things different and only wanted to add to the main point of your good post, not argue with it.
Building further on the idea, i have written about it in the MediaVidea blog:
http://mediavidea.blogspot.com/2007/01/to-be-really-web-20-savvy-mainstream.html
keep the great analysis coming in :-)
Posted by: pramit | January 30, 2007 9:37 PMDoes anyone else think it would be interesting to have a poll on how many of us actually use the Web 2.0 buttons on sites and how many of us use browser extensions/plug-ins to use these services?
I'm just wondering if the MSM and many of us are adding these buttons for reasons other than them actually being useful? To signal that "this site is Web 2.0, baby!" or as a kind of nudge to people to save/share.
Posted by: Dominic Jones | January 30, 2007 9:38 PMI agree with Dominic - this is more about being seen to be "web 2.0" rather than servicing demand from users. Has anyone seen any research on actual adoption rates for such tools among mainstream users?
Posted by: Alistair Brown | January 31, 2007 2:50 AMGood post. Quite amazingly a few of the local newspaper sites in the UK have adopted similar features.
A client featured slightly negatively in the York Evening Press, but when I read the story online loads of readers had expressed their own opinions which made the client look saintly! The wisdom of crowds!
Posted by: Simon Collister | January 31, 2007 3:03 AMThis might be a bit specific, but does anyone know what the situation is with the trade press?
Posted by: Jess | January 31, 2007 5:11 AMAgree, Alex, we are reaching a tipping point, helped by mass media's adoption of some of the components, as you described. But, as Divya, Pramit, Michael, and Daniel stated, we have a long, long way to go. This is just the first inflection point. Posted earlier this week about where mass media is heading:
Posted by: gz | January 31, 2007 5:15 AMNextBlitz mass media, small parts
Nice post. At The Bivings Report we did a similar evaluation looking at the top 100 US newspapers and Top 50 US magazines. It might be of some interest to you:
Magazines
http://www.bivingsreport.com/2006/the-presence-of-magazines-on-the-internet/
Newspapers
Posted by: Todd Zeigler | January 31, 2007 6:36 AMhttp://www.bivingsreport.com/2006/the-use-of-the-internet-by-america%e2%80%99s-newspapers/
I'm hiding my name because I work for Time Inc, and my view of Time.com's new redesign is less than glowing.
Depending on the day, I could fall on either the optimistic or cynical side of the argument (optimistic: Time.com validates social media's growing importance; cynical: Time.com has been a poor performer of long-standing and they'll do anything to appear relevant), but I think all of this misses the point.
Web 2.0 should be about creating and enabling communities and not shuffling them off to whatever becomes the next big social site. Also, I know that it's common to lump RSS into Web 2.0, but please, this is an old technology that is only now gaining traction at the same time as Web 2.0 is ascending. If you don't have an RSS feed at this point (and only 48% of the top magazines do), then you're not even doing Web 1.0 correctly.
Time magazine, as well as most of the top 50 magazines, has done little to empower its community to add value and collective intelligence to its site. To me, this is the essence of Web 2.0. If Web 2.0 is going to truly mean something beyond us interacting with a series of sites that got there first (read MySpace, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, Technorati, "fill in your favorite one here"), then media outlets of all kind - magazines, tv, movie studios, the works - need to recognize that the revolution will happen with or without them: we are no longer just consumers, we are consumer-creators.
Posted by: gracchus | January 31, 2007 7:14 AMCheck out this latest study from Pew Internet:
28% of Online Americans Have Used the Internet to Tag Content
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_Tagging.pdf
not just focused on bookmarking, but it does suggest that people are becoming more common with tagging in general.
Posted by: stevefleck | January 31, 2007 12:26 PMRichard - I wasn't trying to bring back the 'What is Web 2.0' debate =P. My point was that what mainstream users perceive Web 2.0 as, is very different than what the Blogosphere and techies perceive it as.
For every 10 blogger/techies that debated what 'Web 2.0' meant back when the topic was hot, there's 100 other mainstream users that just popped the question, 'What is Web 2.0?' And of these 100, most have already started using Web 2.0 technologies.
Cheers!
Posted by: Michael Vu | January 31, 2007 5:26 PMgood article, i think i'll "digg" it!
Posted by: mark | January 31, 2007 11:10 PMI'm not sure where you looked on the BBC website(s) to come up with your data, but the BBC has all the things you tried to measure.
The default for our blogs, for example, is to have links allowing visitors to add the post to a variety of social bookmarking and recommendation sites including del.icio.us, digg, newsvine, nowpublic and reddit.
See http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/manchester as an example.
A smaller number of our blogs are experimenting with using Technorati favourites, Google and Icerocket. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/worldhaveyoursay/ for an example.
Additionally, we've also got quite a few blogs that pull in photos from programme or site specific flickr group pools, one of our radio stations has rented an Island on myspace, various BBC websites are playing around with posting content on youtube and/or using the "blog this" option on youtube to pull content from there into the BBC website. Here's a post that does just that: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/anniemac/2007/01/silly_noise_fest.shtml
There have been a number of experiements with one-click RSS subscription chicklets to subscribe to our RSS feeds but, at the moment, I am unable to find an active page with this option. We do, however, list a number of RSS readers on our RSS informaiton page and we also enable users to create their own feed (far cooler and more useful in my opinion than a "click this logo" option) based on search terms. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/help/3223484.stm?rss=/rss/newsonline_uk_edition/world/africa/rss.xml
Posted by: Robin Hamman | February 1, 2007 3:49 AMRobin,
Thanks for your article. Yes we did look at the site. This was measured for all regular articles not for blogs.
Alex
Posted by: Alex Iskold | February 1, 2007 2:03 PMThe fact that traditional publishers are essential to the mainstream adoption of online services (and that this dependency seems odd) epitomises the current state-of-play in the media industry. I think we are nearing the tipping point, when 'online becomes the new offline' and when traditional publishers must go beyond simply using "Web 2.0" services, and actually become them.
By this, I mean that traditional publishers will soon (and indeed are starting to) cease to merely copy or reference what is already there, and will contribute with innovative developments of their own.
Posted by: Andrew Davies | February 7, 2007 8:54 AM