On the Internet even the dead live
Internet Facts, the news magazine, is no more. Facts, the brand, lives on online. The combination of «news aggregation» and «networking» does not yet exist.
Internet Facts, the news magazine, is dead. Facts, the brand, lives on in the Internet.
Two major weekly titles were laid to rest this summer - Cash and Facts. However, the Facts brand is not in the brand cemetery where Swissair, PTT or ABM rest in peace. Facts lives on. Not as a news magazine, but as a so-called community portal.
The publisher Tamedia recently launched Facts 2.0, a new website. Instead of conducting expensive research journalism, the platform collects content from all media and the blogosphere, organizes it and links it to its original source. Users can also comment on the articles and track who is reading them.
According to its own description, the platform is "a network for news producers, whether journalists or bloggers". In order to guarantee that only these people are on the portal, new members must be invited by a registered member. As initiator and project manager Christoph Lüscher says, this is to ensure the sustainability of the project.
More than just another cloneFacts 2.0 is nothing new in principle. In terms of design, the platform is a mixture of the well-known news portal Digg.com and the social network Facebook. However, the Tamedia project is not just another clone of successful US community sites. Facts 2.0 offers innovation. According to the architect of the platform, Oliver Reichenstein, the combination of the elements "news aggregation" and "networking" is unprecedented in this form. The aim is to show who the people behind the news are.
Although the creators of Facts 2.0 declare the project to be an experimental kitchen, Tamedia wants to earn money with the platform. How, however, is not yet clear at Werdstrasse. For Lüscher, however, it is clear that they want to offer advertisers large-scale banner advertising for image campaigns. However, this form of advertising has a handicap because online marketing primarily measures clicks and not impressions.
According to the initiators, the project needs to develop its own character before it is marketed so that it is clear to advertisers what they are buying. They want bloggers and other media professionals to share in the profits. "If profits are made, we will pay alpha benefits," says Lüscher. This means that texts that are widely read and discussed will be rewarded. "It's not acceptable for us to be highly profitable with a platform like this and not give anything away. After all, we don't produce any content ourselves."
Lüscher and Reichenstein also occasionally have to deal with criticism. For example, authors of weblogs have already complained because their texts are being teased on the platform. However, according to Lüscher, the aggregation and brief citation of articles is not a problem from a legal perspective. The conflict exists because many blogs protect themselves against the commercial distribution of their content. "However, quoting is not a breach of copyright," says Lüscher, "otherwise Google would not be able to operate a search engine."
However, the Tamedia man does not want to refer to the legal position. Anyone who does not want to be linked will be deleted from the list of sources without discussion.
Grace period until mid-2008Tamedia is the first Swiss media company to experiment with content from weblogs and place it in the context of journalistic products. Christoph Lüscher wants to expand the mix, because in the course of the "uniformization of the media", they want to try to create depth of content with different forms of news. The initiators are convinced that the truth lies somewhere between the content of traditional media and bloggers. Facts 2.0 has a reprieve from Tamedia's management until mid-2008, by which time the project must cover its costs. According to Oliver Reichenstein, one million page views per month would be enough.
Christian Lüscher
Two major weekly titles were laid to rest this summer - Cash and Facts. However, the Facts brand is not in the brand cemetery where Swissair, PTT or ABM rest in peace. Facts lives on. Not as a news magazine, but as a so-called community portal.
The publisher Tamedia recently launched Facts 2.0, a new website. Instead of conducting expensive research journalism, the platform collects content from all media and the blogosphere, organizes it and links it to its original source. Users can also comment on the articles and track who is reading them.
According to its own description, the platform is "a network for news producers, whether journalists or bloggers". In order to guarantee that only these people are on the portal, new members must be invited by a registered member. As initiator and project manager Christoph Lüscher says, this is to ensure the sustainability of the project.
More than just another cloneFacts 2.0 is nothing new in principle. In terms of design, the platform is a mixture of the well-known news portal Digg.com and the social network Facebook. However, the Tamedia project is not just another clone of successful US community sites. Facts 2.0 offers innovation. According to the architect of the platform, Oliver Reichenstein, the combination of the elements "news aggregation" and "networking" is unprecedented in this form. The aim is to show who the people behind the news are.
Although the creators of Facts 2.0 declare the project to be an experimental kitchen, Tamedia wants to earn money with the platform. How, however, is not yet clear at Werdstrasse. For Lüscher, however, it is clear that they want to offer advertisers large-scale banner advertising for image campaigns. However, this form of advertising has a handicap because online marketing primarily measures clicks and not impressions.
According to the initiators, the project needs to develop its own character before it is marketed so that it is clear to advertisers what they are buying. They want bloggers and other media professionals to share in the profits. "If profits are made, we will pay alpha benefits," says Lüscher. This means that texts that are widely read and discussed will be rewarded. "It's not acceptable for us to be highly profitable with a platform like this and not give anything away. After all, we don't produce any content ourselves."
Lüscher and Reichenstein also occasionally have to deal with criticism. For example, authors of weblogs have already complained because their texts are being teased on the platform. However, according to Lüscher, the aggregation and brief citation of articles is not a problem from a legal perspective. The conflict exists because many blogs protect themselves against the commercial distribution of their content. "However, quoting is not a breach of copyright," says Lüscher, "otherwise Google would not be able to operate a search engine."
However, the Tamedia man does not want to refer to the legal position. Anyone who does not want to be linked will be deleted from the list of sources without discussion.
Grace period until mid-2008Tamedia is the first Swiss media company to experiment with content from weblogs and place it in the context of journalistic products. Christoph Lüscher wants to expand the mix, because in the course of the "uniformization of the media", they want to try to create depth of content with different forms of news. The initiators are convinced that the truth lies somewhere between the content of traditional media and bloggers. Facts 2.0 has a reprieve from Tamedia's management until mid-2008, by which time the project must cover its costs. According to Oliver Reichenstein, one million page views per month would be enough.
Christian Lüscher
