Ringier tests participatory web
Internet Youme.net is the name of a new Swiss Web 2.0 project. The Ringier publishing house is behind it.
Internet Youme.net is the name of a new Swiss Web 2.0 project. Video clips, blogs and online exchanges are captivating the Internet community. More and more start-ups are focusing on the participatory web with the ambition of being able to sell to a giant like Google shortly after launch. The Swiss start-up Freeflow also wants to benefit from this hype. With Youme.net, the company is launching a so-called social network, its own interpretation of the well-known US role models MySpace and YouTube.Ringier is supporting the project with a six-figure sum. The aim of Switzerland's largest publishing house is to gain insights into the online usage behavior of the younger generation. It is not surprising that Ringier is investing money in a risky venture, as innovations in the online sector are explicitly on the publisher's strategic agenda for this year. Last autumn, publisher Michael Ringier declared that the company would push ahead with digitization and that it wanted to benefit from the "gap between Internet usage and Internet advertising business" in the future.
According to Ringier, 20 percent of teenagers and young adults today cover their media consumption with the Internet, but less than 5 percent of the advertising business comes from the web. Projects such as Youme.net are therefore an obvious choice, as traditional media will have to reposition themselves sooner or later. "We want to learn how to deal with user-centered platforms and hope to gain access to new target groups," says Andreas Waldis, Head of New Media at Ringier.
The new online platform Youme.net is currently unique in Switzerland. The project is not a clone of existing models. As is the case with the usual offerings on the Internet, users can put themselves in the limelight with all kinds of interaction tools. But Youme.net founder Marcel Meier goes one step further. He wants to work together with the users and is counting on them to become active themselves, to join like-minded communities and not just vegetate on the net as mere consumers. He currently has an editorial team of six, most of whom are teenagers. They moderate the goings-on on the platform.
Cross-media marketingYoume.net works via topic incentives. The creators encourage participants, for example, to upload their own contributions on topics from the fields of entertainment, sport or work and education. For example, Youme.net attracts people to the platform with the call "Make Switzerland laugh" and uses this to find the best videos on the subject of comedy in Switzerland. Once the contributions have been linked, commented on and rated by the community after a few weeks, Meier wants to bring the best contributions to the traditional media channels and sell the corresponding content cross-media to various media partners. He reckons that, for example, portraits of participants in newspapers, reports on television and events where the best up-and-coming comedian is chosen should be of interest to advertisers.
Meier does not want his project to be a mere talent factory, but sees his platform as a pool for ideas and stories. "As a media partner, we are interested in the content that is created," says Andreas Waldis. Founder Marcel Meier is convinced that people will increasingly become producers of their own ideas thanks to the technologies in cell phones and notebooks.
Another novelty of the platform is its mobility: in order to be close to the action and the target audience, the team is constantly on the move with a glass container. It is currently parked on the grounds of the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich. Every six weeks, it will move to the location where the stories produced by the users are happening. If a participant's contribution stands out from the gray mass, the editorial team picks it up with a report or a portrait and seeks distribution in the media. So anyone who has something to say gets the chance to become "famous". Meier's focus is on the Net generation, the target group of technology-savvy people who today produce films with their cell phones, chat on blogs and no longer know information hierarchies. As a rule, these are people between the ages of 18 and 29.
Meier and his team are also looking after media partnerships and campaigns and already have access to a large network of citizen journalists throughout Switzerland. According to Meier, his project can already count on 40 to 50 so-called heavy users producing content before the launch. The ambitious experiment aims to attract 25,000 active users to the platform in the first six months.
However, the company has also come in for criticism. Nicolas Berg, journalist and company founder, supports young entrepreneurs in the Internet sector as an investor. He is rather critical of the Youme project. Berg refers to the proliferation of party and dating platforms. Such websites are much more in line with the main interest of the young target group. "In order to attract users, the platform must clearly differentiate itself thematically from other platforms."
Christian Lüscher
According to Ringier, 20 percent of teenagers and young adults today cover their media consumption with the Internet, but less than 5 percent of the advertising business comes from the web. Projects such as Youme.net are therefore an obvious choice, as traditional media will have to reposition themselves sooner or later. "We want to learn how to deal with user-centered platforms and hope to gain access to new target groups," says Andreas Waldis, Head of New Media at Ringier.
The new online platform Youme.net is currently unique in Switzerland. The project is not a clone of existing models. As is the case with the usual offerings on the Internet, users can put themselves in the limelight with all kinds of interaction tools. But Youme.net founder Marcel Meier goes one step further. He wants to work together with the users and is counting on them to become active themselves, to join like-minded communities and not just vegetate on the net as mere consumers. He currently has an editorial team of six, most of whom are teenagers. They moderate the goings-on on the platform.
Cross-media marketingYoume.net works via topic incentives. The creators encourage participants, for example, to upload their own contributions on topics from the fields of entertainment, sport or work and education. For example, Youme.net attracts people to the platform with the call "Make Switzerland laugh" and uses this to find the best videos on the subject of comedy in Switzerland. Once the contributions have been linked, commented on and rated by the community after a few weeks, Meier wants to bring the best contributions to the traditional media channels and sell the corresponding content cross-media to various media partners. He reckons that, for example, portraits of participants in newspapers, reports on television and events where the best up-and-coming comedian is chosen should be of interest to advertisers.
Meier does not want his project to be a mere talent factory, but sees his platform as a pool for ideas and stories. "As a media partner, we are interested in the content that is created," says Andreas Waldis. Founder Marcel Meier is convinced that people will increasingly become producers of their own ideas thanks to the technologies in cell phones and notebooks.
Another novelty of the platform is its mobility: in order to be close to the action and the target audience, the team is constantly on the move with a glass container. It is currently parked on the grounds of the Museum für Gestaltung in Zurich. Every six weeks, it will move to the location where the stories produced by the users are happening. If a participant's contribution stands out from the gray mass, the editorial team picks it up with a report or a portrait and seeks distribution in the media. So anyone who has something to say gets the chance to become "famous". Meier's focus is on the Net generation, the target group of technology-savvy people who today produce films with their cell phones, chat on blogs and no longer know information hierarchies. As a rule, these are people between the ages of 18 and 29.
Meier and his team are also looking after media partnerships and campaigns and already have access to a large network of citizen journalists throughout Switzerland. According to Meier, his project can already count on 40 to 50 so-called heavy users producing content before the launch. The ambitious experiment aims to attract 25,000 active users to the platform in the first six months.
However, the company has also come in for criticism. Nicolas Berg, journalist and company founder, supports young entrepreneurs in the Internet sector as an investor. He is rather critical of the Youme project. Berg refers to the proliferation of party and dating platforms. Such websites are much more in line with the main interest of the young target group. "In order to attract users, the platform must clearly differentiate itself thematically from other platforms."
Christian Lüscher
