Google, BBC and NYTimes Advancing Web Goals Under the Guise of "Openness"
Whether it's app stores or net neutrality, the importance of "openness" is fast becoming tech industry boilerplate. But for any business, running an "open" Web presence isn't as easy as it sounds; factors like profitability and ease of use tend to muck up even the most noble of intentions. Here's a rundown of who's doing it right, who's doing it wrong, and who, frankly, doesn't know what they're doing.
The Wise The BBC has just announced it wants to double its "outbound click" rate by 2013 -- in other words, its pages will start linking to more outside sites. Conventional wisdom for media outlets dictates that you always link inside your own site, to drive up impressions. But the BBC has a bigger-picture view, realizing that their Web production has the power to affect their brand. As the Neiman Journalism Lab at Harvard reports, BBC News Editor Steve Herrmann believes his organization should be getting readers to think of it as a comprehensive knowledge base on the news:
The strategy envisages the BBC as a cultural and public space, one that isn't trying to sell anything and can be trusted.... So the principle for BBC Online, which covers news, weather, sport and programme content, is that it should be "a window on the web", guiding audiences to the best of the internet as well as partnering with external providers -- and that is why we want to increase the click-throughs.Sure, that's easy for a publicly-funded entity to do. But there's a lesson for conventional businesses, too: an air of magnanimity can bring back visitors, who will get the impression that this brand believe more in quality and completeness of content than in driving traffic. Of course, the whole idea is to drive traffic by reputation, but that's beside the point.
Google (GOOG) is also handling itself aptly. PCWorld is reporting that Google Editions, its e-book service, will launch this summer, touting universal compatibility and an enormous library of books, many of which it has painstakingly scanned into binary via its Google Books project. None of this appears to make Google any money -- and that's sort of the point. By making its books available via any Web browser, Google is pushing a Web-as-standard agenda meant to show that great apps don't need the abstruse requirement Apple (AAPL) saddles them with. Google is also selling its e-books through partner stores, large and small, and letting them keep the lion's share of the revenue. That could build stores' animosity towards Apple's iBooks and Amazon's (AMZN) Kindle books, which leave them excluded. When it comes to media wars, it never hurts to have grassroots allies.
Google's bookstore also preserves its let's-all-get-along persona amongst customers, who see Google's free product suite (and free broadband) initiatives as downright good-willed. And they are. Of course, they also provide lots of new advertising opportunities from which Google can make millions.
The Foolhardy Rupert Murdoch can't seem to help sounding like a curmudgeon, and his new plans for the Wall Street Journal are very much in character. During an earnings call on May 4, the News Corp. (NWS) chairman -- who has accused search engines of stealing his content, and criticized the New York Times for its "half-hearted" paywall plans -- hinted that he'd be launching a competitor to the iTunes Store in the next few weeks. He says there's a consortium of players involved, but it's hard to imagine Fox competitors abandoning Steve Jobs to start a new venture, especially when they can't seem to agree on which technologies to use for Web video.
Murdoch's initiative smacks of solipsism, not market disruption: "everyone else is incompetent" is the same sad party line we get from losing political candidates. As I've written before, the mobile media game will rely increasingly on a crop of new standards and technologies, and it's almost impossible for one company to pick winners in every category. Better to get in with the standards-bearers (Apple, Google) than to alienate them.
Facebook has also been sending the wrong message lately, as it tries to both to open up and lock down our personal data to suit itself. Its new "Connections" initiative resets a lot of its users' privacy settings to default-open and makes more personal dirt Web searchable -- even by people who aren't on Facebook. And yet, here they are suing the hell out of an aggregation service offered by Power Ventures that allows users to view Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Orkut and Hi5 on the same screen. Even worse: the Register is reporting that Facebook is the only dissenting social network -- making it, I suppose, an antisocial network.
The Confused When in doubt, say you're in doubt. That's the lesson of the New York Times' (NYT) approach to new media, at least. The Gray Lady has been airing its half-formed plans for a paywall for months, inviting plenty of conjecture and discussion from all over the digital spectrum. It's also been tentative about jumping into new platforms like the iPad, even while its rival Rupert Murdoch has been quick to praise the iPad as the "saving" of the newspaper industry. The truth is: no one knows what will be the "saving" of the industry, if there will indeed be one at all. The Times isn't selling a solution just yet; instead, it's doing its homework.
The Times has worked with Apple, sure, but it's also stopped short of releasing a full-fledged reader for any Apple device because, perhaps because it's still honoring its deal with Amazon for a digital version of the Times for Kindle. This has reportedly pissed off Steve Jobs, but it's also given readers time to acclimate to the changes. By setting its paywall deadline a full year later than the Journal's, iterating slowly on its digital versions and letting its plans develop in public, the Times is assuring that whatever its ultimate strategy, readers won't be shocked or alienated. Openness doesn't have to be preachy, like Google's, or virtuous, like the BBC's; sometimes transparency is enough.