Web Site of Rajiv Pant

Content on Web sites should be managed using systems that were designed from the ground up for the Web. Traditional content management systems with a legacy of features and workflows used for paper-based print products like newspapers and magazines are unsuitable for Web sites. The future of news media content management for Web sites is in:

• simple & quick workflows
• blogs & wikis as the main content types for text
• social networking & community publishing

simple & quick workflows

Complex editorial workflows make sense for print products (on paper) , where once the edition is done, the content and presentation state is “locked” and sent to the presses. Working with Web content writers and editors over the past decade, I have learned that simple, quick workflows are preferable for Web sites. Many Web site producers who hail from print backgrounds now share the same conclusion that complex content management is a hindrance to successful Web site production.

The concept of an edition of the entire product is not necessary for a content Web site. The atomic unit that can be managed and published together can be a package of articles and multimedia or even just one article. A Web site is a living, dynamic, ever changing collection of content where individual items can be updated whenever required or desired or even automatically based on usage.

To be competitive, content needs to be updated and published quickly. Corrections can be made anytime. Thus for Web sites, the editing and approval process should be streamlined and quick all the way from authoring to posting on the site.

A new concept

The ability of online word processors like Google Docs or WriteWith to enable multiple people to edit a document simultaneously and collaboratively is different paradigm from traditional check-in/check-out access control.

blogs & wikis as the main content types for text

Content management system (CMS) which offers the simplicity of blogs and are extensible via plug-ins to add functionality like WordPress or MovableType, make good foundations of a CMS for a news media Web site.

For revisions, editing history and access control, wiki software works well. WikiPedia and WikiNews, which are powered by the MediaWiki software are two good examples.

The concept of content management systems that combine the agility of blogs and editorial control of wikis is interesting to follow. The term bliki seems to be the leading classification of such products.

In many newsrooms, writers are increasingly using blog posts to publish news articles instead of their enterprise-class content management systems. When asked why, they reply because it is simpler and quicker and they don’t need the overhead of things like complex approvals, advanced version tracking and access controls.

social networking & community publishing

Managing content using a blog or wiki is social networking and community publishing activity. On the readership side, successful social news sites like Digg and Reddit have accelerated the evolution of journalism and readership habits towards the social/community model. The distinction between authors and readers itself is blurring with wikis and comments on blogs.

Social networking features are being added to a variety of Web sites. Going forward, expect to see social networking and community features in content management systems.

Conclusion

Media companies should move to using CMS products that prefer simplicity over complex editorial workflows which were a legacy of writing and editing for print products. A news item, story or blog post should be the same content type. It is likely that blogging products that have proven so successful in empowering talented individuals in competing with large companies will evolve into content management systems with the addition of wiki functionality.

Over the past 15 years, as the Web has evolved, the web sites have gone through these generations. What’s likely to be next in the future of what the Web will be? This article describes the Web so far and what form it will likely assume.

• 1993-1997: Generation 1.0
  • These web sites can essentially be considered digital versions of printed newspapers, magazines and books.
  • Like with the printed products, the consumer is primarily a reader and interactivity is generally limited to filling out and submitting forms.
  • Content and design are the most important part.
  • Product = Content + Design
  • Examples: Most news and other content sites in the 1990s.
• 1997-2004: Generation 1.5
  • These web sites are similar to what interactive CD-ROM based software used to be in the 1990s.
  • The consumer is a user (as in user of software). There can be significant interactivity between the web site and the user. Interactivity between users is generally limited to discussion boards and marketplace activities.
  • Product = Technology + Content + Design
  • Examples: Online multimedia sites, online gaming sites.
• 2004-present: Generation 2.0
  • The concept of user-submitted-content grows stronger. Users in the virtual community of the site publish, share and view photos, videos and text.
  • The consumer is a community participant.
  • Product = People (User Community) + Technology + Content + Design
  • Examples: YouTube, del.icio.us, Wikipedia
• 2006-future: Generation 3.0 (prediction)
  • Concept of user-submitted-interactivity / user-submitted-programming arises. The users create, own, sell, share, alter and use interactive objects in the virtual environment.
  • Consumers are co-developers.
  • Product = Community Developed Interactivity + People (User Community) + Technology + Content + Design
  • Examples: Virtual environments and ecosystems like Second Life and Kaneva.

The topic of integrating legacy technology systems with web technology systems often comes up in the newspaper industry.

There is a key difference between Content Legacy Companies (e.g. newspapers) and Other Legacy Companies (e.g. pharmaceuticals). With the world wide web and information technology becoming part of everyday life, every company becomes a content company in certain ways.

In the case of other legacy companies like pharmaceuticals, aeronautics, construction, etc. their legacy products are not going away nor changing as drastically as a result of the world wide web and IT as is happening in the case of content legacy companies like newspapers.

For other legacy companies, it makes sense to integrate the web systems like content management with their core products because their other core products are not fading away as a result of the web and IT.

However, in print media companies like newspapers whose legacy has been content, their product in its legacy form is going away as a direct result of web and IT. So for them it may make sense to not spend too much effort on integrating legacy systems with web systems. Instead, it may be a better strategy to spend more resources on enhancing and upgrading the web systems and digital media products. So for newspapers today, the 1990s holy grail of having one seamless print+web content management system may be less relevant in 2007. It may actually make better business sense to to keep the print cms and web cms separate, focus more on web and digital media and allow newspaper printed on paper to retire over the next decade.

Some newspaper and magazine web sites visibly label some ads on their web pages as “advertisements” but don’t mark other ads including their own in-house ads on the same pages. Their intentions are journalistic: They want to visibly differentiate their editorial content from ads. (Though that doesn’t explain why they don’t label their own in-house ads.)

Sites should be consistent in visually differentiating journalistic content from advertising and other types of content. Either they should label all ads consistently or not label any.

In specific cases where the Editors believe advertising content may be confused as editorial content, they should label it as an “advertising section” like they do in print.

However, some sites choose not to label ads as “advertisements“. Their reasons:

• Readers can differentiate an ad from editorial content in over 99%¹ cases of web pages.
• Ads are not visibly labeled as ads in print publications, except in special cases when the Editors feel that ad may be confused as content.
• Why stop at ads? Why not label everything on the web page that is not editorial content?

Presenting an entire advertising section as that does make sense. The same way the sports section is branded sports in both print and online, it is useful to brand an advertising section as such. It also does make sense to label ads that look like editorial content (in the Editor’s opinion), such as text ad links and ads in between content.

A related article on this subject at MediaPost.

1. This 99% is not based on a survey, but I believe the actual percentage would be even higher. [↩]

I wish I didn’t have to register at and maintain my profile for each web site that I use that requires me to log in. A shared (not necessarily centralized) registration/login system would be a big convenience and time-saver. The Liberty Alliance has been talking about one for a while, but don’t know when, if ever, it will materialize. Microsoft seems to be lowering the external marketing for Passport. I like Six Apart’s TypeKey, but wonder if they have enough backing and industry and public interest for it to last and remain free.

Some people worry about the privacy concerns of a shared registration system. I think it is safer to give your info to one shared system than to give it to dozens. What happens when I need to update my passwords (or anything else in my profile)? I’d rather do it in one place.

It does make sense for certain sites to ask for registeration: e-commerce sites, sites that provide utilities and services, and sites that charge for content. However, even for these sites, it would be nice if I could use a digital wallet — a common online digital identity, rather than manage my account on each site.

Also read the article by John C. Dvorak of PC Magazine on the topic of content sites requiring user registration before allowing readers access to content:

Thankfully, you don’t need to register to read his article :-)

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1646213,00.asp

Being able to assign labels to content to organize information for searching is superior to placing content in folders for manual browsing. The folder concept may be suitable to physical documents on paper, but does not lend itself well to digital information. The labels concept combined with an effective search capability is a faster way to organize content and find information.

Organizing content is a means to the end goal of finding information. Since organizing content is not a goal by itself, it should be as simple and less work as possible required to meet the goal of finding information.

The folder concept has many limitations:

• A particular item of content can only belong to one folder. Placing it in two folders requires either:
  • Making duplicates. This is problematic to maintain.
  • Using links. This is problematic too: With ’soft links’ the content resides in only one folder and if that folder is deleted, the content is deleted too. With ‘hard links’, it is hard to know how many ‘folders’ contain this content and unlinking the last one may unintentionally erase it.
• Similarly, folders can only be contained within one folder.
• To organize content well in folders requires deep levels of sub-folders. These can be a challenge to browse.
• All content must be placed in a folder for it to be well organized in this scheme. Doing this manually is a burden. Setting up rules for some of the content to be automatically placed in folders relieves the burden to a certain extent. However, after a rule has run and placed a content item in a folder, if the rule was found to have been flawed and it mixed the content in with other content in the wrong folder, it can be a bigger burden to find the content and place it in the right folder.
• Folders are static. Search results are dynamic. With computing power available to the common person growing, dynamic search makes better sense than static folders which put some of the work on the user rather than the computer.

It should not be mandatory to apply all appropriate labels to all content. If the automated content categorization being used employs techniques like artificial intelligence and pattern recognition and can determine that this article is about personal information management or content management then that particular label should not be mandatory.

As the number of labels grows, the labels should not be organized in a taxonomy tree with a folders/sub-folders structure. Such a tree structure has the problems of folders associated with it. The labels should be associated with each other in complex relationships as ‘concepts’ in a language.

For example, placing the label “computing” should return the content in search results for “technology”. Placing the label “personal information management” should find it in the search results for the concept “email”. Note that in a traditional taxonomy tree, “computing” could be a child of “technology”, but “personal information management” could be a parent of “email”.

However, since web page URLs as they are commonly used, especially on static-html sites, are based on the concept of folders, this is a challenge. Now URLs don’t have to be folder-like in their appearance. For example, all the news articles on a site could have URLs like “phillynews.com/ra23px4″ instead of something like “phillynews.com/sports/ice_hockey/flyers/04-08-27-victory.htm” or “phillynews.com/inquirer/2004/08/27/sports/flyers-victory.htm”. In this fictitious example, “ra23px4″ is an automatically generated, short and easy to type id pointing to the article like the shortcuts generated by services like tinyurl.com and metamark.net.

Let us consider the organization of email. It seems to be headed in this direction. Some examples in the email space are Google’s GMail, Microsoft’s LookOut Search Plugin for Outlook, Nelson Email Organizer (NEO).

Some possible labels for this document: “personal information management”, “content management”, “computing”, “technology”.