Date: Tue, 17 Sep 1996 19:56:57 -0500
Priority: normal
X-mailer: Pegasus Mail for Win32 (v2.42a)
Sender: owner-online-news@marketplace.com
Precedence: bulk
Status: RO
X-Status:
> We've had many of our users comment they'd rather get an email with the
> top stories of the day, than log onto our site and check the latest
> news. Most people aren't actively looking for information, and don't
> want to--the push model is much more appropriate for them than relying
> on them to pull down your page.
They would indeed -- for a while. At least that's what I found when
I looked into this about a year and a half ago. Eventually, people
stop opening up the e-mail message, too, particularly if they get a
lot of e-mail. Most get deleted unread.
A lot of all of this relates to novelty. Honestly, now, how many of
you have changed within the past month all the settings on your After
Dark screen blanker that you couldn't stop messing with two years
ago? How many of you have changed within the past two months the
collection of event sounds that you used to play with everyday? After
the novelty wears off, things like that have to do something for you
or you give them up.
Until and unless someone finds something wrong with the current way
of receiving news -- primarily by highly portable, instantly
archival, already delivered, stares-out-at-you, easier-to-read paper
(or even-easier-to-watch TV) -- you must offer something extremely
different or extremely niche-oriented online to last beyond the
novelty period.
For most newspapers, that means small-niche information-retrieval
services and general services to distant readers who cannot
subscribe in print.
At the risk of stealing the very nice headline Mindy McAdams
suggested for her AJR NewsLink column last week: News is old news.
Unless you offer something along the lines of what she suggests
(see http://www.newslink.org/mmcol2.html), once the novelty wears off
you aren't even tomorrow's fish wrap.
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------+
This message was posted to ONLINE-NEWS. http://www.planetarynews.com/o-n.html
From owner-online-news@marketplace.com Wed Sep 18 03:55:26 1996
Received: from marketplace.com (majordom@marketplace.com [206.168.5.232]) by cnj.digex.net (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id DAA12521 ; for ; Wed, 18 Sep 1996 03:55:26 -0400
Received: (from majordom@localhost) by marketplace.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) id VAA28250 for online-news-outgoing; Tue, 17 Sep 1996 21:54:52 -0600
Received: from server.indra.com (server.indra.com [204.144.142.2]) by marketplace.com (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id VAA28189; Tue, 17 Sep 1996 21:52:44 -0600
Received: from indra.com by server.indra.com (8.7.4/Spike-8-1.0)
id VAA01507; Tue, 17 Sep 1996 21:36:05 -0600 (MDT)
Received: from is.nyu.edu by indra.com (8.7.4/Spike-8-1.0)
id VAA16623; Tue, 17 Sep 1996 21:36:04 -0600 (MDT)
Received: from DIAL2-2-ASYNC-13.DIAL.NET.NYU.EDU by is.nyu.edu; (5.65v3.0/1.1.8.2/23Sep94-1121PM)
id AA08043; Tue, 17 Sep 1996 23:35:53 -0400
Message-Id: <323F7C6B.173@is.nyu.edu>