thejournal.ie new meejah

uvox

Anyone checked this out? Impressions? An ad-driven effort? Will it last?

What's the proposition versus storyful.com?

jmcc

uvox wrote: »

Anyone checked this out? Impressions? An ad-driven effort? Will it last?

Not sure. The view count beside the articles is quite useful. Seems to be very much in beta at the moment. I suppose we can be grateful that the usual droolproof press release paper crowd aren't writing any tech articles for it.

Regards...jmcc

uvox

Thanks - interesting. I would of course sign up and check it out myself but with no front end privacy policy disclosed, I am not going to do that.

There is, of course, a elationship between thejournal.ie and boards.ie:

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2010/0902/1224278049643.html

expectationlost

i havn't signed up for the beta, 1 of the first links they put out was a look inside vincent browne's house he was selling because of debts from his print-based publishing ventures, which did announce an irish huffpost media circle jerk/spite onto the scene, not impressed!


but links they've put out , i dunno, back in old days of blogoshere, one would share stories by creating a posts in your blog summarising the story and posting a bit of visual media, now what you do is just share a link to the original story its saves everybodies times they seem to have gone back to the old way of doing things of copy other peoples lame content, like the lettuce efit story.

you could maybe excuse this as silly linkbait but they don't have any advertisers to get pageviews for so i don't know why they're doing it.

but its i guess as with any site your can ignore the crap you're not interested in but it doesn't impress

they have done some comprehensive posts which are 3/4 rounds up of info elsewhere and 1/4 them following up on the story as journalists.
annoying not be able to read the related stories to them, don't know the point of the closed beta the site looks ready.

i guess its the same with techcrunch and engadget, they read everyone else feeds and the wires all day, its about how much added value there is or can you come up with original stuff.

like another new media ventures, they may have some very very good people involved but will it work?

uvox

expectationlost wrote: »

1 of the first links they put out was a look inside vincent browne's house he was selling because of debts from his publishing ventures

daft provenance showing through already. how classy.

jdivision

As this is a commercial venture I suspect there'll be issues if they start publishing copyrighted newspapers content

jmcc

jdivision wrote: »

As this is a commercial venture I suspect there'll be issues if they start publishing copyrighted newspapers content

Because a lot of hard work goes into crafting those by-lines on the press releases?

Regards...jmcc

uvox

Ah come on, there's more to it than that. It's hard work downloading your Twitter avatar to use as your byline pic too.

uvox

Just read this.

http://www.tribune.ie/news/editorial-opinion/article/2010/sep/19/una-mullally-now-its-beginning-to-seem-as-if-some-/

Thejournal.ie should act as a good daily fix for your news updates (even if they have nicked the Guardian's font) while everyone awaits Mark Little's Storyful, which is turning into the most anticipated Irish new media website ever.

Really? I take it she'll be working there by Christmas possibly?

sundaypapers

We need to give it a chance, but it would be hard to run a major operation with full-time staff on ad revenue. they'd need to syndicate etc

jmcc

sundaypapers wrote: »

We need to give it a chance, but it would be hard to run a major operation with full-time staff on ad revenue.

Running a major operation on ad revenue and sponsorship is only doable if there is the traffic to support it. Of course the other side of this is that there has to be content that people want to read. Online.ie tried this back in the day but it made some very serious mistakes when it came to the tech news section. First, they misjudged their tech audience. This was the Irish Times "technology" section mistake - where a bunch of bozos write about stuff they don't understand. On the web, that's a killer because tech websites are reputation driven - if they have the usual happy-clappies writing for them and people with apparently no real tech expertise editing the section then people simply go elsewhere. And on the web, even then, there was a lot more to choose from. Online.ie tried to get some more knowledgable tech people in to repair the earlier mistake but it was too late - the market was changing rapidly as the dotBomb bubble was bursting and much of the tech audience was being made redundant. (There's an argument that one of the reasons that Online.ie didn't do so well was because while it successfully replicated AOL's content rich environment for an Irish audience, it failed to replicate AOL's key revenue stream - its subscription system. (The one where people pay money each month for service/internet access rather than signing up to a mailing list.)

The second problem relates to the syndication element. A lot of Online.ie's syndicated content for its tech section came from Electricnews.net (enn.ie). Much of this would have been cannibalised from Enn.ie's own site but it was in the business of trying to provide syndicated for a number of sites at the time. This syndication of tech content might fill space but it there is nothing that keeps the users on the website reading articles and looking at advertising.

they'd need to syndicate etc

That's only going to fill space and give the illusion that the website is far bigger than it really is. Syndicated content is also going to cost money. And in a startup, after time, money is the most precious resource.

The most double-edged element in TheJournal.ie's web content is the page view count. If they are not paying attention to this and tailoring content based on the most popular articles, they are losing some valuable intelligence. It also indicates to the users what is hot and what is not. This could lead to article hot-spotting where some articles are largely unread.

There is quite a few people who *think* they know how to run online publications and websites but very few know how to do so successfully.

Regards...jmcc

uvox

Good points. I don't remember online.ie - possibly because I was working abroad in real tech at the time. Who was behind it and where did they go?

I don't think thejournal.ie's forte will be tech analysis or ICT/innovation stories. It's low-level wisdom of the flock NCIRL-style new media twattery a la Mark Little aimed at the happy clappies. We already know from research that these kind of sites do not expand the news audience - readers read what they agree with an exchange views with people most like them.

It'll end up another politics.ie - serial whingers with an ad from the Phoenix.

How much ad revenue you can generate from tweets and page views about a boozy taoiseach and beats me...

jmcc

uvox wrote: »

Good points. I don't remember online.ie - possibly because I was working abroad in real tech at the time. Who was behind it and where did they go?

Barry Flanagan and Colm Grealy. They are still around. Some of the tech people who were working for it were really good and a few of them now work for Google/Amazon etc.

As a concept it was good but it was way ahead of the curve because of the size of the potential audience and the complete lack of "lock-ins" like subscription revenue. It also had some early prototype discussion software but it was up against a range of better established competitors - same thing as the Irish Times' ireland.com mess trying to compete with Boards.ie/Politics.ie etc.

I don't think thejournal.ie's forte will be tech analysis or ICT/innovation stories. It's low-level wisdom of the flock NCIRL-style new media twattery a la Mark Little aimed at the happy clappies. We already know from research that these kind of sites do not expand the news audience - readers read what they agree with an exchange views with people most like them.

In some ways it is the evolution of multi-user blogs. The killer is traffic levels and Ireland's traffic levels are not on the same level as those for the Huffington Post.

It'll end up another politics.ie - serial whingers with an ad from the Phoenix.

Not so much politics.ie as an online version of The Village or some other little Dublin publication. That's the big problem with many Irish internet businesses - they are focused on a fraction of a small market.

How much ad revenue you can generate from tweets and page views about a boozy taoiseach and beats me...

Depends on the type of ads (targeted/contextual would work best) and the position of the ads.

Regards...jmcc

sNarah

I'm growing quite fond of it - there are some tech issues with it still but the "9 things you need to know before 9" are a welcome addition to my cuppa in the morning. The reporting is accurate, "short" and they link well to original sources.

As much a fan I am of Mark Little - I do feel fear The Journal will make a worthy competitor to Storyfull.

expectationlost

well its open to the plebs now,they ironing and their linking and crediting and sourcing issues have to say it looks good, i like thats there plenty else on the page to click around to,but then again it swamps the shorter articles, damnit i was trying to be nice, the main text is too big though, they certainly get through a lot of stuff in a day, don't know how much detail they can add.

sataction

The beta version looks good.

I will be looking in on it, it should be worth bookmarking.

sundaypapers

Does it have 24/7 coverage by the journalists working for it?

sNarah

I'm under the impression they have yes.

uvox

Seems like thejournal.ie is very heavily dependent on Twitter.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/thejournal.ie#

jmcc

uvox wrote: »

Seems like thejournal.ie is very heavily dependent on Twitter.

http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/thejournal.ie#

Well it is new/social media so this kind of pattern is to be expected. The problem with Alexa is that the data is as unreliable as it depends largely on users with the Alexa browser toolbar installed.

Regards...jmcc