Why Didn't Media Companies Create Their Own Zite?

from the $40-million-would-have-been-nice... dept

While we're wondering how the NY Times might have better spent the $40 million they dumped into the Emperor's New Paywall, when you combine that with the story of a bunch of big media companies ordering Zite to stop making their content more useful and readable, you come to the natural question of wondering why these big media companies haven't made their own Zites:

For publishers, the problem is that Zite is really, really good at personalization and filtering. In my use of the app over the past few weeks, I’ve consistently found that the app shows me headlines I want to click on – and that’s the test that really matters.

We in media should think about what led us to this place, where major news outlets are targeting a company that is creating something they should create: an innovative, personalized news source.

What efforts have major media companies made to build or enable their own innovative news consumption products?

Couldn't the NY Times or News Corp. have spent the millions they've spent on locking up their content towards something like Zite that actually makes their content more valuable and more useful? The problem seems to be that they value the content over all, and don't realize that, just as important as the content itself, is how people find and interact with it. Unfortunately, it seems unlikely that any of the big media properties recognize that yet.

Filed Under: aggregation, journalism, readers, tools
Companies: zite

Big Media To Innovative App Maker: Stop Innovating Without Our Permission!

from the permission-nation dept

There are a bunch of different newsreader type apps out there, and for years there have been all sorts of apps that let you aggregate content into personal collections. A new one, which recently hit the market for iPads, is called Zite and, apparently, it's getting pretty good reviews. Basically, it can look at what you follow on things like Twitter and Google Reader and formats an algorithmically chosen aggregation of that content to look something like a magazine. If you're familiar with Flipboard, it's somewhat similar, but the implementation is a bit different. I remember when Flipboard came out, there were copyright questions concerning how it scraped various websites.

However, for whatever reason, this new service Zite has really set off pretty much everyone in the traditional newspaper business. A list of who's who in the newspaper/magazine world, including the Associated Press, the Washington Post, Dow Jones, Scripps, Gannett, McClatchy, Time and even National Geogrpahic, all teamed up to send a nastygram (embedded below) that effectively says "hey, we're all for innovation, but you can't innovate without first paying us."

Now, to be clear, technically these newspapers may have a point concerning the fact that Zite displays their content. But if you start to go down that path, you suddenly realize that so does a browser. Zite is really just a form of a browser, that tries to make their content more useful. Again, some may point out that Zite strips some ads from publications, but, again, so do many browsers that have ad blocking extensions installed. When viewed that way, how is Zite really anything other than a specialized browser? If they're claiming that's infringing, then is it really that different from claiming that other browsers/aggregating tools are infringing.

And, honestly, if creating an app that makes it easier to read your content is a threat to your business, you're doing business wrong.

I will say I'm a bit surprised to see the NY Times missing from the list of angry publications, since they've gotten upset about similar apps in the past, but really, this just seems like another example of publications thinking that anyone making their content more readable has to first get permission. If someone wants to make Techdirt content more readable, please go right ahead.

Filed Under: copyright, flipboard, innovation, permission, zite
Companies: associated press, down jones, gannett, mcclatchy, scripps, washington post, zite