The Daily Mirror has joined
a growing number of newspapers who block a news aggregator, NewsNow,
from crawling it's site. The Sun and Times Online had already made
similar moves.
Having worked in the media industry myself for nearly ten years, I understand why, on the face of things, content providers see aggregators as a threat. Aggregators essentially monitor sites for new content and, like an RSS reader, pull in and display any new content.
The move to block aggregators is, however, short sighted. Aggregators, which range from Google News to more configurable services such as NetVibes, typically allow their users to configure the content they see via keywords or tags. Someone who is a regular reader of a particular news source, say the BBC News website, is unlikely to go off and look at other news sites unless they are particularly interested in reading other viewpoints of the same story. News aggregators, however, display the content from a range of sources, which encourages users to explore new publications and providers.
One of the workshops that I frequently run for our clients helps them better understand how to use the whole web as their canvas. The point of such a strategy is that the only people who visit your website are people who already know about you, or who find you through search engines such as google. By posting content, for example images, video or presentation slides, on third party sites, then linking them back to the relevant piece of content on your own site, you're potentially reaching out to new audiences who have never heard of you previously but who can, nonetheless, engage with your message and organisation after stumbling upon your content on third party sites.
Creative Commons Licensing of content is an important piece of the puzzle as it allows content creators to determine who can use their content and under what conditions. So, for example, on flickr I have set my default Creative Commons Licensing so that it restricts use of my images to those, non-commercial and commercial, who are willing to attribute me and link back to the original image on flickr. By doing this, my photos have been used in powerpoint presentations, a mobile guide to Bristol, and as the derivative basis of a watercolour painting. Each time this happens, my content is seen by people who would have never come across it otherwise, potentially inticing new audiences to visit and consume my other content.
Whilst I understand the initial reaction of publishers and other content providers to aggegators, some of which make money by pulling in and displaying third party content, I also firmly believe that allowing them to do so is a powerful marketing tool. With newspaper audiences diminishing, and television audiences fragmenting, it makes sense to do, or in this instance allow, other sites to display your content so long as they clearly attribute that content and link back to you.
Having worked in the media industry myself for nearly ten years, I understand why, on the face of things, content providers see aggregators as a threat. Aggregators essentially monitor sites for new content and, like an RSS reader, pull in and display any new content.
The move to block aggregators is, however, short sighted. Aggregators, which range from Google News to more configurable services such as NetVibes, typically allow their users to configure the content they see via keywords or tags. Someone who is a regular reader of a particular news source, say the BBC News website, is unlikely to go off and look at other news sites unless they are particularly interested in reading other viewpoints of the same story. News aggregators, however, display the content from a range of sources, which encourages users to explore new publications and providers.
One of the workshops that I frequently run for our clients helps them better understand how to use the whole web as their canvas. The point of such a strategy is that the only people who visit your website are people who already know about you, or who find you through search engines such as google. By posting content, for example images, video or presentation slides, on third party sites, then linking them back to the relevant piece of content on your own site, you're potentially reaching out to new audiences who have never heard of you previously but who can, nonetheless, engage with your message and organisation after stumbling upon your content on third party sites.
Creative Commons Licensing of content is an important piece of the puzzle as it allows content creators to determine who can use their content and under what conditions. So, for example, on flickr I have set my default Creative Commons Licensing so that it restricts use of my images to those, non-commercial and commercial, who are willing to attribute me and link back to the original image on flickr. By doing this, my photos have been used in powerpoint presentations, a mobile guide to Bristol, and as the derivative basis of a watercolour painting. Each time this happens, my content is seen by people who would have never come across it otherwise, potentially inticing new audiences to visit and consume my other content.
Whilst I understand the initial reaction of publishers and other content providers to aggegators, some of which make money by pulling in and displaying third party content, I also firmly believe that allowing them to do so is a powerful marketing tool. With newspaper audiences diminishing, and television audiences fragmenting, it makes sense to do, or in this instance allow, other sites to display your content so long as they clearly attribute that content and link back to you.
Aggregation may very well be parasitic at first glance, but the benefits - greater exposure to new audiences, as well as SEO gains - mean that, in actuality, it's a potentially powerful marketing tool for content providers.
(I originally posted this on the Headshift Blog)
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